July 16, 2006

Soccer Camp Service Message

John Blanchard stood up from the bench, straightened his Army uniform, and studied the crowd of people making their way through Grand Central Station. He looked for the girl whose heart he knew, but whose face he didn’t, the girl with the rose.

His interest in her had begun 13 months earlier in a Florida library. Taking a book off the shelf he found himself intrigued, not with the words of the book, but with the notes penciled in the margin. The soft handwriting reflected a thoughtful soul and insightful mind. In the front of the book, he discovered the previous owner’s name, Miss Hollis Maynell. With time and effort he located her address. She now lived in NYC. He wrote her a letter introducing himself and inviting her to correspond. The next day he was shipped overseas for service in WW2.

During the next year the two grew to know each other through the mail. A romance was budding. Blanchard requested a photograph, but she refused. She felt that if he really cared, it wouldn’t matter what she looked like. When the day finally came for him to return from Europe, they scheduled their first meeting- 7PM at the Grand Central Station in New York. “You’ll recognize me,” she wrote, “by the red rose I’ll be wearing on my lapel.” So at 7, he was in the station looking for a girl whose heart he loved, but whose face he’d never seen.

Then a young woman came toward him, her figure long and slim.  Her blond hair lay back in curls from her delicate ears; her eyes were blue as flowers. Her lips and chin had a gentle firmness, and to him, in her pale green suit she was like springtime come alive.  He started toward her, entirely forgetting to notice that she was not wearing a rose.  A small, provocative smile curved her lips: “Goin’ my way, sailor?” she said, while moving her hips.

Almost uncontrollably he made one step closer to her, and then he saw Miss Hollis Maynell.  She was standing almost directly behind this sensual lady.  A woman well past 40, she had graying hair tucked under a worn hat.  Her thick-ankled feet thrust into low-heeled shoes.  The girl in the green suit was walking quickly away.  John felt as though he was split in two, so keen was his desire to follow the lady in green, and yet so deep was his longing for the woman whose spirit had truly companioned him and held him up during the war.  And there she stood.  Her pale, round face was gentle and sensible, her gray eyes had a warm and kindly twinkle.

He did not hesitate. His fingers gripped the small leather copy of the book that was to identify him to her.  He thought, maybe this would not be passionate love, but it would be something precious, something perhaps even better than love, a friendship for which he had been and would ever be grateful.  He squared his shoulders, saluted, and held out the book to the woman, and said kindly: “I’m Lieutenant John Blanchard, and you must be Miss Maynell.  I am so glad you could meet me; May I take you to dinner?”

The woman’s face broadened into a tolerant smile. “I don’t know what this is about, son,” she answered, “but the young lady in the green suit who just went by, she begged me to wear this rose on my coat. And she said if you were to ask me out to dinner, I should go and tell you that she is waiting for you in the big restaurant across the street. She said it was some kind of test!”

Love regardless.  How many people or things in this world do we love regardless of their outward beauty or value to us?  John Blanchard admitted inner feelings of wanting to follow the beauty, that she would be easier to love.  Do we find it easier to love the loveable?  If we are put into similar tests, how do we fare in showing love regardless?  Don’t we often fail that test?  Don’t we often choose the thing that’s easy to love?

I think we do.  I think we often fail this test.  After church today, won’t it be easier for you to talk to the people you know, the ones who make you smile and laugh, than it would be to talk to the person who needs your help?  Isn’t it easier to invite friends over to your house who make you feel good than the ones that take a little work?  Parents, isn’t it easier to “love” your children when they are being so dutiful and well-behaved, than when they are being a major pain?  Husbands, isn’t it easier to love your wife when you are out on a date, enjoying happiness together, than when your wife is really struggling with something?  Isn’t it easier to love the friends who are giving you gifts at Christmas time than the poor brother or sister in need who needs you to give to them?

I think we often fail the love regardless test.  We can be pretty superficial, can’t we?  It is much easier to “love” people who are doing things for us than it is to love those who make us step out of our comfort zones or who desperately need our help.  We have NOT shown love regardless!  Let’s be honest.  We have been selfish.  And God is not OK with that.  That does NOT sit well with God.  Because that is not the way He is at all.

Imagine God taking the test John Blanchard had to take.  You know what?  God passes.  Every time.  God never looks at outward beauty.  He never looks at outward goodness.  God loves us in spite of how ugly we are.  And we are ugly.  The way we often show love with our lives is ugly.  It is selfish.  But even so, God does not cringe at how ugly we are and pass us by.  He loves us regardless.  Regardless of how ugly we are in sin. 

This love we don’t deserve is what our text is telling us about: “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.  Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  God loved us with love regardless!  Even though we’ve been awful to Him, God loved us anyway!

This is what we talked about all week in Soccer Camp.  God So Loved the World!  God has not only loved you and me regardless of who we are and what we have been, He loves the whole world regardless of who they are and what they’ve done.  All people – regardless!  You – regardless!  Me – regardless!  And how did God do it?  How did He love us?  What test did He pass?  He gave up his own Son.  His Son came to this earth, passed by the temptations that Satan offered Him, lived the righteous life instead, and walked up to you and I, the ones with the rose pinned to our lapel, and said, “May I take you to dinner?  May I take you to the feast in heaven with me?”  And all that He wants from us is to take his hand in faith and accept his invitation.

There is something else that He did for us.  Something else we needed Him to do.  Something the following story might help us understand and appreciate.

In a little town by a river, barges would regularly come to deliver goods to the warehouses down by the docks.  Now, to keep the channel clear for the barges, they had to constantly dredge the channel.  And when the sand comes up out of the bottom of the river and is dumped on the side it creates these huge sand hills, and kids love to play on them.  But it’s also dangerous for the kids, because when the sand comes out of the river bottom, it's wet and it creates a crust on the top of the hills. You can get on the top of them and they will collapse and the sand will sink you down inside the hill.

Some years ago, two brothers didn't come home for dinner and their bikes were found outside the fence where the dredging had been going on. The family began to search frantically as well as other rescuers for the two brothers. They finally found one.  He was buried up to his chin in the sand. Because of the pressure of the wet sand and muck around him he was not breathing so they began to dig frantically. When they uncovered him down to his waist he regained consciousness and the family, in hysterics, began to say, "Where's your brother? Where's your Brother?" And what he said was, "I'm standing on his shoulders."  The one brother had given his life for the other.

And that is what our brother Jesus did for us.  For us, the ones who haven’t always honoured Him with our lives.  He had to give his life for us.  And He did it.  Not because He had to.  But because He loved us.  Regardless.  He showed us love regardless.  So that we wouldn’t die, but live.  John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Friends, there is one way to say thank you to Him.  Let’s love God regardless.  Regardless of how hard it is to get up on Sundays or stand up for your faith.  Let’s love each other regardless.  Regardless of how hard people make it for us.  And let’s love others regardless.  Regardless of how much we think they deserve it.  Because God loved us, regardless.   Amen.

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