Most of us have heard it again and again: “God is Love,” “God so loved the world,” “As I have loved you, so love one another.” It feels good to hear. It sounds good to say. But it has been said so much that it can be easy to become numb to what it actually means, and to lose touch with how astonishing it is to claim and proclaim. 

God. Is. Love.  

Really!? 

         Life can be so hard and so cruel. Wouldn’t that mean that God is hard and cruel? 

         Plenty of people have believed that through the years. Makes a certain kind of sense.

         Or maybe there is a god of love or a goddess of love among a whole lot of other gods and goddesses who represent all the various forces in the world: war and birth and death and justice and chance and the harvest and the sea and wind and the earth and on and on. And these gods and goddesses get into all these fights and alliances and dramas over who gets to make what happen when. And that’s what accounts for what happens in the world. And in the thick of all, love clearly is not the one in charge, but is one deity among many. 

Plenty of people have believed that sort of thing. Makes a certain kind of sense.

         Or maybe it makes more sense that there is one God, and that God created everything and set it in motion, but then stepped away and just watches everything play out and doesn’t really care one way or the other however it does play out?

         Aristotle said that God is the “unmoved mover.” There are lots of people who have believed basically that. Makes a certain kind of sense. 

         But then there are these Hebrew prophets, these wild sages from a tiny, minor civilization, who kept having these overwhelming experiences of the Holy “I Am that I Am” who continuously gives existence to the cosmos. And in these experiences, the prophets receive the stunning message that the Creator of the Universe has a passionate concern for the well-being of the beings of creation. 

A passionate concern. A deep and abiding care. 

         These prophets called this love. Divine love. 

And this divine love drove the prophets to say that we also should be caring for everyone – that we should be treating everyone equitably, that we should be treating everyone peaceably. 

The prophets proclaimed that the ways we don’t care, with the powerful feeding off the powerless and the mighty conquering the weak and the rest of us ignoring and neglecting the suffering of it, this is not ordained by a hard and cruel God, and this is not the outcome of the petty rivalries within a pantheon the gods and goddess, and is not of zero concern to an indifferent God. 

But rather the God of all creation cares how we care for all creation. 

We can share in this care of the Creator, receiving that care from God, reciprocating that care to God, and sharing that care with other. And the prophets were very clear that there’s a lot at stake here: When we do not live in faithful and loving relation with God, we suffer and the get stuck in cycles of suffering. But if we live in faithful and loving relation with God, God can liberate us from the consequences of our pettiness and cruelty.

The way human beings live and treat each other is of consequence to the very Creator – and the Creator helps us see that this should be different and this can be different.

This means that our experiences, our struggles, our joys, our survival matters to the One who made all matter. This means that the God of all Creation calls us to the care and the courage of love. Love our God with everything we’ve got, and love others as ourselves.

         We can’t underestimate just how astonishing a proclamation this is, how revolutionary a revelation.

         The great rabbi, civil rights leader, and scholar Abraham Joshua Heschel highlights the contrast this way: instead of Aristotle’s “unmoved mover,” the God of the Hebrew prophets, Heschel says, is the “most moved mover.”

         It is this God of love and love of God first named by the Hebrew prophets that we find embodied in the very person of Jesus. It is in the very personhood of this poor, powerless individual born to a young unwed mother in a backwater civilization always getting trampled over by great empires, it is in this person that we find in the flesh the Infinite made intimate. 

         What Jesus makes clear is that when we realize the reality of this intimacy of infinity, that reality is the wellspring of love. Jesus called this Abba, a beloved relationship of care and courage and compassion. 

But what Jesus also makes very clear is that this kind of love is not just a sentimental love, it’s not just a precious, fragile, sheltered kind of love, it’s not just a small self-serving kind of love. Divine love is universal love. It is the love by which the very Creator of everything that is gives being to everything that is. It is indiscriminate love. 

         It’s easy to say “God is love.” It sounds nice and pleasant. But the reality of it! 

         Jesus, as an embodiment of Divine Love, did a whole lot of schooling folks in how to be more loving. He exposed blind spots and hypocrisies, but he did so by the light of grace, which helps these blind spots become opportunities to grow in becoming more loving and more beloved.

         We want to be loved for who we are – but actually receiving that kind of love can be so challenging it can feel like a kind of death. 

We want to share love with others, to love and to be loved. But to love even just one other person calls us to grow past the petty limitations of our egos, and to keep growing and growing. 

         And then to realize that when we participate in love, even just a little, we are participating in the very force within the inter-relation of all of creation; when we being to realize that the God of all creation loves and cares for all of creation. 

         It can be unbearable. God’s loving concern embraces the all the people we hate, all the things that disgust us. God’s loving concern embraces all the pain and all the beauty to which we can’t bear to fully bear witness. 

         What happens when we more fully participate in the infinite scope of divine care? Look what happened to Jesus! 

“That which you do to the least of these you do so unto me.” 

“Judge not.” “Bless those who curse you.” “Love your enemies.”

Our very sense of self is at risk of spilling over the banks and flooding everything. 

Christ calls us to radical transformation by the light of the love of God. 

This is why this is not only about care but about courage. 

The courage to share in God’s passionate care for all God’s creation. 

Let me close with a prayer that was written for us this third Sunday of Advent, by Vaughn Young, who is a regular Zoom attender of our church, along with his family:

Our God, we give thanks and praise to you who are good, and remembering that your love endures forever.

In this season of Advent, God, let us keep ever present in our hearts and minds your enduring and wonderful love.  

You are a god, thee God, of Love.  Your amazing works of creation surround and resides in each and every one of us, your children.

I pray that all of us be able to recognize and take delight in the dynamic of your love.

Help us to understand that all of us, every human being, is a creation born of your love.

That each of us, carefully and fearfully made, from the lowest of status to the highest earthly king, from the least able to the most driven, from richest to poorest, are worthy of love.

Help us, your believers, to see that we, being made in your love, are made to love.

To love you 1st and foremost, and to love all of your children.  In deed, in thought, and in word.  

We, your children, are all focal points of love, conduits of love to the world and one another, and when acting most in concert with you Father, in the most wondrous way, we are ambassadors of love.

Help us to be your ambassadors of Love, O God.  Hands that soothe, heal and comfort, feet that move with haste to bring help, mouths that speak gently, with uplifting, encouraging, and loving words.

Help us to divine the difference between good acts of your ambassadors, and idolatry, which is a perversion of what we are made to do, which is love.

And God, help us to remember the example set for us in our Savior, Christ.

Help us remember his hands that gave comfort and healing, his feet that carried him to bring aid, his mouth that spoke your teachings, and your love to us. 

His willing sacrifice, an unequalled act of love among us that brings Salvation.

Thank you for loving us so abundantly, and showing us how to love Father.

In Christ Name we pray to you.  Amen.

(Image: “Flaming Heart” by bixentro is licensed under CC BY 2.0. )