Sermon on the Mount cont.

 

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!!  Woo hoo!  It is my prayer for you that God’s love will hold you and help you feel whole today.  It is my prayer that you will live the truth that God’s name for you is, “Beloved.”  When Paul says, “Love is patient, kind, not envious, boastful, arrogant or rude” in 1 Corinthians 13, he is preaching and teaching that love will ask us to dare and dive in with our full selves.  Love is not a spectator sport where we side on the sidelines, love asks us to be engaged with all our energy.  To continue the thread from yesterday, love looks differently depending on who is in front of me.  Love is elastic and expansive.  Love is generative and generous.  I find that when I share love, I receive love back.  Not always, this isn’t a math formula or a machine, we are featherless bipeds who are human-sized with all the bumbles and stumbles.  But the scale tips toward love that is shared does make a difference.

 

On this Valentines Day, which too often is conflated with romantic love, let us as people of faith reclaim this as a day we practice love toward each other.  You can call someone in the church to check in and catch up.  You can send a card to the person before and after you in the church directory.  You can offer the loving kindness meditation I shared yesterday for people in our church who are grieving.  You can participate in the prayer service today or watch it later on YouTube.  You can bring your pastor a gift.  (Just wanted to make sure you were still reading!).  You can watch the words you share with other.  You can try to explore different dimensions of love that have nothing to do with romance or intimacy rather practice love that has everything to do with how we connect as humans to each other.  “Love never ends,” Paul says.  To be honest, we sometimes cling to God’s unconditional and unceasingly love too tightly that this fierce force gets stuck in the cul-de-sac of our souls.  This happens when we want to determine who deserves love, as if it is some limited time resource rather than the foundation of faith.  I have found that the tighter I grasp on God’s gracious, generous love this fierce force starts to gasp for oxygen. 

 

Share love as you are love.  Be love as you are beloved.  Let love loose in a world that won’t know what to do with it…do it anyway.  We have seen the impact of cynicism and criticism and constantly seeing only the brokenness.  We have berated and belittled and badgered people thinking that is what will promote change.  Perhaps today, perhaps this month, perhaps this year, we might truly be open and curious about the revolution of love that Jesus not only preached but lived to show us the way to life. 

 

May your Valentine’s Day be soaked and saturated in the love of God.