Love Wins

by | May 25, 2025

  1. Imagine Jesus sitting with his disciples as they are eating the Passover meal
    1. And they are talking about the future
    2. Jesus knows what is ahead for him this night and he is trying to prepare his disciples
    3. And they are really struggling with the thought of him leaving
    4. Remember, that unlike us, they do not know how the story is going to end
    5. The Rev. Suzanne Trump, Associate Pastor of Formation and CompassionThey have seen things that do not make sense
    6. People healed, water into wine, apparently dead people returning to life
    7. They have seen him angry kicking out the money changers in the Temple
    8. And seen him weep at the death of Lazarus
    9. Put yourselves in the disciples’ shoes for a moment
    10. If I am honest, I wouldn’t be able to make sense of any of this
    11. Imagine going about your workday, and Jesus comes along and calls you to follow
    12. You don’t have training, you haven’t been studying at the feet of the local Rabbi
    13. I know that even with seminary education there are so many things that I cannot make sense of things that defy my logic, and things that just make me mad
    14. Why do good people die young?
    15. I have a lot of questions and very few answers
  2. Jesus tells them that he will not leave them alone
    1. Well, that just makes the water muddier, right?
    2. If you are leaving, how are we not alone?
    3. Jesus tells them to love Jesus and keep his commandments
    4. If they, we, do this, Jesus will send an Advocate to be with us, to walk along side of us
    5. The world will not see this “Advocate”
    6. But because Jesus lives, they, we will live
    7. Love Jesus, they, we, will be loved by God
    8. Judas, not Iscariot is really trying to grasp what Jesus is saying
    9. Judas askes how will Jesus reveals himself to them but not the world
    10. Jesus answers, keep my word, God will love you
    11. The answer is love
    12. The answer is always love
    13. My friends, Jesus really meant it when he gave the new commandment that we should love one another
    14. And good grief, isn’t that hard????
    15. Most of us struggle with love, we make it conditional, I will love you if you…. fill in the blanks
    16. Even when we try hard to love there are just some people that seem so unlovable, right?
    17. Professor Brian Peterson of Lutheran Southern Seminary puts it this way
    18. “The answer to Judas’s question is love. That is how Jesus reveals himself, and that will continue. Loving someone shapes behavior. That is true with parents and children, spouses and partners. Loving our neighbors means actions oriented toward them and their good. It is the same in the relationship between Jesus and his disciples. Their love for him will shape their lives so that they keep his word (verse 23).”
    19. God’s love shapes our lives
  • One of my favorite books is, “Love Wins: Heaven, Hell and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived” by Rob Bell
    1. Addresses Christianity’s missed teachings about salvation, heaven, and hell and why God sent Jesus into the world.
    2. Bell’s conclusion is that much of what we have “Caught” and “Taught” by the church is not actually what the Bible or Jesus teaches
    3. And these misunderstandings have led to countless people turning away from the Christian faith.
    4. Bell offers a hopeful and expansive vision of God’s salvation, as indicated by the book’s title
    5. The bottom line is Love Wins
    6. And it goes like this:
    7. One, God has a purpose
    8. Two, God simply doesn’t give up
    9. Ever!
    10. Three, love demands freedom
    11. it always has and it always will
    12. we are free to resist, reject and rebel against God’s ways for us
    13. We can have all the hell we want and truthfully, don’t we have it here and now
    14. Look at the news and social media
    15. and then there are all the little hells we create for ourselves
    16. choosing to hold grudges and refusing to forgive when we are hard pressed to really remember why we were so angry in the first place
    17. cruel comments, racist remarks, judging others
    18. Have you ever been in an argument and you knew what absolutely not to say?
    19. what would most wound the person
    20. What would get right to the person’s heart in the quickest, most hurtful way?
    21. And yet you said it anyway?
    22. I know I have, if we are honest, we have probably all done it at one time or another
    23. love demands freedom and freedom provides that possibility
    24. Four, God is making everything new
    25. At the end, something new
    26. The last word, it turns out isn’t the last word at all
    27. but the first word
    28. that’s what God’s love does
    29. It speaks new words into the world and into us
    30. That’s how love works
    31. it can’t be forced, manipulated, or coerced
    32. it always leaves room for the other to decide
    33. God says yes
    34. We can have what we want
    35. because love wins
    36. God sent God’s son to declare that Jesus and Jesus alone is saving everybody
    37. whatever categories and limits we try to place on Jesus
    38. he transcends them
    39. God is love
    40. and love is a relationship
    41. Jesus invites us to say yes to this love of God
    42. again, and again, and again
    43. love frees us to embrace all our history
    44. the history in which all things are being made new
    45. love is what God is
    46. love is why Jesus came
    47. and love is why he continues to come
    48. Ultimately Love Wins
    49. It doesn’t depend on us
    50. It is about God loving us
    51. And God’s love is a gift of grace 
    52. To each of us
  • And we accept it in faith
  • Throughout scripture, from Genesis to Revelation
  • The relationship between God’s grace and human faith is one of mutual interaction
  • The precise character of the relationship is a mystery
  • Not as in mystifying conundrum
  • But mystery which takes us on a journey that leads ever deeper into the fullness of comprehension and appreciation
  • With mystery, the more we know, the more we realize that there is more to be known
  • Grace and faith are always in danger of being turned into theological clichés and the relationship between then is in danger of being reduced to a formula
  • If you do this, God will do that
  • It becomes an if…then proposition
  • And it isn’t that God doesn’t ask anything of us in return
  • Faith can become confused with belief
  • Reduced to a mental assent to propositional truths
  • If you believe this, then God will do this
  • Or grace can be seen as a divine commodity that boosts our capacities
  • While faith is understood as a personal moral achievement
  • John’s passage opens to us a rich awareness of the gospel
  • In which the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ
  • The love of God and
  • The communion of the Holy Spirit becomes basic to who we are
  • And what and who we are called to be
  • Love wins
  • And Jesus really meant it when he said to love one another
  • My prayer for each of you is that you will continue to strive to love one another, to love everyone in our community, to extend God’s love in your words and especially your actions
  • In love and through love is how we become God’s beLOVEd community
  • It has been my great joy to share this time with each of you and walk together on this journey of love and life
  • May God bless you today and always
  1. Amen