Love Is The Evidence--November 10, 2023

Love Is The Evidence--November 10, 2023

"But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us." [1 Thessalonians 2:7b-8]

Love leads you to give yourself away. And when you do it, when you give yourself away to others in love--even when it is costly--you would not have it otherwise, because you care more about the ones you are giving yourself away to than holding onto what was yours.

That's it. That's the Christian life in a nutshell.

That's why we Christians are compelled to follow after the Lord we serve, and to build our lives around Jesus: because Jesus makes this kind of genuine community possible. This is what makes it worth it for us to live through petty squabbles, personality conflicts, the tedium of committee meetings, slighted feelings, disappointments, volunteer labor, and all of the rest of the baggage that may come with being "the church" in our time and place. There are those moments, sometimes right in the midst of the squabbles or committee meetings or other frustrations, when we find we are genuinely captivated by love for the other sisters and brothers in Christ around us. And in those moments, it becomes clear that we, with all of our rough edges and limited patience, could not manufacture such a community on our own. The only possible explanation for such genuine love as we hear in Paul's words here is the real presence of the living God, bringing former strangers together and binding them in love. Love is the evidence of God's presence among us--love that doesn't give up or bail out when things get difficult between us.

And in those moments, we can't help but give ourselves away to the motley crew God has brought us into, because, well, because that's how grace works.

I love the way Paul puts it--it makes it so clear that the Gospel Good News is not just talk. He has become determined, not just to bring a verbal message to this congregation whom he loves, but that message itself compels him to pour out the heart of who he is for these people. The English phrase, "not only the Gospel of God, but also our own selves," is pretty close to the force of what Paul says, but the actual word Paul uses here for "self," is the same word that often gets translated "soul." Think about that and let it sink in: Paul says that the love of God has so endeared these brothers and sisters in Christ to him and to his co-writers Silas and Timothy, that they are giving their very souls away to this congregation, the very core of their being and lives. That's powerful stuff.

Love leads us each to give the "me-ness" of me and you to give the you-ness of you to one another, risking the vulnerability of revealing our deepest selves to one another in community, and bearing the responsibility of caring for each other's naked souls as well. That's compelling stuff.

There's an old saying that the world at large has become "immune" to Christianity because it has been inoculated with a weak form of it, the same way a vaccine filled with a weakened form of a virus will keep the real thing from overcoming you. Maybe the friends, neighbors, and acquaintances around us who seem apathetic about the church are where they are exactly because all they have ever seen in the church is a settling for fake niceness, rather than a love that is willing to give itself away for others. People cannot imagine that church really means all that much, because they have seen so many of us Christians barely tolerate the other people in the pews around us or keep one another at arms' length, or they've seen people confuse Christianity with their political party, or they've seen us be absolute jerks to others who didn't quite fit in. Well, I wouldn't want to be a part of that kind of congregation, either, frankly. And if I were a part of that kind of congregation, I wouldn't have much reason to invite anybody else to be a part of that kind of "community," if it could truly be called a community at all in the first place.

But to read these words of Paul's and to see that such a beautiful, compelling, honest love was built between Paul and this congregation in such a short span of time as they had together, my goodness, I cannot help but want to be a part of that kind of life, and that kind of love. And Paul would have us believe that this is precisely the kind of genuine beloved community that is available to all of us in Christ. It was surely not because Paul was such an agreeable fellow all the time--there's plenty of evidence that his personality was a hard pill to swallow for the congregations he served. The kind of love that makes you want to give yourself away and pour yourself out, that is possible in the real world with our real personalities that really do create friction on their own only because the vibrant love of the living God is gathering the people together in the first place. That kind of love--so much deeper than what passes for "love" in pop culture--brings us to life.

Amazingly, the kind of affection and love Paul is witnessing to here is still held out to us--we have the opportunity to practice living in that kind of community as we rejoice with each other in our joys and weep with each other in our sorrows. It happens when we show up to listen and to pray with one another, when we bring each other meals and carry each other's burdens, and when we forgive one another and dare to risk asking for forgiveness. It happens as we are given those blessed moments of clarity, sometimes right in the midst of the otherwise tedious work of organized religion, to see the faces of the fellow disciples around us and to recognize how God has blessed our lives through those faces, hands, and hearts, along with whatever other baggage we bear from each other. And as we become even dimly aware of how God blesses us with the gift of such a community of love around us, disguised to the world as just a group of people who meet in the same building on Sunday mornings, our hearts overflow and we cannot help but pour them out back to these saints who make the love of God tangible for us and real.

Thornton Wilder says that "we can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures." That is something very much like what Pastor Paul is experiencing as he pens these words to the Thessalonians. He is conscious--blessedly aware with open eyes--of how the love of God has bound him together with this congregation of brothers and sisters in faith who have wept and rejoiced with him. And the more this love fills his awareness, the more he is truly alive--and at the very same time, the more cannot help but want to give himself back to these faces of divine love. That is what the Gospel is about. That is why we gather on Sundays and throughout the week as church family. That is "the life that really is life." And it is yours today.

Good God, words fail when we consider the holy and extravagant privilege it is to be surrounded by your people and the ways they become living human channels of your love for us. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Lord, for the glimpses you give us now of such beloved community, and for the chance to belong among the saints you have placed among us. Your name be praised for those sisters and brothers who have blessed us beyond our telling.