“Divine Love, Part 2: Jesus is the Christ” by the Rev. Don Wahlig, May 5, 2024, Year B / Easter 6 – Acts 10:44-48 • Psalm 98 • 1 John 5:1-6 • John 15:9-17

THEME:  God’s love was made incarnate in Jesus and, through faith in him, God’s love is incarnate in us so that we might share it with others who are near us.

Anybody here have a love for science?  In school, I was never particularly good at science, but there was one exception. That was physics.  I suppose that is what comes from having a research physicist as a father. Maybe it was genetic, but physics just made sense to me. I was reminded of that recently when Beth and I went to see the movie Oppenheimer. If you have not seen it, I highly recommend it. There is a good reason why it received a whopping 7 Academy Awards.

Lawrence Oppenheimer was famous for leading the team that developed the atom bomb at Los Alamos. What an extraordinary team it was. Many of the greatest atomic physicists of the 20^th century were gathered in that one place. It made me wonder how was the atom discovered in the first place?  What I discovered surprised me. The history of the atom goes back a lot further than you might think. About 450 BC, the Greek philosopher Democritus wondered what would happen if you cut an apple into smaller and smaller pieces. He thought that there would eventually come a point where all there would be were pieces that could not be cut.  He called these uncuttable pieces atomos.  Which is where we get the word ‘atom.’

No one took Democritus seriously. Aristotle said the idea was crazy. For the next 2000 years, no one disputed that, until the 19^th century when scientists began to see evidence that atoms might actually exist. But none of them, including all those brilliant physicists at Los Alamos, ever actually saw one. Finally, in 1955, a physics professor at Penn State named Erwin Muller became the first person to see an atom. But unless you happen to have a spare $75,000 to buy an electron microscope like the one he had, you and I will never see an atom. So, if we cannot see them for ourselves, how do we know that atoms actually exist?  The answer is because we can see what they do. We know atoms exist because of the effect they have. They have forces like electromagnetism and gravity. These forces shape our world and our lives. 

The same thing is true of God’s love. We trust that God’s love was embodied in Christ and Christ’s love is embodied in us. These are not things we can see. But we know they are real because we can see and feel their effect.  That is the point that the writer of I John is making. I John reminds us of the most fundamental beliefs of our faith. Jesus was the embodiment of God, God in the flesh – really God, and really human.  He was baptized in water and shed his blood, and really did die on the cross. By trusting that Jesus is God’s son, the Messiah, we have new life. That new life comes with a commandment. If we truly believe that Jesus was the embodiment of God and God’s love for us, then we are compelled and empowered to share that love with our neighbor.

Those two things – faith and love – go hand-in-hand. We cannot truly love others if we do not trust that God loves us, and so much so, that he chose to become one of us and even die for us. You will remember from last week that this was where the opponents in John’s community had trouble. For them, Jesus was not God in the flesh. As we saw last week, their lack of faith led to a lack of love.  Now, let’s be honest. Unless some of you have had visions that you have not told me about, none of us has ever seen Jesus.  So, trusting that Jesus was the embodiment of God, is not something that comes easily to our rational minds.  Like doubting Thomas, we are reluctant to believe what we cannot see and touch.  

But Christian faith is not an intellectual affirmation. Christian faith is a relational reality. The proof that it is true is in the application of our faith. That is where it becomes real to us. When we see what the power of God’s love does through Christians like you and me, then we see the reality and the power of what God did for us by becoming one of us.

It reminds me of a Christmas parable written by the great Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard.  It goes like this:  There was a king who loved a humble maiden. This king was like no other king.  Every other statesman trembled at his power.  No one dared breathe a word against him, because he had the strength to crush any opponent.  And yet this mighty king was melted by his love for this humble maiden. But how could he declare his love for her?  In an odd sort of way, his very kingliness tied his hands.  If he brought her to the palace and gave her jewels and clothed her in fine robes, she would surely not resist—no one dared resist him.  But would she love him? She would say she loved him, of course, but would she really?  Or would she live with him in fear, grieving silently for the life she had left behind.  Would she be happy with him?  How could he ever know?

If he went to her cottage in the forest in his royal carriage, with an armed escort, banners waving and trumpets blaring, that, too, would overwhelm her.  What he wanted was not a cringing subject.  He wanted a genuine lover, an equal.  He wanted her to forget that he was a king and she a humble maiden. He wanted love to bridge the gulf between them. Only through love can the unequal be made equal.  The king could not elevate the maiden to his level without crushing her freedom. So, there was only one thing he could do. He would descend to her.  

So, he clothed himself as a beggar and approached her cottage incognito, with a worn cloak fluttering in the wind. It was not just a disguise, but a new identity that he took on.  He renounced the throne in order to win the hand of his beloved. And, bit by bit, day by day, he did. The parable illustrates what God did out of love for us by becoming one of us. It shows the wisdom and the power of God’s decision to embody his love in Jesus of Nazareth, a humble carpenter’s son from an obscure village in the middle of nowhere. It shows us the power of God’s love.

Friends, you and I have that power, too. Through our faith, God’s love is embodied in us. We are each like those atoms that physicists first saw in the last century.  Every atom has a gravitational field. This gravitational field attracts every other thing in the universe. When you get enough atoms together, the gravitational force becomes huge. It’s why we feel gravity on earth. It’s why the earth orbits the sun. It’s why black holes are black. They have so many atoms in such a small space that they attract and capture even light itself. You cannot see the gravitational field of an atom, but you can feel it. It is a force that attracts every other thing in the universe.

That is how it is with God’s love, made incarnate in you and me. We have the relational power of love that you cannot see, but you sure can feel it. And it is capable of attracting anyone and everyone.  And, like an atom, the closer they are, the greater the pull. So, who is close to you? Who do you come near on a daily basis?  Who do you work alongside? For those of you who work full-time, you probably spend more waking hours with your work colleagues than you do with your own family. When we are home, how might we exert the gravitational pull of God’s love in our relationships with our spouse? Our children? Our siblings? Our parents? And what about our neighbors? As we saw last week, loving our neighbor starts with the house next door.

Friends, whoever it is that is near to you, remember this. God has placed you near them for a reason. To share his love - which is incarnate in you, because it was first incarnate in Jesus Christ.

May it be so.