David A. Renwick
Second Presbyterian Church
Sermons: June 11, 2006

A Community of Believers: IV
"To Love and Glorify God"

In our sermons in recent weeks, we’ve been looking together at the focus statement of Second Presbyterian Church adopted some years ago and reaffirmed a couple of years ago in our new plan of action, Plan of Action 2005. It reminds us, of our central tasks and of some of our central beliefs as a congregation. Today is the final sermon in this brief series and I’d like us to think together about the phrase within the statement which tells us that we are to "love and glorify God." We aspire to love and glorify God. Let’s read the statement together, saying,

Second Presbyterian Church is a community of believers.
Called by Jesus Christ and led by the Holy Spirit,
we aspire to love and glorify God within and beyond the Church
through worship, study, fellowship and service.

What a wonderful statement. Second Presbyterian Church is a community of believers. Called by Jesus Christ. Led (never left alone) by the Holy Spirit. We aspire to love and glorify God everywhere – within the church and beyond the church. In various ways which at least include worship, study, fellowship and service.

So here’s the question of the day: Loving God. Do you love God? Is that something you can say? Do you love God?

A historian from Chicago University, Martin Marty writes about the love of God, about the lack of reference to the love of God in the work of scholars he reads. Marty writes this (Context, June 1, 1996):

"Now and then an author retrieves a theme long buried. How about love of God. About which we might assume many theologians are talking all the time but are they? Father Edward Collins Vacek, SJ, writes, `In my own conversations with Christians, I find that almost all of them talk approvingly about love for others. Some talk confidently about God’s love for us but few are willing to talk about their love for God. When I press them to say what it means, to love God, some of them in fact deny that we can love God directly. Many admit that they don’t give much thought to love for God, and most deny that there is any ethical obligation to do so. They judge that it is wrong not to love people, but they have no such thoughts about neglecting God. In short, many contemporary Christians subscribe to Jesus’ second great commandment but not his first." [DR: that is, they hear "Love your neighbor" but they forget "Loving God."]

Now 1 John brings both of these commandments of Jesus very close together. "You can’t say you love God if you don’t love your neighbor," says 1 John, but yet they remain distinct. And so the question, again, is this:

Do you love not only your neighbor but do you love God?

Or at least, to take it down a notch, do you aspire to love God?

And not only to love God but to glorify God, whatever that may mean, to glorify God?

"Glorifying" God simply means to allow what’s inside to spill over.

The glory of the sun is what spills over from the sun. It’s its light. It’s its heat. It’s its energy. That’s the glory of the sun.

The glory of parents would be their children. What spills over, as it were, from us to others.

The glory of God is the overflow of God, the effect of God’s presence, the effect of God’s character, the effect of God’s love on our lives. So that we glorify God when we not only embrace God but when we, as it were, allow God to overflow from our lives to the lives of others. God’s majesty, God’s power, God’s remarkable grace.

Do you aspire to love God? And to glorify God? At one stage in his life, Martin Luther, the great reformer of the church in the sixteenth century certainly did not aspire to love and glorify God. In fact, he says, that at that point in his life, he hated God. Even though he was religious, even though he was a monk, even though he was good, even though he tried to be even better with every ounce of effort he could muster, he says he didn’t love God at all. His God was so majestic, so pure, and in a sense, so merciless, that Luther’s view of God was that God was implacable, and could not be pleased. And so he says he hated God. He says (Here I Stand, by Roland Bainton, pp.30, 42, 44)

"I thought to myself, with what tongue should I address such majesty? Seeing that all people ought to tremble in even in the presence of even an earthly prince, who am I that I should lift up my eyes or raise my hand to the divine majesty? The angels surround him, at his nod the earth trembles and shall I, a miserable little pygmy, say, ‘I want this, I ask for that?’ For I am dust and ashes and full of sin and I am speaking to the living, eternal and the true God?

"Do you not know that God dwells in light inaccessible? We weak and ignorant creatures want to probe and understand the incomprehensible majesty of the unfathomable light of the wonder of God. We approach, we prepare ourselves to approach what wonder then, that his majesty overpowers us and shatters us."

"Love God?" he says, "I hated him!"

. . . Until he read the scriptures. Until he read the writings of the apostle Paul in Galatians and Romans, and perhaps he could have gone on to our reading in 1 John. Until he read, and for the first time fully realized, that God knew him and loved him as he was.

