St. John's Lutheran Church - Sermon: Even a little bit of love is more than enough when blessed by God!

In some ways, one of the easiest things in the world to do is to love. It can be easy to love the person who flatters you, or at least to love that person’s flattery. It can be easy to love the person who is nice to you and good to you and watches out for you. It can be easy to love the person who showers you with gifts and makes you feel worthwhile just because of the attention you are getting. It doesn't matter: If you stand to gain a whole lot of personal points out of a relationship, love is not a hard thing at all. But that is not love. That is selfishness. Real Christian love is something altogether different.

In our Gospel lesson this morning, a certain expert on the Law heard what it means to have the right kind of love. He learned about a real and a meaningful kind of love in answer to his question, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?". Real love is only something that shows itself when you share it unselfishly with others. That is what Jesus tells us in our parable this morning: Real love shows itself in service. Real love shows itself when we serve God!

The problem with many people who say they love God is that they really don't know about this real kind of love. For them, love for God is the kind of love they read into the words of Deuteronomy 30:9. They don't understand that those words are really a messianic prophecy. Those words tell of the wonderful blessings that we will receive when our relationship to God is made perfect through Jesus Christ in heaven. They do not talk about what we can expect right now for faith. If you try to apply those words to this life, then you make the mistake of thinking that God owes those blessings to you. You begin to think that God owes you those blessings out of love.

The passage says, "Then the Lord your God will make you most prosperous in all the work of your hands and in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock and the crops of your land." Imagine having all the wealth and the prosperity of your dreams, just by loving God! If that is all that love is about, who would have any trouble loving a God like that? Indeed, most people would have little trouble loving God if that were all there is to it, but that kind of attitude is not a real love at all.

That kind of love is a borrowed love. It grows out of our desire to want some special thing, and it only really comes to us when that thing comes into sight. It is like the toddler who points at a toy in a store window and says, "I need that!" but forgets that toy almost as soon as the grandparent buys it. It is not a love that loves God, but a love that is only interested in what God can do for a person. It is a love for what we can get out of our God and it lasts as long as God blesses us. But as soon as those blessings seem to disappear, that borrowed love vanishes along with them. Martin Luther once said that the world really thinks it knows how to love God. It loves God like lice love a beggar. They love him to feed on him, and love him only to seek their best interests. In the end, they do not love at all.

This is the kind of mixed up love that the expert of the Law revealed when he asked Jesus his question. The Bible says, "the expert wanted to justify himself" with that second question. That simply means he wanted to make it clear why he was asking any questions at all. He wanted to know who his neighbour is because he didn't want to waste any love on the wrong person. He didn't want to do any more than he really had to in order to get into that wonderful promise of eternal life with God. He was more interested in discovering who he did not have to love than he was in understanding a real, genuine love.

The expert in the Law and many people along with him knew exactly what God expects from us. He knew what it means to do God's Will and live according to God's commandments. He was able to recite God's Word to Jesus, just as are probably able to recite at least some of the things you memorized from Luther's Small Catechism. He could talk about love like we talk about love. He could talk about all the wonderful things that love is and love should be. He could say that in the words that say it all: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and love your neighbour as yourself.

Already long ago God gave us all the direction that we need to really know what love is all about. Like the expert of the Law and so many people of his day, we have the head knowledge we need to please the Lord who has saved us. We can say we know about what the Bible says about love in passage after passage of God’s Word. But talking about love is not the same as living love. If we really want to understand what real love does, then it has to get out of our heads and down to our hands and our feet. We do not love at all if our love is not a love that serves.

Real love shows itself in service, but it has to begin somewhere. It has to begin in faith. It begins with that deep, heartfelt awareness that says, "Jesus, I know you love me!" "I know that You are my Lord and my God." This is the blessedness of every Christian, that we see God loves us.

That is a vision God shows us in faith. This is a vision He first showed us when we brought to the altar and placed before God in baptism for the pardon of our sin. This is a vision that we can see when God’s Word overcomes us and opens our eyes in faith to really hear what God has to say about the love of Jesus Himself.

