all you need is love

from my sermon on Sept. 4, 2011, from Romans 13:8-10

I quote from Paul, not St. Paul, who wrote this letter to the church at Rome, but Sir Paul, McCartney, of Great Britain, of the Beatles, of Wings, and lots of solo work:

( I sing ) Love, Love, Love....Love, Love, Love....Love, Love, Love, Love,,,
All you need is love.....all you need is love.....all you need is love, love, love is all you need.

It is so simple isn't it? Love is all you need. That's what St. Paul was saying too. The whole law is summed up, brought to a head, in one word, love. He quotes Jesus, who quotes Lev. 19:18 in the first testament, "Love your neighbor as yourself."

It is so simple to say, to understand, but so hard to practice. Love your neighbor? It is hard enough to love your spouse. I know we stand before God's altar, we make vows in a marriage covenant for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish. We just don't know all the fine print in that marriage contract.

I want to tell you about our 17th wedding anniversary. Please know that I got Cathy's permission to tell you this story. You know what the 25th anniversary is....silver. You know what the 50th anniversary is....golden. But do you know what the 17th anniversary is? It's the toilet!

On Dec. 30 that year, the city of San Antonio, where we were living was having a toilet rebate program. Trade in your old high volume flush toilet and get money to replace it with a low volume flush toilet. I had done some plumbing in my past. I want to take care of the environment. I had the time to do it. I go out to HOme Depot and buy 2 toilets that qualified for the rebate. I came home, turned off the water, pulled the old toilets, put down the wax rings, set the toilets and the tanks, and hooked up the water. Cathy stayed out of my way. At the end she came in, and said, "I am so proud of you. Thank you for a good job." Then she turned on the lights in the coming of evening and said, "They're beige." "So," I replied. "The sink and tub are white...not beige." "You mean?" I said. "Yes," she replied, "you need to replace them."

So I gritted my teeth, turned off the water, pulled the beige toilets, put them back in the boxes, went back to Home Depot, got 2 new toilets, White ones, came back home and put them in. That was our 17th wedding anniversary, the toilet anniversary.

Love is hard. In fact, if you want to know what is the loving thing to do, choose the hard path, not the easy one.

We love our children. We grow in anticipation as they grow in the womb. We are in awe when they pop into this world and we become co-creators with God. We wonder that God would trust us with such precious ones. Along with the wonder comes feeding at 3 a.m., and it's hard. There comes the time when stuff is blowing out both ends at a high rate of speed and the temperature is 105 and you are rushing to the hospital, and it's hard. Love is hard.

Loving others is hard. I had a poster on my wall growing up. It was Snoopy on his doghouse. Snoopy said, "I love humankind. It is people I can't stand." Love is specific, not generic.

Loving your neighbor is hard. I got an email this past week that was forwarded from one of my distant family members who seemed to agree with it. I can erase it from my computer files, but it is harder to erase from my memory. The gist of the message was that the world's problems can be blamed upon accepting Muslims into society. I couldn't believe it. 9/11 is coming up, and we are looking for someone to blame. Who will we pick on? Gays, different races?

It is hard to love. Some would say impossible. Maybe so. Maybe not if we consider that love is not a feeling; it is an action. It is not a noun; it is a verb. I am so glad that familiar verse that we have memorized, John 3:16, doesn't say, "God so loved the world that he.....cried....or felt bad." Probably God does cry and feel bad for us, but God does more, "for God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life."

There are lots of words for love in the Greek language, and the word here is agape. It is the kind of love that we see in Jesus, in his living with us, in his dying for us, and his being raised from the dead for us. It is love that looks like cross and resurrection.

Love is hard, and the only way we can love others, is to know that we have been loved. We have been loved by God in Jesus Christ. I know this, but sometimes I don't practice it. I went to my prayer/accountability group this past Monday. We pastors talk about our souls, about our families,and about our ministries. One of my peers said to me this past week, "How long has it been since you last let Jesus love you?" Well, it had been too long. The remark cut me to my deepest being. I started practicing it in my morning walks, simply being in Jesus' presence, and letting him love me.

Let's practice that now. I know it is hard. You have so many excuses for not allowing Jesus to do this, but we have just confessed our sins and been forgiven in the liturgy. Let's lay anything on this table that would keep us from accepting Jesus' love. Take a minute and simply let Jesus love you.

(silence)

To paraphrase Sir Paul again, "He loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, He loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, He loves you yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah."

The only way we can love one another as ourselves is to let Jesus love us first. We become a conduit, a pipeline of His love to others. The good news I have to share is that all you need is love.