F. Harry Daniel
Second Presbyterian Church
Sermons: September 30, 2007

"The Breadth of God's Love"

I have spent a significant portion of my life wrestling with Biblical texts. I have read them, studied them, interpreted them, taught them, and preached from them. Much effort, reflection and struggle is required. In that study on extraordinary occasions, the distance between the ancient text and the interpreter disappears with dazzling light, and mind-boggling consequences. When he finished the "Hallelujah Chorus" for his great work the Messiah, G. F. Handel says he was reduced to tears and he "did see God," as much as any human being can do that. This text from Isaiah is an awesome, daring text that eloquently reveals the breadth of love of this God who passionately loves this world and each and every human being in it, and who will not cease caring, who won’t be unloving. This is the kind of God in whom we live and move and have our being. My experience was seeing with the eyes, the mind, and the heart. And it was not an accident that I had just recently returned from a first, incredible trip to the Middle East. I heard this remarkable text in some of its radicalness. I want to help you see and hear.

Human life is full of perils, confronted with grave problems. Our world believes that all that confronts us can be solved by technology, a technology of which we are very proud. But our pride may result in our supreme humiliation. The pride in maintaining "my own power and the might of my hand have won this for me," has caused great destruction and pain in our world. Such an attitude is fraught with dismaying consequences. History is little help or comfort. What is history? Wars, victories, wars, defeats. Watching Ken Burns’ saga of the American side of World War II is difficult. So many dead, so many tears, so many fears, so little regret. Who can sit in judgment over the victims of cruelty whose horror turns to hatred? It is not easy to keep the horror of wickedness from turning into a hatred of the wicked. The world is drenched in pain. Should not hope be abandoned, and walls be built? We see the hand writing on the wall, but we are afraid to read it, to trace the consequences. Why is it when we try to build paradise on our own terms, we turn it into a hell?

What saved the prophets, especially Isaiah, from the despair that gripped them when they looked at their world was their vision of the future from God’s perspective and the power of God’s love for what God had created. Because of such divine love they knew that human beings had the capacity by the grace of God for repentance and yes, for love. That vision of God’s love affected the way they looked at the world and its history.

History is not a blind alley, and guilt is not an abyss. There is always a way that leads out: responding to God’s grace through repentance or turning to God. The prophet was a person who living in dismay was grasped by God’s love to overcome his dismay. Over all the darkness of experience hovered the vision of a different world that animated and focused his energy for living. It remains a vision of the all encompassing breadth of the love of God.

Egypt and Assyria were locked in deadly wars for control of the Middle East. Hating each other, they are both enemies of Israel. Abominable are their idolatries and frightful are their crimes against humanity. How does Isaiah, the son of a people which cherishes the privilege of being called by the Lord "my people," "the work of my hand," feel about Egypt and Assyria? Hatred responding to hatred!

But listen to Isaiah’s words,

On that day there shall be a highway from Egypt to Assyria; the Assyrian will come to Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians shall worship with the Assyrians.

In that day Israel shall be a third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth which the Lord of hosts has blessed saying: Blessed be my people Egypt, and Assyria, the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance.

Only here is such a radical claim made in all of the prophetic corpus. In this remarkable vision the prophet takes the words applied only to beloved Israel, words like "my people" and "the work of my hands" and applies them to arch enemies. The vision looks to a time when the barriers of fear, insecurity, and inequality have been overcome, when there is free access among traditional enemies. This hope of the Biblical faith is incredible for you and I cannot see among ancient empires or among contemporary nation-states how this can come about. Is this possible? Is this certain?

The Biblical answer is yes, yes because of the breadth of the love of a God who can love us and those we so easily hate, a love that can turn enemies into friends. God is also the God of our enemies, without their knowing God, and despite our defying and their defying God. The enmity between nations will turn to friendship and mutuality. They will live together, and worship together. All will be equally God’s chosen, more powerfully all will be God’s beloved!

Can God do this? In a world like ours? Yes, because God loves with a breadth that is truly awesome. If human nature were all we had, there would be little reason for hope. But we, and they, do have so much more: the broad, magnificent, far more abundant love of God. We can move in however small a way toward a vision of healing and wholeness that is the center of hope for the earth. How? Through the life-giving, divine love that gives and gives and gives. Here is a vision of God to cut the web of hostility, suffering, and guilt. From the height and range of this love which won’t let us and them go, look at history. It can be altered.

Does that seem foolish in the light of real politics? Of course it does! But what is real here? Surely more people of the earth have lost their lives by hating their enemies, than loving them.

Is God’s love really that broad? Yes, look at Jesus’ words and deeds. From the cross he loved those killing him. That love turned enemies into friends including you and me. While we were yet at enmity with God, Jesus died for us. The alchemy of God’s love can change hatred into love. We are an enemy that is being loved. We know a God who has searched out a people and called them purely by reason of divine love. We have received love and compassion, not contempt or hatred.

Isaiah speaks of that day – a day of friendship not hate. Can we move toward that day? Yes, as we immerse ourselves in this broad love of God, and look and act with God’s eyes toward those among us in this fragile world. What an extraordinary God who can love us and….You fill in the blank with your own list of enemies.

We have a role to play in this vision. Hating enemies has been acceptable throughout most of history. Obviously it still is for many people today. And look at where it has brought us. Can we learn to lean on this incredible love of God, and not grasp it and keep it for ourselves, but let it go and follow its lead? The gap between what God intends and the way the world is – whose responsibility is that? Do we not have an obligation to be human to our companions on this planet?

This vision can not be imposed, it must be freely chosen. It begins with awe at God’s love. It begins with good news: while we were still enemies of God and estranged from God, in Jesus God loves us nonetheless. Jesus is God’s way of loving enemies. That is seen perhaps most vividly in the fact that Jesus spent most of his time with those who were defined as God’s "enemies," not God’s "friends."

Jesus teaches those who follow him that they should likewise love their enemies. Jesus nowhere prescribed regular church attendance or the tithe, nor did he issue detailed instructions about drink, wine, or dance. He does tell Christians that they should love their enemies. Why? He desires our love to be as broad as God’s and to be shared with passion and intensity and healing.

We must follow this better way, drawing others into this sphere of God’s broad love. We must continue to find ways of accepting strangers, moving toward the time when enemies will become friends. In its narrowest sense it starts here in this church with those you don’t like or have not gotten to know. That may be the person next to you or sitting in the same pew. In its widest sense it extends to those who are our worst and deadliest enemies. In Harper Lee’s splendid novel To Kill a Mockingbird Scout asks her father Atticus the meaning of compassion. He replies, "To get inside the other fellow’s skin." This old text calls us to take responsibility for each other’s lives. God got inside ours. Jesus treated his enemies as human beings who could respond to the gracious drawing of God; so ought we.