Keys: Relationships

John 3: 16

1 Peter 4: 8

1 John 4: 7 – 12

September 21, 2025

I have a good friend who, while he was in high school and college, was a very good baseball player. He played first base on teams that won state championships in high school and conference championships in college. He was a good hitter and an all-star defensively.

Mark – not his real name – grew up in a time of George Steinbrenner’s Yankees. Mark always said his two favorite teams were the Yankees and any team beating the Mets. Mark’s favorite player was Don Mattingly. Mattingly was a star at the time who also played first base. Mattingly was a stylish player in the field but, it was when he was at bat that he demonstrated not only good hitting ability, but also a number of little quirks that he exhibited during every at-bat.

Erasing the back line in the batter’s box. Holding his bat particularly high, flapping his elbows, adjusting his wrist bands – Mattingly had a number of these mannerisms that made him immediately recognizable while at-bat.

Mark had every quirk down. While in the field, or at bat, Mark was a direct copy of Mattingly. He was Mark’s favorite player and so from a very early age he watched and copied every Mattingly move – such was his love and admiration for his favorite player in his favorite sport.

Mark is not alone in copying the behavior of his favorite ball player. Watch 5- and 6-year-olds play T-Ball. It is hilarious to watch them knock the dirt out of their cleats, hold their hands up for a timeout as they are digging in even though there is no pitcher. The ball is sitting on a tee right in front of them.

But kids are not the only ones who imitate people they respect.

Sometimes we adults copy or imitate the behavior or characteristics of people we admire. For the last forty years I have watched adults copy hairstyles, clothing preferences, manners of praying, gestures while singing – all sorts of behaviors that gets copied by admirers. I am not saying there is anything wrong with it. I know I do it.

When I am walking in the chancel during a service I move very deliberately and at a slow pace – trying to look thoughtful as I do so. Now these are not conscious decisions every Sunday, but I do them. Why? Because, growing up, that is exactly how my pastor moved during worship services. He was a man I admired, and I realize as I have grown older how much of his movements and even his preaching style I have incorporated in my own ministry.

I am not saying that there is anything wrong with this imitation – it is a gesture, sometimes unconscious, of love and respect.

Last week we began a conversation about moving from tourist, or traveler, to pilgrims in our lives of faith. We talked about intentionality, about self-reflection, about an engagement with our faith that is transformative for us and equips us to be people of light, not just heat, in today’s broken world.

Today we continue that conversation as we think together about the church as a primary starting place for our faith pilgrimage. And we are going to start with this notion of relationship. We are going to start with the belief that just like with baseball, hairstyles, and pulpit mannerisms, the church is a place where how we relate to one another is, I believe, a direct reflection of what we believe about God.

In 40 years, I have never encountered a church that didn’t describe itself as a warm and loving place. It’s interesting, but during my doctoral work, we read the Session minutes of over 125 churches in southwest Texas that ultimately closed their doors, they no longer exist, they have closed. In every single case, in those minutes, they described themselves as a warm and loving place. But also, in every single case, those minutes described conflict that was ugly, divisive, and hurtful.

How does that happen, you might ask? How does a church go from describing themselves as warm and loving until the day they close, but also describe ugly, hateful, vindictive and petty fights that become their reason for closing? How does that happen?

In 1967, John Lennon wrote the song – and the Beatles performed – “All You Need is Love.” C’mon, you don’t have to be alive back then to know the lyrics.

All you need is love.

All you need is love.

All you need is love, love.

Love is all you need.

That song was released in July of 1967. Just a little over two years later, the composer of that song – John Lennon – informed the rest of the Beatles that he was leaving the group and going solo. The breakup of the Beatles was announced just a few months later in 1970. The group that sang “All You Need is Love” had an ugly breakup and those relationships were damaged for decades. What happened to those relationships? What happened to the love?

Left to our own devices, our own definitions, to our own concepts we are inevitably self-serving. Worldly love is transactional, is all too often maintained only as long as the giver oof love feels as though they are receiving a suitable return on their behavioral love investment. We stay in love, we stay in relationships, we stay in churches with one another as long as we feel our needs are being met. You have heard me say this before. We keep score.

But as believers, as pilgrims, as those trying to grow into the likeness – not of one another – but of Jesus, both our definition and example of love is very different. We seek to love as God has first loved us. We seek to love as exemplified by our role model Jesus - the one who said in his last extended teaching to the disciples before his death, from John, chapter 13: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another:”

And friends, there is nothing new there – yet. Leviticus 19 in the Old Testament told us that we should love one another. But Jesus goes on to show us just how different the kind of love that he expects from us is. Jesus finishes the commandment by saying, “just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Our call, our relationships should reflect, should imitate, our relationships should mimic the love of Jesus. And we can read through the Gospels and try to understand the sacrificial, lifegiving love of Jesus. But I think even more deeply, we can look at God, as shown us in our final text from First John. “God is love.”

“God is love.” Yes, God is all-powerful. Yes, God is all-knowing. Yes, God is present everywhere, created all that is, blew life and meaning and relationship into our very souls. Yes, to all of that. But we need to understand – as a primary way that we understand who God is – that God is love. And here the semantics, the grammar is incredibly important.

It is not just that God acts in a loving fashion. It is not just that God behaves in loving ways. It is not just about what God does – that would be a transactional analysis. Friends, it is about who God IS. God can’t help but act in a loving fashion because the very nature of God is love.

God exists in a relationship of love within the Trinity. Many theologians assert that this love that exists between God and Jesus is the very Holy spirit itself. God is love; and that very nature compelled God to create all that is to be a recipient of God’s love. God is love; so much love that God was willing to become human in the form of Jesus – the second person of the Trinity – that the loving relationship between God and a broken humanity could be restored.

God can’t help but love because that is who God is and that love always has, as its target and desired goal, the wellbeing of the beloved.

God’s love is always in service to the beloved. God’s love is filled with grace, not for God’s benefit, but for the benefit of the beloved. God’s love is in service to the desire for relationship.

The Trinity IS this kind of love, God is this kind of love, and when Jesus calls us to love one another – to be in relationship with one another – it is this kind of love that we are being called to.

Oh, how the church needs to be a reflection of this kind of love. In a world filled with self-absorption and self-serving gestures the church needs to model and offer relationships seeking to love as God is; to love as Jesus has first loved us.

This is a high calling. It will call for what seems like sacrifice as we move from self-service to the service of others. It calls us to move from our own understanding to an understanding and obedience to the teachings of God – themselves a reflection of love.

This is a high calling. It will call for grace….. and mercy….. and forgiveness as we inevitably fall short. But are not grace, mercy, and forgiveness themselves expressions of love?

“Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” How will we be different? How do we continue to grow as pilgrims in the faith? How do our relationships profess the Jesus with whom we are in relationship? May we love one another as God loves us. Amen.