06/10/2026
Sermon for the 1st Sunday after Trinity
The Burden Bearer
If we knew love, the world would be set aright. As it stands, we do not know love. We’d like to think we do, but we do not. God is Love.
In today’s gospel, we are presented with a man like any of us. A rich man, clothed in the finest weave, in royal purple. He lives behind a gate, insulated from the world by his wealth. He is secure in his grand home, furnished with couches and pillows, the finest carpets and collectibles. His table is set with sumptuous fare: pheasant and apricots, olives and cheeses, wine and sweet drink to make the heart merry.
He is like us, and we are like him. It is too convenient to imagine ourselves as less fortunate than he and falsify the chasm that exists between him and us. Even if we are poorer than he, it is only in material wealth. Our resemblance is not in the measure of wealth and the comfort enjoyed. He is like us when measured against a different standard.
Our poverty is every bit as great as his. It is a poverty of love, and not knowing what it is, and what it means.
A poor man named Lazarus is laid at the gate of the wealthy man who has no name. In tattered rags and filthy bare feet, full of sores and longing to eat the scraps from the table of the nameless man who could alter his fate, Lazarus is laid in the hope that mercy and love will move his heart to take up the burden of love for poor Lazarus.
But he steps over him day after day. Not a scrap, not a thought, not a pause, not a nod.
It is not mere avoidance that the rich man maintains, but a refusal to acknowledge the existence of the man covered in sores and starving to death.
To acknowledge his existence, he has to assume some sense of responsibility for the beggar.
To regard him as a man, and not a stone or a root to be stepped over on the way into his home.
To stop for a moment and look into his matted, hair-covered eyes and soiled face, and behold his own moral poverty.
To really see, beneath the neglect and abuse, the abhorrent desecration of his humanity, and in that moment of clarity, pity him and take up the burden of love.
He despises him. He hates him. He murders him in his heart.
“He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
God’s love is unlike anything we imagine. We do not find its correlate in modern society. Our patterns of love are utterly corrupt and self-serving. Our words are empty. Slogans are like flash paper, flaming out in an instant. Political posturing is self-serving.
Love is a burden-bearer. God is love.
To love anything is to become a burden-bearer.
“In these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.”
God is the burden bearer who sustains the universe. All things depend on Him for life and being. The image of Christ washing the feet of the disciples, dressed like a servant, is just as fitting to show God washing the feet of creation, serving it. Christ is nothing and does nothing that God the Father was not and did not already.
There is an interesting word here, φερο—to sustain, uphold or bear. The English word translated bear (carry) is related to it. We bear burdens, we bear with one another, we bear illness and pain, we bear suffering, we bear injustice.
Now, let us consider this world in relation to what it means to love.
“He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, 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 propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
God is a burden-bearing God. We can see this because God sent his son to be the payment and remedy for our sins, so that we might live through him. What this means is that God took upon himself the burden of our sins. So we say, “He bore our sins on the cross.”
This is what the cross is. It is not God punishing His son for our sake, it is God taking upon himself the penalty and the cost of our sins and bearing them on the cross. Every sin is borne there on the wood, with hammer blows and blood.
What gives love its power?
It is not found in its burning ardor. It’s flaming passion. Like a candle, this flickers and is extinguished in a moment. Emotional love is fleeting.
It is not self-gratifying in any way. Love does not exist for itself. It does not seek its own.
Listen to the way love bears and suffers in 1 Cor 13:
"Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails."
Love suffers, believes, bears, hopes, endures. Love never fails.
If this does not fit your concept of God, of the God who is love, then your concept of God is wounded and warped.
To love anything is to become a burden-bearer. We become the slave, the bond-servant, of the object of devotion.
Fathers and mothers become slaves of their children.
Husbands become slaves to their wives, and wives to their husbands.
Farmers become slaves to the soil and seed, and herdsman to the sheep and cattle.
To love someone is to care for them, even when it is most inconvenient. Even if they have gone off the deep end. Even if they have abandoned you. This does not mean enabling self-destructive behavior, because that is not love. It does more harm in the long run. So here, the burden of love is to speak the truth and keep speaking it, and keep acting redemptively.
This is the love of God the Father. Long after the prodigal son left home and spent all he had on riotous living, long after he fought for scraps with the pigs—a picture of utter depravity and uncleanness, the father’s eyes still scanned the hills for signs of the son who was lost.
Long after mankind was lost. After the toll of sin had seeped into every backstreet and highway, God’s love will redeem us.
Long before sin settled in, the Son was begotten before the foundation of the world to save humanity from an unfolding calamity.
And rather than step over us and ignore us and begin again, he bore our humanity by taking on flesh like ours, and took it upon himself to heal us.
You may never have thought of it this way, but Lazarus represents our humanity. Our redeemed humanity. And the Son of God is totally unlike the rich man.
Some of you thought that God was like the rich man, stepping over your pain and sin every day. Ignoring you. Dismissing you. Detesting you.
But in this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. This is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
Love has power because love is the most complete act. It is the most perfect.
Only in becoming the slave of the thing it loves, in sustaining it, caring for it, nurturing it, perfecting it, does it return to the lover the reward of love. Love demotes itself on the list of important things. It heroically takes up the burden of redemption upon itself, even to its own hurt, because that is what God does. And God is love.
