Love, Love, Love

My sermon for Saturday is topical. I'm calling it: "Love and Relationships: What's God got to do with it?" Which I know could be considered kind of a lame throwback to Tina Turner, but hopefully that won't stop the interested from coming.

Here are the problems/issues/dilemmas I'd like to be able to describe and explore, whether or not I'll be able to offer comprehensive solutions:

Being single--obsessions and crushes, self-doubt and waiting, breakups.

Dating--getting to know each other, going through stages of commitment, disagreements, maintaining outside friendships.

Marriage--constancy in love, more disagreements, growing with each other, lines of communication, faithfulness.

I guess, after writing these things out, I can see why this sermon has been a little harder to pull together than I might have initially thought. But I'll give it a shot anyway. What does God have to do with all of this?

First, God created us to love. When Jesus sums up all the commandments, he boils them down to these two: Love God with everything you've got, and love your neighbor as yourself.

Second, it's hard to be consistently loving because love is a choice, not a default option. Our default option is probably to love ourselves first, and then maybe love the people we really like. Or else it could be to be very good to other people so that they'll love us, to make up for the fact that we don't actually love ourselves. And the thing is, if we want to love God, we've mostly got to do it by loving other people.

Third, there's an action component and a feeling component to love. The two are intertwined and related to each other, but I think it's possible, although not necessarily a good thing, to separate the two. I haven't completely decided on this. For example, if I don't like somebody very much, but I feel compelled to act in a loving way toward them, isn't it kind of an empty gesture? I don't know if I want to be on the receiving end of that kind of love.

But on the other hand, I've found on several occasions that when I was patient and spent time listening to people I didn't like, I often came to like them better, or at least understand them more, over time. And is it possible that feelings arise from action just as often as action arises from feelings? So I say, if the feeling of love is not there, that's not always a sign that no love is possible. Act lovingly in small ways, pray the hardest for the people who drive you craziest, and wait for feelings to follow.

Fourth, loving other people is how we love God. Prayer, meditation, study, pilgrimage, journaling, worship, and other spiritual practices are ways of loving God in one way, but in another way, these are practice for loving God by loving others. As 1 John asks--how is it possible to love God, whom you haven't seen, if you don't love your brothers and sisters, whom you have seen? The love we share with each other, in friendships, in loving relationships, in communities, and love toward those different from us--those we call or think of as enemies--matters to God. This is what we're created for and called to do--to love each other as God loves us.

Finally, I find support for my efforts to love like this in remembering God's love for me. I can't explain exactly how this works, but I think it relates to my point about feelings and actions. When I feel most aware of God's abundant love, that's when I'm readiest to act lovingly, both toward people I know and love, and toward the people I don't necessarily like so much.

To sum up, love is a spiritual practice that I think gets easier, or at least more habitual over time. But it's always a choice whether we'll act in a loving way or in a hateful or selfish way. God has created us so that we can have a real choice about whether or not to choose God. We are already beloved. Now the question is whether we will respond in love ourselves.