One of my husband's greatest statements of endearment to me is:

"I love you...more than tacos".

Yeah - I know. Really, really romantic.

And my response is always, 'And I love you... more than salsa," because I love salsa.

I've never met a bowl of mashed up tomatoes that I didn't like, but my favorite is that chunky, fresh cut salsa with black beans and carrots that you buy at Safeway. It is my ideal easy dinner. Plop it in a bowl, top it with feta cheese... and I am in love.   Well, at least my tastebuds are.

So, saying I love my husband more than salsa, says a lot.

Obviously... I'm joking.

However, the way Drew and I got around to this little interchange bears saying in today's day and age. As many of you know, I can get 'hung up' on phrases and their meanings and one of them is 'love'.

So, I'll tell you all what I told my husband, who probably wondered what he had gotten himself into:

Love is the most overused and clichéd word around.

I actually might have also said, "I hate the word 'love'".
 

I explained how I felt we have cheapened the word love by saying things like:

I love your shoes...

I love my job...

I love that funny cat picture on instagram...

Really?

Like the same way I love my husband? Or my children?
Hence - Drew's response to that conversation was that he loves me more than tacos.

And I know what he means. I know that he means he isn't saying 'love' lightly; that he gets the weight of the word.

In our reading today from John the word 'love' is used 9 times in 8 verses [and I thought we tossed the world love around loosely]. I know he's trying to make a point about how significant this thing called love is, specifically Jesus' love, but I'm not certain we even know what love is...

Do we understand what real love is? What it involves to really love somebody? What it means to give ourselves to somebody?

Not long ago Pastor Steve asked the children in first communion class to define the word 'forgiveness'. It was really hard for them.

They said things like, "You know - it's when you forgive someone; Or you say you're sorry. Or..."

Trust me. Trying to characterize what forgiveness really entails is not easy.

I'd venture to say that our grasp of love is similar. We us the word almost at nauseum, but asked to define love, most of us will point to the dreamy, quickened heart beat type of love or the fierce affection parents have for their children.

That picture up there - that's me and Drew - the guy that loves me more than tacos... It is, in many respects, the quintessential picture of adult love:

Two people on their wedding day, with all their days lying ahead of them just waiting to be written into the book of life.

It is a picture of love with which we are familiar. Love looks like that.

There was a time in my life when I said I was never, ever, ever [emphasis on the never ever, in case you didn't comprehend my certainty] doing this whole 'love thing' again.

Which wasn't true when I said it and it isn't true now, however my statement reflected the shattering of my view on what love looked like and how it acted.

Love is messy. Gut wrenching. It's primarily not frilly dresses and fancy tuxes.

Because we all know that sometimes our best intentions at love don't always turn out well. And then we are tempted to shut ourselves off, fortify the walls around our hearts, and forge ahead, promising ourselves that we will never open ourselves up like that again.

Which may be why we love tacos. And new haircuts. And Zelda the warrior video games.

Waaaay easier to love than people.

Little risk with a fair amount of reward.

And yet, Jesus orders us to love people?

"This is my command that you love one another." The whole of today's scripture is a testimony to love.

Jesus' picture of love looks different from many of ours though.

The love that Jesus speaks of goes beyond boundaries and involves the willingness to sacrifice for others - to extend ourselves into the lives of others - be 'vines,' as it were.

Exactly how is that possible? I'd rather have salsa.

Now, I'd like to be sarcastic here and say, "Does Jesus not get how gut wrenching love can be? Does He not get how painful love can be? Does He not get how virtually impossible some people are to love?"

But, of course he does...He knows.

He's loved. He loves.

He knows how it feels to have your heart splayed open wide enough for the whole world to clamber inside it.

And He knows how it feels to watch those you love walk away, turn a blind eye as you're left to bleed to death.

And still He loves.

There is - even if you ask the most cynical of people - no denying that love is at the heart of what we all desire. However allusive, confusing, twisted, and misunderstood it might be, we all long to love and to be loved.

But looking at the world today it's is easy to wonder where the love is... Amongst rioting and rubble, earthquakes and poverty, fractured families and tears... love seems incredibly distant.

But truly, love is only ever distant when it is only defined as fairytale love.

This week I saw love manifest itself a thousandfold.

I have a couple non-traditional pictures which are snapshots I believe Jesus would've taken if He was capturing love, which I'd like to share with you.

These are pictures which captivated my soul, drew me into a life that other than my own, and broke my heart. Broke my heart in the ways it needs to be broken.

And I hope they break yours.

[slide 2]

This haunting picture... I saw it, and my immediate reaction was, this is the most stunning photo of the Christ child I have ever seen. The stated tagline said, "A brother protects and comforts his sister in the wake of earthquake."

And it got to me - these two children - hardly older than babies - hugging each other. The little girl clings to her brother as if she is looking to him for shelter from the outside world, as the boy's scared eyes say more than words can say...

I don't know how you command that type of love, but there before me, I saw the innateness of Christ's love woven into a tiny body. And I saw Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the child, Jesus the healer, Jesus the protector...

And I truly thought, "As the Father has loved me, so I love you; abide in me."

I've never understood 'abide' more clearly.

Now, here's the irony of that picture - it isn't from Nepal. It's from Vietnam; in 2007. You can't believe everything you see on the internet - who knew? When I found that out I almost didn't share it with you all. The tagline wasn't true...

But I couldn't get away from it. The photo was and is a depiction of true abiding, sacrificial love. And, Nepal is not a place I think of - ever. And they are certainly not a people I had ever loved. And now I do.

Statistics show that in 3-4 weeks most of the world will have forgotten about Nepal. I hope that's not true. I hope hearts keep breaking and the story of Nepal abides in the caverns of our souls.

[next slide]

"Love one another, as I have loved you."

Now, I am convinced that the only way this act of love could've happened was by the Holy Spirit falling fresh upon this kid and whispering the words from First John in his ear, "Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God...".

Because the only thing that will conquer the world of racism, of hate, of poverty, of corruption, of disinterest, of despair... is Jesus Christ.

Whose name is also Love.

And on occasion goes under the pseudonym:

Unnamed child in Baltimore.

He's heard the same things we have:

The police are racist; the looters have no care for others.

The world has been telling him to hate police officers.

And yet, there he stands - as the Love of God saying, "Come to me, all who are thirsty."

Love as light in the darkness; Love as the Forsaken; Love as friend.

But there's also another picture of Love here - a surprising one. It's a kind of love that we do not always want and it's found in those police officers who did seek to protect others. They stood protecting us from our very selves.

Sometimes that is what love does - stands strong for us, despite the fact that we rally against it, so that we don't self-destruct.

Whatever your position on the role of the Police in Baltimore is, it's true that sometimes love gets spat upon, degraded, and dishonored in trying to bring about peace.

The world has been telling us to pick a side.  

And the only side God has ever picked is the side of love.

At the cross we see a picture of love that doesn't meet our expectations or fantasies. Thank God for that!

For we have a God that loves us much more than tacos, much more than salsa...

We have a God that loves us more than His very life.

Amen.