1 John 4:7-21 - I Love My Mother, but …
As I began working on this morning’s sermon, I read some material by Leonard Sweet. Sweet is a minister, lecturer, writer, theologian. I like his work but it is often a little bit too far out for my taste. But Leonard said something in a mother’s day sermon that got me to thinking about my relationship with, and my memories of, my mother.
Whenever I talk about my mom, I usually find something negative to say about her. Does that surprise you? How many of you have heard me describe my mother as someone who, if Jesus himself had come to her house, would have asked him to go back out and clean his dirty feet before coming into the room? Now, I have many positive memories of my mother: she was the best of the best. Yet I often temper that positive picture with subtle (and not so subtle) limitations.
I wonder how many of us do that same sort of thing. “I love my mother, but …” And that “but” could be anything from she couldn’t boil water without burning it, to she got her driver’s license from Sears Roebuck.
Other cultures are different. If you ask someone from an Eastern culture to complete the same statement; “I love my mother, but …” you are much more likely to get an answer such as: “I love my mother but I will never be able to show her how much.” Or “I love my mother, but I can never repay what she has done for me.”
The “Eastern” answer does not use “but” to water down the love. The “Eastern” answer adds more feeling and flavor to the love. The Eastern expression of “I love my mother” speaks clearly to belovedness of the mother and the connectedness of the child.
As I think about my mother today, and you think about your mother, or grandmother, or aunt, or foster parent, or even your father or grandfather, it is clear to me that none of these good folks are perfect.
The ones we love are not supposed to be “perfect,” but our choice to love others creates and matures the relationship that we know today.
In this week’s 1 John text, the writer insists on two things about God. First, God is love. 1 John 4:8 Not “love is God,” but “God is love.” God’s presence and power in this world are known and revealed through the expression of that love.
Second, the 1 John text highlights one specific loving action that God has taken; one action that God has taken for you and me. “God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.” 1 John 4:9 This is God’s love as parental love, the God whose love is so great that He sent his son into the world to save the entire world.
Knowing these two things about God is the basis for all God’s children to love: “Since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another”. 1 John 4:11 In fact, it is by expressing this love for our brothers and sisters that we bring God’s presence into this world and are “perfected” by that love.
Love changes us.
Love changes the world.
But we can only love if we have first been loved.
Which is why I love “Mother’s Day” so much.
The presence of a parent’s love is a child’s whole world. The absence of that love creates a terrible alternative universe. And there are some of us here this morning who experienced that terrible absence of a mother’s love. I grieve for you and I pray that working together, you and God have found a way to fill that void with some special gift.
You know, I bet lots of Moms received treasured gifts this Mother’s Day.
Flowers ripped out of the flowerbed.
Breakfasts of burnt toast and undercooked eggs.
Mysterious clay creations whose purpose has yet been determined.
Hugs and kisses that came with their own flavor and degree of stickiness.
And I’ll bet not one Mom frowned at the flowers, bemoaned her breakfast, or pitched her pottery. Not one sticky kiss or muddy hug was rejected.
Love accepts the love that is offered to it. A child’s expression of love for Mom on Mother’s Day is accepted with an overflowing heart, no matter how imperfect that expression might be.
As children grow up, we all begin and then continue to test the strength of parental love, I know that I did.
“I love my mother, but . . . I skipped school, and hung out at the mall instead.”
“I love my mother, but . . . I’ve been using drugs and alcohol and now I’m losing control.”
“I love my mother, but . . . I’m dropping out of college.”
“I love my mother, but . . . now I’m in jail.”
How do we respond to expressions of love that are so broken, so limited, so stunted by human weakness?
By loving one another.
At the close of John’s gospel Jesus is speaking with Peter. Peter the Rock. But Peter the Rat.
Peter who denied Jesus three times. Peter who walked on water, but then sank like a stone and had to be rescued from the waves.
