Loving God

I want to open with a fable from a children’s books called Fables. I think of this story every time I sing the song “Oceans”: "You call me out upon the waters. The great unknown where feet may fail. And there I find You in the mystery, In oceans deep my faith will stand."

The Lobster and the Crab

On a stormy day, the Crab went strolling along the beach. He was surprised to see the Lobster preparing to set sail in his boat. “Lobster,” said the Crab, “it is foolhardy to venture out on a day like this.”

“Perhaps so,” said the Lobster, “but I love a squall at sea!”

“I will come with you,” said the Crab. “I will not let you face such danger alone.”

The Lobster and the Crab began their voyage. Soon they found themselves far from shore. Their boat was tossed and buffeted by the turbulent waters.

“Crab!” shouted the Lobster above the roar of the wind. “For me, the splashing of the salt spray is thrilling! The crashing of every wave takes my breath away!”

“Lobster, I think we are sinking!” cried the Crab.

“Yes, of course, we are sinking,” said the Lobster. “This old boat is full of holes. Have courage, my friend. Remember we are both creatures of the sea.”

The little boat capsized and sank.

“Horrors!” cried the Crab.

“Down we go!” shouted the Lobster.

The Crab was shaken and upset. The Lobster took him for a relaxing walk along the ocean floor.

“How brave we are,” said the Lobster. “What a wonderful adventure we have had!”

The Crab began to feel somewhat better. Although he usually enjoyed a quieter existence, he had to admit that the day had been pleasantly out of the ordinary.

We are out on the ocean in a storm here in Northwest Yearly Meeting. We do not agree on our understanding of the Bible, sexuality, membership, and leadership. We argue about Leviticus and Romans, Faith and Practice, authority and discernment, covenant and evangelism.  These arguments come between us as the brothers and sisters of Jesus. Sometimes I want to come to Jesus and ask him, “Which of us gets to sit at your right hand and call the shots for the rest?” Jesus’s answer to James and John remains the answer to us today, and it is, “Whoever wants to be greatest in God’s Kingdom must learn to serve all other people.” These words are just as hard to hear now as they were then.

 All we can see are the holes in our boat, and the stormy waves on our ocean.  But I want to say today, “Courage, my friends.  Our little boat is afloat in the love God has for us. Remember we are at home in God’s love.” Whether our boat floats or sinks, we are surrounded by God’s love. I have a hard time believing this when my love for God is conditional. But when  I am energetically  loving God with all my heart, I have zest for the adventures life brings. I think this is true for you, too.

I have been thinking about what it means to love the LORD our God with all our hearts. Jesus said this is the first and greatest commandment. What this means to us is that God is the focus of our whole lives, and that learning to love God unconditionally is our life’s work.  Jesus said this one commandment takes in and fulfills all the other God-focused commandments in the Law and the Prophets.

It seems that Jesus had some favorites among the books of the Hebrew testament, and that one of these is Deuteronomy.  The commandment to love God comes from Deuteronomy 6:5, and the phrase “love the LORD your God” repeats 8 additional times in Deuteronomy. Here are those passages.

Love the LORD your God and watch and wait for, treasure, observe, preserve, guard what he has given you to take care of, what he has assigned to you, his judgments concerning you, the work he has commissioned you to do  (Deut. 11:1)

Love the LORD your God and hear and obey what God has told you to do, to love and be a friend to the LORD your God, and to do the work God has given you with all your inner self—body, emotions, mind and will, (Deut. 11:13)

Your job is to hear and obey the LORD your God in all God tells you to do, to love the LORD your God, to walk on God’s road, to stick tight to God; the LORD has driven out all these peoples who are in your face, and you have dispossessed peoples bigger and stronger than yourselves   (Deut.11:21, 22)

If a prophet or dreamer of dreams gives you a sign of wonder, works a miracle, and then says to you, Let us go after other gods, gods you haven’t known, and let us serve them, do not hear and obey the words of that prophet or dreamer; the LORD your God is testing you to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your inner self—body, emotions, mind and will. You continue to walk right behind the LORD your God, respect, honor, and be in awe of God, and hear what God tells you to do and do what God says, and continue to do the work God has given you and stick tight to God. (Deut. 13:1-4)

