October 23, 2005

Pentecost 23

            Alan and Penny McIlroy have two adopted special needs children.  That’s commendable, but not uncommon.  It’s the severity of the health problems that sets this story apart.  Saleena is a cocaine baby.  Her birth mother’s overdose left Saleena unable to hear, see, speak, or move.  Penny and Alan adopted her at seven weeks.  The doctor gave her a year.  She’s lived for six.

One day a friend visited, and as Penny introduced him to the girls, he ruffled Saleena’s hair and squeezed her cheeks, but Saleena didn’t respond.  She never does.  Barring a miracle, she never will.  Neither will her sister, Destiny. In the adjacent bed, one-year-old Destiny lay, motionless and vegetative.  Penny will never hear Destiny’s voice.  Alan will never know Saleena’s kiss.  They’ll never hear their daughters sing in a choir, never see them walk across the stage.  They’ll bathe them, change them, adjust their feeding tubes, and rub their limp limbs, but barring God’s intervention, this mom and dad will never hear more than gurgled breathing. “I need to suction Saleena’s nose,” Penny said to the visitor, “You might want to leave.”

What kind of love is this?  What kind of love adopts disaster?  What kind of love looks into the face of children, knowing full well the weight of their calamity, and says, “I’ll take them”?  The kind of love God had for us.  We were the spiritual Saleenas and Destinys of the world.  We were just as helpless, in a spiritually vegetative state from sin.  According to Peter, we were living an “empty way of life.” (1:18)  Paul writes in Ephesians (2:1): “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins.”

Oh yeah, we were in a lot worse condition than Saleena and Destiny.  We were helpless, paralyzed, blind, deaf, mute, and dead because of our sinfulness.  God’s will for us, loving Him and people, has been an impossibility for us!  By nature we don’t love.  We don’t put others first.  We are selfish.  Deep down, we want what’s best for ourselves!  Even at the expense of others!  Don’t we spend most of our time being concerned for ourselves?  That is the opposite of love.  We are self-centered.  Love is “other-centered.” When we receive good news or bad news, isn’t our first thought directed toward how that news affects us?  Uncle So-and-So is pretty sick.  Oh no, we are going to have to get off work and travel to a funeral, aren’t we?  A friend is struggling in their marriage.  Oh no, this means they are going to be leaning on me a lot for encouragement and help. We are self-centered.  We are love-less.  We have failed God’s command.  We are the spiritual Saleenas and Destinys of the world.  Helpless.  Dead.

But Paul later said in Ephesians (v.4-5): “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved.”  Jesus came into this world in pursuit of the spiritual Saleenas and Destinys of the world and brought us to life!  That, my friends, is love!  A complete devotion to another, regardless of their beauty or worth or what they could be able to give back in return.  We aren’t able to give back God much in return, even less than those babies had to offer their parents, but God loved us anyway.  He sacrificed for us.  He gave for us.  He forgave us. God loved us by sending Jesus into the world to make us alive again with his death and resurrection.

That is LOVE.  What God gave for us, and now enabled us to give back!  And that love is the hook the Bible hangs on.  That one simple idea, LOVE, is the idea that holds everything together in the mind and will and heart of God.  That one simple focus is the focus of his whole will and Word.  Such a generous gift – and yet so many want to reject it.  Such a simple concept, and yet so many want to make it so complicated.

If we haven’t received God’s love, loving others becomes a very complicated thing.  Like it was for the Pharisees.  They missed out on the love God showed them.  They rejected Jesus as the vessel of God’s love.  So they had no love to give. Pharisees claimed to love but didn’t.  Instead they took God’s simple command to LOVE, which was divided into 10 commandments, and made it complicated; 613 laws they could keep in order to obey God.  In trying unsuccessfully to do so, they missed the whole point of love.  Jesus who is God’s love and gives God’s love, frustrated them. They didn’t want his help, so they had to discredit him by getting Him to answer a question that would get him into trouble…Which commandment is the greatest?

Jesus’ answer brought the simple thrust of God’s law back into clear focus.  Love!  “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind...and…Love your neighbor as yourself.”  Love God and Love your Neighbour!  These two are the greatest commandments!  Combine them into one word: LOVE!  And this concept of LOVE is the steel hook that God’s whole Law, his will, his whole Word, hangs on.  Remove love, and the rest of it all falls apart.  God loved us to life when we were dead.  Now He wants us to love back.