Before Jesus ascends to the Father, he wants one final conversation with Peter. It is one of the most moving, most poignant moments in all the New Testament. Jesus turns to Simon Peter, the one to whom Jesus is about ready to entrust the birthing of the church, and asks him one simple question:
“Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” John 21:15
When Jesus asks Peter if he “loves” him Jesus uses the term “agape.” “Agape” love is the selfless, all-encompassing, all consuming divine love. “Agape” love is the love God has for the world. “Agape” love is the love that sent the Son into the world. So the real translation goes like this:
“Simon, do you agape me?”
Peter responds quickly to Jesus’ question. “Yes Lord, you know that I love you.” But what Peter does is to change the word for love from “agape” to “philia.” Peter actually answers Jesus like this: “Yes Lord, you know that I philia you.”
“Philia” is known as “brotherly” love. “Philia” is the warmth and affection found among friends and family. It is the most familiar love. It is a very human kind of love. That is the love Peter offers to Jesus.
So Jesus tries again. For a second time Jesus asks his top disciple, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Again Jesus asks Peter if he “agape” loves him. “Peter, do you agape me.”
Again, Peter answers his master quickly, “Yes Lord, you know that I love you.” But again, as he had the first time, Peter offers Jesus “philia” love. Peter extends his love to Jesus, but it is limited, fragile, faulty. “Yes, Lord, I philia you.”
And here is where Jesus shows us the real nature of agape love. Jesus then comes down to Peter’s level, accepts the best that Peter can offer, and the third time asks him a whole new question:
“Simon, do you philia me?”
Jesus is saying to Peter, and to us – Peter, if that is the best you are capable of at that time and place in your life, it’s okay. I’ll take it.
In other words, Peter can only offer Jesus a lumpy ashtray, a burned toast breakfast, a broken flower. Peter’s faith is still that of a child’s. He is not yet “a Rock,” he is just rock candy, a pebble, a sandstone.
The power of “agape” love is in its grace and compassion.
Jesus meets Peter where he is.
Jesus accepts Peter’s love, however bent and basic it might be.
That’s why for the third time Jesus asks his top disciple, his companion, his friend, “Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me?” but this time he takes it down a notch. This time Jesus welcomes the sticky kiss. This time Jesus asks Peter, “Do you “philia” me”?
If Jesus proved his agape love by stooping to Peter’s level, Peter proved his philia love by taking offense at being asked about his love for a third time. Peter doesn’t get it. The grace Jesus has extended him doesn’t even register. Peter, now with some exasperation, only repeats what he has asserted before: “You know that I philia you.”
The love that bends and extends, the love that reaches out and brings in, that is “agape” love.
The love that sent the Son into the world for our redemption was “agape” love.
The love that hung on the cross was “agape” love.
The love that destroyed the power of death forever was “agape” love.
The love that sacrifices and puts others first, the love that will take rejections and betrayals and still come back for more, that kind of agape love is “mother’s love.”
I love this passage from Hosea 11:1:
When Israel was a child, I loved him. It was I who taught them to walk. . . I took them up in my arms. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks . . . I bent down to them and fed them.
Yet whether you can rise to a mother’s bent love, to agape love, this morning, you need to hear the message of the gospel: “God loves you, and God takes you in His arms and loves you, and bends down to you so far and so much that God will accept whatever love you can muster. And God will bless and bring your love, no matter how pitiful and puny that love may be, to new heights and depths of mission.
I want you all to stand right now: put your fingertips from your right hand up against the fingertips of your left hand. You have just made a bridge. But if you bend your fingertips together, and let your joined thumb tips drop a little downward, your hands create a heart. Let me show you what I mean: . . .
How you formed this heart with your hands is what “agape” love does—-it joins together and bends a little to meet the other. Heart Love is what our mothers have given us. And Heart Love is what we are to give the world.
Now put this heart up to your face, and look at the world through the heart that your hands have made.
Now, that’s real agape love.
Let’s look at the world this week through Heart Love, that others may know that “God is Love.”
