Styrofoam Cups By the Beach--April 30, 2024
God's love has been revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. [1 John 4:9-10]
If you want to know what love is really like, look at the crucified and risen Jesus before you bother looking in the Hallmark card store or the florist.
If at first that doesn't sound like a fair comparison (obviously the cross of Jesus is a more serious business than my stopping for flowers and candy on Valentine's Day), it's because it's not a fair comparison, and it's not meant to be. That's part of John's point. The gestures, words, feelings, and actions that we often equate with love (and really, they are barely even romance, much less real love) all pale in comparison to what God has done for us and the depth of God's love for the world. They are leaky styrofoam cups of water next to the wide sun-lit ocean.
So if we really want to know what love is like, and even what Real Life is like, John says we had better go straight to the source and consider how God has loved us, before we go comparing our tiny gestures of love for God against each other. And truthfully, that's the only way to rightly make sense of what happens week by week in worship. At first blush, we might think that worship is primarily about us trying to show Jesus how much we love him. We give our offerings, we sing praises, we commit our time to be there for that hour or so on Sunday mornings--and it can be very easy to think that this is all about what we are doing for God. John says that's all upside down and backwards. What we are really doing week in and week out is gathering around God's signs of love for us and God's gifts of life to us, then we can't help but overflow with that kind of love and life ourselves--for the sake of others. But first and foremost, we are there because of God's love for us; we are alive because Jesus has given his life to us. We are centered around the Word where we hear again the story of what God has done for us, where we hear the promises of God is committed to doing for us, and where we hear the very presence of God coming to be with us in the hearing. We are centered around the Table where we taste and touch the presence of Jesus again, where we rehearse the story of the cross and resurrection, and where we receive what God has to give. What happens in worship is primarily about God's love for us, because the followers of Jesus have known for two thousand years that it doesn't make any sense to stare at water in a styrofoam cup while you're standing on the shore and then still miss the vast flowing beauty of the ocean. This is love, John says... not that we loved God, but that God loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. This is life, John says: not our attempts to prolong our days or make ourselves richer, but God's self-giving choice in Jesus "that we might live through him."
If you want to look at what love is really like, we Christians says you look at a Jewish rabbi with nail-scars on his hands, having given himself away for the world. And if you want to see what life is really about, in the fullest sense, you don't have to go to a resort, a Caribbean cruise, or a weekend of excess in Vegas--you look at the way Jesus makes us fully alive, even right here and right now where we are. Everything else we do in the name of love--the bold, romantic gestures, the flowers and candy, the poetry and kisses--it all pales in comparison to what God has shown us there in Jesus. And that's really what we are all about as the disciple-community. We come each week, not to impress God or impress each other with how much we love God, but simply to bask in the light and swim in the ocean of the depths of God's love for us... to be filled with the fullness of Jesus' life in us. Maybe that gives us a different answer to why we keep showing up each week for worship, beyond the tired answers of "Because you’re supposed to," or "Because we're doing our part for God." We gather because we are beloved, and we need to know it and hear it again and again and again.
Lord Jesus amid all the other lesser loves, let us never settle or fall for them at the cost of knowing your love.
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