Preached by the Reverend Ronald F. McGuire at the Sunshine Cathedral on Sunday, May 21, 2006.
1 John 4:16-21
16We know God loves us; we can count on it! Why? Because God is love. Therefore, those who live in love live in God, and God is alive in them. 17Because of God’s love alive in us, we can face the most difficult examination. When we live in love we are expressing God’s image in us right here, right now. 18Fear and love — opposites of each other — don’t coexist. Love drives out fear. (Fear is based on ‘punishment,’ on ‘what God is going to do to us’. If we are afraid of God, how can we experience God, who is Love?)
19We love God because God first loved us. 20If someone says, “I love God,” but holds hatred in their heart toward another, how can this be? It’s not the Truth, it’s a Lie! How could someone hate a brother or sister — someone right in front of our eyes — and then claim to love God — who can only be seen by the eye of faith? 21This is the core Truth of Divine Principle: To love God is to love your brother and sister.
John 15:9-17
9“I love you in the same way Abba loves me. Live in that love… always! 10Here’s how to remain in loving connectedness with me: follow my teaching; do what I have told you, just as I have followed Abba’s plan for me, living in the love that is my lifeline to God. 11I’m sharing this with you because I want you to experience the joy I experience; it will bring you to marvelous maturity. 12Here’s the essence of what I’m telling you: Love one another the way I loved you. 13There’s no greater love in all the world than to put your life on the line for your friends. That’s what I’ve done! 14For you, my friends! You follow my teaching, doing what I tell you. 15How could I call you ‘servants’? A servant doesn’t know the Master’s business. I call you my friends, because everything Abba shared with me I’ve shared with you.”
16“Remember, you didn’t choose me! I hand-picked every one of you Then I sent you to bear fruit, delicious, everlasting fruit. As fruit-bearers you can ask Abba for anything in my name, and it’s yours.”
17“This is the ‘bottom line’ on everything I’ve taught you: Love one another!”
Like the little boy hiding from his parents (and finding that amusing) many of us do likewise and hide ourselves from love. The only difference is our hiding is not amusing.
Allow me introduce to you a woman whose writings I absolutely love. Most of you may recognize her. Iyanla Vanzant is an attorney, best-selling author and nationally recognized speaker.
Some of you may remember her from her daytime talk show entitled, Iyanla. Listen to what she has to say about not being present in love. I quote, “You cannot be fully present in your loving if you are happy sometime and sad most of the time… if you are afraid to tell the absolute truth about who you are — what you need and what you want, you are not in love, you are in hiding. Love does not hide itself from itself or from anyone else. Love stands tall in the truth of who it is for everyone to see it, know it, and have it, all of the time. You are not fully present in your loving if you are blaming not accepting your share; not acknowledging your part or your pain.
If you are not giving thanks for all, offering support, if you are not sharing your vision and if you are making excuses for not being present. Until you are willing and ready to stand in love, with love for the love of yourself, you cannot be yourself, you cannot be fully present in your loving of another because you will undoubtedly be in pain.”
Why do we hide from love? The answer that many of us give is usually: it hurts. The fear of being rejected keeps us from pursuing possibilities and opportunities that are standing there watching and looking and waiting with arms wide open ready to embrace us with in the truth of who and what it is.
Why do we hide from love? We hide because hiding keeps us safe. It provides for us a shelter in which we choose when we want, where we want, how we want and who we want to love.
Hiding keeps us in control of our lives. As a result, we become separated from life, others and most importantly, from God. When we look at what love is, we find the Apostle Paul so eloquently pens in his sermon of love to the Corinthians says, love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, endures all things. In Iyanla’s sermon of love, she says, “Love is simple — we make it hard with our trappings. We make love difficult, painful, hurtful and regrettable, because we keep trying to figure out — how to do love right. In order to do and get the right kind of love, we place demands, restrictions and conditions on our loving and those we love. Sometimes it works. Usually it doesn’t. And when we get hurt, we blame it on love. Love does not hurt.
Falling into the traps we set for love, makes us hurt ourselves. Because love just is — It is the experience of joy we have when we have the courage to tell the truth, be exactly who are, and allow those around you to do the same. Love is not what you have been told, what you have heard in the stories, seen in the pictures, love is not a tool or a weapon, love is the key. It is the key that allows you to see more in yourself and about yourself than you would dare to show to the world. Love is simple. You simply give love or you don’t. You simply know love or you don’t, you simply are love or you continue to fall into the traps that make you hurt yourself because you don’t acknowledge yourself as the love that you are.” But who do you think you are? When you wake in the morning don’t you feel good about yourself? When you look into the mirror instead of looking at yourself and say, Oh my God– (period). We should say: Oh my God! What joy! What beauty! What inspiration! God looking back at me! I am the expressed image of God!
Have we forgotten the real meaning of love? Or, perhaps we never really knew. Have we been so busy feeding and clothing and protecting that we have missed the basic theme and message of life. The message that there is nothing but love and all comes from it to return to it. Have we forgotten that love is all—nothing less than the essence of everything. Have we covered the spirit of love in black or white, or good or bad, or right or wrong, so that loves meaning has been lost with our sense of value, worth and wisdom.
Have we become so guilty about how we love, ashamed of why we love, afraid of who we love, that the conditions, judgments, restrictions and limits we place on love have left us, loveless, lovelorn and love starved. Or is it simply that we have taken so much God out of love, which we can no longer find ourselves in it.
The voice of love is calling out to you. The same voice that called out to Lazarus. The story goes; Mary and Martha had gone to Jesus to inform him that their brother Lazarus was sick. Jesus waited a couple of days before setting out on the trip. During that time, Lazarus had died. When Jesus finally arrived in the city Mary jumped up and ran to Jesus, fell to his feet weeping, “if you had been here, Lord, my brother would not have died.” Jesus saw her pain and the sorrow of the others around and was deeply moved and troubled. Jesus wept. Jesus’ love for Lazarus was so deep, He didn’t care that Lazarus had been dead for four days with a decaying of the body, in a rotting and deteriorating condition.
He didn’t care that Lazarus was stinking as Martha had told him. He looked beyond the stench and the grim of the grave just like he looks beyond our grim and stench of our sometimes entombed state and called, “Lazarus, come forth!”
And Lazarus in his dead state; Lazarus, who was thought by family and friends to have been dead, heard the voice of love and by the power of love came forth hands, face and feet bound. Jesus said, “Unbind him, let him go.”
Jesus has come to us, calling us from our bounded state.
He is saying: unwrap that cloth that binds us from loving and him loved. Unwrap that cloth that keeps us critical of each other. Unwrap the fear that keeps us divided and jealous due to race and abilities, economic and social standing. You cannot keep love bound for it is the very essence of our survival the formula that brings us as one, that keeps us from our greed over land and property and determining who can and cannot be a part of experiencing freedom from oppression. Be unwrapped — and be free to love. Come out of hiding. Be come unraveled and be free to love one another first of all loving yourself.
Be free in who you are, free to love and explore who you are, your sexuality. Let every cell in your body be filled with light, love, and peace. Let yourself experience the depth of joy and excitement that only the transforming power of love, loving and being loved can offer you.
Let your life be a second-by-second, moment-by-moment, day-by-day realization of rapture that gives you courage and strength and inspiration to move beyond fear, beyond what has been or might be into the glory and the beauty of that which already is. Be who you are my friend and simply live the life.
As I close, I leave you with this one thought — Why isn’t being who you are good enough for you, if it’s good enough for God?
Think about it? And be blessed!
