I believe in a thing called love. I think I always have. I was raised on songs about love by the church that I grew up in. From the very beginning, the love of Jesus was sung over me in lullaby songs like Jesus Loves Me, and Jesus Loves the Little Children. Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis calls the final chapter in her book Fierce Love, “Believe Assiduously. Have Faith in Love.” Assiduously means with great care, attention, and effort. Love takes effort, attention, and care to create. My grandma Jann taught me about love. Not just in Sunday school though she did teach me there, but by being love incarnate in my life. It was the love she shared over gingersnaps, as she expressed her unconditional love for me that taught me what it feels like to be loved, and what love is capable of. Not all the love I’ve received in my life has been perfect. But when I have been loved – that love has shaped me in so many ways. I know that it is powerful life-changing, and life-shaping stuff.

         God is love, my grandmother taught me. She told me that God’s love for me is bigger than my wildest imagination. That there is nowhere that I can go that love will not go with me. If I am a lost sheep, love will come running after me and find me. It is love that formed me, love that knows me. Love that is a refuge where I can find rest, and love that is a source from which I can draw strength. Love forgives my shortcomings. Love chooses me, not in spite of who I am, but because of who I am. Love walks with me, and talks with me, and claims me as its own. Love is not visible, but its impact is tangible. I have seen the power of love in all the churches I’ve been a part of – where I have seen love carry people through grief, and healing, and forgiveness, and reconciliation. I’ve seen love take shape through care, attention, and effort. I’ve seen love embodied by the people in my life who believe in love.

         To believe assiduously in love is to believe in love with all your heart, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, because love is a force to be reckoned with, and it changes everything. I take what the Bible has to say about love seriously. That God’s love endures forever. That God loves justice (Psalm 37:28, Isaiah 61:8). That the greatest commandments are to love God and to love my neighbor as myself. That we should show love to strangers, and to immigrants, and even to our enemies. When Jesus gave his followers a new commandment, it was: “Love one another. Just as I have loved you… By this everyone will know that you are my disciples.” (John 13:34-35) If I spoke to you with the voice of an angel, but didn’t have love, it would mean nothing. If I had prophetic abilities and understood every mystery, but didn’t have love, I wouldn’t know anything. Even if I gave everything I have away, there would be nothing for me to gain without love.

         When I read that God is love, it is the closest I get to taking the bible literally. If God is love, then Love is the point of all this. For us to find love, know love, and share love so that through us there might be an abundance of love in the world. If there is any purpose for our religion, it must be to create more love. To teach generations of us through stories, and songs, and rituals, and prayers, and fellowship, and worship the fundamental truth that we are loved, and so is everyone else. God gave us faith, hope, and love – and the greatest is? Love. There is no lesson I can teach you that is more powerful, or more transformative, or more challenging than to love yourself, love your neighbor, and love God with everything you are.

         No one has seen God, but when we love, God abides in us and God’s love is perfected in us – because humanity thrives when we love each other. I have seen it through those who have loved me into the person I am today. Love has done many good things for me. When we love each other as God does, we embody the will of God. And the most egregious way we take God’s name in vain – is if we say that we love God while hurting someone that God loves. You will never look into the eyes of a person that God does not love. It is through loving your neighbor, loving yourself, and loving God that God will help you grow.

         Rev. Lewis writes this in that chapter: “I’m trying to get you to believe assiduously, to paraphrase a scripture from my tradition, that love is the only way, the only truth, and the only life. No one religion has all the truth, but love is the truest truth I know. My life has been transformed by revolutionary, fierce love. I’ve been saved from depression and anger by love given to me with force and grace. Angels have watched over me with love. I’ve been midwifed and given birth to myself by love. I’m deeply connected…because of love. I’ve seen love drive millions into the streets to declare “Love Wins,” and I’m a believer. I… believe in you and me.”

         I think we should believe in us, because we are already the result of centuries of love that has been building up. We’re not the first to face hard times and cold hearts. We are the products of those who have faced them. We have been carried here by the love of those who came before us, and as we grow in love, we will add to what they started, and when we’re done there will still be more room for love to keep growing. Love which time and again overcomes hate. Love which always wins. As we go through life, we see it in seasons. There are endings each winter and beginnings each spring. Again and again, there is rot and decay, but it becomes the energy that feeds new life. No matter what we’ve been through, we all may be born again, made new through love.

         In the passage we read, it says that, “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” And if you listened to the Rev’d up with Luke and Meghan podcast – you already know there’s more than one way to understand atonement. Break down atone, and you get at-one. Atoning to me simply means at-one-ing, repairing what has been broken, and I know that all of us can probably list a great many things that are broken. Jesus came and gave himself entirely over to the message of love. Love which can overcome every mistake, every wall, and every grudge. Love was a verb in motion through him, repairing and healing and returning us to wholeness. Love can be a verb through us too. In our biggest choices, but also in simple loving acts of care, attention, and effort that shape the world around us.

         I invite you as does Rev. Lewis to believe “in how lovable we each are, and in the love between us and among us.” Love can carry us all the way to restoration and redemption. It was power, greed, and hatred that put Jesus on the cross, but the good news is that those things do not get to have the final word. Love does. Life does. We continue to be invited to dream God’s dream. All the sin of all the world is no match for God’s abiding love and grace. God sees all that has gone wrong, every flaw that we have, and loves us anyways. This is the good news that I proselytize for. My faith is pretty simple. I have faith in love, and that is more than enough for me. Because before we ever were, God already was love. The universe was formed by a love that will not give up on us until it brings us to wholeness. With my whole heart I believe that love will do that, and more!

         The only thing love gives me permission to hate is violence. The only thing love permits me to condemn is injustice. Our role in this story is just to love, with attention, effort, and care. Our purpose is to love and be loved and to find our hope and joy within it. I’m sure for some people that may sound far too simple. It’s a lot easier not to have to care about the people we disagree with. But that won’t move us from where we are. Only love can do that. I stand before you to witness to the fact that learning to love myself, my neighbor, and my God has been the challenge of my life, and it is where I have found the greatest reward. I believe with my whole heart in love. Fierce love. Courageous love. Rule-breaking, border-crossing, bold and fearless love.

         I hope we can believe in it together, assiduously – with all our care and attention and effort. With all our hearts, and all our souls, and all our minds. I’m not saying it will fix the whole world right now. But I guarantee that it will change the world. One person at a time. One moment at a time. As love is nurtured, it grows, and grows, and grows, and grows. Amen.