Göttinger Predigten im Internet
ed. by U. Nembach, J. Neukirch, C. Dinkel, I. Karle

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2006
A Chapel Devotion Preached at Mwika Lutheran Bible College, Mwika, Tanzania
(on the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro)
Based on 1 John 4: 7-13 by David Zersen
(->current sermons )


SHARING LOVE FACE TO FACE

Today’s text is one of the loveliest passages in the New Testament. It reminds us that love is at the very heart of whom we are as Christians and that this love is nothing less than the kind of love that God shared with us when he gave his son to die for our sins that we might receive a whole new way of life.

We have learned to understand this love in very intellectual ways. We have studied about it in classrooms and tried to understand it as best we can. We have learned the difference between agape and philia love in the New Testament. We are church leaders or in the process of becoming church leaders who have a special investment in such expressions of love. It is what we are in the business of living, explaining, sharing, applying. But what is it like? On a personal basis? Is there some way that we can come to grips with it so that we can say that we have experienced it and have made it our own? Can we say, “we don’t just understand it, but we know it to be real?”

What would be a really dramatic way for a Christian to share the love of God—so that all the world could see? For example, Bill Gates, the Microsoft tycoon, the world’s richest man, who is also a committed Christian, provides billions of dollars to address world health needs in the hope that his own lifetime, major diseases might be eradicated? Isn’t that impressive Christian love in action? And a good friend of his, Warren Buffet, also a Christian and a very rich man, recently gave Bill Gates $36 billion dollars, because he thought Gates could share love with the world better than he. Isn’t that impressive?

In our own Lutheran tradition, there is a concept Luther developed called deus absconditus, the hidden God. There is something quite profound about this concept, especially when we’re thinking about dramatizing love. It suggests that God, being God, often appears to us in unexpected ways. It implies that he shares his love with us in strange and hidden places—as for example in an animal’s stable where only poor people can find a home, or on a lonely hill outside Jerusalem where only criminals find their end! In such surprising places, God sneaks up on us and catches us off guard. It is not perhaps as dramatic as giving billions of dollars to cure diseases, but what God cures with his quiet, unassuming love is bigger than disease. He gives us life which outlasts disease, life which is eternal.

In searching for a modern example of this kind of hidden, back-room, surprising love, I came across this African story from Bishop Tutu. It tells of a South African black woman who listened in a court room as a white police officer acknowledged his part in atrocities. He had shot the woman’s 18 year old son, point blank, and partied with others as they burned the boy’s body, turning it over and over until it was reduced to ashes.

Eight year’s later, this same Officer Van de Broek had come and seized her husband, and forced the woman to watch as her husband was bound to a woodpile, had gasoline poured over him, and was consumed by the flames. The last thing she heard her husband say was “forgive them.”

Now the court was bringing Van de Broek and others to justice. The Truth and Reconciliation Committee of South Africa wanted to know what the woman wanted.

“I want three things,” she said calmly. “I want Mr. Van de Broek to take me to the place where they burned my husband's body. I would like to gather up the dust and give him a decent burial. “Second, Mr. Van de Broek took all my family away from me, and I still have a lot of love to give. Twice a month, I would like for him to come to the ghetto and spend a day with me so that I can be a mother to him. “Third, I would like Mr. Van de Broek to know that he is forgiven by God, and that I forgive him, too. I would like to embrace him so he can know my forgiveness is real.”

As the elderly woman was led across the courtroom, Van de Broek fainted, overwhelmed. Someone began singing “Amazing Grace.” Gradually everyone joined in.

In that courtroom, Luther’s deus absconditus was present and active, powerful and real. As sinners, all of us, we can only wonder, how should one properly behave in the face of such love? Overwhelmed, do we faint? Do we weep? Do we hold our head in our hands?

And knowing that such love claims us as well, sinners that we are, how do we reflect it in our world? Perhaps, we don’t need to think of dramatic stages from which we can change the world by the power of our money or wisdom or war. We can look for hidden corners where people who have been hurt or wronged or misjudged can find affirmation and acceptance through us.

There are those who may claim that they are showing God’s love by freeing countries from totalitarian regimes or by developing a UN Millennium Project to eradicate world hunger within a decade. Those may or may not be visionary ideas. But knowing the God who found us, one by one, in our own private places in the quiet moment of our baptisms, we may be looking for something else. Perhaps we are looking for a woman whose eyes reflect fear of her husband, a child who is worried because his/her mother is ill, a man who hasn’t had work in months. Perhaps we are looking at the eyes of a pregnant girl who doesn’t know where to turn, at the eyes of a spouse who has been unfaithful to his/her wife, at the eyes of a student who doesn’t know how to pay his fees. And as we look at these people, they are looking at us too. And what they see may be a surprise for them. For although no one has ever seen God, as we learn how to love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. And we may see him, face to face.

Prof. Dr. Dr. David Zersen, President Emeritus
Concordia University at Austin
Austin , Texas
djzersen@aol.com

 


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