God's Love is Without Limits

Rev. Gilbert H. Caldwell

It seems that over and over again, "happenings" within the United Methodist Church nudge me to re-read the writings of those who are not United Methodists. The negative response to the testimony of two women in a worship service at an Annual Conference session has provoked some negative responses that are of deep concern. We claim that we believe the love of God is all-encompassing, but then some say, "How dare two women who are in a committed relationship to each other testify in a worship service to their experience of the love of God?"

I re-read these words that I had first read ten years ago.

The once unchallenged moral authority of the church has been devastated by its defenses of slavery, apartheid, and segregation, by its persecution of heretics, by its opposition to the emancipation of women, and by its hostility to gay and lesbian people.

The church that will live in the present and survive into the future will not be about the task of propagandizing its people...It will see the Christian life as a journey that is ongoing, a journey the goal of which is the undefined mystery of God, and in the pursuit of that goal no boundaries on the human spirit will be admissible

From The Bishop's Voice, Selected Essays 1979-1999, John Shelby Spong, 1999.

When will we who know that God loves us despite much that is us, stop seeking to restrict others who also know that God loves them? The love of God that I have experienced is so overwhelming that I do not believe God needs any of us to restrict others from expressing the love of God that they have known and know. God's love is without limits. What better place to express that love if not in a worship service?