A couple of weeks ago we talked about love. I’m not going to rehash that sermon about the centrality of love in Scripture and in our faith, but I do want to revisit a couple of points. I first want to remind you that God loves. God loves you. God loves me. God loves your neighbor. God loves your enemy. God loves everyone, without exceptions. God loves.
The second thing we talked about is that God is love. That is a slight, but important, distinction. God loves is about the doing of God. What does God do? God loves. It is about actions that God takes. God is love is about identity. It is about the being of God. God loves and God is love. They are different and distinct, but related to each other. Because God loves, God is love. God’s identity as love leads to the actions of love. It is important to understand that God’s identity and God’s actions align in this way and are connected to each other. God loves you, not because of what you have done. God loves you for who God is. God loves you because God is love. That means that God’s love for you is not conditional. It is not something you earned. It is not something that you have to be worthy to receive. It is not something that you can lose. It is. God loves you. Why? Because God is love.
The whole idea that God loves you regardless of what you have done, irrespective of your actions, is what we call grace. God’s grace is so enormous that God is going to love you, no matter what. Every once in a while someone will come to me and express concern that they are not worthy enough to receive God’s love. It always breaks my heart. My first reaction is to tell them they are worthy, let me tell you all the wonderful things about you, that God loves you unconditionally. But none of that matters. Because the truth is, even if you were not worthy, God still loves you because of who God is. God loves, not because the object of the affection deserves the love, but because the one offering the love is so full of love that he can do nothing but love you. You cannot earn it, you cannot lose it, you do not deserve it, but that is all beside the point. God loves you already. That is grace.
While we love the idea of love, I think we are challenged by the idea of grace because we do not live in a society that teaches us much about grace. We live in a society that says your worth is in what you achieve, how good you are, maybe even being good isn’t enough, but you need to be great. You need to be perfect. We live in a society that says what goes around comes around, and that people deserve the good things that happen to them, or deserve the bad things that happen to them. And I have to tell you, my friends, that that is not the way of God. That is not the way of our God who is so full of grace that He will love you even if you don’t actually deserve it. And I am not saying there is a person here who doesn’t deserve it, but even if you don’t, God still loves you. That is grace.
For the past month or so we have been reading from the Book of Ephesians as our New Testament reading each Sunday, and this is what Paul has been laying out in his letter. He is talking about the enormous love of God. Paul said the height and breadth and depth and length of God’s love is more than you can imagine. God’s love surpasses knowing. If you close your eyes and imagine the length and breadth and depth and height of God’s love, you will still not imagine the whole thing. It is more than we can imagine. Paul says that the love God has for us is grace. We didn’t deserve it. He says we were still in sin when we received the grace, because grace is an undeserved gift that you are given. Paul tells the Ephesians God loves you, you didn’t do anything to earn it, and you are not going to lose it. God loves you because God has super abundant grace that He showers down upon this earth. That is the essence of Paul’s letter up to this reading.
Today’s reading is answering the question, so what? God loves me, I don’t deserve it, it is a gift, it is grace, so what? Paul says, so then. So then put away all falsehood. Speak with truth. Be angry, it’s OK to be angry, it happens, it’s an emotion, but do not sin. Walk that fine line. Thieves must give up stealing. I love that line because it reminds us that the grace came before the good work. The thief is still stealing but they already have the grace, so Paul says to give up the stealing. Labor honestly with your own hands. Share with the needy. Do not let evil come out of your mouth, but make sure the words coming out of your mouth build others up. Put away from yourself all bitterness, put away all wrath, put away all anger, put away all wrangling, put away all slander, put away all malice. Instead, be kind. Be tenderhearted. Forgive one another. This is a list of concrete ways that we can respond to God’s grace. We do not do all of these good and wonderful things to earn God’s grace, to earn God’s love, because we already have that love through grace. These things are instead our response. It is an order of operations. God loves you, therefore do these good things. Paul’s list is not meant to be exhaustive, it is just a list of suggestions. I imagine Paul talking out loud to his scribe, thinking of ideas. I’m sure he missed some, and I imagine you could come up with some ideas for yourself. What is it in your life that you need to do to respond to God’s love given to you in grace?
In the end, Paul’s letter goes on to say, therefore be imitators of God. All of these ideas that Paul throws out, all the ideas that you can come up with are all meant to help us be imitators of God, the God who is love. It goes on to say, and live in love. Be imitators of God, and live in love. We do that, not to earn God’s love, rather we do it because God has already given the love. The grace of God is so abundant, God has given us so much love that we have some to give away. We have so much love that God gave us that you will never run out of that love yourself. There is more than enough love to go around.
So, my friends, this week take some time to reflect on all we have been learning these past few weeks. Take some time to remember God’s love for you. Try to imagine how enormous God’s love is. Try to imagine the height by imagining the highest thing you can think if, and then go even farther. Imagine the longest thing you can imagine, and then go longer. Imagine the broadest thing you can think of, and then go broader. Imagine the deepest thing you can think of and go deeper. When you have that in your head and think how enormous that is, remember you have not gone far enough. God’s love is even more than that. Try to stretch your brain every day to imagine God’s love as even bigger than you imagined it the day before. Remember that God has given it to you whether or not you earn it, whether or not you deserve it. You are loveable because God loves you, and it is nothing more than that. He does not love you because you do something special. You are loveable because God loves you. Reflect on that, and then ask yourself, what can I do in response. I, who have this enormous amount of love filling me every day, how can I share that same love with someone else? At work, at home, at school, on the street, in the store, wherever you are think of how you can share that love with my neighbors, with my enemies, with all of creation. How can I share that love that God has already given me in grace? Why? Because God loves you.
AMEN.
