Sunday, September 15th: "Original Words: Agape"

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First United Presbyterian Church

“Original Words: Agape”

Rev. Amy Morgan

September 15, 2024

Romans 8:31-39

31 What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 32 He who did not withhold his own Son but gave him up for all of us, how will he not with him also give us everything else? 33 Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? It is Christ[a] who died, or rather, who was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. 35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? 36 As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all day long;

    we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.”

37 No, in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

1 Corinthians 13

13 If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast[a] but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12 For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love. 

My heart was racing. I walked down the hallway toward the theater, taking deep breaths, wiping my sweaty palms on my jeans, trying to convince myself that what I was about to see really didn’t matter that much. 

But the truth was, I had been in torment for the last several days. I had given what I was sure was the best audition of my life, and I wanted the role so badly. My high school was staging a production The Miracle Worker, a play about the life of Hellen Keller. In my audition, I’d let go of all inhibitions to embody the fury of a girl who was blind and deaf and struggling to understand the world around her. I had given the director everything she could ask for. I had done everything I could to earn this role of a lifetime, and I had waited in agony for the cast list to be posted. 

But as I stared at the white piece of paper posted on the wall next to the backstage door, my name was not on it. Hellen Keller would be played by a petite, arrogant Freshman whom I now despised. And I would run the sound board and watch every single performance. 

I felt like the worst actor ever. If I couldn’t get a role by giving the best audition of which I was capable, what was the point? I thought I was good, but I was tragically mistaken. 

Actors are known for having fragile egos. But all of us have this deep desire to feel special, to be affirmed, to be chosen. All of us want that Sally Fields feeling of, “You like me! You really like me!” 

All of us have the need to be loved. 

Any of us who knew Bill Spearman are well aware that there are seven different words for love in the Greek language. There are different words for romantic love, brotherly affection, the love between parents and children, flirtatious love, committed love, and self-love. And then there is agape love. 

Agape comes from the Greek word meaning “to prefer.” It is a love that affirms, chooses, sees the inherent worth of another. It was the word for love that came to characterize the Christian community of the first century. 

The early church father, Tertullian, in his defense of Christianity to the Roman authorities, wrote, “See how they love one another!” Agape love motivated Christians to care for the poor among them, to host feasts where people of high status sat humbly with the those of lower esteem, and even to be imprisoned and die for one another. 

But the Corinthian church struggled with this notion of agape love. They felt like people needed to audition for the cast of the Christian church. People would give their best performance, offer everything they had, but it wasn’t enough for some in the Corinthian church. In truth, the church was having trouble sorting out what was enough. Did agape love require wealth and status? Purity and righteousness? A particular citizenship or profession? What exactly were the qualifications?

The apostle Paul attempted to put these questions to rest in his detailed description of agape in 1 Corinthians 13. No audition will win you agape love. You don’t have to give the best performance. You don’t have to speak well, prophesy, know it all or even have great faith. You don’t have to be generous. Agape is not a love that comes from how good we are, what we do, or what we believe. 

Let me be clear on this point: Paul is saying to a CHRISTIAN community that you don’t need faith or works, gifts or wisdom to be worthy of love. In fact, none of these things matter in the least if we do not have love. Agape is not something we can earn.

Instead, Paul says, agape is patient, kind, not envious, boastful, arrogant or rude. It is not selfish, irritable, resentful, or false. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Agape never ends. 

Agape love bears with our terrible performances, believes in our limitless potential, hopes for our well-being, and endures our faults and failings. Agape love understands that we are only human, that we are trying our best to grow up and stop acting like children, that we can’t possibly see the whole picture clearly. And agape love chooses us anyway. Agape love prefers us, affirms us, sees our inherent worth. 

This is not a love that we find in abundance in our world today. 

Life can feel like a constant audition. We try to do those things that will get us cast as the good child, the capable employee, the affectionate parent or grandparent, the smart kid, the nice person. When we start a new school, a new job, move to a new neighborhood, or meet a new acquaintance, we are auditioning to join the cast of a circle of friends. We have political candidates auditioning for our votes, corporations auditioning for our dollars, and non-profits auditioning for our compassion. Our culture is built on trying to get cast in a better and better role, trying to earn people’s preference, affirmation. We’re all giving our best in the hope that someone will see us and acknowledge our inherent worth. 

