Rector's Blog: If God is Love

If God is not Love, I don’t really see the point of church.

I don’t think Church makes you a good person. I don’t think it exists as a tool of self-improvement. It’s not a very good social club. It will not improve your standing in your career or with your circle of friends. It will not help you make money or lose weight, or gain weight, or clear up acne. It won’t do your taxes. Church isn’t cool. It’s rarely fun and doesn’t even pretend to be.

And by the way if a church claims to be any of these things, don’t trust it.

Church is demanding and inconvenient, and slow and clunky, and made up of messy, imperfect people trying to make it through another day. None of the claims of the Church can be proven, and in fact many of its past claims have been disproven. Many of its past beliefs have had to be reshaped, reformed, or changed altogether.

But the Church claims that God is Love.

And this: This is the real point of church. That God is Love. We exist as a community that proclaims that God is Love. This means that love isn’t simply powerful or lovely or good or nice or pleasant – but that Love is the fountainhead of all that ever was, is, or will be. That Love is our Creator. That Love reconciles us. That Love heals and liberates us. That Love is the air we breathe. That Love is the home we left, and the home to which we will return, that Love is the one who will embrace us upon our return.

If God is Love, then Love is the beginning and end of every conversation, every thought, every dream, every hope. If God is Love, then I see the point of church. Because if God is Love, I want to know that Love more fully, and I want to be part of a community that puts Love at the very center of its existence. And I particularly love the church community I serve – Church of the Redeemer here in Cincinnati, Ohio – because we explicitly claim it is our desire to Know Jesus and Grow in Love.

I want to grow in Love. I want to make my life about Love. I want Love to be the end and the beginning of me.

I hear a lot about the failure of love. That love isn’t enough. That love is only capable of so much. That love only works in ideal situations. That love is all well and good to hope for or think about, and maybe even to try from time to time: But to make love the centerpiece of your life is just fanciful, idealistic, not to mention naïve.

I was about to argue with that, but I don’t know – maybe centering your life on love is fanciful and idealistic and naïve. On the other hand, what else is worth worshiping? If you’re going to put something at the center of you, what other than Love could it be? Is there something better to give your life to than Love?

There are many objections to making Love central to your life, but so many of the ones I’ve heard seem to take a limited view of Love. Love is sometimes substituted with pleasantness or good manners, or attraction or romance. I have heard people describe Love as essentially being nice. And if Love is just these things, then it isn’t God, and it doesn’t deserve our faith, our commitment.

As the recently deceased author Frederick Buechner once wrote, “To say that love is God is romantic idealism. To say that God is love is either the last straw or the ultimate truth.” Or as the brilliant prophet James Baldwin said, “Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.”

The Church looks at the naked homeless man being hung from a cross, executed by the world he came to save, and we say, “I see Love.” And if that’s true, and if Baldwin and Buechner are right, then Love is hope and commitment and radical transformation and relentless giving, a pouring out of the heart. And if St. Mary is right, Love is both the great source of liberation and the baby that rests in your arms. And if St. Paul is right, then Love is the never-ending force of reconciliation that is inseparable from the human experience, the shared life, the bearing of each other’s burdens. And if Jesus is right, then Love is both turning the other cheek and turning over the tables: Love is honesty and healing and accountability and grace and gentleness and toughness, and forgiveness and justice. And if the Church is right, Jesus is God and God is Love.

Last week I sat with a gentleman who has been a churchgoer for most of his life. During the first months of the pandemic, when the church doors were completely shut, and all of our worship was remote, church stopped being a part of his life. He and his spouse tried watching it online sometimes, and while the effort to bring worship into his living room via livestream was valiant, it did not resonate with them. It was cold comfort. The Church had done good work and had been a positive thing in his life, and also, he was ok with saying goodbye.

I did not try to convince him to stay. I did not try either to sell him or scare him back into church. I did not have any interest in pretending I knew better than he did the contents of his own heart or the needs of his own life. Mostly I listened. And because I’m me, I wondered what I could’ve done differently. He was very gracious. He said it wasn’t my failing – though I had been a failure at making him feel loved and connected, and I apologized for that. I got a lot wrong during the last two years. Again, he said, it wasn’t my failing, or the Church’s shortcomings. He just didn’t see a place for it in his life anymore.

I appreciated his candor, and I knew he was not alone, that a lot of people had come to a similar place. That a lot of people who used to make church a part of their life in 2019 weren’t especially ready to do so again in 2022. This candid, thoughtful man later messaged me and asked if it’s possible to be culturally Christian – to recognize that you’ve been shaped by the Christian religious community as opposed to, say, the Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist communities – and to honor that regardless of what you currently believe, to show up occasionally, to remember the words, to think fondly.

And I didn’t answer him right away because I was pondering. I am still pondering, but I think what I’m writing here is my answer, with gratitude and admiration towards him for pushing me. I think, yes, you can let the Church go, and you can honor your past and have affection and respect and care for the time in which it formed you. You can sing the old songs, and pray the old prayers when they pop into your head. And you should not be judged for that. It should not be held against you.

But I think cultures come and go. Cultures live and die. And I am persuaded that St. Paul is right, that Love never ends. I believe that Love is a growing up, that it is the last straw and the ultimate truth. And I don’t know what will happen to Christianity or Episcopalians or Church of the Redeemer, but we will keep trying to build a community that says God is Love and to act like we believe it. And in this way we will know Jesus, and in this way we will grasp at eternity. And as long as we take this seriously, there will be a place for you in it.