“It is not our love that satisfies God or makes things right. It is God’s love for us that does so.”

Author’s Note: Even the least biblically inclined people are aware of this pericope and epistle, even if they cannot name or quote it. “God is love” is the main takeaway, and that is now a fixture of Western culture. Here, the focus is in how this can quickly slide from proclamation of what God has done for us into a generalized commandment that we all think we can fulfill without any need for God.

DIAGNOSIS: All you need is love

Step 1: Initial Diagnosis (External Problem): Love is the one thing you must do:  God is Love?
The text seems to command that love is the one thing you must do (v. 21). Don’t need to worry about anything more or anything less. All of those other commandments and suggestions fall away in the face of love. This is also an easy way to conflate religions – if they value love, they all know God in their own way, and that is enough. Good people love their fellow humans, and loving them is enough to satisfy God and anyone else who may care to critique us. As long as we try hard, and hold to love, we’ll be ok.

Step 2: Advanced Diagnosis (Internal Problem): Lying in our Fear and Hatred:  We Know God Because We Love?
The probing of our problem focuses on the quality and reality of your love: is there fear (v. 18)?  Do we hate others (v. 20)? In other words, is your love real? But both of those focus on the commandment to love God, which is Law.

‘Do you really love God’ is an easy route to go with this pericope. Especially if there’s some kind of conflict between people who all agree that God is love. The Law is great for diagnosis. “What is love” becomes the focus, sometimes with a “how-to,” sometimes with a “just wing it and it will work out” approach. Tackling the question “are you really loving your neighbor” often moves to calling people liars (cf. v. 20).  Perhaps they are. While ‘‘what is love?” is an important question, perhaps a bigger question (taken almost for granted in the text) raised in this pericope concerns our relationship with God. Can we be saved by the Law, even one as important as “love others”? Or in other words, is holding love in our hearts enough to satisfy whatever Power rules the universe? Hindu, Muslim, Jew, Christian, agnostic, atheist, etc. … it’s all the same as long as we agree that we serve love… right?

Step 3: Final Diagnosis (Eternal Problem): “Love is God”
In the text, the final criticism is in the negative – if you fail to love others, you cannot love God, which means you do not abide in God, so God will not abide in you. All of that is bad news, so you better love.  Not only that, it better not have any fear and be “perfected” love (v. 18), despite the implicit threat.

While that is all terrifying and everything, if you serve Love, everything is fine. Right?

The problem is that we are often tempted to switch from “God is love” to “Love is God” in practice. If you having love is all you need, you are the focus, not God. Soon, your definition of love becomes all important. That definition justifies many actions you might want to take. Maybe those actions hurt other people. Maybe they don’t… they just leave God out of it. Then the Christian God becomes one face of a more expansive Deity called “Love” that encompasses all people, Christian or not. The Christian God is no longer needed, and becomes no longer present or meaningful.

In other words, God no longer abides in you.

PROGNOSIS: All you need is God’s love

Step 4: Initial Prognosis (Eternal Solution): God saves us out of love
The epistle spells out what “God is love,” and how it is NOT about our love: “God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (vv. 9-10)

The mechanism for God’s love is specifically Jesus’ death on the cross to put to death all of our failures, sins, imperfect love, and other short-comings. That God’s love for us is stronger than our service to other gods, including our ideas of love, is borne out in Jesus’ resurrection from the grave.

We are saved by God’s love for us, not by our love for God or neighbor.

Step 5: Advanced Prognosis (Internal Solution): We believe the love God has for us
Centering on the love God has shown us in Jesus changes the equation. It is no longer about the quality of our love. It is our trust that ”God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.” (vv. 15-16a).

It is not our love that satisfies God or makes things right. It is God’s love for us that does so. Trusting that promise of love is God abiding in us. We are assured of God’s presence through our faith that Jesus is the Son of God who was crucified for us.

Step 6: Final Prognosis (External Solution): God’s love is perfected in us
The outcome of trusting God abiding in us is love for others. The key difference from the beginning is that when we trust that “God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.”  We do not live from our fear, nor from our alienating ourselves from others in hatred.  Fear and hatred have been overcome on the cross. Our love becomes perfected love when it is grounded in this  Promise. That’s because the focus is God’s love for us, not our love for God, or even our love for others. Or as phrased in the pericope: “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world.” (vv. 16b-17)

This frees us to live in love and testify to our Savior. Through this, we reflect God’s love in this world.

