"It's All About Love"
1 John 4:7-21; John 15:9-17; Isaiah 43:1-7
Today is officially Good News Sunday at Littlefield! We told people that—if they brought someone
to worship today—we promise that they would hear some good news!
I hope that
people were paying attention to the scripture passages today as they were being
read…and the words of the Psalm we sang.
Have you heard some good news? [I
hope so. That takes a bit of the
pressure off me, now. Though I’ll do my
best.]
I do
believe we have good news to share--
important and transformative-- life-changing good news. Sometimes I think I risk sounding like a
“broken record.” Some of you have heard
me say it over and over again, in various ways.
But the more I’ve studied the
scriptures over the years and looked for the main themes and the big
picture, the more I’ve become convinced that our Christian faith is all
about love.
God loves
us. We are—all of us-- God’s beloved
children. Our faith is about responding
to God’s love for us and for all God’s children by loving God and loving all
the people God loves.
The Old
Testament includes a lot of stories and verses that a lot of us find puzzling
and troubling. Yet one of the major
themes in the Old Testament is of God’s steadfast mercy. One of my Old Testament teachers at seminary did
her doctoral dissertation on the recurring theme of “hesed”, which is a Hebrew
word that can be translated as “mercy,” or “steadfast loving-kindness.” One of the other prominent themes in the Old
Testament is how God keeps sending prophets to call people back to living in
right relationship with God and with their neighbors… and how those right relationships are
characterized by love and justice and mercy.
The gospel message in the New Testament
proclaims in various ways how Jesus came to live among us, full of grace and
truth, to embody God’s love for us and to show us how to live in the way of
love. Jesus preached about the “kingdom
of God” or the “reign of God” or “God’s dream for us” and how we are called to live into it.
When people
asked Jesus what the most important commandment is, he said what’s most
important is two-fold: Love God. Love your neighbor.
In the parable of the Good
Samaritan, Jesus made it clear that your
neighbor is anybody we encounter—even people who are different… even people we might see as enemies.
In his last
talk with his disciples, Jesus said, “I give you a new commandment, that you
love one another as I have loved you.
People will know you are my followers by the way you love one another.”[1]
In the
gospel lesson we heard today, Jesus tells his followers, “If you keep my
commandments—the commandments to love God and love the neighbor—we will abide
in his love. He tells his disciples that
he has said these things so that we may have his joy, and that our joy may be
complete.”
Jesus made
it very clear that it’s all about love.
So I keep wondering how so many people who call themselves Christians
could be so confused about this.
We live in such a broken and fearful
world. Our government spends vast
amounts of resources fighting terrorism.
Alarm systems to protect homes, businesses, and even churches are
commonplace.
In this election season, we hear
some politicians speaking to the fears and prejudices of many voters. There are people who are afraid of Muslims…
people afraid of African-Americans—especially males. Muslims are afraid of being attacked. African-Americans are afraid of being shot
by police officers who are afraid of them.
So many people in our society fear
and mistrust those who are different:
Muslims… people whose skin is a
different color… immigrants.
We live in a nation wracked by gun
violence. Every year in the United States,
on average, more than 111,000 people are
shot in murders, assaults, suicides & suicide attempts, unintentional
shootings, or by police intervention, and over 32,000 die. That’s an average of 306 people shot every
day, and 90 of them die. Every day, 48
children and teens are shot, and 7 die. Precious
lives, of beloved children of God—lost.
There are too many people in our
nation and around the world who are hungry or food insecure.
Around the world, there’s war…
genocide… people living under occupation.
The list could go on and on. The bad news in our local communities, in our
nation, and around the globe can feel overwhelming.
In the midst of all this brokenness
and fear and injustice, how are we-- as people of faith-- called to live?
“Beloved,
let us love one another, because love is from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and knows
God. Whoever does not love does not know
God-- for God is love…. Since God loved us so much, we also ought to
love one another. No one has ever seen
God. If we love one another, God lives
in us, and his love is perfected in us.”
What I hear
in this is that loving one another is a spiritual practice, and that-- as we
work at loving one another—God is living in us and working in us and perfecting
love in us….
“There is
no fear in love. But perfect love casts
out fear. Whoever fears has not reached
maturity in love.”
We love
because God first loved us. If we say,
“I love God” but hate our brother or sister, we’re lying about loving God. As we heard in First John, “those who do not love a brother or sister
whom they have seen—cannot love God, whom they have not seen.
Fear
divides us. It leads to violence and
destruction. Hatred and fear are
toxic. They harm us as persons… and as a
society.
But
there is a way out. It is not the way of fear, and hate and
violence; it is the way of
love. In Dr. Martin Luther King’s
words: “Darkness cannot drive out
darkness: only light can do that. Hate
cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”Fifty-three years after Dr. King gave his “I have a dream speech” during the March on Washington, we can see that we have made progress. Just yesterday, at the opening of the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall in Washington, President Obama, the First Lady, and 99-year-old Ruth Bonner, the daughter of a man born into slavery, together rang the bell to celebrate the opening.
But if we’re
honest with ourselves, we know that we have a long way to go. And so…
we need to be in prayer. We need to open our lives to God’s call in
our lives, as we live further into God’s dream for the world—the world that God
so loves.
We need to come together as a
community of faith-- not for the sake of
coming to a place called church-- but
for the sake of coming together as part of the Body of Christ… for the sake of
gathering as disciples who need to learn and practice living in the way of
love. We need to encourage one another… and love one
another. We need to love one another
into becoming more and more the beloved children of God we were created to
be. I remember one stewardship season John Haugen stood before us and told us about how he and Reema came to be regular attenders here, rather than coming a few times a year. He said he’d been so disheartened by the outcome of an election and some of the things that were going on in the world. And then he said, “But what am I doing to make things better?” So they promised themselves that they’d come every Sunday for a while, and then they just kept coming.
John was invited to share his faith, and I’ll never forget his witness. He told us, “I’m a better person because I’m a part of the people here.”
I think that’s an important part of why we need to come together as a community of faith. We keep getting reminded that God loves us, that we are beloved children of God. We’re challenged to love God fully and to love our neighbors, and we encourage one another.
When we understand ourselves to be beloved children of
God, when we start seeing others as God’s beloved children, it changes us. It’s transformative.
God isn’t finished with any of us
yet, and our love isn’t yet perfect, and it hasn’t yet cast out all our
fears. But God is still working in and among and
through us, through the power of the
Holy Spirit-- leading and empowering us to become more patient and kind and
generous… and helping us to become less envious or controlling… less irritable
or resentful. God is still working in us, guiding us further into the truth, re-forming us, teaching us what it means to go out and be the church out in the world.
The good news is that as we grow more
and more into God’s way of love, God’s love will cast out our fears.
In a broken and fearful world, we can trust in the Holy Spirit to give us
courage to pray without ceasing. As we
work with others for justice, freedom and peace, our lives will be transformed,
and we can change the world.
So be it! Amen!
Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor
Littlefield Presbyterian Church
Dearborn, Michigan
September 26, 2016
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