1Peter
1:17-23
A
sermon for the people of Holy Cross Lutheran Church
May
4, 2014
Pray with me as we
begin. May the words of my mouth and the
meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Two
weeks ago, we sat in this very room and proclaimed, “Christ is Risen!” Then, last week we heard about poor Thomas
who had such a hard time believing the unbelievable until he saw it for
himself…then he, too, proclaimed the risen Christ as “my Lord and my God!” Amen.
Today we are here again…the sanctuary is still dressed in its Easter
finery, and we still shout gladly “Christ is risen!” But, maybe by now the new has begun to wear off,
the chocolate rabbits are gone, the lilies are wilting, and some of us are
beginning to think, “He is risen indeed…Now what?”
Our
epistle lesson (epistle means letter, by the way…we’ll demystify that a little
bit)…our epistle lesson for today comes from 1 Peter the 1st
chapter, and it largely answers the question “now what?”
Peter
reminds us it is precisely because God raised Jesus from the dead that we are truly
able to trust God. We know that God
promises us a future, and we put our faith and our trust in God’s promises. Peter
tells us since we have “purified our souls” or “cleaned up our lives” by
following and being obedient to the truth (which is Jesus who is the Christ),
we are to love one another from the heart, as though our very lives depend upon
it.
But
what does that mean? What does it mean
to love someone?
It’s
important to recognize that love is a verb…an action verb to be precise. In the immortal words of Fred Rogers,
everyone’s favorite neighbor, “Love doesn't mean a state of perfect caring….To
love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is
right here and now and to go on caring through joyful times and through times
that may bring us pain.” It can be a
process, and it’s work.
We
lived in Hanford, California, a smallish Navy town an hour south of Fresno,
about eight years ago. While we were
there, we attended the Presbyterian church in town…this congregation was very
kid friendly with lots of things for kids to do: a large VBS, multiple Sunday
School classrooms, two different nurseries…you get the idea. Well because it was so kid friendly, many of
the aviators with whom James worked at the Naval Air Station also attended
worship there. One of the pilots was
Carter’s Sunday School teacher LCDR Frank Wittwer. Frank was a truly truly wonderful man. He was smart, funny, incredibly patient, and
positive. He was the kind of man that
could make you feel important to the whole world just by smiling at you, and
Carter thrived under Frank’s attention especially when James left for a 12
month unaccompanied overseas tour. Frank
and his equally incredible wife Mendi had three children more or less the same
ages as my oldest three. With God,
country, and kids in common, I spent a whole lot of time in the same room with
the Wittwers (even if the kids never let us really talk to one another).
They
say the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree, and that was certainly the
case with Frank and Mendi’s daughters.
Erin and Abby (who were about 7 and 5 at the time) were sunny, loving little things prone to fits of giggles,
and they played with and accepted my boys as one of the gaggle of kids who
gathered regularly for crafts or tag or a dip in the pool. I relished those days because it meant I got
to relax just a bit and rely on the goodness and love of my friends to tend to
my spirit and to keep those boys (especially Carter) out of trouble.
Now,
my Jackson back then was really shy and very, very quiet. He spent a lot of time with his thumb in his
mouth, wishing that I would pick him up and just hold him. But little Abby Wittwer would inevitably come
along and grab him by the hand and drag him into whatever she happened to be
doing…loving him in and through the joy of childhood and of being together. This sort of unconditional acceptance is God-given,
and little children who are loved offer it well. These carefree days of playdates and
Christmas parties were such a blessing to my boys and to me.
But
then, in January of 2006, Frank’s plane went down during a routine training
mission. And all of that changed. The community and the church were
devastated. As Mendi and her children
adjusted to their “new normal” (if you can even say something like that) they
were noticeably absent from gatherings.
And the rest of us were heartbroken, too.
A
month later for Valentine’s Day, a friend of ours decided to host a party for
all the kids that Erin and Abby knew from church. Their mom dropped them off as she was just
not quite ready yet for a public appearance.
The
house was swarming with happy kids, and chatty moms, and every surface was
draped with red and white and pink and purple banners and hearts and the word
“Love”. The Wittwer girls entered our
friend’s home with downcast eyes. Their
anxiety was palpable. Then, an older boy
waltzed up to them and said, in that nasty, sing-songy way that bullies seem to
perfect, “Nice of you to show up since your dad
died.”
Erin burst into tears. There was stunned silence, then a flurry of
activity as mothers rushed to discipline the one and comfort the other.
In a
heartbeat, I found myself alone with grief-stricken, abandoned little 5-year-old Abby and silent, wide-eyed Jackson.
I wanted to walk over and console that beautiful little lonely girl, but
I was afraid that she wouldn’t recognize me.
She was so little and had been through so very, very much. I remember feeling as though the world had
frozen around me, and I couldn’t move to help her.
And
then, and then…I watched as my child, my sweet little boy walked over to her,
put his arm around her shoulders and whispered, “I miss my dad, too.” They stood there in the kitchen holding onto
each other with thumbs in their mouths, heads together, loving one another
through the pain of separation and the sting of death.
The
love written about in Peter’s epistle is the same as the love shown to me by
Frank and Mendi when they taught my children and invited me alongside their
family; it’s the same as the love shown to Jackson by little Abby when she
included him in her fun; it’s the same
as the love shown by our friend who would open her home to welcome grieving
girls and offer them a taste of “normal”; it’s the same as the love offered to
that bully of a boy when those moms stepped in to tell him his behavior and his words were not okay; it’s the same as the love shown to Abby by
little Jackson as he affirmed her pain and held her through it. This is
the love found in a life of obedience to the truth of Christ and it is amazing
…it’s welcoming…it’s teaching…it’s giving…it’s accepting…it’s dwelling in the
hard times; this love is life-giving, and it is a way of life. It’s a verb of
profound and prolific action! It is
work! Sometimes it’s a whole lot of
work…roll-up-your-sleeves-and-prepare-to-sweat kind of work. Love one another from the heart, as though
your lives depend on it!
What
does it mean to really, really love
one another? It means to care for the
other person with the same concern and care you give to yourself. It means you put the other’s needs and
desires at the top of your list. It
means being patient. It means that you
allow the other person to be exactly who he or she is in that moment. It means that you bear one another’s
burdens. It means sometimes dwelling in
sorrow or longing or loss with the other.
It means that you take care of the other person, but it also means that
you allow them to take care of you. It means recognizing that the other person
is as valuable, and meaningful, and worthwhile to God as you are. And it can be painful. And it can be messy. But it is a beautiful mess, and it is what we
are called to do!
Loving
and being loved in this way is life-giving, and it is life-changing! So roll up your sleeves. Get sweaty.
Get messy. Get hurt. Love your neighbor as yourself.
Christ
is risen! So, love one another from the
heart. As though your lives depend on
it.
Amen.
