God is Love, let heaven adore him;
God is Love, let earth rejoice;
Let creation sing before him
And exalt him with one voice [.]
God is Love, eternal Love.God is Love; and love enfolds us,
All the world in one embrace:
With unfailing grasp God hold us,
Every child of every race [.]God is Love; and though with blindness
Taken from God is Love by Timothy Rees
Sin afflicts all human life,
God’s eternal loving kindness
Guides us through our earthly strife.
Sin and death and hell shall never
Over us final triumph gain;
God is Love, so Love for ever
Over the universe must reign.
Today is, nowadays, known as Christ the King Sunday. If we looked at Christianity on a timeline, it is a fairly recent feast day. It was introduced by the Pope around 1925 due to the aftermath of the First World War to remind people of their allegiance to God.
So, why did I start by quoting parts of a hymn called “God is Love”?
The other week I was part of an interfaith panel answering questions about faith. One of the questions was about whether we can love certain groups of people and my answer – which is one I firmly believe and say a lot is, “God is Love and we should love others as God does”.
Let us recollect for a moment the events of Jesus’s lifetime and His teachings. He did not come to be served but to serve. He did not come to overthrow the Roman Government or depose Caesar. He became human, to find out what it was like to be human, to experience every range of humanity, to show us the way, the truth and the life and ultimately to sacrifice himself for the sins of all so that we might be forgiven and reconciled with God.
Where in all that does Jesus call Himself a king? Even when He is questioned at His trials before His crucifixion Jesus does not actually call Himself a king – instead His reply when asked if He is King of the Jews was “You say I am”.
Jesus was fully human as well as being fully divine. But we tend to give human imperialistic titles to Jesus’s divinity. Sometimes we forget that He was also a great human.
Remembering that Jesus was also a human does not diminish his power or significance.
Sometimes, however, we fall into the trap of thinking of Jesus as being up there and us as being down here. By doing this we separate us and Jesus; we separate us from God.
Jesus is with us, He walks with us, He carries us – think of those footsteps in the sand. He has not and does not abandon us.
God made us in His own image. That does not mean that we all look the same visually – like a colony of clones in a sci-fi drama. It means that humans are in the image of God in their spiritual nature. We are God’s masterpieces and have the potential to become that again.
We are not worthless! We are loved by God!
God is love and compassion and Jesus showed us this when He came to earth. He showed us our capacities: for God, for compassion, for empathy, for courage, for seeing possibilities even when there seem to be none, for resilience, for imagination, for heroism, tenderness, healing and transformation. He showed us that we do have the capacity to change the world.
Jesus is real – there is historical evidence of His existence. He was and is one of us. He is our hope and hope is that God is with us.
In God’s eyes we are all of equal value and we all matter. To go back to the Gospel, the lesson is simply that God will judge us on our reaction to human need; on the help that we have given. It also teaches us about the type of help we must give.
The type of help we must give is not complicated. It is simply doing what we can for those in need without having to think about it first, without calculating what is in it for us if we help, without helping for recognition or glory.
It is simply giving someone who is hungry something to eat, welcoming a stranger, giving comfort to someone in distress, visiting the sick, visiting prisoners, giving a smile or a wave or a hello or asking how someone is.
It is pure and simple. It is giving simple help to those we meet, pass, see everyday. But it is to give that help without any thought of self. It is to be the natural, instinctive reaction of a loving heart. The help that is given freely for the sake of helping, out of love, with no expectation of reward.
Francis of Assisi found blessings in this parable. He was high-born, high-spirited and wealthy but he was very unhappy. One day he was out riding and saw a very disfigured leper. Something made Francis stop and jump off his horse. He went over to the leper and hugged him. Whilst in his arms, Francis saw the face of the leper change to the face of Christ.
Martin of Tours was a Roman soldier and Christian. One cold day as he was entering a city a beggar asked him for alms. Martin of Tours had no money but the beggar was freezing and shivering. He took off his soldier’s cloak, cut it in two and gave half to the beggar man. That night he had a dream where he saw Jesus surrounded by angels wearing half a Roman soldier’s cloak. One of the angels asked Jesus “Master why are you wearing that old cloak? Who gave it to you?” Jesus answered, “My servant Martin gave it to me”.
The generosity of helping in the simplest of things from the heart without calculated thinking gives us the joy of helping Jesus. It helps us make a difference and it changes the world.
God is love. He loves us. And just as He loves us let us go out into the world loving Him and our fellow humans.
Just because 