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Proper 6, Year A
June 16, 2002
Christ Church, Covington
“But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ
died for us” (Rom. 5:8).
Paul is usually accounted the “apostle of faith”, but of course he has
quite a bit to say about love as well. “Love is patient; love is kind;
love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude” (1 Cor. 13:4-5), Paul
writes in the First Letter to the Church in Corinth, and then (famously)
“faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is
love” (1 Cor. 13:13). But it is in our reading today, from Romans, that
Paul gives us his most acute definition of love; that is, God’s love for
us. “But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners
Christ died for us”: a definition that places the cross of Jesus Christ
firmly before our eyes, and gives us a sense of how important love is. In
fact, love is crucial for Paul (and for the Christian tradition) as we
attempt to proclaim the Gospel and tell the story of our Faith.
It is for the sake of love that Jesus dies. Not for those who have earned
favor with God, but for those who are described by Paul as God’s “enemies”
(Rom. 5:10). It is within the realm of reason, Paul says, that one might
die for a good person, but not for one’s enemy. Yet this is what Jesus
does when he dies for us. It is this generous act of love that reconciles
us to God; that is, reestablishes the relationship that human sin has
destroyed. The love that Paul is talking about here is love that does not
depend on the worth of the recipient, but creates worth, creates
relationship. It is this passionate love that leads Jesus to the cross.
Love, from the perspective of Christian belief, is nothing less than the
mainspring of the universe. It is what makes things go; the cause of the
sun’s rising and its setting. This love that God shows for humanity is not
a love “of the bottom line”, a love that counts the cost, but a generous
love that lays down its life for its friends (to borrow some words from
the Gospel of John). This love that Jesus shows for us is important,
significant, crucial, for without it we cannot tell our Christian story of
the universe.
There are many other ways to tell the story, of course. We could begin
with scarcity, or selfishness, or even violence. These narratives are
ever-popular in the world, even if we don’t think of them in these blunt
terms. But mind you, every time someone tells you about the way things are
in “the real world”, then you are probably hearing the story told in this
diminished way, where something else is substituted for love.
But Paul says to us in our reading that love is the crucial thing to
remember. God’s love for us, shown in the gracious giving of self on the
cross. God’s love for us, enacted in a drama that makes no earthly sense.
Jesus reconciles us in this way and no other. That’s the true bottom line.
It is to this love that we respond in faith as Christians. “And the life I
now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and
gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20), as Paul writes in the Letter to the
Galatians. Paul typically writes about faith when he talks about our
response to God’s love, but he’s not talking about faith in contrast to
love, but rather about faith informed by love. Not only God’s love of us,
but our love of God.
It would be senseless to talk about our response to this generous act of a
loving God if it did not involve our own love for God. Our collect today
gets it right when it prays that we may be kept in God’s steadfast faith
and love. Faith without love would be something less than authentic faith.
Faith in God is the action of a person responding in love to an act of
love. We cannot love God in the same way in which we are loved, because
God is worthy of our love, but we can love God as the One we were created
for, and who is our highest desire.
Paul outlines the love of God for us today in the form of the cross,
Jesus’ act of self-giving love and mercy toward us in death and
resurrection. It is this sacrifice that creates relationship, and truly
makes us worthy of our call. It is this love of God that we respond to in
faith, loving God with all our heart and soul and strength.
The Rev’d John Bauerschmidt is Rector of Christ Church, Covington.
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