Seek Love, for God is Love.

Things change rather dramatically from one generation to the next. For example, Johnny Carson was a very big deal for much of my life. He began hosting the Tonight Show just after my first birthday in 1962. For my first 30 years, Johnny Carson was a big deal.  His place in television was unique, enormous and there hasn’t been anyone like him since.

He retired from that show in 1992, just a couple of weeks after our son Philip was born. How could I possibly explain Johnny Carson to Philip? Even if I shared video clips, his jokes were on contemporary events from then, his interviews were of celebrities from then. How could Philip ever really get that? And if I tried to explain it to our grandchildren? They are so polite. They would patiently wait for grandpa to finish his, “Back in my day…” story then get on with their lives, their times, their interests, as they should.

That is a trivial example. What about the important lessons of history, like the Great Depression? Its lessons about thrift, value, charity, appreciation and gratitude are in the very bones of those who lived through it. Today, you really have to teach those values. It is very easy and in some respects necessary for each generation to embrace its own context and forget what wasn’t really necessary from before.

And so we should take careful notice of what is passed successfully from generation to generation. We have in our readings today a most extraordinary declaration from the Apostle John. I made a passing reference to it a couple of weeks ago and here it is again. It’s not even an entire verse, just a piece that he repeats. God is love.

That is an extraordinary statement that, like any statement about God, requires clarification and reflection. We must immediately ask and explore, “What is love?” After all, when we say “God is love” we are in part acknowledging that love, true love, is the most important thing there is.

It isn’t, cannot be, just whatever any of us happen to think it is. Many people would like very much to detach from this foundational truth that God is love and all that entails. But what do we get? Weak Hallmark sentimentalism; lust, lust and more lust; indulgence of all sorts of self-destructive and community-destructive behaviors; and a never-ending, navel-gazing ego-centric quest for self-fulfillment. (I’ve actually heard people talk about having a child as an experience they’d like to have, like visiting Paris or reading a good book.)

We must seek its highest, perfected form, not settling for incomplete, inadequate substitutes like lust, which seeks merely selfish pleasure or indulgence, which seeks appeasement.

When we think of love as a synonym for God, we find love that creates with a Word. Love that seeks to grow, that nurtures and develops. You can tell if someone loves gardening, for example. It doesn’t really matter what they knew when they started. Over time they learn and do and adapt and their garden shows it. Love is like that. God is like that.

We think of love that restrains or corrects its beloved for the sake of its future. Don’t run in the street. Do your homework. Eat your vegetables. Be home by 11:00. Take care, even as I try to take care for you. I’ll give you rules if you need rules, but really that is all just preparing you to not need them. Love is like that. God is like that.

We think of love that cares enough to forgive, to apologize, to reconcile even and especially when that is painful and costly. We think of love that sacrifices, even to the point of sacrificing health and life itself, for the sake of others. Love is like that. God is like that.

When we fail as Christians, when we come to realize that we have failed Christ, we can trace the nature and the root of our error by holding it to this standard and principle of love. We have either done an unloving thing or failed to do the loving thing.  God is love and by extension Jesus is love incarnate.

And it is this testimony that is so important that it carries on from generation to generation. Jesus said, “I am the true vine and my Father is the vine-grower.” Everything I’ve said to this point about love is an idea, an ideal, a concept that, while unavoidably true, most important and more real to human flourishing than anything, is intangible. You cannot measure it with a ruler or put it on a scale. Yet it is our deepest need.

When Jesus said, “I am the true vine” he is pointing to the most extraordinary fact about him. Not only do we hold this ultimate, unalterable truth that “God is love,” we find that love became flesh and blood like you and me. That is one way to grasp the Christian witness. God is love and that perfect love came among us in the person of Jesus. He spoke and demonstrated, he enacted, the true meaning of love as nurturing, healing, growing, reconciling as well as love as discipline, boundaries, action and sacrifice.

To believe in Jesus is to believe in love, true love. To love him demands that we follow his unyielding commands, that we love God and love one another. Loving one another means we demonstrate the true meaning of love, imitating him to the very depths of our being as best we can and repenting and correcting when we fail to do so.

Now men, don’t think for a moment that this is all flowers and lace. It isn’t. It’s grease up to your elbows and dirt under your nails. It’s standing strong and getting the job done. It’s spiritual armor and battle against the insidious evil that continuously seeks to poison and ruin our children, our families and our communities. It’s leadership and mentorship in what is good (God) and true (God) with people outside our homes. Faith is a job to be done. It is a lot of things, but it isn’t easy.

The great challenge of our generation is the same as it has been to every generation, to share this unalterable truth today and to pass it on the next generations. He is the vine; we are the branches. A physical vine draws water and nutrients from the soil and transmits them to the branches where, with energy from the sun they produce the fruit, the grapes which will then be used to produce wine. Fruit produces seeds to be scattered to produce more vines.

You do recall Jesus’ first miracle, changing water into wine? Did you consider that is precisely what he is doing, or intends to do, with you? I’m not talking about alcohol but the rich, sweet joy of entering into God’s grace and peace.

As a vine draws water and nutrients, we draw him. What is coursing through this vine, our vine? Love in its full truth, its full strength and in all its complexity. Detached, cut off from their source, our branches cannot bear good fruit, lasting fruit. If you struggle with the concept, the idea of God, start with love. Pursue love and you will pursue God. You will find its ultimate expression in Jesus. God is love.

AMEN