May 10 Sermon I John 4:7-21

Our readings continue to look at dimensions of the new Christian life as Easter life. God can work even with happenstance. A eunuch just happens to be going home and happens to be reading a suffering servant passage from Isaiah. Our precise genetic inheritance is a collision of chromosomes. The Bible is the memory book of the church. The Ethiopian is reading, but he needs some clues to understanding what he is reading. Philip responds by giving him the great aid to interpreting scripture for Christians, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The official is brought into a new global family, a new Easter life through the new waters of new life. Philip is the midwife for the new birth of the Ethiopian eunuch. We see the radical character of the new faith, as it is a most inclusive family. Eunuchs were not in the congregation of Israel in Dt. 23, but Is. 56 looks toward an inclusive future. In its way, the story in Acts tells us that the future is now. Philip disappears, just like Jesus at Emmaus, but the formally foreign official goes on his way rejoicing. He lives the Easter life of gladness at this new life, this new way of seeing his world, this new world, this new way of life.

I John 4 is at the heart of my faith. We were asked in Committee on Preparation for Ministry to write our own statement of faith, so we could have a better sense of writing our own creed, as we require of candidates. My main section came from what John twice says: God is love. It is not control, not power over others, but the ennobling power of mutuality that is love.It is not a possessive love, but a love that seeks to share life. God wanted to share that life as fully as possible. John’s requirements for salvation are remarkably simple: a life of love. Indeed, it seems that the love of God and the love of others are less 2 separate commandments here, but they seem to involve each other so that separation is difficult if not impossible. We find that the true dwelling place of God is where love appears, where love is practiced. . That love can move beyond the self’s desires and move into the life of the loved one, to sacrifice for the loved one, even laying down one’s own life in ultimate sacrifice for the well-being of the loved one.

I would like to draw some parallels between the love of God and the love of Mothers- Mothers have nine months getting to love the new life within them. Scripture says that God was in planning before the foundation of the world, an eternity to come to see us and love us. For that matter, all life emerged from God’s work, so perhaps we see that God could well love the whole creation as a mother loves a child, with all of its flaws and imperfections. At Bible Study a woman said that she worries that she loves her family more than she loves God. That is a worry I don’t think would cross the mind of a lot of fathers. I don’t know how Mary, the mother of Jesus, worked that out in her life. In Jesus Christ, we see the love of God clearly. Before Jesus said a word or healed anyone, we get a glimpse of the love of God that was determined to demonstrate that love in a person, in an incarnate way. We see love for humanity clearly. God’s love is incarnate in Jesus Christ. Mothers incarnate love for us every day. Mothers are a part of so many memories, especially of childhood. In the womb, the umbilical cord forms, so that we are nourished through the mother. At birth, the cord is cut. We are connected by cords of love all through our lives, even when we cut the apron springs and begin adult life on our own. Our very existence depends on being connected to the hand of God holding the world from spinning into entropy and decay, chaos and confusion. On this Mother’s Day, the force that no equation can gather, no force control, is that of love