Sermon for the 1st Sunday after Trinity, June 21, 2009
“ My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth. And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him. For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God. ”
I believe in a God of love , say those who don't believe in God at all. If God exists, He doesn't send anyone to hell, he doesn't judge us—He made us, and accepts us as we are. Love means total acceptance. Love means He'll always open His arms to everyone. So says the DCLU. That's the Diabolical Civil Liberties Union, the Human Rights Coalition of Hell. If they're right, then there is no Hell. If they're right, Hell is Heaven. If they're right, even hatred is love.
God is love , says St. John, and we are to love one another as Christ loved us. Love is the highest and most important commandment because out of love comes every other righteous motivation and godly action. But first we must know what love is, and what love does. If we are to love as God loves, what does such love look like?
There is a place in God's heart that is exactly where you belong. In fact, it has your name written in it, and it fits you beyond your highest ideal or imagination. That place in His Heart is not a prison. God doesn't abduct His beloved, nor does He take away her freedom in order to love her and be loved in return. Being in that place that has your name in it is like being born anew in a pristine and perfect creation whose every feature touches your heart. The rainbows and waterfalls, ferns and misty glades, soaring mountain peaks and rocky coastlines, flowered fields, fruits abundant, friendly creatures and of course, you . God has such a place in His great heart for you that would fulfill your every need, maintain you in every way joyful and contented forever. He would be completely happy with you choosing Him and His Heart for you. But what if you don't?
What if you wanted your heaven to match your life right here? I've heard eulogies where well-meaning people express the hope that their departed loved ones are being allowed to pursue all their hobbies and earthly passions up in the sky, because God must understand that Bobbie really loved golf (or softball, or fishing, or women, or scotch, or big screen TV). That desire may be harmless, but it's rather pointless as well. God's heaven is God's . I think He knows what we'll be doing there. We needn't fix heaven to suit ourselves. We'd better not.
The Universalist's creed says that everyone gets to heaven , somehow. God's love is so wide that no one falls outside it, and everyone qualifies for His heavenly realm. Now, beside the fact that not one word of God's revealed will has ever given that impression—quite the reverse in fact—how would it make sense to let just anyone into Heaven? What about the ones that just don't want to go? In the parable, that man's great supper with its invited guests was all he had to offer his so-called friends. The hall, the food, the gold-embossed invitations, the servants urging them, the special occasion : it was all ready for them, but they made excuses and refused to come. People have excuses for not wanting God's arrangement in heaven, too. And their excuses are not God's failure to create better lives for them or make them a better offer.
In the detective's office at the Police Station I noticed a poster board with photos of everyone involved with a recent tragic murder, one you read about in the paper. The faces of the victim, the chief suspect, friends and witnesses all looked out from that board, with lines of relationship drawn between them and descriptions of their roles in that sad drama. I asked a sergeant passing by, “So, any of these folks methamphetamine addicts?” “All of them,” he answered. And it was an easy guess on my part, from the sunken, mottled skin and distorted appearances of everyone pictured there. Life didn't do that to this little sub-culture. It was a choice, and they have all been choosing wrong. The murder was just a part of a lifestyle of persistently making bad decisions.
We don't have to use Hitler or Khomeini to illustrate why not everyone goes to Heaven. Of course the most evil men and women imaginable can't live there: they'd be bringing Hell right into God's kingdom. But the principle works with everyday people as well. What moves us? What gives us life? What do we consistently choose? Can we change? Do we want to change? If along the line we never choose God—by His many kindly acts, by His loving offer of redemption, by His agony and passion rendered for our sakes, by His showering of graces upon us to aid us in making the right choices—but if we never agree, never say Yes , never walk with Him and choose Him and let our puny hearts love Him, what other course has He to take but let us go our lost and lonely way? It doesn't take a drug addict to create Hell. It just takes one proud individual, stuck in his or her road because the life they want doesn't square with the man upstairs .
