God is Love. Grace is Free. Get Over It!
(Based on Ephesians 2:1-10 & John 3:14-21)
Love the Lord, your God! And love your neighbor as yourself. This is the one constant
message throughout the Bible. This is THE message of the Bible. We hear these words spoken
by Jesus, but they have their roots in the First Testament. As we discussed last week, the 10
Commandments can be summarized into these two statements. Love God and love your
neighbor. Everything Jesus did exemplified these two statements. All of Jesus’ miracles glorify
God and demonstrate God’s love for humanity. If we are to live in the image of Christ, we must
also try our hardest to live by those commandments.
That sounds pretty easy, but as a society, we haven’t been able to figure it out yet. We
have been fighting with each other since the beginning of time. Fighting over whose god is
stronger or more powerful. But here’s the thing. The vast majority of the fighting throughout
history has taken place fighting not over whose god is more powerful, but over whose god loves
them more. There is some significant irony here. The irony is that we are fighting about how best
to show our love for God while completely overlooking the commandment to love our neighbor.
Catholics and Protestants have been fighting for 500 years over how best to worship
Jesus. Even before the Protestant movement split the Protestant Church from the Catholic
Church, the Eastern church and the Western church began fighting and split literally over one
letter in the Greek translation of the New Testament. Christians and Muslims have been fighting
about what name to use when referring to God. Christians and Jews have been fighting about
whether Jesus fulfilled enough prophesies to be the Messiah.
Even among Christians, there is fighting about what it means to be baptized, what Holy
Communion represents, what the resurrection means. We have been fighting about different
understandings of Paul’s letters, or different understandings of the Apocryphal texts. Some
Christian denominations believe that every word in the Bible was literally written by the hand of
God while others acknowledge that men may have written down the ideas. Some denominations
baptize infants while others believe that a person must be an adult to be baptized or that anyone
coming into their church from another church requires a new baptism while still others believe
one baptism will last a lifetime. Some denominations believe everyone is entitled to participate
in the Lord’s Supper while others reserve communion for those who have demonstrated their
desire to know Jesus.
This fighting is absurd! We should be working together! We are all trying to do the same
thing! I just read a book (Finding Our Way Again, McLaren, Brian 2008) where the author
compared the different denominations to cooking styles. I like this analogy, because it works!
There are about a thousand ways to cook something like chicken. A French style might include
cooking with cheese and wine. An Italian style might include cooking with olive oil, basil and
tomatoes. A Cajun style might include some cayenne pepper. We may disagree with how to do
it, but we are all cooking chicken! Which cooking style is wrong? I suppose fried chicken is not
the healthiest style, but that doesn’t make it wrong! We may prefer one style over another, but
our preference doesn’t mean that another style is wrong. They all cook chicken, and none are
wrong.
In this same way, each denomination demonstrates their love for God – love for the same
God. None of them is wrong. We have the first Commandment down, love the Lord, your God.
We know how to love God, but we have forsaken the second Commandment, to love our
neighbor. We have forsaken this Commandment by fighting with other people because we prefer
different worship styles.
Today, we read one of the most beautiful passages in the entire bible, but this passage has
also caused the most damage of any single passage in the Bible. John 3:16, the most well known
passage in the whole Bible. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that
everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” This is a beautiful
passage that explains just how much God loves us. God loves us so much that God gave up a
child for our sake! That is love! It is also the important half of the passage.
It is the second half of the passage that has caused damage and pain in Christ’s name over
the years. Those words, “So that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have
eternal life,” have led to much torment and pain. They have been used to judge others and to
justify horrible things throughout history. How is that loving your neighbor? The next verse
helps frame the passage in a way that honors the Commandment to Love your neighbor. John
3:17 says, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order
that the world might be saved through him.” The message here is not one of exclusion or
judgment or condemnation, it is a message of love, just like the rest of the message.
It is when we forget one of the two greatest Commandments, when we forget to love God
or to love our neighbor, that the message of the Bible leads us to cause harm or pain. But through
focusing on those Commandments, we can repair the harm that has been done. As Paul tells the
people of Ephesus, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith— and this is not from
yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s
handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to
do.” We are justified by our faith. Our faith demonstrates our love for God, but we were created
with the intention of being able to do good works in God’s name, demonstrating our love for our
neighbor. This is the message of the Bible, and the reason we are here.
This week, we participate in the UMCOR mission, One Great Hour of Sharing. This is an
opportunity for us to demonstrate our love for our neighbors around the world. When the
earthquake struck in Haiti, UMCOR came with supplies. When Hurricane Katrina hit New
Orleans UMCOR came with supplies. When the Tsunami hit Japan, UNCOR came with
supplies. Whenever there is an emergency, whether it is on the other side of the planet or in our
back yard, UMCOR brings supplies. This ministry is not one that we could sustain alone. Only
by working together could we share this much love with our neighbors around the world.
Let us always respect other denominations and other traditions and end the fighting so
that we may work together to share the message and God’s love and grace.
Let us always remember to love God and love our neighbor in all we do.
Let us by our words and actions promote unity and love in the name of Christ because that is
what we’re here to do!
Amen