These are our texts for the morning:

From the epistle of Saint John:  Those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.

And from the gospel of Saint John:  The words of Jesus:  A new commandment I give you, that you love one another as I have loved you.

From Saint Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth:  Faith, hope, love, abide these three, but the greatest of these is love.

Let us pray:
Gracious God, we come to you this morning with hearts overflowing. We come to thank you for all the blessings of life, for the week past with its tantalizing promises of springtime, and for all reminders of the mystery and majesty of life.

O Holy One, we come with hearts full of love and gratitude, for parents and grandparents, children and grandchildren, lovers and partners and dear friends, and most especially today, for our mothers: for each person who has blessed us with love, kindness, diversity and laughter.

Now in your mercy open your Word to our hearts and our hearts to your Word.  In the spirit of Jesus.  Amen.

Each of us has three basic needs: A need to be loved, a need to love, and a need to know yourself as a precious child of God.  You have been richly blessed if you have had these three needs met in your family and church as a child, and if they continue to be fulfilled in your relationships today.  Not all are so fortunate, for families can be fragile, if not fractured, and churches can be dysfunctional.

There are parents who simply are not there for their children, parents who abuse their children, children who abuse and neglect aging parents.  There are parents and children who have reached an impasse over money, life style, religion or politics, and no longer speak to each other.  There are brothers and sisters who have fought over the same issues and have erased each other from their address books.

When the separation is mutual it is difficult enough, but it is even worse when you have been cut off and don’t know why, or you do know why and you want to work it out, but you can’t because the telephone number is unlisted, the letters are not answered, and the birthday present comes back marked “Return to Sender.”  This is painful stuff!  About as painful as it gets.  For no one knows how to hurt each other the way family members do.
It only deepens the hurt by holding up in the media or from the pulpit on Mother’s Day the image or the myth of a perfect family, flawless relationships.

There are some of you here this morning who have no idea from your personal experience of what I have just shared.  I want you to do this, before you leave here this morning:  say a little prayer of thanksgiving for your mother, the home and church in which you were raised and where you first came to know Love divine and human.
There are others here this morning who are sure I have been reading their e-mail and looking into their hearts and seeing their pain.

I want you to do this before you leave here this morning: say a little prayer and hold those painful memories, those feelings of hurt, rejection, loss and anger up before God, turn them over to God and let them go, that you might be healed.

We each have this deep need: a need to be loved, a need to love, and a need to know ourselves as a precious child of God.

Some of us find this love in our families, and some of us do not.  Some of us find this love in our marriage and partnerships, and some of us do not. Some of us find this love in our friendships, and some of us do not.

Sometimes, not finding and knowing this love haunts our hearts and drives us to things which turn out to be terribly self-destructive.  Jesus, in his life and ministry, death and resurrection, shows us a life of love:  This is the way which leads at last to spiritual health and wholeness.

It can be, and often is, a difficult and painful road.  It is not always easy to risk love, for which one of us has not been rejected.  Yet, the Christian life to which we are called is a life of love.  “A new commandment I give you,” Jesus says to his disciples on the last evening of his life, “that you love one another as I have loved you.  By this all will know that you are my disciples, by the way you love one another.”  Jesus says, also, I want you to be this way with everybody in the world.  Now I am sure that shocked the disciples.  They most likely looked at each other and said, “Everybody?  Why, that includes a lot of folk I don’t like.”  Jesus said “everybody.”

Saint John remembered it, for he writes this probing question: “How can you love God whom you have not seen, if you do not love your brother and your sister whom you have seen?”  This is the way of Jesus.  The way of love.  It is by struggling to walk faithfully in this way that you come at last to know yourself as a beloved child of God.  You are loved.  You are loving.  You are God’s precious child.

When Jesus or John or Paul speak of love they do not mean you are to like everyone; that will not be possible till Heaven arrives on earth.  When they speak of love they mean a commitment to seek the other’s good. We are to reflect and pass on to others the love and grace, generosity, kindness and forgiveness we have experienced from God.  As Saint Paul writes to the Corinthians in the verse you all know and love: “Faith, hope, love, abide these three, but the greatest of these is love.”

Have you ever asked yourself, why is love the greatest of all the spiritual gifts?  Why not faith? Surely each of us could use a stronger and deeper faith.  Why not hope?  Surely each of us would be strengthened and encouraged by a firmer and surer hope.  Saint Paul says that love is the greatest of all the spiritual gifts for at least two reasons.

