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Sermons In Time
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September 21, 1975
The most important question Jesus asked in his ministry here on earth was the question he asked of Peter just before he left. It was their last conversation together. At such a crucial time, he did not ask about his understanding of Moses and the Prophets, or even his understanding of God, the nature of Christian Community, or what it meant to be a Disciple. He asked one question:
"Peter, do you love me?"
There is about that question that which is almost overwhelming as you think about the possibility of response a person can have to it. A completeness of human feeling arises out of the question itself. The possibility of the deepest kind of closeness, the greatest dread, the fullness of joy, the depth of anguish - all of these can be experienced as one anticipates the answer that is going to be given to the question: "Do you love me?"
Breaking with the tradition of centuries, Tevyea turns to his wife Golda after he sees the young love of his children and asks her, "Golda, do you love me?" She responds, "Do I love you? I've cooked your meals, darned your socks, kept your house; I"ve slept with you, borne your children, How can you ask, 'Golda, do you love me?' Do I love you? Yes, I guess I do." Together they say, "It doesn't change a thing, but after 25 years, it's nice to know."
Our deepest need is to know that we are loved. To know that somebody cares deeply. It's the hardest question there is to ask: Does anybody really love me? Especially when we look around and experience what looks like the lack of love, and the kinds of action which make it very difficult to love one another. These are actions which happen between persons which instead of eliciting a response of love, elicit exactly the opposite response.
How easy it is to look with scorn upon those persons who are obviously hard to love - the ones you just have to do everything in your power to say, " well, I guess I do." Those despicable persons who seem to do everything in the world to prove that nobody loves them and to prove they are not worthy of being loved. Having experienced rejection, rebuff and criticism, hatred and disdain, every effort is put forth on the part of that person to say, "See, I told you you didn't love me."
It's like the epitaph on the gravestone of the hypochondriac: "See I told you I was sick." It becomes: "See, I told you you didn't love me." The persons who rebel, who do acts that are socially unacceptable, who are self-destructive, who are destructive of other people - how can you love such a one?
St Paul said it this way: Hardly for a good man would one die, and certainly for one who is not good you would not expect somebody to die, but God, in His love, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
On the other hand, it is possible that there are those who have tried so hard to make sure they are all right: In trying to keep that commandment of loving God and Loving neighbor and loving self - Trying to keep all the commandments- have done it in such a way they have become sharp and bitter and even perfectionistic and filled with all kinds of anxiety which asks, "Am I doing all right?" They become very difficult to love. Always anxious. Always uptight. Always on the edge of uncertainty. Always on the edge of criticism, comparing themselves with other persons. They covet the assurance of closeness yet it just does not come.
In the Bible, especially in the Book of Romans, the 5th and 6th Chapters, there is a clarity that all we do and do not do does not really answer the question "Do You Love Me?" at all. In effect, St. Paul is saying, "God is not impressed with the things you do. Not if they are only a requirement of the law. Not if we are only trying to prove ourselves before God. God does not require a burnt offering - or good deeds." Rather, he offers himself in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. And to each of us, the lost and the lonely, the hurt and the one who cries our for love,. He says, "I love you."
Paul Tournier in his book, "Guilt and Grace," writing about the pervasiveness of guilt and the need for forgiveness, speaks of Jesus and says these words:
"Everywhere Jesus defends despised people, for example, the adulteress, Mary, the prostitute in the house of Simon the Pharisee, whom she shocks not only by her past conduct but by her lack of restraint in showing her feelings. To Simon, Jesus speaks with severity; and to the woman He says, 'Your sins are forgiven.' Again, He defends children, saying, ' See that you do not despise one of these little ones.' "
In the Church of Corinth, St. Paul finds that there are not many wise, not many powerful, not many of noble birth. And so, following his Master's example, he makes himself weak that he might win the weak. He knows how to be abased. He emancipates himself from the judgement of men. He frees his disciple Timothy from his sense of inferiority: "Let no one despise your youth," he writes to him and elsewhere. "God did not give us a spirit of timidity." And St. James, in his turn, stigmatizes those who honor the rich and vilify the poor.
