Sermon Illustrations on divine love (Agape)

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Studies

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Background

Christian Love: the Antithesis of Envy

The Christian’s self-understanding is that she is precious before God—however much a sinner, however much a failure (or success) she may be by the standards of worldly comparisons—and that every other person she meets has the same status…This vision is not only one that levels every distinction by which egos seek…glory…This vision, when appropriated, is also the ultimate ground of self-confidence.

For the message is that God loves me for myself—not for anything I have achieved, not for my beauty or intelligence or righteousness or for any other “qualification,” but simply in the way that a good mother loves the fruit of her womb. If I can get that into my head—or better, into my heart—then I won’t be grasping desperately for self-esteem at the expense of others, and cutting myself off from my proper destiny, which is spiritual fellowship with them.

Robert C. Roberts, Spirituality and Human Emotion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 69. See the updated chapter in his Spiritual Emotions: A Psychology of Christian Virtues (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007).

The Heart of Christian Virtue

If love is the soul of Christian existence, it must be at the heart of every other Christian virtue. Thus, for example, justice without love is legalism; faith without love is ideology; hope without love is self-centeredness; forgiveness without love is self-abasement; fortitude without love is recklessness; generosity without love is extravagance; care without love is mere duty; fidelity without love is servitude. Every virtue is an expression of love. No virtue is really a virtue unless it is permeated, or informed, by love.

Richard P. McBrien, quoted in Christianity Today, Vol. 40, no. 1

The Masters Of Suspicion

Nietzsche belongs to a trinity of nineteenth-century thinkers that Paul Ricoeur called the “masters of suspicion.” These masters of suspicion—Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud—were all suspicious of the same thing: the possibility of altruistic love as a primary motive. For Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud, the claim that at the heart of Christian faith is found pure love is met with resolute skepticism—they simply don’t believe that people can be truly motivated by love of God and love of neighbor.

Marx says our motives are mostly about money; Freud says our motives are mostly about sex; Nietzsche says our motives are mostly about power. Nietzsche in particular insisted that Christian love was nothing but what he called “slave morality”—a way for the weak to manipulate the strong, a way for the slave to covertly express his ressentiment toward his master.

According to Nietzsche, the slave morality of Christian love prevented humanity from rising to its potential greatness. Nietzsche thought that the ideal of Christian love kept humanity weak, ignoble, and sick. He was convinced that it was time for humanity to cast off the pretense of altruistic love and, through a fierce will to power, become supermen who march into a new heroic age unshackled from the ball and chain of Christian slave morality.

This is certainly how the Nazis read Nietzsche as they venerated Beyond Good and Evil, The Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, and other Nietzschean works as their canonical texts. The Nazis were consciously attempting to live out Nietzsche’s philosophy; they were deliberately trying to be the supermen that Nietzsche imagined. Nietzsche was certainly not a genocidal anti-Semite, but powerful ideas can have consequences—and Nietzsche knew this. In Ecce Homo, he writes,

I know my fate.

One day there will be associated with my name the recollection of something frightful—a crisis like no other before on earth, of the profoundest collision of conscience, a decision evoked against everything that until then had been believed in, demanded, sanctified. I am not a man, I am dynamite.

The Way we Answer the Door is the Way we Deal with the World

The Rule of Benedict is a document that has ordered the life of Benedictine monks for 1500 years. That remarkable document, written by Saint Benedict of Nursia, instructs the monks in how they are to live their daily lives together in community. One of the things that Benedict describes is a particular role, the “porter” of the monastery.

The porter is the one who opens the door to the monastery when someone knocks. Not much of a role, you say? Ah, but there is so much to it, so much entailed, and so much communicated in how one opens a door. Roman Catholic nun and author Joan Chittister goes so far as to say, “The way we answer doors is the way we deal with the world.”

In the Rule of Benedict, the porter is given very specific instructions. He is to sleep near the entrance to the monastery so he can hear and respond in a timely way when someone knocks. Then, as soon as anyone knocks, likely a poor person because they often sought refuge in monasteries, the porter is to reply, “

…Your blessing, please.” That’s before he even knows who is on the other side of the door. Before the porter knows who that person is or why he or she is there, he is to praise God for that person’s presence and to ask for the person’s blessing.

