Fourth Sunday of Easter
May 3, 2009
Love Acts
1 John 3:16-24
Alleluia! Christ is Risen. He is risen, indeed. Alleluia!
Love is Tangible and Real
Just ask any parent here. Ask Brian & Nicole or ask Jennie & Ralph. Love is real. Love is concrete. Love acts! Love does touchable, physical things.
You can’t bring a baby into the world, put that infant on shelf and never lovingly touch that infant again. Well you could, but that child wouldn’t last very long. Can you even imagine giving birth to a baby but never holding, never hugging him or her?
Go to Google and type in three words—monkeys touch deprivation—and you will discover the ever since the early 1950s studies show that infant monkeys who are properly cared for, fed and nourished BUT who are also deprived of their parent’s touch develop poorly. In fact, given a choice between food and touch, the infant monkeys consistently chose touch.
Love is real. Love is physical and concrete. Love acts! Love does touchable, tangible things.
Jesus is the Love of God Made Visible
Have you noticed through the Easter season how the Risen Jesus does touchable, tangible things? Jesus has his disciples touch his hands and feet. Jesus tells Thomas to put his finger in the mark of the nails and to put his hand in gash made by the spear in his side.
When God loved the world, God did not send an angel or send another messenger like Moses. God did not stand at a far distance and shout out across the universe “I love you.” God sent his only son. God got his hands dirty in the human situation. God became flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth.
And God got his hands dirty in the human situation.
He ate and drank with sinners to say loud and clear that God loved them—a message we continue to say loud and clear through the weekly meal of Holy Communion.
And Jesus laid his hands on those who were ill and he touched them. He physically touched them*mdash;even the lepers whom many treated like they had swine flu.
And Jesus stepped into the waters of the Jordan river to be drenched with a baptism for the forgiveness of sin—a practice we continue in Holy Baptism.
John says it so clearly in the Gospel that we hear today: “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd…runs away because he does not love, he does not care for the sheep.” Love acts! Love is real. Love is concrete.
Jesus is the love of God made visible. That is what the disciple John hammers home is his first letter. It’s all about the love of God. Jesus is the love of God made visible.
The Love of God Seeks to Make us Lovers, too
And that love of God calls us to be lovers, too, whose actions are clear and whose motivations are made visible to the world.
The baptisms of Lucas and Thomas this morning make me think back to my own daughter and her early years and to all the “surprises” that came with being a brand new parent. And if you want to have some surprises, just have a child. It will change the way you look at the world.
And one of the biggest surprises that I had as a parent had to deal with touch. I thought that all infant children were just naturally huggy, cuddly and kissy with their parents. I thought that all infant children just naturally took to their mother’s breast and clung to their parents right away.
But, no. Kick and scratch and bite and poop and poop and poop. That’s what babies do naturally. You have to teach those little buggers how to love. And the way we learn to love is by being loved in real, visible, concrete ways.
And what Christians believe and teach and confess is that it all begins with God. God is love. And we love because God first loved us—not just in word and speech, but in deed and action. In this is love, not that we loved God but that God loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
It is as we said last week, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”
Changed by Baptism
And nothing shows that better than Holy Baptism. The love of God is what is poured out on us through water and the Spirit so that we might become the loving children of God, too. Children of God who make the love of God visible, real and concrete through tangible deeds and actions.
Preparing for the baptisms that we have today, Ralph and Jennie shared with me a daily experience they are having with Thomas which is very similar to the experience that Laurie and I had with our own daughter when she was Thomas’s age.
Every night around 7:30 P.M. Thomas starts to get fussy, whiney and cranky. He is tired. And he is stinky. And he is agitated from all the stresses of the day. But then Jennie and Ralph give him a bath. Thomas just loves his bath. And from those waters there emerges a peaceful, loving, calm, sweet-smelling child that just wants to melt into his parents’ arms.
And what a great picture this is of the very change that our baptism into the death and resurrection of Jesus makes in us.
Without Jesus we are nothing more than just a bunch of whiny, stinky, fussy sinners focused on ourselves. But through our baptism we emerge as calm, peaceful, sweet-smelling children of God who seek to do the Father’s will by believing in Jesus and loving others in his name.
God’s Work, Our Hands
In the ELCA we have a saying: “God’s work. Our hands.”
It is our way of saying that all love begins with God. It all beings with God. But it continues through the very real and tangible things that we do.
Love acts! Love is real and concrete. And it does very touchable and tangible things. And any parent can tell you that.
Alleluia! Christ is Risen. He is risen, indeed. Alleluia!
© 2009 Pastor Paul Jaster