What Is This Thing Called Love?

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
The First Presbyterian Church
Washingtonville, New York
September 19, 2004

What Is This Thing Called Love?
Luke 20:1-8
1 John 4:7-12

It is early morning.
You know that the day ahead will be especially busy.
It is a few days before Passover
and Jerusalem is teeming with people.
You’re a scribe at the Temple;
You know that today is the day your leaders
have decided to confront that carpenter,
the one who is causing all the trouble.
Jesus, the one people are calling the Prophet,
the Son of David.

He came riding into Jerusalem just two days ago
to the cheers of the throngs along the street.
You had never seen the people so excited,
so filled with passion.
Just who did he think he was, this carpenter from Galilee?

You think about yesterday.
You were at the temple when he arrived with his followers.
At first you gave him the benefit of the doubt:
You assumed that he was going to offer a sacrifice,
just like every other pilgrim.
But instead, he went on a rampage
chasing everyone out of the place,
cursing the money changers and others.
Then he had the audacity to sit in the temple and teach!
You’d never seen such a blatant act of desecration.
What you had heard is true:
Nothing good comes out of Nazareth.

But today, you and your brethren will be rid of him.
You think to yourself:
“This man is a mere carpenter,
He’s no threat to us,
He’s a bother.
a nuisance.
We’ll be rid of him quickly.
We are learned: priests and elders and scribes.
We have studied, we are well read,
We are clever…. We are in the right.
This man will be no match for us;
We will trap him,
catch him off guard and
then be rid of him.
Imagine his arrogance,
to be causing such a disruption right before Passover!
While we should be remembering our ancestors’ flight from Egypt,
this man is turning over tables in the Temple!”

You walk to the Temple and join your colleagues there.
Everything has been arranged.
You and your brothers are confident,
even a bit smug, knowing that you will cleanse the Temple of this rabble.

You see Jesus;
He looks like the rest of the pilgrims: dusty and rumpled,
You look at his face
From a distance it looks ordinary, burnt from the sun, dried by the wind,
like so many others who have traveled great distances
to come to the Holy City for the Passover festival.
You try to move through the crowd for a closer look.
You look at the hair, the beard, the cheeks.
Then you notice his eyes:
lambent,
luminous
piercing.
He has a look that is filled with confidence,
certainty..... authority.
A look that you’ve never seen in the eyes
of any other man or woman.
You look away, and try to remember all the trouble he has caused,
but something has got hold of you.
A feeling, an odd feeling deep inside you.

Then above the din, you hear a loud voice speak out.
It is the voice of the chief priest.
His voice oozes with self-righteousness:
“By what authority are you doing these things?
Who gave you authority to do them?”
You think to yourself, a perfect question!
This carpenter, this Nazarene can have no answer to that;
Everyone knows how the system works;
Everyone knows where authority comes from;
Everyone knows you don’t question authority.
That’s not what a good citizen does.

But then you hear Jesus’ response:
“I will also ask you a question;
and you tell me,
and I will tell you by what authority I do these things.
Did the baptism of John come from heaven,
or was it of human origin?
........Answer me.”

The chief priests struggle to answer him.
You hear them talking among themselves
‘We cannot answer this way.’
Yet, we cannot answer that way”
You have never seen them so flummoxed
so completely confused.

The priests concede that they cannot answer,
and Jesus, standing tall,
and with a firm voice, says,
“Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.”
You hear his words and you are surprised
that there is no smugness, no sense of victory,
no sense of self-righteousness like you heard in the chief priest’s voice.

You know this man is trouble,
but yet his response stays with you.
His calmness,
his conviction,
his poise,
his confidence,
his authority.

You think to yourself:
“I have to talk to this man,
I have to ask him a question.
I cannot let this opportunity pass by.”
So you approach him, not to trap him,
for clearly this man is far more than
you or your colleagues ever thought.
You ask him your question:
“Which commandment is the first of all?”
He answers;
and you respond to his answer.
He takes in your response
and then he looks at you with those eyes and says:
“You are not far from the Kingdom of God.”
(Mark 12:34)

You walk away from the Temple by yourself
in the hazy heat of late afternoon, thinking,
“All he told me was the Shema,
the lessons I have known forever:
‘Hear O Israel..
love the Lord with all your heart,
and all your soul,
and all your strength and all your mind;
and love your neighbor as yourself.’
I know that.
I do as Moses taught our ancestors to do:
I recite those words each morning when I rise,
and each evening before I retire. (Deut. 6:7)
I understand the importance of that ritual.