Until that moment, he’d been trying to earn God’s love. He had been trying to twist God’s arm. He was trying to be so good, so religious, so extreme in his devotion, that God had to love him (which, of course, is not love, if it’s forced). All of a sudden, in fact, he realized he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t climb high enough up the mountain of moral and religious duties. The mountain was too high. And, furthermore, he realized that even if he got there, it would have in no sense increased God’s love for him. God loved him anyway wherever he was on that mountain. Where he was, God loved him, and had demonstrated that love in flesh and blood, in sending Jesus of Nazareth to this earth to live and to love and to die and to rise. In that moment in history, in the middle as it were of history, God places this person, God incarnate, on earth, as a sign that will never change of the depth of God’s love for us. And when Luther saw it, it was as if the scales fell off. It was if the burden was lifted off his back. It was as if the pressure was gone from his chest. It was if the sun had begun to shine again in his eyes.

It was a stunning revelation and it was as well, in his case, a transforming revelation. The same kind of stunning and transforming revelation a woman also had, who met Jesus when he lived here on earth, fifteen hundred years before Luther (Luke 7). This woman turned up at a party given for Jesus, uninvited. She comes into this party, offered to Jesus by a religious leader, by the name of Simon. And she comes in and kneels down at Jesus’ feet, and she begins to weep, and she has ointment with her, and she anoints Jesus’ feet with her tears and with this ointment – and it is an overflow of love. She is glorifying this Jesus. And why? Well, somewhere along the way, she had discovered that despite her sin (in the scripture she is called "a sinner"), despite her sin, she realized that she was of value to this Jesus, that he loved her anyway. And the sense of relief, the sense of joy, was so enormous, she could not keep it to herself.

One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee’s house and he took his place at the table and a woman in the city who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. She stood behind him at his feet, weeping and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment. And then the story takes a little twist. Now, when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, ‘If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him. That she is a sinner.’

Jesus spoke up and said to him, ‘Simon, I’ve something to say to you.’

‘Teacher,’ Simon replied, ‘speak.’

So Jesus speaks and says, ‘A certain creditor had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii and the other just fifty. When they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. Now, which of them would love him more?’

Simon answered, ‘I suppose the one for whom he canceled the greater debt.’

And Jesus said to him, ‘You’ve judged rightly.’

And turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, ‘You see this woman? I entered your house, you gave me no water for my feet but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss but from the time I came in, she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins which were many, have been forgiven.’

Not forgiven because she did all these things but forgiven before she does all these things. What she does is the response to the knowledge that she has been forgiven much. Therefore, I tell you, her sins which were many have been forgiven. Hence, she has shown great love.

And the same is true for us. If we don’t know the depth of God’s forgiveness in our lives, if we don’t know the depth of God’s love within our lives, the chances are we will not seek voluntarily to love God. And to glorify God. We may do it as a response to a command but it will not come from the depth of our hearts. We have to know the love of God in order to want and long and to aspire to love God.

If we don’t know it, instead, in fact, we’ll spend a lot of our energy trying to cover up the truth. We’ll spend a lot of our time pretending to be who we are not, when all along God is saying to us, "You know, you really don’t have to do that." But we do it anyway.

Peter Haile tells a wonderful story of a time when he was with his daughter (The Difference God Makes, 1981, pp.9-10). He was in his study at the time (he’s an author and a speaker in churches). He’s in his study, and his daughter comes in and asks for some scotch tape. And normally he would ask, "Well, why do you want this scotch tape? What is this for?" But he had a sense that something important was happening, maybe a present was being wrapped, and he decided not to ask. He just said, "Bring it back when you’re finished." So he gives her the scotch tape and she goes away. . goes away to the bedroom where she has written with red ink on the wall. And she is going to take some Kleenex and tape it over this little red mark. She’s been told time and time again not to use crayons on the wall and she knows she’s done wrong. So she covers up her anxiety. She asks her dad for the scotch tape. She does it pretty boldly. She’s just three years old. But then, later on, after she brings it back, Peter is wandering through the house and goes into her bedroom. And there on the wall, he sees it, this Kleenex taped to the wall. Fortunately, when he lifts it up it doesn’t rip even more off the wallboard, and he sees this little red mark, hidden discretely behind it. And he says this,

"She was trying to cover up what she had done. It’s a common occupation and the older we get, the more skillful we become at it. Instead of scotch tape and Kleenex, we use borrowed words and manufactured attitudes. We try to obscure what we are, and what we have done, by putting up a front, pretending to be something that we are not. When God loves us anyway."

How deeply we need to know that. How much we run away from that. How often we hear it but it doesn’t register. But how deeply we need to know it.

There’s a wonderful Spanish story of a father and a son who become estranged.

The son runs away and the father sets off to find him. He searches for months to no avail. Finally, in a last desperate attempt to find him, the father puts an ad in the Madrid newspaper. And the ad reads like this, "Dear Paco, Meet me in front of this newspaper office at noon on Saturday. All is forgiven. I love you. Your Father." So Saturday comes. And noon comes. And outside that newspaper office there are . . . eight hundred Pacos. All showing up to find love from their fathers, love that they did not feel they had received, but which they needed desperately.

