This God Who Is Love

It is so good to see you.

But I can peek out and see your faces in here today.

It really is beautiful to get to worship together in this space.

 a mission to create space for belonging, purpose, justice, and joy.

And when you come here and you participate with us in this way, my hope for you is that you would come to know that you are loved and valued just as you are, and that the God of the universe that loves you and values you just as you are is with you here in this space today.

 Our text today is going to come to us from the book of 1 John.

It's one that I have always, my entire life, really wrestled with to understand and to know, but we're going to be digging in today.

It's quite a bit of a hefty text, so bear with us as we go through it together.

The words of this scripture will be here on the screen.

This is starting in verse 7.

 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.

God's love was revealed among us in this way.

God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him.

In this is love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.

Give your friend a pat on the shoulder and say, I love you.

 But no one has ever seen God.

 So we have known and believed the love that God has for us.

Once again, God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.

Love has been perfected among us in this, that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.

 For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.

We love because he first loved us.

Those who say, I love God, and hate a brother or sister are liars.

For those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen cannot love God whom they have not seen.

The commandment we have from him is this.

 Those who love God must love their brothers and sisters.

There's a lot of ups and downs in this text, isn't there?

Some highs and maybe even some scary lows for us.

My hope today is that as we walk through this together, as we learn and grow

 together as we worship together, that we would come to see the good news that First John offers us today.

Maybe first, I wanna share a little story with you.

I actually grew up, I call myself a boomerang Methodist because I was born and raised in the Methodist church until about the age of six years old.

And then I came back to the Methodist church around the age of 26 years old.

So there was a bit of a gap in there, but I do have some really, really early and vivid memories.

 of my time growing up in Methodist Church that are very special to me.

And one of my most vivid memories is actually of children's time.

Now, at this moment, we don't currently have a children's time here in this modern worship space, though it gets talked about.

But we do it up in the traditional worship.

So if you're familiar with it, it's a time when the pastor or

 somebody from the front invites the little children to come forward to sit and to hear a short message.

And usually, or at least it was when I was growing up, they get something like a little piece of candy.

Now, my favorite was Sweethearts.

If you've ever had them before, you know they are delicious and they make a mess.

 and they get crushed into the carpet when you inevitably step on them.

And I looked forward every single week to coming down there and getting my sweetheart.

I was so excited to come get this piece of candy.

I cannot tell you one single message that I learned.

 But I can tell you every single word to the song that we always sang.

And that song was called Jesus Loves Me.

Now, if you know this song, you probably know it by heart like me because you sang it ad nauseum.

But the song goes, Jesus loves me, this I know.

For the Bible tells me so.

Which, of course, we just, you know, John just kind of went on about this for a little bit.

Little ones to him belong forever.

 We are weak, but he is strong.

Yes, Jesus loves me.

Yes, Jesus loves me.

Yes, Jesus loves me.

And I think this captures us from a young age.

It captivates our attention, this thought, this idea that we are loved by something so much greater and so much bigger than ourselves, bigger than our parents, bigger than the worlds we live in and inhabit.

And it brings us comfort and security to know that there's something, some person

 some God, but yet also human with us that cares for us in this unique and profound way.

And as a child, I remember thinking about the song and singing the song at home on my own and wondering if this God is with me and loves me, where is this God?

Is this God

 present is a is this god invisible in the sky is this god at the church whenever we sing where is this and while maybe i kind of thought of god as being this maybe invisible force there was something visible that i did get whenever i would go to children's time that i think really helped me to understand what this love meant and it was that piece of candy

 It was this sweetness, this tangible way in which God's love was showing up for me as a child.

It was this little reminder that I received with hands stretched out and open that God isn't just an idea, but actually in some way comes into our lives in a way that is tangible for a lot of ways.

I think that this piece of candy, this treat, was the thing that proved to me that the things

 we sing are true.

You know, a lot has been made of this idea of love in our culture, hasn't it?

It's the focus point of so many movies and TV shows, and if you play video games like me, you can romance people in video games now.

Don't tell my husband.

 This love shows up everywhere, and in some ways, it kind of organizes not just the things that we consume, it's not just the focus point of a lot of the stories that we hold, but it also organizes our lives.

