The Authority of Love

Catechism Sermon I: Authority
Preached at St. John’s Lancaster 24 October 2010

The Bishop is coming! The Bishop is coming! On the Sunday after thanksgiving, Bishop Breidenthal will be amongst us to minister in Word and Sacrament. We will gather here for a single service at 9 AM. After hearing God’s Word proclaimed, and responding by renewing our baptismal vows and receiving the sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, we will adjourn to the undercroft for a wonderful party with the parish silver, finger foods, and laughter all around. But what makes it such a special day? The Right Rev’d Thomas Breidenthal stands in direct line of succession to the apostles themselves, and he is for us a direct link to Christians throughout the world and across the centuries. He literally stands in the place of Christ, and we are called by the fathers of the church to honour him as we would honour his Lord, the Saviour of us all. As you might guess, I have some differences of belief and interpretation with the Bishop, but then, he also has some with me. In fact, I daresay there are no two of us here today who agree on everything. Life is a bit more complicated than that. In spite of our differences, we who name the Name of Christ, we who eat the flesh and drink the blood of God, are called to come together each week to lay aside our differences and affirm with the people of God through the ages that Jesus Christ, the second person of the Holy and blessed Trinity, came and died for our sins that we might be reconciled to God the Father; and that he, by the power of love, took up his life again on the third day and ascended into heaven that we might live henceforth in the power of the Spirit, sharing with every person in the world the good news that God has broken into history to give us purpose, and belonging, and union with God in this world and in the next. In contrast to such a great truth, to such a powerful message, our disagreements, as profound and important as they may be, pale in comparison.
In preparation for Bishop Breidenthal’s visit, I thought it worthwhile to review with the entire parish a sort of catechism, or instruction of the faithful. Today, and over the next three weeks, I hope that we will be able to review the essentials of our faith as Christians, and the unique witness we bear as Anglican Christians, known since the American revolution as Episcopalians. Our discussions will fall into four categories:
1. What is our Authority for the things we believe and do?
2. How does the Holy and Blessed Trinity model the nature of the community in which we live and bear witness?
3. What does the incarnation of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ say about the relationships we should have with him and with each other?
4. How do our peculiar traditions, and the Tradition we have received from the apostles, help us to sense God in our midst, and share him more effectively with others?
And so what exactly is our authority for the things we do? In short, our authority is the love of God manifested usward in Christ Jesus our Lord. When I wandered in darkness and sin, leaning unto my own understanding, and doing what I thought was best for me and mine, Jesus looked upon my pitiful blindness, on my selfishness, and on my insecurity, and he said to the Father, “I will go and pay the price for all his errors and confusion, that he might be reconciled to you and have a new start.” He loved me even when I was rebelling against him, so much that he laid down his life for me. Such loving sacrifice gives him the right, the authority, to come and speak truth to me. Such love places a fair claim on my life, and compels me to respond to his invitation and be restored to a healed relationship with the Father. Such love calls me to respond in kind, and to accept gratefully, if imperfectly, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which enable me to become a conduit of love, his love, to all people, everywhere.
I, we, have been transformed by the love of God into what we were made to be. God is love, and we who are made in his image are called to reflect his love in all that we do. By his grace, he has given us the Bible, a collection of books written by human authors under divine inspiration which shows us the character of God, which is love. Because this collection of books is the God-breathed record of his self-revelation in Jesus, it is the place where we see the true nature of love. It is here, through the examples of patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, and ultimately through the example of Jesus himself that we see the sacrificial nature of love. “Greater love hath no man than this, than that he lay down his life for his friends.” It is here that we learn the degree to which love extends to every part of our lives, for we are to “love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbors as ourselves.” It is here that we learn the true nature of love when we realize that we ought to “do unto others as we would have others do unto us.” It is here that we see this law of love for God and man made practical in the tables of the ten commandments and in the working out of the laws of Israel in everyday life. As God’s love is the authority in our lives, and for all we do as a church, so is the Bible that body of belief which is given us by a loving God to help us in the understanding and application of that love to which we are called.
In his first letter to the Church at Corinth, Saint Paul sings the glories of Charity, or that Godly love which the ancient Greeks called agape. “Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunted not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth….” Indeed, he goes on to say, “And now abideth faith, hope, and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” This is the love of God made manifest to us in Jesus Christ, and implanted in our hearts by the infilling of the Holy Spirit. A life characterized by such piety, such humility, such love, is all the authority any man or woman of God needs to reach out to a world in need.
We Anglican Christians have been blessed by God in so many ways to experience this love of God. Christianity first came among us in the middle years of the first century, carried by Jewish traders and Samaritan soldiers of Rome. It was cross fertilized in the second, third, and fourth centuries by the words and examples of Greek and French missionaries, and organized in the fifth and sixth centuries by Irish abbots and Roman bishops. By the time of Whitby in the seventh century, we had seen that the love of God is truly for all people, and that no single organization, or denomination, or national group has a monopoly on the experience or proclamation of God’s love. The man or woman who is transformed into the image of Jesus, and who lives humbly in the power of his love, bears the authority of God himself to reach out and share that same love in every situation. This is our authority, and this is our mission. It is who we are and who we are called to be.
And so in the words of St. Paul, the question remains, “Is the evidence of God’s love manifest in your life?” When your neighbors look at you, do they see Jesus? When they look at you, do they see someone who is long-suffering and kind? Do they see someone who is not motivated by envy, someone who is not always seeking to be the center of attention or characterized by prideful arrogance? Is your behaviour above question and reproach? Are you desirous of seeing good come to other people instead of always insisting on your own way? Are you able to walk away from a fight or argument, and to think well of others even when perhaps they do not deserve it? Does iniquity bring you sorrow, or do you enjoy a good laugh at the expense of someone else from time to time? Are you truly happy when you see the triumph of the good, and can you be happy for others when good things happen to them, even if you are left out? Are you willing to bear the difficulties and vicissitudes of life with your faith in God unshaken, and even in the darkest of times does your hope in God’s love burn brightly? Are you able to trust God and be patient when things don’t go your way? These are the true evidences of God’s love in your life and in mine. Where such evidences of piety and godliness exist, no other authority is necessary, for people will see in us the love of God, and they will know that God has come among us to offer us deliverance from the mess that we have made of our lives and in our world.
On this day, as we prepare for the visit of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, our Reverend Father in God, Thomas, let us beseech our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to fill us with His grace, and perfect us in his love, that every man and woman and boy and girl might know the truth of the Good News of God through us. This is all the authority we need, and it is the authority offered to us by God. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. AMEN.