Love from the center

The opening of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, “Aspects of Love,” begins with the song “Love Changes Everything.”

“Love, love changes everything, hands and faces, earth and sky. Love, love changes everything, how you live and how you die ... Yes, love, love changes everything ... Love will never, ever let you be the same ...”

If human love has the ability to change us, how much more can God's steadfast and merciful love in Christ change each of us?

In Romans 12:9-21, the Apostle Paul throws out a lot for us to think about. A few questions come to mind. How shall we respond to what God has done for us and has given us in Christ? How shall we live as the children of God in the light of God's amazing love and grace for us and for this world? Paul writes: “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection … serve the Lord … Rejoice in hope .. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers” (Romans 12:9-13).

In Eugene Peterson's contemporary language translation of the Bible, “The Message,” he interprets the words of Romans 12:9 “Let love be genuine” this way: “Love from the center of who you are.”

Paul urges the Roman churches, and us, to love from the center of who we are in Jesus Christ our Lord. Who we are in Christ makes all the difference in how we live in the world, in the way we treat each other, and in the way we treat all other human beings.

God's love, which “has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit,” changes everything about us. Then how should we, as the Christian community, react to all that is going on around us and in our world? How can we respond in a positive and constructive way, in a Christ-like way? Paul says to us, “Love from the center of who you are.”

Late one night several decades ago, Martin Luther King Jr.'s home was burned to the ground by a group of people who did not like him or his message. The Black community was incensed and wanted to retaliate against those who had burned Dr. King's home. Martin Luther King Jr. told the crowd that night, “When you live by the rule 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,' you end up with a nation of blind and toothless people.”

Dr. King was a man of faith, a person whose heart was filled with God's love and who tried to live according to the commands and teachings of Christ. Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you and pray for those who mistreat you. His solution that night was to love from the center of who he was and who the Black community was as children of God. The people returned to their homes determined to win the victory with votes instead of with guns, with politics instead of with fire, with love instead of hate.

We know God's love for us by the way Jesus lived and by what he taught. Jesus didn't love us by simply feeling loving toward us. He acted out that love; he lived a life that embodied God's love. Jesus calls us to do the same.

Several years ago, a gunman went into an Amish elementary school and killed several children there. The Amish community portrayed to the world what it is like to love from the center of who you are in Jesus Christ, to love as Christ loves us, to forgive as Christ forgives us. In the midst of their pain and grief, the Amish community reached out in love and forgiveness to the wife of the murderer. They realized that this woman was also a victim who was suffering in pain and grief as they were. They requested that all relief monies intended for Amish families be shared with the woman and her children. And, finally, in an astonishing act of reconciliation, more than 30 members of the Amish community attended the funeral of the killer.

We are tempted to buy into the myth of redemptive violence: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. In the forgiveness Jesus offered to all of us while he was on the cross and in the power of the resurrection, God speaks of an even greater power of redemptive love. God's powerful, merciful love changes everything, and enables us to “love from the center of who we are” in Christ.