Beloved, let us love

Beloved, let us love one another. Today God offers you a chance to redeem your salvation, so that Easter did in fact happen for you. You may be seated.


Beloved, let us love one another.
Jesus said the First Commandment is this, “‘Sh’ma Yisrael, Adonai eloheinu, Adonai echod,’ Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength; the Second Commandment is its equal in every way, in fact they are one and the same: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.”

Why do you suppose we need a law like this? It is because we live in a world of hatred, not a world of love.

Beloved, let us love one another. 
“We confess that we have sinned against thee in thought, word and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved thee with our whole heart. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.” Do you seriously think that God would have given us the two Great Love Commandments if we were loving people? God would not have given these commandments if we, selfish creatures, were Loving, had already been Loving, are Loving. But God knows us - - has known since our days in the Garden with Adam. God has known since we emerged from the Ark with Noah. God has known us, loved us, hung on the Cross for us, returned from the grave to us because God loves us, even as God grieves that we are so far from the loving Godly image in which God meant to create us.  

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. … Those who say, "I love God," and hate others, are liars; for those who do not love others whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love others. All others. The different-from-us. The other.

Beloved, let us love one another. 
Ejected from the Garden of Eden, God’s world of love, we live in our own world of selfish hatred. In a malignant age when many of us think we remember a United States of America when ordinary people knew common courtesy and were civil to each other despite deep differences, we have changed as a nation and a people; changed and allowed ourselves to be changed - - into poisonous beings with no human decency, becoming creatures of darkness who abide under rocks, angry, gutless, contemptible. Unsigned, anonymous, we hide in internet shadows, pseudo humans, nameless but to God and self, hating, harming and offending others. Historically so in the religious realm where we entrench in absolute certainty, today so in the electronic social and political arena where we freely despise and contemn each other with unbridled hatred. Why? Why do we hate each other? I, like you, am a child of God, a son of Adam, a brother of Jesus: why do you hate me? You and I are not the same, but why, why, because we see and know and experience life and the world differently, why must you hate me so? 

Beloved, let us love one another. 
A world of hatred. Americans are said to be more hate-filled toward each other than at any time in our history. I have been critical at times, stunned at protestant v. catholic, that Irish Christians could hate and kill each other. At the Muslim v. Hindu hatreds that separated Pakistan from India. That sects of Islam, Sunnis and Shia, so hate and murder each other. That Europeans could so hate Jews. In Africa, the Hutu - Tutsi genocide and cruelty. That American whites can so put down blacks and other minorities and want to keep them down. That in our divided society we hate those “above” us, and fear those “beneath” us because they threaten to supplant us. As the divide between us widens, hatred and fear become indistinguishable. American “democracy” is not a classless society as our constitution says, and we do not love one another.

Beloved, let us love one another. 
If we loved, had loved, did love, do love, if it were our nature to love, God would not have given the Love Commandment, but instead, created in the image of God, we have strayed free will to hate and contemn others, thereby hating God himself, hating God himself, hating God himself. Because if the Bible is true, First John is clear: if you hate another person, or people who are different from you, then you hate God.

Beloved, let us love one another. 
Years ago I read, I think in Readers Digest, about a man with a new motor home who, on his first and only long highway trip, out on the Interstate, turned on the cruise control, set the speed at 60 miles an hour, got up from his driver’s seat and headed to the back of the motor home for a cup of coffee. Just so, in a few minutes, after the Creed and our Prayers, we shall confess our sins in usual liturgical fashion. I ask you this morning, do not let your confession be mindless liturgical rote: do not let your mouth, lips and tongue murmur in cruise control while your mind wanders to the back of the bus. Think ahead, right now, about who you hate. Whom do you hate? Whom do you criticize, talk about behind their back, at home, on the internet, or at work? Whom do you blast hatefully, anonymously online, knowing they can’t see and know you? What category of Americans or other human beings Red or Blue, black, yellow, brown, or white, LGBTQ, pink or lavender, do you hate or hold in contempt because of what they are, or because you disagree with every breath they take, every word they utter, every vote they cast, every person they love? This is your morning to come clean with God, to restore and redeem your salvation so that Easter dawned for you.


Beloved, let us love one another. 

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 Sermon preached in Holy Nativity Episcopal Church the Fifth Sunday of Easter, 29th April 2018 by the Rev Tom Weller, retired. Top: 1935 Cadillac convertible sedan. 1935 was a holy year for all that is, seen and unseen.