The Hidden Power of Love

For All
March 6, 2016
Grace Through Your Life
April 10, 2016

The Hidden Power of Love

Listen to the sermon here or watch the entire Easter Sunday Service.

We all want to experience signs of resurrection.  In our lives now when life seems difficult or unfulfilling and eventually on the other side of eternity.  The good news from this morning’s passage from John’s gospel is that resurrection is not only the absence of death, it is the presence of God’s love.   Let us pray.

Loving God, we have heard your word and John’s magnificent account of Easter morning.   We long to know you and experience your grace.  Open to us the meaning of your word and how it can help us understand the reality of your love for each of us.  Amen.

One of the great Hollywood film directors is a Canadian.  One of his films received international acclaim a few years ago.  He got an invitation from the Queen of England to go to London to receive a special recognition.  In the invitation it said he would be able to wear any medals of recognition he had.   He didn’t have any medals of recognition but feeling that that must be what people wore in such occasions, when he arrived in London he went to an antique shop.  As he perused the aisle he found a war medal with a maple leaf.   “Ah ha,” he said, “this is appropriate.  I’ll wear this and when the Queen sees this, she will be impressed, thinking that I am a war hero in addition to being an acclaimed director.”

So he bought the medal, pinned it on and went to the recognition ceremony.  When he went to shake the Queen’s hand she saw the medal and said, “I see you have been decorated.”  “Why yes,” the director replied.   “And I noticed the maple leaf, you must be from one of the Canadian regiments.”  “Yes,” he replied, “Thank you very much.”

The queen looked a bit further at the medal and said, “And I see you have been decorated for bravery.”  The director cleared his throat and said, “Well, yes, I was.”  Then the queen said, “And I see you died in battle.”

We would all like to experience resurrection.  To be found alive after having died.   But we can’t pretend we are something we are not.  We are mortal.  Death comes to us all and too soon.   There is no denying death.

The question is, where do we hope to find resurrection?  Easter answers.

As John tells it, the scene of the first Easter morning opens with Mary Magdalene reaching the tomb where the crucified Jesus has been buried only to find that his body is gone.   

She runs to share the news with two of Jesus’ disciples, Simon Peter, and an unnamed man the Gospels refer to as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” 

The first words uttered on that Easter morning are Mary shouting, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we do not know where they have laid him.” 

Mary was looking for answers.  So are we.  Why do the terrorist attacks continue?   Where am I going to find work?  Who do I talk to to fix this relationship?   What is happening to my body?  How am I renewed when life seems difficult or unfulfilling?

Mary’s anxious mind immediately locks in on one answer – that Jesus’ body must have been stolen.  Peter and the disciple whom Jesus loved make it to the tomb and the unnamed disciple sees the body is gone and believes the resurrection.

Then Jesus appears, but Mary mistakes him for a gardener.

Then Jesus says her name, “Mary.”   

Only when he speaks her name does Mary turn and recognize Jesus.

In C.S. Lewis’ classic book The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, the great Lion Aslan gives his life for the sins of humanity.  Then he is resurrected. 

The heroines, Susan and Lucy, see the empty stone table, where his body lay, but don’t recognize that the risen Aslan is there behind them until he speaks directly to them.  Then they turn around and like Mary, recognize him.   

In the story, an evil witch has killed Aslan and thinks she has won.   But Aslan explains there is deeper, hidden power, which the queen did not recognize, which resurrects him.  The implication is that this hidden power is love.  Resurrection occurs when someone freely sacrifices themselves in love as Aslan did. 

Lewis writes this part of the story as an Easter allegory.  For as our choir has sung, Christ died for us and rose to show that love is stronger than death. 

Christ’s resurrection ensures we have hope for eternal life.  We tap into that resurrection experience today through the power of love.

We all desire to be like Mary.  To be able to declare “I have seen the Lord.”  Wouldn’t it have been nice had someone been there at the resurrection with an iPhone to tape it?   And put it on YouTube.   Or ThouTube (or ThyFi) or whatever they would have had back then. J

Yet nowhere in scripture is the resurrection itself described.  No one literally sees Jesus rise from the dead.  The resurrection itself happens beyond the ability of humans to see it.  What we have is the testimony of those to whom Jesus appeared after the fact. And yet appearance alone is not why Mary and others are able to experience the resurrection.  It is the experience of the love of God which reveals what is hidden and makes the resurrection real.

Contrast the two men at the tomb.   Peter sees that the body is gone and he is the one who goes into the tomb first.  But perhaps conflicted by his own previous denial of Jesus, Peter does not express belief in the resurrection then.  

Instead, the text tells us that when the disciple whom Jesus loved goes into the tomb, he believes.   Jesus’s body was gone in both cases, but the presence of love allows an experience of resurrection.

John’s Gospel tells us that when Mary first looks at Jesus, when he speaks factually and asks who she is looking for, she doesn’t recognize him.

She had seen the Lord, but didn’t recognize him.  Resurrection had not come to her. It is only when Jesus speaks personally, lovingly and says her name, “Mary,” that she recognizes him.

