Sermon by:
The Rev. Pamela Dolan
“Walk in Love”
October 20, 2024
“Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” This verse from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is the source of the offertory sentence that is used most regularly in the Episcopal Church. Liturgically, it is said at the moment when we move from Word to Table, from a focus on listening and responding to God’s word to a focus on receiving Holy Communion, that sacramental action of blessing, breaking, and partaking of Christ’s body. The offertory sentence is a pivot point in our worship service, a doorway from one mode of worship into another.
Sometimes when I’m trying to go deep with a passage from Scripture, I look at various translations to see how even small differences in vocabulary or phrasing can open up new levels of meaning. In this case, I found The Message, a paraphrase by Eugene Peterson, to be especially helpful. It takes that one line and expands it into a short paragraph. Peterson writes,
“Watch what God does, and then you do it [too]. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.”
Yes! The Gospels are fundamentally our primary opportunity to watch what God does in Christ. That’s why we put the Bible at the center of our worship life, both in the Eucharist and in the daily office. And what Scripture shows us over and over again is that Christ’s love was extravagant, unfiltered, without limit, and that, as Peterson says, “He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything to us.” That is the pattern of self-offering, self-emptying life and love that Jesus gave us to follow.
But it doesn’t stop there. It can’t stop there. Christians who think we can just learn everything we need to know from the Bible and leave it at that are turning the book into an idol. Worse still, they are missing out on noticing the many ways that God is showing up now, in our own lives, in the world around us, through nature and people and everything that God made and loves. Peterson gets close us close to this real-life, present-tense reality when he says, “Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love.”
Keep company with God. Keep company with Jesus. Not as some artifact from the past, but as a living, current reality. Where better to do that than right here, in the church, the gathered and re-membered Body of Christ? It might not be going too far to say that that’s the primary purpose of the church: to help us communally, as a people, to find and notice and amplify our endless and varied opportunities to keep company with God and learn a life of love.
When I say that church is the best place to keep company with God and learn from Jesus, to walk the walk, as it were, it’s not because I think the world “out there” is so evil and corrupt that you need to stay here in the nice safe cocoon of the church in order to nurture your faith. Not at all. Building a true community based on love is hard work, and it’s just as hard in church as anywhere else—maybe even harder, sometimes.
We don’t show up here on Sundays to prove that we’re better than the people who spend their Sundays reading the New York Times or hiking or having brunch or whatever. We show up here on Sundays because we know we need other people, and because we know we need God, and because we need a place where it’s okay to admit that we need these things, where we can messy and broken and questioning, and we will still be reassured of God’s love. We need a place where we can look over at the person a few seats down from us, someone we don’t even know, and we can be fairly sure that they need something, too, and that they maybe don’t have it all figured out, either, and that that’s just fine.
And you know what? We’re in really good company. The disciples, whom Jesus loved with all his heart, weren’t always so great at this walking in love thing, either. They were literally on the road with Jesus, literally keeping company with him, and they still needed to be told over and over again that they were largely missing the point. We are here, Jesus says, not to be served but to serve, not to be first but to put others first, not to gain greatness or glory or power but to pour out our lives so that all may one day be free and healed and whole.
In the end what matters most is that we’re all on this road together. Some days the walk feels easy and you saunter along like you haven’t a care in the world and every person you meet is a window into the goodness of God. Other days, the walk is one hard, painful slog, like you’re ankle deep in mud and you’re carrying the weight of the world in your backpack. But most of the time, if there’s someone else on the road with you, you can keep walking, one step at a time, until the way gets a little smoother and the path a little clearer and maybe someone else even takes your pack from you for a little while so you can catch your breath and carry on. That’s a fragrant offering, right there, and perhaps the kind that the world truly needs right now: not acts of great heroism, but small acts done with great love.
Every time the bread is blessed and broken, and the wine is poured out and shared, God is recommitting to keeping company with us. How else could we come forward to receive that great gift of God’s companionship, but with love and in love and for love.
As our stewardship materials remind us: When we walk in love, there is clarity and purpose. We move in alignment with each other and with our values. Walking in love is also something we cannot do alone – by definition it implies connection, community. Whether we walk with our children or our spouse, or form an orderly line, or rely on the help of a friend or a neighbor to come forward to receive the Body of Christ, broken for us, we carry with us all with whom we are in communion and they carry us with them. Our journey is one made by millions, over thousands of years. A cycle of sharing and invitation.
What a way to bring our gifts forward: first the bread and wine followed by the offering plates, and finally ourselves—walking in love! When we gather in love, bless, break, and share our gifts and ourselves with the world, we are truly following in the footsteps of Christ. Amen.