Compelled By Love
Sermon for New Year's Eve, year B (preached at St Stephens)
Bible reading: Luke 6:27-38
So what’s changed in your life this year? Where has there been growth? Where has there been improvement? As they say: the greatest room in the world is the room for improvement.
We may not like these questions but they seem legitimate. After all Jesus said:
A man planted a fig tree in his garden and he came looking for fruit and found none. Finally he said to his gardener, I’ve waited three years, and there hasn’t been a single fig. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?
—Luke 13:6-7
God has put each one of us on this earth, to bear fruit, to grow in Christ likeness, in faith in God, in love for one another. Has there been fruit? Has there been growth?
Brian McLaren, in a new book called Finding Our Way Again, speaks about asking the manager of a large bookstore what the most popular books are these days. The manager said that the most popular books were on how to get rich. And the second most popular were on spirituality, and in particular books about Buddhism. The question the book asks is: why are books on Buddhism so much more popular than books on Christianity? And the answer that we need to hear well is: I think it’s because Buddhism presents itself as a way of life, and Christianity presents itself as a system of belief.
At the end of this year we need to ask ourselves, have we grown in discovering our faith as a way of life? Has our faith grown into a life of love? How have I become more like Christ … and less like the world around me? What can others see in me at the end of this year? What can I see in myself? And far above all, what change and growth can Jesus Christ see in me as another year of grace draws to a close?
This might all seem rather threatening, that God should come looking for fruit in my garden, or better, in his garden? As people saved by grace, through faith, isn’t it good enough to leave it at that, to rejoice that we are forgiven freely, for Christ sake, and not go delving to see whether we have changed as a result of it?
Yet we read that God comes looking for fruit. Somebody has said: God loves us the way we are, but he loves us too much to leave us the way we are.
God loved us and sent his Son to die for us while we were still sinners. But that does not mean that we remain unchanged, with the handy excuse that “I’m only a poor sinner. I’m not perfect, just forgiven.” That sounded good to me in the past. Now I’m not so sure. It sounds more like a fig tree that never produces fruit, and bets on forgiveness – once, twice, three times – until the master’s patience runs out. God has not put us on this earth to forgive us, but so that we’ll bear fruit, and grow in faith and love as he has loved us, and become more and more like his Son Jesus.
God is totally loving, and compassionate and merciful.
In his generous love he made human beings to share his love, and he placed them in a garden to generously share in his good gifts and take care of them. But, despite all God’s generosity, they doubted and disobeyed and were driven from the garden – but not without God’s mercy. They left clothed with his grace. They left with the promise of freedom from their bondage.
There would be hard days, but there would be a better day. There would be sin and rebellion, but there would be forgiveness and reconciliation. There would be deep darkness, but in that darkness they were to bring light to the nations. There would be war and chaos, but then there would be Christmas and Christ and hope and peace.
God is totally loving, and compassionate and merciful.
He has come to us in history long past, to suffer the pain of this world, and to pay the price for it’s sin, and to open the way to eternal life for us all. And God has come to us all in the recent history of this past year, walking beside us unseen, feeding us in bread and wine, forgiving us in words spoken as he once forgave us in words washed, embracing us with the arms of a loving community, speaking to us lovingly through his sure written word, and through the stumbling words of pastor and people.
And in his love God has again placed us in his garden to eat the fruit of loving fellowship with him. In his love God has again planted us in his garden to bear the fruit of love, joy and peace, for the rest of the world to feast on and find hope and be saved.
The Christian life does not end with forgiveness and salvation. That’s where it begins. And it leads to loving as God has loved us … to bringing peace as God has brought peace to us … to giving generously as God has given his Son in total generosity to us.
Read Luke 6:27-38. This is the way of God. This is the way we see God in Jesus. This is the way Jesus has treated us, and through it brought us back into his family so we resemble Jesus, back into his garden so we bear the same fruit as Jesus, back into the light so we let our light shine in the dark world around us. Through what God has done for us in Christ we are
… a chosen race … in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.
—1 Peter 2.9
These are dark times. War and hatred and terror reign in so many corners of the earth. Greed, the god that has ruled the hearts and lives of so many for so long, has shown itself to be a bottomless pit which sucks all its devotees down into its depths of despair.
What is Jesus, the light of the world, doing in times like these? How are we his followers, the salt of the earth and the light of the world, living in these times? Surely we’re not just living like everybody else except that we go to church and pray and give our offerings?
No, as born again followers of Jesus, we’re called to transformed living – living that is different from the lives of unbelievers and lukewarm Christians around us. This is what is different about us: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.
A good way to move into a new year would be to ask how we are following Jesus in this kind of counter-cultural love. Let’s not talk about God’s love and following, until we are compelled by that love to walk in this self giving way of Jesus. And we who’ve been forgiven ‘seventy times seven’ by God, how prepared are we to forgive others, as we’ve been forgiven … to go to those who have offended us with the manure of forgiveness, and give them another chance to do better, and be more loving?
Jesus seems to be reckless with handing out love, and calls his followers to be the same.
And what about money? Was Jesus ever lying awake worrying about his finances? No wonder he says: give and it will be given to you… give to everyone who begs from you… do good and lend, expecting nothing in return.
In this dark, greedy world, Jesus and his followers stand out by giving, and loving, and offering peace recklessly. This was the love which drove Jesus to the cross for us all. This is the love that compels us all to risk our lives in loving and giving for the sake of those around us who are hell-bent on themselves. God grow us to produce such fruit, to bring his love to the world. Amen.