“Freed from the tyranny of death and its threats, we begin to direct our attention to all that nurtures and encourages life, confident that death no longer has the final word. Life does. Alleluia!”

DIAGNOSIS: Death

Step One: Initial Diagnosis (External Problem): Preoccupied with the Details of Death

Mary Magdalene and the other women have been with Jesus during his ministry. They have heard him teach. They surely knew that he had planned to come to Jerusalem to face death. That would have upset the disciples enough for it to be common knowledge in the broader Jesus community, even if the women themselves had not been present when Jesus said the words. Now the death part has become a cold, hard reality, and the women have come to attend to all the tasks that need to be done when death comes.

Step Two: Advanced Diagnosis (Internal Problem): Trusting the Power of Death

Jesus also said that after being killed he would rise from the dead on the third day, but Peter seemed to ignore that in his rebuke (see Mark 8:31-33). Just like Peter, the only thing that had really sunk in for the women was the prospect, now made real, of Jesus’ death. We get it, we who retell this story each year in Holy Week, and in abbreviated form each Sunday in our gatherings. We, like the women, have ample experience with death’s devastation. When death comes, it has the final word. Always. So, no wonder we trust death. It has a proven track record of making good on its threats.

Step Three: Final Diagnosis (Eternal Problem): Dead

Understandable or not, our trust in death betrays our profound disconnection from the font and source of our life. We are alienated from God and hostile to God’s messengers, so that news of resurrection strikes us as either ridiculous or terrifying. We prefer to cling to the comfortable reliability of death, and so cut ourselves off from life.

PROGNOSIS: Life

Step 4: Initial Prognosis (Eternal Solution): Alive

And yet, in spite of our inability to grasp reality that doesn’t conform to our expectations, the Christ who died on the cross (with and for us) has in fact risen from the dead. (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!) We do not dictate this reality. He is not Tinkerbell whose existence depends upon our belief. He is alive, and plans to meet up with us.

Step 5: Advanced Prognosis (Internal Solution): Trusting the Power of Life

I love the irony of this ending to Mark that so many have found troubling, as evidenced by the alternate endings subsequently tagged on. “They said nothing to anyone…” We know as we read the text that they must have said something to someone at some point, because we’re hearing the story now. The gospel works that way. Despite their initial terror and amazement, the good news of the resurrection that was communicated to them eventually found a crack in their armor. By  the power of the Holy Spirit it has driven out their misplaced trust and has begun to work in them trust in Christ’s promise of life in him.

Step 6: Final Prognosis (External Solution): Preoccupied with the Details of Life

That redirected trust now reorients and refocuses their lives and ours. Freed from the tyranny of death and its threats, we begin to direct our attention to all that nurtures and encourages life, confident that death no longer has the final word. Life does. Alleluia! And this is only the beginning (see Mark 1:1)!

14 “For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; 15 to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. 16 The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. 17 In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. 18 But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. 19 After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. 20 Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.’ 21 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ 22 And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.’ 23 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ 24 Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; 25 so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ 26 But his master replied, ‘You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? 27 Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. 28 So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. 29 For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. 30 As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

 

“Those who trade with the gospel wind up with only more grace to share.”

Diagnosis: Called to Account

Step 1: Initial Diagnosis (External Problem): Buried Treasure

There is no one correct interpretation of a parable. Parables are stories laid alongside our lives. Parables, like the rest of the Bible, are thick with meaning, but porous with many points of entry. Here is my take on the parable.

A talent was an enormous amount of wealth, beyond our imagination. Like the pearl of great price and the treasure hidden in the field, this extraordinary sum is used to indicate the value of the gospel. The master lavishes this fortune on his servants. Two of them went out and traded with it. They traded with the gospel. They were in the gospel trade.

The third servant dug a hole and buried it.

Step 2: Advance Diagnosis (Internal Problem): Not Trusting the Product

This third servant was not lazy. It would have taken a big hole to bury that much money. More likely it was a grave-size hole. He did not believe Jesus rose from the dead. Or he didn’t believe it made any difference in his life. He didn’t get in on the gospel trade. He did not believe in the product. He put it back in the ground, forgot about it, and went on with his life.

Step 3: Final Diagnosis (Eternal Problem): The Day of Reckoning

It turns out he dug himself into a hole. The day of reckoning came. The master returned to check on how the gospel trade was going. When he called for an accounting the third servant forfeited the gospel fortune that had been entrusted to him. It wasn’t doing him or anyone else any good buried in the ground as it was.