When you have done all that I God have given you to do this day, to love the LORD your God, and to walk every day on God’s road, then you will add three more cities of refuge for the accidental killer, besides these three given today. (i.e., you will increase the opportunities for mercy rather than vengeance.) (Deut. 19:9)

And the LORD your God will have reshaped your and your children’s inner selves—body, emotions, mind and will—to love the LORD your God with all your inner self and all your identity, giving you life. (Deut. 30:6)

For this commandment I God command you this day is not extraordinary or beyond your power or difficult to understand; not remote from you; …my word, my speaking is exceedingly near you, in your mouth and in your whole inner being, so that you know what to do. See, I have set before you today life and happiness or death and misery, commanding you today to love the LORD your God, to walk on his road, to keep what he has given you to take care of, to fulfill what he has assigned to you, to respect his judgments concerning you, to do the work he has commissioned you to do. You will live and will be great, and the LORD your God will bless you and give you the land to which you are going. (Deut. 30:11, 14-16)

I expect you know that “heart” means far more than the physical organ, more than “I heart God,” more than a feeling of warm emotion toward the deity. The Hebrew words for heart (Leb, Lebab) refer by metaphor to the center of the self, the soul, the senses, affections and emotions, to how one thinks and acts, to one’s will and purpose, intellect and wisdom; the includes reflection and memory, resolution, and determination.  The heart is the complexity of the self, the complexity of mind and body together, it is who you and I are.

Our purpose on earth is to love God with our whole hearts, our whole selves, and to do the work God has given us to do. This is our foundation and our goal. We throw ourselves into loving God. We are God’s fans, loyal through winning and losing seasons.

God made us for this relationship. We aren’t our whole selves outside of relationship with God.  That’s why it is so crucial that we have nothing else sneaking in between us and God and that we recognize that we are human and God is God.  Jesus taught us by example and word that we are treasured by God as the best of all possible Fathers treasures his children, and that out of our relationship with God comes everything else.  Jesus taught us how God loves us and how we can love God back.

One aspect of loving God is remembering God’s work in our lives and in the lives of others.  Rehearse these things, say them over to yourself and to your children, remember how you were once enslaved and imprisoned and how God led you out through water and desert, through chains and locked doors to freedom. Remember when God spoke to you, even though you saw no one. Let’s take a few minutes to think about at least one of God’s redeeming works in our lives.  Write it down. Share it with someone. (Deut. 4:9)

A second aspect to loving God is trusting God.  Job, the perfect human in the Hebrew testament, says, “Though God slay me, yet will I trust in him; I will set my journey before him, and he will save me, because he will see I am not godless or a hypocrite” (Job 13:14, 15). Trust means waiting for God, hoping for God to show up, accepting God’s justice for ourselves, and accepting God’s mercy for others.  It means leaning on God with our whole selves, instead of leaning on our own understanding or wisdom, and learning from God the path God has for us, which God will lead us along (Proverbs 3:5, 6).  Trust in God at all times, people, pour out your inner selves before God; God is a shelter for us (Psalm 62.8).  Let’s pause right now and choose to trust in God; write a note to God that tells what you are waiting in hope and confidence for God to do for you, or perhaps for us. When we leave here this evening to enjoy each other’s company over ice cream, tell someone what you are trusting God for.

A third aspect of loving God is seeking God.  If we have let something else creep in between us and God, we just need to seek God again, with our whole selves, all our heart and all our soul (Deut. 4:29).  The Hebrew word here translated “seek” has in it so many ways of seeking: consult, inquire, investigate, study, follow, require.  David, the adulterous and murderous king of Israel, is named a man after God’s own heart because he seeks God. We can see him seeking God in Psalm 51:  “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and repair my spirit so it is stable…The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” Many of David’s psalms are personal appeals to God for God to show up, or personal expressions of praise and loyalty to God. Jesus reiterates the continuousness of our seeking in his words to seek first the kingdom where God rules; to ask, seek and knock, and to keep on asking, seeking and knocking.  Take a moment now to ask God a question or to consult God for guidance.  Write it down so you remember that you did this when God responds. 

