"The Sacrament of Love"
The sources, signs and strength of love
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, April 29, 2001
Text: I John 4:16-18; 5:6-8
One of the words that is currently in vogue is the word real, or reality. In fact, you can hardly turn on a television program without finding that this word real strikes you very boldly.
For example, we now have what are known as reality television shows, shows that, of course, are anything but real, for who lives on a desert island followed around by a camera? Nevertheless, we have been persuaded that this is reality television.
Or, for example, we listen to politicians using real numbers to describe the state of the economy. One of the things I have always found is that numbers can be so subjective, can they not? What constitutes the real, really depends on the nature of the argument that you want to make ahead of time. Nevertheless, people like to claim that they have the real numbers.
My friends, even now, you can go for a reality vacation. I've never been on any other kind, but I'm assuming that these reality vacations consist of going to places like Atlantis (in Barbados, I think) that try to re-create this mythical city. Then they call it a reality vacation. Well, I don't know about you, but to me, a lot of this sounds far more surreal than real.
Nevertheless, real is good. The real thing is important and having reality is considered to be absolutely de rigeur.
I think some of this is in response to what I call the virtual world that many of us live in: Virtual reality, which is, of course, a sort of an oxymoron, is something that young people live and play with every day, whether it's the games on their computers, the arcades on Yonge Street or the movies, such as The Matrix, that they go to. Everybody wants a virtual world. And so the real is juxtaposed to the virtual, and we want the real world and real things now, because that's what our generation craves.
Now, what constitutes the real, really? Well the real is that which is not fallacious, that which is not obscure. The real is that which is consistent, that which is to do with the ordinary, that which is to do with the observable. That's how the dictionary defines the word real.
And, in the nature of that definition, I want to make a suggestion to you today: In a world that is looking for the real, I would like to suggest the reality of the gospel, because, it seems to me, the gospel of Jesus Christ is extremely real. It talks about real issues. It deals with real people. It addresses real things in society, because it is based on a real person.
Now, this might not sound very dramatic news. You might think that it sounds obvious, but not so. For I think that there are many people in our society who really, in their heart of hearts, in the serious things of this world, are really craving something real.
For example, this week, when I picked up my mail on Monday, there was a flyer in it. I actually have the flyer here with me. As I looked at this flyer, it woke me up to a reality. I will not give the name of the company because I don't want to advertise over the air, but it's a dating service. The flyer talks about a remarkable invitation to enhance your life.
Well, naturally, I wasn't interested in this, seeing as I'm happily married, but I picked it up and I started to read it. I thought, what is it that people are looking for? I mean, advertisers are supposed to be able to detect real needs better than almost any of us.
The opening paragraph just speaks volumes to me. I want to quote it. It says the following: “I'm sure you have felt like the world is getting faster paced, and it's hard to find time to focus on anything more than your work schedules and your daily routines. The way we interact with others has changed over time. Years ago, we all knew our neighbours. Nowadays, we often don't even get to know the person who lives next door. Let's face it. In today's world, it's difficult not only to meet people, but it's even more difficult to find the right person and to find love.”
Now, this, to me, speaks of reality. This addresses not only, I think, the difficulties of being single in our society (and, for many people, that is a real challenge in a world that is so busy, and so hectic, and so chaotic that it's harder than ever to meet people, and to meet people in an intimate, and a personal, and a meaningful way. It really is.); but it also addresses, as far as I am concerned, a fundamental issue within our society as a whole: namely, that our interactions with one another have become surreal. They have been blocked by these things. They have been blocked by our craving for entertainment, by our craving for instant pleasure, by our craving for gratifying our own needs at the expense of our neighbours'.
We therefore build up our walls and try to find our pleasures behind them in a surreal world that separates us from society as a whole. In spite of the fact that our population has grown, and the world population continues to grow, the problem of loneliness, the problem of being isolated, the problem of not having our needs heard or seen by those around us, is becoming even more serious.
This was really brought home to me last week in one of the most moving things that has happened to me in quite a while. There was a frantic phone call to my office. Actually, it went to our executive assistants, Sonya and Anne. There were voice messages in a foreign accent, pleadings to see Dr. Stirling immediately.
Unfortunately, the accent was so thick that the people in our office could not completely understand the nature of the request. So, this week, this person who was doing the pleading arrived in the offices in person. She arrived in the office with a little boy. Her story was one of the most disturbing and frightening that I have heard in a long time.
