Pr. Hector Garfias-Toledo + July 28, 2024
Love Fits Week 4 - The Cornerstone: Divine Love Fits Our Faith
In his sermon for the 4th week of our Love Fits worship series, Pastor Hector reflects on the intrinsic nature of love in our spiritual DNA, emphasizing that everyone who loves is born of God. Through moving personal stories, he highlights how love requires intentional actions and sacrifices. He calls us to embody God's love in our daily lives, casting out fear and living fully in our divine purpose.
Sermon Transcript
From automatically generated captions, lightly edited for readability by Chat GPT
Grace to you and peace from God, our Abba, Father-Mother and Creator, and the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, our sibling, our friend, the love of God made flesh.
As the people of God said last Sunday, we were talking about giving pieces of our heart, pieces of love, as we love one another, as we walk with one another. Today, I want to share in this short time that we have before the baptisms. I would like to share with you some personal notes that I believe make this passage tangible and palpable, and at the same time invite you to look back, maybe to look forward, or maybe look where we are right now, and to think how this truth of "Dios es amor" is made tangible and possible in your lives and through your lives.
Some of you know, and most of you I believe know, that my mother-in-law had an accident in Taiwan. For many weeks, Pastor Jade, my wife, and I were witnesses to how the community around her, especially the church community where she is a member, provided for her all the care, all the presence that she needed. The care that neither my wife nor I could have given to her because she is in Taiwan and we are here.
Then my mom had a fall, and she has been in the hospital for almost five weeks now. In the same way, the community around her, the church community, friends, neighbors, and other relatives have been with her, providing the care that she needs, care that neither I nor my siblings, because we are in different places, have been able to provide for her.
This, to me, is an example, as Sue was saying earlier, of how we live that love. That love that has been given to us before we even ask. We love because God loves us first. We love because this is the inherent character of God that has been given to us. As we have been reflecting in the past Sundays, you and I are born of God, and love is part of our DNA. The challenge, I believe, is that sometimes this love, while being freedom, is also challenging because it's a covenant and a love that requires from us to live a life that reflects the love that Jesus shows us with his life.
Everyone who loves is born of God. Everyone who loves is born of God, and this is the driving force that directs our lives. This is the driving force that guides us in how we respond when we are moved to serve even those we do not know, and as we heard earlier, even those who we do not like or who do not like us.
I remember that many years ago I heard a commercial from one of the car makers here in the United States, "Made to last." Remember that? What company was that? Ford. Ford used to say that, made the trucks "made to last." Well, I think that God made us to love and not to last. Why I say that is because sometimes when we believe that we are made to last, we think that we need to live lives that are survival lives. We think we need to find any way to stay alive and last as long as we can, no matter whose toes we step on, who we push away in our journeys, who we disregard, because the end goal is to last. But God said, "Yes, I made you to love. You are made to love." And that is challenging because love requires from us to take steps that, in some ways, push us to put away our interests, our desires, our agendas, in order to be channels of the divine compassion that in many cases runs against my own personal interests, my own personal desires, my own personal traditions, my own personal convictions, my own personal likes and dislikes of others.
Love casts out fear. I think that we live in a society where we have come to believe that we need to earn our way to heaven. I don't think that is what Jesus teaches us. Jesus teaches us that the reign of God, heaven, the love of God, is already in us, and therefore you and I are not called to live in fear. We are not called to last, but to live every moment of our lives as channels and instruments of the love that Jesus has shown us. Fear paralyzes us. Fear leads us to believe that we need to do everything that is in our hands to ensure that we are going to get to heaven, when Jesus says heaven is already in you. The only thing you need to do is to be open to the Spirit and unleash the power that God has put in your hearts so that every single person in the world can experience the compassionate love of God in every word and in every action.
It is exhausting, it is discouraging, it is tiring when we try to live only to last because in doing that we suppress who we are called to be, and at the same time we suppress others and their call to be what God called them to be.
In the passage that we read today, the Elder, the writer of this first letter of John, changes the paradigm that we have in our mind. Sometimes we believe that we need to create that force to love others, and that's why it's so difficult for us. It is not so much me loving God and loving others. The Elder says, "God loves you so that you can love all." That changes completely the way that we live out our lives of love for others. Love is more than a feeling. Love is an intentional decision because, as I said earlier, it changes us and challenges us. That is why sometimes it is easier to hate because hate doesn't require anything from us, only to despise others. But the Elder exhorts us not to forget the call that we have as a community of faith: Be who you are and do not suppress it. Live the life that God has given you to live. We love because God has loved us first.
So my mom, as I said, and my mother-in-law, they experience the love of people, people who they knew and people who they didn't know. Last week, my mom was going to be scheduled for surgery on her back, her spine. In Mexico, there is a socialized health system. When a person is going to have major surgery like this, the hospitals require the patients to have one or two blood donors in order to keep the supply of blood full or complete in the blood bank. My siblings and I are far away from my mom, and because they didn't have anybody, there was the possibility that she wouldn't be scheduled for surgery. I sent a message to my classmates from college and high school, and I said, "Help me to understand the system because I have been out of Mexico for so long that I don't understand how this works. Besides that, what can we do to get blood so my mom can have surgery?" Then, two days later, classmates that I didn't know well, classmates who don't know my parents, took the day off and went to donate blood so that my mom could have surgery next week.
To me, that is what it means to love, and to me, this is the challenge that these words bring to me and to each one of us. We love because God loved us first, because God has said yes to us before you and I can even think or talk. Today, as we gather in this place, we are going to celebrate that together as four of our young worshippers in this congregation are going to hear the words, "You love because I have loved you first." This congregation is going to remind one another of the message that has been given to us, that whether we know or we do not know, whether we like or whether we don't like someone, you and I are called to be the love, the healing love, the transforming love, the powerful love of God in this world. I invite you to open our hearts and to remind one another with our voices and our presence of the miracle that God once again makes in the life of these young worshippers and in you and me as we gather in the celebration of this baptism.
Let's do that. Could we? Should we? Are we ready? Let's do it.
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