Rev. Scott Summerville

I Thessalonians 3:9-13

How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you? Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever is lacking in your faith. Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you. And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

This is an interesting day, this first Sunday in the season of Advent. It still feels like Thanksgiving, but the calendar tells us we are in a new season. Before we head back to work and school and the quickening pace of December, we pause here in the quietness of this place. This seems a good day to step back and take stock of things. Last Sunday, Mary Thombs led us in a time of remembering and giving thanks. Those of us who were here each got a free pen – on the condition that we used for the first time to write on a colored leaf some expression of thanks, some expression of gratefulness.
The leaves were gathered and placed on branches to make a Thanksgiving tree. It comes as no surprise that again and again people give thanks for family and friends, followed by health. Human beings and especially human relationships are very complicated, yet in some ways we are simple creatures who want simple things.

I was visiting yesterday in the intensive care unit a large hospital. There must have been fifty different machines and monitors in the room. The patient was wired up like an astronaut heading off into space. There by his side was his daughter, gently stroking his head. No matter how many breakthroughs there are in medical science, nothing will ever take the place of the loving presence and the gentle hand and compassionate caress of one who loves us. We are made to love. We have a deeply built in need for love and relationships.

And we are all part of some family – even if we have moved a thousand miles away – our family lives inside us. That is how we are. We sometimes call the church a family, and even refer to one another as sisters and as brothers. Actually one of the nice things about church is that we are not a family. We are not all related to one another, and we do not have all the complications that come with those we are biologically related to. We are a family of faith, not a family by blood. Our lives are very different than the lives of the first small groups of Christians who gathered in the time of the apostles. Even so, we have a lot in common with them. The earliest Christians were drawn together to form churches because they found in Jesus and in the community of Jesus a place of accepting love.

We heard a reading today from the oldest piece of writing in the New Testament, Paul’s first letter to the church at Thessalonica. This is the earliest letter of Paul that has survived, and it was written decades before any of our Gospels were written. It takes us right back into the earliest days of some of the first churches. Two things are quite striking about this letter: one is that Paul thinks the world is just about to end. He is surprised that it has not ended already, and he is quite sure that it’s going to end in the very near future, certainly in his generation.

Paul was wrong about that, but fortunately that is not the primary importance of this letter. You might say that this is the sweetest of Paul’s letters. It is written with great tenderness. It is a letter that overflows with love.

How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you? Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever is lacking in your faith. Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you. And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you.

The letter tells us that the people of the church in Thessalonica were suffering, and that Paul himself was suffering. This was a letter from one who had known much pain to others who were in pain.
The church was suffering persecution. People were grieving, and fearful. It was a troubled time.
The letter was written at a particular moment to a particular group of people, but there is something timeless in the spirit of this letter. It has spoken to many generations of Christians, and still speaks to us now.

There is a special spot in the sanctuary where the bride and groom stand during the wedding ceremony. Thousands of couples have stood on this spot and declared their undying love for one another. Many of them — I hope most of them — have been bonded in love until parted by death, but many of them went their separate ways long before death. There are thousands of talk shows and magazines and movies and sermons and books devoted to love, but human beings are as tangled up in their passions as they ever were; we struggle to find enduring love; and relationships seem as fragile and difficult as ever.

It’s all over the news this weekend. A certain celebrity ran his car into a fire hydrant at 2 AM as he was driving away from his wife…. Thus a sordid story unfolds. Love drives people to extremes. Or as the country song says,
Love is a burning thing
and it makes a fiery ring
bound by wild desire
I fell in to a ring of fire…
(Ring of Fire, Johnny Cash)

Or as it says in the Bible:
“Love is strong as death,
jealousy is cruel as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a most vehement flame.
Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can floods drown it.” (Song of Solomon 8:6)

You didn’t know there was stuff like that Bible, did you? And there’s more where that came from. There are things in the Bible that I am not be able to read aloud to you from the pulpit. You have to come to Bible study to hear the whole uncut version.

One of the standard questions I ask to engaged couples during premarital counseling is this: “Something like half of all marriages end in divorce; why do you think yours will not?” Of course, everyone has a good answer. The fabric of love, the way love flows from us and toward us, this is a key to human health and happiness. Love is a powerful force. It is not all sweet and sentimental. If you have a sentimental idea about love, that may be fine when the baby is sleeping through the night and everybody is happy and rested, but what about when the baby is not sleeping through the night and everybody is tired, and somebody at a very inconvenient time comes down with the flu? It’s when life is untidy, when life is messy, that love becomes deeper, more wonderful and more powerful – or love dies.

I wish there was a way that we could take engaged couples and fast-forward them into real life, life after the honeymoon, and see what happens to those warm fuzzy feelings they have for each other when life is unfair and difficult. Children are the joy of life in the flesh – but the child who held your hand so sweetly as a little kid might someday be the adult child who has been reckless and is in trouble and you are trying to decide whether it is an act of love to bail them out or whether it is a higher act of love not to rescue them.

Love is not always sweet and comforting. There are so many myths about love. In marriage, there is the myth that we grow closer to one another and sustain intense love by having long pleasant vacations together. I’ve got nothing against vacations, but it is closer to the truth to say that love grows and deepens and ripens as individuals learn to face challenges together, as they cope together with the unpredictability of life.

In family life there is the myth of the perfect family. Some people live with the myth that they have the perfect family. More often we live with the myth that other people have the perfect family. The myths we have about the ideal family make it more difficult to be honest and direct with our family members. I was not kidding when I said it’s a good thing that we are not a family – can you imagine how exhausted we would be if all of us were related to one another? It is not easy to be a family. If we could just accept that fact as a normal fact of life, maybe we could lower the pressure to be perfect and look for ways to strengthen our families without expecting them ever to be perfect. It is phoniness and pretense, pretending that all is well when it is not, that undermines relationships, marriages, and families over time. We have a responsibility to those we love to be truthful with them, and to ask that they be truthful with us. Simple honesty, being willing to talk when things are not easy to talk about: that is what we need.

It is our willingness to be honest with each other that protects our love from dying. Being honest with ourselves and with those we love is the best way to stay in love for the long haul. The letter that Paul wrote to Thessalonica is heartwarming to read even so many centuries later. You can feel the love Paul had for these people. You can sense the power of that love, the way the love of Christ in that community was sustaining people in their hardship and binding them together as a community in the face of violent persecution. That love we receive from sisters and brothers in Christ – the love we give sisters and brothers in Christ – this is a great gift. To be welcomed and accepted as you are into the community of Jesus Christ is sweet; it feeds the soul.

It is painful to see people use the Bible to deny people their rights and even to encourage hostility against others. Today in all the Catholic parishes of New Jersey a letter from the bishops of the state is being read the congregations. The letter urges people to ask their legislators to deny marriage equality to gay people. The Catholic bishops believe they are acting on the basis of natural law and biblical truth. I could not disagree more. The early church grew because it offered people a place of acceptance and love, and this message appealed especially to those who were least accepted by their society. I believe that the words of our congregation’s Welcoming Statement convey the deepest spirit of Christ and the scriptures:

Asbury United Methodist Church in Yonkers, New York, established in 1771, has long been a welcoming community. We strive to follow the example of Christ, grow in love and welcome into full fellowship persons of every race, gender, culture, nationality, sexual orientation or gender identity, economic circumstance, age, physical and mental ability, family and marital status. We affirm that all persons are individuals of sacred worth.

Each of us is hungry for love. We are made that way. And the heart of the gospel is this: that human beings find in Christ and in the people of Christ welcoming and accepting love:

How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you? … And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you.

Grace and peace to you