The Scandal of
Love
© by the Reverend Dr. Byron E. Shafer
(Rutgers, May 21, 2000; 5th
Sunday of Easter, Year B)
John 15:1–8 (NT, p. 113); I John
4:7–21 (NT, pp. 260–261)
All right! I
have to admit it. My choice of a
sermon title probably was influenced by developments in New York politics over
the past several weeks. But—sorry
if I misled you!—my sermon really isn’t about Mayor Giuliani and his marital
woes, although that certainly would have made a good topic.
No, today I am offering—for better or for worse—one of my more
straightforwardly theological sermons, a sermon focused on the two-fold scandal
first that God is love and second that, as love, God took flesh and dwelled
among us.
For most of us, the word “scandal” means what the dictionary says it should,
namely “an act or set of circumstances, usually deemed immoral, that produces
shame, disgrace, or outrage.”
But in the New Testament, the Greek word “skandalon,”
the word, as you can hear, that lies at the root of our English word
“scandal”—skandalon/scandal—yes, in the New Testament the Greek word “skandalon”
can be used in a much more general sense than the English word to describe
“anything that gives offense,” whether immoral, moral, or
whatever—“anything that gives offense.”
So, for example, “skandalon” can be used in the New Testament to refer to the cross
of Christ, which gave offense to many Greek-speaking people because a Son of God
ought not to have been put to death like a criminal.
So the apostle Paul speaks of to
skandalon tou staurou (Gal. 5:11)—“the scandal of the cross.
And something else that gave offense to many first-century Gentiles was the
claim about the nature of God made for the first time, so far as I know, by the
elder of the church who wrote the First Letter of John—the claim, twice
repeated in this morning’s Second Lesson, that “God is love.” (4:8, 16)
It is this claim that I would call “the scandal of love.”
Why a scandal? Because for many of
the ancient Greeks and Romans among whom Christianity was seeking to expand the
key attribute of Divine Reality was thought to be Intelligence, Intellect,
Reasoned Contemplation, and not some fleeting, fragile feeling like Love, with
all its susceptibility to sorrow and disappointment.
The great Greek philosopher Aristotle had set the tone some four centuries
earlier by speaking of God as Pure Intelligence.
As Aristotle understood it, God is not one who acts.
Rather, God is one who thinks, who contemplates.
For the long-lasting happiness that’s worthy of a God surely is to be
found not in this world of action but only in the realm of pure thought and
contemplation.
Now, the ancient Greeks and Romans are not the only persons who’ve found the
claim that God is love to be a scandal. Many
people today also find this claim offensive or, at least, “ignorant,” albeit
many of them do so for reasons that are quite different from Aristotle’s.
God is love? Then, say many, please
explain why some babies die in their cribs, why many children suffer from
physical abuse, why a young mother with 5 children dies of a brain aneurysm, why
a middle-aged missionary in Malawi picks up the HIV virus from a blood
transfusion.
God is love? Then explain the
Holocaust, ethnic cleansings, mass rapes, the shooting of countless innocent
victims.
God is love? Well, say many, the
truth of the matter is that a number of experiences in life provide us humans
with reasons to suspect that God is not love.
So why, in light of all these horrible aspects to life and existence, why do we
Christians persist in affirming with the author of First John that God is love?
Why, Well, we do so for one reason, and for one reason alone.
We affirm that God is love because of Jesus of Nazareth.
We affirm that God is love because we believe that the man Jesus was the
perfect image of God and that Jesus embodied a pure and perfect love. We believe that Jesus was the person into whom the divine
nature was most perfectly poured, and in him we see that God’s nature is love.
Listen again to the description of God’s love made visible in Christ that’s
found in our denomination’s Brief Statement of Faith, the part of our
Presbyterian Book of Confessions (lines 7–26) that as a congregation we professed at our Easter
Vigil:
“We trust in Jesus Christ,
fully human, fully God.
Jesus proclaimed the reign of God:
preaching good news to the poor
and release to the captives,
teaching by word and deep
and blessing the children,
healing the sick
and binding up the brokenhearted,
eating with outcasts,
forgiving sinners,
and calling all to repent and believe the gospel.