In both cases, it is not the absence of death alone that allows the recognition of resurrection, but the presence of God’s love.  

Last November, the singer Adele, dressed up as an Adele impersonator for a BBC program about a group of aspiring Adele impersonators auditioning to play her.   Adelle sported a fake nose and chin, altered her speech, changed her name to Jenny, and hung out backstage.  None of the impersonators recognized her.  Until it was Jenny’s turn to sing.  When Adele’s Jenny hit the stage for her audition, Adele’s voice was unmistakable.  The impersonators immediately recognized the real Adele hidden underneath and began clapping and crying in appreciation.  The song Adele was singing then, Make You Feel My Love, says it all. 

Despite outer facades and the distractions of life, the deeper part of God’s love within each of us is unmistakable. 

I see the hidden power of love when a college student realizes later that their grandparents worked years longer than they might have in order to put their family in a better place. 

I see it in the young adult who turns around and realizes their soul mate was there all the time.

I see it in those who give blood to help someone they will never meet.  Or in the interview I read this week about the Jewish educator from Rockville who describes how donating a kidney was the greatest experiences of her life.

I see it in visiting the member of our congregation who stayed with his wife every day after her stroke and then one day she squeezes his hand back.

I see it in the broken hearted women who never misses a birthday or anniversary in our columbarium.

One of the things that used to bug me as an overly aggressive young adult was my dad didn’t seem to want to expand his business at a time many others were.  Every night for a while as he returned home for dinner at 6:00 I used to ask him why he didn’t expand it more.  Then I became a parent myself, pulled in lots of directions as I look for my family time and I realize why he set his priorities as he did.  It was so my dad could be home for dinner every night at 6:00.  I am grateful for that love even if that love was hidden to my short sided thinking at the time.

Deep, resurrecting love is real.   At Easter God invites us to discover it for ourselves.  The hidden power of love renews, replenishes, and resurrects life. 

Phil Yancey writes that some things are loved because they are beautiful, but other things are beautiful because they are loved.  The love of God for us doesn’t measure value, it gives value.

Tim Keller writes, “The Christian Gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, and yet I am so loved and so valued that he was glad to die for me.” 

The Apostle Paul tells us “love never ends.”

Resurrection is not only the absence of death, it is the presence of God’s love.  

New York Times columnist David Brooks’ recent book, The Road to Character, is a self-described attempt for Brooks to become the person he aspires to be.

Brooks writes about what he calls a Moral Bucket list.  Virtues he wants to cultivate before he dies. 

Brooks writes that there are two sets of virtues in life, résumé virtues and eulogy virtues.  Brooks laments that our society is better at building resume virtues than internal character.  What is more important, he says, are the eulogy virtues.  The “qualities you need to radiate….inner light.”

He writes, “The people I admire achieved that unfakeable inner virtue.”

Brooks concludes that, “The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral — whether you were kind, honest or faithful.  And were you capable of deep love?  That is what matters.

Death is real, but it is not the end.   There is love on the other side that is so good that it breaks through into our side.

Easter is about God surfacing our recognition of the deep love in our world, for and in us and bringing forth the character which goes with it. 

The kind of love that cannot be faked with medals, but is revealed when our metal is tested.

The kind of love which breaks bonds, barriers, biases and binds wounds. 

The kind of love which opens tombs and opens the path to eternal life.

It used to bother me that I couldn’t figure out all the facts involved with the resurrection.  But as I have studied God’s love I have become more confident over time that the resurrection is real, that it happened. 

So I worry less about the facts of the past, and focus on the experience in the present and its possibilities for our future.

Understanding the resurrection is not about carbon dating or historic records or textual deconstruction.   It’s about love.

We could have been present 2000 years ago, but without love the resurrection would remain hidden to us.  

We can be here 2000 years later and experience resurrection when we embrace the power of God’s love.

There is a Los Angeles based robotics company called Humai Tech which is promising to be able to resurrect the dead by 2045.  Their business plan is to transplant human brains into robotic bodies so as we die we get a new body.  Humai’s corporate tag line is “human resurrection through artificial intelligence.”

What God offers at Easter is real, spiritual resurrection through higher intelligence.

God sets a seal upon our hearts.

For at Easter we celebrate that Christ rose from the dead.  And so rather than fearing death we know that Jesus opens a path for new life.

We don’t have to search for immortality amidst resume virtues and robotics, but are part of the electric web of unconditional love which radiates glory for all the world for all time.

As long as we live in love we are alive. 

As long as we honor the deep, powerful light of Christ within us we shine.

As long as we put our faith in the path God has made to us here and for us beyond the grave we shall be free.

The message on our columbarium wall says it all.  Jesus is the resurrection and the life. 

I have come to believe in the resurrection because I have seen love bring life from death, faith from fear, hope from misery.  Why would God’s eternity be different?  And in a world that desperately needs restraint, relationship, reconciliation and resurrection, what is idea more important than this?

Jesus’ loving resurrection is a gift God offers to you.  Believe it.   Let your soul grab hold of it.  And have life.  Now and always.  Amen.