Epiphany
4A 2019
The Wayof Love: Intro, Turn (1 Cor 13:1-13)
Rev. Adam T. Trambley
February
4, 2019, St. John’s Sharon
This morning I want to talk about The Way of Love. The Way of Love is a set of practices for a
Jesus-Centered Life that were introduced by our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry
at General Convention this summer. You
may have noticed, if you saw his sermon at the Royal Wedding or have every
heard him preach, that he talks a lot about love. Bishop Curry talks about love because love is
at the center of our Christian life.
Love is the core of what Jesus was about. Love is the Way – the Way to a full, abundant
life in God.
We know the importance of love. This morning we heard a beautiful reading
from First Corinthians celebrating love.
Many of us have used this reading at our weddings, because we know that
if we want a marriage to be happy and to last, our marriage has to be grounded
in the kind of love Saint Paul talks about.
Patient, kind, not jealous, not envious, not rude. Bearing all things, believing all things,
hoping all things, enduring all things. It
doesn’t matter how right we are, or how flashy, or how anything else – in the
end only love matters. And love
endures. When our marriage is grounded
in that enduring love, we know it’s going to work. In fact, when we love our spouse like Saint
Paul describes, that love is going to endure even beyond our marriage in this
life. Because that love abides. That love abides forever because that love
abides in God. We can anchor not only
our marriages, but even our whole lives in that abiding, life-giving,
liberating love that is nothing less than God.
God is love.
Living into such love is hard, though. If it was easy, we wouldn’t have to read and
preach about it – we’d just do it. The Way of Love is a set of practices so
that we can live in to the fullness of life in Jesus. Sometimes we call a set practices like this a
“Rule of Life.” A Rule of Life lays out
for us a variety of things we do to orient our lives in the direction we want
to go. A Rule of Life has different
components touching different aspects of our lives that we need if we are going
to have the whole life we want. Most of
us have some sort of Rule of Life already, even if it is an informal one. Our Rule of Life may include things like
coming to church on Sunday, or saying prayers before bed, or making a weekly
contribution to the church or to charity, or volunteering in a ministry, or
eating dinner with our spouse every day, or going to visit our grandchildren
every month, or taking a walk every morning.
These are all things that provide meaning to our lives as we fill in other
aspects of life around them. The Way of
Love is a Rule of Life with seven components.
Exactly how these seven components look will be different for each of
us. A Jesus-centered life is going to
include all seven in some way, however.
The seven practices of the Way of Love are:
1. Turn
2. Learn
3. Pray
4. Worship
5. Bless
6. Go
7. Rest
Now, I know these can be a little bit hard to remember, so
I’m going to help you in two ways.
First, there are trifolds that I hope you received with your bulletin
that talk a bit about the Way of Love and each practice. I’ll also have wallet cards next week that
people can keep or give out to others.
Second, I’m going to teach you some hand motions for the Way of
Love.
(Do hand motions.)
The first practice on the Way of Love is Turn. I want to talk about Turning this morning. When we Turn, we pause, listen and choose to
follow Jesus. Just like the first disciples who turned from what they were
doing when Jesus said, “Follow me,” we stop what we are doing, listen to where
Jesus is leading us, and follow.
Turn has three different aspects that I think are important:
the first big turn away from sin and toward Jesus; the on-going course
corrections that keep us heading in the right direction; and the falling in
love again and again, more and more deeply with Jesus.
Our first Turn might occur at our baptism, or at some adult
profession of faith, or at some time in our lives when we decided we were going
to live for God. This decision often
happens when our lives are so out of control that we can’t handle them
ourselves. We have fear and hatred and
sin swirling around us. We feel
oppressed and overwhelmed. Nothing we
can do seems to work and we want out.
Somehow in that moment we find a moment of stillness, like the eye of a
hurricane. In that quiet moment, the
call of Jesus comes to us and he invites us to turn our lives to him. Jesus invites us to accept him as our Savior
– the one who can get us out of this horrible place we’ve ended up in – and as
our Lord – the one who is able to order our life in the right way. Hearing that still, small voice, we can
choose to Turn so that we follow Jesus into a life of truth, love, hope,
justice, and freedom. This fundamental
Turn is our decision to be on the side of the light, instead of the side of
darkness; to be about God’s work instead of wittingly or unwittingly doing the
devil’s work; to leave behind sin, hatred, and fear to be about the abounding
love of Jesus Christ.
Once we’ve made that first Turn, however or whenever we made
it, we have to continually reaffirm that decision. Somehow, despite our best intentions, we find
ourselves wandering off the road that Jesus wants to lead us down. Maybe we tripped and found ourselves in the
brambles on the side of the path. Maybe
we thought we knew a shortcut, but got lost instead. Maybe we got tired or bored and wandered off
to look for berries for a minute. Maybe
someone else on the path really hurt or annoyed us and we decided to try a
different path for a time. In reality,
we find ourselves straying quite a bit.
In those moments, we are invited to stop, listen for Jesus, and turn in
the right direction again.
These on-going turns can be tough. Pride and judgment both can get in the
way. We can be too stubborn to
stop. We might be afraid of looking bad
if we apologize and turn around. Nobody
wants to have messed up. Yet we all
bumble around so often that stopping regularly, listening for Jesus, and making
a course correction may need to happen multiple times a day. And that is OK, as long as we are willing to
do the work. Put down the distractions,
apologize to the people we’ve hurt and make it up to them as best as we can,
and Turn back to heading in the right direction. A few weeks ago, we talked about the practice
of the Examen, which is just stopping at the end of the day and asking where we
felt closest to God during the day and where we felt farthest away. This practice is one way to stop and see how
well we are following Jesus and decide to Turn as may be necessary.
The final aspect of Turn, that is also the most important,
is what we are turning toward. We are
not turning just because where we are is bad, although it very well may
be. We Turn because we want to be with
Jesus. We want to fall in love with Jesus
and live more and more deeply in his love.
Jesus loves us. Jesus loves each
and every one of us more than we can even begin to imagine. The strongest human love we have ever known
is nothing compared to the unconditional, unfathomable, unstoppable love that
Jesus has for each and every one of us.
Jesus wants nothing more than for us to be following along with him on
the Way of Love because he wants to be with us.
When we mess up, he wants us to turn back as quickly as possible. He’s not waiting to judge or punish us for
our sins and mistakes. He just wants to
overcome them so that we can go back to being with him. When we Turn, we are turning toward that
incredible love that we find in Jesus Christ.
Jesus is the love that we long to see face to face. Jesus is the love that we yearn to be fully
known by. Jesus lavishes his love on us,
as much as we will let him. To Turn is
to follow the longing our of heart to abide in that radiant love of Jesus and
to fall in love with him in return. This
desire to be loved more and more deeply by Jesus and to love him in return is
the first step on the Way of Love. This
desire for Jesus’ love is what propels us forward into a Jesus-centered life. And Jesus’ love for us is what calls us to
him and gives us the strength and ability for the rest of the journey.
Turn. The first
practice for a Jesus-Centered Life on the Way of Love. Next week we’ll continue looking at other
practices. Let’s close by reminding
ourselves of all seven practices, using the hand motions.
1. Turn
2. Learn
3. Pray
4. Worship
5. Bless
6. Go
7. Rest
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