We don’t hear the final repercussion for this servant in the appointed text. We must read on to verse 30 where we hear the litany that is repeated at the end of many of Jesus’ parables. The master called for him to be thrown into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

 

Prognosis: Entrusted with Christ’s Benefits

Step 4: Initial Prognosis (Eternal Solution): Trading His Life for Our Death

And in the outer darkness we witness the enormity of the gospel’s worth. Jesus trusted God to the point of death. Jesus joined the wicked servant in the outer darkness. Jesus bears his and our sins. He is buried in the grave we dig. On the third day God raised him to life. He trades his life for our death, his mercy for our sins, his trust in God for our mistrust. God promises that we too will be raised with Jesus.

Step 5: Advanced Prognosis (Internal Solution): Spirit Powered Faith

The Holy Spirit uses the promise to work faith in our hearts, to engender love for God in which resides a proper fear of God, and to kindle trust so that daily we commend to God’s hands our soul, body, and all that is ours. The gospel regenerates us, erases sin, trumps death, and multiplies itself.

Step 6: Final Prognosis (External Solution): Taking Up the Trade

And then, as a matter of course, we take up the gospel trade. We make use of Christ’s benefits. We take revenge in trade for mercy. For the wrongs we do to others or others do to us we take alienation in trade for the hard work of reconciliation. We trade keeping score and getting even in exchange for a refusal to answer in kind. Rather, we seek to interpret our neighbor’s actions in the best possible light. Stingy hearts and narrow lives we counter with generosity.

You’d think such a trader would end up with a big warehouse full of sin, with revenge lining the basement shelves and paybacks stored in big bins in the attic. But such is the nature of God’s economy that those who trade with the gospel wind up with only more grace to share.

15Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap Jesus in what he said. 16So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. 17Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” 18But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? 19Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. 20Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” 21They answered, “The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” 22When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.

Jesus is changing the system. Instead of working hard at being good in order to be rewarded with God’s blessings and kingdom, Jesus is offering the kingdom of God to those who don’t qualify.

Diagnosis: Taxes and Death Are from God

Step 1: Initial Diagnosis (External Problem): There Is a Hidden Agenda

Why try to entrap Jesus? Not because he was so popular (21:1-11, entry into Jerusalem to cheering crowds); not because he ruined your business (21:12-17, cleaning out the temple); not because he said that tax collectors and prostitutes would enter the kingdom of God ahead of you (21:31); and not because Jesus said, “The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produce the fruits of the kingdom” (21:43). Such things could make you envious, mad, or insulted. But you can deal with those kinds of events. People deal with those things, and worse, every week. They fix a business, find new friends, and try to be better, one day at a time. Why would people want to discredit Jesus? It’s the same as when people entrap God by saying after a tragedy, “I can’t worship a God who allows bad things to happen.”

Step 2: Advance Diagnosis (Internal Problem): We Trust the System of Working Hard

When Jesus says that the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to others who will produce fruits, then that threat makes you promise that you will produce fruits just as good as anybody else. But that is not what Jesus is saying. He is saying that he will give, without cause or reason, he will give the kingdom of God to those who are not good, who don’t try as hard as you do. In other words, Jesus is changing the system. Instead of working hard at being good in order to be rewarded with God’s blessings and kingdom, Jesus is offering the kingdom of God to those who don’t qualify. Jesus is offering forgiveness from God as a gift. Jesus is offering peace with God as a gift. Jesus is offering heaven to people who are disobedient, unbelieving slobs. That makes us want to entrap Jesus. We are not disobedient, unbelieving slobs. Why should Jesus give them God’s kingdom? They don’t deserve it. We want the system of working hard to do good and get heaven to remain in effect. Jesus can’t just change how we deal with God. We will show he can’t by entrapping him. We will attack him instead of his policy of giving God’s forgiveness. Get rid of him and his policy is also gotten rid of.

