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By John Bryson Chane
Washington Window
Vol. 75, No. 7, June 2006

Take a few moments with me and think about how we use the word love in our daily lives.

In personal relationships we talk about our love for one another. "Oh, how I love you." "You are the love of my life." Or in the words of Tom Cruise in the movie Jerry Maguire; "I love you…you complete me." Or in the words of Erich Segel, author of Love Story: "Love means never having to say you're sorry."

How well does love expressed at this level really express the depth of a relationship? Some would say very well. I say that even the great poets and bards are incomplete in their writing, poetry and prose as they attempt to express in words the true meaning of love as a gift from the Creator.

In his book, Letters to a Young Doubter, my good friend and mentor Bill Coffin wrote this to help us understand the meaning of love from a theological perspective:

"In Saint Luke's Gospel, Jesus asks, 'Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten in God's sight.'

"In those days the rich bought animals to sacrifice while the poor could afford only sparrows. Sparrows went two for a penny, and if you bought two pennies' worth, a fifth was thrown in.

"God cares for the fifth sparrow, the one tossed in! Nature is made the symbol of God's supernatural mercy. It is with an unbounded, unfathomable love that God loves every last human being on the face of the Earth, from the Pope to the lowliest wino. 'Do not be afraid,' adds Jesus: 'You are of more value than many sparrows.' And God's love doesn't seek value, it creates it. It's not because we have value that we are loved, but because we are loved that we have value. Our value is a gift, not an achievement. Just think: we never have to prove ourselves; that's already been taken care of. All we have to do is express ourselves - return God's love for our own - and what a world of difference there is between proving ourselves and expressing ourselves.

"I never get over the huge gift and huge demands of Christianity, the gift of God's love and the demands of human possibility. Christianity has certainly not been tried and found wanting; it has been tried and found difficult, and watered down again and again.

"The founding pastor of the Riverside Church in New York once wrote: 'The world has tried in two ways to get rid of Jesus: first by crucifying him, and second by worshipping him.' Jesus doesn't ask us to worship him. He said; 'Follow me!' "

In 1st John we read; "Do not be astonished brothers and sisters, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Who ever does not love abides in death. All who hate brother and sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life, abiding in them. We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us - and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action."

Remember this teaching as I share the following with you:
Across the globe, more than 800 million people go to bed hungry every night.
Every 30 seconds, an African child dies of malaria.
Every year more than 10 million children die before their 5th birthday from completely preventable diseases like pneumonia and diarrhea.
Every day 20,000 people die because they are too poor to stay alive.
There are 73 million children living in America today living in poverty.

Globally more than 43 million souls live with AIDS. Every minute of every day nine more persons are newly infected with AIDS and most of these new infections are occurring among vulnerable women and children.

And where is the love in all of this? As it has been said in 1st John, "How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help?" And in John's Gospel we are reminded; "If you love me, you will keep my commandments."

Our desire to obey God's commandments has led the Diocese of Washington into its relationship with the Anglican Province of Southern Africa in Namibia, Mozambique, Swaziland (where almost 50 percent of the adult population is infected with HIV/AIDS) and South Africa, where disease and poverty is killing the body and soul of a whole generation of human beings - all made in the image of God and worth more than many sparrows.

Our desire to obey God's commandments impels us to oppose those in the Anglican Communion who want us to focus on human sexuality as a way of diverting us from the huge task before us, the task of caring for the sick, the friendless and the needy - of using the great resources of the people of this diocese to make a difference in the lives of thousands.

Working together we can literally become the living, breathing body of Jesus Christ. Working together we make manifest our understanding that love is more than a concept, a sentiment, or an emotion: Love is the very essence of God.

Are you ready to really love? Let us not be defined by the cynics who sell love cheap and who call those of us merging into the 21st century the "me" generation. Let us be known as the first of the 21st century to rediscover the miracle of God's love for the whole world.

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