Unjustly condemned for blasphemy and sedition,
Jesus was crucified,
suffering the depths of human pain
and giving his life for the sins of the world.
God raised this Jesus from the dead,
vindicating his sinless life,
breaking the power of sin and evil,
delivering us from death to eternal life.
And listen further to these words from another of the documents in our Book of
Confessions, this time The Confession of 1967:
“God’s sovereign love is a mystery beyond the reach of [our] mind[s].
Human thought ascribes to God superlatives of power, wisdom, and
goodness. But God reveals … love in Jesus Christ by showing power in
the form of a servant, wisdom in the folly of the cross, and goodness in
receiving [sinners].” (from
9.15, altered for inclusiveness of language)
“God is love.” Yes, whoever
wrote First John did indeed succeed in capturing the essence of God’s identity
as it was disclosed in Jesus’s ministry of forgiveness, and of healing and of
welcoming the weak, the outcast,
and the oppressed, welcoming them without regard for their “attractiveness”
or their lack thereof, welcoming them without concern for their “capacity to
reciprocate” or their lack thereof. Indeed,
it is precisely in the ministry of Jesus that we behold the breadth
of God’s love, for it is in the ministry of Jesus that we see God embracing all
of humankind
“God is love.”
Yes, whoever wrote First John did indeed succeed in capturing the essence
of God’s identity as it was disclosed in Jesus’s full obedience to the
demands of love, an obedience that led inexorably to his death on the cross.
Indeed, it is precisely in the death of Jesus that we behold the depth
of God’s love, for it is in the death of Jesus that we see God fully sharing
the pain, and sorrow, and suffering of humankind.
“God is love.” Yes, whoever
wrote First John did indeed succeed in capturing the essence of God’s identity
as it was disclosed at the end of the gospel’s story of Jesus, when God raised
Jesus from the dead, thereby revealing, despite all appearances to the contrary,
that death has no power to triumph over love.
Indeed, it is precisely in the resurrection of Jesus that we behold the height
of God’s love, for it is in the resurrection of Jesus that we discern God’s
loving will that all persons should come to everlasting life.
“God is love.” And in Jesus we
behold the breadth, and the depth, and the height of God’s love—in the
ministry, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus.
According to the Community of John, from which came not only the Letters of John
but the Gospel as well, the nature of the eternal God is love.
And in Jesus, we find that the Creator of the universe acted to leave the
realm of Perfect Love and to take earthly flesh so that we might behold that
love and receive it as a gift with which to fill the earth.
One of the greatest of all American poets is Emily Dickinson.
In the short, four-line poem that she labeled simply No. 917, she caught
perfectly, whether she intended to or not— Dickinson caught perfectly what it
was that that ancient Community of John meant to proclaim when it said, “God
is love.
Dickinson wrote:
“Love—is anterior to
Life—
Posterior—to Death—
Initial of Creation, and
The exponent of Earth.” [Repeat a
second time.]
If I may be permitted to translate Dickinson’s spare but complex poetry into
my own prose, it would go something like this:
“Love brought life into existence; Love carries life into eternity.
It is Love that initiated the universe; it is Love that defines the
world.”
In this is the scandal of love: first
that God is Love, rather than Pure Intelligence or Overwhelming Power; and
second that, as love, God chose not to remain aloof from the suffering and
sorrow of this world but rather took flesh in order to dwell among us, to show
us the way of love, to share our pain, and to offer us the gifts of faith in
Christ and hope in everlasting life.
Yes, it is Jesus who is the image of the fullness of God’s love, in all its
breadth, and depth, and height. It
is Jesus who is the image of the fullness of God’s love—the love that’s
anterior to life and posterior to death, the love that created the universe and
defines the Earth.
Jesus of Nazareth: God’s love made visible.
I invite you to join with me and Elder Roger Franklin over the course of
the next three Tuesday evenings as we use the medium of Franco Zefferelli’s
six-hour film “Jesus of Nazareth” as a way to engage and to extend our
reflections on the scandal of love.
Let us pray:
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