The things that we love become our rhythms.

They become our routines, they become our investment, our careers.

They determine the ways in which we celebrate family together.

 The things that we love shape us in ways that we may not even notice.

We start to resemble the things that we love.

Are there any runners in the room?

Anybody here who enjoys running?

God bless you.

Thank you.

Typically, if I see somebody running, I'm assuming something is chasing them.

But believe it or not, there's people who do this for fun.

People go to Katy Trail not just to go to Katy Trail Ice House and get a fishbowl margarita, apparently.

 They go to pretend that they need to flee from something.

And you can always tell a runner, can't you?

Well, number one, they're going to tell you they're a runner.

But number two, their running actually begins to shape their body, doesn't it?

And maybe my friend can know what this is like.

You actually structurally change and develop as you run.

You get those runner's legs.

 You get those runners lungs, you get that runner physique, one that maybe I should work on.

So it's not just that you love running and that you enjoy doing it, but in the actual act of it and the practice of it, you actually experience love and participate in that love of running in such a way that it actually comes back and shapes you at boomerangs back around to transform your life.

 your body, your experience.

My wonderful husband gave me permission to share this, which I have to say because people ask me after, did I ask for permission?

But when we first started dating, obviously there's a lot to love about him.

But one of my very, very favorite things, one of the things that made me fall in love with him the most was,

 his love of animals, his love of creatures.

I think we were first talking over Snapchat, you know, we're giggling and flirting and doing all the things that you do.

He would send me pictures of him feeding ducks with lettuce out by the lake.

 And then when we started going on dates and eventually would end up on road trips through more rural areas of the state of Texas, for whatever reason, on more than one occasion over the span of a few months, we would be driving and we would come across a turtle on the side of the road.

And every single time, he would pull off onto the side of the road, get out of his car, take a picture, of course,

 pick up the turtle and go and move it across the road in the direction that it was going, defying traffic to do this, and set the turtle down.

And that just made me fall in love with him.

To see that this is a person who not only watches National Geographic or not only enjoyed a biology class or perhaps a children's cartoon with figures named after famous painters,

 But this is somebody who actually embodies the love that he experiences in the world.

Somebody who stops, who gets out the car, who fights traffic, who picks up and moves.

These actions, these actions that we do in love, they shape us, they change our habits, they change our posture and the way that we move throughout the world.

 It's clear from 1 John, I think, that the author here sees love as this kind of primal source of not just ourselves and our identity and perhaps God's identity, but as this sort of central organizing principle which motivates us and catalyzes us into every area of our lives.

It is not something that is just talked about.

 or sing on a Sunday morning.

It is not just, oh, I will build my life upon the love.

It is the actual building our life upon this love.

It is rescuing turtles on the side of the road.

It is feeding lettuce to ducks.

And it is not something that can be learned in the same way that we often think about learning.

Make no mistake, love is a practice.

 And in some ways, it is a skill, but it is not one that you can pick up in a seminar or a class or, to my dismay, even a sermon.

No Brene Brown book can teach you the ins and outs of love.

Yes, you can get tools.

You can learn some things about love that can help you along.

This is not impractical to seek out information about love, but the truth is that love is really on-the-job training.

 It's something you can only really ever grasp if you actually get into the fray and begin to do it.

And guys, that's really hard because it'll beat you up.

Rachel, when you run, there's some hard days, isn't there?

There's blisters and calf strains and shin splints.

 And days missed for lack of motivation.

There's detours to Katy Trail Ice House that linger a little too long.

There's distraction.

There's the struggle of finding the best playlist.

I never could myself.

Love is something that has to be done.

 or it isn't love at all.

And with it comes all of these other things, these things that feel maybe at times like pain, but perhaps are actually freedom for us.

The chiseling away of ourselves into the shape of love so that we can do and be the very thing that we are called to and are.

 because friends, true love does require knowing, but this is not like the knowledge you can get at seminary.

It is the kind that comes through experience and participation.

It's the kind of love that forces us to invest our bodies into the object of our affections, and it transforms us just as much as we can transform it.

I, um,

 I'm now four years into marriage.

