There's a famous marriage scene in The Princess Bride.

The evil Prince is forcing the lovely Princess Buttercup into a marriage so that he can kill her and use that as an excuse to start a war with a neighboring kingdom.

In his sermon, cut short by the pace of events in the movie, the priest speaks of love; except it comes out as Wove, Twue Wove.

So what is love? In our day and time love is understood as a powerful emotion or feeling.

But the New Testament defines love with the formula found in this morning's 2nd lesson:

This is how we know what love is: Jesus the Messiah laid down his life for us.

All true love is based on that love of God for us and is the basis for expressing love to others.

Following Jesus is not just about the ultimate destination it is just as much about the journey we are on to that destination. Which is probably why the first followers of Jesus were known as The Way (or The Road). I like to think of this as The Ride.

1 John was written to a group of Jesus' followers who were in the midst of a bitter church split. This had created a crisis of faith. 1 John's one firm conviction was that, no matter what, actions must match convictions. An intimate knowledge of God and a love for one another are inseparable.

I think this speaks to us about how we treat those in the ELCA from whom we split. I think this means we have to start defining ourselves by what we are for, not against.