I John 4:7-21 * Luke 16:19-31
“He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love…Herein is love, not
that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the
propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love
one another.”
Love is the theme of this First Sunday
after Trinity; and that love is the love of God. It is best expressed in
English with the word “charity,” and even in that we find some confusion. For
the kind of charity that St. John
The love that these passages of
Scripture speak of is personal. And, it begins not with us, but with God. It
begins by having your eyes opened to what God has done for you, and then only
in light of how undeserving you are. You can defend yourself and plead your
case; you can try to justify every sin you ever committed. That is how the Rich
Man lived his life. The ending of this parable was meant to shock us into
reality. This is the only parable Jesus told that he did not compose Himself;
except, that is, for the ending. It has been discovered that this was a well
known story among the Jewish people of that time, and the story always ended
with Abraham saying, “And besides all this, between
us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass
from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.” But, Jesus added His own ending.
“Then [the Rich
Man] said, ‘I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send [Lazarus] to
my father's house: for I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them,
lest they also come into this place of torment.’ Abraham saith unto him, ‘They
have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. And he said, Nay, father
Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said
unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be
persuaded, though one rose from the dead.’”
Indeed, like the Rich Man and his brothers, you can spend
your life trying to convince yourself that you have God’s complete approval,
and no need of forgiveness. Perhaps, you may construct your own system of good
and bad, compare yourself to people who are infinitely worse, and so feel that
you are righteous enough not to need God’s mercy. But, if reality hits you, and
if the truth shall make you free, it
begins by asking if your own standard may not be true enough to take you safely
into eternity. Has God spoken? Should you not hear? In Moses and the Prophets
we find a moral law that is eternal and unchanging, those Ten Commandments and
all that they really mean (which we learn in the Sermon on the Mount). We also
see in Moses and the Prophets the great Messianic themes of salvation from sin
and death. To prepare for eternity, we have been given quite a lot to hear. We
have been given both Law and Gospel. “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to
bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith (Galatians 3:24).”
Once you see your own need you can appreciate the love of
God. We see that salvation from sin and death was not our idea, but God’s own
will. Redemption is His initiative, without any suggestion from us. “Herein is
love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the
propitiation for our sins…We love him, because he first loved us.” That love was not merely some nice and inspiring
bit of sweetness and sentimentality. God saw that our need involved everything
that is meant by that word, “propitiation.” It involved the pain and
suffering that was born by Jesus in the death of the cross. And, even so, if
you don’t hear the great moral themes and the great Messianic themes of
redemption, that is, if you don’t hear Moses and the prophets, Christ’s own
resurrection with over five-hundred eyewitnesses, will never persuade you to
repent. You need a soft heart that listens and hears. Then the Gospel, the Good
News that He first loved us, can enter your mind and heart.
You
see, on this First Sunday after Trinity, Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Easter
and Pentecost have all come, and we are now in the Church that became so
powerful in the Book of Acts because the Holy Spirit has come to us with His
gifts and power. Now, we turn to the second table of the Law. That first table
has four commandments that tell us to love God. But, we cannot love God; that
is, we cannot love God unless and until we know that He first loved us. We find
that love nailed to the cross. There He is broken, bleeding and pouring out His
soul for your sins and mine. We are forgiven without losing sight of God’s
holiness, and without mistaking that forgiveness for some idea that God didn’t
really care. Forgiveness is not approval. It was costly. The ninth chapter of
the Epistle to the Hebrews tells us that redemption perfects and cleanses the
human conscience. Indeed, a true understanding of the cross of Christ gives
life to your conscience. God loved you, and this is what it cost. Sin does
matter, because God is holy. And, sin is forgiven, because God is love. But, it
did not come without the death of the cross.
So,
this Sunday we see that to obey the first four commandments, which are
summarized by the First and Great Commandment to love God (“with all thy heart,
all thy soul and all thy mind”), is only possible as a response; “We love Him
because He first loved us.” And, now, in this Epistle and Gospel reading, after
celebrating from Advent until today the great acts of God’s love in Jesus His
Son that move us to love Him, we turn to the second table of the Law, the six
commandments that are summarized in the words, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as
thyself.”
And,
at the beginning it is personal. “Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to
love one another…” And, so it goes on:
“We love him, because he first loved us. If a man
say, I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar: for he that loves not his
brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this
commandment have we from him, That he who loves God love his brother also.”
(RSV)
I am reminded always of the singular words in commandments
to love. I am going to quote an earlier sermon of my own for this same Sunday:
"‘The
righteous man considers the life of his beast. But, the tender mercies of the
wicked are cruel’ says the Book of Proverbs (12:10). Utopian ideologues since
the French Revolution, such as Karl Marx and his followers, spoke lofty words
about what was best for mankind. It reminds me of one of Charles Schultz’s Peanuts cartoons.
Linus tells his sister Lucy that he wants to be a doctor, a great
doctor. She tells him, ‘You cannot be a great doctor. You know why? Because a
doctor must love mankind. You don’t love mankind.’ Linus, stunned, retorts ‘I
do love mankind…It’s people I can’t stand!’ The ideologues
have always loved mankind; and they have made many people suffer
for it. They have offered millions of innocent victims to some idea of ‘good
for the highest number,’ and Satanic propaganda about what is best for
humanity. Crowds enjoying the spectacle of heads being cut off in Paris,
Communists dictating who should live, who should die, and who must go to the
camps, and, indeed, the Nazis destroying millions in order to advance human
evolution to the state of perfection, believed they were lovers of mankind,
saviors of that abstract and impersonal thing called ‘humanity.’"
Hear this from the twenty-fifth chapter of St.
Matthew:
"When the Son of man comes in his
glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne.
Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from
another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will place the sheep at his right
hand, but the goats at the left. Then the King will say to those at his right
hand, `Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from
the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was
thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick
and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.' Then the righteous will answer him, `Lord,
when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and
welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison
and visit thee?' And the King will answer them, `Truly, I say
to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to
me.' Then he will say to those at his left hand,
`Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and
his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I
was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me,
naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' Then they also will answer, `Lord, when did
we see thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and
did not minister to thee?' Then he will answer them, `Truly, I say to
you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.' And they will go away into eternal
punishment, but the righteous into eternal life (Matthew 25:31-46).”
How often has this been quoted, “the
least of these my brethren?” Look again, and see what it really says: “One of the least of these my brethren.”
“One of…” those are the missing words
when this is misquoted, as it usually is. That one is your neighbor, That one
is your Lazarus, with his unpleasant and unsightly sores.
The
Bible always personalizes it. “Thou
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Thy neighbor, not mankind. “He that
loveth not his brother whom he hath seen…” His brother, not some impersonal
thing called mankind. The Rich Man gave at the office, so to speak. He
sent out those crumbs from his table to the beggar. But, if he had known God’s
love, if he had heard Moses and the Prophets, the great moral truth and the
themes of redemption revealed to the children of men, if he had loved God
because God first loved us, he would have brought in his brother Lazarus from
the streets, and sat him at his own table.
That
is the love of God when it is reflected in your heart. How can you know that
love? You may begin right now, by letting God quicken your conscience, and
cleanse it, all the while showing His love for as you contemplate the cross
where Jesus poured out His soul unto death for you. It is personal; the gift
was given to you there. His words of forgiveness from the cross are for you.
His “It is finished” was the full payment and cancelation of your entire debt.
You can love God because, as we see on the cross where Jesus died, He first
loved you. And, therefore, you can love your brother, your neighbor, your own
Lazarus.
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