Preamble: Before the Tabernacle was finished,
the people had to decide what kind of people they would become.

Not what kind of structure they admired,
but what kind of heart could bear holy nearness.

Before John speaks of perfect love,
Torah speaks of stirred hearts.
Before fear is cast out,
the hand must learn to open.

That word meets us in a restless age,
loud with alarm and thin in reverence,
quick to sharpen suspicion,
slow to deepen mercy,
rich in reaction,
poor in presence.

Scripture will not let us confuse agitation with love.

Love is not sentiment.
Not slogan.
Not polished religion
laid over an anxious soul.
Love is holy force.
It begins in God,
passes through the heart,
reaches into the hand,
and takes form in the life of a people.

John gives us the mystery:
God is love.
Love did not begin in our reaching,
but in God’s movement toward us.
The Son is sent.
The Spirit is given.
The Invisible becomes known
where love becomes visible among the visible.

Exodus gives us the earthly witness:
a people so inwardly awakened
that generosity outruns calculation,
so much so that Moses must tell them to stop bringing.

That is no small wonder:
not only that a sanctuary was raised,
but that fear no longer ruled the camp.

For fear closes the hand.
Fear guards image.
Fear creates distance
and names that distance order.
But love, when taught by the living God,
opens, gives, abides, and binds.

And holy truth, if it is truth indeed,
must take flesh in history.
Words that never become costly deeds
have not yet become obedience.

So the question before us is not whether we can speak of love,
but whether love has grown deep enough in us
to make us a people
in whom God would be pleased to dwell.