Many centuries ago, a pastor announced to his congregation that he would be preaching the following Sunday evening on the topic, “The Love of God.” And on that evening, as the shadows fell across the church windows, the congregation gathered to receive the sacrament and to hear his message.
After they had communed, in the darkness of the sanctuary he quietly lit a candle and held it up to the crucifix that stood beside the altar. Without saying a single word he held the candle up and illumined the crown of thorns that adorned the head of Jesus. Then he lowered the candle to the two wounded hands, and then to the wound in his side. As the congregation stood in silence, he blew out the candle and left the sanctuary. There was nothing else to say.
That story reminds me of how it is that love is the core value of the Christian faith. We all long for love, and in our yearning, we’ve discovered some incredibly good news. God loves us! As the author of 1st John proclaims to us, “In this
is love, not that we loved God but
he loved us.”
He even declares to us that God is love.
How do we know? We know because God’s love has been revealed to us in Jesus. God came into the world so that we might live through him. God comes to us in the sacrament of baptism and in the bread and the wine that we share as a community of faith. We know that God is love because we have looked into the tomb and we have seen that it is empty.
God’s love for us could not be destroyed on the cross. Jesus became the sacrifice for our sins. He is the revelation of God’s endless love and commitment to us.
I ran across the words of an anonymous poet once that speak to this. Jesus understood
the loving reach of God, and
the longing reach of men. In his
life, in his death, he joined their
hands together.
That is the good news that we offer to a love-starved world. Even as we long for God, God longs for us. And that longing that we share comes together in Jesus.
But there’s more to love than just being loved. “Beloved, since
God loved us so much, we also
ought to love one another. If we
love one another, God lives in
us.”
This thought, written by the author of 1st John, has a profound implication for the mission of the churches in our community. Love shapes what we do as people of God because God is at work in us.
What we learn from scripture is that we are called to act on the love that we receive. Acting out our love for one another is something that we learn from how God has acted out his love for us. God’s love for us resulted in his coming to us. The sacrifice made for us on the cross grew out of God’s relentless, and unyielding, and grace-driven love. God’s love for us is so fervent that he could not leave us as we were, lost in sin and unable to undo the stain that clings to us. Out of love, Jesus acted. Out of love, Jesus paid. The author of 1st John makes a statement that always intrigues me. He says that “… if we love
one another, God lives in us, and
his love is perfected in us.”
Whenever I read that passage, I wonder if I read it correctly. “… His love is perfected
in us?”
What a revolutionary statement! God’s love is perfect already, isn’t it? God is perfect, unchangeable and eternal. Everything that is beautiful and true flows from God. Is it possible that God’s love is actually changed by his relationship to us? I love this, because it opens up the possibility that God’s love grows, matures, changes and gets better when it is shared with us. It is perfected in us.
What a humbling and yet empowering thought. The love of God lives within us, and through it, God lives in us.
God lives in me. God lives in you. God lives in our neighbors, and God lives in people we will never meet. God lives in those we love, and God lives in our enemies as well. How precious is all of life when we look at it from this perspective. How holy is the life of each teenager in our high school, each orphaned child in Haiti and Chile, each senior citizen who has no one to care for them.
All life is precious because God lives in us. All life is precious because God’s love is perfected in each and every one of us.
Our world would understand this love so much better if every once in a while we simply gathered together, lit a candle, and like that pastor so long ago, just held it up to the cross and saw for ourselves how God chose to love us. God’s love isn’t about words. God’s love is about sacrifice, and that love is made perfect in us through his sacrifice on the cross.
Each month a member of the
Cook County Ministerium
will offer Spiritual Reflections.
For June, our contributor is
Tom Murray of the Lutsen
Evangelical Lutheran Church.
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