Love.

"Love" – Matthew 22:34-46 Sermon by the Rev. Elizabeth N.H. Link from Sunday, October 29, 2023. "Love God; love neighbor. It’s every bit as simple, and every bit as hard as it sounds. We live in a culture that throws the word love around all the time. . . . We associate it with the feelings that arise out of our own enjoyment of things. We don’t think of it as a discipline, as a practice, as exercise, as something that requires effort. . . . But this is not how Jesus describes love. Jesus doesn’t say, 'I hope love happens to you.' He says, 'Love is the greatest and first commandment.' It’s not a matter of luck or accident. It’s not something that always comes easy. It’s something you do. It’s something you choose. It’s a matter of obedience, Jesus says, to the one we call Lord. So, if this is the great commandment—to love—we ought to ask ourselves, are we living this way? Are we living as though love were the greatest commandment of all? What would it cost us to take Jesus’s version of love seriously?" Read the manuscript on our website: https://www.spres.org/love/