A look at Holy Scripture can give us
answers as well as challenges: In 1 John
4:7-21 we read, “Let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone
who loves is born of God and knows God.”
Nice to know that love begins with God, not with us and that in receiving
this love as a gift we are challenged to love others. The good news given to us is that if we love
we are God’s children and we “know God.”
The bad news for us is that “whoever does not love does not know God,
for God is love.”
Since God showed us divine love in
creation and through Jesus, the giver of love and life and truth, we can begin
to see ourselves created in God’s Image rather than God being created in our
image. Since we are created in the image
of God, “and since God loved us so much, then we also ought to love one
another.” As the writer of First John tells us, “God is love and those who
abide in love abide in God.”
John tells us that “there is no fear
in love, perfect love casts out fear.” I believe that fear and not hate is the
opposite of love, and if we love we are less likely to hate, less likely to be
controlled by anger, more likely to know God.
At this part of this passage I always
feel pretty good, but then John hits us with his most powerful challenge: “those
who say, I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those
who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom
they have not seen.” Jesus came into the
world to remind us not only to love God, but to love our neighbors, our
brothers and sisters as well. “The commandment we have from God is this: those
who love God must lover their brothers and sisters also.”
Can we really love our brothers and
sisters who we not only see, but who complicate our lives? Can we really love
people who get in the way of our success or do not pull their weight or just plain
lie, cheat and steal, and tear down rather than build up?
As I was preparing a sermon on this
topic I posted some of my reflections about this scripture. One friend replied by asking if she really
had to love the neighbor who had killed her dog, and was it alright to file
charges against him. Another friend asked
how we can love Christians who lie, cheat and steal. After preaching this sermon, a friend in the
congregation challenged this love commandment by sharing with me the story of a
family member who had hurt her and several other family members in ways that
have destroyed relationships and affected the whole family forever.
How do we preach love, live a life of
love “because God love us first,” in the midst of our lives in which some treat
us in ways that tear down rather than build up?
It is easy to preach about God’s love and our being created in God’s
image, and loving others because God loves us first. But, we do not live in a world insulated from
reality. In our lives in the trenches
there are times when responsibility and accountability are what love looks
like. Remember that the first and great
commandment requires that “we love our neighbor as we love ourselves.” We must first love ourselves and care for
ourselves if we are even to begin to love our neighbors.
How do we both love our brother and take him
to court? How do we love our sister and prevent
her from destroying our life or our reputation?
How do we deal with a family member who is unlovable? How do
people deal with you and me when we are the ones who are unlovable? How do we “love
our neighbor as ourselves without becoming a doormat, without enabling bad
behavior?
I believe we look for the answer to
these questions in community. We keep
preaching the love of God found in scripture.
We encourage dialogue around the scriptures and the sermons. After all neither
scripture nor sermons are handed down from on high without passing through
human hands, hearts and minds, but grow out of the day to day lives of people
who struggle to know God and describe their experience of God in a way that invites
others into the conversation. Jesus
promised that God would send us the Holy Spirit to lead us and guide us into
all truth. I believe that Holy Spirit is
most prevalent when we engage one another in conversation and in life as
together we seek the answers to life’s persistent questions.
If we are to learn how to live a life
of love, I suspect we will learn it together with our companions on the way as
we travel the road of life together.
