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Measure Your Life In Love
And now on to the sermon: part
two. So you just listened to Evan, and I
bet that when you saw that there were going to be two sermons today, you were
just terribly enthused. So, just to
bring a comic break to the table, I thought that I would try your inner
monologues for a second. Oh wow, senior Sunday. hmm….lets scan the
bulletin………. song from Wicked, good.
Song from Rent, even better. What
is this, the Broadway church? Yeah some
lessons and scripture, uh huh….sermon….wait, rewind. TWO sermons, ohhh boy. Ok, so now that we’re all warmed up here, I
thought we could play this new game, if at any point you are all so extremely
bored that your considering slitting your wrists with the bulletins, if someone
would be so kind as to go tell Al, he’ll play some music, I’ll pretend that I
just received an Academy Award and that I’m being played off, Ok? So I sat down to write my sermon and I had
one of those experiences like when its one in the morning and I’m staring at
the computer screen thinking that I have no idea what to write about some book,
not to mention that I’m also sitting there thinking I probably wouldn’t be in
this mess if I actually read the book in the first place… So I’m sitting at the
computer, I’ve got my chill-out music playing, and I’m thinking to myself,
“What on Earth could I possibly say that could mean something to this
congregation?!” So I start to list
ideas, none of which seem the least bit inspirational or interesting to me,
when Seasons of Love starts playing. So
I’m sitting there like, well, this could work, and I start to listen. And I’m listening, kinda picking through the
lyrics when one specific lyric hits me.
Measure your life in love.
Measure your life in love, what a great idea. It’s such a simplistic
concept, God wants each and every one of us to love eachother. Before I thought about love in that way, I
believed love to be some elusive quality that you really only found when
something big occurred, like getting married or having children. Today, everyone seems to love something new
every minute, it seemed almost worthless to me, so I decided to keep note of
every time I heard someone or myself say the word love to another person. What I found really surprised me; as soon as
I started looking, I saw so many instances of smaller examples of love. So, love just isn’t reserved for your spouse
or your family anymore. Love can be
found in the tiniest of places, if you know how to look for it. Love is David Graybill driving all over
Wilton to deliver his Easter Sermon to someone who couldn’t make it to
church. Love is Al Galletly, dedicating
so much of his time to help out putting together a youth choir. Love is always being there to take care of
someone, even though they may not always remember you, but you do it anyways
because you stood before that person and before God and you pledged to be there
always, not just when it was easy and convienent. In today’s lesson from Matthew, we heard,
“For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” We are here together, united in our faith in
God, united in love. We are all here
because we believe not only in God, we believe in eachother as well. Without this belief in eachother, there would
be no reason for each and every one of us to gather here and worship. If we did not believe in eachother, we could
worship at home; a simple prayer before meals and perhaps one before you go to
bed. It is this belief in not only
ourselves, but in the other members of this congregation that brings us all
together and unites us under God. We
share our joys and our sorrows; we take a moment in each service to extend a
friendly greeting to those around us, we gather in places outside of the church
to continue to show our love and support for one another. It’s the little things that add up. Another aspect of love is the consequences of
loving somebody. I have heard it said that
Grief is the price of love. When you see
a stranger trip and fall, you feel sorry, but you do not grieve. You pause, see if they need help, and move on
with your life. You have no emotional
attachment to them because you do not love them. But, when someone that you love trips and
falls, or looses a friend, or gets rejected from their first choice college,
you grieve. You grieve not only for
them, but with them. You share their
tears and wrap your arms around them.
You whisper encouragements to not only help them, but to help yourself
as well. You tell them that everything
happens for a reason, what is meant to be is meant to be, and that it’s OK to
cry. Because that person is your friend,
because you have invested so much of yourself in them, because you love them;
you grieve. Another aspect of love is
moving on, letting go. One of todays
lessons reads, “ He sustained him in a desert land, in a howling wilderness
waste; he shielded him, cared for him, guarded him as the apple of his
eye. As an eagle stirs up its nest, and
hovers over its young; as it spreads its wings, takes them up, and bears them
aloft on its pinions, the Lord alone guided him.” This, I have learned in my relatively short
eighteen years, is the epitome of love.
