Love Is The Way

A homily preached on Sunday May 28, 2006 at New Spirit Community Church, in Berkeley, California.

Good morning! My name is Jim Weller. I’m your student intern pastor, and this is the last day of my official internship. I’ll bet you thought you were going to get away without having to hear me preach to you!

Perhaps I should explain the schema for our chapel arrangements this morning. White and red are the prescribed liturgical colors for the six Sundays after Easter, of which today is the last. I thought we would hang our United Church of Christ “God Is Still Speaking” identity banner, since we are now a full-fledged UCC church, and it matches the color scheme. And I just got back last Sunday from the UCC Northern California Nevada Conference Annual Meeting weekend at Asilomar, full of denominational identity!

I am, after all, a theological student, as I will continue to be until I become august and venerable, so I thought it good today to give you a brief survey of the key meanings of Christian theology, as I understand them. The core message is that love is what redeems us, but a few other theology words will make appearances, too. Don’t let them distract you!

Anyhow, I have my white and red on; my head is polished, so let’s go!

Let those with ears to hear listen:

“How big is God, Daddy? Is he bigger than a house?” asked Anna, the firstborn and the more pensive of my two preschool-aged daughters, one afternoon while they sat together, talking with me on the front porch.

“God is not a person, or a thing you can see, or touch, or hear,” I 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.

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, first and final cause of being. Creator and creation completely interpenetrated.

Our lives are God’s gifts of being, in relatedness with all other beings and being itself. We are given the gift of awareness of our relationship with God in each other, and our accepting response is love. There is no way by works of penitence to attain to the love of God. Love is the way.

Let me tell another story here. A Unitarian Universalist minister I know was preaching the good news of God’s love one day, and afterward an older man approached her with a question. Now this man, Bill, like most Unitarians, had an advanced education, and he was a perfectly rational thinker. He really was a rocket scientist. He and his colleagues knew how to put a man on the moon, and bring him back to tell about it – and they actually had.

So Bill asked, “Pastor, I know you believe in your experience of God’s presence, but how do you know that’s what you’re experiencing? How do you know it’s not just your imagination? Rachel could have launched into an intricate philosophical proof of the existence of God, and Bill could have followed it.

But instead, she asked him another question. “Bill,” she asked, “Have you ever been in love? I mean, really in love, so that everything was brighter, and more beautiful than before?” Bill smiled, remembering. “Oh yes,” he replied. “Well, how do you know?” she rejoined. “How do you know you didn’t just imagine it?

There you go.

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

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

“The glory of God is a human being fully alive,” wrote an early Christian, Irenaeus.

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!”

Sh'ma Yisrael Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echod! "Hear, O Israel, Adonai your God is One!"

"You shall love Adonai your God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your strength, as you are beloved of God. You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself."

We are here to love one another, for that is the way to love God as we are beloved. These are the greatest commandments.

The relationship between God and human persons really is one of unending, unconditional love and acceptance. You are a beloved child of God in whom God delights. You are accepted in the kingdom of God, now and forever. God’s acceptance does not end.

That is the good news of God. Your part of the relationship is very simple: Accept your acceptance!

The way Jesus put the saving message was this: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the good news."

What this meant was that God's time is always fulfilled. The love and acceptance of God are immediately available for you, right here, right now.

To re-pent is to turn the soul round right. It means, "Think again!" It is to respond rightly to the good news of God. We take our turned-inward spirits and turn them inside out, turning the light of love toward God and other people.

Jesus taught us to believe that in this way only, we will be redeemed from sin.

Sin is not a popular topic in churches like ours, where the gospel of love is emphasized. We all know that mistaken ideas about sin have been used, or misused, in church as weapons to shame us in our expressions of love and the joy of living, and to separate us from the love of God.

No one is untouched by sin. William Sloane Coffin said that sin is the abuse of our God-given free will. I say that it almost always involves pridefulness and abuses of power. In any case, it erects barricades that keep love out.

Sin forms in the shadow of the isolated self that stands between the human soul and the light of God’s love.

To sin is to do the opposite of the Great Commandment to love God, and love others as oneself. It is to be alienated by self will from God's will to love unconditionally. It is to will harm, and to act harmfully, instead of for good. It is to abide in diffidence, ignoring and disguising the harm others and we do in our alienation. And, it builds up permanency in our social structures and inherited cultural traditions.

Sin and salvation could be explored at length in many other sermons. Understanding them is at the core of understanding the meaning of the gospel. But today’s topic is simply about love and acceptance.

The glad tiding of God is the good news that you are accepted! Sinners and saints alike. You have been beloved of God and accepted into God’s realm since the day you were born, and before then, and nothing you can do or believe, or not do or not believe, will cause God’s love and acceptance of you to be withdrawn.

All that is required of you for salvation is to accept your acceptance. Repentance of sin demands no more of you than this: "Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly in the presence of God."

Remission of sin is a process engaged in on the part of the human person who has accepted God’s unconditional acceptance – one who has been redeemed by simple surrender to divine love. It is a movement of the human spirit in love toward God, the divinity of being itself that is reflected in the human spirit.

One morning last weekend during the UCC Conference Annual Meeting, I took a walk by myself among the flowering dunes, back of Pebble Beach on Monterey Bay. The sky was full of sailing clouds and sunlight, and the wind tore wildly at my shirt. It would have whipped the hat off my head if it hadn’t been tied on. For weeks, I had been full of self-doubt, and despaired of the authenticity of my vocation, feeling alone and ill equipped to accept God’s calling – if it even was that, and not just my wishful imagination.

Then I rounded a bend in the path, coming into the lee of a sand dune under a sheltering growth of cypresses. And the wind ceased its howling. The hollow where I stood was bright and quiet. I reflected that this walk was a metaphor for these days of my arrival in the company of saints, so to speak. For I was a part of a gathering of members of the body of Christ, young and old, clergy and laity, ordinary human persons who were accepting their acceptance – and I was accepted among them, imperfect as I am.

[solo singing accompanied by choir, humming the melody] “Sometimes I feel discouraged, and think my work’s in vain, but then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again. There is a balm in Gilead, to make the wounded whole; there is a balm in Gilead, to heal the sin-sick soul.”

Salvation is never done once and for all. We need periodic renewal treatments, makeovers, or tune-ups. We salve each other. That’s why we pray and worship together. Salvation is the balm of God’s grace given freely and received by faith, and it is the way of life for God’s people. All people are chosen to be redeemed by God’s grace, if only we will accept God’s choice.

The Deuteronomist of ancient Israel discerned God’s message of salvation this way: “I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life – so that you and your children may live" – by loving your God, heeding God’s commands, and holding fast to God.

Love made us, and it is what we are here for. Love is the way.

Let us choose accordingly, and love one another as God loves us.

May it be so. Amen.