“God Is Love!”

Fifth Sunday of Easter B 2006

1 John 4:7-21

Dear friends, grace and peace be with you from our risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Amen.

              Is there any greater gift than the gift of love?  “Love is what makes the world go round,” as the song states.  Love is what makes life exciting, meaningful, and fulfilling.  A person who experiences love and shares it with others is living life the way God intended it to be lived.  Many people have written about the importance of love.  Martin Buber said, “He who loves brings God and the world together.”  Homes added, “Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness.”  Goethe said, “We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.”  Henry Van Dyke wrote this poem: “There are many kinds of love, as many kinds of light, And every kind of love makes a glory in the night.  There is love that stirs the heart, and love that gives it rest, But the love that leads life upward is the noblest and the best.”  Perhaps the best word about love comes from our second lesson in 1 John.  It tells us where love comes from and what we should do with it.  “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.”

              On this Fifth Sunday of Easter, we get a look into the heart and mind of God.  It is love.  God is love.  The Bible tells us in Genesis chapter one that God created the heavens and the earth.  Have you ever wondered why God created us and all that exists?  I believe it was out of love.  God desired to be in relationship with something or someone, so God created us.  Everything that I am and that I have is a gift of God’s creative power and love.  Psalm 24:1 tells us, “The earth is the Lord’s and that is in it, the world, and all those who live in it.”  The writer of Psalm 8 contemplates the beauty and majesty of God’s creative ability, asking, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them.”  Martin Luther answers the question of why God created the heavens and the earth as he wrote in his Small Catechism, “All this he does out of a fatherly and divine goodness and mercy, though I do not deserve it.  Therefore I surely ought to thank and praise, serve and obey him.”  Out of love, God created us, making his love known to us, so that we might respond by loving God and one another.

              But, as we know, something happened to this good creation.  In the story of the fall in the Garden of Eden, sin entered the world through the disobedience of Adam and Eve.  They were not content on just being a creation of God, but fell in to the temptation to actually be like God, to be the Creator.  Sin creates a separation between us and God, because it is a turning inward upon myself, putting me at the center of all things.  The love given in our creation became for us selfish and self-centered, making it impossible to return God’s love, let alone share love with others and the rest of God’s creation.  The Apostle Paul describes sin this way: “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.”  We see the effects of sin and its power over us in many different ways: war and terror, neglect and abuse, hunger and homelessness, death and destruction.  Something had to be done about sin.  God had to do something about sin.  So, out of love, God sent to us his only Son, to live, to die, and to live again.  Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, the power of sin is broken, granting us forgiveness and new life.  The Bible tells us, “God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son in to the world so that we might live through him.  In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”  God’s love is a sacrificial, self-giving love that doesn’t look inward upon itself, but rather looks outward at everything else.  God restored love to his creation by what he did for us through Jesus.  Again, in his Small Catechism, Martin Luther says: “At great cost Jesus saved and redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, not with silver or gold, gut with his holy and precious blood and his innocent suffering and death.”  Why, I ask?  Again, because God is love.  Another favorite passage is Romans 5:8, “But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”

              But God’s love does not stop here.  There is still more.  God’s love is given to us and works in us through the Holy Spirit.  When we are told to “love one another,” it is only possible because the Holy Spirit is present in our lives, enabling, empowering, and motivating us to love.  “If we love,” the Bible says, “God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.” Without the Spirit that God gives to us, we could not and can not love, because God is love.  But if we abide in God, if we stay connected to God, if we allow God to live in us, then we have the power and ability to testify to the power of God’s love and confess that Jesus is the Son of God.  Through us, the love of God is made known and shared with others.  Love is the mark of God’s abiding presence in us and in the world.  Love always gives itself away, as God gave his love away to us.  Love is never intended to be kept for oneself, but given away in service to those who are in need.

              In March, six of us from United went to Argentina on a mission trip.  We established a relationship with Pastor Octavio and the members of Congregation Crus Del Sur.  One of the projects we were involve in was finishing off an addition on a daycare center in the Barrio, a neighborhood where indigenous people live in what you would call tarpaper shacks.  We sanded and painted and put up trim in this room.   When we were finished, a young boy entered the room, looked up and all around and said, “Wow!”   His expression filled us with the love of God, for in our serving we come to know and experience that God is love.

              During this past month, we have been emphasizing the world hunger outreach of our church.  Many people have been dropping off film canisters filled with quarters.  So far, over $1,300 has been given in quarters and overall gifts have been given totally $2,000, all will be going to alleviate hunger around the world.  A couple of weeks ago, Pastor Clark told me this story of how Bev Dietrich came by with a young boy from the congregation.  He had a box filled with quarters and asked if he could buy a goat for someone in need with his money.  He had read with his parents how it is possible to buy a goat for a family in another part of the world.  During communion last week, as this young boy came up with his parents for a blessing, Pastor Clark whispered to him, “Are you the one who wanted to buy a goat?”  And with his eyes wide open, he nodded yes. “I think we can buy that goat.”

              The Bible says, “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”  At a time in our nation and in our world when there is so much fear, suspicion, and mistrust, there is only one answer, to obey the Lord’s command and “love one another.”  Evils great and small are overcome by the power of God’s love.  When you love another person, you cast out fear, replacing fear with the abiding presence of God’s love.  Let us love one another as God has loved us.  Amen.