Love Perfected

1 John 4:7-21

We say it all of the time.  We tell ourselves and our children and those who know just a little about who we are as Christians.  We sing it and pray it, point it out in scripture and poetry and art.  It is the foundation of who we are and it is this:  God is love.  Love is from God.  Love is God.  But, I doubt that most of us have a sense for what this really means, at least in terms of how we are to live our lives.  So we are left with the question, God is love, but so what? 

This past week a woman called to speak with me because she had heard about our church.  She heard that there are wonderful things happening here and she wanted to invite me to come and speak to her group.  I am still getting used to such phone calls and so I asked her to tell me more.  She is a member of a group called Parents of Murdered Children and she wanted me to come and speak to offer a word of comfort.  I sat in silence on the other end of the phone, thinking, “Who am I?” and “How could I possibly offer words of hope or words to soothe such a profound kind of pain?”  When the silence lifted, I asked her what exactly she would like me to speak about.  Without hesitation she said, “Why?”  I waited, hoping that she would say more.  She went on.  “The group would love to hear from you about why a thing like this would happen, why a child would be murdered.”

I am not exactly sure what I said on the phone after that, but I am sure that it was woefully inadequate.  It seems impossible to even begin to figure out what to say or how to say what I know in my heart about our God, especially in the face of such profoundly painful and heart breaking circumstances.

And yet it is in times, times in peoples’ lives, times when there is no where to go but up, that God’s love becomes more than words.  We have learned from our scriptures and from those who have gone before us, that it is in times like these that God chooses to reveal Herself most fully, most vibrantly, most concretely.  When we human beings are in the most pain or the darkest hour or the deepest depths of loss, somehow God’s love can feel more real.  And not because God wants us to suffer in order to reveal His love, but because something happens within us when pain finds us.

Something happens to us, something changes in us when we are hurting, when we are lost, when we are lonely, when we are grieving.  Maybe it is because we can no longer fool ourselves into thinking that we are invincible or free from suffering.  Maybe it is because we are too broken to let our pride block God from getting in.  Or maybe it is because when we are down so far, when we are lost or hurting, we are so vulnerable that it becomes more difficult to deny the presence of God.  And it is in these times, these moments when hearts are aching and tender, when souls feel empty of hope, when minds wonder if life is worth living or whether love will ever come again, these are the very times when many of us take a break from the church or a hiatus from God.  It sounds like us doesn’t it?  Right when we could know God’s love as a real and present force, we pull away out of fear that others will know for sure that we are imperfect or out of a loss of what we could possibly say to God.  And yet, these are the times when we need each other most and if we are willing, these are the very times when we are most likely to grow in faith. 

It is quite a quandary.  God does not promise us an easy passage during our time here on earth, God does not promise us a life free from suffering, but God does promise to walk with us and as Christians, because we are a people of the incarnation, because we know that God manifests usually in the human form, often that means that God sends us someone.  Often God sends us a pair of hands to pray with us.  Often God sends us a set of ears to listen to the pain that weighs on our hearts.  Often God sends us an open heart to remind us that God is love.  Love is from God.  Love is God. 

For us here, these representatives of God’s love, these hands of Christ, these carriers of hope are called Stephen Ministers.  Now if you are a guest today or if you are just getting started here at the Cotuit Federated Church, let me introduce you to our Stephen Ministry Program.  Stephen Ministry is named for Stephen, whose story is told in the sixth chapter of the book of Acts.  The apostles or early followers of Jesus felt called to commission a group of individuals to work with them to do acts of caring ministry.  At the time, this would have been quite radical.  The idea that people other than clergy could be sent out to care for those in need of a reminder of God’s love, surely shook up the newly forming Christian community.

