"Love
One Another"
By
Dr. Mickey Anders
South
Elkhorn Christian Church
Lexington,
Kentucky
February
15, 2009
Texts:
John 13.34, Romans 12.10, Romans 13.8, 1 Thessalonians 4.9, 1 Peter
1.22, 1
John 3.11, 1 John 3.14, 1 John 3.23, 1 John 4.7, 1 John 4.11, 1 John
4.12, 2
John 1.5
The story is told
of a
congregation who had just called a new minister. Everyone was excited
about
meeting their new pastor and hearing him preach. Come Sunday morning,
the
sanctuary was packed. The people sat on the edge of their pews in
anticipation
of his first sermon. Sure enough, it was a doozy. He selected as his
text, 1
John 4:11, “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love
one another.” As
the sermon ended, heads nodded, and the Pastor Nominating Committee
breathed a
huge sigh of relief. He was a keeper.
But the next
Sunday, as the new
minister read the text for the day, a few of the old saints raised
their
eyebrows, for it was the same text as the Sunday before – 1 John
4:11, “Beloved,
if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”
They’d never heard two
consecutive sermons on the same text before, but, to give the new
preacher the
benefit of the doubt, they listened carefully and tried to be
open-minded. But
as the preacher began his sermon, lo and behold, it was the exact same
sermon
they’d heard the week before, word for word.
They didn’t
know what to make
of it. “Was this some sort of joke?” they wondered.
“Were they supposed to get
some deeper meaning the second time around?” “Was he even
aware that he was
repeating himself?” Out of courtesy, they didn’t say
anything. They just
listened politely and, when the service was over, shook hands at the
door and
said something like, “That was a mighty interesting sermon you
had for us
today, Reverend.”
The next Sunday,
everyone was
on pins and needles. The tension was thick as the service began. One
could
sense that a storm was brewing. When the new minister began reading the
text,
the congregation began squirming in their seats, for, once again, he
read from
1 John 4:11, “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love
one another.”
And, to their dismay, he began the sermon with the same exact words as
the two
Sundays before.
But before he could
get past
the introduction, one of the elders jumped up and said,
“Preacher, we’ve heard
this sermon twice now. What gives?” The minister looked at the
elder and said,
“Why, nothing, really. Do this, and I’ll give you another
sermon next week!”
When I come to
preach a sermon
about loving one another, I have the feeling that I have preached this
sermon
before, time and time again. And the
truth is -I don't really have anything new to say about loving one
another. I don't have anything to tell
you about loving one another that you don't already know and that you
haven't
heard a hundred times from every preacher you have ever heard.
The problem is that
we know
what to do; but we don't do it.
You see, love is a
verb, and I
have never known a church that did not have trouble with verbs.
Nouns have always
come easily:
God, Father, Jesus, Holy Spirit, fellowship, cross, baptism, Lord's
Supper,
Bible, book, hope. We have battled long
and hard over many of these nouns, but they have come easily for most
of us.
The adjectives have
come even
more easily: wonderful, great, spectacular, lovely, best,
Spirit-filled,
Bible-believing, verbally inspired, holy, sacred.
But the verbs have
always given
us the most difficulty. Verbs connote
action. They make things happen in a
sentence. My freshman English teacher would say, "That's not a sentence
-
it doesn't have a verb."
Long ago Paul wrote
across the
miles to Corinth. Like my old English
teacher he chided his friends at Corinth.
What kind of a church do you really expect to be with only nouns
and
adjectives? You won't get anywhere
without the verbs.
That is why it took
the
children of Israel forty years to travel a short distance of four
hundred
miles. They had difficulty with the
verbs. The verbs are everywhere in the
gospel: come, follow me, take up your cross, give away what you have,
build a
tower, lay down your life, eat, drink,
knock, ask, seek.
The amazing thing
about this
love chapter is that Paul says over and over that love is a verb. In the Greek text, scholars tell us that love
is used as a noun only three times in this long chapter.
We also discover fifteen verbs in this
passage. After the first verse, not a
single descriptive adjective is used in the Greek.
We encounter only verbs and verbal
adjectives. As Carlyle Marney has
pointed out, all the verbs are verbs of relation.
