Wedding Meditation: The Meaning of Love

As M and L sat with Lois and me before the wedding, I asked what passages of Scripture they might want me to speak on. They gave me a wonderful selection. Hosea 2 reminds us of the way that God’s love creates acceptance and identity in the emptiness of human rejection and failures. The letters of John – including 1 John 4 – have the constant theme of God’s Love. Love defines God, and God’s love defines us. Ephesians 4 locates the source of our love and unity within the work of God’s Holy Spirit in our lives. Psalms 25 and 116 remind us that we find God’s love and care when we come to the end of our own resources. These are good passages! Read them often and read them well. 

 

As I read the passages myself, I decided to do something other than work through the Scriptures. One thread that ties them together is the meaning of love – God’s love for us, and our love for each other. Marriage is more than love. Marriage includes as its lifeblood promises made and promises kept. Marriage grows and changes over the years. Sometimes marriage is full of fun and frolic; sometimes it is held together by a stubborn commitment not to give up. But love is the heart of marriage; love is the essence of human life as God’s images, so I want to talk a bit about love. 

 

When I was young, the Beatles sang, “All you need is love”. A little over 50 years ago, Lennon and McCartney wrote this song. They were right, but only if we have some idea of what love is. To many people in North America today, love is reduced to the attraction we feel between the sexes, but of course love is much more than that. 

 

I suspect that many of you know that the Greek language (used in the New Testament) has four words for love, where in English we have one. (More, if you include synonyms such as “like” and “adore”.) These four words make a useful tool to explore a fuller meaning of love than the Beatles had in mind. 

 

The first is “storge” – affection, or family love. Family love is the affection we feel for those people who we are related to, like it or not. Sometimes we say, “You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your relatives.” We may fight with those who we love as family, but let someone from outside attack us and we bond together. We are family! 

 

There is something divine in this kind of love – loving the other person even when they annoy you or hurt you. This love is important enough that Jesus showed it as he hung on the cross: “Mother, behold your son. John, behold your mother.” In his own extremity, Jesus reached out to take care of his mother. 

 

Family love also has its dark side. Sometimes it sets itself up as the ultimate authority in our lives. You may remember the moment in the gospels when Jesus’ own family tried to take him from his ministry to provide psychological and spiritual help. At that moment, Jesus turned from his family and declared that the family of God was his true family. 

 

The second word for love is “philia” – friendship. We can’t choose our family, but we do choose our friends. Friends are bound together by shared interests. I love the game of chess, and I have observed that when I find another chess player, friendship is easily formed. Notably, one of the words that Jesus used for the disciples was to call them his friends. As with storge, there is something divine about friendship. As we come together with those who share our interests, we are bound together in something that resembles the love that Jesus had for his disciples. 

 

There’s another reason that friendship is incredibly important. Sometimes in North America we think that our spouse must be everything to us. No human relationship can bear that burden. To have a healthy relationship with our spouse, we need other people outside the relationship to share interests and life with; we need friends. 

 

Friendship also has its dark side. When people bond with each other around a demonic interest – as the Nazis did in the 1930s and 1940s – the friendships they form are not good. Bad friends are all the worse because friendship itself is so important. 

 

The third word we look at is well known – eros, or physical sexual attraction. Eros brings sparkle and joy to the marriage relationship. This committed relationship provides a safe place for Eros to shine. This form of love is, of course, what the Beatles were thinking about in their song. Stephen Sills expressed a similar thought in 1970 with the song, “If you can’t be with the one you love, honey, love the one you’re with.” A Christian view of eros emphasizes instead the place of sexual love within the marriage covenant. 

 

In its place, eros is wonderful! Eros is so wonderful that it is actually one of the gods in the Greek pantheon, but like the other forms of love, eros has its dark side. When sexual love becomes the “be all and end all” of life, it becomes destructive of marriage and of life itself. 

 

You see a common theme here in the first three forms of love. They each reflect something of divinity. They each bring us closer to each other and to God. And they each have their dark side. They each become God’s enemy when they try to take God’s place. [Note: I have taken this insight, along with much of the description of each kind of love, from C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves.] 

 

All of this brings us to the fourth word for love – the word that is used when John says, “God is love”. The word is “agape”. This is the New Testament’s favourite word for love. This is the love that Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13. This is distinctively Christian love. 

