“TALK IS CHEAP”
Fourth Sunday of Easter
April 26, 2015
Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church
Glenshaw, Pennsylvania
TEXT:
Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
1 John 3:18 (ESV)
Nowhere do we encounter the stating of the obvious more clearly than in some of the warnings and prohibitions that we see posted in various places. On a recent trip to our district office in Buffalo, my wife and I stopped at a rest area along I-79 and saw a sign listing various things that were prohibited there. Believe it or not, among the things that are not allowed at the rest area are hunting, changing the oil in your car, doing your laundry, vandalizing or defacing the property, and committing various perverted criminal acts. I laughed when I read that sign, thinking: “Who in the world would do these things here?” But, at the same time, the thought occurred to me that these things are listed on that sign for a reason: because people actually have done these things at a rest area somewhere! Even the activities that are obviously inappropriate at a rest area (and some of them are inappropriate anywhere) are nevertheless posted on a sign for the simple reason that a lot of people are just too dense to realize the obvious.
We Christians must be pretty dense too, since the New Testament frequently tells us to do the obvious: “A new commandment I give to you,” Jesus says to His disciples, “that you love one another; just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34, 35). This commandment was really not new, since love is the essence of the Ten Commandments. But the life and ministry of Jesus have given love a whole new meaning. In today’s text John the evangelist reminds us that our love for one another (as well as for others) is to not to be a matter of mere words but also of action. “James, the Lord’s brother” (Galatians 1:19) says the same thing in greater detail when he writes: “If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So faith, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works” (James 2:15-18). As we ponder John’s words about love this morning, we will especially focus on our problem with love and Jesus’ solution.
Our problem with love is that, more often than not, we are “all talk.” We “whisper sweet nothings,” as some have said. The source of our problem, I believe, is that we have begun to swallow the big lie that our culture has fed us about love, namely, that love is essentially an emotion beyond our control that is “felt” and that love finds its expression in sweet sentimentality. A card, flowers, soft music, romantic lighting--to many people these days, these things are what love is all about. Love, in their minds, is always pleasant and serene, never difficult or tiring or painful or messy. As we have sanitized so many things life, we have sanitized love also--to such an extent that what we call love no longer bears any resemblance to what love really is according to the Word of God.
In the Scriptures love is always manifested in action, and very often the action that manifests love is far from pleasant and serene. On the night of His betrayal and arrest the Savior told His disciples: “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Jesus was speaking, of course, of the ultimate expression of love. Love may not always require suffering and death for the sake the beloved, but genuine love--love as God Himself defines it and personifies it--does require real action in the service the one who we claim to love and that service will most likely require sacrifice. Those sacrifices usually involve common everyday things--things like giving up time to care for young children or elderly parents or giving up leisure activities to pursue a greater good or doing without certain luxuries to contribute to the needs of others or moving out of your “comfort zone,” as they say, to get involved in people’s lives and problems. It is these things, not the sentimental words and symbolic actions that we so often associate with love, that are the manifestations of real love as God’s Word defines it.
We see this kind of love only in the Savior Himself--the Savior who said: “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28; Mark 10:45). His entire life was a life of service. This is true not only of His suffering and death but of everything that He did. After washing His disciples’ feet at the Last Supper, Jesus explained to them what that act was all about when He told them: “Do you understand what I have done to you? You call Me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them” (John 13:12-17). If we ever wonder what love really is or how it can be seen in everyday life, all we need to do is look at Jesus’ life of Self-sacrificing service, for there and only there do we see perfect love demonstrated in perfect action.
But the love of Jesus offers us so much more than just an example or a demonstration of love. His love for us actually accomplishes great things for us. It relieves us of the guilt and power of sin and from the righteous judgment and condemnation that we deserve. It reconciles us to God--the God whom we have offended by our sin--restoring us as His dear children. And it also gives us the motivation and the strength that we need to love as we have been loved--certainly not perfectly (at least not in this life) but nevertheless willingly and with joy. It encourages us with the knowledge that our imperfect love is accepted as perfect by our heavenly Father for the sake of His perfect Son. The Gospel of Christ--the testament of His redeeming love for us--gives us everything that we need to be the people of God--people of love--despite our failings, as His Spirit feeds us with Word and Sacrament so that we might grow in His grace and love our Savior by loving others and serving them in His name.
Talk is cheap, as they say. It’s relatively easy to say grand and glorious and loving things. But actually doing those grand and glorious and loving things is something else altogether. It is beyond us. But it is not at all beyond the One who lived and died and rose again for us. He is the One who loves us and loves others through us as His Spirit moves and empowers us to love as we have been loved and to serve as we have been served. What we cannot do ourselves He does through us, even when we fail. Each time we fall short, He forgives us and restores us and puts us back on our feet, encouraged with the knowledge that His infinite love can and will overcome anything and everything that is lacking in us, completing the great and wonderful things that He, in love, has determined to do.
Amen.
May the God of peace, who brought again from the dead that great Shepherd of the sheep, our Lord Jesus, by the blood of the everlasting covenant equip you thoroughly for the doing of His will. May He work in you everything which is pleasing to Him, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, to whom be honor and glory forever and ever. He who calls you is faithful, and He will do it. Amen.