Choose to love just as God loves you

During the Easter season, the scripture lessons paired resurrection stories from the Gospel of John with passages from 1 John. Some describe this letter as a response to early Christians who needed help living out their new lives in Christ. They believed in Jesus, but were not following in Jesus’ way of love.

“Those who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.” (1 John 4:20)

I recognize that most of my articles for the Pastor’s Corner come back to this. That they will know we are Christians by our love. For God so loved the world … God showed us what love is. Jesus died, not to condemn the world, but that we would know eternal life through him.

This kind of love is hard. Hard to receive and even harder to live for others. Yet, Jesus told his disciples before he died, abiding in this love and living this love for others will be the way the world will come to know God’s love for them. And, this changes everything. In this love, we become a new creation.

But, without love, Paul writes. When we don’t let this love flow through us, like the Dead Sea or the people John was worried about, people of faith become toxic, clanging cymbals.

This could feel like I am pointing fingers. But, whenever we point a finger, there are always three pointing back at ourselves.

And, that is why I write again about God’s love. Because I have heard the clanking in my own heart. After this past year, and as the world tempts us to speed back to “normal” so we cannot or will not look at the grief we have all experienced. Nor the wounds we have inflicted upon each other through our labeling, judgments, and hate hurled; sins no longer hidden by the cloak of darkness, exposed by our responses to the pandemic.

Ignoring this won’t allow the healing to begin. Seeking out only those who think like you, won’t fix things. God made sure that the only way is a way together, by the grace of Jesus the Christ. Or as Jesus described, I am the vine and you are the branches. Chosen to love just as God loves you, intertwined to bear fruit, fruit that will last. Fruits of the Spirit that will bless and heal not only us, but all creation.

I pray that God will help us turn and rediscover this way together and give us the courage to do so.

Lori Morton is pastor of First Lutheran Church in Sandpoint.