ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
July 3, 2026
I was contemplating love the other day. While it may seem like a straightforward topic for a minister to ponder, it all began when someone said, “I don’t believe she deserves love.” The identity of the person deemed undeserving is not crucial, but the implication of someone being unworthy of love is significant. Our culture is quite clear in distinguishing between those who are deserving and those who have lost favor. Many expressions of religion have created their own systems by which deservedness is determined, and with every deserving person there is a clear opposite that is used as an example of what is to be rejected. Yet I do not believe love, at least the love of God revealed in Jesus, exists on a spectrum of deserving and undeserving. Love does not appear when one is deemed worthy of love and then disappear the moment there is a different assessment. Even Jesus did not use love to make the unvirtuous suddenly virtuous. Love is its own category, outside all other categories. It does not bend to the opinions or shallow impulsiveness of those who have come to see themselves as the authoritative voice on who is worthy and who is not. Many have tried to force love onto their scale at some fixed point from which it is easy to decide where one fits in regard to love. This is, in my opinion, a blasphemous distortion of love. Love exists outside all the categories our insecurities have sought to conceive. It invites those who have been touched by its sacred power to remove themselves from the dualism that has sought to empty love of its very nature and purpose. Whether it is the love we feel for a friend, child, or spouse, there is not a line drawn in the sand that influences our opinion of love. People can make poor choices and be declared by society as bad, immoral, or even a criminal. But those choices do not impact love. Just the opposite! Love standing outside those determinations helps the people who have been labeled as undeserving discover the real truth of an unconditional and limitless love that continually invites them to embrace a sacred worthiness that was never in question when it comes to the opinion of God.
There are so many voices wanting to sway my opinion on who is good and who is bad; who is worthy and who is unworthy, who is righteous and who is unrighteous. Determining was never the task you called me to do, Merciful God. Instead, you have called me to love with the same boldness and fierceness seen in the life of Jesus. Such love dismantles dangerous categories and heals the injuries brought about by those who have become convinced that they know who is in and who is out. As your love embraces us, help us to share such love without any sort of assessment of deservedness. Amen.