To love someone so much, you let them go. Probably, the most typical example of this
love is a family preparing their children to go off to college. The child is ecstatic to be heading off to
college, whether it be down the road or across the country. The childs parents watch the scene unfold,
conflicted inside. Excited for their son
or daughter to start the new chapter in their life, all the while wondering how
they will deal with the emptiness in their homes and souls. Without the ritual morning fights when its
time to get ready for school. The seemingly
oh-so-necessary pictures before proms and dances. The family discussions around the dinner
table. And most importantly, the
fighting. The screaming, crying,
stomping and door-slamming. But the
parents know that they must let their child go, they cannot remain young
forever. To love someone is to let them
go. This imagery created in the bible is
also indicative of how Wilton Presbyterian Church has helped to shape the
people that we are today. Most of us
started coming here when we were young enough to attend church school. We were guided through the Bible, learning
lessons like David and Goliath and “Be kind to your neighbors” from our
teachers, fun and games, and Veggietales movies. We were encouraged to go participate on the
Mission Trips, to enhance our cultural awareness and to teach us to help
others. We spent nights and weekends in
the Upper Core participating in various youth groups, bonding us not only to
eachother in friendship, but also in our quest to find an understanding in our
religion. With the Church community acting
as the Eagle and us as the young, we took off into the sky in the beginning of
our times here. We entered confirmation
class, a preparation for our first solo flight.
We stood next door in the Parish Hall, and declared our intentions to
become members of the church. We flew
free of any support that day. Even
though we no longer needed the church community to fly for us, we all knew that
they were still there for us; still
willing to provide a guiding hand in not only our quest to God, but the journey
to ourselves. Another lesson I have learned
about love that I would like to share with you is to be weary of love, for
sometimes people love maliciously.
People may “love” you only in
order to advance themselves or their causes.
In the third lesson today from John, we heard, “This is my commandment,
that you love one another as I have loved you.
No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s
friends. You are my friends if you do
what I command you. I do not call you
servants any longer, because the servant
does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because
I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit,
fruit that will last, so that the father will give you whatever you ask him in
my name. I am giving you these commands
so that you may love one another.” By
laying down his life for us, Jesus made us ALL
his friends and loved us, not just those that were useful to him. Through his love God sustains us. Mother Theresa said that America has become a
selfish nation, in danger of losing the proper meaning of love, which she
defines as giving until it hurts. Before
her quotation, I had never heard love defined like that before. We talk and hear about love as the warm and
fuzzy feelings inside when we are with a special person. We talk about loving a new car or some other
object, meaning that we really like it, or really want it, or we spend all of our
free time working on it. We often equate
love with getting or having something. However, Mother Theresa said that love is
giving, giving until it hurts. That’s
what Jesus does. He not only gave until
it hurt, he gave until he gave his life for us.
I took some time after I read Mother Theresa’s quote to figure out my
love in which I gave until it hurt. I
found it, and it came from inside this church.
At first, I thought of the hurting as a physical hurt, like an ache or a
stomach cramp. I kept looking, and I
could not find a love that I had that physically hurt, so I moved on to
mentally and emotionally. BINGO! I realized that my love which I gave until it
hurt was one of my best friends, a friendship that had been fostered inside the
walls of this church. Lindsay
Rutishauser and I met when we were in first grade. We took a family vacation, and we began to
bond as friends in school, in theater, and in church during church school and
youth groups. We have worked together in
the past on productions we have been a part of, volunteering at Childrens
Theater and many other activities. Not a
day goes by that we don’t talk, but the most important part of our love as
friends is that we are always there for eachother, no matter what. We both know that we can ask the other person
to perform a task because we know it will get done. We were both there for eachother during the
college process. We comforted eachother
when we got bad news, and we celebrated when we were accepted. We have put many hours of work into helping
the other person, but most of all, we invest ourselves in eachother. We are always there for eachother, not just
when its convienent. As evident in the
lesson from Matthew, that when we are gathered, on our own, with the church
community, or with our peers at school; we are there to love, to give and
receive love in Gods presence. I want to
leave you with a final thought on love, life isn’t measured by the amount of
breaths you take, the amount of money you make, the car you drive, the job you
have, how many friends you have…none of those.
Your life is truly measured in love, giving and receiving love. My grandmother always says “say when”
whenever she is pouring something for you.
She would start to pour, “Say When,” she would chuckle, which I never
actually did. I never said when because
of the possibility of more. More candy,
more books, more clothes, more love.
More is always better.