LOVE'S ADVENTURE Jobn M. Buchanan

I John 3:11-18 Broad Street Presbyterian Church
April 28, 1985 Columbus, OH

On April 9, 1945, forty years ago this month, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed
by his &.S, guards at Flossenburg prison, as a traitor to the Third Reich. Bonhoeffer
was a young German pastor and theologian with a growing international following.
When the Nazis came to power in 1933 he was a pacifist. In time, however, his
mind changed: he became an outspoken critic of the government and ultimate-~
ly joined a conspiracy to assasinate Adolf Hitler, The plan failed. Bonhoeffer
and others were arrested. Several days before the end of the war he was hanged.
On the fortieth anniversary of his death the Christian Century editorialized: "As
perilous as the issues of our time may seem, Bonhoeffer's legacy reminds us that
we must take sides, that indifference is the worst form of immorality.” (April,
1985, p. 343)

Bonhoeffer is a reminder that to love God intentionally, to chose to be a
Christian in this world is a deep commitment. It can be an adventure at best, a
very costly business at worst, Bonhoeffer's is a reminder to those of us not forced
by circumstance to make a decision which will determine whether or not we live,
that there is more to life, in Christian terms, than putting in time. His brief but
publically faithful life, is a reminder that by Christian criteria the meaning of
a life has more to do with the choices and commitments made in love than the
number of years it endured. From his prison cell he wrote:

"A person must plunge into the life of a godless world...To be a Christian
dees not mean to be religious in a particular way, to cultivate some
form of ascetism..but to be a man. {Letters and Papers from Prison,
July 18, 1944, p. 222-223)

The problem, of course, is life: How to live it fully; how to enjoy it; how
to get as much out of it as we possibly can; how to go to sleep peacefully at night
with some sense that this day and the accumulation of all these days T am living
has been worth the effort, that it all is adding up to something. Knowledge of
our mortality is a mixed blessing. Without it we probably would not create anything.
Herbert Maslow, recuperating from a heart attack, wrote to a friend that if you
knew you were never going to die, love, ecstacy and beauty would not be possible,
And yet the morbid but accurate observation that life is merely the process of
dying does have a sobering affect when one stumbles upon it in the wee hours of
some sleepless night. Macbeth's lament is universal?

"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death, Out, out, brief candle!"

How to live? How to live with enough intentionality and commitment so
that our lives transcend, are free from, the captivity of death? That is the human
question, The answer, I submit, is a truth the saints and martyrs have seen, a truth
lived and taught by Jesus Christ: a truth to which the Church has born witness
in its better moments. It is contained in a deceptively simple phrase in the First
Epistle of Jobn..."For we know that we have passed from death into Hfe because
we have loved the brethren."

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That is the astounding assertion. You move from the morbid captivity of
death inte the bright fullness of life by loving your sisters and your brothers! Church
tradition has always linked the three brief epistles which bear the name John with
the beloved disciple. Scholarship has determined that they were written quite
late, however, perhaps seventy years after the fact. But the tradition that at least
links them with John persists. In fact Robert Browning wrote a wonderful poem
once, "A Death in the Desert," in which the very old disciple John is hiding, in the
desert, near death, attended by a few devoted followers who themselves will soon
be martyred. He realizes that he is the last and he reflects:

“weit is long
Since James and Peter had release by death,
And Iam only he, your brother John,
Who saw and heard, and could remember all.
there is left on earth
No one alive who knew (consider this!)
Saw with his eyes and handled with his hands
That which was from the first, the Word of life.
How will it be when nane more saith

IT saw'?"

In that situation, when the last eye witness is about to die, the last to have
seen Jesus, talked with him, touched him, the problem becomes getting the essence
of it recorded so it won't be lost. And these little epistles, written out of that
situation testify that the essence of it is love. ,

"See what love the father has given us, that we should be called Children
of God," he wrote. "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts
out fear," he asserted. "God is love," he observed, “and the person who
abides in love abides in God, and God abides in that person.”

Students have always known that the author of these letters is really a very
gifted thinker who introduces a whole new category of religious thought. Most
religion, certainly the rich Hebrew religion of Jesus relies on the ideas of sin and
righteousness, goodness and badness, to talk about the human condition. This author
proposes several interesting alternatives. Instead of sin and righteousness he uses
darkness and light, and hatred and love. He wrote: “God is light, and in him is
no darkness at ail...The one who loves his brothers and sisters abides in the light.
The one who hates walks in the darkness."

There is a very important Christian point here. It is one we are inclined to
forget. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not a new set of ideas about God, it is about
an incarnate love that gets itself lived in the life of the Christian community. The
Gospel is not a new philosophic system but an invitation to Hve a new style of life.
We are saved, this author proposes, not by adopting orthodox doctrine, or by growing
in our understanding of the mysteries of God, but by "loving the brothers and sisters."

Ours is not a receptive climate for that basic Christian understanding, I fear.
Each age has its particular challenges for the church. Some of them have been
in the form of outright hostility and persecution. In other ages the challenge has

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come in a seductive sympathy with religion which either doesn’t understand or
doesn’t like the essence of this Gospel. That is our situation. Our culture asks
the question of life's meaning and prospect, holds up the solitary human self as
the answer, and sayst

"\.this is itt discover it, get into yourself, actualize it, realize it, cele-
brate it, indulge yourself, you deserve a break teday, you are worth
it, look out for number 1, be your own best friend, etc."

