Listen to this sermon HERE

THE LOVE OF GOD
Deuteronomy 6:1-9
1 John 4:7-21
November 16, 2008

     A year and a half ago our daughter, Katie, was married.  As the father of the bride it was my duty (but more realistically, my extreme pleasure) to walk her down the aisle.  This was not something I had dreaded.  Rather, it was exciting to me to see my daughter launching into a new and wonderful phase of life.  We reached the altar, and at the appropriate time in the service I placed her hand in Brett’s, and turned to take my place in the pew next to Jackie.  Before she let go of my hand Katie placed these two items in my hand and said, “This is for you Dad.”  I didn’t stop to look at them until I was sitting. 

     This first item is a handkerchief; embroidered on it in silver thread it says I Love You Dad – Katie.This second item is a portrait of Katie in her wedding dress.  Next to the picture is a hand written note which says, Dad, You have been the perfect Father.  You have loved me and held me.  You have taught me about sports and tools and people.  You have stood up for me and fought for me and now you have to do the hardest task yet, you have to give me away.  I know I can’t be a Dad, but I hope I can be a parent just like you.  I love you. – Katie. 

     I missed the next ten minutes of the wedding.  I have no idea what happened.  Maybe they recited vows and promised to love, honor, and cherish.  Maybe they danced the tango and sacrificed burnt offerings to the Lord God on High.  I have no idea.  I was thoroughly overwhelmed with love.  I could not help but review significant moments from my relationship with Katie.  I can clearly remember how excited I was at her birth; knowing I have a daughter.  When she was one year old we took a two mile walk through alligator alley in Florida.  We walked a path, literally strewn with live, wild alligators.  When she became bored with that she climbed into my arms and slept for the remainder of the hike.  When she was four, and we spent an entire day coloring and cutting and gluing.  She was twelve years old and we were walking through a mall, when she reached out and grabbed my hand and held on very tightly.  I had just read a psychologists report that said twelve is the breakaway age for young women; and they will hold on tightly to their Fathers while they gain the confidence to step out into the world.  I could ‘feel’ our relationship. 

     I spent the next ten minutes regaining my composure and letting the incredible goodness of God just wash over me.  How blessed am I?  To be husband and Father to my family, to have so much love in my life – how blessed am I?  The Apostle John says our ability to comprehend what love is, to know love; to give and receive love is a gift from God.  We are created in the image of God.  One of the incredible blessings of our unique status is that we alone – we alone – can anticipate, and then revel in, overwhelming love. 

     Here’s the thing; the complete immersion in love that I felt for, and from, my daughter at that moment is less than a million, millionth percent of the love that God has for each and every one of us.  I didn’t even scratch the surface of the love that God aches to pour out on me.  Last week, at the conference in San Diego, I listened to a speaker named Francis Chan.  On the flight back to Dallas I was reading one of his books.  He says it like this:

          The very fact that a holy, eternal, all-knowing, all-powerful, merciful, fair,                       and just God loves you and me is nothing short of astonishing.  The wildest                         part is that Jesus doesn’t have to love us.  His being is utterly complete and                         perfect.  He doesn’t need me or you.  Yet He wants us, chooses us, even                     considers us His inheritance (Ephesians 1:18).  The greatest knowledge we                      can ever have is knowing God treasures us.

     The incredible irony is that most people spend their entire lives; from birth to death, from cradle to grave, desperately trying to find that love anywhere they can – except from God.  Trying to find something equal to, but not, the love of God.  I haven’t been able to hunt down the source of the quote, but someone once said, “We are born with a God sized hole in our being, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to fill that hole with stuff.”  I believe that’s true.  Who is more likely to commit suicide, the man who makes twenty thousand dollars a year, or the man who makes over one hundred thousand dollars a year?   Statistics bear out that the wealthier man is more likely to take his own life.  The poor man has only God to rely on, and he finds love and contentment in that reliance.  The rich man stuffs his life with money, and cars, and houses, and women; and in the end finds that it is meaningless (Ecclesiastes 2:9-11).  We crave the love of God. 

     Marla Paul is a freelance journalist who has written for The Washington Post, Family Circle, and Ladies Home Journal.  She writes a weekly column for The Chicago Tribune on friends and friendship.  She is considered an expert on how to make and keep quality, lifelong friends.  Yet, even she in a moment of honesty once wrote, “I think there are women out there who don’t know how lonely they are.  It’s easy enough to fill up the day with work and family.  But no matter how much I enjoy my job and love my husband and child, they are not enough.”  

     In his book, Confessions, St. Augustine describes a search for true love that took him decades.   Initially, he decided to love only that which was beautiful (young prostitutes and sex).  From there he moved on to love that which other people valued.  If the rest of the world tells me to love this, it must be worth loving.  That commercialism was horribly unsatisfying and he found himself trying to love the idealistic; world peace and high virtue.  Only, no one can agree on which virtues should be called ‘high’, and a man of high virtue can still perform unspeakable acts of evil.  So, he decided to pursue a love of knowledge.  The more you know in your head, perhaps the more your heart will feel love.  High knowledge came with more questions than answers, and that was a source of frustration, not love.

