• "God Loved Us First"
• Sermon for the First Sunday after Trinity
• June 13, 2004
• The Reverend Stephen C. Scarlett

"Herein is love," says St. John in the epistle (1 John 4:7-21), "not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins." That is to say, the initiative in love is with God.

The initiative was with God in creation. God chose, in love, to create the world, to give us life. The initiative was with God in redemption. He chose Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and made Israel his people. He sent his Son into the world to die on the cross. Then God pursued each of us individually by the Holy Spirit, calling us to faith.

As Hymn 405 says, "I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew He moved my soul to seek him, seeking me; It was not I that found, O Saviour true; No, I was found of thee."

In the Garden of Eden, after the first sin, Adam and Eve hid from God in the bushes-naked, ashamed of what they had done and afraid of God. That is where fallen man remains. We claim to search for God but we really hide from him, afraid of the implications of being known.

Grace brings us out of hiding. Grace is the unmerited love of God. The experience of grace is the experience of God's unmerited favor. God does not love us because of what we have done. God loves us because God is love. We cannot earn or merit the love of God. Our highest and best religious effort cannot earn the smallest measure of grace.

In fact, true Christianity works in exactly the opposite direction. If we experience but the smallest measure of grace, we will be moved by the experience to love as we have been loved. And the failure to love shows that we have not really come to know the grace of God. As the epistle says, "He that loveth not, knoweth not God."

In this light, what are we to make of the rich man in the gospel (Luke 19:31) who ended up in Hades, tormented in the flame? We might say that the rich man ended up on the wrong side of the great gulf because he failed to love Lazarus. But we would get closer to the root of the problem if we said that he failed to love Lazarus because he did not know the love of God. "He that loveth not, knoweth not God."

The rich man was religious in some sense. He referred to Abraham as "Father." He was most likely an observant Jew who went to the synagogue on the Sabbath and the temple for the appointed feasts. But he did not know the love of God. And, thus, he did not act in love towards Lazarus, who was laid at his gate.

The rich man's religion was not rooted in grace. He probably believed that he merited God's favor. That all he had was his just reward. He probably thought that Lazarus, laid at his gate full of sores, was suffering the just reward of his sins.

When God saved Israel from Egypt, he warned the nation against this kind of attitude. Deuteronomy says, "Take heed lest you forget the Lord your God...lest, when you have eaten and are full, and have built goodly houses and live in them...and your silver and gold is multiplied; then your heart be lifted up and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt...lest you say in your heart, 'My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth'" (8:11-17).

When we come to think that what we have is ours by right and not the gift of God, we forget the unmerited favor he has shown us. Forgetting God's love towards us, we forget to love. Life becomes inwardly focused. We come to be preoccupied with getting and holding rather than giving to others what we ourselves have received from God.

Thus, we need to remember, constantly, the grace we have received from God through Jesus Christ. As 2 Corinthians says, "You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that you, through his poverty might become rich" (8:9).

We come to the altar of God precisely to remember, to receive again the gift. In the Holy Eucharist, Jesus, King of kings and Lord of lords, comes down from heaven again to forgive our sins, to remove our guilt, to comfort us in our afflictions, to give us new strength, to raise us from the dead. As Jesus said, "He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day" (John 6:54).

What merit do we bring to the altar that is worthy of his gift? We come as sinners, perhaps having even fallen in the same place as the week before. We have come having left undone the things we ought to have done and having done the things we ought not to have done. We come with sins of thought, word and deed. We come unworthy to gather up even the crumbs under God's holy table. Yet, Jesus is always there. Jesus is always Really Present to give himself for us.

We come to the altar, spiritually, as Lazarus lay at God's gate. We come covered with the sores of sin; we come spiritually hungry and dying. But Jesus does not ignore us. By his stripes the wounds of our sins are healed. He lifts us off the ground and gives us a seat at the heavenly banquet.

Can we eat so freely and generously from God's table and then refuse to feed others with the abundance God has given us? If we have been made one body with him so that he dwells in us and we in him, then do we not go out into the world as members of his body to feed others with the gifts he has given us-to do the good works he has prepared for us to walk in?

As St. John says, "Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another." And we ought to be always watchful for Lazarus, whom God has laid at our gate.