The New York Times last week reviewed an important new book, Habits of
the Heart, based on four major research studies and edited by Robert Bellah, a
University of California sociologist. The book is a study of individualism in America
and it concludes that individualism, which when balanced with a commitment to
equality is dynamic, has today tipped the scales. "We are concerned," the authors
pees "that this individualism may have grown cancerous...that it may be destroying
us)..."

The Times review included a most thoughtful paragraph:

"We have never before faced a situation that called our deepest assump-
tions so radically into question. Our problems today are uot just politi-
cal, They are moral and have to do with the meaning of life...we are
beginning to understand that our common life requires more than an
exclusive concern for material accumulation. Perhaps Hfe is not a
race whose only goal is being foremost." (New York Times, 4/14/85)

It would seem at first that if the goal is to get as much out of life as possible,
we ought to do as much for ourselves as possible. We ought to focus cur energies,
our creativity, our time and resources on this project. The only trouble is that
it doesn’t work. It ought to but it doesn't. Our best humanity is not affirmed by
egotism, The best in us is not celebrated by self indulgence. The psychological
disciplines know that about us. And I’m amazed at the surprising places that discov-
ery turns up...A poem of D, H, Lawrence, for instance. Now, Lawrence is not an
artist one would normally characterize as self denying, but he wrote once about
the dehumanizing power of obsessive self centeredness.

"I was weary of the world

t was so sick of it,

Everything was tainted with myself,

Skies, trees, flowers, birds, water." (New Heaven and Earth)

How much better, Lawrence realized, to get out of yourself and into the
world, the world of people, the world of nature. In another lovely poem, “The Wild
Common," the poet is alive - not with self alone - but in relationship with the
world outside himself, in this instance a beautiful, idyllic space in the woods,

“How splendid it is to be substance, here!
My shadow is neither here nor there: But I,
Tam royally here!

All that is right, all that is good,

All that is God takes substance,"

-4-

The Gospel of Jesus Christ suggests that life gets good and exciting and interes~
ting when we get out of self. Life is an adventure of love. That is the Christian
secret. In Jesus Christ, God our creator summons us to realize the fullness of our
humanity, and to discover the meaning of Hfe by shifting the focus - away from
ourselves to others, to redirect the energy from introspection to the world outside
ourselves, It is not a philosophic shift, by the way. The author of the Epistle of
John moved from soaring abstractions to concrete realities: “We move from death
to life because we love," and then several sentences later..."But if anyone has the
world's goods and sees someone in need, yet closes his heart, how does God's love
abide in that person?"

Martin Marty recently cited a prayer which if we haven't prayed we surely
understand, "Use me Lord, use even me. But preferably in an advisory capacity."
Christian love is tangible, practical: it has to do with flesh and bload people who
need us.

So today the rhythm is from theology to the Board of Trustees: from thoughtful
reflections on the meaning of life to the lengthy meetings of the Organ Committee;
from sermons on love to budget hearings. The people who are today ordained and
installed, and all those who serve the church in every day, pragmatic ways, are
eloguently expressing the truth of the Gospel. Love is practical. Love reaches
out and makes life better, happier, safer, healthier, for others, Love discovers
that the happiest thing in the world is someone else's happiness.

How to live? The noble example of Dietrich Bonhoeffer suggests that there
is more to the answer than managing to stay alive for 70 or 80 or 90 years. It is
a matter of loving deeply. It is a matter of taking sides, of caring deeply about
the world and all its agonizing complexity. The Christian prescription for full life
is to care deeply about life everywhere: to make choices: to learn and understand
and have opinions about brothers and sisters in Central America, in the desper-
ate ghettoes of South Africa, in wretched refugee camps in Ethiopia. The Christian
prescription is to love life everywhere: to become vulnerable; to love enough to
experience the hurt whenever and wherever human life is denied, exploited, dimin-
ished, oppressed.

To the ancient question: "How shall we live fully?” the faith answers, Love...
love the people God gives you to love; love them with strength and kindness and
ultimate loyalty. Love them by listening to them, by taking into your own hearts
their joys, hopes, aspirations, disappointments, and fears. Love school and church
and community. Love your nation enough te expect it to be a noble as its noble
principals. Love it enough to weep when it is less than that. Love the whole wide
wonderful world God has given, and love the God who made it to give.

The meaning of our humanity is established when we love enough to make
some choices and commitment, when we put our lives in the service of some cause.
Bach of us decides, therefore, to live fully or not to live fully,

What makes those propositions a proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ
and not just sound psychological advice is that their turth has been demonstrated.
God has put his life on the line. God has allowed himself to be defined as love
~ love fully lived out in Jesus: love lived in serving, healing, teaching, and dying.
The truth is you and I have been loved = are loved by God. And in Jesus Christ,
summoned to all the glorious fullness of life as God conceived and created it. We
are invited to love's adventure - for life, and forever. Amen.