First, love builds up the life of the church, the community of faith.  Paul established the Corinth church.  He was the founding pastor.  He lived among the people for 18 months, maybe two years, as long as he stayed with any church.  He cared enough to write them at least four letters, two of which have been lost.  He cared deeply about this small faith community existing in a hostile pagan world.  The church was tearing itself apart by division, strife, folks fighting with one another over many different issues, but most bitterly over spiritual gifts, especially the gift of speaking in tongues.  Paul knew the only way to save the church from self-destruction was for people to stop fighting and start walking in the way of love, not all of a sudden to begin liking each other, but being committed to working together in love, to build up the body of Christ.

In the midst of all this fighting and division, Paul writes in the last words of Chapter 12:
”I will show you a more excellent way.”  In Chapter 13 we have this beautiful poem of love. Read it over this afternoon – it speaks so powerfully and directly to the situation in Corinth and who knows, you may find it speaking to your own life . .”Faith, hope, love, abide these three, but the greatest of these is love.”

Now you all know, this is not ancient history. Churches today can be torn asunder by strife and division.  A minister friend of mine found himself caught in a church conflict.  It had nothing to do with him.  Folks fighting, quarreling, exactly as the Corinthian folk were doing. Senior Ministers, especially those who have had the privilege of serving large churches, have a saying:
 I am not the engineer
 I can’t run the train
 I can’t blow the whistle
 I can’t ring the bell
 But when the train jumps off the track
 Who knows who catches hell?

Well, that was what my friend was up against, and it was nasty.  One day his wife, after running into some busybody at the supermarket, came home in tears.  They sat up late at night around the kitchen table praying and talking.  A few days later he resigned.  You talk with some of these folks today:  they will tell you, “he was the finest minister we ever had.”  Too late.

Churches can be vulnerable, fragile human institutions.  It is only as we love one another, pray with and for one another, hold hands and stick together, that the church will be strong and faithful to God.  “I will show you a more excellent way.”  “Faith, hope, love, abide these three, but the greatest of these is love.”

Love seems so feeble, so weak against the violence and hatred stalking the world this morning.  Sounds like “preacher talk,” the thing you would expect to hear in church.  Come on, this is the real world, wake up and smell the coffee.  Jesus lived in a world filled with violence and war; still, in the words of Saint Paul, he shows us all a “more excellent way.”  The way of love – forgiveness, reconciliation.

At a time when religion and its leaders ought to be showing the world a way to common ground, ought to be witnessing to the world the truth basic to all major faiths, that you cannot love God whom you have not seen if you do not love your sister and your brother whom you have seen, exactly the opposite is happening.

In Israel, in Palestine, in India, in Pakistan, in dozens of other places religious zealots call for a holy war and refuse to give peace a chance.  Here in our own country religious fundamentalists urge our national leaders on to even more aggression.  Not long after September 11, someone scribbled these chilling words on the wall of a building in Washington, D.C.: “Dear God, please save us from the people who believe in You.”  The foundation of this love must be justice.  Our love will be in vain, unless there is first justice.

The words of the prophet continue to be true:  “What does God require of you, but to do justly, to love mercy and kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”  “By this,” says Jesus, “all will know you are my disciples, by your love for one another.”  Faith, hope, love, abide these three, but the greatest of these is love.

Love is the greatest of all the spiritual gifts because it builds up and strengthens the church, the body of Christ.  Love is the greatest of all the spiritual gifts because it builds up and strengthens the life of the family and all of our personal relationships.  Love is the greatest of all the spiritual gifts because when the life of our city and our nation is undergirded by justice, love, a commitment to seek the other’s good, is the way which may at last lead to peace.  Love is also the greatest of all the spiritual gifts because each of us can try to live the Christian life – the life of love.  No one of us can exercise all of the spiritual gifts, but each of us can choose to be a more loving person.

Each day you have a decision to make:  will you choose to continue to hug your hurts and nurse your grudges, or will you choose to be a more loving person?  The choice is yours!  The need to be loved, the need to love, the need to know yourself as a precious, beloved child of God.

When some of our grandchildren were a lot younger and we would talk on the phone, when they could think of nothing else to say or thought they had talked long enough and had better things to do, they would say, “Time for me to say I love You” and they would hang up.
Well, it is time for me to say, “I love you” and to urge you, before you leave here today, to pledge anew, promise yourself to walk the way Jesus walked – the way of love.  For it is always in this … world time to say “I love you.”

“I will show you a more excellent way.”  “Faith, hope, love, abide these three, but the greatest of these is love.”  And to God be the glory in the Spirit of Jesus. Amen.

Scripture Readings

I John 4: 7-21
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God: everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.  God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.  In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.  Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.  We love because he first loved us. 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.  The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

John 13: 31-35
When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.  If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once.  Little children, I am with you only a little longer.  You will look for me, and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’  I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.”  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”