Easter 6

This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you.

Romeo and Juliet, Wuthering Heights, Anna Carinena, Gone with the Wind, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Pride and Prejudice, and Casablanca. Sleepless in Seatle, When Harry Met Sally, The Notebook, The Bridges of Madison County, The Princess Bride, not to mention a few of the current favorites in the Schlueter household Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid.
What draws these stories all together, the common thread that runs through each one is that each is a love story. A story about the formation and implementation of romantic love, classic stories about endearing and enduring romance between a man and a woman. The stories are often tragic, always heartfelt, and each one seeks to contribute some piece, small as it may be, to the over all discussion and understanding of Love.
Love! What is it?
How do you find it?
What do you do when you are caught up in it?
These are the questions of our day. And as much has been written, as much ink has been spilled and as many stories as have been told, there are always more to tell. Characters are redrawn, plots are reconstructed and tales are re-woven to once again tell the story of love.
These are the question of our day. And increasingly more so. With romance filling the airwaves and painting pictures on our television screens, and streaming on the Internet, with initiatives on ballots for who can and can not love and criticism and accusations of bigotry in print and flowing from new sources, questions of love are ever before us. How to answer them? That is the question.
The answer to the question of love is to examine the topic under the cross. God is love. If you want to know the character of love, if you want to know what it is and how it works and what it does the place to begin is with the Word of God. The place where God has revealed himself to us and the place where God has written a record that answers these questions as we need to know them.
If you want to know love, know God.  because God is love.
“As the Father has loved me”, said Jesus, “so have I love you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments you will abide in my love just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you that your joy may be full.”
With so many people looking for love, with so many people wanting to be loved, Jesus here offers to us the key to love and to where it begins – love begins in God. Because God is Love. God the Father who sent to us Jesus, who gave to us his commandment, who offers to us the fullness of the Joy that comes through receiving His love; He is love.
“In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” 1 John 4:10 (ESV) That was our text last week. It really couldn't be any more clearly put. Love is what God does to give us Jesus who is the sacrifice for our sin. Last week we talked about propitiation. A word found in the Bible, that we don't really use anywhere else, but that tells us about God's mercy that fulfills his right and righteous judgment by means of His own perfect sacrifice – Jesus on the cross for our sin.
That is so different from how we think about love. It doesn't matter how else you would define it: Passion. Chemistry. Emotion. Feelings. Desire. Sex. Whatever... These things, to find them, you look inside yourself. You look into your heart. Popular ideas about love all have to do with attraction, whether or not someone stimulates you, makes you feel a certain way when you are around them. This is not love. This feeling can be a by-product of love. But it is not love. Love. Real love. True love is a conscious decision, an act of the will, something you do because you can do no other. Last week we also talked about moms. We have all heard the expression, “He has a face only a mother could love”. That's about as close as we can come in a sinful world to understanding what love is. It doesn't matter how badly you disappoint her, you mom still loves you. You're still her precious baby whether or not you deserve to be.
Love is what love does. Love surrenders. Love sacrifices. Love dies. "Greater love has no one than this, than that he lay down his life for his friends." You want to see love. You want to know a love story, you want to see the greatest love story ever told, ever written, ever conceived? It didn't come from a human mind, a human heart. Romeo and Juliet is a tragic love story about a young couple who give up their lives for their love. Romeo and Juliet has nothing on this story, on God's story. God's love is far more radical, far more sacrificial, far better, more beautiful. To see and understand God's love, look at the cross. There has never been a greater love, a more perfect love, a purer and yes even more “passion”ate love than the one we see in Jesus on the cross. Jesus who gave all so that you could live. Jesus who made himself the sacrifice, the scape goat, the God in human flesh who came to die for the sins of the world. This is love. Jesus is love.
Love might create feelings. Love might foster emotion. But the stuff you feel in your heart, the butterflies you feel in your stomach – that is not love, not true love, not love that in the end is worth something. Love is sacrifice. Love is dying, laying yourself down for your friends, stepping in to take the punishment that you don't deserve. That is love.
Have you loved?
No. You haven't. I haven't. Not like that. Not like God has loved. Not the way we should love. Or didn't your realize that was the standard.  Jesus said, “This is my commandment: that you love one another as I have loved you.” We have seen His love; love that is so complete that He literally died for us on the cross, that he suffered unspeakable tortures at the hands of the Roman soldiers but especially at the hands of God.  This is how Jesus has loved you; now, says Jesus, you show that same love to your neighbor. 
We have come nowhere close. Not to that kind of love anyways. The best human love we find example of, the purest love a human heart can muster is a mother's love, but even that is partial and impure.  Mom's, just think about the things that go through your heads when you pick up the same toys and the same dirty clothes from the floor for 87th time in one day.  Are the thoughts in your head thoughts of love, or are they influenced by frustration or even anger? Is your love at times given begrudgingly and unwillingly?
The best love that we can muster, the most complete and consistent love that we produce is the love we have for ourselves. We are always looking to further our own ends, to achieve our own goals, to promote our own agendas. We are always concerned to preserve what we need, what we want, what we think our lives should be.
That's why love in the world is such a mess. Consider divorce. These days it is acceptable, both culturally and legally, for a husband or wife to come home announce to their spouse they have fallen out of love, causally make an appointment with an attorney and dissolve what God has joined together. In our day, marriage means nothing. Love means nothing. Marriage is a small flame that burns for a while, whose flames provide a passing entertainment, but when that flame grows dim, putting it out all together is a quick and easy process.
With the way we treat marriage, with the dishonorable way we conceive of God's greatest gift for human love and relationships, is it a wonder that so many states are considering initiatives to allow marriage between two men or between two women. Is it any wonder that when marriage is nothing more than a party with some gifts and nice vacation afterward that our popular culture has come to understand this as disposable. Of course not. We are sleeping in the bed that we have made with our own poor choices. And since this is the bed we have made, there's no stopping who can get in or out of it.
So how do we stop it? Return to love. Look to your first love. That is to say look to the One who has loved you first, who has loved you first and best. Look to Jesus.
God is love. God has demonstrated love by living that love. He lived that love by living to first to obey and second to die.
Jesus lived to love and he loved to obey.
Jesus tells us that we love God when we obey his commandments. He gives us ten. He sums them up into two and then to one. Love God. Love your neighbor. Love. Obey this command.
Emotion is not love because emotion serves the self. You can fall in and out of love a hundred times a day. Love must be greater than that.
Adultery, be it same sex or opposite, is not love because love is faithfulness, faithless sexuality is self serving. Christian sexuality is never self serving it is God's gift of you to your spouse.
Chemistry is not love because love never fails. Science experiments burn hot and then burn out.
As those redeemed by Christ under the cross, we aught to confess those sins. We aught to acknowledge to God and then to each other that we have not loved. Husbands have not loved their wives. Wives have not loved their husbands. Parents have not loved their children. Children have not loved their parents. Brothers and sisters have not loved one another. We are guilty of self-love. We need to confess that misguided love and instead love each other the way we love ourselves.
And when we have obeyed that commandment, our hearts are ready and prepared. We have seen our fault, we have confessed it and God is ready with his forgiveness. He has chosen us. He has moved us, our heart to this confession. He has turned us outside ourselves to begin learning to love him.
Love is what love does.  Love is what God does.  God gives.  God surrenders.  God sacrifices.  God does this all for you.
Because God has done this you are forgiven. God's love has driven out your sinful love. God's love has replaced your impartial love. If some have a face only a mother could love, we all have a heart that only God could love. He has loved. He has loved you. Go in His peace.