OUT OF GREAT LOVE

March 15, 2015

Lent 4

John 3:14-21

Ephesians 2:1-10

(prayer)

Mother Teresa said, “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with
great love.” 

What a wise woman – a true saint to the church and the world.

She did not just speak these words; she lived her life doing the small things out of great love.

In September 1946, Sister Teresa felt a strong call from God to leave her convent and begin living and working with the poor.  She began doing just that in 1948.  With some basic medical training and a heart of compassion she set out into the slums - started a school and began engaging in the lives of the poorest of the poor.
She spawned a movement by her actions eventually founding her own diocesan congregation, later known as The Missionaries of Charity.

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I doubt that it is each our fates to become Mother Teresas in the fullest sense of her example - but we can all aspire to do small things out of great love.

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The nature of God can be described as, ‘the deepest of all compassion’ – Jesus said that the greatest commandments were ‘to love.’  Following Jesus is accepting the challenge to live life caring about everyone and everything that God has put in our life - to do the same things out of great love.

Easy to say. 
Harder to do.

Hard - because we aren't always mindful of the small things; and Hard - because we have emotions other-than-love competing for our attention.

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Biblical scholars date the gospel of John to the end of the first century - that makes it the last of the four gospels to be written and, in fact, one of most recent Biblical records we have.

So, it makes sense that one of the central themes of John is 'believing'.  That theme is summed up in the later chapters of the book in the story of the resurrected Jesus appearing to the disciple named Thomas.  If you are familiar with that story, you will recall that on the Sunday after Jesus died on the executioner's cross he appeared to Mary Magdalene early in the morning.  She ran and told the other disciples, but they weren't sure that they could believe her on her word alone.  Two of the disciples confirmed that the tomb was empty, but couldn’t confirm that Jesus wad raised from death.  
That evening, Jesus appeared to the disciples directly.  They talked with him; saw his wounds.  They believed then.  But Thomas wasn't there when Jesus came.  Like Mary did in the morning, others told the story of their experience but the one who missed out was reluctant to believe.

The next week, Jesus appeared again and - this time - Thomas was there.  He got his own chance to see and believe.  That section of the gospel is summed up with Jesus saying: blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe. 

The gospel-writer intends that sentence to heard by his readers.  By the end of the first century, the community of the followers of Jesus was almost exclusively made up of those who 'hadn't seen' - the apostles who had seen and shared their first hand experiences with Jesus had all passed away by this time.
The church was transitioning into its second and third generations of followers who did not know Jesus in the flesh.
John needed to find language that would be helpful as the church made this transition.

The gospel of John encourages believing.

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We see the believing theme in our reading this morning from chapter three.  "That everyone who believes in [God's son: Jesus] may not perish but have eternal life."  This is possible because of the great love of God.  God so loved the world... that there was Jesus... and in this love, there is no condemnation, but life eternal.

The text goes on to compare Jesus' life of teaching and actions as a guiding light - not only to those who experienced those times directly - but also to those who found inspiration in the stories of faith.

The promise contained in the great love of God is on-going.
The grace of God has outlived Jesus' first disciples.

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In the letter to the Ephesians, we heard the call to see ourselves as being made 'for good works'.  Paul dances around his words carefully.  He doesn't want his readers to think that doing good works earns us God's love.  Rather God's love is the start of the faithful relationship.  God - abundant in mercy - has already embraced us with saving love.

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And so here we sit - on this side of the love of God - to make the compassionate ministry of Jesus real in the world today.

As I said earlier, it is easy to "say" that we will do small things out of great love, but that it can be challenging to actually do it.

As I implied before, we can sometimes miss the small things, because we are to focused on the big picture.  Small things count - even if they are only known to those directly involved.

There is a great story about a boy walking along a beach during low tide on a very hot day.  Forgive me, if you've heard this before, but I think it bears repeating. Hundreds of starfish were starting to dry out waiting for the waters to return.  The boy - worried that some of the starfish might not survive the cycle - began tossing starfish back into the surf.  A passerby told the boy, "Why are you bothering with this?  There's so many; there's no way you can make a difference."  The boy paused.  And tossed a starfish into the water.  "I made a difference to that one."

Small impacts may not be noticed on the grand scale, but they matter to those presence, even if they don't change the world in that moment.

I hope that we can all feel the call to do the small things that manifest God's love. 

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I also implied earlier that 'love' is sometimes the barrier.
We may not always feel like loving. The Apostle Paul understood this and wrote about it in a letter to the church in Corinth.

Love is not jealous or boastful.

It is not arrogant or rude.

It does not insist on its own way.

It is not irritable or resentful.

Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing.

When our minds and hearts are dominated by jealousy or resentfulness or our own sense of self-superiority, our ability to shine the light of God’s great love is impaired.

We all know what it feels like to irritable.  We might even he self-aware enough to know what contributes to our irritability, be it lack of sleep or any number of pet peeves.  And I am sure that we all know that when we are irritable, loving attitudes are hard to come by.

Being mindful of these facts of conflicting emotions, is the first step in getting past them and letting great love do its magic.

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In the New Revised Standard english language Version of the Bible the word 'love' appears 538 times.  We are created - as Ephesians says - out of God's great love.  John reminds us that Jesus' presence in the world was an act of God's love for the world.

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So... out of all this I think some encouragement for us today is to work on unlocking the great potential of compassion in our lives. There are at least two ways we can be doing that:

1.  Don't be too discouraged by the vast amount of work love has to do - the great yearning and need there is for deep compassion in the world.  Focus on the small opportunities to have an impact in little corners of the world.  That was Jesus' primary style: moment to moment, person to person, leading by example.  What we may find - is these small acts will add up.  Love's momentum will build. 
2.  And, secondly, we will do well to be mindful of those feeling and ways of thinking within us, individually, that block our ability to be open to showing God's compassion to others. When we harbour jealeousy or resentment, or even our own sense of self-worth, we can block love from doing God's great work.  Perhaps this can begin with the promise expressed in the Ephesians reading this morning: Even when we were dead through our trespasses, [God] made us alive together with Christ - by grace [we] have been saved... It is a gift of God.

Let us pray:

We lift up our hearts to you, O God.  We thank you for your constant love that saves and heals.  Open us up to living out your great love.  Amen.

#333VU “Love Divine”