Sermon for March 14, 2021 – Fourth Sunday in Lent

“The struggle of receiving unconditional love.”

Let us bow our heads in prayer. Gracious and loving God, we give you thanks for the gift of your presence in this time and place and within each one of us in the many places we have gathered. Help us now to open our minds, our hearts, our whole lives, to receive the gift of your living Word for us this day; and may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

I want to begin this morning by offering an hypothesis in this sense: that I believe that we live in a time, thanks to the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason, where we live by the rule of “cause and effect.” We expect that our lives, and other people’s lives, will play out that way, such as, “If we work hard, we’ll do well.”  And sadly, if someone loses their job, we may feel badly for them, but underneath we’re tempted to still hold on to a belief that “if they were really good at what they do, they would not have been let go by their employer.” It’s true, too, that most of us feel badly for the less-fortunate, for the poor and the homeless, but we’re still tempted to make comparisons, to ask ourselves, “I wonder what bad decisions or poor choices they made to end up where they are today?” - again, even though we feel badly.

I think we see ourselves as living in a ‘conditional’ universe – determined by cause and effect. We even create little proverbs that reinforce this. Think of how we may say to our children: “Don’t go outside without a jacket; or don’t play in puddles and get your feet soaked – you’ll catch a cold!”, even though we know how cold viruses are actually transmitted.

We try to make connections between ‘conditions’ and ‘consequences’, and sometimes with horrifically stigmatizing results. Think back to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and how quickly that was labelled as a ‘homosexual disease’, until, of course, we experienced heterosexual people contracting and spreading the disease, as well as non-sexual transmission through blood. 

So we have a huge struggle with what we might call ‘unconditional diseases’ like our present Covid-19. It’s not dependent on race, or gender, or socio-economic status, or education, or work ethic. Now some of those factors can affect how seriously one experiences the coronavirus or our vulnerability to catching the disease, but Covid doesn’t care about what kind of persons you and I are, as long as you have living human tissue you can become diseased. It is an unconditional disease.

But I think our struggle with ‘the unconditional’ also happens with the good things – the positive things. If we work hard, and get ahead in life,  we’re content with our success being conditional on our effort.  But what happens if we simply seem to do really well for no particular reason – we make enough money, have lots of friends, receive lots of good fortune? And while we may appreciate it, underneath we still struggle to determine “why?” We want to make our success or our popularity ‘conditional’ – usually on something we’ve done, or on some attribute we’ve developed.

So my point is this: whether it’s a negative or a positive, we want to determine the underlying conditions causing the result. We struggle with the unconditional whether it’s positive or negative. If it’s a negative outcome, we try to figure out what we’ve done wrong – what weakness in us needs to be strengthened. If it’s a positive outcome, we try to assign it as conditional on some effort or attribute of ours.  Note the underlying assumption that ‘I’m in control of me and what happens to me!’

So then, what do we do with ‘unconditional love’ and, in particular, God’s unconditional love? In today’s Gospel reading from the Gospel of John we read (and we listened to a beautiful choir rendition of John Stainer’s musical rendition of this passage), we read these words: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. ‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him’.” There are no conditions. There are no underlying causes. There is nothing that you or I have done, or not done, to be recipients of God’s eternal, saving love!  We could try to claim, “Oh but I made the decision to believe in Jesus Christ.”  Yes, you may have, but that didn’t make you more worthy or more loveable. It simply enabled you to receive the gift that God was offering. It did not change the gift itself – the gift of God’s unconditional love.

This is what the 2nd Reading from the Letter to the Ephesians is trying to impress upon us as well. The author writes these words, “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved.” By grace – a free gift – totally unmerited, unearned – unconditional love. And the author asserts it again a verse or two later, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what God has made us …”

But I’m suggesting that we really struggle with this gift of unconditional love. In fact, I think most of us believe it in theory, but have trouble believing it in reality. We believe that God’s love for us must be tied to some kind of score sheet, somewhere! Why do we struggle?  Sometimes, it’s because we want to take some credit – somewhere – for our lovability and our acceptance by God, maybe to help us believe that it’s really true. Yes, we’re lovable to God because God made us that way – that’s the nature of God. So it takes humility, vulnerability, and trust to accept and receive the gift of God’s unconditional love for us – to receive this grace freely – unconditionally given.

Then there’s one more piece. In the Prayer after Communion today it opens it up for us. We’ll pray these words, “Giver of life … Fill our hearts with the splendour of your grace, that we may perfectly love you …” God is offering us, and expecting us to mirror, reflect back, the same unconditional love – first to God – loving God not because I’m doing well or prospering in my life – but simply because that’s who God has made me to be – regardless of how I might be feeling. And then, to love other people in the same unconditional way – not because of anything they’ve done to deserve that love, but simply because of who you and I are, and who God has created you and them to be.

That’s grace! That’s the splendour of God’s grace – so different from the rational ‘cause and effect’, conditional world that we experience all around us; and so transformational – for us and for everyone to whom we offer it. 

We need to “let go” of ourselves – let go of the need to attribute causes to effects in our lives, and instead, in humility, to receive God’s free gift of grace – God’s unconditional love – which then frees us to offer to all those around us the same gift of life-transforming grace. Thanks be to God!

Amen.