Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
August 7, 2005

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

In the verses that are the focus of this five part sermon series, Paul tells us that nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Last week I talked about the nature of that love and said that it is a love that wants only what is best for us, God’s human creatures. I told you that God’s love sustains us, holds us, inspires us, and gives us peace, courage, hope and joy. And like Paul I am convinced that all of that is true; yet we must ask: How do we know that it is true? Different people may give different answers to that question, but in these verses themselves lies what I think has to be the answer for those of us how have made the choice to live our relationship with God within the Christian tradition. For us Christians, the answer to how we know that God is a God of this kind of love lies in Paul’s phrase "in Christ Jesus." Nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

To be perfectly honest, when I began working on this sermon series, I struggled a bit with Paul’s phrase "in Christ Jesus." What does it mean, exactly? Is it a claim of Christian exclusivism meaning that the only way to be inseparable from God’s love is to be Christian, to believe in Jesus Christ? Many of you know I could never accept such a reading. It contradicts everything I’ve been saying about Romans 8:38-39. So I had to look for another meaning. Last week looking up the Greek word Paul uses for love-agape-and then looking at what Paul himself had to say about that word helped us understand what kind of love he was talking about; but this week the Greek is no help at all. It says exactly what the NRSV says it says: "in Christ Jesus." Most translations just leave it at that, so they don’t help either. One very good translation however, the New Jerusalem Bible, a Catholic Bible that is less literal than the NRSV but which often reads a good deal better renders the Greek "in Christ Jesus" as "known to us in Christ Jesus." That isn’t what the Greek says literally, but surely the scholars who did the New Jerusalem Bible are right in concluding that what Paul meant was that nothing can separate us from the love of God known to us in Christ Jesus. That love, that agape of God, is made known to us in and through Jesus the Christ. That indeed is why so many centuries after he died Jesus is still revered, and not just by those of us who call ourselves Christians but by peace-loving people all around the world. In Jesus, whom we call the Christ, God’s Anointed One, we see what the love of God is like. He reveals to us who God really is, and he reveals that God is a God of love, of agape, of a giving, caring love that will not let us go.

How does Jesus do that? To explain that fully would take the rest of my professional career, and since I’m sure you don’t want to sit there for the next twelve years straight I won’t attempt a complete explanation right now. Let me just briefly suggest four ways in which we see the love of God in Jesus. First of all we see it in his teachings. Jesus rejected the dominant teaching of the Judaism of his day that said that what God wants from us is our own moral and ritual purity. Instead, Jesus taught that God wants of us that we love God with our entire being and that we love our neighbor as ourselves. And he taught that everyone is our neighbor, especially the people who we think ruin the neighborhood-the poor, sick, disabled, mentally ill, the reject, the outcast, the one our society and our religion tell us we don’t have to care about. Jesus said O yes you do. You have to care about them as much as you care about yourself. That’s because that’s how God cares about you. That’s how God loves you.

Jesus revealed the love of God in how he lived too. He didn’t just say love all those unlovable people as much as you love yourself. He did it. He lived it. He extended God’s hospitality to all of the people the religious authorities of his time said were beyond the pale of God’s love. He ate with them. He touched them. He healed them. They were his friends, his disciples. He lived God’s unending love for all people. In the way he lived we see that love.

Jesus also revealed the love of God in the way he died. He died a miserable, unjust death precisely so that we might see that even when we suffer and even when we die, no matter how we die, God is with us. God knows our suffering and our death because God experienced it in the cross of Jesus. God does not reject our suffering and does not reject us when we suffer. God does not reject our death and does not reject us when we die. Remember, Paul says that not even death can separate us from the love of God that we know in Christ Jesus. How do we know that? Because we know that Jesus died to prove it to us.

And we know it because Jesus revealed that love of God in his Resurrection. Jesus’ Resurrection is God’s great "Yes!" to the revelation of God that we see in Jesus. Jesus’ Resurrection is a mystery. We can’t explain it. We don’t know exactly what happened. We know, however, that Jesus’ unjust death on a cross was not the end for him or for his followers. Through those first Disciples who spoke the language and told the stories of Christ’s Resurrection God spoke to us, saying: "This is indeed my Son, my Beloved. Listen to him. He shows you what you need to know about me. He shows you how I love you. He shows you that nothing in all creation, nothing in life and nothing in death, can separate you from my love."

And so, when we talk about the love of God, when we say that God’s love wants not what is best for God but what is best for us, we’re not making things up, we’re not pulling beautiful ideas out of thin air. We are saying that we know these things about God because we see them in Christ Jesus, because God revealed them to us in Christ Jesus. We know them because when we follow Jesus we experience that kind of divine love. We experience that love that will not let us go that we come to know in Jesus. It is the revelation of God’s love in Christ Jesus that makes it concrete, that makes it specific, that makes it real, that makes it known to us.

That doesn’t mean, by the way, that that love is available only to Christians, or that God loves only Christians. The love of God that Jesus reveals is universal. It is for everyone. We know that love in Jesus, but God’s love is bigger even than Jesus. Jesus embraced all people. We see it in his embrace of the hated Samaritans, of hated Roman collaborators, and even of hated Romans themselves. So we know that God embraces all people, because we see it in Jesus. We know that love through Christ Jesus, but nobody is separated from that love of God. We see it in Jesus, but it isn’t limited to those of us who see it there. It is for everyone.

And as I’ve said in every sermon in this series, that is the best news there ever was or ever could be. We don’t have to earn God’s love. No one has to earn God’s love. God’s love is already there, and Paul assures us that nothing in all creation can separate us from it. Paul’s right. Believe him. Trust his truth, for it is God’s truth. Nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.