This is a woman who had had to leave the Balkans because of the war. She had fled four years ago, after her family had been executed. She came to Canada with her son and, for the last four years, she has been living here. She has been trying to get an education in order to provide for her son. She has been trying to elevate herself to provide for her child and, all the time, she has been doing this on a mother's allowance, and on welfare. She has tried to get work in the evenings, which she has done, but when she has gone to work, she has had to pay for a baby-sitter, and so much of the money disappears. She came to me in desperate need. But she came to me not asking for money.
She said: “Dr. Stirling, I simply don't know where else to go. My brother is at home where he lives under the constant threat of danger. He is 36 years old. If he is killed I don't have another, single relative on earth. I am so incredibly alone.”
She wanted me to work with an agency to help bring her brother over as a refugee. We started to talk about how we could solve this problem, but then, a most frightening thing occurred. I went into the office, and I tried to seek for a few dollars to help her right here and now. I came out to her with an envelope, and I said: “I would like you, right now, to have this on behalf of the church.”
The look on her face was one of terror. Now, I could not understand this. I thought she would be grateful.
She said: “I don't really need charity.”
I said: “I'm not giving you charity. I'm giving this to you in the name of Jesus Christ. That's all.”
She said: “I don't know if I can take this from you.”
I said: “Yes, you can. It's okay.”
And then, I saw the look of reluctance on her face. She said to me: “And you're sure you don't want anything else in return?”
My heart just broke, because it seemed to me that here was a young woman, an attractive young woman, on her own, in this city, with a child. I hate to think of the pressures that she has been put under, when she's given anything.
I don't know what experiences she has had, or what fear is in her heart, but this I know: The love of Jesus Christ is real; the love of Jesus Christ does not demand anything in return; the love of Jesus Christ isn't given to someone in the expectation that they themselves will somehow be forced by either an inner compulsion, or an outer compulsion, to give in return; true love, real love, is the love that we find in the gospel; it is different, qualitatively different, from what is often purported as love in the world in which we live.
In our passage from the First Epistle of John, this great epistle that talks about love, love is referred to in very concrete terms, in very real terms. It talks about love that is based, and grounded, and rooted in the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, our Lord. It is based, this love that we find in this particular passage, on a revelation, not just on some whim or some fancy, and there are three things that make it really powerful.
The first of these is love's source. John has radical words. He says: “God is love.” Now, I have been reading a commentary on this passage by Alan Churchill, who makes a distinction between our saying that God is love and the commonly held view that love is God.
There's a difference, a big difference. Because, when love is God, then our definition of God is based on our understanding of what constitutes love, and not the other way around. Therefore, we can see God as being simply sentimental. We can see God as ebbing and flowing as our feelings come and go. If our definition of love is not founded on a solid and a holy foundation, then God in a sense becomes the love that we envisage, and not the other way round.
So often, my friends, that word love that is used in society as a whole, even when we are talking about our love of our neighbour, is based at times on whether or not we ourselves derive some pleasure in the loving, rather than in the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ which is actually founded in the giving, in the very giving itself, regardless of how you may feel about it.
Over the last couple of weeks, I have decided to go back to my roots a little bit, and have been reading political economics. I suppose I have been doing so in following the debate on free trade. I thought, what does my scholarly background tell me? So I have been reading the likes of Adam Smith, Marcuse, Hayek and others. I thought I would be intrigued when I picked up, in the political section, a history, a biography of a man called Vladimir Ulyanov.
Vladimir Ulyanov was born in 1870. His life is a remarkable story, for Vladimir Ulyanov is better known to us all as Lenin. There is a moment in this book when his wife, Krupskaya, tells about Lenin. Lenin was writing about the need for equity and justice in society.
One night he went to write at his desk in their bedroom. In the neighbouring bedroom was Krupskaya's mother, who was dying. Krupskaya had been staying up every night to look after her mother, and she wanted desperately to sleep. So she asked Lenin if he would keep an eye on her and, if she needed her, to come and get her. Lenin agreed. He sat at his desk and he began to write about equity. He began to write about the rise of the proletariat and an upcoming revolution.
In the morning Krupskaya woke. She came into the bedroom and went to the bed of her mother. Her mother was dead. She said to Lenin: “Didn't I ask you to come and get me if she needed me?” Lenin said: “She didn't need you. She had died.” He continued to write.