So Paul took up his
pen and
began to write. You don't need any more nouns or adjectives. What you need are some action words to build
a bridge across the chasms that divide you from one another. Paul believed that this single verb, love,
had the power to reshape the broken, splintered body in Corinth.
Paul ends with the
incredible
verbs: Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things,
endures
all things. These verbs are
comprehensive. Over and over Paul writes
in large letters: All things.
Love is not
something we feel;
it is something we do.
God’s love is
anything but
abstract. It’s concrete and specific, and this is the way
we’re called to love
one another, not with gushy feelings, but with deeds of loving
kindness. As the
writer of the Letter of James puts it:
“If a brother
or sister is
naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in
peace, keep
warm, eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily
needs, what is the
good of that?” (Jam. 2:15-16)
A Civil War
chaplain approached
a wounded soldier on the battlefield and asked if he would like to hear
a few
verses from the Bible. The wounded man said, "No, I'm so thirsty, I'd
rather have some water." The chaplain gave him a drink, then repeated
his
question. "No sir, not now -- but could you put something under my
head?" The chaplain did so, and again repeated his question.
"No," said the soldier, "I'm cold. Could you cover me up?"
The chaplain took off his inside coat and wrapped the soldier. Afraid
to ask,
he did not repeat his question. He made to go away, but the soldier
called him
back. "Look, Chaplain, if there's anything in that book of yours that
makes a person do for another what you've done for me, then I want to
hear
it." (Walking the talk.
Howard Thurman
tells of a dream
a man once had. In the dream the man was on a train.
The train stopped and he found himself in a
large city. It was early morning and
snow covered the ground. As he left the
train the man noticed that no one he met wore shoes.
They were warmly dressed but the baggage man
and the redcap wore no shoes. He thought
this was odd for such a cold day. As he
moved into the station he noticed that nobody had shoes on. Boarding a bus he saw that everyone on the
bus was barefooted. When he arrived at
his hotel, everyone he met was shoeless.
Finally he could
restrain
himself no longer and asked the manager about the practice. "What practice?" the manager said.
"The practice of
not
wearing shoes. Nobody in this town wears
shoes and it is very cold."
The manager
shrugged, "Ah,
that's just it. Why don't we?"
The man was
persistent. "I don't understand. Why don't you wear shoes?
Don't you believe in shoes?"
The manager said,
"Believe
in shoes, indeed we do. This is the first article of our creed, shoes. Shoes are indispensable to the well-being of
humanity. Why, shoes make things more comfortable.
Not to speak of the cuts, sores, and
suffering they prevent. Shoes really are
wonderful."
So the man asked,
"Then
why don't you wear them?"
The manager sighed,
"Ah,
that's just it. Why don't we?"
After the man
checked into his
room he went down to the coffee shop and sat down next to a man who
wore no
shoes. The man was friendly.
After the meal he told the stranger he would
show him around the city. The first
building they came to had a huge sign indicating that shoes were
manufactured
inside.
The man did not
understand:
"You manufacture shoes there?"
The host said
"Well, not
exactly. We talk about making
shoes. We have one of the most brilliant
fellows to lead us you will ever meet.
He's quite well known, really.
Every week he talks convincingly and movingly about the great
subject of
shoes. He has enormous charisma. Just yesterday as he talked about wearing
shoes people in the audience just broke down and wept.
It was one of the greatest things I have ever
seen."
The man said, "But why
don't you wear shoes?"
And his guide said,
"That's just it. Why don't
we?"
They turned down a
side street
and through the window the man saw a cobbler making a pair of shoes in
a
shop. He excused himself from his guide
and walked into the shop. He asked the
shoemaker why his little shop was not overrun with customers. The cobbler said, "Nobody wants my
shoes. They just want to talk about
them."
The man bought what
pairs of
shoes the cobbler had and rushed out of the store.
He handed one of the pairs to his host and
said, "Put them on - you'll feel so much better on this cold day."
The man drew back
in
embarrassment. He thanked the stranger
and shook his head. "You just don't
understand, do you? This just is not
done. The best people in town would
never wear shoes."
The stranger though
he was
going mad. "But why don't people in
this town wear shoes?"
And the tour guide
smiled and
said, "Ah, that's just it. Why
don't we?"
As the stranger
left the town,
one question kept ringing in his ears: "Why don't we?
Why don't we wear shoes?" (Minister's
Manual 2001, p. 367-368)