Welcome to Springfield United Methodist Church! This is an inclusive, multicultural church that loves God and one another.
I. L — : True Love Stays
Loyalty is steadfast faithfulness: a commitment that remains when it is costly, inconvenient, or unpopular. In Hebrew it echoes hesed, God’s covenant loyalty; in Greek, pistis, faithfulness.
“With all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” The Shema leaves no room for divided allegiance. God is not asking for a portion of us; God is asking for all of us.
I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear. — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “Where Do We Go From Here?” (SCLC address, Atlanta, 1967)
Love that leaves when it gets hard was only visiting.
II. O — : True Love Makes Room
Openness is the to receive: to make room in our hearts, homes, and churches for God and for others, especially those unlike us. The New Testament word is philoxenia (Romans 12:13): literally, “love of the stranger.”
Leviticus 19:18 is followed by 19:34: “The who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself.” In Luke’s account, the same conversation produces the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37). Neighbor is not a zip code; neighbor is whoever God puts in our path.
If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. — Mother Teresa of Calcutta (attributed)
Closed hands cannot receive grace, and closed cannot extend it. Openness to God (loving God with all our mind) and openness to neighbor are two sides of one door.
A closed heart can’t what an open heaven is pouring out.
III. V — : True Love Sees Worth
Value is recognizing the , God-given worth of every person. Every human being bears the imago Dei, the image of God (Genesis 1:27).
“As yourself” (Greek hōs seauton). Jesus assumes a healthy self-regard, not pride, but the dignity of knowing you are by God. We cannot value our neighbor if we have been taught to despise ourselves, and we cannot truly value ourselves while we devalue others.
[We] are held by the enduring power of God’s love… — Bishop Tracy S. Malone, President of the Council of Bishops, pastoral letter, November 9, 2024
God did not love you because you were you are valuable because God loves you.
IV. E — : True Love Feels With
Empathy is the to enter another’s experience: to feel with them, not merely for them. Matthew repeatedly says Jesus was “moved with compassion” (splanchnizomai, 9:36; 14:14; 20:34), a word rooted in splanchna, the inward parts. Jesus’ compassion was a gut-level love.
To love your neighbor “as yourself” is to their hurt as your hurt, their hunger as your hunger, their fear as your fear.
Jesus, thou art all compassion, pure, unbounded love thou art; visit us with thy salvation; enter every trembling heart.— Charles Wesley, “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” (1747)
Empathy is when your heart learns to hurt in someone else’s
Do not just know the greatest commandment this week; become it. Go home loyal. Go to work open. Go into the community seeing Go to the hurting with The world has heard enough sermons about love; it is waiting to see one walk through the door.