 

Agape differs from the first three words. Storge, philia, and eros each tries to take God’s place; agape lives within God as God. The first three show themselves as a matter of emotions and feeling; agape is primarily a choice, a matter of the will. The first three give of themselves, but they also ask for something in return. They are what C.S. Lewis calls “need-love”. Agape gives itself completely for the good of the other and asks for nothing in return. God is Agape. 

 

What then is “agape”? What sort of love is this? Many years ago, a friend of mine described it as “wanting God’s best for the other person”. When we say that God loves us, we know that means that God wants the very best for us. But it is often the case that when we say, “I love you”, we mean simply that I need you and I need what you give to me. This is not bad; it is in fact the way that God has made us. It is good! But it is not agape. 

 

Agape love, then, reflects God’s heart for the other person. It brings us closer to each other, and it brings us closer to God. When you are filled with this God-love, all other forms of love become good and beautiful. Eros and philia and storge become almost divine themselves, ruled by agape flowing from the heart of God. 

 

What does this mean in practical terms? Well, that is for you to figure out over the rest of your lives, but I will say just this much today. It’s good that you have warm feelings about each other. It’s good that you feel deep affection for each other. It’s good that you share interests and values. But none of these is enough to build your lives on. 

 

Build your lives on God. Build your lives on God’s love, which works in you for God’s best in you. Desire God’s best for each other. Choose God and choose what is good. Build the foundation of your lives with God’s perfect love, which sanctifies and celebrates all other forms of love. 

 

You know of course how God’s love shows itself for us. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) God’s love is most visible on the cross. Your love for each other will grow and develop and become what God wants when it begins with your own embrace of the cross. 

 

You will have to work out what that means: Giving yourself for each other; caring more about each other’s needs than of your own; seeking God’s best for each other at all times. If you do this, if you bring yourselves and your marriage to the foot of the cross, God’s love will flow through you in good times and in bad times. May God bless you and your marriage from this day and forever.

Choosing David

A funny thing happened on the way to this sermon. I read the lectionary texts, and I thought I knew what sermon was coming from them. I wrote a focus statement and sent it out to the people doing the children’s feature and the music, so that they would know what I was planning to say. Then I reread them and started to write. As I wrote and thought, the sermon suddenly stepped from the path we were on and joined another path, and I found that it was really a sermon about peace and nonresistance. Not where I thought we were going!

I started with several questions. How does God work in our world? Many people are ready to say they are on God’s side and to declare that their actions have divine sanction. How can we tell if they are right? I thought that exploring story of David’s anointing would help answer this question, so I started looking at another question, “Why did God choose David?” Walk with me through the texts and see what happens.

1 Samuel 16

The story of David’s anointing is an interesting one. It serves to explain how God removed the kingship of Israel from Saul’s house and settled it on David’s line, but it does so in a way that emphasizes God’s rule in all of life.

Our text tells us that Saul had failed to follow God several times, and finally God rejected Saul. Last Sunday, Lee took us through the way that the Israelites had insisted on a king and how that insistence represented a rejection of God as king. God then chose Saul to lead them, but Saul insisted on following his own way once he became king, and God took the kingship from him.

Following God’s internal voice, Samuel went to the area of Bethlehem, where God led him to the family of Jesse. Samuel then inspected Jesse’s sons to see which one of them God had called as king. Our text says that David’s brothers looked like better candidates to become king than David did; God tells Samuel, “[People] look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” Paul describes David in memorable words (Acts 13:22) as “a man after God’s own heart.” God chose David because David oriented his life towards God. Sometimes he succeeded – his victory over Goliath remains an amazing act of faith. When he succeeded, he thanked God for leading him. Sometimes he failed – his betrayal of Uriah was a shameful act. When he failed, God rebuked him, and he admitted his failure and turned back to God.

Why did God choose David? Because David oriented his life towards God. God defined for him what was right and what was wrong. God’s glory and goodness gave David’s life meaning, both when David did well and when he did wrong.

Here’s where the sermon went sideways on me. The story makes its point in a context that we find difficult to process – that of warfare and fighting. David is called to be king precisely to defeat the Philistines and to establish Israel in military terms. We examine this difficulty in order to understand something of what God may be saying to us.

We begin by acknowledging that Israel’s military activity is a problem for us. We understand the call to peace that Jesus makes to mean that we cannot ourselves embrace the use of violence that David embraced. What then do we do with it?

