“All You Need Is Love”
October 25, 2026
Rev. Rebecca Migliore
Today is Reformation Sunday. A day when we celebrate our heritage. A day to remember that we are called to be “reformed and always reforming.” A day when we hear the pounding of a hammer by Martin Luther posting 95 theses (95 suggested reforms) on the door of the Wittenburg church. A day that might remind us of all the bloodshed that has been done in the name of Protestant and/or Roman Catholic purity. A day that we should not celebrate and then forget. For we see our imperfect world imperfectly. And we sometimes forget how much of a “work in progress” we are—all of us, individually and corporately.
And so I choose the title of this sermon with tongue in cheek. “All You Need Is Love” is a wonderful idea. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if love made the world go round. If love could fix all the hurts, fill in all the cracks, make the greatest rom-com story be always true. But do we even know what love is? Is our idea of love as expansive as God intends it to be? Aren’t we always learning to love a little deeper, to make our love a little wider, to have a “higher love”?
It’s interesting that in some languages you can tell a lot about that culture by how many words there are for something. Let’s take the word “snow” for example. The Sami people of northern Scandinavia and Russia have roughly 180 to 300 distinct words for snow and ice types. The Scots language has 421 terms for snow and wintry conditions. English counts a dozen or so: like—slush, powder, and sleet. It seems that those in the far northern climes think about and speak about that frozen precipitation more than we might. That makes sense.
So, what about the word love? We could look at a language like Greek, and say—“hey, they have more words for love than we do. They have eros (romantic love), philia (deep friendship), storge (protective love, like between parents and children), philautia (self-love), pragma (long-standing love based on compromise and duty), ludus (playful, uncommitted love), mania (obsessive love), and, of course, agape (unconditional, selfless and universal love).”
Yes, English primarily uses the one word “love” to express all these different kinds of feelings and actions—but there are hundreds of synonyms, related terms, and specific expressions—like—adoration, ardor, cherish, crush, fidelity, flame, rapture, relish—you get the idea. So we know this category, “love” has many gradients, many nuances, many ways of manifesting itself in our lives. When we say, “All You Need is Love”—that encompasses a whole lot!
And then, Jesus, layers another dimension. In this greatest commandment, to Love God (and then to love neighbor as self) Jesus says he has summarized all the law and the prophets. Everything that has gone before, those two wide avenues of being right with God, can be whittled down to this. Love. Love God. Love Neighbor. Love Self. Love—in the Hebrew “Ahava”—from the root “hav” meaning to give, so that true love is about giving rather than taking. That is the word used in the Shema, the verse in Deuteronomy (6:4-5) that is supposed to be recited twice a day (in the morning and in the evening, when you rise up and when you lie down)—“Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”
Love, giving rather than taking. Adoring, worshipping, treasuring, cherishing. Loving like God loves, with “hesed”—steadfast love, never-ending love, lovingkindness, mercy, loyalty. All we need is Love like that. And yet, when God gives the commandments to Moses, up on that mountain, they are not all about God.
They are also about how we are supposed to treat one another. And in case we think that Jesus just made up that second part of the greatest commandment, the love neighbor as self, we hear the words from Leviticus this morning. This love your neighbor as yourself isn’t just a throw away line. It is a summary in and of itself—about how we are to judge with justice, how we are not to defer to the great (nor be partial to the poor—so says Leviticus), and one that speaks to us today “you shall not stand idly by when the blood of your neighbor is at stake.” We are to be holy, we are to try to act in God’s likeness. This is what it is to love.
On this Reformation Sunday, we remember that there have been reformations in the past, and there will be reformations in the future. Jesus was trying to reformulate how people viewed their Scriptures, he felt that some might have gotten away from the core meaning of God’s relationship with God’s people. He even says that the whole of the law and the prophets hang on these greatest commandments—Loving God, with everything that we have. And Loving one another, including ourselves. All we need is Love.
And yet, we know that it is elusive—this love. Aren’t there times when we get distracted from loving God? Aren’t there times when we might get really angry at God? Isn’t it hard to be in that adoration state all the time? Loving is hard work, because it is within a relationship, and relationships are hard work. And along with that, it isn’t just this “God and me” love that we have to work on—it is also this “God, me, and you.” This love was never meant to be singular. God choose a people. God called a people. God rescued a people. And yes, that shows us who God is and how God works. We can talk about being the chosen, being the called, being the rescued. But I don’t Jesus would ever have seen that as only a personal thing, just for me, without involving you. And not just the yous who are close at hand, but the yous that are far away, even the yous that we don’t like so much.
All you need is love. But that doesn’t make it any easier. All you need is love. But that doesn’t mean it is something we achieve. All you need is love, as if we can throw out all the other emotions that tend to rule us, as if we can jettison all the intricacies of interpersonal relationships, as if we can clothe ourselves in love and never have to wear anything else! I’m not sure Jesus would have said, All you need is Love. Maybe more, What you need is Love to color everything else.
Love isn’t meant to filter out everything else. May we could think of it as a necessary additive--we need to sprinkle some love on everything we do, everything we say, everything we are. Love should surround us, waking with us in the morning, going to bed with us at night. For Jesus, love is like the air we breathe. If it isn’t there, we die. What would it mean to think of love every time we took a breath? Who might we become if we tried to incorporate love in every moment of our lives? It is a fantastic idea—meaning, it seems a fantasy, an impossibility. And that is why we need to remember that this love is going two ways.
We love God because God first loved us. We can see a glimpse of what love is, because we have learned of steadfastness, mercy, and grace from God. And this love isn’t just in heaven, it isn’t just a cloud that surrounds God up on the mountain. This love is intended, God intends it, to break into our very world. This is what Jesus means by the kin[g]dom of heaven. Love, that relationship of love, between us and God, between us and all the other uses, even that love we need to have of ourselves, can be manifest in the here and now. That is the work we are called to do. To live in love, to act in love, to speak in love, to do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with God.
Love God. Love neighbor as Self. Jesus says that if you want to understand the Law and the Prophets, if you want to understand what God is trying to say to us, these are the two pillars. These are the hooks that hold up the stockings of Law and Prophets on the mantle place of life.
These are the things that provide the foundation for everything else. These are the things that we should never forget.
Love. Love of God (with everything we have—heart, mind, soul and strength). Love of others (so we do not untether ourselves from the rest of God’s people). Love of ourselves (so we do not forget that we too are beloved and should be treated as such).
All we need to do is Love. That’s maybe a better refrain than All You Need is Love. But either way, the focus is on where we stand, what our foundation is, and to whom we belong. Love becomes the word that ties us to God, ties us to each other, even ties us to ourselves. Love becomes the word that inspires us to make a stab at living in our flawed existence—Love requires justice and mercy and humility. Love requires relationship. For as the apostle Paul writes, “If I speak in the tongues of humans or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails…And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
May we live in this love, as we work and pray, Thy kin[g]dom come. Alleluia, Amen.
