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Is This Love?


I don't follow politics as much as I should... but I have been following, entirely second hand, what happened in North Carolina and President Obama’s statement supporting same-sex marriage and I wonder…how did we get here?
I am in the midst of working on my sermon for Sunday and I don’t know where to go because I don’t know how we got here.
Maybe you are asking “where is here?” Here May 11, 2012 in a society that feels like total anarchy. 236 years ago (give or take) some people who were feeling oppressed and alienated sought to make a better life where it would be understood that ALL were created equal. Of course that first claim came with underlying unspoken exceptions- ALL were created equal- except women, children, people of different skin tone, and more recently people who define and qualify love differently than others.
I admittedly do not know much more than I did as a senior in high school about politics. Political Science was a classed I HAD to take in order to graduate from college but in my un-politically knowing mind- NONE of this makes sense, at least not to me.
I have believed for a long time now, that couples can be married in the eyes of the church but not in the eyes of the state. To me marriage is a blessed union of two individuals whom God has brought together. Unfortunately over time even this union has become corrupt because the basis of the union has become superficial. Love- not hallmark cards, diamonds, and roses kind of love but genuine God centered love has left humanity. Even those of us who claim to stand in God’s love alone, are corrupted by the world around us.  In 1993 John Killinger wrote a book entitled The Greatest Teachings of Jesus. In the first chapter he says this:

“Love. It is a strange thing for a man in Jesus’ time to be talking about…But Jesus appears to never to have been embarrassed to talk about love. It was the center of who he was, at the heart of his vision. For him, love was always the bottom line- every interpretation of life, every act of will, every decision involving other persons. Anything that did not proceed from love or answer to love was simply wrong”

When I first read this I thought to myself “Yes! Amen this is true” Then I reread it and I felt my thoughts turning to the world today.  As I look back over the centuries that have passed since Jesus was alive I start to realize that this is what he was teaching but it is most certainly what WE (the whole people of God) have been learning or living for that matter. There might be pockets of this love out there, moments when defenses drop and doors open and this Christ like love enters in but not everywhere and not all the time.

What does it take for people on either side of any debate to realize that at the heart of the gospel no matter what translation you read, no matter what denomination you align yourself with, NO MATTER WHAT “anything that did not proceed from love or answer to love was simply wrong”.

What has to happen for this to be true?

Comments

  1. AnonymousMay 11, 2012 at 11:21 AM

    We have to submit ourselves anew to the authority of Christ in our lives. In our narcissistic culture it may not be possible

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wanda B.May 11, 2012 at 1:36 PM

    So true Andrea, abiding in Christ's love as Christ abides in the love of God is a stretch for most of us. But that is what is so eye opening about the John 15:1-17 passage for Sunday. The metaphor of the vines coming out of the one branch being indistinguishable and interrelated. Such an awesome ideal for the church. Instead of individual vines we need to see ourselves connected to the one branch, who abides in God's love.

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