Coming Together in Love

Rev. JT Smiedendorf

September 7, 2025

Text: I John 4:11-12

CENTRAL FOCUS:

To center love as the force which binds community and generates internal and external communion.

From The Inclusive Bible

Beloved, if God has loved us so, we must have the same love for

one another. No one has ever seen God. Yet if we love one

another, God dwells in us, and God’s love is brought to

wholeness (perfection, fullness) in us.

These are the words of our ancient tradition.

May these words become Living Wisdom

within us, among us, and beyond us.

On such a Sunday as Rally Sunday, we are acknowledging a change of seasons, coming back together after the summer and its activities. And, even deeper than a change of seasonal routine, I invite us into knowing that we are coming together for something more, for a mission, for a purpose. At Plymouth Church that purpose was stated simply a decade ago: to humbly seek and serve God within, among, and beyond ourselves. And, as we just heard from the early letter of the church that we call I John, the seeking and the serving of God was all about love. First John states that God is love and that if we are in the practice of loving one another, God is dwelling with us, and God’s Love is coming into wholeness among us.

First John reminds us that our coming together is about Divine Love, the love that we can know within ourselves in healing and liberation and growth and motivation, the love among us that nurtures relationships and has us showing up for each other in caring ways, and the love for the larger community beyond this church that has us offering mercy to those in need and seeking justice for all people and the whole earth.

Hearing this, I hope we can quickly set aside any notion that love is simply a kind of Hallmark movie emotion, that coming together in love is a simple matter of being nice. Divine love is profoundly deeper than that and asks us to know that what is in each one of us is profoundly deeper. This is love that is compassion and commitment. This is love that connects deeply with a mystery, purpose, and perspective of life way beyond our own lifetime. This is love that asks us to grieve and to be courageous. This is love that knows about the core reality of interdependence and the lifesaving importance of inclusion. This is love that calls us to forgiveness and to faith even when times are tough. This is the love that shows up in the reality that life that is often messy and unplanned. This is a love circle so big that it includes the simple delight and play of the scrawling of crayon on the rug here in our sanctuary and includes the scrawling in a concentration camp barracks wall that says “I believe in the sun even when it is not shining. And I believe in love, even when there’s no one there. And I believe in God, even when God is silent.”

That’s the Divine Love to which we are invited.

That’s the Divine Love that is worth coming together for.

That’s the Divine Love that will make a difference in your life and mine, a difference amidst loneliness and loss, a difference amidst environmental degradation and authoritarian illusion.

And let me also be clear that in the Congregational way, coming together has never meant conformity or sameness. Our covenant states that we are walking together in discerning God’s truth and in our Congregational way each has the freedom of conscience and a responsibility to discern that truth of God. With joy, we will receive this morning into membership Flora Scharback who completed the confirmation class journey last year and is choosing to join this church in full membership. I have every trust that Flora is aware that this means she has the freedom and the responsibility to seek God and to serve God in the way that she discerns is true. And that she knows that God is love so that her discernment, her seeking and serving is all about love within her, among her relationships and communities, and beyond her personal life and family.

As we are asked to come together, it’s helpful to know that former Senior Minister of Plymouth, Jim Gertmanian, described Plymouth church as a place of progressive Christian universalism, meaning that we are a faith community rooted in the Christian stories and symbols as our way to engage the Divine Mystery, and yet we recognize and respect that there are other ways to engage and know the sacred. The progressive part of that statement is not to imply a fixed political formula to which all must ascribe, but to remind us that we have inherited and cherish an openness to evolving understandings of God and of the expressions of God’s love within, among, and beyond us. “There is more light and truth yet to break forth from God’s holy word,” said Pastor John Robinson in 1620 as the Pilgrims embarked from Holland on their journey across the Atlantic Ocean to North America. We come together in a journey where our understanding of the God of Love and what is love and truth can evolve.

Like the musicians who come together to sing and to play beautiful music, we are invited to come together with differences of voice and instrument to create beautiful ministry together, to discern and express the ministry of God’s love within, among, and beyond ourselves with our different preferences and perspectives, different gifts and graces. The many are called together to the one mission and purpose of humbly seeking and serving God. We are called to come together in discernment and prayer, in worship and wonder, and in discussion and teamwork to work out the details of God’s love within, among, and beyond us for our time and place. And even as we work with the diversity of who we are and what we think and what particularly is our passion and expression of ministry, we still can come together in one covenant and in the one shared purpose of humbly seeking and serving the God who is Love. Indeed, it is the diversity of instruments in the orchestra, of voices in the choir, of parts in the band that make the one song come through so richly and powerfully.

(I mentioned earlier the love that comes within as healing. Healing prayer and anointing with oil is an ancient practice of the church. We offer it here during communion for those who choose it, knowing that while a cure is not always available, healing within always is.)

So, come together, Plymouth in Love. Spirit is moving.

Within us, among us, and beyond us, the Spirit calls and lures us deeper into Love.