     Then, while in Rome trying to hide from his life, he met Catholic Bishop Ambrose – who introduced him to Jesus.  In the unconditional love of God, Augustine found the peace, and contentment, and acceptance that had eluded him his entire life.  He found the answer to the craving he had attempted to fill with sex and alcohol and good deeds and intellect.  He had those ten minutes of being washed over with love. 

     So many of us go crazy as we desperately search for the very thing God is trying to give us.  We don’t get it.  God delights in us.   That is no small thing.  The Creator of the universe, the source of all life, the maker of gravity and light and particle physics, takes his single greatest enjoyment in loving us.  Thoroughly, completely, and overwhelmingly, he loves us.  And, more importantly, he loves us just as we are.  We are horribly messed up, and God knows that, and loves us anyway.   It is a love we could never hope to duplicate on our own. 

     On the flight home from San Diego last week Jackie and I had taken our seats during the boarding process.  A mother and her five year old daughter were supposed to sit two rows in front of us, but they didn’t like those seats and they stopped everyone else from boarding while they negotiated to move to the seats directly in front of us.  I found this annoying. 
When they sat down the mother was in front of me, and the daughter was in front of Jackie, and I felt lucky.  At least I wouldn’t have to put up with the child for the long flight back.  No sooner do we get airborne than the mother grabs the armrests and begins to violently rock her seat back and forth, and side to side.  It wasn’t fear of flying – she was trying to make her seat larger and more comfortable.  Like, if you just shook the seat enough it would suddenly turn into a first class seat with leather upholstery and more legroom!  The fact that it didn’t work the first fifteen minutes she tried it didn’t stop her from repeating the process again and again.  And then, every twenty minutes, she would pass gas. 

     I couldn’t keep a cup of coffee on my tray table because of the acrobatics taking place in front of me, and I kept opening my air vent wider and wider.  All of this as I read in my book, God loves us just the way we are!  Why!?!   Amazingly, as I’m asked myself that question, Chan wrote:

          My existence is not random, nor was it an accident.  God knew who He was                    creating.  God’s words to Jeremiah assure me that I need not fear failure.                    When Jeremiah voices his hesitation and fear, God – the God of the galaxies                        – reaches out and touches his mouth.  It’s a gentle and affectionate gesture,                 something a loving parent would do.  Through this illustration I realize I                     don’t have to worry about not meeting His expectations.  This is the God we                       serve, the God who knew us before He made us.  The God who promises to                         remains with us and rescue us.  The God who loves us and longs for us to                  love Him back.

There it is.  God loves us just the way we are because we are not an accident, we are not random.  We are his creation, and it is good. 

     As I sat in the pew at Katie’s wedding I was overwhelmed with the unconditional love of a parent for a child.  The Bible says that God loves each of us like a parent (Proverbs 14:26, Hebrews 12:4-11).  “This is a love that is not to be analyzed or understood.  This is not intellectual.  It is to be received, absorbed, felt.”   When I first became a Pastor I had to take a class on Worship and Sacraments.  In our Communion ceremony on page 16 the Pastor says to the church, “All honor and glory is yours, almighty Father (and then in parenthesis it says ‘God’) now and forever.”

     When the instructor walked us through that liturgy he encouraged us to use the word God, and not the word Father.  He said so many people come from dysfunctional families, and have such a horrendous relationship with their Fathers, that we only dredge up hatred and bitterness if we call God, ‘The Father’.  Out of respect for a hurting world, use ‘God’ instead.  That became my habit, and I still practice it to this day.  But, I have come to believe that is a wrong thing to do.  In that practice we allow a broken and sinful world to project our failures and shortcomings upon a holy and perfect God, instead of embracing a perfect and holy love.  We cheat ourselves out of seeking what perfect Fatherhood was meant to be. 

     God’s love goes so far beyond my love as a parent, that they can’t even be compared.  Augustine eventually found perfect love in God.  What was shocking to him, is that he found it in God’s willingness to sacrifice his own Son on the cross, for our salvation.  Augustine wrote:

          Certainly, we can never give thanks to Him enough for the fact that we live,                     that we behold heaven and earth, and that we possess the mind and reason by            which we seek to know Him who created all things.  But more than this:                     when we were burdened and overwhelmed with sins, turned away from the                 contemplation of His light and blinded by our love of darkness, He did not                 desert us.  Rather, He sent to us His only Son, so that, by          His birth and                       suffering in the flesh, we might know how highly God prized mankind.

     I could never sacrifice my daughter for someone else.  Especially not for someone I didn’t like.  I could never sacrifice my daughter for the airplane lady.  And yet, God sacrificed his only Son for the salvation of every human who has ever lived (1 John 2:2).  And he did this, because more than anything else in all of creation, he wants us to let Him love us.  And so, I find my daughter’s letter to me becomes the perfect prayer to God.

  Lord Jesus, You have are the perfect Father.  You have loved me and held me.  You have taught me about joy and suffering and people.  You have stood up for me and died for me and now you have to do the hardest task yet, you have to give me the freedom to choose to be loved.  I know I am not God, but I hope I can live my life just like you.  I love you.