READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
1 Samuel 16:1-13
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
- St. Luke 18:31-43
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ. (Eph 1)
Who speaks to you on this day from His Gospel heard, saying:
“And Jesus said to
him, ‘Recover your sight; your faith has saved you.’”
Just let me get all the clichés out of the way, you too,
because today our Epistle has spoken of love.
What is love…if it don’t hurt me…no more. This quote implies
that love is a double-edged sword, something that cuts forward and back. You
may swing one way and win, but it may bounce back at you and you lose. We can’t
answer that question any more than we can answer “what is a woman” or “what is
truth”.
But it wasn’t so from the beginning. In the beginning, love
created all things. Nothing that was created, was created without love. Love
also wins in the end, because Christ wins in the end. It is inevitable. Christ
is God and God is love. To find out about love, you look to Jesus.
And yet, after the beginning, so much blood and ink has been
spilled over this topic that it amounts to insanity, that is, doing the same
thing over and over again, but expecting something different to happen. Handing
a sinner “love”, plugs him into an infinite feedback loop from which there is
no escape.
Not only does the sinner repeat the same mistakes of those
in love, in the past, but he also continues to misunderstand love, believing
either he needs to love himself first or everyone needs to love each other, or
else. This cognitive dissonance produces anxiety, depression, and illness. Love
in the hands of an angry sinner actually turns to hatred.
This is why love hurts. Not because you are a victim or you
have your own “love”, but because you believe with all your heart that if you
have love, you will feel loved, happy, fulfilled. You believe “Love wins” only
when that happens for everyone and so you try to fix the playing field that
makes everyone unhappy. That usually means getting rid of those who think
differently.
So much for love.
However, you can’t just forget about the things that
actually make you fulfilled and happy. There is real blessing from God in love.
He made it. He gave it. So there are good things to be had in relationships
from love. But again, our sinfulness rears its ugly head, slicing us on the
backswing.
When we look at verse 8 of our Epistle reading, we find the
thorn in our side, concerning love. “Love never ends”, says Jesus
and there’s our problem, because we end. There is an end to our love, even
though we try and say that “love lives on in those we leave behind”, its not
the same. Anyone who has lost someone that loved them will agree. They would
rather have physical presence, than spiritual platitudes.
Love is the greatest gift, our Epistle ends with, and we are
to pursue it, the next chapter in 1 Corinthians begins, and he even finishes
the letter with, “My love be with you all in Christ Jesus”. And there it
is.
Repent. We will seek out love anywhere else, everywhere else
except in Christ. 1 Corinthians 13 is not about you, it is about God’s love
towards us only in and through His Son, and it is about the love we have access
to, only in and through that same Son, Jesus Christ.
Love, Jesus, is not an encourager of self-destruction, or
dysphoria, or dysmorphia. Love does not transcend boundaries, or patriarchy, or
cis-white-alt-right supremacy. Neither does love desire the “hate-crime amount
of years” for a jail sentencing. All these fall under the double-edged sword,
for all are beliefs that hold a double-standard. True love does not force
“love” on others.
When the Christian says “God is love”, he is referencing the
God-man, Jesus Christ, Who is His own person. The Christian cannot make things
up, because God has already laid out what love is, in His Word. And not just
the Bible either. God has come Himself, as the Word made flesh, to explain love
and to live out love, in Jesus.
Our Gospel reading today is the beginning of this
understanding, because it is there that we see Jesus Who is both willing and
able. He is able to save this man from blindness and He is willing to pay the
price for his sight, which is to be handed over, mocked, scourged, spit upon,
flogged, and killed.
You see love is not just an idea or an action, but it is
both, united together. But an idea and action do not have their own presence,
they need a medium, a tool to act out, in other words a body. This is why love
is so often acted out physically between a man and a woman. This is also why
there is so much protesting about what love is. When there is no object for
self-love, that person must force everyone else to be as miserable as they are.
