It Starts With Love

[INTRO CITY SLICKERS CLIP: MITCH & CURLY)

You know what the secret of life is?

One thing.

That’s what the rest of the movie is really about…Mitch trying to figure out the “one thing” that is most important to him.

Let me ask you this—if you wanted to know the secret of life, who or what would you turn to?

I’m not sure if a grizzled old cowboy in a 30-year old movie would be my first choice, but you have to admit his answer is intriguing.

He at least keeps it simple: the secret is one thing, and you have to discover that one thing for yourself.

I guess he’s saying that the secret of life is going to be different for each person, which is a pleasant thought…but it’s not all that practical.

Isn’t there possibly an answer that works…for everyone?

Because deep down inside people are desperate to make sense of life, aren’t they?

The quest for some sort of meaning, some secret behind it all, has been going on since history began.

Everyone from Aristotle to Bob Dylan, from Plato to Steven Spielberg, from Confucius to Monty Python…

…and everyone in between…there are no shortage of folks who’ve tried to find an answer.

Even the great comedian Groucho Marks gave it a shot when he said:

“The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

As we get ready to listen to God’s Word this morning…I wonder how you would answer that question.

What is the secret of life?

And where would you go to learn more about that secret?

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Earlier I asked you about the secret of life.

What you may not know is that an extensive scientific survey has already figured it all out.

Back in 2004 George Vaillant, a Harvard psychiatrist and obviously very patient man, completed the last phase of an extensive study that tracked 268 people for 75 years, collecting data on their lives at regular intervals.

And at the very top of their conclusions was, in fact, a claim to have nailed down the secret to a happy and fulfilling life.

And sure enough…it was one thing.

Can anyone guess? (LOVE)

Vaillant put it like this:

(SLIDE)

“There are two pillars of happiness. One is love. The other is finding a way of coping with life that does not push love away."

That’s what it all comes down to: love.

Of course, any even just casual reader of the life of Jesus could have told them that and saved them all those years and all that money.

It’s all right there out of the mouth of Jesus himself in the gospel reading we just heard.

When asked by one of Israel’s teachers, “What is the greatest commandment?”

Notice how Jesus responds.

(SLIDE)

“The most important one is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

Jesus said two thousand years ago what those people at Harvard took 75 years to figure out: it all comes down to love.

Love for God.

Love for others.

That is the heartbeat of this full and abundant life we so desire for ourselves and for our churches.

Four simple words:

(SLIDE)

Love God, love others.

As I said last week, we are beginning a journey together as a congregation.

A journey to discover what it means to be a healthy church living out a vibrant and exciting mission in the world.

And that journey towards vitality, towards being healthier and more missional, begins right here with these words of Jesus.

Because if we don’t grasp this “one thing”…we might as well pack it up and go home.

This is why we’re here.

This is the reason we were put on this earth.

Jesus himself says there is nothing else we do that compares to these two.

And I wanted to begin here because these two become the measuring stick for everything else.

They are the plumb line, the scale for helping us evaluate all the things we do as Christians and all the things we do as a church.

And we’re going to be doing a lot of that over this vitality journey…we’re going to spend time looking at our lives…and looking at our ministries…

…and asking ourselves: do the things we do help us live out these two greatest commandments?

Are our individual lives and our corporate experiences as a church…are they centered well on these two priorities?

Or are there places where we need our focus sharpened and our passion reignited?

Love God…love others.

Four words.

Say them with me: “LOVE GOD. LOVE OTHERS.”

In the States you often find those four words on huge stickers on peoples’ cars.

But there’s a danger of reducing things to pithy slogans.

If we make it easy to say and remember, we can get fooled into thinking it’s easy to do and live out.

But let’s be honest for a moment.

Living out these two commandments is not an easy thing to do.

Because we live in a culture that values self above all else.

And yet these commandments…they call us to lay self aside.

That’s not something we do willingly, even in the church.

Even in the church we struggle to put God and others ahead of ourselves.

And I’ll admit, I struggle with that even as a pastor.

Agendas get in the way.

Emotions get in the way.

Our own felt needs get in the way.

And if we’re not careful we can give in to a consumer type of faith that believes that the church exists to make me happy…to make me feel good.

Now don’t get me wrong…I believe being part of a church can bring a great level of personal fulfillment.

But it’s not the goal.

The goal of being a church is not about retreating into our little Christian bubble where it’s safe and it feels good.

The goal of being a church is glorifying God and sharing Him with others.

Yes…sometimes there are seasons in life when we need to retreat.

When we’ve been beat up by the world, by the circumstances of life…sometimes even by other Christians.

And in those times we need to pull back and seek healing and restoration.

But it’s always with the goal and the hope that, having been restored, we are better able to engage this mission of glorifying God and sharing Him with others.

And notice in this mission there are two dimensions:

There’s a vertical dimension…our relationship with God…

…and a horizontal dimension…our relationship with other people.

LOVE GOD.

LOVE OTHERS.

You know, as I read these words of Jesus, and as I read the rest of his words and really the whole of Scripture…I’m struck by something significant:

The full and abundant life of following Jesus is less about retreating…than it is about pursuing.