You see, my friends, you can have a love for society, you can have a desire for equity in the world, you can want the good of social justice and all those good things, but it seems to me that, at the heart of real love, the sign of real love must come from the heart. For indeed, Jesus says: “If you abide in me, I will abide in you. Your love, then, might be full.”
The source of love, then, is God. God is love. Love is not God. There is a difference.
But there is also the sign of love. In the Christian faith, there is something that we have always cherished, and that is, that we believe in the humanity of Jesus. Now, this might not seem very important in doctrinal terms, but, in terms of love, it is, because we have always celebrated the sacraments in the Christian faith. And the sacraments, as St. Augustine said, are an “outward, visible sign of an inward, spiritual grace”.
When we, as Christians, gather, we break bread. We drink wine. We baptize with water. We do earthly things because we don't want to spiritualize the love of God to the extent that it is not incarnate, that it is not real; for the real love that we find in Jesus of Nazareth is a human love as well as a divine love. It is a sign. It is a sacrament of God's love. Christ's self-giving is the sacrament of love. It is not, therefore, just pie in the sky when you die. It is right here, and it is right now, and it is real.
There's a wonderful story of a priest who lived in Crete. When he was in Crete, there was a terrible drought. After this terrible drought, he got the people together and he said: “All right, next Sunday, we will have a litany for rain. And so, everybody in the community was told to fast and to pray, and to come to church next Sunday.
Lo and behold, the community all began to pray. They all fasted, and, as they fasted and prayed, they came to church on the Sunday morning.
The priest looked down at them and said: “Go away.”
They said: “What do you mean, Go away? We are here for the litany of rain.”
He said: “No. Go away.”
They said: “Look, we have fasted. We have prayed. We have done everything that you wanted.”
He said: “No. Go away until you bring your umbrellas.”
You see, my friends, our faith is real. Our faith is not just a spiritual exercise. It is the true, compassionate love for one another. The love of Christ is a sacrament. It is a sign. John says (and he puts it so boldly, and I love the King James Version so well - it rolls off the tongue, does it not?): “If a man say he loves God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?”
The love of God, therefore, is real, and it is seen in the way we love one another.
This brings me to the last point, namely, love's strength. John writes: “We know that God is love, for God has sent us his spirit.” The power to love is not just a power that is generated by the will, it is something that is empowered by the spirit; and true love, the love that reaches out to the lonely, the love that reaches out to the lost, is sincere. It is born in the heart as it is empowered by the Holy Spirit.
This lesson was brought home to me many years ago on a wet, spring day in northern England. I belonged to our school's soccer team and we were playing in the semi-final of the county championships. I myself was injured that day - not that the team missed me at all. I was by far the slowest member of the team. Nevertheless, I was there. I was a warm body and I was hard to run around. (Shall we put it that way?)
But, on this day, I wasn't playing. We were playing a team from Gateshead, in the northeast of England. I remember it as if it were yesterday. The mist was coming down and the mud was thick. The grass was non-existent. It was a muddy field and we lost four goals to nil.
I remember getting on the bus on my way home. All the gym teachers and all the jocks and guys who had been there with us during our success were silent. We were supposed to come back to a reception outside the bike-shed at five o'clock.
As we drove around the corner, no-one was there. Muddy boots, skinned shins, bruised eyes and bruised egos, we descended from the bus. But there was somebody there. He came out from the bike-shed. His name was Mr. Jackson.
Now, Mr. Jackson was sort of a joke amongst the students, for he taught religious education. The jocks, particularly, had little or no time for him. He used to wear very soft shoes and you could never hear him coming down the hallway. So he was nicknamed Creeping Jesus wherever he went.
Well, on that day, the only one there to see us was Creeping Jesus. One by one, as each of us got off the bus, he gave us an embrace and said: “Well done. I'm proud of you.”
And we all went our separate ways.
I thought to myself, what a powerful witness by a humble and a quiet, Christian man. At the time when we needed him most, when the glory of the world was clearly not a crown on our heads, it seemed to me that the one who had the spirit within him was the one who cared. That's a sacrament of love and it's what our world is crying out for.
William Blake put it like this:
Love seeketh not itself to pleasure,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease
And builds a heaven in hell's despair.
My friends, in Christ's name, we must be a sacrament of love. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.