“Complete Love”      1 John 5: 1 – 6; John 15: 9 – 17 

Yesterday afternoon, I performed a wedding here—you might find a few silk rose petals and little white feathers still floating about, though Diana and I, along with the wedding coordinator’s assistant, tried hard to clean all of them up.  A wedding is always an opportunity to reflect upon the meaning of love.  Over the years, I’ve done many wedding sermons on the meaning and challenge of love.   

There’s certainly no shortage of people who have reflected upon this subject—poets from Kalil Gibran to e.e.cummings, novelists of all varieties, essayists like Anne Morrow Lindberg, and ordinary folks like you and me.  Some address the emotions love engenders—the passion, the commitment, even at times the despair of loving another.  Others speak of the difficulties of loving someone day in and day out, in the midst of ordinary life, when the “bloom is off the rose,” and your loved one’s imperfections are clearly seen—perhaps for the first time.   

Love is a subject often addressed in scripture as well.  Today we have selections from both the gospel of John and the first letter of John, helping us delve deeper into the meaning and reality of this blessing we call love.  

“Abide in my love….”  over and over throughout these two readings, we are offered insights into the nature of God’s love for us.  Like holding up a diamond and letting the light flash through each facet, so we are repeatedly offered visions of the beauty of God’s love for us.  But this is not the end of what we can see—we also perceive how our response to God’s love completes and fulfills that love.  As children of God, we are to love one another, love our Creator, and obey God’s commandments.  It is our faith in the love of God, and our expression of that love in our daily lives, that enables us to confidently make an astounding claim…. “whatever is born of God conquers the world.”   

The first letter of John begins by reminding us that everyone is on a search for God, a search that is motivated by our deep longing for connection with our Creator, the divine power that pervades all of the universe.  People search in their own ways for God—and for some their search is a life-long investigation of many faiths and many religions.  Christians affirm that we find God in the person of Jesus, and when we find God in him, we become a member of an organizationally eclectic, theologically diverse, vibrant family of faith.   

Our scriptures remind us too that we are not just to love God but also to love the children of God… “everyone who loves the parent loves the child.”  Now, if there is to be no distinction between our love of God and our love of our fellow children of God, we have to honestly admit that this is not always easy even within the Christian community.  Loving others who do not think as we do, who hold differing faith perspectives, who read the same scripture but come away with a different understanding than ours—these fellow Christians are still our brothers and sisters in faith, and we are to love them with God’s complete love, even if that is a challenge.  Loving others in this way brings us a deep and abiding joy, for we begin to see them as God sees them—as beloved children of the one God and Father of us all.  

John goes ahead to explain next what it means to love these other children of God.  He prescription is quite simple actually… “love God and obey God’s commandments.”  Love, it turns out, is not an emotion or an expression of affection.  Love is a life of obedience to God’s commandments.  “If you love your parents, show it by honoring them.  If you say you love your neighbor, show it by not stealing, envying, murdering or making false accusations. If you love your family, spend not just quality time with them, but attention, fun times, play times, relaxing times, serious times. When it comes to love, actions do—in fact—speak louder than words.” [Homiletics, May, 2006) 

Love and obedience to God’s commandments go together like peanut butter and jelly.  A couple of weeks ago we had a reading from James’ letter remind us, “Be doers of the word and not merely hearers.”  Similarly, John’s letter reminds us that obedient doers of God’s word know instinctively that loving words have to be translated into loving actions.  God has designed our world so that love and obedience, faith and action belong together.  Neither is a complete expression of God’s love for us and our love for God without the other.   

When love and action are guided by God’s commandments, tremendous things can happen—things that not only change the world but have the capacity to conquer the world.   Before we let that go to our heads, remember that Jesus’ message had nothing to do with political power or domination, and everything to do with humble service and personal transformation.  His ministry, teachings and resurrection were a response to the darkness, despair and evil that does exist in the world.  Jesus brought light, hope and goodness, and our individual life and corporate goals need to be patterned upon his example.  As Christians, our goal must never be to deny the world or crush the world, but to change it by changing ourselves to become clearer channels of God’s love.  We do that by following Jesus’ command:  “love one another AS I have loved you.”   

That one, two-letter word—AS—is so important!  It means that whatever we do as individual Christians and as a community of faith needs to be measured against Jesus’ own ministry and actions.  Jesus put one condition on his unconditional love—that anyone committed to being his disciple live out the same all-encompassing love that he demonstrated in his life.  Rather than outlining and emphasizing others’ sins, failings and illnesses, Jesus stepped forward to bring healing and restoration to individuals. Rather than engaging in lengthy debates over theological minutia, Jesus pointed people to what he did, how he invited everyone into God’s loving kingdom.   

We are called to do the same—to remain in Jesus’ love by bearing the fruit of love ourselves—in whatever way we can.  There will be many opportunities that arise to do so over the course of our lives.  And what is just the right opportunity for one person to express their particular spiritual gifts may not be the right opportunity for another—but there will be a multitude of chances, for our world needs a whole lot of healing and transformation!   

To help us prepare to recognize God’s invitation to action when it comes, I suggest you remember Jesus’ encouragement to love God with all our heart, and soul and mind and strength.  For most of us, loving God with our hearts, with our emotions, our feelings, was the natural starting point of our faith.  Unfortunately, some of us outgrew that emotional connection with God—we began to “think” about God rather than have a “relationship” with God. We convinced ourselves that a mature faith outgrows such childish enthusiasm.  Not so, says Jesus—unless you become like a child—full of all the enthusiasm and intensity of children, all the laughter and song of children—then you miss the deep joy of faith in God.   

Loving God with all our souls means we integrate all of our faith into every part of our lives, our thoughts, our perceptions, our understanding.  You cannot compartmentalize your “religious life” from the rest of your life if the love of God has entered deeply into your soul.  A soul sensitized by Jesus’ own compassion can never again see the world as a “secular” place.  Now we must see the world, all of the world, through Jesus’ eyes—and then see the invitations to action that present themselves everywhere, from ecological issues to economic injustice, generational misunderstandings to international conflicts, building better neighborhoods to reading tutoring in schools.    

Loving God with all our minds means that we move away from thought patterns and assumptions that no longer reflect the priorities Jesus would have us accept.  A mind committed to Christ doesn’t spend all its energies thinking of ways to get ahead.  Rather, our minds focus upon how we can work effectively to bring God’s love into reality right here and now—in our families, in our work, in our community, in our world.   

Loving God with all our strength means that we must not forget God created us as physical beings, and pronounced the creation “good.”  We need to care for our bodies—issues of diet and health and fitness are not just “good for you” they are good for demonstrating God’s presence in your life.  When we abuse our bodies through too much food, drugs, alcohol or tobacco, engaging in casual sex, or even plain old couch-potato slothfulness, we are intentionally limiting, indeed depleting, the strength we have to offer God.   

Loving God, loving others, loving ourselves—if we do these three things consistently and faithfully, no wonder John insists that “whatever is born of God conquers the world.”  “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”  (Jn 15: 11)  The joy that arises from love—what more could we ever want or need?  Amen.