God is Love | February 22, 2026 | Rev. Hassaun Ali Jones-Bey
- The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples
- Feb 22
- 7 min read
A little more than six months ago, on June 1 of last year, I stood up here to be ordained, and I opened my sermon as follows:
The title on the order of service may cause you to wonder. If not it should. I have so much grey hair, and also with tremors in my hand and foot, that one would naturally expect me to have a sad ending ceremony, or maybe a “home-going” ceremony—certainly not a celebratory beginning ceremony, certainly not an ordination.
By December of last year, the humorous opening to my June 1 ordination sermon was more fact than fiction. How to address increasing frequency and aggressiveness of tremoring took over the number one spot in my consciousness. In January of this year however, just last month, I seemed to catch myself.
I was intending to come to church on the third Sunday in January. That morning though, my plans changed. Someone who had attended my ordination, right here in this sanctuary, literally had her home going on the morning of the third Sunday in January. So I went to that home going rather than coming here to church.
The home going celebration for that person was held during the first week in February, and it was only after that, to be honest, that the mindfulness to write sermons returned. That is where this sermon comes from. The name of the person who went home was Barbara Ann Sims-Epperson.
According to a greeting card that was drafted by family and given to attendees of her home going celebration,
Barbara Ann Sims was born in New Orleans to Beulah Banks and Ezikle Sims. She spent the early years of her childhood in Pine Grove, Louisiana. In 1953, Beulah and Ezikle Sims moved their young family to Oakland, California. Nine year old Barbara, affectionately known to her aunts and cousins as “Duckie”, began her 4th grade year as a student at Highland Elementary; attended Havenscourt Middle, and graduated from Castlemont High. She furthered her education by attending Chabot Community College, receiving a degree in Business Administration.
Barbara accepted Christ at an early age. Later on in life, she changed her membership to the denomination of COGIC. She remained faithful until her demise.
Barbara was a very Afrocentric person, and loved learning about African cultures, arts and entertainment. She would proudly tell the story of meeting her Ethiopian roommate in college, who gave her the name “Mahasan”, meaning beauty and goodness.
As an adult, she worked for the Social Security Administration in Richmond, and spent the majority of her career with Oakland Community Organizations. Barbara had a broad career with city organizations.
In 1975, her beloved son Yumanti was born. He was the apple of her eye, and she loved spending time with him, taking him to the park, the Oakland Zoo, Disneyland, and road trips to various California destinations like Yosemite and California Pines.
Barbara, was an avid dancer and music aficionado. She loved traveling, and dressing in her African attire. Barbara greatly enjoyed the company of her family and friends. She traveled to Louisiana to spend time with her aunt, Willie Edna Grayer.
Barbara leaves behind her son, Yumanti, her Aunt Willie Edna Grayer, cousin/sister Faye, godson Howard and his mother Miss June. She is also survived by a host of other family members in Louisiana, and other extended family and friends.
Not mentioned of course (because the card had to be completed prior) was the loving atmosphere at her home going celebration. The latter inspired this sermon. Those who came had been friends with Barbara for many decades, some since childhood or grade school. I, who had only spoken with Barbara at length one time, was blown away by the love. It was palpable.
I was probably more sensitive to this than normal during the celebration because the thing that seemed to wake me up just prior to the third Sunday in January was a conviction or perhaps a realization that God is love and that additional words beyond that become increasingly incorrect.
The additional words are not necessarily useless, because they can lead one to realize that God is love. But once one reaches that conclusion, it’s time to be quiet and let that sink in. As Bob Marley sang in “Redemption Song,” “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery.”
Barbara’s home going celebration was my largest experience of that conviction (that God is love), since realizing it about a week or so earlier. Barbara’s actual home going was probably my first conscious experience of it. But that was much smaller than the celebration of her home going.
There are scriptural statements to this effect, of course. For instance in the fourth chapter of the first epistle of John, verses 7 through 12 we read:
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent [God’s] only [Child] into the world, so that we might live through [that Child]. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that [God] loved us and sent [God’s Child] to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and [God’s] love is perfected in us.
Words to this effect can be found in other traditions and scriptures as well. For instance, in the Islamic Qur’an, just about every chapter begins with two names of Allah (God): Rahman and Raheem. These are often translated as Grace or Compassion and Mercy but, according to an entry on the whyislam.org web site, the Arabic names
Rahman and Raheem stem from the root letters r-h-m. These are the same root letters which the word rahim comes from. A rahim is a womb, and the names of God Rahman and Raheem connote a motherly love. No one would describe a mother’s love as mercy, but they would use terms like loving, caring, selfless, compassionate, and empathetic.
In the oral, indigenous African tradition of Ifa, “love is not an unexplainable romantic emotion one feels for another person,” according to an entry on the Orisa Scientific Spirituality Facebook page, which elaborates as follows:
… real love is the pure realization that you are a microcosm of Olodumare [God] and when you see the oneness of God in another person too and they see it in you. Love is the experience of you seeing the god in yourself and another person (and of this being reciprocated). When you experience this true definition of love, your relationship with each other will reflect the realization of the oneness of Olodumare in us.
Rather than going into other traditions at this time, however, I want to focus on Barbara and her home going. In the days between her home going and her home going ceremony, I got to spend several visits at her house as the celebration was being prepared for.
On her coffee table was an African Heritage Study Bible. It caught my attention, so I read the introduction. I finished reading only to feel that this was a gift she had left for me—a gift beyond words.
The footnotes to the creation story in the book of Genesis essentially stated that “the garden located Eastward in Eden” was encompassed by four rivers:
They are Pishon, Gihon (Blue and White Nile), Hiddekel (Tigris), and the Euphrates. … Most contemporary maps of Africa show only the main body of the continent with the Suez Canal being its northeastern border. Prior to the building of the Suez Canal (1859-1869), Africa perhaps extended to the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. All of this region was landlocked with the main continent. Ancient caravans once journeyed in this region by foot (Gen. 46). Also, it must be pointed out that the original people of this region were black Africans and the mixed stock of Afro-Asiatics.
So the first humans were African, from northeast Africa, as modern scientific archeology also indicates. Thus, Adam and Eve, and Mary, Joseph, and Jesus would all look very different, very much more African than they are usually depicted in modern Western art.
It also means that the stories in the Bible were initially African stories. This made me smile and shake my head, because this is very far from what European Christians taught to enslaved, Jim-Crowed and massively incarcerated Africans in the Americas. It is also probably quite different from what the European Christians were themselves taught. So, what does all of that have to do with God being love?
The Ifa definition seems to say it best. “Love is the experience of you seeing the god in yourself and another person (and of this being reciprocated).” This is what the people at the home going celebration had seen in Barbara and what she had seen in them—and based on just one conversation, what I saw in her as well.
As I said in a prayer while holding hands at her actual home going, the home that she was going to is the home that we all go to. Or as it is said in the Qur’an (2:155-7):
And most certainly shall We try you by means of danger, and hunger, and loss of worldly goods, of lives of [labor’s] fruits. But give glad tidings unto those who patiently persevere — who when calamity befalls them say, “Verily, unto God do we belong and, verily unto [God] we shall return.” It is they upon whom their Sustainer’s blessings and grace [Rahmah] are bestowed, and it is they, they who are guided.
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