May 21, 2000

LESSON: 1 Corinthians 1.10-13a; 1 Corinthians 3.1-4, 19-23, NRSV

SERMON TITLE: Perfect Love Casts Out All Fear

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INTRODUCTION:

  1. Professor Morrie Schwartz in Mitch Albom's, Tuesdays With Morrie says, "Life is a series of pulls back and forth (1).
    1. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else.
    2. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn't.
    3. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted.
    4. "A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. And most of us live somewhere in the middle."
    5. Sounds like a wrestling match, I say.
    6. "A wrestling match." He laughs. "Yes, you could describe life that way."
    7. So which side wins, I ask?
      1. "Which side wins?"
      2. He smiles at me, the crinkled eyes, the crooked teeth.
      3. "Love wins. Love always wins."
    8. But Morrie died.
      1. But it is how he died.
      2. If you read the book or saw the movie starring Jack Lemon, you know that he died a good death.
      3. He laughed his way to the end.

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  1. Does love always win?
    1. It may not always be apparent, but it does.
    2. Jesus dies on the cross.
      1. In the movie Jesus, Satan is portrayed as a modern, dressed in a suit adult.
      2. He is pointing out that Judas is coming with the cohort to arrest Jesus.
      3. This is going to lead to a trial and death.
      4. Satan urges Jesus to wave his hand, a magic wand and go back to where he came from.
      5. Doing this will avoid the death that will be his.
      6. Jesus rejects the temptation, allows himself to be taken prisoner, tried and executed.
    3. Does love win?
      1. Oh, Yes!
      2. Jesus dies because he loves us.
      3. Jesus dies out of his love for us to save us.
  2. This is the way that John writes they way he does.
    1. The Christianity community was divided.
      1. The people were agruing over the nature of Jesus Christ.
      2. Was he divine?
      3. Was he only human.
    2. So John writes in 1 John 4.7-21, NRSV
      1. Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.
      2. God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.
      3. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
      4. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.
      5. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.
      6. And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world.
      7. God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God.
      8. So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.
      9. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world.
      10. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.
      11. We love because he first loved us.
      12. 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.
      13. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also

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  1. It is vital to see ourselves and life and the world in a different way.
    1. Bradford Keeney, Everyday Soul (2) illustrates this point very well.
      1. "We are too often stuck in seeing the world in only one way and forget that we can be led to different viewing.
      2. A wealthy oil baron once commissioned Picasso to paint a portrait of his wife.
        1. When the work was completed, the baron was shocked to see the image that had been created.
        2. "Why that looks nothing like my wife! You should have painted her the way she really is!"
        3. Picasso took a deep breath and said, "I'm not sure what that would be."
        4. Without hesitation, the oil baron pulled out his wallet and removed a photograph of his wife saying, "There, you see, this is a picture of how she really is!
        5. Picasso, bending over, looked at it and replied, "She is rather small and flat, isn't she?"
    2. What is being offered as an antidote for the division and quarreling that broke out in Corinth?
      1. There is only love.
      2. This is why the Apostle Poaul takes great pains to describe love.
      3. 1 Corinthians 13:1-8 NRSV, If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. [2] And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. [3] If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. [4] Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant [5] or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; [6] it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. [7] It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. [8] Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.

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  1. Does love always win.
    1. Jesus Christ lays down important principles for resolving conflict.
      1. The first and most important one is love.
        1. John 14:15 NRSV, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
        2. The greatest Commandments
          1. Love God
          2. Love your neighbor as you love yourself.
      2. Everything else is based on this.
    2. There is then a second principle that is vital.
      1. It is expressed by the apostle Paul in Galatians 6:7-10 NRSV
      2. Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit.
      3. So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up.
      4. So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.
  2. One other quotation from Tuesdays with Morrie (3)

"Take any emotion - love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I'm going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness [reflects Professor Morrie Schwartz]. If you hold back on the emotions - if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them - you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.

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"But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, 'All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment.'"

Morrie stopped and looked me over, perhaps to make sure I was getting this right.

"I know you think this is just about dying," he said, "but it's like I keep telling you. When you learn how to die, you learn how to live."

    1. He is right, isn't he?

1. Mitch Albom, Tuesdays With Morrie (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 40.

2. Bradford Keeney, Everyday Soul (New York: Riverhead Books, 1996), 30.

3. Mitch Albom, Tuesdays With Morrie (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 103-104.

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