We Love Loud

Built Different, Week 4

August 24, 2025

John 13:34-35

1 John 3:16-18

John 13:14

Rev. David Collins

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Have you heard that they're making a sequel to This is Spinal Tap? Gosh, I hope it's good.

I fought my way through watching Happy Gilmore 2.

It was so bad, I could only watch it in 15 minute increments, but I felt like I owed it to my 15-year-old self to watch the whole thing.

It won’t be hard for Spinal Tap 2 to be better than Happy Gilmore 2, but it will be very hard for it to match up to the original, especially because the first movie invented the whole genre of the mockumentary. The memory is pretty hazy for me, since I was four when the movie came out and didn’t see it.

In fact, I’ll guess that most of you have never seen the original, but you’ve heard the line that it introduced into the zeitgeist (and boy isn’t that an obnoxious word? That word should come with a canvas tote bag, shouldn’t it? That word has leather patches on its sleeves. Every time you say that word, they add $500 to your student loan debt)

Anyway, the phrase you’ve probably heard even if you never saw the movie is “This goes up to 11”. It’s from this scene where Christopher Guest’s character is showing Rob Reiner’s character his guitar collection and then he shows him his special custom Marshall amp where all the dials go to 11 instead of 10, which he says makes it extra loud. And when Rob Reiner asks him why not just adjust the internals of the amp so that 10 is louder, he says,

“But this goes to 11.”

This month we’ve been talking about what Megan and I see as a fresh articulation of our values as a church. We’ve got our vision statement, which is pretty bold and admittedly unattainable, “Love Like Jesus”. That's what vision is supposed to be!

Values are things that help us to live up to our our vision. They are ways that we define it. They’re smaller steps that we can take that add up to something much bigger. So we've been talking about those this month in this series Built Different. In week one Megan talked about how we believe it’s never too late to start over.

Christianity is first a foremost a religion of grace. Of forgiveness and fresh starts. And those fresh starts enable us to

Fight to Fix What’s actually broken. Part of loving like Jesus means to do what he did, which was not take the bait about debates that didn’t matter and instead focus on what really does.

Last week Megan taught on the third value we see here. That we insist on real community. Not conformity, not politely ignoring things because we’d hate to cause a scene, but insisting on real fellowship.

And today I’m going to try and unpack the last one. We love loud.

But what does “loud” even mean in our context? If we’re going to turn our love up to 11, we have to deal with the fact that the world is already loud. There’s no shortage of voices shouting for attention. There’s already enough anger, outrage, cynicism, and division out there. And in here sometimes.

We already know how to hate loud.

We all know that whenever there is a lull in a conversation, the best way to get it going again is to bring up someone who drives us crazy. Instantly, everybody’s locked in. Everyone is suddenly a great listener and an even better story teller.

And it feels good, right? You feel connected. You feel like you’re back in sync. There’s this buzz of belonging, because nothing bonds people like a little shared contempt.

But it’s cheap belonging. It doesn’t last. Once the moment’s over, you’re left with the same problems you had before.

So how do we love loud instead? The good news is that Jesus already showed us how.

A New Commandment

Love is what we are called to do and who we are called to be. Jesus couldn’t have been clearer about this.In John 13, he tells his disciples plainly and thoroughly.

First he says, “do as I say.”

34 I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.

Then he says, “do as I do”

Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.

Then he tells them the result.

35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Which means that if we don’t love, they won’t know. And it also means that if we don’t love, we’re not really his.

So do as Jesus says. Love. Do as Jesus does. Love. And do it loud, so that people notice.

Jesus doesn't command us to love him

Jesus doesn’t say, I give you a new commandment, that you love me, and tell people how much you love me, and that the way other people will come to love me is if you tell them how much you love me.

Nope. All that love, all that commanded and modeled and attention-grabbing love, is meant for people. For neighbors. For one another.

And that last part tells us so clearly that the love Jesus is talking about here is not a feeling. It’s an action. Hopefully it’s a feeling too, but if that’s all it is, who cares, right?

Feelings and intentions are completely meaningless until they become actions.

We see this really clearly when we talk about hate. People really get their feelings hurt when we imply that their indifference to the suffering of others means that they hate them. They think that it’s only hate if they have personal feelings of animosity. They equate hate with being mean.

But love and hate are both actions.

Hate isn’t just spitting insults or shaking your fist. Hate is ignoring the wound right in front of you. Hate is walking past the person who’s in danger. Hate is knowing something is broken and choosing not to lift a finger.

It’s the same with love. Love isn’t just warm feelings. Love is stopping. Love is stepping in. Love is doing something that costs you time, energy, maybe even comfort.

That’s why Jesus makes it so clear. If love is only what we feel, then it doesn’t mean anything.

So what is love?

The apostle John puts it like this in his first letter.

16 We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers and sisters.

One of my favorite professors liked to say that maybe some of the compromises of the church could have been avoided if people had just held up signs at football games that said 1st John 3:16 instead of John 3:16. (Image of sign) If you’re going to condense the faith down to just one verse out of roughly 31,000, this might be a better choice because it shows that faith is never something you can just believe without also living out.

Then he gets specific and personal.

17 How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?

That’s not a rhetorical question. John is saying… it doesn’t. God’s love does not abide there. You can’t hoard resources and claim to be full of God’s love. You can’t close your eyes to someone’s need and then open your mouth to sing God’s praises.

It’s blunt, but it’s true. Because love isn’t measured by what we feel in here (heart)… it’s measured by what we do out there. If the need is right in front of you and you choose not to act, that’s not just a failure of kindness…it’s a failure of love.

