Sermons for the Month

Unwavering Love Equals Unquenchable Hope
DATE: 6/16/02
SERVICE: 4th Sunday After Pentecost
TEXT: Romans 5:1-8
“To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN

I like to go to museums and I have discovered that often the people visiting the museum are as interesting as the exhibits. On a recent trip to a Natural History Museum I found myself unintentionally ease-dropping on a Muslim woman who was giving her four-year-old daughter a religion lesson.
She was describing how Allah - her name for God - had made humanity different from all other mammals by giving them a moral code by which to live. I have to admit that even though her loud voice was annoying, I was impressed by how articulate she was, and by her willingness to discuss such things with her child in a public place. As we gazed at the displays she talked about Allah's - God's - interaction with human beings.
After I moved on it occurred to me that there was an interesting omission in that mother's discussion with her child. I'll admit that I do not know enough about Islam to determine if what I observed is generally true of that faith, or simply a reflection of one person' s focus on that particular day. But, I heard no references to the love of God.
To be fair, I've been a part of conversations with Christians who seem more interested in a God who punishes than a God who loves. And even those of us who by tradition and theology stress grace may not necessarily grasp how much God loves us. Indeed, it's a concept that is almost beyond our comprehension, although Paul attempts to make it clear in Romans 5.
"For while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person - though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us."
While we were weak, while we were ungodly, while we were sinners … God loved and loves us. Do we get that?
I read something this week about Thomas Carlyle who had married his secretary, whom he dearly loved, but he was absorbed in his own interests and treated his wife as if she were still his employee.
She became ill with cancer and was confined to bed for a long time before she died. After her funeral Carlyle went back to his empty house, wandered aimlessly in and out of the rooms, thinking about the woman he had loved. He ended up in her room and sat down in the chair beside the bed on which she had been lying for months. He realized with painful regret that he had not sat there very often during her illness.
He noticed her diary. Now that she had died, he felt free to pick it up and thumb through it. One entry caught his eye, "Yesterday he spent an hour with me and it was like being in heaven. I love him so much." He turned a few pages and read, "I listened all day to hear his steps in the hallway. And now it is late. I guess he won't come to see me." Carlyle read a few more entries and then threw the book on the floor and ran out into the rain and back to the cemetery. He fell on his wife's grave in the mud sobbing, "If only I had known…if only I had known." (Clarence Macartney, "Macartney's Illustrations".)
He did not realize how much his wife loved him, so focused was he on his own agenda, and therefore missed out on what she had to offer him. Might the same be true of us in our relationship with God? Might we too say, "If only I had known…", having gone through our lives engrossed by our own concerns and failing to benefit from God overwhelming love for us?
The nature of that love is made clear to us over and over again in scripture, and particularly in the book of Romans. Just take a look at what the first five verses of Chapter 5 have to offer. "Since we are justified by faith we have peace with God." This "peace" is something very specific; it's more than absence of outward hostility or the presence of inward peace. It means, specifically, that God is at peace with us. In other words, we are free in our relationship with God; there are no obstacles between us.
Because of Jesus Christ we stand confidently in God's grace. In fact, we are so confident that we can boast - not in ourselves - but in our hope of sharing the glory of God. Let me be clear, that word hope is used in a purely positive sense. We are not hoping for something that probably will not occur, like hoping to win the lottery, but we have hope in that which is a sure thing, so sure that we can boast about it. Remember… we are FREE in our relationship with God.
And that's why we can boast in our sufferings, a concept that seems absolutely ludicrous. The reason we can boast in our suffering is because we KNOW, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that while suffering goes hand in hand with living in an imperfect world, it does not indicate that God no longer loves us.
We will be challenged in this life, but God will be with us. In fact, suffering can draw us closer to our Creator and force us to, as the saying proclaims, "Let Go and Let God." And we will endure; we will become people of character who stand firm in a sure and certain hope that will not ultimately disappoint us. In spite of whatever difficulty we face we will share the Glory of God.
The problem is that while there is always hope, in this imperfect world it does not always feel that way. When we face illness, loss of employment, financial difficulty, a broken relationship, the death of someone we love it seems as if hope is lost. Yet, while our hope may be running low, the point of verse five is that through the power of the Holy Spirit God's love is poured into us, filling us with a hope that we could not create ourselves. God is the creator of continual hope.
But, do we know that? Do we feel it? Do we allow it to change us, and to sustain us in the midst of life's challenges? Or, do we wander through our days, intent on this goal or that project or event, and miss out on the tremendous love that is ours' for the taking?
If we take it, we will be transformed, just as Carlyle would have become a different person had he not been oblivious to his wife's love for him.
If we take it, other people will be influenced by the love of God they see in us. I am an admirer of Mother Teresa, and honor her not only for her ministry to the poor - which began in India but became worldwide - but also for the humble wisdom that she exuded. In a book written about her, A Life For God, she reflects on the overwhelming love of God that we have been discussing this morning. She says, "Our holy faith is nothing but a gospel of love, revealing to us God's love for men and women and claiming in return their love for God."
She tells a story of a man who came to her with a report of a Christian family with eight children. They had not eaten for day. Mother Teresa took some food and went to them. She writes that when she came to the family she saw the faces of little children disfigured by hunger. There was no sorrow or sadness in their faces, just the deep pain of hunger.
She gave rice to the mother. She divided the rice in two, and went out, carrying half the rice. When she came back, Mother Teresa asked where she had gone. She gave a simple answer, "To my neighbors - they are hungry also."
Mother Teresa reports that the neighbors were Muslims. "I was surprised," she said, that she knew they were hungry. As a rule, when we are suffering, we are so focused on ourselves that we have no time for others. This woman showed something of the truly generous love of Christ."
That woman must have grasped the message of today's second lesson, that God's love is boundless. The Holy Spirit had been poured into her so that even in her intense suffering she was able to see beyond herself and offer to another - someone of a different religion - the love of God that she claimed as her own.
My friends, as undeserving as we are, we have been given tremendous, life-altering gifts - love, freedom in our relationship with God and a hope that is unending. May we never say, "If I had only known."

AMEN
Sources:

"Our Relationship With God: Experiencing the Future Now" by Greg Herrick, PhD.

The Mother Teresa Reader: A Life For God, Compiled by LaVonne Neff, Servant Publications, Ann Arbor, Michigan.