And something that we get now that we never got when we first started dating, people would come up to us when we first started dating, and they would say, oh, you're such a cute couple.

And we would say, thank you, we've been dating for three months.

And we'd look at each other, and then we'd look at them, and it was like, oh, thank you.

It was a precious time.

But now, we don't get, you're such a cute couple anymore.

Now we get, oh, are y'all brothers?

 And this is a little concerning to us.

One, we're entirely different ethnicities.

 It is a little, you know, I don't know which one of us isn't really showing the genetic makeup that we have, but we don't necessarily think that we look alike.

Now, in part, we kind of wonder sometimes maybe if people ask this because they're not sure how to ask, are you together?

Maybe it's a way of getting around it.

But more than that, I actually think what people are seeing is the way that we've shaped each other in such a way that we have begun to resemble each other.

 not in our face, or our freckles, or our eye color, not in the genome, in the phenotype, but in our posture, in our humor, in the ways that we show hospitality, in the way that we laugh.

Perhaps our time together, our chiseling of each other through this act of love, has caused us not to become less of ourselves, but to become more of us.

 us two distinct things sharing more and more an identity.

Not that we lose any of our true self or any of our true identity, but through the act of love, through this shaping, through hard nights and conversations, through discussions about bills and finance and work, and through planning a family, through these acts of investing, we somehow begin to resemble and mirror a more true self.

 One that's not lost in each other, but one that finds real definition and value in the act of loving and being beloved.

And that all sounds really lovely, doesn't it?

It's exciting to think about the possibilities of that in your life.

It doesn't have to be romantic love now, does it?

It could be friendships, communities.

It could be the vocation that you feel called to, your career.

 It could be the philanthropies that you care for.

It can be turtles on the side of the road.

This love can be a lot of things to us.

And if we're all doing it just this way, and it is as beautiful as it sounds, you would think that the world would begin to resemble more of a utopia by now than it does.

That we'd all be getting along, we'd have it figured out, there would be no injustice, no poverty, no crime, no fear,

 families wouldn't struggle to keep it all together, you would think that if this thing that we're shaped for and empowered to do and called to do were really operating in this way so powerfully, we'd all have it together by now.

And I think we know when we look around that we don't.

In many ways, our true life doesn't reflect our most deepest desires.

 And for a lot of us, there's a tension.

Yes, we want to love.

Yes, we want to be loved.

We want to live as 1 John calls us to live in the love of God, abiding in it, but we don't.

Now, if you're reading 1 John for the first time, it's a little scary the way that this gets set up.

1 John says something a little bit like this.

If you don't love, maybe God doesn't live in you at all.

Ooh.

 Spooky okay anybody here thinking about the bank teller that they got snippy with on Tuesday Anybody thinking about the person that cut them off in traffic the grandparent who keeps violating your personal boundaries The neighbor who keeps blasting their music past midnight.

Yes.

I do love Bad Bunny No, I don't want to be serenaded by it as I go to sleep Love is not

 the easy choice for us.

And in many ways, there are parts of us that it doesn't necessarily feel natural or easy because our perspective is limited by the world that we live in.

We look around and we don't always see the abundance that you have to have to love.

We don't always see the resources or feel we have the resources that we have to love.

Our love is intention with the truth.

 that in myself, in the things that I have, in the time that I have to invest, in the resources I have to invest, maybe, maybe I'm not enough.

Maybe there's lack.

And in that lack, then, love can kind of fade into the background and be replaced by a self-preserving drive

 this need to defend where you feel offended, this need to get back at others for the wrongdoing they've done to you, this need to scream, talk to representative over the line over and over again until some poor haggard worker finally picks up.

In the lack and in the scarcity of our lives, our love can become distorted.

 And often, then, we try to assert control.

Like a captain of a ship attempting to land at shore, sometimes we run aground in love.

And instead of harbor and safety and peace, we find shipwreck.

We're not the captain of our lives.

We're the captain of love.

 God is.

God is the source.

God is the sustaining power.

God is the thing, the person, the being that we participate in that gives us what we need to do the thing we're made to do.