Step 3: Final Diagnosis (Eternal Problem):  Render unto God What Is God’s

Our preference for the system of working hard to do good as the way to get the kingdom of God means our hearts trust our actions. Our hearts trust the law that defines what actions are good. “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” (19:16). We always think we can be good enough. When we trust the good deeds we do, then we are quite against those who do not do those good deeds, like those tax collectors and prostitutes. We are blind to our own disobedience to the First Commandment of loving God most of all; we love our good deeds more. So we come under our own judgment that says people who do wrong must be gotten rid of. Oh, it’s not just our judgment that says so. It’s God’s judgment. Death is God’s judgment against all people, for no one loves God more than their own good deeds. And if we don’t have good deeds, we still trust our bad deeds as the determiners of how God deals with us. No one can change the system of law. We must render to God what is God’s–our lives.

 

Prognosis: Life and Love Are from Jesus

Step 4: Initial Prognosis (Eternal Solution): Jesus Renders unto God

Jesus evaded the trap about taxes, but he did not evade the trap about whether or not he was the Son of God. The law made it clear that no son of God would give God’s kingdom to tax collectors; Jesus was guilty of being the Son of God who wrongly gave God’s kingdom to unbelieving slobs. Jesus rendered to God his life. Yet God declared Jesus not guilty; God declared Jesus to be the Son of God who has the authority (28:18) from God to give God’s kingdom to all people. God did both by raising Jesus from the dead (28.1-10). The system has changed.

Step 5: Advanced Prognosis (Internal Solution): Jesus Renders to Us

Jesus gives us faith in him by saying, “You can believe me.” Trusting him gives us the faith he offers. We render to God faith in Jesus, not that our faith is a good deed, but that our faith, little as it is, is in Jesus whom God raised from the dead. We trust he gives people the kingdom of God. We no longer trust our good deeds or the law. Faith takes away our desire for the law and replaces it with a desire to love our neighbors with Christ’s love and mercy.

Step 6: Final Prognosis (External Solution): Taxes Say, “I Love You”

The trap about whether paying taxes to Caesar was lawful (a good deed to God that gets one eternal life) is not about us paying taxes to our government. The trap was about paying taxes to an enemy government. There were Roman coins and Jewish coins. To give Caesar his own coins could have been a patriotic statement: “Let them take what’s theirs and get out.” That verse about giving Caesar what is Caesar’s and giving God what is God’s is used to divide our lives, as if some things and activities are ruled only by the government and God has no say about them. Some say rightly to keep religion out of government because ideology can cause bad governing. But all belongs to God (Romans 13:1: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.”). Taxes are what citizens pay to work together to provide roads, energy distribution, clean water, medicine for those in need, and safety for the nation and local government. In Christ, we do not ask, “What is lawful?” That is, we do not ask about what we must do to please God or to get eternal life. We only please God by our faith in Christ. So we ask, “What is loving for my neighbor?” Taxes are a way to love our neighbor, because neighbors belong to God. And if people still want to trap God (as one who allows bad things to happen), they are like the Pharisees and think they have done nothing wrong. They trust the system of doing good to get life. They do not see tragedy as a call to repent, to change what their hearts trust to get them eternal life. It is natural for people to think that righteousness comes from the law (“For human reason only focuses on the law and does not understand any other righteousness except obedience to the law,” Book of Concord, Kolb and Wengert, 154.229, also 151.206; 165); it is not natural to trust Jesus who died on a cross to give us eternal life. So Jesus is proclaimed to us and our neighbor so that we might believe in his name and have life; the thing we render to God is faith in Jesus. We render to others our love, including our care for our mutual citizens–even in the form of taxes.

God promised blessing for Abram and for us too. And we know it is not derived from circumstances, bloodlines, or possessions, but from trusting God’s presence working in our lives.

DIAGNOSIS: Hang ups

Step 1: Initial Diagnosis (External Problem): Leaving Your Country

Step 2: Advanced Diagnosis (Internal Problem): Leaving Your Kindred

Go. Leave those who love you best. Imagine the internal struggle required to leave family behind. We fear being unloved and unknown, and who knows and loves us better than our families? God? Can we trust that? Abram is about to find out.

Step 3: Final Diagnosis (Eternal Problem): On Your Own

PROGNOSIS: Blessed by God’s Confidence

Step 4: Initial Prognosis (Eternal Solution): Great Nation

God promised blessing for Abram and for us too. And we know it is not derived from circumstances, bloodlines, or possessions, but from trusting God’s presence working in our lives. God’s calling never ends and is heard in the words of Baptism (being born of the spirit; see John 3) as we are proclaimed a beloved child of God. And the blessing is repeated in the Holy Eucharist as God’s grace is “given for you.”

Step 6: Final Prognosis (External Solution): All Families are Blessed