“No Strings Attached”
Mark 12:28-34
A man who really had no interest in Christianity became a casual friend with a Christian guy who lived next door.
They talked over the back fence, borrowed lawn mowers, stuff like that.
Then, the non-Christian man’s wife found out she had cancer, and died three months later.
Here is part of the note he wrote afterward:
“I was in total despair. I went through the funeral preparations and the service like I was in a trance.
After the service I went to the path along the river and walked all night.
But I didn’t walk alone.
My neighbor—afraid for me, I guess—stayed with me all night.
He didn’t speak; he didn’t even walk beside me.
He just followed me.
When the sun finally came up over the river, he came over and said, ‘Let’s go get some breakfast.’
I go to church now.
My neighbor’s church.
A religion that can produce the kind of caring and love my neighbor showed me is something I want to find out more about.
I want to love and be loved like that for the rest of my life.”
In the 2nd Century, one Christian theogian remarked how Christian love attracted the notice of non-believers: “What marks us in the eyes of our enemies is our loving kindness.
‘Only look,’ they say, ‘look how they love one another.’”
Is this how our community reacts when they think of East Ridge United Methodist Church?
What can we do to make an even bigger impact on those who want to love and be loved?
Because that is what people want; that is what people need; that is what people hunger for…
Unconditional love—with no strings attached!!!
Imagine if all Christians were to live this way.
Christ would have already returned.
But we can live this way.
And we are the only ones we have control over.
We can take back this city for Christ—through love.
East Ridge is in no way beyond redemption.
There’s a song that goes, “All you need is love; love is all you need.”
And that is true.
I know I used this at the evening service a couple weeks ago, but, have you ever heard the expression: “What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it is all about?”
Wouldn’t that be tragic?
And isn’t it sad that we live in a world that increasingly believes that this might as well be true.
It almost makes you want to cry, does it not?
We have children growing up who know absolutely nothing about true, real, unconditional love.
We have adults on crack, meth, living in hotels, living on the streets, killing themselves because they have never been loved or they don’t know they are loved.
They think that life is worth nothing, it’s cheap.
So why not just throw it away?
But life is not cheap.
It has incalculable worth!!!
God created every one of us out of love and because of love—in God’s image.
And when that image became blurred due to sin, God gave up everything to come and rescue us!!!
Life is not cheap or worthless.
And that is because God loves us, and Jesus shed His blood to prove that love and save us from self-destruction and misery!!!
A journalist from Time Magazine has described John 3:16 as “one of the most famous and well-known Bible verses.
It has been called the ‘Gospel in a Nutshell’ because it is considered to be a summary of the central doctrines of Christianity.”
And the verb translated as “love” in John 3:16 is the Greek word “agape.”
“For God so loved the world that he gave his One and Only Son, that whosoever shall believe in him shall not perish, but [will] have everlasting life.”
“God so agaped the world!!!”
Agape love is the love of God for you, me and the rest of humankind.
It represents divine, unconditional, self-sacrificing, active and thoughtful love.
It has no strings attached.
It is the highest level of love.
It is selfless, and it’s a love that is committed fully to the well-being of others.
Again, in its pure form it is essentially divine.
And yet Jesus calls us to love like this, and expects us to love like this.
When asked what the most important commandment is, Jesus answered, “you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your mind and with all your strength.
And the second is this, You will love your neighbor as yourself.
No other commandment is greater than these.”
And that is what it is all about…not the Hokey Pokey or anything else!!!
To love God is the greatest commandment, says Jesus, but it’s important to remember that God’s love for us comes first.
To love God with agape love is a response.
Our love for God is completely dependent on the love that God has for us.
As we are told in 1 John Chapter 4:19, “We love because God first loved us.”
And Jesus declares that the greatest commandment involves agape loving both God and our neighbor.
So how does agape love work in relation to our neighbor?
I mean, our neighbor doesn’t necessarily love us.
Our neighbor might even hate us and seek to do us harm.
To love God is completely responsive to God’s love for us shown through Jesus Christ our Lord.
It’s dependent on God’s love for us.
And it entails us completely giving ourselves over to God—“You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your mind, and with all your strength.”
That’s everything we’ve got.
So, again, how does agape love toward other people work?
I mean, to love our neighbor can’t mean that we are to give all of ourselves to our neighbors.
That would be idolatry.
We aren’t to worship our neighbors; but we are to love our neighbors with the same agape love that Christ has for us.
And that means that we love our neighbors long before they love us.
As a matter of fact, we are to love our neighbors even if they never do love us.
In Mathew Chapter 5 Jesus gives us the definition of what agape love toward our neighbors entails when He says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You must love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who harass you so that you will be acting as children of your Father who is in heaven.”
Way back in 1937, a researcher at Harvard University started a study on what factors contribute to human well-being and happiness.
The research team selected 268 Harvard students whom they would study over a period of 72 years.
They tracked the students using a number of factors, including physical exercise, cholesterol levels, marital status, the use of alcohol, smoking, education levels, weight, and psychological factors such as how a person deals with the challenges of life.
Over the period of 72 years, several different people have been in charge of the research.
For the last 42 years, the director has been psychiatrist George Vaillant.
In 2008 someone asked Dr. Vaillant what he had learned about human health and happiness from his years of poring over the data of these 268 people.
You might expect a complex answer from a Harvard social scientist, but his secret to happiness and well-being was breathtakingly simple: “The only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.”
In 1 Corinthians 13 Paul puts this beautifully.
“If I speak in the tongues of human beings and of angels but I don’t have love, I’m a clanging gong or clashing symbol.”
This could be said in another way, “If I can speak in hundreds of different languages, but don’t have love, my ability is just a bunch of annoying, useless noise.”
Paul goes on, “If I have the gift of prophecy and I know all the mysteries and everything else, and if I have such complete faith that I can move mountains but I don’t have love, I’m nothing.”
“If I give away everything that I have and hand over my body to feel good about what I’ve done but I don’t have love, I receive no benefit whatsoever.”
“Love is patient, love is kind, it isn’t jealous, it doesn’t brag, it isn’t arrogant, it isn’t rude, it doesn’t seek its own advantage, it isn’t irritable, it doesn’t keep a record of complaints, it isn’t happy with injustice, but it is happy with the truth…
…love never fails…
…Now faith, hope and love remain—these three things—and the greatest of these is love.”
Oh, if we could live into this!!!
Oh, if we could have this kind of love!!!
You know what?
I believe we can!!!
It may not come all at once.
It may take a lifetime to achieve.
We may never completely arrive…
…but the journey begins when we make the resolute decision to follow Christ’s commandment to love God above all else and with everything we’ve got and to love our neighbor as ourself.
It is written in 1 John 4:7-8: “Dear friends, let’s love each other, because love is from God, and everyone who loves is born from God and knows God.
The person who doesn’t love does not know God, because God is love.”
Do we know God?
Do we love…
…do we agape love God and all humankind—no strings attached?
That’s what this life is all about.
That is the secret to everything.
That should be our goal.
Remember the man who experienced the love of his Christian neighbor?
He wrote, “A religion that can produce the kind of caring and love my neighbor showed me is something I want to find out more about.
I want to love and be loved like that for the rest of my life.”
And so does everyone else.
So does everyone else.
Amen.
