God is Love. Sermon by Priest Konstantin Korepanov (06/20/2024)
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Sermon by Priest Konstantin Korepanov
GOD IS LOVE
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Today you heard the words of the Lord Jesus Christ, with which He concludes His farewell discourse with the disciples before the High Priestly Prayer. He speaks in a very unexpected, unusual, and interesting way. "Whatever you ask the Father in My name will be done for you, for I and the Father are one. And I want you to have My peace." And this boldness of Christian life, of Christian existence, always eludes Christians. It eludes not only our own time, which is understandable. It has always eluded us. Even in the time of the Apostle Paul, people could not comprehend what God had done for them. They could not comprehend it then, and they cannot comprehend it now.
We are accustomed to seeing the crucified Body on the Cross. There are no crucifixes around us, no one paves the roads with crucifixes, as in Ancient Rome, and there are no gallows standing along the roads in place of fallen pillars, as during the Civil War or the Great Patriotic War. It would seem that we should regard the crucified Body of our Lord hanging on the Cross with some special reverence, but alas, this does not happen. For us, the Cross is simply a reminder of death, and upon seeing the Cross, we joyfully rush to it to light a candle "for the repose of the soul." For us, the Cross has become a sign of death—ordinary human death; our cemeteries are decorated with crosses—but... we do not see God crucified on the Cross.
But every person must experience both this horror and this delight and admiration: “How is it that He, the great, the powerful, Who can destroy everything simply by consigning everything that exists to oblivion, decides to save it by shrinking Himself to the size of a human body and allowing Himself to be mocked, and allowing Himself to be killed?” But how else can He show how much He loves us? Well, tell me, what else needs to be done to prove that God loves us? He loves us! He did not come to judge us, not to punish us for our sins – He loves us so much that He was crucified for us, died on the Cross for us! What else must God do for man for man to believe that God is love? Well, what else, tell me! Why don’t we believe that He loves us? Why do we go to our father and say, "Dad, give me some money!" believing that he will give it to us? But we don't ask God, "Well, yeah, he'll give it to us right now, like a bang! And then he'll demand it, and we'll have to pay back 100 percent—worse than at the bank!"
Where do we get this idea about God? What did He do to us that makes us think this way? How is He guilty of anything? No, we imagine some terrible things about Him in our heads. Of course, the evil spirit has been at work here, instilling in us an incorrect image of our God—that's understandable—but we try to accept these images.
Christ says: "Whatever you ask of the Father, you will receive, because the Father loves you, because He sent Me to you. Ask, and He will give you!" But we won't ask, we won't believe: "No, He doesn't love us! That can't be! Someone else might love us, but He doesn't!" And this is what ruins our entire life: our disbelief in His love. Yes, we still go to church and do what we're supposed to. We go like clockwork, we do what we're told: they told me to confess—okay, I'll confess; they told me to take communion—I'll take communion; they told me to read these prayers—I'll pray; they told me to do this—and I'll do that. Tell me, what else do I need to do?
But to think that God loves us: "He loves me, just as I am, the first sinner? No, He came to punish me, He came to torment me! He torments me here, depriving me of all the blessings I so desire! And then He will torment me there too, because I was a sinner here!" After all, that's exactly how we think about God! We've reached such a bestial state! Is this how a son treats his father and mother? Is this how a daughter views her father and mother? That is, we still believe in our earthly parents, who beat us, punish us, and who are sometimes truly not of the best quality, and we run to them. But as for God, although He has done us no harm, who has pulled us out of the pits we fall into since childhood, who helps us, saves our lives, gives us what we ask for and what we don't, who cares for us in every way He can—by hanging on the Cross, by bringing us to church, by teaching us to believe and pray, by feeding us with His Body so that we don't go completely mad from brutality and sink into darkness—no, we don't believe at all that God is love.
The ending is in the first comment to this video.
This video was recorded on June 20, 2024, during the Divine Liturgy at the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Yekaterinburg.
Author: Konstantin Korepanov
Cameraman: Sergey Komarov
Text transcript: Elena Plotnikova.