God promises to be found when we seek wholeheartedly. The author of Hebrews (11:6) echoes the promise of Deut. 4:29: God IS; believe this and seek with your whole heart and throughout your whole life for God, and God will reward you.

A fourth aspect of loving God is obeying God.  What does the LORD our God require of us? To revere and respect the LORD our God, to walk on God’s road, to love God, and to serve—to obey—the LORD our God with all our heart and all our soul.  Jesus said we are his friends when we do what he tells us. Jesus said, I do only what I hear from my Father. God’s word is near to us, in our mouths, and in our hearts, and we need to do what we know is the next right thing to do. This is the existential, risky edge of loving God: listening and doing what God says.  Now, in this moment. Take a few minutes to listen to God right now.  Ask God what you need to do next.  Write it down, and share it sometime this evening with someone who will help you remember do it.

How do we know that we are not loving God well? Many inner conditions and outer behaviors tell us that our love for God is not unconditional. We are discouraged when we face difficulty and we fear when we face opposition. We say that God does not see us and will not act, so we take matters into our own hands. And we forget God’s work on our behalf and are proud as if we were the source of our success; we forget God’s generosity to us and are hard-hearted to the poor and without hospitality to the stranger. We want more and more rather than being content, and we are twisted and crooked in our inner selves.  When we are not obeying God’s present instructions, we are afraid of God, we see God as wrathful, and we become preoccupied with other people’s sins and errors.  We become meticulously obedient in small things to hide how we are missing the mark elsewhere. We hold others to a higher standard than we do ourselves, and we bind burdens on others we will not carry ourselves or help them carry. We tithe our money and avoid the hard work of discerning what is right, of being ready to help those in misery, and of trusting in the character of God.

If in this stormy time, we have come to realize that we are having a hard time remembering God’s good work in us, that we cannot trust God, that something has crept in between us and God to delay or derail our seeking God, that we are not doing today what God wants us to do, this is a good time to run toward God to say we’re sorry.  This is a good time for us to pray for one another and to pray for ourselves to see clearly that God loves us so wholeheartedly; we will respond to that vision with love that takes our whole lives to express. Seeing God’s love clearly and loving God wholeheartedly gives us hope and a future.

Jesus Is the Brains of Our Outfit

Preached at Northwest Yearly Meeting of Friends

July 21, 2013

God gave me a song on Tuesday of last week as I thought about Yearly Meeting.  I hummed it cheerfully and worshipfully, and then realized I was singing this: “It’s time to play the music, It’s time to light the lights, It’s time to meet the Muppets on the Muppet Show tonight. It’s time to put on makeup, It’s time to dress up right, It’s time to get things started on the Muppet Show tonight.”  As I chuckled over the incongruity of this song with the seriousness of our purposes here this week, I moved on in my mind to this line: “Why do we always come here, I guess we’ll never know, It’s like a kind of torture To have to watch the show.”

The Muppet Show included so many divergent personalities and agendas (I think particularly of Sam the Eagle and Gonzo the improbable Turkey) and frequently incorporated explosions, unexpected intrusions, diversions and hecklers. 

I began to think we might be able sincerely and worshipfully to open YM sessions with the Muppet theme song and that the Muppet Show might be an appropriate metaphor for the part of the Body of Christ called Northwest Yearly Meeting of Friends. We are all part of the show—performers, organizers, audience—all brought together to participate in the kingdom of God together—perhaps even to party together. (I plead with you to see me as Kermit, not Miss Piggy.) The incongruity between who we actually are and the way God sees us working together as part of the one Body of Christ is worth a response of laughter and an even more important response of awe and wonder and gratitude.

At least one of the times Jesus showed up after his death and burial, he made a point of displaying his wounds to prove his identity. The glorified physical body of Jesus still carries those wounds.  The Church is the body of Jesus in the world since the ascension; this is both a metaphor and a spiritual truth. We too, the body of Christ spiritually, carry wounds, and we count on the power of the resurrection to glorify us and our wounds to bring glory to God.  This is one way the Church reflects the resurrected Jesus—wounds abound, yet through these shine the glory.