God's love is tough . It's tough because it is so strong . He is passionate enough about us that He had His Son become one of us, suffer in our place because of our many sins, die and rise to life for us. We've heard that line so often, have we forgotten what it cost Him? God's love is muscular, bloody, intentional, personal and freely handed to you with a question: Will you love me too?
God's love is tough also because He can say No . What God says No to is our sin. And why? He says No because of what our sin does to us . Like those photos on the poster, our sins twist our visage, mutilate and brutalize the image of God in us. He says No because we hurt other people and turn their hearts against Him as well. He says No when we want to bring all our wickedness to Heaven, and never change and never say Thank You , and never actually want Him at all. No. This cost too much to sell it so cheaply. And it wouldn't do us any good anyway.
That perfect place in God's heart is the only place that He has for you. It's there, or it's exile. He loves you either way, but tough love says you don't come as you are, if you are against Him. Love says No, you can't do that to God. You can't do that to the rest of peaceful Heaven.
Tough love is also about loving people . Think of the trouble it must cause God to love us. We are not nice or easy to love, not for the Perfect Creator. Even in our repeated sins and rebellions, He has loved us, pursued us, cared about us, and taken us back, again and again. Now, if we are to be like God, we are commanded to love people too. Jesus commanded it of us, especially toward other Christians. As also reported by St. John, “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” John 13:34-35 “This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” 15:12-13 Jesus didn't give many direct commands. But here is the Lord of lords, the author of life, making a demand upon our lives, and the love He commands is a high level, tough and resilient love. We have to love like He loved—muscular, passionate, unconditional, and sacrificial.
Our highest human love is to be for our fellow Christians, but love of the brethren is not the limit of love. Jesus also commanded us to love our enemies. He said that mercy and forgiveness that lead us to love are in the very nature of the Father, and we are to be perfect in this way, just like the Father is perfect: in love, mercy, forgiveness, forbearance. Tough love is love that takes a beating at times, but what else would prove that love is true?
God's love is so tough it lasts forever. The DCLU's complaint notwithstanding, God loves even the damned, but He won't have them contaminating His perfect new world. His love sends them away, for they won't have Him anyway. It's been truly said, the Judgment of God is to give us what we want . If we want our own way, or a god who answers to our description of some kind of god of love, then we can't have the True and Only God who defines Himself, and commands certain things of us.
Think only of Jesus and you will know the love of God. I see my sins, my secret thoughts, bad habits and cherished little evils done in this life are the bits of bone or twists of metal tied to the lashes that tore our Lord's precious flesh. The wood that once grew tall in a tree, now a crudely hewn timber weighing down His swollen back and leaving splinters in the wounds that I inflicted on Him. A nail meant for building, but driven through His wrist into that wood and upon which His weary body hung for those slow, painful hours. That's my life to Him. And He went through all of that just for my sake, to wash me of those sins by the shedding of His Blood. That, my friends, is tough love, very tough love. What can I do for Him in return? What can you do?
Go to Heaven. Take your place in the Heart of God. It's going to be so much better than your poor ideas about eternity. No matter how good you thought Heaven might be it will be infinitely better. Let go of this world and of its cruelty. We can love God and we must love one another. The world may hate us for it, but the world hated Jesus, the Perfect Man. We were there, in our sins, hating Him too, but we love Him today, and He loves us with a tough and abiding love, a very tough love that never ends. We have passed from death to life, even in this world, and love is now natural to us.
God's love is very tough, tough enough to love even you. His love is tough enough to tell you No when all you want to do is hurt yourself. His love is so very tough He let His Son die in your place. His love is so totally tough, it will last for eternity. He has a place in His great Heart just for you and no one else, and He beckons you to it. You can live in God's heart even while you live this life for Him, but His way, His life, His path, His Son—no longer your own. Is there anything you can truly think of that is more valuable, more worthy than God and His way back to Him? Set things and causes and lesser loves in their places, and enter the Heart of God where your life, your real life, may at long last begin.
PFH+