Will You Be Mine?
Valentine's Day is the perfect opportunity for us to ask ourselves what the root of our Love is. While many are focused on the celebration of the traditional partnership of romantic lovers, others may find themselves seeking Love in a much broader, unconditional way. Jean-Marie asks the question "Will you be mine?" not only in the sense of being a good neighbor but also much more introspectively, exploring our ability to celebrate the Love we have for ourselves without falling for self-indulgence or false pride.
Experience the Sermon
Sermon Notes
Main Scripture
1 Corinthians 13:1–13 NRSV: The Gift of Love
1 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
Supporting Scriptures
“He said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:37–39)
Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” (Mark 10:21)
Quotes
“Love is the absence of judgment.” (The Dalai Lama)
“The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, no knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.” (Rumi)
“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.” (The Dalai Lama)
Invocation
Excerpt from “The Door of Everything” by Ruby Nelson
…Everything is not many things, it is One.
Everything is Love.
Love. Love as you have never known it or imagined it to be. Love, the only true force in all creation, the Light out of which all things were made, the cohesive power which holds all things together. Love. The very Love of God which I have promised would be shed forth through the hearts of men. Love, concentrated beyond measure in the River of Life More Abundant. Love the most indescribably, all-inclusive vibration.
Love contains all the purified qualities of mind and heart even as white contains all the colors of the spectrum.
Love contains Everything.
Just as there is no real dividing barrier between your human self and your Grand Cosmic Self, there is no real dividing barrier between your human love and your Christ Love. Christ Love is human love multiplied by a thousandfold, ten thousandfold, ten million.
Human love is limited but Christ Love is infinite.
…
For Life is Light and Light is Love.
Your should is the vessel which must receive this Love, your little human self would be consumed by it. Let your soul stand forth and LIVE. For of what profit is it if a man gains the whole world and loses his own soul?
Come!
Meet me just inside the Door of Everything, in my timeless realm of Being, where all the perfect qualities of your Grand Cosmic Self will intersect and blend into one precious jewel—the precious jewel of Love.