An Old Testament picture that points to this truth is the story of Gideon, the pitchers of Gideon’s small army with the torches inside, which the warriors broke to reveal the hidden light.  A New Testament picture is the cracked pots of Paul—1 Cor 4:5-7—“we publicize not ourselves but the chosen and anointed messenger of God, Jesus, our owner; and we are your servants to further Jesus’s interests.  Because God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts to enlighten us, to give us the truth that the face of Jesus Christ shows us the glory, the praiseworthiness of God. And we have this storehouse of truth in frail clay containers so that the excellence, the superiority of the power, the energy to do good things, may be recognized as God’s, not ours.” 

And we share in St. Paul’s personal experience: “that in my weakness, God’s Grace is sufficient, that God’s strength is made perfect through weakness, and I can glory, I can rejoice that I am weak, broken, infirm, wounded so that the power, the energy of Christ may enter into me and take possession of me.  Therefore I willingly choose weakness, lack of capacity, insults, calamities, harassments and persecutions, entrapment, and anguish in order to advance Jesus’s interests. For when I am powerless, then I am strong and able to accomplish good things.” (2 Cor. 9-10)

The cracks in our clay are how Jesus gets into us and how Jesus shines out of us.  This is true individually, and it is true of our lives together.

Sometimes we are actually blind to how Jesus uses our weaknesses or those of other people to advance His purposes.  Like Paul, we want Jesus to fix us up so we can do more for Jesus, as we see it.  We also want Jesus to remove the horrible flaws in those around us so that we don’t have to deal with them and we don’t have any conflict.  And yet what we have just read suggests that Jesus has other purposes for where we come up short of our ideal as individuals or together.

Remember that together, Christians are the body of Christ on earth since Jesus physically ascended.  Jesus is the Head of this body—not the executive director, not the CEO, not the president, not the superintendent, not even the Presiding Clerk, but the actual brains of the outfit.  Jesus chooses who is included in his body.  Jesus chooses.  The rest of us do what we’re told by the Head.  And yet, we are weak and we see through a glass darkly, and we run headlong into conflict.  What then?

Paul speaks to our condition. 1 Cor 11:17-19, 31-33: “Now this I am telling you is no commendation, namely that you come together, not usefully, making things better, but instead making things worse.  I hear that when you gather publicly as a church, there are divisions, tears, schisms among you, and I partly believe it, because there must be dissension, diversity of opinion and aims, so that those who are authentic and genuine, full of integrity, will be recognized and known among you…If we would just doubt ourselves, be willing to question our own opinions and aims, if we would just judge ourselves, we would not be judged or censured. But when we are judged or censured, God trains and disciplines us so that we will not be condemned as alienated from God. Therefore, when you come together to celebrate Jesus’s death and resurrection, and to commune with God, wait for each other to catch up.” Wait for each other to catch up.

This reminds me of some lines from a love song by Bruce Springsteen: “if as we’re walking a hand should slip free, I’ll wait for you, and if I fall behind, wait for me…So let’s make our steps clear that the other may see, and I’ll wait for you, if I should fall behind, wait for me.”

1 Cor. 12:3-7, 12-27

“I tell you, no one can say ‘Jesus is the Lord, Jesus is the person to whom all things belong, Jesus is the person to whom I belong, Jesus is my Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.

“There are distinct gifts, charismas, but only one Holy Spirit gives them. And there are diverse ways of serving others, but only one Lord Jesus directs the servants.  And there are distinct, diverse kinds of works, but only one God works all God’s works in and through individuals and groups. But the Spirit is obviously present in each person to help individually and to bring people together usefully to make things better.

“For as a body is one and at the same time has many members, and all the members of that body, though there are many, are one body, so also Christ.  Truly therefore, in the one Holy Spirit, we are all immersed into Christ’s one body; Christ’s one body overwhelms us.  This is so whether we are Jews or Gentiles, whether we are slaves or free, whether we are Quaker or everyone else.  Christ’s body includes us across divisions.  We have all been given the one Holy Spirit to drink into our whole selves. 

