“To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name… We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.”  Thomas Merton

In his book If God is Love, Phil Gulley uses his attitude during his first pastorate to emphasize what living as if God is Love can be like.  He says, “If you’d asked me what motivated my behavior [at the beginning of ministry], I would have claimed a deep concern for the lost.  In retrospect, I realize my motives weren’t always so pure.  It was my first pastorate, and like any person in a new career, I wanted to be successful. I counted everybody who attended worship each Sunday.  When the numbers were up, I was happy.  When attendance was down, I was depressed. My ministry, even when it spoke of God’s grace, wasn’t always gracious. I wanted people to join “my” church, adopt my beliefs, conform to my expectations, and do this as quickly as possible. My ministry was often selfish, aggressive and ungracious.

          Gracious religion,” he continues, “is gentle, making room for a person to mature, knowing this takes time, and often comes with pain and struggle. It respects the integrity of the other person too much to coerce and manipulate. Gracious religion is convinced that in the end, every person will recognize the truth – that we are loved and created to love. We shall all know this truth, and this truth shall set us free. When by word or action we resist this truth, God waits patiently. When we finally end our rebellion, God’s joy is full.”

          In our everyday walk do we think about being gracious and a source of love?  Some of you do, and it shows in your choices and how you spend your free time.  People are visited or called, sometimes texted.  You find ways of helping others and, to your friends, you are faithful and loyal.  Most importantly, your attitude is one of grace and allowing others to be themselves in whatever condition that is.

In the quote from Thomas Merton, when we are examples of God’s love, we are selfless and about the business of loving other people as much as we love ourselves.  To believe that you are spiritually made in the image of God means we are indeed love. What does characteristics do we display?

          1 Corinthians 13 tells us that love is enduring, persevering, kind, unassuming, undemanding, not about our egos at all — patient, loving, graceful — always forgiving, always reliable, always about the other person.  Do we love our neighbors as ourselves? 

To do that we first must love ourselves. So, do we love ourselves with patience and kindness, with grace and forgiveness?  Sometimes we don’t show that we are made in the image of God because we don’t embrace that we are made in the image of a loving God.  The first person we need to learn to love is ourselves.  I was not brought up to love myself.  In my family of origin being a good person meant sacrificing self at all costs.  My mother frequently said that she could sleep when she was dead, but until then she would fill up her time she should have been sleeping taking care of other people.  That was what we were taught was a good life – but a selfless life is not one in which we don’t care about or for ourselves.  I used to think that.  I thought I was being so good when I was burning my candle at both ends wondering why I kept running out of wax.  That got projected onto others, and eventually I was loving other people just like myself – which was not very well and with a lot of irritability.

          Years of wisdom and therapy helped me get to a point where I at least see the need for selfcare, even if I still ignore that need from time to time.  I’m a work in progress, and I have to be kind to myself and gracious about my shortcomings.  When that happens, I don’t project anger and frustration onto others.  I can actually project love.  Because we are made, we are designed to love ourselves and when we reach that goal, we then can project that love, grace, kindness, and forgiveness onto others. 

We are made in the image of God and God is love. 1 John 4 tells us that if it isn’t loving, it doesn’t have to do with God – and suggests that all unloving acts are sourced from fear – that fear can be anything — from we won’t amount to enough, or fear we won’t have enough, or fear that we aren’t loved or cared about — Those fears stand in the way of loving ourselves and thus loving others.  We are enough.  We have enough.  This is a life of abundance.

          How do we show that kind of love?  Are we supposed to be selfish?  As we sit here in this room, people are having life saving drugs kept from them by our country.  Humanitarian aid food is on barges unable to be unloaded while children starve to death.  We have lost our hearts if this does not affect us in some way, hopefully a way that gets us to contact our representatives, or maybe at least feed someone at the homeless shelter or food pantry or pour into the streets with voices and signs.  We can’t act just out of guilt as we sit in the wealthiest country in the world. We have to come up with ways that will be effective and implement them.  Sometimes this means dealing with politics.

          I have heard the argument that church is not the place for politics.  When political systems target the poor and helpless, we are sinful if we don’t do something.  That is the sentence the book of James ends on in the Bible – if we know to do good and don’t do it, that is sinful. Church can’t just be a shelter from reality but a place that emboldens us to show love in some radical ways in our own personal lives. 

Radical love is Christian love.  Christian love goes that extra mile, takes that extra chance, risks being seen as foolish or uncool.  Christian love isn’t just for our family and friends – we are taught through the parable of the good Samaritan that true love reaches out to find the good in our enemies, searches for it.  And that’s not an easy task.  It is a radical task. 

And “love your enemies” is also a commandment we need to look at and live into.  In loving our enemy, we can do a lot of self-care and healing if it is done correctly and with the proper guidance and in the right environment.

That is why we have to be here for each other, holding each other in the light, because your ways of showing radical love will be radically different from any other people — so we cannot judge people if they don’t  act out of love the exact way we want them to.  It’s not our job to be the radical love police.  Instead, we need to get in touch with that source of love in ourselves through mediation or prayer or sitting peacefully — but let our actions come from that source of love, and they will be radically different than acting out of ego — they may be less bold and more kind like Phil Gulley talked about gracious love.   Maybe it isn’t writing the angry letter to our representatives.  Maybe it is being kind and open — encouraging others  to understand what you might be saying – but not trying to make them think like you.

 This whole radical love thing can be complicated because we can more-easily go off in self-righteous indignation, and we should feel that – but our actions have to be sourced from that love within, that source of patience and grace, that source of kindness and longsuffering.  Real change for the better takes a long, long time, and comes with struggling and comes with pain — so we can’t fault people if they don’t want to change — but by loving them, we create an environment that is supportive of change, supportive of love.  Your act of radical love might be reacting nicely to that coworker who has been a real pill of late or reaching out to a relative you are concerned about, knowing they might not reach back.  Radical love doesn’t make sense.  But that doesn’t mean our lives don’t need to make sense.  There should be no doubt of whose image you are made.  You are made in the image of God and God is love.

You are designed to love – and to function better in a loving environment — Creating on earth as it is in heaven can be an ongoing task rather than just a part of a prayer.  You are designed to be loving, and you are designed to be loved, and we have to, if we want to follow any commandment in the Bible, follow the one that is the source of all other commandments — to love God with all our heart and our neighbor as ourselves.