Examples could be multiplied. It is Joseph, the 11th son of Jacob, hated by his brothers for the provoking pride he flaunted before them who becomes God's chosen one and the Pharaoh's powerful minister. A prostitute, Rahab, is the instrument of God's plan, a humble widow of Zerephath has divine grace showered upon her; it is to a foreigner of easy virtue - the Samaritan woman to whom Jesus reveals that He is the Messiah. The Prodigal Son is the parable of the one for whom the father's arms are opened wide to the great scandal of his virtuous brother. Lydia, the first European to receive Christian baptism is an inconspicious street hawker. It is a refugee, Aquila, who first welcomes St. Paul to Corinth.
From one end of the Bible to the other, the answer is similar, a clear unambiguous answer, unconditional and without restriction, to those with feelings of inferiority and guilt.
At one and the same time, Grace frees us from social contempt which burdens us from without - and from remorse which gnaws at us from within.
And we ask, who are these? St Paul comes back again and says, "All of us have sinned and come short of the Glory of God." It is to all of us in whom sin abounds that God speaks and it is in the midst of our own life with all of its struggles and all its uncertainties that make us ask, "Golda, do you love me?
What we are really saying is, "Am I worthy of being loved?" And the response that is given by the New Testament is, "No, but that's not the issue. The response is instead, "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." - God loves us!.
It is your life. Live it well. It is your life, as Martin Luther said, " Love God and do as you please." Here is where a question comes. Is St. Paul saying in this that God loves us, so we can do as we please? As we supposed to take what God has done in Christ Jesus and load it up and if the one sin of many , is God's love shown by the amount of Grace he pours upon us? Shall we sin that grace may abound? NO!
So, what do we please to do? Given the opportunity, to do what we want, what would we do? Is it really inevitable that being trusted men will cheat? Cheat on their wives? Cheat in their business? It is inevitable that youth will do self-destructive things? Is it inevitable that business and commerce will rape the land and that races will destroy each other? Although the answer so often seems "yes"? With all this, we can still ask the question, and ask it sincerely, "What do you really want to do?"
Perhaps we are in a position where St. Paul is still speaking to us in all of those conditions when he says of himself, " The good that I would do, I do not. The evil things that I would not do, I find myself doing. Oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me?"
It is for this reason that God's love got into the action. It is for this reason that God does not leave Himself aloof from the world, and says, "I love you, do as you please." And lets it go at that. That's not what happens. But rather, He says, "I Love You" and then redeems our life in Christ Jesus.
The person of Jesus Christ in his life and his death comes again and again and asks the question, "What do you want from life?" God wanted his people to be able to respond to this love and He was willing to give himself that we might have life and we might have it more abundantly. He gives the assurance again and again. Even in the face of our failures! Even in the face of the ways we disappoint God and disappoint others and disappoint ourselves. I Still Love You!
God comes to us again and again in the person of Jesus of Nazareth and says, "Pick up your bed and walk!" Do not quit. Do not be overcome by discouragement. Discouraged, know there is a Balm in Gilead. There is healing for the sin sick soul. The discouragement is not just for a balm to heal us in the time of wounds, but also prepares us to go back out into the fray once again.
And we are still asked, "Do You Love Me?" If there were not life after death, I would still be thankful for God's love and what it means. If this life were all there were, I would still want to be a Christian. If I could do anything I wanted to do, I would still do what I am doing. If we were all free from responsibility that is given to us, would we not, in turn, assume responsibility? We want to do something worthwhile with our lives that is responsive to the love which has been give to us.
I like the covenant that I have with my wife. I'm glad she loves me "just as I am." It is because of that mutual love I want to be faithful to her. That is my desire. And it is the same analogy because of God's Love. I want to be faithful to God. I want to love God in response to God's love to me. I want to say in response to the question, "Do You Love Me?" "Yes, I love You!" Amen
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