It is through abiding, through participation in God, in the life of God, in the lives of each other in God,

 that we find the strength we need to overcome scarcity, to overcome our feelings of lack, and to find abundance.

There's, I think, something very powerful about the ways that we fail.

 do this and the humility it takes sometimes to get back off our feet i think when we fail in love often we feel shame and we try to hide from the way that we're feeling we put on armor and defenses we create rational reasons for why we didn't succeed we find ways to blame that blame turned outward turned inward

 sometimes even turned to God.

And that is okay.

I think that's a natural part of our process.

I think we have to experience the grief of it.

But it isn't where we stay, I don't think.

Not if we truly are who we think we are, and I believe you are.

Love gets back up on its feet and it tries again.

Love

 is a moment by moment choice and orientation of the heart.

It is not the sum of your successes and failures.

It is the posture of your person.

It is the looking this way towards others and towards God and sometimes not.

But that drag and that pull,

 that God calls us to, this participation that God offers us, orients our hearts in such a way that when we fail in love, and we will, there's direction and clarity about next steps.

There's that tug to make amends, to reconcile, to meet the need that was ignored, to participate anew in one another,

 There is redemption through the atoning work of Christ.

This love is messy and gritty and fleshed in us, and it's not easy.

And you can mess it up.

And that's okay.

Because this God is love is not a catchphrase.

It's actual good news for us.

 Just as we don't abandon the cause of love because of our failure, neither does God abandon us.

This statement that John makes that God is love is not a slogan engineered by a Christian's finest PR team.

It is God actually offering God's self to us each and every day anew and fresh.

And it is embodied in this earth through us.

 the church in the way that we love each other in the kindness of strangers and the mercy and forgiveness of your loved one touching you on the shoulder and saying hey i can see you're having a bad day and you didn't mean that it is embodied to us in these acts and traditions that we participate in here in services like this it's embodied to us in communion

 We're gonna get to celebrate communion here today, but I wanna draw attention maybe to something that communion doesn't often necessarily get talked about as.

We think about communion often as a meal that is hosted for us.

In it, we believe that we find God, that we experience God's grace in a very powerful, spiritual, even if invisible way, ways that we don't understand.

 But it's a bit more than that too.

It's not just an invitation to come and to receive the grace of God, but it is an invitation to actually participate in God in a very powerful way.

You see on the night that Jesus was betrayed, he gathered his disciples one final time to do something, something that was powerful enough to evoke a 2000 year old response in us.

 It's generated art and music and traditions like the very one that we're celebrating today.

And on that night that Jesus was betrayed, he took the bread and gave thanks for it.

And he broke it and he said, this is my body, which is broken for you.

And on the night that Jesus was betrayed,

 offered up the cup the wine and said this is my blood which is shed for you in this invitation to take and eat this offering of god to us is an offering for us to participate an offering for us

 to yield ourselves to the same God who yielded themself to us.

This is us taking on Jesus in the same way that Jesus took on us.

You see, in coming as a human person, Jesus bore our sufferings.

Jesus bore our scarcity.

Jesus bore our lack.

Jesus bore the pain of limitation of the human experience and

 Jesus did it through love.

Jesus endured in love.

And so when we participate in God, just as God takes on us, we take on God.

 God's abundance, God's life, God's provision, God's care, God's eternal joy in the love of the Trinity, just as Jesus took on our sufferings, so we take on God's true life.

And at this table, we physically embody it just like that children's moment.

 When I walked up to the front of the church and I held my hands out and I got that piece of candy, that sweet treat that told me that the thing that we're saying isn't just words, it is true, it is experienced in us.

So when we come to the table, we too experience God.

It's a treat.

 It's that sweet thing that tells us that the things that we sing are true.

Pastor Elizabeth is going to come up and lead us in communion in just a moment.

But before we go, I just want to remind you

 That if today, if you're feeling that your love is turned away, if it's shut off, if it's gone cold, if it's not where it needs to be, it's okay.

Come to the same altar we're all coming to.

Take on the God that God offers you in this act.

 And go in peace knowing that you are loved and that your heart is being pulled in the same direction that mine is, that your neighbor's is, that those disciples were being pulled on that night.

We're in this together.

This God that is love is with us.

Amen.