Let me say that again:

The full and abundant life of following Jesus is less about retreating…than it is about pursuing.

We are called to pursue a relationship with Jesus…and we are called to pursue a relationship with the world he loved enough to die for.

We need to tend to both the vertical and the horizontal.

Last week I shared with you the two key words for our vitality journey:

(SLIDE)

Healthy and Missional.

And this language of pursuit is key in understanding what those mean.

(ADD TO SLIDE)

Healthy is about “pursuing Christ.”

Missional is about “pursuing Christ’s priorities in the world.”

(ADD TO SLIDE) Loving God…Loving others. Do you see it?

These two priorities are rooted in the words of Jesus.

And they’re not just suggestions…they are literal “commandments.”

And that’s a tricky word sometimes for us.

We hear that word—commandment—and we start thinking about other words…like rules and obligations and obedience and effort.

But I’d like to give you a different word to think about when it comes to loving God and loving others.

It’s the word…response.

Because that’s what love is.

It’s a response.

It’s not something we have to manufacture within ourselves, it’s not a commodity we need to figure out how to get a hold of.

Think of the famous verse from 1 John:

(SLIDE)

“We love…because God first loved us.”

I hope that verse comes as a comfort to you if you, like me, struggle at times with a lack of love.

Or you feel that your love is somehow deficient or faulty.

Truth is—left to our own devices, the kind of love Jesus calls us to just doesn’t happen.

The love Jesus is talking about in these to commandments, the key to expressing that love for God and love for neighbor…lies in first understanding the love God has for you.

Our love, John says, is a response to that love.

(THE ONE JESUS LOVES)

If we can learn to truly rest in that…we find that the response of loving God and loving other people becomes as natural as breathing.

These are the vertical and horizontal dimensions of our mission.

And if we neglect either of them, we’re in great danger.

Jesus isn’t giving us a choice here, he isn’t saying, “Pick one of these, and do it.”

Both are important.

Granted, he does rank them.

He does make it clear the pursuit of God comes first.

It’s the place out of which everything else flows.

We can’t fully love our neighbor as we should if we’re not first attending to our love of God.

That’s why in this vitality sermon series we’ll be tending to the vertical dimensions first and stressing the importance of things like worship…prayer…community…discipleship…

…because I believe without these things we can’t live out the commandment to love God with everything we are.

But I also believe that if we lean into these things fully and sacrificially, then they will radically impact how we live out that second commandment.

“We love…because he first loved us.”

The vertical dimension comes first.

At the center of who we are as a church…is the truth that God loves us and calls us into relationship with himself.

But the reality is…the more we rest in the knowledge of God’s love and grow in our experience of loving him…that growth empowers us to love others well.

Especially when you consider that we’re called to love EVERYONE.

Even our enemies. Even those who persecute us. Even those who hurt us.

We’re called to love.

And I don’t know about you…but I don’t have that in me.

It’s not natural for me to love those who have hurt me.

But that’s just the thing: it’s not natural.

It’s supernatural.

As you and I draw closer to God…we are able to love others in ways we never thought possible.

And the beautiful thing is this:

As you and I learn what it means to love God with every fiber of our being…as we pursue Christ…

….and as we learn what it means to love our neighbors and share Jesus with them…as we pursue his priorities:

…we are drawn into a life that is far more amazing than we can ever imagine.

That’s vitality.

That should be the heartbeat of every church.

But for it to the heartbeat of our church…it first needs to be the heartbeat of every one of us.

You know, in a lot of churches…when you start talking about mission and vision and the future of the church and all that...

...in a lot of churches a lot of people listen to it all and say, “That sounds great! Can’t wait to hear how it goes!”

But this vitality journey we’re starting isn’t something that’s done just by the church leadership.

It’s something we do together.

Jesus isn’t just talking to pastors and elders and managers in our passage from Mark.

He’s talking to each and every one of us.

Let me put it as plainly and as bluntly as I can:

If the church of Jesus Christ in the 21st century is going to experience renewal and vitality and growth…it’s going to happen because her people are experiencing renewal and vitality and growth in their own lives.

So let me bring this down to a personal level and ask you:

What does it mean for you personally…to love God and to love others?

What would it look like for you to grow in the vertical dimension of your faith, pursuing Christ more intentionally and passionately in your own life?

And what would it look like for you to grow in the horizontal dimension of your faith, pursuing Christ’s priorities of transformation, unity, forgiveness, grace, and mercy in your personal relationships?

Friends…the invitation in this journey of vitality, first and foremost, is for you.

Jesus said, “I have come that you might have life…and have it in abundance.”

The abundant life he’s talking about…is a life centered on love.

Filled with a love for God that connects us to him in a real, tangible, powerful way.

And love for others that leads to transformed lives, restored relationships, and an experience of God’s Kingdom here on earth.

Does that sound intriguing to you?

If it does, then my invitation to you is to join us on this journey.

(VITALITY JOURNEY: LENT, GOSPEL READINGS….TRANSITION TO PRAYER)