1 John 4:7-12 & John 3:11-17
Let's talk about love. Love is all around us. Love is in the air. We easily add heart emojis to our texts and facebook posts and more - sometimes in long chains: love, love, love, love. Love is so easy to say and so hard to do.
God is love. Let us love one another. Love your neighbor as yourself. Love is the very core not only of our religion but of who we are. Made in the image of God our essential nature is love. But not many of us pull off being loving day in and day out. If love is who we are, why is it so hard to be loving?
Let's not start with how we keep messing up these clear requests for how we live. Let's start before that: not with what we do but with who we are. Let's start with "you are loved." God so loved the world. We are bombarded every day with thousands, maybe millions, of messages and very few of them are this: you are loved. Many of them tell us what's wrong with us. You are too fat, too short, too tall, too thin, too young, too old, too dumb, too smart, too poor, too rich, too liberal, too conservative, too out of shape, too obsessed with exercise, too lazy, too busy, too talkative, too quiet. Have I hit your buttons yet? If Goldilocks is known for finding something just right, we have very few Goldilocks moments in life. And when we do, we seldom remember those good messages and instead focus on what's wrong with whatever.
Into all that noise Jesus' message comes to us: you are loved.
In a happy accident we printed the wrong scripture in the bulletin today - the long story of Jesus' interaction with the Samaritan woman at the public well. You've probably heard that story. The woman has come to the well at midday when few others would be there because she was the talk of the town. Jesus asks her for water, violating social taboos that say a man can't talk to an unknown woman. She was a Samaritan and he a Jew, enemy factions that had nothing to do with each other. When she asks about why he's breaking down these barriers, he tells her to call her husband. Then tells her she's had five and is living with a man who's not her husband. We hear this as promiscuity. It may or may not be. In the first century it would have been about economic insecurity.
A woman without a husband or adult children would have no legal means to support herself. This woman didn't divorce five men because women weren't allowed to divorce anyone. Five men had either died or driven her out and she was forced to accept the charity of a sixth in order to survive. We don't know how exploited she was, but we know that the community looked down on her, without empathy for her vulnerable situation. Yet Jesus spoke to her like an equal, someone to have an important conversation with. He offered her respect and dignity. It was an act of love.
Through Jesus God says to us over and over "you are loved." Love doesn't depend on your circumstances or your behavior. It doesn't depend on keeping the rules and having everything go well. You are loved - before anything else.
So love isn't the endpoint of our living, it's the beginning. Whatever love we're able to express flows from that beginning. Because you are loved, you can love one another. The first letter from John tells us that we know about God's love because we can see it in action. We know about God by the way we live God into the world. For us as a congregation we've decided that means to welcome everyone: welcoming all into the fullness of God's love. For some of us that means we cook. Remember the resident of LaGrave on First who asked why we cooked for him, as he said, "an old drunk." We cook because we love our neighbors, some of whom live at LaGrave. For others we make quilts and blankets. We wrap people in love, especially in times they feel most unloved. A few of you donate blood. That kind of love is life-saving. Others offer care to family members out of love. Or rides to appointments for friends and neighbors. Or donations to help people keep apartments and be sheltered. Or food for refugees from war.
Each one of us loves in unique ways, but each of those loving actions is a sign of God among us. The Gospel of John tells us that love leads to eternal life. Jesus comes to the world when it's broken and hurting to invite people to love each other. Over the years we've come to think that this love gives us a passkey to heaven - eternal life. I believe that's true. But first it helps us create heaven among us. When we love one another, heaven is already here.
Yesterday my daughter and I were reflecting on how crazy life is right now. People are busy trying to make a living and care for families. Each day brings unexpected challenges and stresses to overcome. When we think we're about to see an easy way, somebody at work or in our family manages to make things harder. Then there's a country running amok and Russian starting a war. Why are things so broken? I told her I hope it's because we're about to evolve to a higher plain and the chaos is resistance to that progress. Meanwhile, what do we do while we wait for the world around us to evolve with us?
We love. Through our frustration, we love. Through our fear, we love. Love insists on telling the truth in the face of lies. Love says no to violence and destruction. Love stands alongside folks experiencing the consequences of poor choices and extends another chance to choose again. Love cooks and sews and repairs and sings and grows and donates. When the world is scary and broken, Mr. Rogers tells us to look for the helpers. We can extend that and resolve to BE a helper. Let's commit to do all we can be BE love for this world. In the process we come to know eternal life.