Sermon: Words to Live By

1 John 4:7-21

Last summer, there was a YouTube video that got a renewed surge of interest. It was already a popular one. People had sent it back and forth to each another, and it got a lot attention. The reason it got attention is pretty simple: It invited people to sit back and truly take stock of what matters most to them. Who are the people that matter? What dreams matter the most? What goals matter the most? Who are you, and how will you be the one who values all of these?

And then last summer, the person behind the video tragically died of pancreatic cancer. That’s when the video became even more significant. Randy Pausch purposefully died the same way he lived. He lived for the people and experiences he most valued, and as he died, he kept these at the center of himself. In that video, he taught the world a lot by simply prioritizing what really mattered to him. It seems like a simple act to prioritize like that, but as you and I know, we miss the boat way too often. Randy Pausch inspired people to think about what really matters.

He learned that he had pancreatic cancer in 2006. He knew that odds were very much against him. This cancer would almost certainly take his life. And in 2007, he made that video. He was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and he participated in a series of talks there called the “Last Lecture.” Basically, the premise was this: If you could know that you were giving your last lecture ever, what would you want to say? What wisdom would you try to impart to the world if you knew it was your very last chance? In 2007, he gave that lecture. Randy Pausch was different than the other professors who gave that talk, of course, because he knew he was actually dying. He had only learned this one month before the lecture; in fact, it was the same week he had consented to give the lecture. He didn’t plan to give it as one who would die soon, but he faced the truth of that. He spoke about how he had achieved his dreams and invited the audience to do the same. The lecture was so successful and meaningful that he was given a book contract. He co-authored the book called The Last Lecture which expanded the themes of his speech, and it was a New York Times best-seller. Tragically, cancer took its toll, and he died last summer on July 25th.

And Randy Pausch poses some big questions to us: If you knew you were speaking for the last time, or if you knew that you were living your last days, what would you want people to know? What wisdom would you hope to impart to the world? What is so important that you would die for it – or more importantly, die living for it? Those are good questions.

I doubt that the author of our scripture tonight was thinking about a last lecture when these words were written, these words that were part of a letter to an ancient church millennia ago. But I do have a feeling that the author believed these words about love to be ultimate. And the church over time has agreed with him. The church has read and studied these words over the course of millennia because the church has trusted that these words contain a Word – Capital W – for us and for our lives. If the author of these words were given the chance to give a last lecture to us tonight, I wonder if something like this text would come to us. These words about love encapsulate so much of what life is about. I wonder what that last lecture would be like. . .

God is love. God loves so deeply, so fully, so broadly, we could just go ahead and equate God with love! That’s because God’s being is first and foremost about love. God is love. And God doesn’t just love that way on paper. God loves you! God loves us! God loves you deeply, fully, and broadly. That’s how God loves us. God is love.

Those are words to live by. Those are words to live for.

Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God. But if we love one another, we might as well be seeing God! If we love one another, God lives in us and God’s love is perfected in us. If we love one another, this God beyond our seeing is right in our midst. God, here. God, right now. God with us, loving us.

Words to live by. Words to live for.

Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness even on the day of judgment! Why? Because as he is – as Christ is – so are we in this world. There is no fear in love. None whatsoever, because perfect love casts out all fear. Fear has to do with punishment. But God is love and invites us into perfected love – free from fear and full and freedom. We can live that way! We can love and be loved that way.

That’s what these words are telling us. That’s why these words are truly worth living for.

And the commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also. For those who do not love their brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. Brother and sister. . . We don’t get to decide who’s in and who’s out. God brothers and sisters us together with all of humanity. That means that those people on the street out there are our brothers and sisters. They’re related to us. And when we love them, we are loving God. We are living into the perfected love of God when we love those around us – especially when we show love to people who may have forgotten what it means to be loved.

Words to live by. Words to live for.

These words might not be a last lecture, but we could say that these words are part of this author’s longest-lasting lecture. And that’s probably no surprise. They’re not just words on a page, but they are a Word that can be lived. So what do they mean to us? I wonder. . . how would words like these filter into our last lecture? How are these words a Word, lived and embodied in our own experience? How do these words point to the Word made flesh among us?

This weekend, I’ve had to ask myself: If I were giving a last lecture of sorts – or a last sermon – what would I want to say? More importantly, what would God want me to say? How would I testify to God’s love? How would I give testimony to how God has been revealed?

Those are big questions, of course, and God’s love and God’s revelation can’t be boiled down into little bullet points. God’s love is not a premise. God’s revelation is not a list of theological propositions. God’s love is lived. God’s revelation is experienced. We are called to testify to it, to point to it. We’re all called to be beggars who tell other beggars where to find bread. So I will tell you just a little splice of where I have found bread.

I’ve found these things to be most true:

God loves us with a love beyond anything we can understand! God chooses us and elects us. God is surrounding us with a community, larger and more cosmic than we can imagine, to love and shape us. God communities us and gathers us. God is calling us to be a community, deeper and richer than we can comprehend, to love and shape others. God calls us to elect others into this family of faith.


So if I had to start somewhere, I might take my cues from this scripture. God is love. God chooses and elects us for love. What does that mean?