God is love and love was made man. This is the real meaning
behind, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for
his friends” (John 15:13). Not just that there was a “life laid down”, but
that a true man was there to do it. That is exactly what the Greater Love,
Jesus Christ, did in order that love, Himself, be actually known on
earth.
First, He preached and taught about love. He fed the poor,
healed the sick, visited the imprisoned, and so on. The good works of Jesus are
limitless. Even when He was walking around, St. John said of Him, “there are
also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I
suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be
written” (Jn 21:25).
For God to condescend to our lives and do that for us,
Himself, should be enough. But of course it is not. For sinners can also talk a
lot and do a lot. There is no telling who is right or wrong simply by looking
at their good deeds. This is the catch and trap we all fall into in the modern
discussions on love.
Secondly, because of that sin, Jesus not only spoke and
acted, but He showed true love in order to reveal that God does love His
creation, through His Son. This is known because the life and sacrifice that
Jesus made was accepted by the Father and He was raised from the dead. The
resurrection of Jesus proves that the love of God is real, that is His way of
love, and that He shows it to those who repent and believe.
But even that wasn’t enough for God. He knows words and
sermons can be forgotten and twisted. He knows that healing this blind man,
from the Gospel, was only for that man and not for us. He knows that His “not
being around today like He was” puts an extreme amount of stress on modern
believers.
Thus, thirdly, He creates His Church. The place where
preaching, the resurrection, and love all come together in the nice, neat
package of Word and Sacrament. It is not enough for Jesus to just heal earthly
ailments, they will come again and ultimately take us into death. It is not
enough for Jesus to just “lay down His life” either, though this purchases,
wins, and accomplishes salvation for all of time.
The love of God is such that He does all of that and
continues to love in our hearts, minds, souls, AND bodies. The love of God does
not find love on earth, but creates that love in which He delights. This means
that no matter our state, God is able and willing to give His love to us so
that we may be lovely for all eternity. This love is grasped only by faith.
Love is not the answer. Is love greater than faith? Shall I
give up all in order to stay with love? Do I count as loss Christ, His Blood,
His wounds, and all His benefits to obtain love?
Love is the effect, the fruit, the what-comes-afterward. It
is not the cause of Divine Forgiveness. For that is what we need for our love:
forgiveness. No matter how much we love, we will never gain God’s love.
But, are we Christians saved the same way when we were
baptized or has God changed the rules?
Is Christ’s Blood sufficient for our sanctification or not?
If you do get to heaven, how will you get in? By how much
you loved your neighbor? Your spouse? Your enemy?
The love of man is generated by what it delights in;
finicky, picky, fragile. From our Old Testament reading, David was unloved by
his family, the seventh not at the feast. The love of God creates the love of
God in you. David was chosen, because the love of God changed him into beloved
of God, a man after His own heart, by Faith alone.
“Love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be” we
sing in our hymn (LSB 430:1). And let’s not forget Proverbs 3, “My son, do
not despise the LORD’s discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the LORD
reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights” (v.11-12).
Love seeks to build up, not to indulge. If we truly love our
neighbor, we will want what's best for him, not just what he thinks he needs.
Because God truly loves us and wants our best, therefore He sent Love to
suffer, die, and rise again. Our neighbor needs that love, that Jesus, just as
much as we do. That Love will bring him to Church, where Jesus is speaking and
working for him.
Thus faith suffers any and everything sent from God, be it
tears or gladness. Because now we do not desire self-fulfillment, but love from
the Father. As He spoke to the Son, “This is my beloved Son in Whom I am
well pleased”. In faith, we unwearily pursue this love of Father to Son.
But He finds us first. He claims us first. He baptizes us
first, into the Beloved, such that when the Father now looks at us, He cannot
help but say, “You are my beloved”. Love never ends. Your sin does not end Him.
The cross does not end Him. Death does not end Him. And united to Him in
baptism, neither will any part of this world end you.
True Love desires faith in Christ, forgiveness of sins, and
eternal life in Him. The world does not know love, because it does not desire
these things, but Jesus loved you first so that you may.
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