Note that David’s own example emphasizes his weakness relative to the enemies he faced. In the next chapter, we have the story of David and Goliath. However much we may deplore the use of violence to kill Goliath, we can see the element of God’s saving activity through human weakness. David is a young lad; Goliath is a giant of a man. David is unarmed except for a sling and some stones; Goliath is fully armed with the best and latest weapons. All that David has is God’s presence, and God saves Israel through David’s weakness.

The whole story reminds one of Gideon and the 300, who defeated the Midianites several hundred years earlier (Judges 7). Gideon began with 32,000 men to fight against Midian. He winnowed them down to 10,000, but God required a further winnowing – to 300 men. The reason for this winnowing is stated clearly: “The people who are with you are too many for Me to hand Midian over to them, otherwise Israel would become boastful, saying, ‘My own power has saved me.’” God chooses to work through human weakness to make it clear that God saves us; we cannot save ourselves.

These stories illustrate the words of Psalm 20: 7, “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.”

The problem of violence in the Old Testament remains, but it is relativized. God wanted God’s People to trust God rather than the strength of their own arms. In the New Testament, most notably in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus makes it clear that God’s desire is for a radical trust that dispenses entirely with violence. That sounds like a peace sermon to me!

Mark 4:26-34

So, we turn to Mark’s gospel. The first part of Mark 4 presents the parable of the Soils, concluding with words that emphasise God’s right to determine human destiny. God acts in our lives to bring about growth – the growth of God’s kingdom. The parable of the soils uses the miracle of plant growth to suggest how greatly God’s reign can grow in human existence. The parables we read at the end of the chapter remind us of this truth.

·         The first of the two parables we read considers the miracle of something like wheat: While the farmer goes about their daily work, the single seed turns into a plant, which then becomes a full-size plant with a full head of grain. The growth of God’s reign comes from God. The most we can do is participate as God’s servants.

·         The second parable considers the contrast between how small the seed is and how large the plant is that grows from the seed. Once again, the growth is God’s work, and we receive God’s good gifts, however little we deserve them.

·         The third section of the passage we read describes the place of parables in Jesus’ teaching. He taught the people in parables, and he gave fuller explanations to the disciples. It almost looks as though Jesus did not want people to get the point, but that, I think, misreads the text. The point is rather an invitation to become a disciple. The parables spark interest in God’s reign, and those who choose to walk with God find out more fully what God is actually doing.

Bringing the Scripture into our Conversation

Come back to the questions that we began with: How does God work in our world? Many people are ready to say they are on God’s side and to declare that their actions have divine sanction. How can we tell if they are right? To put it another way, if God’s Reign is growing in the world around us, how can we choose to be part of God’s Reign?

Look again at David. These questions lead us to another the question: “Why did God choose David?” Why would God choose a man of war to lead God’s people into peace? Why would God choose someone who failed in such significant ways? David destroyed Uriah’s marriage and took Uriah’s life because he wanted Uriah’s wife. Why would God choose someone like that? David was a failure as a father. His sons fought among themselves to take David’s place, even before their father had died! Why would God choose someone like that?

I said earlier: Because David oriented his life towards God. God defined for him what was right and what was wrong. God’s glory and goodness gave David’s life meaning, both when David did well and when he did wrong.

To put it another way, if you want to be a part of God’s Reign growing in this world – like the parables of the growth of the kingdom in Mark’s gospel – then you must be like David. Not by fighting against the Philistines, but by seeking God’s heart and mind and glory. David oriented his life towards God. God’s glory and goodness gave David’s life meaning.

But God’s glory and goodness are seen most clearly in God’s love and peace. God refused to let David build a temple for him because his hands were stained with the blood of his enemies. Jesus brings God’s perfect reign, which is a reign of peace and love. I find it hard to resist this conclusion: If you want to know who loves God and desires God’s glory, if you want to know “who is on the Lord’s side”, look to who is living a life of God’s peace and love.

So Hard to Do!

Living a life of peace and love is brutally hard to do. I know this truth from my own life. In the past month, when I’m in my study, the phone sometimes rings with someone I don’t know calling the church. One call came from someone in our area – not from our church – who was upset because we don’t meet for services in our sanctuary. He told me that we are siding with Satan and kept pushing and pushing. I could feel myself getting more and more angry, until I hung up on him. I want to live a life of peace and love, but it is hard to do!

