2017-05-22
Brooke Strong
Scripture: John 14:15-21
A great New Testament scholar of the last century, Krister Stendahl, a Swedish Lutheran bishop, developed what he called “The Ten Commandments for Biblical Preaching.” I’ve never been able to find the entire list, but I’ve heard a number of them, and they’ve stuck with me. One was that, as a preacher, you are not responsible for what you think you said; you are responsible for what you were heard to say. In other words, it doesn’t really matter what I think I said; if you don’t get it—if it’s not clear enough, not transparent in its meaning—then I have failed in my task. As a preacher, you’re not responsible for what you think you said; you are responsible for what you were heard to say.
Another of Stendahl’s preaching commandments is never to use the word “love” in a sermon unless it’s been used in the passage of scripture from which you’re preaching. Stendahl’s point is that it’s too simplistic to reduce all of scripture, all of faith, to love. It’s sometimes tempting, as a preacher and as a person of faith, to get sloppy and to pretend that all of faith is contained in the word love. Love is certainly huge in our relationship with God, but there’s also hope and faith and trust and sin and mystery and sustenance and awe and forgiveness. Love doesn’t capture every nuance of a Christian’s relationship with God.
Late in his life, Stendahl wrote an article about why he loved the Bible. It’s a radiant lauding of the richness and beauty of the Bible. Part of what entrances me about the article is Stendahl’s appreciation of the number and variety of witnesses to Jesus. In some circles of the church, historically, the diversity of witnesses has been a source of embarrassment: which story is true; why do the gospels diverge; how can we know what really happened? Stendahl says it’s precisely that diversity that conveys the richness of who Jesus was and is. From your angle, Jesus is different from mine. Through the eyes and heart of a Mexican farm-worker or a Wall Street banker or a cancer-stricken child, the way Jesus is seen is different. And that’s a good thing.
Stendahl says that having four gospels is like having four portraits of someone you love. Each portrait shines a light on the person in a different way, and you see different aspects of the person. Just as with a person, so with the Bible and so with Jesus: there are multiple meanings rather than a single meaning.
He goes on to say that there are at least three different symbol systems for Christian theology that come through in the gospels. And they have noticeably different emphases. The first is an emphasis on God as judge. The whole focus of this perspective is on judgment and sin and redemption and the cross. That’s an extremely familiar way of seeing Christian faith. If you grew up Roman Catholic or Lutheran, you will probably recognize this perspective: God as judge.
A second take on faith is God as Lord. God is ruler and we are God’s subjects, and the world is full of covenants. That, says Stendahl, is the way John Calvin and the Jewish tradition tend to see things—Calvin being the direct ancestor of the United Church of Christ. This is the model that gave us the federal structure of the United States; foedus in Latin means covenant. This is the sociopolitical model of God—God as Lord.
And then there’s the third model of God, and that’s the model we see most fully worked out in the gospel of John. This model is all about life. Sin, in this way of seeing, is all about sickness, not primarily guilt. Faith in this model is not about obedience and lordship. It’s about life. Jesus “came that they should have life, and have it abundantly (John 10:10). In him was life (1:4). Out of his innermost parts, streams of living water will flow (7:1-52). And everything is to be born anew, born out of water and [the Spirit. We heard it, too, in our text this morning: “because I live, you also will live” (14:19). That’s John, and that’s Eastern Christendom. There is no crucifix in an Eastern church; there is the icon, where the divine life shines through the human being” (https://genius.com/Krister-stendahl-why-i-love-the-bible-annotated). This is the gift of John’s gospel, this gift of faith as life, and it’s tremendously appealing.
There isn’t just one way of seeing and understanding Jesus, in other words. There are several, all with their own integrity and beauty. For me, the way John sees things has a radiance and a compelling nature that I find irresistible. Jesus is all about life. Jesus is all about enhancing the richness of our being together. Jesus is all about filling us with the goodness of our life together.
And at the heart of life, at the heart of what fills us and makes us whole, is love. So this morning I’m honoring Stendahl’s rule about only using the word “love” in a sermon when it occurs in the scripture passage because our passage uses the word “love” five times.
All love begins with the God who gave it and gives it always. We are able to live life in all its richness because God first loved us (I John 4:19). At the heart of our lives is not expectation or punishment or even reward, but love. Simply love. God’s love, that does not let us go.
We sometimes forget that, though, or we get led us astray, thinking perhaps that God is out to get us. In the current issue of Sports Illustrated, a retrospective on the life of former football player Nick Buoniconti recounts the story of the day he found out that his son, Marc, had been paralyzed from the neck down in a football accident. After the doctor called him, he had to tell his wife Terry. “She’ll never forget that day, how beautiful it was, Nick’s face coming closer, his mouth saying that Marc would never walk again. She’ll never forget, too, how a day later, outside of intensive care, she found her husband sitting on the floor, tears streaming, saying, ‘God is punishing me, God is punishing me.’
