Our commandment is to love and there are no exceptions

Throughout Easter I have been preaching about the beauty of faith and along with that how faith isn’t always easy.

It isn’t easy amidst grief and suffering and doubt.

Our faith doesn’t always make sense when we look at a world that can sometimes seem angry or broken; in tumult or touched by terror.

Why is there suffering if God is all knowing, omniscient, and omnipresent?

Why cannot God end suffering if God is all those things?

And on this Trinity Sunday, where we are to acknowledge our God is three separate things in one thing, where I am to stand up here and tell you that the Spirit is not the Father and the Father is not Jesus and Jesus is not the Spirit and so on, but all three are God, on this Sunday I can firmly and quite confidently tell you that I do not know why suffering exists.

I have ideas but I do not know why we are left to weep when our hearts break, when we see hate in the world, when we are cut off from a world that seems to make no sense.

I only know that there is beauty in faith.

There is desire through faith.

There is a longing, a looking up at the night sky counting stars and wondering about our place in all of this kind of longing.

A want to understand.

And a commandment that, if I am faithful, I will love you.

I will love all of you.

Even those hardest love, present company excluded, of course, I will love.

That is the beauty of faith.

That is the beauty of this faith, that God so loved God’s creation, God shared it with us, with all of us for all of creation is ours to tend and till.

The beauty of such responsibility is immense and unending.

And that beauty is why I am faithful.

Faithful in a God who loves the totality of my very self, my very being, all of me, nooks, crannies, and everything, and all of us even when that faith can be hard to practice and difficult to discern.

On this Trinity Sunday when I am supposed to make sense of all of this for all of you, of how God can be three beings in one, God in three persons, holy Trinity, I can say this: God is love.

God is love.

And this too, us too, us worshipping together, us being together, us sharing stories, is love.

And love is easy to understand.

That I am loved, that I even deserve such love, well, I do wonder about that sometimes, but love, the unquestioning, totality of love is ever present.

We cannot escape it; we cannot even try turn away from it, for it is there.

It is present.

I am loved.

You are loved.

We are loved.

Because a very long time ago, eleven disciples went to Galilee.

And they climbed a mountain.

They saw Jesus at the top of that mountain.

After so much had happened.

After Judas’ betrayal.

After they witnessed his arrest in the garden that night, after Peter drew his sword, after the trial, the march to Calvary, his death on the cross.

After his resurrection.

The joy of seeing him on the shore.

After meals and late night talks beside the sea.

After all of that, they climbed a mountain.

And they saw him once more.

Once more and one last time.

They worshipped him and still, after everything that happened, some doubted.

Because this is hard to believe.

It is though, hard to believe, yet easy to know.

Because God is love.

We are loved.

And because God is love and because we are loved, we are to share that love.

Make disciples of all nations and teach them to obey everything Jesus commanded.

And what did Jesus command?

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. ’This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.”

That is our command.

No matter how difficult it is to hold onto faith, we must still love.

And we must love fiercely, so fiercely that that love becomes endemic, so regularly occurring, so joyful, that we through that love become an antidote to the anger and judgement Christianity is so usually associated with.

Our commandment is to love and there are no exceptions.

You who are about to graduate, Tess, Grace, that is your charge.

And you too who have recently graduated too, that also is your charge.

Love one another and love every other, no exceptions.

I have not been here a very long time.

I know though that this community loves you.

They, we are so proud of your accomplishments, you have been cheered on throughout your life by those who love you.

Your parents, of course, your grandparents, your family all love you.

And so do the folks you have met here.

You are loved and now it is time for you to go out into the world.

To cross beneath new transoms, new landscapes to wander, new streets to walk.

You will encounter newness everywhere, new people who might become friends, new rooms you might describe as home for at least a little while.

And those people you encounter?

Love them.

Love them even when they are difficult to love, love them when they leave toothpaste in the sink and their socks on the floor.

Love them because you are commanded to love.

Love them because you are loved and that is the only currency without limits, without controls.

You are loved wholly and you get to share that love.

That is the only charge I can give, the only advice that makes sense.

For you are going away now to where the horizons are new and past those horizons is a hopefulness brought on by a new day dawning.

The light of the dawn is yours, revel in its hope, love that you get to witness a new world with new people to love.

We can look at the world as it is, said Robert Kennedy, and ask why,

Or we can ask, why not?

It is the youth I believe, specifically your generation that will see through the anger and discord of a broken world and change it.

Because, why not?

Why not change the world?

And you will.

Because your very presence in it has already changed us for the better.

Go to Skidmore.

Go to Emerson.

And love.

Love your neighbor, love them well, love them fiercely.

That is all you can do.

Still, know this.

This town will still be your home.

And this church will always welcome you home.

But perhaps your perspective of such places might change because you have gone into the world and witnessed new things.

You will be changed and that is okay.

That is, in fact, good.

I’ve said a few words this morning but it boils down to this: as we celebrate you this morning, as we send you off into a world unknown, remember that God is with you, we are with you.

And you are loved.

We, this church full of people who love you will be with you always, to the end of the age.

Amen.