I had another call a few weeks later, from someone who said she lives in Winnipeg. She identified us with the church south of town who actively oppose any government restrictions. She told me in no uncertain terms that we have blood on our hands and that she would pray to God that we might be saved from Hell. Again, I could feel my anger rising, until this time she hung up on me. I want to live a life of peace and love, but it is hard to do!

When I am faced with the anger and vitriol that many people express, I do not feel peaceful or loving! I need God’s love and forgiveness to pick me up and get me going again! That’s where we learn from David. David was “a man after God’s own heart”, because whenever he failed, he turned back to God and sought God’s presence and direction in his life.

Two hundred and fifty-five years ago, Swiss Mennonites migrated north from Pennsylvania to what they then called “Central Canada”. On July 6, 1986, Mennonites celebrated 200 years in Canada with a service in Kitchener, Ontario. I was there in the gathering of about 8,000 people as we celebrated with the theme of “Mennonites: A People of Peace.” Ron Sider was asked to speak about our Anabaptist commitment to be a people of peace in the world.

Thirty-five years later, I don’t remember most of what we said or did that day, but I do remember a basic part of Sider’s address to the assembly. He said something like this (adapted to our setting):

If you want to have peace in this world, you must have peace between the nations of the world. If you want to have peace between nations, you must have peace within the nations of the world – such as Canada. If you want peace in Canada, you must have peace between the Provinces of Canada. If you want peace within the Province of Manitoba, you must have peace between the communities of Manitoba. If you want to have peace between the communities of Manitoba, you must have peace within each community. If you want to have peace within Steinbach, you must have peace between the families of Steinbach. If you want to have peace within your family, you must have peace between the members of your family. If you want to have peace with the others in your family, you must have peace within yourself, and that means peace with God.

Now any one of the links in this chain may fail. We may have family conflict or a church fight. We may see violence in our own community or in the international community. But the basic point is clear: Our desire for peace in the world, something we all desire deeply, depends in the end on responding to God’s call in our lives. If we are a people after God’s own heart, we become those who live out the growing reign of God in our lives. That means that when people call us looking for a fight, we respond with God’s peace and love. When we find ourselves struggling with the problems and relationships of this world, we respond with God’s peace and love. The truth is that this task is beyond us – unless, like David, we depend on God to pick us up and set us back on the “paths of righteousness, for his name’s sakes”.

We started by asking, “Why did God choose David?” We should ask also, “Why has God chosen us?” And then we respond by welcoming God’s presence within us, moulding us into God’s people, growing and growing until God’s reign fills the whole world.

Steinbach Mennonite Church

13 June 2021

Texts

1 Samuel 15:34-16:13

³⁴ Then Samuel went to Ramah; and Saul went up to his house in Gibeah of Saul. ³⁵ Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death, but Samuel grieved over Saul. And the Lord was sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel.

16 The Lord said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul? I have rejected him from being king over Israel. Fill your horn with oil and set out; I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.” ² Samuel said, “How can I go? If Saul hears of it, he will kill me.” And the Lord said, “Take a heifer with you, and say, ‘I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.’ ³ Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do; and you shall anoint for me the one whom I name to you.” ⁴ Samuel did what the Lord commanded and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him trembling, and said, “Do you come peaceably?” ⁵ He said, “Peaceably; I have come to sacrifice to the Lord; sanctify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice.” And he sanctified Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.

⁶ When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, “Surely the Lord’s anointed is now before the Lord.” ⁷ But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” ⁸ Then Jesse called Abinadab and made him pass before Samuel. He said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” ⁹ Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And he said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” ¹⁰ Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel, and Samuel said to Jesse, “The Lord has not chosen any of these.” ¹¹ Samuel said to Jesse, “Are all your sons here?” And he said, “There remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep.” And Samuel said to Jesse, “Send and bring him; for we will not sit down until he comes here.” ¹² He sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. The Lord said, “Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.” ¹³ Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers; and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward. Samuel then set out and went to Ramah.

Mark 4:26-34

The Parable of the Growing Seed

²⁶ He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, ²⁷ and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. ²⁸ The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. ²⁹ But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”

The Parable of the Mustard Seed

³⁰ He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? ³¹ It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; ³² yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

The Use of Parables

³³ With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; ³⁴ he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.

Focus Statement: God works in ways that may surprise us. Our job is to be listening for God's presence and direction.

Looking Ahead Questions: How does God work in our world? Many people are ready to say they are on God’s side and to declare that their actions have divine sanction. How can we tell if they are right?