What did Jesus mean when he said
that I am not far from the Kingdom of God?
If I am not far, what must I do to get there?”

And then you realize it.
Jesus was telling you,
“Don’t just recite those words;
LIVE THEM!
Live them in all you do
Don’t just say that you love the Lord and your neighbor.
Act in all that you do in a way that leaves no doubt in anyone’s
mind that you love the Lord.
Act in all that you do in a way that leaves no doubt in anyone’s
mind that you love your neighbor as yourself.
Put love into action;
LIVE love.”
Jesus was telling you that when you live love in all that you do,
you will find yourself that much closer to the Kingdom of God.

You think about this as you retire at the end of the day.
You faithfully recite the Shema,
but the words take on a whole new meaning.
You understand the feeling you have had all day;
The feeling you’ve had ever since you first looked into Jesus’ eyes:
It is love.
You feel love,
and you feel loved.
You feel a sense of peace you’ve never had before.
You know your life changed today.
It will never be the same.

Love seems to be such a simple word; one syllable, easy to spell.
Yet it is so complex.
It is no wonder it has been such a favorite topic for poets
and composers.
Cole Porter’s tune, “What is this thing called Love”,
is one of the best.

We find it so hard to love.
Our world seems to be filled with hatred,
not just violence, not just war in countless nations throughout the world,
but hatred.
Judgmental hatred.
Hatred: contempt, nastiness, rudeness
anger, rage: hatred.
Even in churches, where we are supposed to get along with one another,
we bite, we bicker,
We skip right past the love.

That is not what God wants for us;
it is not what God intended for us.
God wants us to feel love and
and then act on it by sharing it with others.

In last week’s sermon, Sam Noir witnessed so many different acts of love,
acts of love hidden behind so much everyday ordinariness:
a nurse in a hospital,
a person helping a blind man across the street,
children laughing and playing together
in a park built for them by the community.
The soup kitchen at the church was the most obvious,
but it seemed that everywhere Sam went,
he saw acts of kindness, goodness, and mercy: acts of love.
Each a reflection of Christ presence in the world, God’s presence in the world.
You and I can either take God’s love given to us through Christ
out into the world, in every interaction,
or we can keep it all bottled up, on the shelf, and fight.

Jesus knew the Pharisees wouldn’t get it.
They were too focused on themselves,
their own power, authority,
They were too focused on keeping things just the way they wanted.
On making sure the order and structure they had created
remained intact.
They were never going to look beyond the ends of their noses.

Each of us has a tendency to behave like the Pharisees.
We act from assurance, arrogance,
a sense of our self righteousness.
A sense that we have all the answers.

John writes, “God is love, and those who abide in love,
abide in God and God abides in them.” (1J4.16b)
The minute we stop loving,
God no longer abides in us;
not because God flees, but because we evict him and shove him right out.
How many times have you pushed God aside in the last 24, 48, 72 hours?
You know you have, if you answer honestly.

German poet Ranier Maria Rilke wrote of God,
“Only in our doing can we grasp you,
Only with our hands can we illumine you.”
Only in our doing,
only in our showing love,
living love.

The path that will lead us to the kingdom of God
is love:
love for God
and love for all our brothers and sisters.
Love based on action
Love based not on what we say, as much as
it is based on how we live our lives.

This love fills our very being and soul
and then guides us in everything we do.
It guides our actions here in this church on Sunday morning;
but it also guides us in our interactions with spouses,
children, parents, friends, neighbors;
people we like,
and people we don’t like.
It guides us in all we do,
everywhere we go,
with everyone with whom we come into contact.

Love is not just a feeling,
it is a gift we receive:
It is a gift we are called to share.
Love should motivate and drive everything we do.

We are called to think about the love God has given each of us
through Jesus Christ.
We are called to remember that we are all God’s children and
we are all one another’s neighbors.
We are called to go out into the world to live lives
of active love.

This was the lesson the Scribe learned from Jesus in the Temple.
This is the lesson Jesus calls on us to learn,
even now,
2000 years later:
God is love,
and as long as you live your life in love,
God will abide in you.

Amen