Scott Bowerman, Source Material from Martin B. Copenhaver, “Who’s That Knocking On My Door?” in Journal for Preachers,

Stories

Giving Myself

I heard a story about a little boy who wanted to give God an offering but had nothing to give. He sat on the floor, watching people pass by and place their offerings in large wicker baskets. How he longed to give a little something to the Savior he so dearly loved. He walked to the front of the church, grabbed the rim of the basket and hoisted himself inside. When the deacons went to retrieve the boy, one scolded him, saying, ‘This is not a play area!’ Embarrassed and bewildered, the little boy responded, ‘I didn’t have anything to give the Lord, so I was giving him myself’.

Love Does not Insist on Its Own Way

Once, while on vacation, on our way to church, Terri and I got into a disagreement over something. When I felt I was losing, to make my point, I stopped the car and got out. We were on a country road. It was drizzling. Unfortunately, I had no idea what I was going to do next. She and our kids looked at me wondering, “What’s he doing out there?” Lacking an alternative, I got back in. We put the kids in the nursery and sat down in the sanctuary. The pastor began to read, ‘Our text this morning is from 1 Corinthains 13, “Love is patient, love is kind, love is not jealous or boastful or arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice in the wrong but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”‘ And just then, I felt Terri’s hand reach over and lay itself gently on my hand. In that moment, whatever had been wrong between us was healed. Her willingness to die to herself, breathed new life into our marriage. This is one of the Bible’s most powerful and profound truths–“Love does not insist on its own way.”

Dave Peterson

The Prodigal Daughter

In What’s So Amazing about Grace?, Philip Yancey offers an updated version of the parable of the prodigal son.

Growing up in the countryside in Michigan, a young girl rebels against her old-fashioned parents who object to her nose-ring, music, and apparel. After an argument with her parents, she decides to run away.

She heads for Detroit where she falls into drugs and prostitution. Life even seems glamorous for a time. However, when she gets sick, her pimp turns her out on the streets, cold, hungry, homeless, and desperate for a fix. She barely survives, most of the little she can earn feeding her habit.

One night she is tormented by images of the beautiful countryside where she grew up and she reflects that even the dogs eat better than she does now.

She makes a decision. She leaves a message on the answering machine from a pay phone and boards a bus headed home, wondering what sort of reception she can look forward to.

When the bus pulls into the station, she finds forty brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and even a great-grandparent waiting for her, wearing party hats, with a huge sign saying “Welcome Home!”

When she tries to say “I’m sorry…” her father hushes her. “Hush child. We’ve got no time for that. No time for apologies. You’ll be late for the party. A banquet’s waiting for you at home.”

Summarized from source, Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing about Grace (Zondervan, 2002).

Analogies

The Circle of Giving

In all life we see this circle of giving, which is the law of love. Consider electricity: when electricity moves through metal wires it does so by the movement of electrons from one atom to another. They flow in what we call a current, but they can only do so if the current forms a complete circle, which we call a circuit.

When you flip the switch to turn on a light, you have “closed” the electrical circuit, thus forming a complete “circle” allowing the electrons to flow and the light to come on. Conversely, when you flip the switch to turn off the light, you break the circle, and the electrons cannot flow. It is only when the circles (circuits) are complete that electricity flows. This is how nature was built to operate. The law of love is the design template for all God’s creation because all life flows from him and God is love.

The God-Shaped Brain: How Changing Your View of God Transforms Your Life, InterVarsity Press.

Giving Myself

I heard a story about a little boy who wanted to give God an offering but had nothing to give. He sat on the floor, watching people pass by and place their offerings in large wicker baskets. How he longed to give a little something to the Savior he so dearly loved. He walked to the front of the church, grabbed the rim of the basket and hoisted himself inside. When the deacons went to retrieve the boy, one scolded him, saying, ‘This is not a play area!’ Embarrassed and bewildered, the little boy responded, ‘I didn’t have anything to give the Lord, so I was giving him myself’.