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A Foretaste of What Love Can and Will Do

This is my sermon for tomorrow - Thanks to everyone I stole from. I think I have given everyone credit for what I have taken. I’ve been waiting for a sermon in which I could use the Fred Craddock story about soup for some time, and this sermon feels about right for it. Special thanks to Tim Zingale and Charles Johnson. I also plan to use Bass Mitchell’s wonderful invitation to communion as a bridge from the word to table.

By the way, members of First United Methodist Church are forbidden from reading this until after tomorrow’s services. Yes, that means you, Jim Pennock : )

For all you others out there, any comments or corrections or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

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Scriptures:

Acts 11:1-18
Revelation 21:1-6
John 13:31-35

All of which can be read here.

John, a disciple of Jesus, is in exile,
imprisoned on the island of Patmos.
He is an old man and no doubt is already looking forward to the life
that will come when he finally casts off his mortal body for one that
is immortal.
It is while here, on Patmos, at the end of his life,
that John has a vision, which we have come to call the book of Revelation.
Now while most of this book is filled with symbolism and can be
incredibly difficult to interpret and understand,
chapter 21 is almost crystal clear in giving us a picture of what God
has in store for his children.
For here John is given a vision of the new heaven, the new earth, and
a new Jerusalem,
and all these things are vastly different from the heaven, earth and
Jerusalem we have now.

Listen to his words:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth;
for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away,
and the sea was no more.
And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem,
coming down out of heaven from God,
prepared as a bride adorned for her husband;
and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
“Behold, the dwelling of God is with mortals.
He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people,
and God himself will be with them;
And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes,
and death shall be no more,
neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more,
for the former things have passed away.”

Now I don’t know about you,
but I can all but feel the joy and comfort that these verses exude.
I can almost picture the brilliance and glory of this scene,
and I find myself wanting, more than anything,
a world without death and sorrow and pain,
a world where these “former things” have passed away.

And I’ll bet that many of you feel the same way.
I am sure that John did.
One small phrase gives a clue to John’s feelings as he lives in
isolation upon that island.
Notice that he says “for the sea was no more!’
Robert Borgwardt, in the Augsburg Epistles series, writes:
John is saying something very significant in those few words.
He is speaking about separation,
he is speaking about the sea separating him from his friends, his
books, Christian fellowship, separation from the land where Jesus
walked and lived,
separation from all that made life bearable for John.
So John says very clearly that heaven will be a place where there will
be no more separation. There will be completeness, a togetherness, a
union of all things.

All of us live now with a bit or a lot of separation in our lives.
We can be separated from God through our sin,
separated from ourselves through the brokenness of this world.
We can be separated from each other through our unwillingness to love
others as we love ourselves.

As another (Tim Zingale) has stated:
John found in his vision a promise from God that through the power of
the resurrection,
through the grace of Jesus Christ,
each person will experience a sense of closure, or completeness in life.
Unity will be restored,
people will be fully reconciled,
A trusting faith in Christ will be brought to its completion.
Healing will take place in all the broken areas ‘of life,
and perfect love will allow everyone to be a brother and sister to
each person and a perfect child to God, all this will happen in
heaven, in the new dwelling place.

But we don’t necessarily have to wait for the new heaven and new earth to appear for us to get a foretaste of what they will be like.
Jesus tells us in our lesson from John that one way we can begin to
experience the new heaven and new earth now, is to love one another.

He says: “A new commandment I give to you:
Love one another.
Just as I have loved you,
so you should also love one another.
By this all will know that you are my disciples,
if you have love toward one another.”

John saw in his vision of the new heaven and the new earth of
completeness of love. And Jesus tells us in the gospel lesson that
loving one another is the most complete way to live.
Of course, this isn’t easy.
If anyone ever tells you that love is easy,
they are lying and the truth isn’t in them.
And though loving may become easier over time,
as we draw closer to Christ and his life,
it is never easy.

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