Love is proven in what we do with what we have. Our money, our time, and our energy.

And if it wasn’t already as plain as day, he brings it home.

18 Little children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth.

Love can’t be just words or slogans. It has to be lived out loud, in all of our choices.

Words without actions are meaningless. Words with contradictory actions are lies.

So when we say, “We love loud,” we’ve got to be careful. That doesn’t mean we just crank up the volume on our words. It doesn’t mean shouting slogans or making sure everyone hears how loving we think we are.

Loud love isn’t about noise. Loud love is truth and action. It’s love you can see. That’s actually the other meaning of loud.

Loud also describes colors that stand out. Patterns that refuse to blend in. Like the opposite of beige.

Our love can’t be beige. If our love is loud, it has to be the rainbow.

The Rainbow

The rainbow is a symbol of belonging and inclusion. It says to people who have been told they’re not welcome, that they are. And it says to people that have always been welcomed everywhere, that they’re standing on the same ground as everyone else. No higher, no lower. And that’s what the church is called to be.

Every color stands out and shines as its true authentic self. None of them have to mute themselves to blend in. None of them have to apologize for taking up space. Together, they make something beautiful that no single color could make on its own.

And yes… that includes red.

Red Belongs Too

Red belongs in the rainbow too!

But…red only works as part of the rainbow if it doesn’t try to drown out the rest. It can’t control or mute the other colors. It has to be more than okay with being just one color out of seven. Because that’s the only way the rainbow works. Every color holds its place, side by side.

And the church works the same way. Love can make space for difference. It can carry tension. It can live with disagreement.

But what love can’t do is let one part erase the rest, or paint over it in the middle of the night.

That’s not love. That’s control and domination. That’s the opposite of love.

Someone might object though and say, “It sounds like you’re trying to control me. It sounds like you’re trying to silence my voice.”

Maybe. We do sometimes have to shush the shushers. The paradox of tolerance is that it can’t tolerate intolerance.

Which should be obvious right?

Family Dinner

At a family dinner, everyone gets to talk. That’s tolerance. But if one person keeps interrupting, shouting down everyone else, the only way to keep the table from being taken over is to stop that person, right? Not because you want to silence them, but because their noise is silencing everyone else.

You know, it was at a family dinner that Jesus demonstrated what loud love looks like, and it’s much quieter than you’d think. Because the way he corrected his disciples, the way he stopped their noise and their arguing about who was the greatest, was by getting down on the floor and washing their dirty feet.

That is how he showed them what leadership looks like. That is how he silenced their power games. Not with more noise, not with a bigger argument, but with an act of love so disarming that they could not miss the point. And it doesn’t say it explicitly, but I think we can assume that he was just as gentle with Judas who betrayed him, and Peter who denied him, as he was with everyone else.

Foot-washing is an important way that we love loud. Right before Jesus commanded his disciples to love, he told them

John 13:14 So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.

That has to be a part of what it means to love loud.

So let me ask you this. Whose feet are you willing to wash? Not literally, probably. But who are the people in your life that God is calling you to serve in ways that feel beneath you? Who are the people you would rather avoid, the people you struggle to respect, the people you do not think deserve it?

Because that is where loud love shows up. Not in the easy places where it comes naturally, but in the hard places where it costs you something. In the conversations you would rather not have. In the service you would rather not give. In the forgiveness you would rather not extend.

You do not get to choose who is worthy of that kind of love. Jesus already made that call. He washed Judas’ feet. He washed Peter’s feet. Which means there is no one outside the reach of the love he calls us to give.

So who is it for you? Where are you being invited to love loud by bending low?

Now, I should also say this. There will always be people who demand that you wash their feet, who insist that you listen to them above everyone else. And sometimes the most faithful thing you can do is recognize that you are not the one called to meet that demand. It is okay to let someone else deal with them.

Loud love does not mean you have to carry every burden, or meet every need, or give yourself away to every single voice that shouts the loudest. It means being faithful to the people God has actually placed in front of you.

And with those people, you’ve got to turn your love up to 11. You’ve got to love loud. By showing up when it would be easier to stay home. By listening when you’re tired of listening. By forgiving when you would rather hold a grudge. By speaking truth even if it shakes your voice. By putting their good ahead of your comfort.

That is what it looks like to love loud. Not background noise, not beige, not halfway. Real love. Jesus-shaped love. Love that people can see and feel.

People can’t see your intentions. They can’t feel your vibes. But they can hear your words! They can see your actions!

In order to love loud, you’re going to have to stand up for what and who you believe in. You’re going to have to be willing to have some people not like you in order to really and truly love the people who they also don’t like.

You might need to admit that you were wrong and you’re sorry but now you’re ready to do better, because it’s never too late to start over.

And that goes double for us as a church.

We put Love Like Jesus everywhere. It is our vision, our slogan, our reminder. But it cannot just live on our t-shirts or in the bulletin. It has to live in us. It has to come through in the way we speak to one another, the way we welcome people in, the way we carry each other’s burdens.

If we are serious about Love Like Jesus, then our shared life together has to be turned all the way up. And that means being a rainbow church. A community where every color shines, where difference is celebrated, where together we reflect a beauty that no single one of us could carry on our own. That is how people will know who we are, and that there’s a place for them too.

So that is who we are called to be. A church that does not hide, or whisper, a church that doesn't blend into the background.

We are a rainbow church.

We are a Love Like Jesus church. And the way we live that out, the way we make it unmistakable, is simple.

We love loud.