(17) All We Need

 

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for All We Need, originally shared on May 25, 2020. It was the seventeenth video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   I was talking with one of my brothers the other day. He said that one of the hardest things for him, in this era of isolation, is to be afraid of other people. He said he had gone to the grocery store the other day and almost everybody was wearing a mask and gloves, pushing a sanitized shopping cart in one way traffic, as the store directed, when somebody sneezed. He said that the whole place went silent. Then the guy raised his hand and said, “Hay fever”. That’s our world. We want it to change, but we’re not there yet.

    The world is not the way it’s supposed to be. No one knows that better than a Veteran, and no one wants peace more than someone who has seen war.

   Today is Memorial Day. It’s a day in which we remember those who have given what Abraham Lincoln called, “the last full measure of devotion”. We remember those who have died in the service of our country. I remember Dennis Belonger, a friend of mine from high school who joined the Army right away and died a Pfc in Vietnam. I remember the open casket at his funeral, how he looked like a man, how he had grown a mustache. Sally remembers Richard Chorlins from her high school, an Air Force Academy graduate, a Captain who likewise died in Vietnam. We both remember Staff Sergeant Nathan Thompson, a member of the church I served in San Dimas who served 2 tours in Iraq, became an Army recruiter in Pomona and died while on active duty.

   There are so many others, people you know and we know, and so many, many others who we don’t know. Each one of them was a brother, a sister, a spouse, a mother, a father, a friend. And we are grateful for their sacrifice and what it means for our country.

   Some are also remembering the 100,000 people who have died in the US alone this year. And, we have another name: in addition to the Corona virus, COVID-19, and C-19, we have a new one to me: coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)

   For some, this is the last day of a three-day weekend, which would be more exciting, Jimmy Fallon said, if many of us were not now on a 72-day weekend.

   For others, today will mean the official start of the summer, literally a day at the beach. We’ll see how people respond to the loosening of restrictions and the beginning of the coronavirus recovery. It doesn’t look good so far. Some will be acting as if the restrictions are gone. Hopefully, some of them will see the video of mass graves being dug in Brazil, even as many ignore the deadly dangers of the virus.

   Likewise, there was some confusion this past weekend over whether or not people could return to public worship, live and in person, and under what conditions. There was also some division over whether they should, even if they could.

   There are several things that can guide us in deciding that question, and they all revolve around the idea of love.

   Love is pretty important in the Bible. When you have a passage that says, “God is love.”, that’s pretty significant. That theme permeates the whole Bible:

*Matthew 22:34-40

   I read some time ago about a younger person who was asked if they had heard of a band called The Beatles. Oh yeah, they said. Wasn’t that Paul McCartney’s band before he was in Wings?

   Yeah, that’s right. They were pretty famous. And one of their first popular songs was, “All You Need is Love”. The lyrics are kind of a head scratcher. They say that there’s nothing you can do that’s impossible. All you need is love to do what you can already do (thanks Capt. Obvious).

“Nothing you can do, but you can learn how to be you in time
It's easy
All you need is love
All you need is love”

   “Be yourself”, Lily Tomlin said. “Everyone else is already taken.”

   Have you found that learning to be yourself is easy? I haven’t.

   It does take love, but that’s because God is love. We can’t be ourselves until we understand who we are. And, we can only understand who we are when we understand whose we are.

   “You gotta serve somebody”, Bob Dylan wrote.

   Or as the bumper sticker said, “I’m a fool for Christ. Whose fool are you?”

   Love, as it’s understood in the Bible is deeper and wider than being laid back and being yourself.

   To love as the Bible speaks of love is to love selflessly. It is to love as God loves us, without self-interest or hope of gain. It’s about living the purpose for which God has made you, and that is for a living relationship with the living God. That relationship puts us in a relationship of love with all those who also love God.

*1 John 4:7-12

   That’s why it’s hard for some of us to see so many people taking the easy way forward and, in doing so, putting others at risk.

   Love is who we are as the Christian Church. It is what we are about.

   Love is all we need, because God is love and God supplies us together with all we need.

   The response to the relationship we are given by the loving and gracious living God is to love one another because God first loved us, to do unto others as we would want others to do unto us, and to show that love by giving up some of our freedoms for the sake of others.

   Our love is God’s love flowing through us. It is forgiveness and grace. It is concern for the well-being of others.

   Wearing face masks whenever we’re away from the people we are sheltering with mainly protects others from us. Hand sanitizer protects us from others. Social distancing does both. Together, they have been proven to be unparalleled in protecting everybody from sickness and death.

   That part in the Bible about loving your neighbor as yourself? Now is the time to let other see that we mean it.

   Our problem is that we tend to want to look after ourselves. Sin is being curved in upon ourselves. Loving God and neighbor is not natural for us. Sin separates us from God. We are in rebellion against God and want to be God.

   God draws out of ourselves and to God’s self.

   God takes the initiative. Not ours, but God’s. God reaches out to us. God suffers and dies for us. That is what love means.

   It’s been said that everything the Bible has to say about love can be summarized in two words, “Jesus Christ”. It is seen in his deeds, all leading to the cross.

   Love is all we need. It is seen at the cross. It is seen in sacrificing to protect others. And, on this Memorial Day, we remember.

*John 15:12-17