Christmas Gods Love is Our Reason for Being

 Christmas Gods Love is Our Reason for Being

December 25, 1973 – preached at St. Paul’s Walla Walla

By Rev. Ernest F. Campbell

In the beginning, and rom the beginning, God’s love has been our reason for being.

From age to age and time to time and from person to person we have kicked against this

truth…kicked against it hard with…

     Our quest for greater independence

     Our accumulation of scientific knowledge.

     Our personal opinion of our own importance.

But the truth has never been dented, nicked, scratched or changes…. In God’s love we live,

move, and have our reason for being.

So what! What difference does it make?

If god’s love isn’t our reason for being then this world, where we all struggle for survival, will

force us to justify our existence by inventing our own reason for being. A game fraught with

destructive potential.

One group might come to believe that their reason for being is to see that no one that is different

gets across the white line. While at the same time another group might come to believe that their

reason for being is to somehow get across that blasted white line…. because it puts them down.

Another group may come to believe that their reason for being is to promote their wonderful

system. A system developed out of scientific study and research destined to bring happiness to

all. While at the same time another group may come to believe that their reason for being is to

get power so when they have that power, they can get rid of that suffocating system.

History must be tired of teaching us that when we all invent our own reason for being, we must

at the same time, invent (for someone else) a reason not to be. We say we will…and we do…give

our lives to prove our reason is superior.

Why is it so difficult to look at the people with whom we share living accommodations on this

fragile space ship we call earth and boldly proclaim that God’s love is their reason for being?

Why is that so difficult? Because in dark times we all have trouble believing God’s love for

ourselves. Who hasn’t said from the depth of his own agony and self-disgust…when we have

really messed up our life, or the life of someone else…. “How could anyone love me?”

That timeless question, lie a prayer, has leaped from the heart of everyman. God hears. And

because He cares has never stopped, never will stop trying to help us know the reality of His

love. Listen again to the prologue of the Good News. God’s response to our question, “Can

anyone love me?”

(with some slight changes)

“In the beginning was the Reason-for-Being, and the Reason-For-Being was with Love, and the

Reason-for-Being was Love. And Love became Flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and

truth. We have beheld His glory.”

To see love is to see God. The incarnation is the enfleshment of love…. Love coming to life,

becoming real in life’s experiences!

Surely this led St. Paul to write, “Christ is the visible expression of the invisible God.” And John

to write, “God’s love in Christ was there from the beginning; we have heard it, we have seen it

with our own eyes; we have looked upon it and felt it with our hands.”

God loves the people of His own creation so much that when he heard us cry out from our pitter

loneliness, self-disgust, and crippling hatred….” Can anyone love us?” He put his answer in

flesh….in the person of Jesus Christ who lived, died, and rose from the dead that we might surly

know and believe yes!.....someone can love you…God’s love is your reason for being. Yes,

someone does love you.

Wonderful words…. beautiful words…but how can these mere words whish we have all heard so

many times before, make God’s love a reality to me now?

Simply parroting ‘God is love’ doesn’t do it. And we are only kidding ourselves if we say we

believe those words without the experience.

Like the incarnation, if those words are to become a reality, we must dare to live them and risk

letting them live in our own lives. So when we hear the question, “Can anyone love me” don’t

send words, send yourself.

One man told me after being in a hospital for one year that he would never send a get-well card

to anyone without attaching a note. It was only the notes, personally written, that helped him

feel real through his pain and isolation.

The small group of men who meet for what we call “Proper’s Breakfast” to study the lessons for

the coming Sunday have reached a point in our relationship where we can ask each other some

very down to earth, practical, and sometimes hard to answer questions about the words we read

and talk about in Holy Scripture.

So, this question was raised. “If scriptures say God’s love is for real then specifically, how has it

been made real to you during this past year?

After thinking about it for a minute I answered, this breakfast time together. If anything has

given me a reason for being, if anything has allowed me to be me…bearing success and failures

it has been the insight fellowship and love shared here.

Then the others sitting around said that they would agree…it meant the same to them. If God

speaks to us anywhere He speaks to us at that proper’s breakfast through our discussion of His

Word. And these men did not say this in some kind of polite perfunctory way…to make the

rector feel happy (we know each other better than to try) but they said it with a conviction you

could bet your life on.

Since then, I have continued to think about the question and it’s been like opening a food

gate…the more you open it the more pours through. God’s love has become more and more real

to me in many ways during this past year…

     In and through the Campbell family

     Through the Bishop and fellow clergy

     Through our many wonderful friends here and all over the place.

     Through our prayer group and answered prayers.

     Through a series Fr. Jarboe presented Wednesday mornings on the meaning of the

        Eucharist

     (and I’m not just listing everything I do, but if time permitted could describe a specific

        experience that showed me more clearly that God’s love is for real)

Yes, God’s love is made flesh and it has dwelt among us.

The visibility of God may be hazy for many of us at times because we haven’t give ourselves

over to love, to trust, to a go ahead kind of commitment.

We are like beginner riders who kick our horse to make him go and then pull back on the reigns

because we’re afraid he will.

Let me conclude with this challenge:

There is a need – a deep need – for people who can trust the go-ahead of the good news, who can

give themselves to love, who can experience the incarnation for themselves. In the midst of

mistrust in high places, personal loneliness and despair, the visibility of god must come with

clarity; the incarnation must be seen in us – in persons who can trust and love, in persons who

are sensitive and responsive, in persons who will commit themselves.

Wouldn’t the Angels rejoice if the whole town looked at this parish community, and based on

what they saw happening here among us…. dare to ask, “Can anyone love me?”