God is for Lovers

Jack Hardaway
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There are certain things that I should not be allowed to do. This comes from experience. Like filing my own taxes. I just get in trouble. Or talking about whatever ever sport happens to be in season. I just embarrass myself.
Some people just shouldn’t be allowed to do certain things.
Have you ever thought that someone just shouldn’t be allowed to drive?
Or, that someone shouldn’t be allowed to own a hand gun?
Or, that someone shouldn’t be allowed in a kitchen?
Lord knows all the things I shouldn’t be allowed to do!
Sometimes, I think that some people just shouldn’t be allowed to read the Bible, or to use the Bible.
If we are full of the urge to hate or kill or point the finger or to denigrate then we should just stay away from the Bible, or at least everyone else should just stay away from us. The ancient Church called this “making anathema.” Clearing space for us when we become toxic, making room until we get our hearts and minds right.
The Bible is about something very different from what the vile and the violent make it out to be.
The Bible is about the crazy love that holds the Universe together.
God is love. Through and through, beginning to end, the long and the short of it. God is love.
We should make bumper stickers that say, “The Bible is for lovers.”
Just because we sometimes lack the patience or the imagination to always see the love doesn’t change the faith that the love is always there.
John’s Gospel sees the whole Universe being designed and held together by God’s love. Not just the particles and the stars, but also the stuff of life, the living biosphere of planet earth, the human soul, the human community, the human body it is all designed and held together by God’s love.
When we forsake, or forget, or break away from the divine pattern of love then the Universe starts to fall apart, to die and wither.
In John’s Gospel the universe has lost the love, and it is collapsing into the way of death, of violence, of hate, mockery and denigration.
Even the Bible is turned into something profane. A weapon.
Jesus is the love of God restoring the universe, bringing things back to life.
When we live in the pattern of divine love, in the pattern of the way of Jesus, of the Cross, then we become part of the Universe being pulled back together again.
The Gospel lesson today shows us a glimpse of the divine intimacy and love between Jesus and the Father, between Jesus and the source of all, between the Son and the Father.
Jesus is the divine pattern. The Father is the source of all things. The divine pattern and the divine source, at one, in intimate love.
When we believe in Jesus, when we follow the way of Jesus, then we connect to the crazy love that creates and sustains all that is.
As we approach the passion and death of Jesus that is Holy Week we approach the cross that is the pattern of divine love, of sacrifice, and we pattern our lives after this crazy love that holds the Universe together.
We are drawn to the one who is lifted up.
The Bible really is for lovers.
Believing is for lovers.
God is for lovers.