| What's Love Got to Do with It? - article by Joel Hempel
Tina Turner asked the question, but Jesus gave the answer: Everything! For Christians, love has everything to do with being Christian. Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind (Matthew 22:37-39; Mark 12:30-31). “And the second is like unto it; you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” All other commandments can be understood in light of these two all-encompassing mandates.
What would Glendale Lutheran Church (and each of us individually) look like if these two Jesus-directed commands were our passion and practice? The first thing to clarify is that the kind of love Jesus talked about has little to do with passion. God’s love for us and our love for God and others is first and foremost about action. Christian love does not wait until it feels right. It acts!
Driving to Dierbergs one day to pick up a couple of items for Marcia, I pulled into the ramp going up into the plaza. But parked in the middle of the ramp was a car that had broken down. So, what did I do? I did what every not-so-good Samaritan does. I backed up and drove by on the other side, up the down ramp into the plaza.
But the whole time in the store, I felt guilty and thought about what I did not do. I hurried to find the items Marcia wanted, checked out, and quickly went to my car. As I approached the ramp, I saw that a police car had pulled up behind the stalled car, and both the police officer and driver were looking under the hood. I felt better, but only for a moment.
I neither loved God nor my neighbor as myself! Once again, I was convicted by the laws to love self-sacrificially. Although I obviously have not forgotten this incident that took place a few years ago, and although I felt the shame of my inaction until recently, I am grateful for our God of Love, who I know has forgiven me.
Some of you, I know, would have immediately stopped to help the person. Others may have left the plaza by a different exit. But all of us can be eternally grateful for our Lord’s ever-present love and immediately available forgiveness. For it is because of God’s compassion and Spirit-empowering mercy that we can get past our guilt and onto the next opportunity to not pass by on the other side. | 
