Remain in Love

1 John 4:7-21

The last wedding I performed was for a friend who I know through playing disc golf. I met with he and his fiancée and showed them the basic framework of a wedding ceremony and then listened to their hopes and vision for the ceremony. “You know, we’re not really that religious,” they said. “Well, I am,” I responded playfully, “and I’m going to bring some of that along with me, is that okay?” Neither of them was opposed. I told them that I was pretty sure we could find common ground on which the affirmation of my faith would resonate with their own life and love story. And so, I shared with them this passage from 1 John 4:16, “God is love, and those who remain in love remain in God and God remains in them.” “What we’re doing on your wedding day,” I told them, “is celebrating through the vows you make to one another, your witness to the power, importance, value, and beauty of love.”

Then I took a real risk and brought up the 20th century theologian, Paul Tillich, who spoke about God as our “ultimate concern.” We can have other concerns, other interests, but our ultimate concerns can be only that which determines our being or non-being. When talking about this concept of existence using normal vocabulary, we tend to use the word “life” rather than the phrase “experience of being.” So, if we smash together Tillich (“God is the ultimate concern”) and John (God is love) we get a statement that looks something like this: “Love is the ultimate concern.” What does it look like to make love the ultimate concern of your life? Well that, I told the couple, is what we are trying to do with your wedding. And that is how I ended up being able to quote Paul Tillich during the wedding homily of a couple who “weren’t really that religious.”

I’d like to share a bit more of Tillich’s work with you in relation to today’s passage from 1 John. Let’s go back to the central affirmations of today’s scripture: “Love is from God” and “God is love.” Tillich’s affirmation that God is the ultimate concern is rooted in understanding God as that which determines being and non-being. We are because God is...without God we wouldn’t be. God, Tillich says is not simply a being, but is the power of being. God is the grounds of being-itself. Think about God’s famous self-affirmation to Moses at the burning bush. “Who shall I say sent me? Who are you?” Moses asks. “I am who I am.” I remember my seminary Hebrew professor would translate this passage, “I am the is-ing one.” Tillich affirms this by saying, God is being-itself.

Then he connects to 1 John, “God is love.” “And, since God is being-itself, one must say that being-itself is love.” As I said earlier, we tend to use the word “life” when making a reference to our experience of being...it’s a little less complicated. All this to return to a powerful affirmation that the divine life has the character of love. Therefore, “those who remain in love, remain in God and God remains in them.”

“Since [we] are rooted in the divine life,” says Tillich, “and are supposed to return to it, [we also] participate in its glory.” We sometimes act in ways that are unloving, that do not participate in God’s glory, and that separate us from God. But if God is our ultimate concern, then we, even when we are broken and fallen, long to return to God’s love. God loves us, says John, “so that we can live.” This is what distinguishes God’s love, divine love, ultimate love, from human love. In all forms of love the element of “desire” is present, but God’s love transcends all other types of love by “the desire for the fulfilment of the longing of the other being.” This is how God’s love is made perfect in us, that when we are forgiven our sins and called to return to God’s love, we are given an opportunity to be re-born from God, and to live a fulfilled life in unity with divine love. God’s love “affirms the other unconditionally.” No one is excluded from God’s love, nor is anyone preferred by it. This is how and why “God works toward the fulfilment of every creature.” God wants to bring all into the unity of the divine life “who are separated and disrupted.” And John affirms this, he writes that we cannot participate in this unity, we cannot say we love God, but hate a brother or sister; we cannot say we love God but hate a neighbor.

But, yet again, we sometimes act in ways that are unloving, that do not participate in God’s glory, that separate us from brother, sister, consequently, from God. We act in ways that do not allow the longings of the other (our neighbor) to be fulfilled. We put ourselves first, we put our country first, we put a part before the whole, and do not concern ourselves with unity. Because of this we experience condemnation. Condemnation, however, is not an act of God’s anger or hatred towards us. Condemnation is ultimately an expression of divine love. “Condemnation is not the negation of love but the negation of the negation of love.” Condemnation “is the way in which that which resists love, namely the reunion of the separated in the divine life, is left to separation, with an implied and inescapable self-destruction.” To refuse to love our brother, our sister, our neighbor, or even, as Jesus more radically suggested, our enemy, is to resist God, who is love, who is the ground of all being, who determines our being or non-being. To refuse to love is ultimately self-destructive.

That’s kind of frightening, because we haven’t always behaved in the most loving ways. We haven’t longed for the fulfilment of others’ longings. We’ve put our needs and wants and desires first. We are worthy of condemnation, and hence self-destruction, non-being, death. That’s terrifying. The author of 1 John probably had this fear in mind when he wrote, “there is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear expects punishment. The person who is afraid has not been made perfect in love.” “We love because God first love us,” he writes, repeating himself from earlier. “This is love: not that we loved God, but that God loved us.” God loves us, even when we are unloving. God initiates love and calls us to be reunited to it, to be fulfilled in it, to be reborn by it, to let it be made perfect in us. Despite our failures, and fallings, our selfishness and greed, God remains in love with us. This is grace. God remains in love with you, may you remain in love, may you remain in God. Amen.