Author Anne Foerst wrote, in her book about what robots teach us about humanity and God, “The biblical term agape describes the attempt to treat everyone as a person.” It sounds overly-simplistic, but it’s not what we always do. We treat people as commodities, as objects to fulfill our needs, as robots who are supposed to say and do what we want. Agape treats everyone as a person. It affirms the inherent worth of each person’s humanity. It recognizes the human need to be chosen, preferred, loved.

Agape love doesn’t require an audition. And the Christian community knows this. We know that God loved us before we even knew what role we were trying out for. God loved us during our worst performances. And God loves us after we’ve given up loving ourselves. 

God’s love is agape love. It is a love that chooses us not because we’re good-looking or a blood relation or fun to be with or in any way fulfill God’s desires. God’s agape love chooses us for no reason at all. It’s a love that doesn’t require us to be or do anything. It’s a love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome that God’s agape love endures affliction, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, and sword. It endures anything that life or death can throw at us, any power or principality in heaven or on earth. It endures every regret and resentment and trauma of the past and every possible failure or misfortune in the future. No mountain or valley, nothing in all creation, can separate us from God’s agape love in Jesus Christ. Because God’s love never ends. 

All our auditioning – our speeches and prophesies - will come to an end. But God’s agape love never ends. There’s nothing we can do to make God love us less.

Because God knows us fully. We don’t have to audition for God because God already knows who we are – our strengths and challenges, our dreams and fears, our wisdom and confusion. God knows it all. And still, God prefers us, God loves us. 

And by “us” I mean ALL of us. There is no cast list that goes up where some people make the cut and others are left out. God prefers, God loves, each and every human being created in the image of God. And nothing any of us can do can separate us, or anyone else, from that love. God knows us fully, and loves us endlessly. 

On opening night of The Miracle Worker, the director sat next to me as I glumly ran through the sound cues. As the actor playing Helen Keller went into her raging fit, the director said to me, “You were good for the part. But you were too tall. We’re doing Our Town in the fall. You should try out for Emily.” 

That role turned out to be the one that was right for me. I auditioned, but I didn’t have to. The director had chosen the play for me. She knew me, better than I knew myself. I wasn’t the worst actor ever. I wasn’t terribly mistaken about my gifts and passion. I was loved. Through my great auditions and terrible performances, through my teenage trauma and triumph, I was loved. And that love led me to study acting in college. That love led me to put those skills to use in Christian ministry. That love led me to re-arrange my life for a few days last summer to pray over the coffin of that director when she suddenly died. 

You see, when we experience agape love, we can’t help but love others in that same way. The early Christian community came to be defined by agape love because they had experienced the agape love of God in Jesus Christ. And so they, imperfectly, loved each other and their communities with that agape love. 

The philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard wrote, “As the quiet lake is fed deep down by the flow of hidden springs, which no eye sees, so a human being’s love is grounded, still more deeply, in God’s love. If there were no spring at the bottom, if God were not love, then there would be neither a little lake nor a person’s love. As the still waters begin obscurely in the deep spring, so a [hu]man’s love mysteriously begins in God’s love.”

That deep spring of agape love exists within each of us. We simply must tap into it, allow it to flow through us. 

My church in Michigan housed a non-profit organization called FAR. It offered arts therapy to children with special needs. Each spring, the students put on a performance for the community. They sang, danced, played instruments, and told jokes. There were no auditions for this performance. Everybody got a part. Everybody got a standing ovation. Everybody felt chosen, affirmed, loved. 

This is how we are invited to love as children of a loving God. No auditions, everyone gets a part in the cast of our loved ones. And if we can do that, even just a little more often, perhaps we will see more singing, more dancing, more music, and more laughter in our lives and in our world. 

To God be all glory forever and ever. Amen.