08-24-2025 Rev. Steven Marsh – What’s Love Got to Do with It
“What’s Love Got to Do with It
The Unconditional Love of Our God Beckons Us To Serve Part 2
(Together, in a Variety of Ways) ”; Jeremiah 1:4-10, Luke 13:10-17
When Marley’s ghost appears to Ebenezer Scrooge, Marley often refers to “the truncated heart.” Both Marley and Scrooge have sat in their counting house alone, with their concern only focused within those walls. When Marley’s eyes are opened to suffering and the needs of others, he becomes painfully aware that the choices he made in his life made him incapable of helping. The outcome? Marley is the person he made himself to be. And, he has awareness that he could have been more.[1]
Abraham Lincoln in a speech at Edwardsville, Illinois (September 13, 1858) spoke these words,
Our reliance is in love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which primed liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your door. Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you.[2]
God has planted in each one of us the ability to love. It’s love that ensures civil rights, enduring commitments, and flourishing relationships.
It is true that Jeremiah 1:4-10 and Luke 13:10-17 encourage us to remember that God has known each one of us before we were born and calls each one of us to an amazing purpose to love God and love others.
Jeremiah 1:4-10 specifically lifts up the sense of inadequacy we may feel when we realize God’s great love for us. We also may feel that the call to love God and others is above our pay grade. Yes, we can easily ask where God is in all of this. Ahh, but that is the best place to be. God loves us so much that all we need to do is believe that God knows each one of us better than we know ourselves. Karl Barth, a most significant theologian in the 20th century, states unequivocally that before we can embrace the YES that God has for each one of us, we must acknowledge God’s NO. According to Barth, God’s NO informs us that we are not the fully loving people that God created us to be. We’re lacking in this admission. To admit this requires acknowledging we’re stuck in ongoing self-congratulatory “pats on the back.” Our discomfort with being called by God mirrors God’s dissatisfaction with society built by human hands.
Luke 13:10-17 specifically speaks out against legalism. Love cannot thrive and does not thrive in a legalistic approach to life. When Jesus healed the disabled woman on the Sabbath, the religious leaders went “nuts.” This woman is not known by anyone. No one knows her name. She’s not even recognized. The woman is completely pushed to the margins. You see, the disability she had was attributed to some sin in her family lineage. Yep, that’s how it was back then. Jesus’ demonstration of love to the “nobody” violated the religious code by “working” on the Sabbath. The letter of the law was more important than the woman’s well-being.[3]
God’s unconditional love beckons you to allow God to serve you and you in turn to serve others. Anytime two humans move closer to God, we, by necessity, move closer to one another. If Marley could have lived his life over, he would have. Each one of us, like the disabled woman, require the mercy and healing power of Jesus.
What’s love got to do with it? Everything! Again, hear the words of Abraham Lincoln, “Our reliance is in love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which primed liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your door.” Share the gifts of God. Embrace “holy restlessness.” Move closer to God and one another. To what holy work are you called? Remember, the unexamined life is not worth living.[4] Amen!
This sermon was preached on Sunday, August 24, 2025
by the Rev. Dr. Steven M. Marsh in the Great Room and Sanctuary at
Grace Presbyterian Church in Wichita, Kansas
Copyright 2025
All Rights Reserved
Steven M. Marsh
[1]I am grateful for Robert A. Ratcliff and his insight on Marley and Ebenezer Scrooge as found in Joel B. Green, Thomas G. Long, Luke A. Powery and Cynthia L. Rigby, editors, Connections, Year C, Volume 3 (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2019), 236.
[2]Source: Abraham Lincoln in a speech at Edwardsville, Illinois (Sept.13,1858). Christianity Today, Vol. 36, no. 8.
[3]In the three paragraphs above, I am indebted to Elizabeth C. Larocca-Pitts, Robert A. Ratcliff, Angela Dienhart Hancock, Paul K. Hooker, Jill Duffield, Elizabeth F. Caldwell, and Sally Smith Holt in Joel B. Green, Thomas G. Long, Luke A. Powery and Cynthia L. Rigby, editors, Connections, Year C, Volume 3 (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2019), 251-253, 254-255, 256-258, 259-261, 261-263, 264-266, and 266-267.
[4]Attributed to Socrates.
