“God is Love”

May 2, 2021        

Scripture 1 John 4:7-21

⁷ Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. ⁸ Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. ⁹ 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. ¹⁰ 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. ¹¹ Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.

¹³ By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. ¹⁴ And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. ¹⁵ God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. ¹⁶ So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. ¹⁷ 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. ¹⁸ 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. ¹⁹ We love because he first loved us. ²⁰ 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. ²¹ The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

Scripture John 15:1, 5

15 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower.

⁵ I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.

In the Broadway play Oliver, young orphan Oliver Twist, Dicken’s lost and abused child, sings “Where O Where is Love?”  Our heart breaks for this young lad, as we also have our own longing for deep abiding love.  Love is the universal hunger in the human heart.  We may chase after love, try to buy love, lose our voice for love.  But love is not earned or purchased.  Rather it is gift from God.  Well, it is the very nature of God.  “All things begin in love, flow from love, are perfected through love and return to love… “God is love” (Feasting on the Word, B2, p. 466)

We heard that twice today in our passage, this declaration that “God is Love.”  It is a simple and profound truth.  One I recall Gene Burk telling me shortly after I got here.  It sums up his theology and I think that is solid ground.  God is love.  Some form of the word love appears 29 times in 14 verses.  I think love is the point.  The love that is talked about in John’s letter is so unique that the early Christians took an old colorless Greek word that was rarely used and adopted it for their own purposes, giving it a rich meaning.  That word is agape, love that gives without expecting a return, love that gives sacrificially.  God is love, God is agape.

As we consider agape love, I want us to focus on three aspects of that Love.  God is love, God loves us, and we love others.  You might say well isn’t that the great commandment.  You are right to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself. (Matthew 22:37-40).  John declares it this way, “A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.  By this shall all know that you are my disciples, if you have love one to another.” (John 13:34-35) Remember we believe that these letters were written by or in the tradition of the Gospel writer John, so the continuation of this theme makes sense.

First, God is love.  This fact deepens our understanding of the Shema, the great commandment. That was all about what we did and how we behaved. We love, we do, we make it happen.   Now defining God as love, as agape, means it all starts with God. Love starts with God- God initiates.  “The initiative of God’s love makes possible the reality of human love.” (Feasting on the Word, 467)  Think about that.  We love because God first loved us.  Our very idea of love is one that originates with God.

Judith Jones writes, “God’s love does not depend on our initiative or on our worthiness. We don’t have to reach out to God or even believe in God in order to be loved. We don’t have to clean up our act before God can love us. We don’t have to measure up to some standard in order to be lovable. No, God showers love on us whether we deserve it or not. And honestly, who could ever deserve such amazing, immeasurable love? (Working Preacher).

I hope you felt God’s love pour over you as I described God’s love.  But I also know we sometimes have a hard time seeing God is such a loving way.

What is your view of God? Shadows of scowling judge waiting to convict you? The disapproving parent whose love you have to earn? Your view of God affects every decision and relationship in your life. Kathleen Chesto wrote to Catholic Digest to tell them about an incident that occurred in her family. Her five-year-old child approached her one day in the kitchen and asked, “Mom, is God a grown-up or a parent?”

Mom was a little puzzled by the question. “I’m not sure what you mean,” she said. “Is there a difference between a grown-up and a parent?” “Oh yes,” her five-year-old answered quickly. “Grown-ups love you when you are good and parents love you anyway” (sermons.com, King Duncan).   That is God’s agape love.  God our parent loves us anyway.  No matter what we have done.  God is love! God initiates loving us, loving YOU!

Secondly, we know we are loved. We love because God first loved us. Our faith teaches us to know we are loved by God.  We answer Oliver’s question of where O where is love by receiving and living in God’s 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…” (v. 9).

WE know and experience we are loved in Jesus Christ.

First in Jesus’ Birth- love made incarnate, dwelling among us.

Second, in Jesus’ Life- love lived, love made real.

Third in Jesus’ Death – love sacrificed for us.

Finally in Jesus’ Resurrection – love in the hope and promise of eternal life.

Agape love is a peculiar kind of love. It is not romantic love or the love of a mother for a child or the love shared between friends. This love seeks what is best for all other persons, even our enemies, without regard to benefits or costs. Why? Because God has lavished upon us His very best–a Savior named Jesus.

Several years ago, there was a famous PEANUTS cartoon in which Shroeder, that piano loving intellectual, was interrupted as he often was by his infatuated admirer, Lucy. Lucy asked Shroeder, “Shroeder, do you know what love is?” Shroeder abruptly stopped his playing, stood to his feet and said precisely, “Love: noun, to be fond of, a strong affection for or an attachment or devotion to a person or persons.” Then he sat back down and resumed playing his piano. Lucy sat there stunned and then murmured sarcastically, “On paper, he’s great.”

We don’t get to be Christians who are great on paper. Long on sentiment, short on action.  Once you know God’s love, God’s agape love through Jesus, you get to share that love.  Our love needs to take action, to love our brothers and sisters.  Because if we do not love them we “do not know God, for God is love” (v.8)

Finally We Love Others

John writes to the beloved, the agapetoi, while defining God as agape. Hear the same root word? Agape, apapetoi. God’s love to God’s beloved. We are the beloved, we are loved by God.   One commentator writes, “God is love, agape.  Jesus died for us an act of agape, and we ought to agape one another” (Feasting on the Word, 469).

Judith Jones writes, “Seeing ourselves as God’s beloved means seeing our sisters and brothers as God’s loved ones too. If we have come to know God’s love, we have seen for ourselves that it is unearned, undeserved, utterly free. Although God’s love is without conditions, it is not without consequences: God commands us to love one another as God has loved us” (Working Preacher).

“The crusty old sports announcer, Red Barber, once said: “When I boil down thirty years of experience in interviewing people on the radio and television and put it into one word, I would have to say that the Greeks have a word for it, ‘agape.’ ” Agape means, broadly, “to have concern for.” (we get to have concern for our brothers and sister.  We get to agape one another.) To use Michener’s phrase: “There is no real coming home to oneself until our goals and our motives are rooted in unselfish love in agape. This is our reason for being. This is our reason for doing. This is our reason for living.” (sermons.com)

Today we share agape with those we love and we know agape in the breaking of the bread.  Sometimes communion is called an agape meal, an expression of God’s love, enacted by Jesus’ love.  In the breaking of the bread the vine and the branches are interconnected. God’s unconditional love, Jesus made real to us in love, all unfolds in this sacrament.  In this agape meal may we know God is love, God loves us, and we are fed to love others.  Amen.