Paul reminded the people of Colosse in our second lesson this morning about that most amazing love of God. He reminded them of our heavenly Father’s love that led to the most awesome action that we could imagine! “For God has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the Kingdom of the Son whom He loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

There we see what love is all about, because God has accepted us and sustains us. There we see how God’s love was not just about words and about knowledge but about doing the very thing that needed to be done for love to be that godly love that is the only love that counts in God’s sight. Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this: that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13) That is the love that the Cross represents to us. That is the love that moves us not just to thank God, but to serve Him, and not just to serve Him but to joyfully respond to our Lord’s own command, “Love each other as I have loved you!” (John 15:12)

We know what love is about when we see how the Cross stays with us and assures us of God's blessings and His love, and we see that love, in faith, as a love that will bring us before God for Jesus sake as He offers us His eternal glory. Real love comes from our ability in faith to see love. God's love becomes our love, and that is all that it takes of us to live our love in Christ as a love of service.

The real test of our love for God takes place when we have the chance to show our love for our neighbour. We can talk about our love for God all we want, but we do not really learn if we love God with all our heart and with all our strength and with all our mind if we have nothing left for the people God sends for to us. In the parable of the sheep and the goats Jesus was asked, "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go and visit you?" Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." Are we grateful for the love and the compassion that Jesus showed for us when He died on the Cross for us? Are we grateful for that perfect love Jesus showed to each of us in giving Himself for us? God gives us a chance to love Him back, by loving the people we rub shoulders with. He gives us the chance to show our love for Him by living our love in service.

Jesus showed us exactly how to live love in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Here Jesus showed us that love has to shine through our prejudices. It has to shine through our fears of what will happen to us if we show love to someone that our friends, our family or our community love to ignore or despise. Samaritans were not welcome among the Jews. There were considered to be unclean people and the Jews did not get along with them at all. Jews in those days looked at Samaritans in the same way they look at Palestinians today. The two groups were enemies. The Good Samaritan took a lot of personal chances in helping a wounded Jew. His own people would have been angry with him for doing that, and the good man himself must have had his own doubts about helping somebody who was the wrong kind of person. Yet, that is what real love is all about. Real love does not listen to selfish excuses to get out of serving people in need. Real love sees the opportunity to serve, and it serves.

Real love also does not ask questions. The Samaritan could have decided it was the Jewish traveller's own fault for getting mugged. He could have left him to get what he deserved. When we look at the people we are supposed to help, we find it very hard to love them when it is obvious they got themselves into that mess. We are inclined to leave gamblers or drunks or immoral people in their misery instead of steering them back to God because we know how hard the job can be. We are more eager to let people go their own way than we are to take the risk that they make take advantage of us. The Good Samaritan took the risk that the man he stopped to help might only be lying in ambush, pretending to be in distress in order to mug the Samaritan. The Lord asks us to take risks in love, too. He does not ask us to risk our lives foolishly, but He does ask us to love even when the loving is far from easy.

Real love also seeks solutions. It looks for the best way to help a person in need, and then it follows through with that. The Samaritan good see that injured man needed to be treated for his wounds, so he did that first. But he did more than just deal with what was on the surface. He provided that stranger with a place where he could recover and heal in safety and in comfort. He arranged things so that other people, such as the innkeeper, would also look after the man in need. The Samaritan could not do it all alone, but he did get things moving.

In the same way, our Christian love shows itself in the willingness to look for solutions. We may have to deal with what is on the surface, but we have to go to the source of the problems of those we serve. It may take discipline to really help someone through love. It may mean that we have to be firm with people until they are at the point where they can truly be helped. It may also mean that we have to bring other people in to help us help others. God asks us to persist with that love, though. He asks us to persist in showing the real love of service, because that is what God has done for us.

The most difficult test of our love for Jesus is the love that He asks us to show for each other. It is hard to love like that. It is easy to fail and we fail in that love often. God knows that, though. He understands our weakness and our inability to love. Through His own love He comes to us and helps us where we really need that help. He goes to the source and He strengthens us through forgiveness. He strengthens us in faith. He strengthens us in the word of hope He has given us through His Gospel. Then those things about which Paul prayed for the Colossians are offered us, too. God indeed enables us to bear fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to His glorious might so that you may have endurance and patience and joyfully give thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of the Son whom He loves and through whom we have redemption and the forgiveness of sins.

The expert in the Law learned about real love. He learned where it comes from and what it does. May that real love, the love of Christian service, be the love by which God blesses you. May your love for others reflect the depth of your love for God!