"It's All About the Love"
Matthew 22:34-40; 1 John 4:7-21
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!
Have you
heard some good news? In the scripture
lessons or in the songs? [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 life-changing good
news. Sometimes I think I risk sounding
like a “broken record.” Some of you
have heard me say this 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
really 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 Hebrew
Scriptures include some stories and verses that a lot of us find puzzling and
troubling. Yet one of the major themes is
of God’s steadfast loving-kindness.
One of my teachers
at Princeton 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 neighbor… 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” 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, anybody God puts in
our path—even people who are different…
people we might even see as sinners or 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]
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, who they
could exclude and condemn people Christ has shown us we are to love and
welcome.
So many
people in our society fear and mistrust those who are different: Muslims…
people whose skin is a different color…
immigrants… refugees…people of different sexual orientations.
There are
so many people in our nation who are hungry or food insecure or lack the basic
things they need to live a life of dignity. 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 made complete in us.”[2]
I hear the
scriptures saying that loving one another is an essential part of our spiritual
practice and life. 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.”[3]If we’re honest with ourselves, we know that we have a long way to go to drive hatred and fear out of our lives and out of our society. Living in the way of love is not easy. Living in the way of love is too hard to do on our own power alone.
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 each other. The Greek word ekklesia which we translate as “church” literally means an “assembly,” or those who are gathered together. 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 Christ’s way of love.
We need to love one another and encourage one another. We need to love one another into becoming more and more the beloved children of God we were created to be. We need to love one another into becoming the beloved community.
God isn’t finished with any of us yet. 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 in the world, in this time and place.
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.[4] As we work with others for justice, freedom
and peace, our lives will be transformed, and together we can change the
world.
Thanks be to God!
Amen.
[1]
John 13:31-35
[2] 1
John 4:7-12
[3]
Quoted from Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Strength to Love (1963). I have read
that he first said it in a sermon around 1957.
[4]
This is an allusion to the “Brief Statement of Faith of the Presbyterian Church
(USA)”, 1990.
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