“And right then, amid a mother’s worst nightmare and a scuttling fear, Terry had this one moment of clarity. She leaned over to her husband. ‘God doesn’t work that way,’ she said (May15-22, 2017, p. 107). The God of life is rooted not in punishment but in love.
For the children of God, for people of faith, the upshot is that real life entails loving in return. As Jesus says, the way to love God is to love each other. And contrary to popular opinion and the lyrics of innumerable songs, love, of course, is not a feeling. Love is a doing. It’s my regarding you as highly as I regard myself. It’s offering myself to you. The love Jesus expects extends even to those we may not like. It crosses all boundaries, throws out all rules, flings its arms out to all people.
It will not surprise you to learn that I have had ample opportunity to witness and receive such love myself over these last several weeks. Your notes and cards and expressions of concern and meals have meant the world to me. You have held me in God’s light, and I have treasured that. Mary and I had a young English houseguest a week or so ago, a college student, the son of family friends, and when I was opening cards one day, he said to me wide-eyed, “Are all of those from people in your church?” Yes, I said to this non-church-goer, this is one of the great gifts of the church: people form community and they show their love for each other in a tangible way, on a daily basis.
I also had the opportunity, spending nine days in the hospital, to see both the difficulties and the wonders of love. I had three different roommates in my time there, and sometimes the conversations between patients and caregivers were painful to overhear. Edginess and punitiveness and an inability to hear each other were commonplace.
But then luminous moments would appear. Several of my doctors and nurses brought a remarkable touch to their work. Dr. Mathias and Dr. Mathew gave me patient and tender care. When I first arrived in the ICU, the nurse there saw my gurney being wheeled in and she said with great enthusiasm, “Here’s my guy,” as if she was just waiting for me. Tia and Amy spent endless time answering my questions and explaining what had happened to me and what I could expect. Larry was my nurse one day, and then he had a couple of days off. When he returned to work, he walked in to my room and said, “You still here? What, are they naming a wing after you?!” The love of these caregivers was life.
Some of the most vivid demonstrations of love came from people from whom you might not have guessed it. The guy who most often delivered my meals was named Tom Parks. We got to talking one day and it turned out he had been one of the founding members of a dance troupe called “Beefcake on the Lake,” a group of, shall we say, portly men who danced for several years at Cavaliers’ basketball games. Tom was unfailingly gracious and warm, enthusiastically greeting me by name each time he saw me, suggesting entrees for future meals, and shining his light before him.
Toward the end of my time there, I learned, not from Tom but from someone else, that Tom had recently been diagnosed with multiple myeloma. What was striking to me was that he had never mentioned his disease and had never demonstrated any sign of self-pity. I discovered that there was a GoFundMe site for contributions to his medical care, or you could leave donations at the nursing station, which Mary and I gladly did. Through all of this, Tom was radiant and gracious and caring. His love was life.
One of the people I saw most often was a member of the house-cleaning staff. Wynette was her name. Every day she came in shining. We talked about her family and her work. She would often be singing. And we laughed together. One day, she came into my room with a single carnation in water. I stuck it in my IV pole where it stayed until I was discharged. On the day I was to go home, she came into my room and brought me this, a funny little gadget with plastic mechanical flowers that wave when the sun hits them. I think of her gratefully when I see it. Wynette’s love was life.
This is what’s asked of all of us, in every setting of our lives. In what ways can we give? In what ways can we get ourselves out of the way, and make the world a better place? In what ways can we share the love of God? Michael Lindvall, a Presbyterian minister in New York, reminds us that love is always an action. “Yes,” he says, “tell your kids you love them, but remember, when it’s 9:15 at night and you’re exhausted and one of them needs help with an English assignment, love is something you do. It’s a rich thing to talk about love here at church, but when somebody asks you to teach the 7th-grade class, remember that love is something you do. When you see a sign-up sheet for [Loaves and Fishes], remember that love is something you do. When somebody asks you to [give some time as an Angel Visitor or Stephen Minister, or to tutor at Chagrin Falls Park, or to serve at a primetime lunch], remember that love is something you do” (http://brickchurch.org/Customized/Uploads/BrickChurch/Worship/Sermons/PDFs/2009/090510.pdf).
When someone asks you to make a generous pledge to Federated’s Rejoice and Renew capital campaign, remember that love is something you do. All of it makes a difference. All of it celebrates God’s gracious presence. And at the heart of it all is this: God has loved us, and in our love for each other is life.