Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor

© 2025, Dr. Tamilio

Jesus makes it quite clear in today’s Gospel Lesson: we are his disciples if we have love for one another.  In other words, as John Lennon would sing many years later, “Love is the answer.”

We take this word for granted.  We use it all the time:

  • I love him.
  • I love her.
  • I love that show.
  • I love to read.
  • I love Beethoven.
  • I love chocolate.

Love is a noun as well as a verb.  If you look it up in the dictionary, you will find all sorts of definitions.  According to the first of several offered by Merriam-Webster, love is “strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties.”  Although this is good, and it is augmented by several of the other definitions, it still does not encompass what that word really means.

Maybe some of the great writers of history can give us a better definition.

In his 147th Sonnet, William Shakespeare wrote:

My love is as a fever, longing still

For that which longer nurseth the disease,

Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,

Th’ uncertain sickly appetite to please.

That’s a bit harsh.

Sir Thomas Moore wrote:

“Romantic love is an illusion.  Most of us discover this truth at the end of a love affair or else when the sweet emotions of love lead us into marriage and then turn down their flames.”

That’s ever worse!

 Oscar Wilde always provides great insight:

“When one is in love,” he wrote, “one always begins by deceiving one’s self, and one always ends by deceiving others.  That is what the world calls a romance.”

Well, at least good old Oscar can make us smile with his wit.

Toni Morrison claims that:

“Love is divine only and difficult always.  If you think it is easy, you are a fool.  If you think it is natural, you are blind.”

Okay…

What about good ol’ Plato?  According to him:

“Love is madness.”

None of this sounds too promising.  Maybe we can only define love by trying to understand what it is not.  The Apostle Paul gives us some insight in this regard.  In what is often called his love poem (1 Corinthians 13), Paul says:  Love is patient, love is kind.  It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  Love never fails (1 Cor. 13:4-8a).

There is a lot there — a lot to unpack.  Still, Paul is simply telling us what love is not, not so much what it is.

So, what is it?  We need to know.  After all, in today’s Gospel Lesson, Jesus says that it is required for discipleship.  The last two verses of that passage read: “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.”

Still, what does it look like?

Well, that’s sort of a dumb question.  No one can explain what love looks like, especially since there are so many different forms of love, nor are there words to fully define it.

It’s one of those things that you need to feel, that you need to experience.  That love is found in many places.  One place is in the community.  I am going to quote our own Nancy McKenna , who shared the following the other night during Bible study.  She said that she has been to several other churches throughout her life — different denominations, different places — and never has she been to one where the love was so strong as this church.  I concur.  I have served four churches as an ordained pastor.  I was at my first church (in New Hampshire) for five years, and served churches in Kansas City and Cleveland for four years each.  As of this September, I will have been here for thirteen years.  That is the same amount of time as I’ve spent at the other three churches combined.  And, if I may put to bed the questions that some of our members and friends have asked me, I’m not going anywhere.  I have never experienced the level of sacred love that I feel here anywhere else — be it a church I have served or attended.

Love abounds in this place, but it isn’t just a feeling of affinity or ardor that we have for one another.  I believe it truly is the Holy Spirit: one that comes to us, calls us together, and sustains us as a community.  In other words, it is beyond us — it is not something that we can just make happen on our own.  You can get a whole group of amiable people together to be part of a social group.  It could be a book club, a gardening club, or any group where people assemble to explore a mutual interest.  They may develop friendships and strong feelings for one another.  A romantic relationship or even a marriage may emerge from the group.

But the church is different.  It is distinguished by a power beyond its members that calls the group together.  It also binds the members together with a purpose that they could not concoct on their own.  If that weren’t the case, we would be no different than some sort of social club.  The difference is that the Church is called together by God out of love to love and to share that love with everyone.  Everyone!  Not just those who are members or come to worship regularly.  Everyone.

It is not enough to say that this is a welcoming church and that people here love one another.  That love needs to be shared.  It needs to be shared because God first shared that love with us.  As the writer of the First Letter of John writes, “We love because God first loved us” (4:19).  In fact, God loves us in spite of ourselves.  God’s love is unconditional.  It is as if God is saying:

  • I love you in spite of your sinful nature.
  • I love you when you fail to love others, and when you fail to love yourself.
  • I love you when you fail to love me in return.
  • I love you even though you carry that guilt around like a sack of rocks.
  • I love you even though your faith is fickle.
  • I love you especially when you doubt that I do.

We could add to this list all day long.

The love of God is ever-flowing, and it is offered categorically to us all.  And furthermore, we experience it more fully as members of the Church.  You won’t find a definition that can fully capture it.  You will not find an earthly comparison that equals it.

I’ll give the final word to the Christian devotional writer Max Lucado, who wrote, “Trust God’s love.  His perfect love.  Don’t fear, He will discover your past.  He already has.  Don’t fear disappointing Him in the future.  He can show you the chapter in which you will.  With perfect knowledge of the past and perfect vision of the future, He loves you perfectly in spite of both.”[1]  Amen

[1] Max Lucado, Lucado 3-in-1: Traveling Light, Next Door Savior, Come Thirsty (Thomas Nelson Inc., 2007), 158.