From some significant other in our lives we desperately need to know that we have been loved. We need their love! And we need it from the most ‘significant other,’ from God, too. There are times when we do not know the depth of that need but what a difference it makes when we know it. When we know it deeply. It is transforming within our lives. Though we may resist it, and the more successful we are in life, the more we tend to resist it.

One of the most successful preachers in our country is our former Pace-Warren speaker, Lloyd Ogilvie. If anyone was successful, it was Lloyd Ogilvie. Pastor of a great church in Hollywood. Chaplain of the U.S. Senate. Everything going his way. Successful. But he writes a wonderful story of the time he came truly to see the depth of God’s love for him and it wasn’t at the beginning of his ministry, it was in the middle of his ministry, and it was at a time when things were going wrong for him. He had been in Scotland (lucky man!), but there in Scotland he’d had an accident, which included a very, very severe breaking of his leg, and he was laid up for three months. And he says this (in Let God Love You),

"Well, what can you do when there’s nothing to do but wait for healing. For three months I could put no weight on my leg and even when I could get out of bed, I had to use crutches.

When I took my first steps, I had to depend on a cane. During that difficult convalesce, I discovered in a new way that God loves me not for what I do, but simply because I belong to him. That liberating conclusion has transformed my attitude toward life’s pressures and difficulties. I don’t have to write books. I don’t have to do television. I don’t have to lead a church to be loved by God. Doesn’t that seem simple? So why didn’t I learn that twenty-five years ago?"

"During my recuperation, I read a speech given by Henri Nouwen. He’d left his career at Harvard to work in Canada at Dayspring, a care center for the mentally challenged. He, along with several others, was assigned to care for a little boy named Adam who had epilepsy. One day, while calming Adam after an epileptic seizure, Henri looked at him and thought, `God loves Adam as much as he loves Henri, and there’s nothing Adam can do to be loved by God. God loves Adam just as he is.’"

And the same, my friends, is true for you and me. Even when things go wrong, even when we are part of making things go wrong, whether we are part of it or not, even then, God loves us.

Some of you may have seen this little piece that is often on a plaque that people have. It may seem a little hokey, but it speaks the truth. It’s called "Footprints."

One night, a man had a dream. He dreamed he was walking along the beach with the Lord. Across the sky flashed scenes from his life. For each scene he noticed two sets of footprints in the sand. One belonged to him and the other to the Lord.

When the last scene of his life, flashed before him he looked back at his footprints in the sand. He noticed that many times along the path of his life, there was only one set of footprints. He also noticed that it happened at the very lowest and saddest times of his life. This really bothered him.

And he questioned the Lord about it. ‘Lord, you said that once I decided to follow you, you would walk with me all the way but I have noticed that during the most troublesome times in my life, there is only one set of footprints. I don’t understand. Why, when I needed you most, you would leave me.’

The Lord replied, ‘My child, my precious child, I love you and I would never leave you. During the times of trial and suffering when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.’

Do you know it? The gracious, amazing ‘carrying’ of our lives by the Lord, amazing grace? Do you know it? The love of God? In human terms, "He’s crazy about you. He’s madly in love with you. He’s head over heals in love with you."

He loves you like a boy loves a girl or a girl loves a boy.

He loves you like a parent loves a newborn child and cannot let that child go.

He loves you like a grandparent loves a grandchild and would do anything for the well-being of that child. Loves you that much.

Amazing grace. We need to know it. It’s only then that our lives will be transformed in the way that Christ wants them to be. Our desires will be changed. Our goals will be changed. Our aspirations will be changed and we will find ourselves aspiring ‘in return,’ not because of commandment but ‘in return,’ aspiring to love and glorify God, within the church and beyond, through our worship (Sunday by Sunday), through our study (using our minds to love God. Every part of this world is God’s: our work, our play, our rest, using our minds where ever we are, to love and glorify God), in fellowship, (binding our lives to others, who need us as much as we need them), and in service (being Christ’s hands and feet where ever we are).

Aspiring to love and glorify God as those who know, not just in our heads, but deep down in our hearts, the depth of God’s love for us.

What a wonderful and joyful calling. A response to God’s amazing grace.

Second Presbyterian Church is a community of believers, – and so it is.
Called by Jesus Christ, – and so we have been,
and led by the Holy Spirit – who will not leave us alone, but who leads us even now.
Surely, we long to aspire to love and glorify God.
Within and beyond the Church.
At the very least – in worship, in study, in fellowship, and in service.
May God help us to fulfill such a great call as this.

Let us pray.

Holy God, we need your power. We need your light. We need your life. Fill us with such a sense of good news that we will be your faithful lovers, glorifying you in this world, now and always. Amen.