Homily on the Theology of Love

Let those with ears to hear listen:

“How big is God, Daddy? Is he bigger than a house?” asked Anna, firstborn and the more pensive of two sisters, one afternoon while they sat together, talking with their father on the front porch railing, after their preschool day.

“God is not a person, or a thing you can see, or touch, or hear,” he answered her, quite as thoughtfully. “God is . . . a feeling inside you. God is how you feel when you know you are alive. God is what you feel when you love someone. When you say, ‘I love you,’ you feel God in you.”

Anna sat quietly for half a minute, enjoying her ice cream cone. “I love you, Daddy”, she said.

“I know, sweetie. I love you, too. Listen. Do you remember the day we were at the beach, when you were kneeling in the wet sand, with your back to the waves, and you’d laugh as each wave surprised you, splashing over your shoulders? Maggie was playing by herself, near us on the big rocks, and you and I were there in the surf, and I’d laugh when you laughed, and you looked up at me then and yelled, ‘I’m happy!’ Do you remember how good you felt then? That was God, laughing inside you.”

Now, friends, I can speak to you in more sophisticated terms than one can with a child. To you I can affirm that yes, God is not only not a person and not a thing, God is utterly other – absolutely unlike any object of understanding. Nothing that can be said of anything in being can be said of God, as Godself.

Truths of God, that God is eternal, absolute, infinite, unconditional, are true of no person or thing in being. God is ultimately beyond reason, unreachable to finite human understanding.

And yet, God is nearer to us than we are to ourselves. God is not one and the same as everything in being, but God is real and present in every time and place, with every thing and every person, for God is being itself, ground of being, ultimate reality, first and final cause of being.

Hear, O Israel, Adonai your God is One! You shall love Adonai your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength, as you are beloved of God. You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself. These are the greatest commandments. Love your enemies, and bless those who revile you. This is the Way of Christ.

We hear and we believe we are beloved of God, and God is love.

Though any meaning we may attribute to God is but a metaphor, a symbol, or a sign pointing to the incomprehensible awesome reality of God, one glorious affirmation is indubitably ours to make – God is! Ancient Hebrew Scripture tells that that is how God answered Moses, asking God’s name – “I am!”

Because he knew he was of God, that is the way Jesus answered his accusers – “Before Abraham was, I am!”

As it is said, we are children of God, beings made in God’s image. And by God’s holy grace, the same affirmation is ours to make in every season of our lives, in sorrow and in gladness, with our first breaths and our last, “Yes God – I am! I am of you and I am yours, God. Your will be done, not mine!”