There were trained, blessed and let loose, knowing that God would work through them to reveal His true character as a force of love.  This ministry has become an essential part of the way that we follow Jesus here in this place.  And it is one of the ways in which we live up to our promise to God to bring God’s love to those who are hungering for it.  So today as we celebrate all of the lives we have touched, we also join together to remember why we felt called to begin this ministry in the first place.  As we heard in our scripture for this morning in the letter written to the church just getting going, we started Stephen Ministry for a simple reason:  to love those whom God sent us to love.  As the letter opens, “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God” we know that as followers of Jesus our first task is love, but not just to love each other but to love those who feel outside of God’s love for whatever reason.  But the funny thing about this letter is that it is a window into a church that was struggling a bit.  Often in the Bible when we read things prohibiting certain behavior, like in 1 Peter when we are told that wives are supposed to be submissive, we can read between the lines that such words were written because wives were speaking out loud all over the place.

So in this letter in 1 John, we read all about God’s love and how if we want to understand God’s love, if we want to embody our belief that God is love; Love is from God;  Love is God; then we must first love each other.  Toward the end of the letter we read, “Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.”  Obviously the early church was having trouble loving each other.  We read different variations of laments about people who say “I love God” and then talk badly about others in the church or fail to care for those in need.  Remembering that God is love must have been a challenge for that community and they were clearly being called to remember why they wanted to follow Jesus in the first place.  And while this is not our struggle, I believe that today is a time for us to sit around the table as a family and ask ourselves if we are living up to the mission of loving those whom God has sent to us..  How important is it for us to continue sending Christ’s hands into living rooms and tender hearts?  How important is it for us to continue to train, equip and send our own out to walk with those who are alone?

If we believe that one of our tasks as a church, like those who gathered to follow Jesus so long ago, is to care for those who are in need, then we are at a crossroads.  Our Stephen Ministers and Leaders have each extended their initial commitment beyond their two years.  All of them have at least doubled their commitment and are planning to keep going, but this is not a final solution.  We cannot continue to meet the growing needs of those in our community, those who are in need of a weekly caring visit, with this small group.  You might be wondering, well isn’t that your job pastor?  Well the answer is yes and no.  For a long time, churches like ours sat back and said, well we have a pastor and we pay our pastor to pray, preach and visit.  But friends, I am afraid this is not biblical.  Jesus asks all of us to be ministers, to follow him in his work of caring for those in need.

And your next thought might be to look at Joan or Peter or Pam or Louise and think to yourself, “I could never do that!  I could never be a Stephen Minister!”  And some of you might be right.  This ministry requires a unique set of gifts that not everyone has, but let me remind each of you that God equips the called, instead of the way we usually think of things like this, which is that God calls the already equipped.  No, God equips the called, so if you are feeling nudged or inspired to be Christ’s hands, if you are holding a question or harboring a small voice within you that is beckoning you, today is your time to come forward.  There are so many ways to serve God as a follower of Jesus Christ, but this ministry is one in which you are guaranteed to grow in faith.  This ministry is one in which you can be assured that your heart will expand and your sense of God’s love will be made real.  This ministry is one in which you will no longer need to ask, God is love, but so what? 

And for those of you who are thinking, “I know this is not for me,” before your mind wanders any further, let me tell you that we need you too.  Up until now, most of us have celebrated this ministry, thanked God for our Stephen Ministers, and thanked God especially that we don’t have to do anything.  Well friends, even if you are not called to be a Stephen Minister or a Stephen Leader we need you.  We need you to be open about looking around you to see who could use a Stephen Minister.  We need you to be listening around you to hear if there is a role for a Stephen Minister.  We need you to hold a piece of this ministry if it is going to continue. 

So if we say it all of the time.  If we tell ourselves and our children and those who know just a little about who we are as Christians.  If we sing it and pray it, point it out in scripture and poetry and art that God is love, that love is from God, that love is God, then let that love be perfected in us, let that love be breathed to life as we enter living rooms and tender hearts as Christ’s hands.  Let that love be perfected in us as we step out beyond our comfort and into Christ’s heart.  Let that love be perfected in us not because we could ever be perfect, but because God’s love is perfected in us when we do what Jesus asks: to love those whom God sent us to love.  May this be so.  Amen.