God is Love. Period

I’m a young Boomer and grew up on love songs like “You Can’t Hurry Love” and “Evergreen” and “Endless Love” and Earth Wind and Fire’s “Love’s Holiday.”

I could not breathe when I heard this lyric in Maurice White’s sultry voice:

Would you mind if I touched, if I kissed, if I held you tight in the morning light, Yeah.

…I never ever felt this way in my heart before ….love has found it’s way in my heart tonight….”

Earth Wind and Fire was my first concert. Maurice White my first love. He did’t know it but, damn….that voice, that jumpsuit, I mean….Sure, Phillip Bailey had it going on. But Dear Maurice….I would not mind, I would think, if you touched, kissed, and held me tight until the morning light. Yeah. I was a virgin, and a kiss from a boy could melt me all the way down and leave my head spinning (yes, a boy named Ronald had me all dizzy and soft and ….) This romantic, sexy love seemed elusive to me, but I yearned for it, for the breathlessness, for the connection to another who beheld you and found you amazing.

“You want my love and you can’t deny it. You know the truth and you try to hide….” Another song with Maurice making out to this teen with no experience, but with a hunger to be loved so deeply that it made you crazy.

I went to seminary when I was thirty. I was looking for a love that would not let me go. I began to translate my romantic notions of love into the mystical wonder of just how much God loves me. Psalm 139 lays it out, God who searches me and knows me, knows my laying down and my rising up. Is present in my best behaviour and in my hellish self. Close to me like breath. Endless love. Reckless love? Persistent pursuing love. What I yearned for in human companionship was there for me, IS here for me in the love God has for me.

I’m sad at the state of the world. I am. Today a mom’s baby boy (teen age boy) drowned at the beach on a supervised school trip. A boy was killed and the man who shot him in the back was aquitted. Another boy defended himself and was sentenced to years in prison. A cross was burned in Chicago. That’s just the stuff in my feed since I started writing.

AND…

Last night my grandson teased me with some kind of app in which your face can be a martian or a bear. He laughed so hard and was so open, I fell more in love with him. And my colleagues who don’t get paid spent hours and hours this week working on Middle Church and what we do next to rebuild our space. My staff cared for the broken hearted, mailed love notes to our community, prayed for folks, worked on policy and programs to heal the world. I watched as my friend Linda celebrated her friend Tameka, and thought of all the ways they have loved this nation even though it does not love them back. A child was going to fall of a building ledge and a young man caught the child and saved a life.

Love can be soft and wet, but t is also fierce and courageous and bold. It is determined and risk-taking and leads to rule-breaking kindness.

On Sunday, June 14, some of my favorite authors are coming to Middle Church to preach a sermon called Love is Love. It’s part of our June Justice Arc. We’re celebrating Pride, we’re honoring Juneteenth, and we are reflecting on 250 years of the experiment called the United States of America.

Lindsay Branam, Kerry Docherty, and Joel Leon are going to be in the space for a conversational sermon on their books and on what love requires of us right now.

Eugene Peterson’s The Message is a wonderful translation of 1 John 4. Read this poetry:

^17-18 God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.

¹⁹ We, though, are going to love—love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first.

^20-21 If anyone boasts, “I love God,” and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won’t love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can’t see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both.

When we take up a permanent residence in love, when we abide in love, when love abides in us, God resides in us. When we love, no matter who, no matter their gender or sexuality, no matter our relationship to the beloved, WHEN WE LOVE as a permanent residency, God moves into us, into our love. God moves into the neighborhood when we love, living in us while we live in God. God is love. Love is God.

Love is God. God is love.

When we love, God moves into us. When we love, that makes us a love shack, baby.

Play a little game with me. What’s your favorite love song? Pretend it is about you and God, God and you. How does that feel?

I believe God’s agape love is stronger, sturdier, more sensual (as in about the senses) than any other love. It is the fount from which other love flows. It is the source of our love for ourselves, and our love for our neighbor.

These are some hot mess times. We need God to move inside us, take up residence in our love. And we need to love the hell out of the world. It’s what we need.