Christ Episcopal Church
May 6, 2012
5 Easter B
One Sunday morning, some 20 years ago, our son Slocomb announced from the back seat of the car on the way to church that he knows what God looks like. "Really?" said his interested parents. "Tell us." "God wears pajamas," said Slocomb. Slocomb was as convinced of this fact as he was that he had eaten strawberry pop tarts for breakfast that morning. "How do you know this," asked his amused parents. "We are made in the image of God, right?" said Slocomb. "Yes," I said hesitantly. "We wear pajamas, right?" said Slocomb. "Yes." Well, then God must wear pajamas" proclaimed our 6 year old theologian. Our younger son, not to be outdone, chimed in that God has big hands. "Big hands?" I asked. "Why does God need big hands?" "To give the children candy," said Caldwell. This gave me pause until I realized that one of the priests here at Christ Church at the time was a very tall man with large hands who often gave Caldwell candy when we came by the office. Both children had taken what they know and used that knowledge to come to some understanding about something beyond them. Whether or not they came to the correct conclusion is debatable. I doubt God needs pajamas or gives candy to children, as sweet as those images might be. But as we grow older, we still use what we know to try to understand the unknown. We talk about coming to a new understanding of God’s unconditional love when we see our newborn child for the first time, or learning what God’s forgiveness must be like when we are forgiven by a loved one for a wrong we have done. We use our own experiences as a way to reflect on our understanding and experience of God. Without the experience of loving and being loved by other human beings, how can we possibly understand the love of God? Without being able to recognize the image of God in each other, how would we know anything of the person God is calling us to be?
The reading from 1 John this morning reminds us, however, that this way of understanding God is limited, for the love of God stretches us beyond anything we can explain by human experience. The reading begins "Beloved, let us love one another for love is of God." Then the writer says "In this is love, not that we loved God but that God loved us and sent his son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins." The writer of this letter reminds us that God’s love is the baseline love, so to speak, and that we are called to love others as we have been loved by God. So what does that love look like?
According to 1 John, God’s love is life giving. "God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him." The point of sending God’s only son was so that we might have life. Secondly, God’s love is self-sacrificing: God sent God’s only son-the heart of God’s heart-to give us life. Thirdly, God’s love is a free gift-there are no strings attached. There is nothing in 1 John that tells us what we have to do to earn that gift. We love because we are loved, not in order to be loved. We are called to respond to the gift of God’s love by loving our brothers and sisters with that same life-giving, self-sacrificing, no strings attached love.
All that is well and good, but sometimes I need something more like a story to show me the love 1 John describes . And in the reading from Acts this morning we have an excellent story of life-giving, self-sacrificing, no strings attached love from one human being to a total stranger. Philip is given directions by an angel of the Lord that will take him to an Ethiopian eunuch who had come to Jerusalem to worship. As an Ethiopian and as a eunuch, the man was something of a double outsider even if he was in charge of the entire royal treasury. The Ethiopian invites Philip to sit in the chariot with him, an act of hospitality, and Philip interprets the scriptures for him, proclaiming the good news about Jesus, ultimately baptizing the eunuch before being snatched away. Philip’s love for God was demonstrated in his openness to the angel of the Lord who told him to travel a wilderness road for no apparent reason, his care and acceptance of the Ethiopian, and his sudden departure after baptizing the Ethiopian that left no room for any praise or credit for Philip. The Ethiopian’s love for God was demonstrated in his openness to hearing God speak through the scriptures, his openness to Philip and hearing God speak through Philip, and his openness to the Spirit in his desire to be baptized. The love Philip and the Ethiopian had for God spilled over into life giving, self-sacrificing, no strings attached acts of love for a total stranger.
The writer of 1 John says "God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them." Jesus says the same thing in the gospel lesson when he says "Abide in me as I in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me." The fruit we are to bear is the love of God. I John was written to a Christian community that was bitterly divided over issues of Christian doctrine. If they and we proclaim the love of God, but practice a faith that is full of hate, vengeance, and judgement, the world around us will see that we are unattached to the very vine we proclaim and flee from the gospel. If we proclaim the love of God, and practice that very love even when we disagree, our attachment to the vine will grow ever deeper and the world around us will see a living story of the life-giving, self-sacrificing, no strings attached love of God.
Amen.
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