A few summers ago, I was on staff at College Connection at Mo Ranch. After one of the talks, some of the students were hanging around in the lodge, and a couple of them were asking theological questions of Ben Johnston-Krase, who used to be one of our pastors. I wasn’t directly part of the conversation, but I was listening. One of the students asked, “So what does predestination mean?” And. . .I laughed. I laughed to myself because for many people, predestination has been a doctrine like this: “From the beginning of time, God has elected some for salvation and some for damnation. There’s nothing anyone can do about it. You’re either in, or you’re out. Case closed.” That’s one way that predestination has been taught. I wondered how Ben would answer the question.

He said something I’ve never quite forgotten. God loves us deeply, and because God loves us deeply, God has pledged to be God to us. And there’s nothing we can do to make God love us more. And there’s nothing we can do to make God love us less. God loves us fully. And because God has pledged to be God to us, we are each someone in light of that pledge. There is nothing we can do to cast ourselves out from that love.

To bring the point home, he mentioned his daughter Sylvia. “I love Sylvia, and I have pledged to be someone to her. I’m her father, and she is someone in light of that pledge. You know, someday, she may choose to act like that isn’t true. She could choose to act like she’s not my daughter. She could walk out the door and choose to never talk to me again. But here’s what I say to that: ‘I’m not going to let you not be my daughter!!!’”

There is nothing Sylvia can do to un-daughter herself. In the same way, there’s nothing we can do to un-child ourselves in God’s eyes. God loves you deeply, fully, and broadly. We are simply invited to live in light of that truth. We can play in that truth as God’s own delightful children. God chooses us and elects us for love.


God communities us and gathers us. I have a feeling we could talk for hours about how this has been true in our lives. God is surrounding us with a community, larger and more cosmic than we can imagine.

In May of 2005, I was in the middle of a host of life transitions. I was spending twenty days in Germany. The Cardinal Singers, the choir I used to sing with, had somehow in a short period of time become internationally recognized and known. It was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had. All of the sudden, we were competing in one of the most prestigious choral competitions in the world. While I was on that trip, I was thinking about what was next for me in the very near future. When I got home from the trip, I was getting married ten days later. Then Ian and I would move across the country to Texas - honestly never a place I imagined myself - so that he could start at UT while I would start at Austin Seminary. At the beginning of that trip, I admitted something to myself. I had no desire whatsoever to move. None. I knew it was the right decision, but I had no desire to do it at all. And the reason is that I couldn’t begin to imagine it, is that I couldn’t fathom leaving the people in that choir. In so many ways, they had made me who I am! And I loved those people. And I definitely couldn’t begin to imagine stepping outside of St. John United Presbyterian Church, the congregation that literally raised me to be the person I had become. It was one of the most difficult decisions I’d ever faced in my life.

One day, when I was on that trip, I felt all the weight and fear of that decision. I went for a walk in one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been – a mile down a simple pathway that had a beautiful line of trees along both sides of the road. Then that road suddenly opens, out of nowhere, to a view of the Alps and a view of an enormous field of wildflowers. I had so much anxiety and discomfort within myself. My heart was asking big questions of God.

But when I got to that clearing on that day, I mysteriously stepped into the most transcendent moment I’ve ever experienced. I can’t explain it, but it’s as if all the anxiety within me lifted and a deep calm set in. About a year ago, Bobbie Sanders once asked me, “Have you ever had a thought you didn’t think?” I realize that sounds like a strange question, but have you ever had a moment when thoughts seemed to flow through you, yet they seemed to come from beyond you?

No words fell out of the sky that day. There were no neon lights, no cosmic visions. But if there would have been a voice, it would have said something like this: “Renee, just like this field in front of you, I am sending you to a field of people. You need to become yourself. There are people in Austin you have to meet. I am sending you to people – a field of people. You will not become yourself apart from them. You have to do it, and if you do, it will affect things. Go, live, and play in that field of people.”

And so. . . I did. I have. I am. I cannot begin to tell you how many times in the last four years, I have sat back in complete awe. On that day, those “people” seemed very general. Today, they are very specific. Every word of that moment has been true. I have needed the people here to teach me and form me. Every once and a while, I sit back in complete amazement, and I think, “Oh my God. . . . These are the people. . .” That moment led me here – to a field of people. That moment led me to you, and I am more grateful for that than you probably know.

God is forming a cosmic community around you, a community that includes the living and the dead! – saints of the present and saints past. God is forming you into a field of people – people who will teach you, form you, and shape you. God lovingly communities us and gathers us, calling us together for a purpose.

What is that purpose? Maybe that’s what the last lecture is about. The community isn’t only around us. We are also around it. We’re called to be a community with and for others. God calls us to elect others into this family of faith. We are called to pledge ourselves to others, and those others are particular people in light of that pledge. It happens every single year! Every year, new students come to this community, and without fail, I always end up saying to myself, “I cannot imagine this group without this person, or without that person.” Each student brings life, energy, and direction to this ministry. God has called you here. A community has surrounded you, but you are also called to surround others. Guess what? Next year, a whole new set of people will be joined to this family of faith. We are blessed that we get to welcome them. How will you be a community with and for others? God calls us to elect others into this family of faith. How will you participate?

What’s amazing is that the story goes on. The life of ministry here is always moving and breathing within this place. So what’s your last lecture? What’s our last lecture, and how can we pledge to live according to it? Who will people be in light of that pledge?

I’ll leave us with that open ended question. Our last lecture is a living one. What will those living words be? Let’s ask ourselves those questions, because one thing is sure: They will be words to live by. They will be words to live for. Let’s do it. Amen.

-Renée Roederer, Campus Minister