“Because a body is one and at the same time has many members, if the foot says, ‘I am not a hand, I don’t belong to the body,’ is that therefore true?  And if the ear says, ‘I am not an eye, I don’t belong to the body,’ is that therefore true?  A body needs more than a hand, more than an eye in order to live.  God has put all the parts together according to God’s best idea and for God’s delight.

“And the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you.’ Nor can the head say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you.’ In fact, some of those parts of the body that seem weaker than others are actually necessary, and some that embarrass us are worthy of great honor, and some that we think ugly are actually lovely. The parts WE think lovely are the parts that are strong and sufficient, without need, but God has commingled the body together and given abundant honor to the needy, weak, insufficient parts, so that there should be no tearing, no dissension in the body but rather the various members should care for and promote the interests of the other members.  When one suffers, all suffer; when one rejoices, all rejoice.  Now you are the body of Christ, and each one has an assigned part.”

Last year, we came to yearly meeting after the letter from OneGeorgeFox had jarred us into awareness of significant differences in our yearly meeting, chasms that for many looked unbridgeable. Would we survive as a single yearly meeting, and if so, what would we look like together?  The past year of tension has been anguish, and yet we have been patient to see what God will do.  This year, the conflict is still present, and again we will talk about how we are not like each other as we address the revisions to Faith and Practice.  The potential is still here for tearing apart, for dissension, for schism within NWYM.  We feel trapped in a narrow place.

If we listen well to Paul, we know that this is the exact moment when the power of God can be revealed through us. This is the crack in our clay that the light of Jesus can shine into and shine out of.  This is the persistent ache in our body about which God has told us, “My strength is made perfect in your weakness.” We have the choice individually and as a congregation, as a yearly meeting to lean into the truth that “God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts to enlighten us, to give us the truth that the face of Jesus Christ shows us the glory, the praiseworthiness of God. And we have this storehouse of truth in frail, clay containers so that the excellence, the superiority of the power, the energy to do good things may be recognized as God’s, not ours.” 

There is much good we do. We send ambassadors who take Jesus with them to other countries.  We reach out for Jesus’s sake with showers, laundry, clothing, and meals to those who live outside on purpose as well as those who are looking for a permanent home. We make outsiders welcome in our churches and our communities.  We make it possible for young people to experience the ministry of our camping programs.  We help young people go to college and seminary.  We help those coming out of prison re-enter the outside world.  And we are doing all these things together as a yearly meeting.  Each ministry of an individual church is something we are all doing as part of the body of Christ.  We care about and for each others’ churches as well as the individuals we know and love. We are compelled to share the good news that Jesus Christ is alive and present today to teach us himself; to share that we identify ourselves as Friends of Jesus when we do what Jesus tells us to do individually and corporately; and to share that this Friendship is open to all. We confess that Jesus is God’s anointed, God and human together in one person, whose death and resurrection bring us into a family relationship with God Almighty and with each other.

Let us add to the good we do an affirmation of commitment to each other, commitment to caring for and promoting each others’ interests, weeping with those who weep, rejoicing with those who rejoice.

Let us add to our speaking, our doing, our studying, and our faith the central goodness of love, agape.  As Paul wrote, “Love is long-term, not losing heart, suffering hard times and troubles with patience, slow to anger, slow to punish; love uses kindness. Love does not boil over with zeal or envy or anger; love does not brag; love is not puffed up with pride; love does not act disgracefully; love does not demand its own way; love does not burn with anger; love does not count up evil.  Love cannot thrive in injustice but rejoices together with truth and openness. Love protects and endures, love trusts, love hopes, love abides.  Love is never powerless, is never without effect” (1 Cor. 13). Love instead is always powerful, always effective.

As we spend a few minutes in silence so that we can hear from Jesus, the brains of our outfit, please feel free to come forward to pray if you want to.  I will close this time with a blessing.  After the service, we will meet in the dining hall for ice cream, after the manner of Friends.

This yearly meeting is where we gather to love each other, to listen to Jesus together, and to make plans to obey what Jesus tells us to do.  We’re getting ready to take our show on the road.  So…

It’s time to play the music, It’s time to light the lights, It’s time to get things started on the most sensational, inspirational, celebrational, Friends-relational, this is what we call our yearly show!

(All scripture quotations are based on Strong’s Concordance.)