Beloved: Be Loved, Be Love (Luke 3)

"Baptism of Jesus" ©Gheorghe Virtosu (2017)

This sermon was originally preached at on January 12, 2025 at Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Hopkins, MN.

The service may be viewed in full here. The sermon may be viewed below.

Baptism of Our Lord Sunday
 Lectionary readings: Luke 3:15-22,
Isaiah 43:1-7, and Acts 8:14-17.

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If I were to whittle down everything I'm about to say to five words, it would be these:
Beloved, Be Loved. Be Love. 

If you’ve heard me say that before, it’s because these words have been the anchor of my life, my personal mission statement, for years now -- ever since October of 2014, in fact, when a dear friend asked me to write a song from one of her poems reflecting on the fragmentation caused by the years of abuse she suffered as a small child. As I wrote, I grieved -- and the song became a conversation between her truth of what is and my hope that her Beloved self would learn to Be Loved. And as almost always happens when I set about writing a song or a sermon, the words that come are as much if not more for my own hearing than anyone else’s. 

So those words-- Beloved: Be Loved -- became the rooting affirmation of my life. And the invitation to Be Love, which so seamlessly follows, became its guiding aspiration.

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