Love Revealed

Sermon

This week, on one of my daily walks, trudging through the dim mist, I went past the middle school that both of my sons attended. Though I’ve been by that school many times over the years, I noticed something for the very first time. Etched in stone above the side entrance was this quote, from early American statesman Daniel Webster, “Knowledge, in truth, is the great sun in the firmament. Life and power are scattered with all its beams.” 

We are having a difficult a time with truth these days, aren’t we? During this global pandemic, the right course of action has sometimes been obscured by conflicting reports, distraction, and misinformation. Back in March, I inadvertently shared an online post, supposedly a study with advice on COVID-19, by Stanford Medical School. It seemed true. But quickly I heard from others that though that post had gone “viral,” it wasn’t from Stanford, and it wasn’t all accurate. Increasingly, over the past few years, we are subscribing to very different beliefs about the world, based on different sources of news. Last February, some people believed that COVID-19 was a hoax. Though more than 80,000 people have died in the U.S., there are disputes over numbers of cases, of tests available, of treatments.  

If, as Webster said, knowledge, in truth, is the sun, we are in a murky time, indeed. In these crises, we would hope that as a nation and world we could pull together for the common good. But instead, polarized politics are pulling us ever farther apart.  

How does the scripture from the Gospel of John speak to this time? Can this passage point us in a helpful direction?  

Jesus: “If you love me, keep my commandment [to love one another]. I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in God, and you in me, and I in you.” 

It can be very difficult at times to see how God is with us. Jesus says that the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, will be with us. At times we strain to see the work of love through the Holy Spirit. But it is God’s love that comes first and from which we have our being. In another scripture appointed for today, Acts 17:27-28, the apostle Paul writes: “God is not far from each one of us. For in God, we live and move, and have our being.”  

We are from love, and it is in our very nature and purpose to love.  

When it seems that bad news comes in wave after unrelenting wave, we can take heart in this: God has not abandoned us. We are not orphaned. We live and move and have our being in God. We have community together, the body of Christ, to continually help one another to remember whose we are. 

In Greek mythology, when the dead crossed into Hades, they drank from the Lethe River in order to forget their past. The Greek word for “truth” in our scripture is alethea. In Greek, the “a” is like our English “un.” And so “a-lethea” – truth, is the opposite of forgetting. It has the sense of waking up, remembering, not being deceived by false ideas or desires or scams, seeing what is as it actually is. And what actually is, is God’s love for us. When we remember our being in God, when we are centered in that, it becomes a way of life to love others.  

Medieval mystic Julian of Norwich observed, “If I pay special attention to myself, I am nothing at all; but I am … in the unity of love … for it is in this Oneing that the life of all people consists. … The love of God creates in us such a Oneing that when it is truly seen, no person can separate themselves from another.” 

Jesus says, If you love me, you will love others, as I have loved you. I think that when we see self-giving love in action, we are seeing Jesus with us, no matter whether or not that love comes in a recognizable religious form. 

One woman who showed that love in action was Tendol Gyalzur, known as the “Orphan Supermother,” who died this past week. Tendol was a Tibetan orphan and child refugee who fled her homeland for Switzerland in 1959. In 1993, she returned to Tibet to establish orphanages. Overall, she is credited with caring for 300 children over a period of 25 years. Her orphanages provided a new home for seven different ethnic groups, including Tibetan and Han Chinese. “We don’t discriminate on the ethnic origin, the color of skin, or religion, instead we accept those who are most in need of our help and protection,” Tendol said. She explained how the nondenominational orphanage didn’t impose any belief system but encouraged cultural identity among the children, who referred to each other as brothers and sisters. “My religion is wiping children’s noses,” she added. 

If you love me, keep my commandment to love one another. This is the Spirit of Truth. You will know, because truth lives with you, and will be in you.