Hello, and welcome to the Will Preach for Food podcast. I’m Doug, a pastor here at Faith Lutheran Church, based out of Shelton, Washington, a congregation of the ELCA. “It Starts and Ends with Love” is this week’s podcast title. That “EHR” you see in parens stands for “Emotionally Healthy Relationships.” This Fall Faith Lutheran is leaning into our congregation’s vision and dream to become “closer to and more like Jesus.” Today’s message is the first in an eight week preaching, devotional, and small group series based on the work of Pete and Geri Scazzero.

You can learn more about Faith and about Emotionally Healthy Relationships at our website, www.faithshelton.org. Thanks for listening today. 

They’ll know we are Christians by our LOVE, the old song says. So why is it that so much of Christianity that we see all around us is so judgmental, angry, and fearful? It seems like we used to be able to have differences of opinion, but still be friends, right. We could work together, go to church together, care for each other. Yet these days it feels like we’ve all been pushed into opposite corners. Earlier this week I used the word “progressive” in a conversation about my faith, and just about got my head bit off. And I’m a pastor! I can only imagine how it is with you. So, what happened? Where did love go?

The Greatest Commandment

As we start a fall emphasis on being Emotionally Healthy followers of Jesus Christ, we must start—and end—with love.

Dear friends, let us love one another, the Bible teaches, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us (1 John 4:7-12).

Jesus taught and modeled the life of love: love God with everything you’ve got, and you do that by loving your neighbor—and yourself—with everything you’ve got (Mark 12:30-31). 

If you’ve ever been to a Christian wedding you probably heard some bit about love being patient and kind, that faith, hope, and love abide, and the greatest of these is…love (1 Corinthians 13). Faith and love are inseparable. “Ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for God’s people,” Paul writes to a beloved congregation in Ephesus, “I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers” (Ephesians 1:15-16).

[The story of Lazarus in Luke 16 portrays a wealthy man who fundamentally lacks love, showing no care or compassion or sympathy for a beggar at his doorstep.]

Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our…love.