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Meet Father KempQuinquagesima – 14 February 2010
I have asked my Father-in-law and Mother-in-law for many things, the most important being their permission to marry Emily, their eldest daughter. However, a few weeks ago I asked them for something I thought I would never ask anyone, I asked them to sign me up for a half marathon. I now have a duty, a duty to train for this race. Some people are born to run, people like Forest Gump and my brother-in-law Scott, who can put on a pair of old shoes and go running for miles on end without breaking a sweat. I am not one of those people. I was not born to run. While Scott runs like a gazelle, I run like a geriatric elephant with four broken legs. I have been running three days a week with moderate consistency for two months and on Monday I had my best run ever, a measly 5.64 miles, which is not even half of a half marathon. When I hit the second mile during my Monday run, I had the brutal realization that running a half marathon will be a difficult task. I realized a sense of duty will not be enough to overcome my natural inability to run. To run this race I needed to develop a strong love for running. I had always thought of running as a form of hellacious punishment imposed Jr. High and Sr. High athletic coaches, yet by mile three on Monday’s run something odd happened, something I never could have expected: I developed a love for running. This love did not make running any easier, but it made the labor worth while.
Life is a race, (not just a rat race!) a long spiritual race that requires rigorous training and unfathomable endurance. Much work and great sacrifice are required to sustain a marriage. Raising children requires unfathomable patience and work. To be a successful and honest employee requires much diligence and great practice. Life is a race, a race we must dutifully run. Scripture calls us time and time again to dutifully make marital sacrifices, to dutifully be patient with our children and to dutifully work as honestly and justly as we can, but duty is not enough. Mere duty will not get my legs in shape to run. Mere duty will not foster a strong and healthy marriage. Mere duty will not provide patience for my children. Mere duty will not make me a good and faithful employee.
Duty is not enough, but love is. Love is the great strength driving Christians forward, it is the mark distinguishing us from others. Listen to what Jesus told his disciples, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:35) Love distinguishes Christians from the world. Consider St. John, “Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because god is love. …God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment…if anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has see, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.” Consider also St. Paul’s words, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing…And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” I think we have heard these verses so often they have become a mere resounding gong sound, tickling our ears. These verses, however, are radically subversive. Jesus said the way the world knows we belong to him is not through our creeds nor through our deeds, not through our denomination, nor our liturgy, but through love. St. John said that if we do not love our brother, there is no way we can claim to love God, no way at all. St. Paul said spiritual gifts, gifts like teaching or prophecy, are nothing without love. He also said our knowledge, all of our doctrinal systems and confessions of faith, is mere ink splatterings if we do not have love. Sacrificial giving and martyrdom gain nothing but extra pain without love. Finally. our faith , the very faith that Paul said justifies us, is empty and dead without love and some people have thought James and Paul contradict each other, by no means. Paul ups the ante, James said faith without works is dead, works are easy compared to love. If we could sum up the words of Jesus, John and Paul, we might be able to say that if you call yourself a Christian, a disciple of Jesus Christ, but do not love your spouse, your children, your neighbors, your co-workers and all others whom you pass by in life, you are fooling yourself. If you have understood this, then you will have a greater appreciation for Jonathan Edward’s famous sermon, Sinners in the hand of an angry God and those words in the Invitation to Confession, “Ye who…are in love and charity with your neighbors.”
Since love or charity is a necessary mark of the Christian, were does it come from? Does it come from positive thinking? Is it produced through our good deeds? Love is a fruit of the Spirit that grows from the seed of the Gospel that God the Father plants in our lives. Love is a fruit that is not just to be gazed upon and adored, it is a fruit that demands to be used. If we are to love we must pluck this fruit from the vine of the Spirit and then appropriately distributive it. Some people have suggested that the only way pluck the fruit of love from the Spirit, the only way we can selflessly and sacrificially love others is if our personal needs are first met. It is tempting to reject this suggestion as egotistical, selfish drivel, but it is true. We all have personal needs, needs that long to met and desire to be fulfilled. Our personal needs are two fold: we have a need for security, which is an awareness that we are unconditionally loved by a love freely given that cannot be earned or lost. We have a need for significance, which is the realization that we have a responsibility or job that is truly and eternally significant that has a meaningful impact on the lives of other people and a job that we are adequately prepared to fulfill.[1] When these needs for security and significance are met, when we know in the very depths of our being that we are loved and worthwhile then we can pluck the fruit of love from the vine of the Spirit and use it lavishly, sacrificially and freely. Love is not like an artisan well naturally springing up with us. We are like empty vessels that must be filled to the brim, so that love liberally spill forth. I suppose we could say, “If I am to love, I must first know that I am loved and know that I am capable of loving.”
The only person capable of satisfying our needs for security and significance, the only person capable of filling us with love, is Jesus Christ. Thus the only way we can love is first to know his love, as John said, “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” If we are to run the race of life we need love and love is only found in Christ. As someone has said, Jesus fulfills our legitimate need for security because “he loves us with a love we never deserved, a love that sees everything ugly within us yet accepts us, a love that we can do nothing to increase or decrease, a love that was forever proven at the Cross, where Christ through his shed blood fully paid for our sins to provide us with the gift of an eternally loving relationship with God. In that love, [we] are secure.”[2] Jesus fulfill our legitimate need for significance because he has given the Holy Spirit who sovereignly equips us to participate in building God’s kingdom and given us the ability and desire to be charitable to our spouse, children and neighbors. When our needs for security and significance are met in Jesus Christ, we can go forth and love all those around us without the fear of rejection, disappointment or apathy because there nothing any person can do to diminish Jesus’ love of us for neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38)
Life is a race, a long, arduous race, a race we can only finish victoriously through love. So who will we trust, who will we trust to fulfill and satisfy our needs? Will we trust in ourselves, our spouses, our children, friends, jobs or other worldly possession to fulfill our needs for security and significance? If we our trust is built upon those things we will not cross life’s finish line. Will we trust in God the Father to fill our needs for security and significance through his Son Jesus Christ whom we know through the work of the Holy Spirit? If our trust is built upon the Father, Son and Spirit then we will find divine love filling our lives, strengthen our weary legs, heart and mind and pouring forth from our lives, refreshing all who pass by.
[1] Larry Crabb, The Marriage Builder, pg. 29.
[2] Ibid, pg 34.
