What Does Love Look Like?

Beloved in Christ, 

What does love look like?

That’s the core question every follower of Jesus is called to ask themselves. In every situation, every moment, every encounter. What does love look like? It’s the plumb line around which we orient our days and the standard by which we measure our lives. 

Answering the question of what love looks like is often exceedingly complex. Love is not a matter of being nice, or of making ourselves and others feel good. Love is a matter of actively seeking someone else’s good, and looking out for their interests. Often, love looks like crying out for justice on behalf of those who are oppressed by the political and economic engines of the world. Love occasionally looks like saying a hard thing to someone whose patterns of behavior are harmful to them or others. For Jesus, love looked like a willingness to die. It looked like not insisting on being right, or forcing the world to conform to his preferences and desires, but giving up what was rightfully his for the sake of others’ good. For Jesus, and for us as disciples, love isn’t winning a victory, it’s liberation through giving ourselves away.

As we continue to keep a vigil of prayer in these days before the election, there are two things worth bearing in mind. First, our true citizenship is in God’s kingdom, and we are sojourners and guests in the kingdom of this country, called, in all seasons and all situations, to keep pointing to God’s coming reign of perfect love. And two, in the days, weeks, and months following the election, our work remains ever the same: asking, over and over and over, in every moment, with each breath - what does love look like?

Grace and Peace, 

The Right Reverend Craig Loya