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“Looking For Love
In All the Right Places”
Text: 1 John 5:1-6
a sermon by Kevin Fleming
Sunday, May 10, 2015
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH - EVANSVILLE, INDIANA
Some of you will remember a film that was released 35 years ago,
called “Urban Cowboy.” It was one of those films that sought to cash in
on a contemporary trend and the trend at that time was all things cowboy.
The film starred John Travolta and Debra Winger as two love-struck
Texas young people who alternated their time between their jobs and
Gilley’s, the world-famous, world’s largest watering hole in Pasadena,
Texas. The movie was rightly summarized in the line, “hard-hat days and
honky-tonk nights.”
“Urban Cowboy” gave the culture things like line-dancing and
mechanical bulls. People were pulling on their western boots and jeans
and western shirts. Everyone owned a cowboy hat and did their best to
learn the western two-step. The trend stayed with us for quite some time
and then sort of played out as country music changed. For some of us, the
day that trend died was second only to the day disco died. Rest in peace
and good riddance.
But, there was a song from “Urban Cowboy” that struck a chord with
both country and pop fans. The song was “Lookin’ for Love in All The
Wrong Places” and was recorded by country singer Johnny Lee. It hit
number 1 on the Billboard country chart and made it all the way to number
5 on the pop chart. It sort of summarized what was going on in the movie
and in the culture of the time. The chorus said:
© 2015 Kevin Scott Fleming
I was looking for love in all the wrong places
Looking for love in too many faces
Searching your eyes, looking for traces
Of what.. I’m dreaming of...
Hopin’ to find a friend and a lover
God bless the day I discover
Another heart, lookin’ for love.
There were all kinds of people who could related to those sentiments back
then.
And there still are today. Just watch a little television and you’ll be
bombarded by ads for ChristianMingle.com, eHarmony, Match.com,
FarmersOnly.com, OurTime.com (for those of a more mature age level), and
so many more. All kinds of people are still “looking for love” and now that the
probabilities of love can be reduced to a series of zeroes and ones, the internet
can help you find “another heart, lookin’ for love.”
Now, obviously, there is a particular kind of love being sought in the song
and on the websites. People are looking for that other person with whom they
can share their lives in intimate and cherished ways. Finding that person who
helps life make sense is sometimes a rewarding – sometimes frustrating –
experience. And sometimes, you get really lucky and find the person who
makes your heart sing and you make their heart sing and the music goes on and
on.
But the love of which the First Letter of John speaks, is not that
passionate, physical love, but a kind of love that is at the heart of what it means
to be a Christian. While we have one word for love – which expresses our
delight in everything from green beans to our partner – the Greeks had four
words for love, each expressing a distinctive kind of love. The word for love
in our passage from the First Letter of John is agapé.
Agapé is the selfless, compassionate, love-in-action that Christians are to
have for one another and for their neighbors. Agapé flows, not from the human
heart, but from the selfless, compassionate love-in-action of God’s own heart.
In Paul’s classic definition to the Corinthians, it is the love that
patient and kind;
it is a love that is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude;
it is love that does not insist on its own way;
it is love that is not irritable or resentful;
it is love that does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.
This love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things,
endures all things.
And this love never ends.
This is the love that most imitates the very love of God. And it’s not easy. Not
by a long-shot.
John writes, “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born
of God and everyone who loves the parent loves the child.” Okay, that makes
sense. We’re accustomed to hearing that. “By this we know that we love the
children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.” There’s a
little twist there. Usually we think of obeying God’s commandments to prove
how we love God, but this verse says that our love for God and our desire to
keep God’s commandments proves that we love our Christian brothers and
sisters.1 Love for God and love for one another grows out of a relationship
with God. And who is God? For the Christian – God is defined by God’s
saving, redeeming, and recreating love in Jesus Christ. We know that, even
though we sometimes forget to live it.
But, then, the Letter gives us a moment of challenge. “For the love of God
is this, that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not
burdensome, for whatever is born of God conquers the world.” Now, I’ve been
a Christian for nearly 58 years and I’ve been a pastor for 29 years and I gotta
tell you – there are days when loving God by loving my sisters and brothers in
the faith is pure burden. Some of my sisters and brothers in the faith drive me
nuts! (Not anyone here today, of course.) When some Christians start spouting
their version of Christianity in the media and in congressional gathering places,
I want to completely disassociate myself from them. There are days I don’t
want to be identified as a Christian because of what some of my sisters and
brothers are up to.
The problem is: love is a birthright of our faith. Love comes to us as both
gift and grace. Love comes to us in times of despondency and unhappiness and
love comes to us in times of exuberance and cheerfulness. Love comes to us
and makes us new. Love comes to us in spite of who we are and what we have
done. Love comes to us in spite of what we believe or don’t believe. Love
shakes us from our complacent way of life and drives us deeper into life’s
truest meaning and purpose.
And it is this love – this selfless, compassionate, endlessly giving love –
that will win out over all the lesser forms of love that the world around us
offers. It is this love that will bring meaning and significance to life after the
trinkets and charms of the world have tarnished and shriveled. It is this love
that brings forth the fullness and richness of life that we always seem to be
searching for, but in all the wrong places.
Sometimes, if we are lucky, we learn that kind of love in the heart of our
homes. Sometimes we learn that love from caring and compassionate friends
who seem to reflect the love of God with ease and grace. Sometimes we
experience that love unexpectedly and out of the blue.
That self-giving, life-changing love finds its source in God. That same
First Letter of John reminds us that – whatever else anyone may say about God
– God is love. And God’s people are to be people of love. And if we are going
to be people of love, we have to look for love in all the right places and, chief
among them, is the very person of God.
This agape love – this patient, kind, generous, understanding,
compassionate love – is the foundation of true life and true living. All other
forms of love find their beginnings here. This is the right place to begin
looking for love.
In the lead up to the Gulf War, a group of Christians gathered for prayer.
There were songs, and scripture, and prayer, and then more songs, and more
scripture, and more prayer. It went on for a while. A young man, of about
eighteen or nineteen, maybe a college freshman, offered a prayer, during the
sentence prayers, asking that God be with the women and children in Iraq who
would be hurt and killed in the war. When the gathering was over, a man in
his mid-fifties came over to that young man and said, “Are you on Saddam’s
side?” The young man replied, “Uh, no sir.” To which the man replied,
“Well, you’re praying for the wrong people.” 2
One got it. One didn’t. One reflected the love of God. One moved
toward the darkness. One lived the command of God. One walked the way of
the world and not the way of God.
“By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God
and obey his commandments. And his commandments are not
burdensome, for whatever is born of God conquers the world.”
“I give you a new commandment: that you love one another.”
For now and evermore. Amen.
1.) Feasting on the Word, year B, volume 2, p. 492
2.) Craddock Stories, p. 130