That begins with loving Him with all our heart and soul and mind.  Loving God is putting Him first in our lives.  It means we worship, value, esteem, feel generous concern for, be faithful towards, delight in, and treasure up the God who loved us first with every ounce of our being!

Once God is first in our lives, our hearts, souls, and minds, our neighbours come next.  Wanna thank God for adopting you and bringing you to life?  Then love Him by loving people!  Put them first!  Be patient with them when you want to strangle them!  Be kind to them when you would like to kill them.  Serve them when you are upset that they have done nothing for you.  Turn your cheek when they have hit you.  Be available.  Be generous instead of stingy with what you have.  Give as you have been given.  Love others as you would love yourself.

Love is the hook the Bible Hangs On.  And here’s why.  Here is why it is so important to God that we love other people.  Because we are speaking for Him.  Let me share a story with you that a man on a plane once shared with Max Lucado…

In a skyscraper downtown, everyone in the building works for the CEO, whose office is on the top floor.  Most have not seen him, but they have seen his daughter.  She works in the building for her father.  She exploits her family position to her benefit.  One morning she approaches Bert, the guard. “I’m hungry, Bert.  Go down the street and buy me a Danish.”  The demand places Bert in a quandary.  He’s on duty.  Leaving his post puts the building at risk.  But his boss’s daughter insists, “Come on, now; hurry up.”  What option does he have?  As he leaves, he says nothing but thinks, If the daughter is so bossy, what does that say about her father?

She’s only getting started.  Munching on her muffin, she bumps into a paper-laden secretary.  “Where are you going with all those papers?”  “To have them bound for an afternoon meeting.”  “Forget the meeting.  Come to my office and vacuum the carpet.”  “But I was told…” “And I am telling you something else.”  The woman has no choice.  After all, this is the boss’s daughter speaking.  Which causes the secretary to question the wisdom of the boss.

And on the daughter goes.  Making demands.  Calling shots.  Interrupting schedules.  Never invoking the name of her dad.  Never leveraging her comments with, “My dad said…” No need to.  Isn’t she the boss’s child?  Doesn’t the child speak for the father?  And so Bert abandons his post.  An assistant fails to finish a task.  And more than one employee questions the wisdom of the man upstairs.  Does he really know what he is doing?  They wonder.  This girl dishonored the name of her father with insensitive living.  With not loving.  She was showing people self-centeredness instead of selflessness.  If she would keep this up, the whole building would be second guessing the CEO in no time.

But what if the daughter acted differently?  Rather than demand a muffin from Bert, she brings a muffin to Bert.  “I thought of you this morning,” she explains.  “You arrive so early.  Do you have time to eat?”  And she hands him the gift.  En route to the elevator she bumps into a woman with an armful of documents.  “My, I’m sorry.  Can I help?” the daughter offers.  The assistant smiles, and the two carry the stacks down the hallway.  And so the daughter engages the people.  She asks about their families, offers to bring them coffee.  New workers are welcomed, and hard workers are applauded.  She, through kindness and concern and love, raises the happiness level of the entire company.

She does so not even mentioning her father’s name.  Never does she declare, “My father says…” There is no need to.  Is she not his child?  Does she not speak on his behalf?  Reflect his heart?  When she speaks, they assume she speaks for him.  And because they think highly of her, they think highly of her father.  They’ve not seen him.  They’ve not met him.  But they know his child, so they know his heart.

Friends, there are people around you who haven’t seen God.  They haven’t met Him.  They don’t know Him.  But they know you.  They know his child.  And because they know his child, they will get to know his heart.  His love.  They will see the love of God when they see your love.  That is why love is the hook the Bible hangs on.  That is why God’s desire for us to love is so important!  We speak and act on his behalf!  May God rescue us from self-centered thinking!  May He fill our hearts, minds, and souls with the love He has given us!  So that when others see us, they will think more highly of our heavenly Father!

You know how the story ends?  The daughter takes the elevator to the top floor to see her father.  When she arrives, he is waiting in the doorway.  He’s aware of her love and good works, and has seen her kind acts.  People have come to love Him because of her.  And He knows it.  As she approaches, he greets her with six words:  “Well done, good and faithful servant.”   Amen.

Back to the Pentecost page
Back to the Pastor's Messages page