The Park Road Pulpit

  Sermons from Park Road Baptist Church

      Russ and Amy Jacks Dean, Pastors

 God is Love?

I John3; 1-3,18-24, 4:16-21

Amy Jacks Dean, May 4, 2003

Preface: I am indebted to 3 particular scholars/theologians/preachers for bringing my thoughts together today – such as they are: Roberta Bondi, Barbara Brown Taylor, and Fred Craddock. I am indebted to 2 friends for posing the questions that I have wrestled with this week in the first place: “Ultimately, do we believe just what we choose to believe?” and “How can we hold to the belief in the Love of God when it seems contrary to the created order of things as we know them?”

Roberta Bondi tells the story about turning eleven years old, and starting Confirmation classes at Christ the King Lutheran Church in New York City. There were eight children in the class – six girls and two boys – and the teacher was Pastor Schmidt. Roberta remembers how boring the first two weeks of classes were - memorizing things like the Ten Commandments, and the Nicene Creed, and the catechism. She and the other children had a hard time getting excited about all that! 

But then, in the third week, something happened that captured Roberta’s attention. Pastor Schmidt, in an obvious attempt to perk up the interest of his young students, announced a psalm-memorizing contest. Whoever came back first with their psalm memorized would win a grand, unnamed prize. Roberta Bondi says she was instantly electrified. An exotic and mysterious prize! Her greed was mobilized. And she was determined to win it.

            And she did! Roberta memorized Psalm 1 which she chose because it seemed to be short enough to handle. And the following week, Pastor Schmidt brought her the prize.

            At the end of roll call, Pastor Schmidt made a big ceremonious speech about the word of God and its importance in the lives of Christians. Then he reached into a bag and pulled out a little brown wrapped box and handed it to Roberta. Her hands trembled as she unwrapped the prize.

            The gift was a tiny little bottle of perfume. It was round, like a ball, with little dimples in the glass that gave it the texture of an orange. The cap was brown like a twig, and tied around its long neck with a white ribbon were two little paper orange blossoms that had printed on them the words “Souvenir of Florida”.

            As an adult, Roberta Bondi acknowledges that the prize was probably an afterthought. Pastor Schmidt probably forgot all about it until just before class time and probably said to his wife, “Honey, do we have anything laying around that we can give Roberta as a prize?” Even so, Roberta loved the gift as soon as she laid her eyes on it. But that love was nothing compared to what came over her when she unscrewed the little cap, and lifted the bottle to her eleven-year-old nose, and smelled the fragrance. To her, it was the aroma of heaven – the very smell of God.

            Bondi writes, “How can I describe to you what was in that box when I opened it at last? Never before or after, as a child or as an adult, have I received a present that so far outran my hopes for it. His gift exceeded my powers to describe it then, and it exceeds them still.”

            As a grown adult, Bondi still associates the gift with the very scent of God.

            For those of us who grew up in the church, and for those of you who raise your children here, you must know that from the very beginning, the church begins the subtle and subliminal indoctrination of certain basic tenants of the faith. First of all – there is a God. It is amazing to me that children believe this one. Children who think concretely. Children who have no ability with abstract thinking seem to buy the notion of a Being that they cannot see, touch, hear, feel, or taste actually exists. How do they do that? How do you do that? How do I do that?

            One night, during the war, we were lighting our candles during our bedtime prayers. “The light of the candle reminds us that God is with us,” Russ said. To which our 4-year old responded, “How do you know? We can’t see him.” Not being satisfied with the good old parental standby of “because I said so,” we explained, “God is not a person – not a man or a woman. God is God. Unlike anyone or anything else. God is always with us, but we cannot see God, but God is here with us, even as we pray for peace.” And he bought it. Why? How?

            Do you ever stop and think about what you really believe and why you believe it? Is there a systematic approach to your understanding of God? Is there a method to the madness for your faith? Do you realize how truly unbelievable our beliefs are?

            Very quickly we move into teaching our children that above all else, God is love. Why do we say this, affirm this, believe this? What evidence is there to support such a notion? Chaos around us and among us. Suffering is beyond our ability to imagine. Much of the chaos and suffering can be explained by human freedom – the result of thousands upon thousands of years of bad choices. But not all of it can be explained that way. How can we claim the assurance of God’s love with the question of suffering and evil lurking all around? How uncomfortable are you with the questions being asked at all, much less from the pulpit of all places? And just after Easter no less.

            This is precisely the place where the questions should be asked. And the timing could not be better. It is appropriate in this place in the post-Easter season, known as Eastertide, to reflect on such things. But if you are looking or hoping for a definitive answer I’m afraid you will leave here disappointed this morning.

            We believe because we have been taught to believe. We believe because we choose to believe. We believe, because as the writer of Hebrews suggests, that faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of things we cannot see. (Hebrews 11) We believe because in some moment at some time (perhaps, if you are lucky or maybe just attentive, even many moments in many times) we have experienced something beyond our ability to describe – something beyond our words – that we have named God – and we are sure of it. We believe because in the life of Jesus, the One we follow, he believed. Or so they tell us. We believe because throughout history, people have claimed the assurance of God and God’s love, even if in the same breath they spoke of the dark side of God (a phrase from Gene Owens). We believe because if we are created in the image of God, if we do indeed embody at least some of the divine, we know that we have the capacity for love. And we assume that this came from God. (And yes I do hear the inherent question in that statement – if our capacity for love is attributed to God, then from whence did come our capacity for evil?) The sermon title is a question – not a statement: God is Love? It is a better question than it is a statement.

            Many folks at this point say stop – stop thinking, stop questioning – this hurts my head and makes me nervous. It is too hard. Just believe. Just accept. Let me encourage you NOT to do that. This church has, as a part of its richest history in my opinion, the attitude of “bring it on.” There is no fear in the questions and no need for dogmatic answers. There is an acceptance that faith is a journey.

            We say to babies upon their dedication “Welcome to a journey that will take your whole life. This is the beginning of God’s experiment with your life. What life will make of you, we know not. Where life will take you, surprise you, we cannot say. This we do know and this we say: God is with you.” How do I know that so definitively? So confidently? I don’t. From that very infant moment, we put into their heads and their hearts the belief that they are never alone. That the God of Love is always with them. How do I know it? I don’t. But I do believe it and am compelled, beyond myself, to tell it. I guess this week, I have come to realize that perhaps the main reason we hold to these basic tenants of the faith is because the community, The Church, believes it. Barbara Brown Taylor says that “religious language is communal property, after all. None of us invents words as we speak, at least not if we wish to be understood. Instead, we dip into the great pot of our shared language about God, which includes biblical narratives, creeds, liturgies, theologies, popular piety, and folklore. It is a pot into which quite a bit has been thrown over the years, which would lead one to expect a rich stew. Instead, many who taste it complain that it has gotten thin. Some say it is because the meat has gotten lost in all the potatoes, while others admit that they are just plain tired of stew. The problem, for a preacher, is how to call people to the table with the language at hand, especially when so many of them have become suspicious if not downright disdainful of the spoken word. It is a problem that is compounded by God’s own silence. If God spoke directly to people, then preachers could retire. As it is, God’s reticence is the problem that clergy are hired to address.”

            “God is.” “God is Love.” We speak these words as if they were “made out of steel instead of air.” Even our most carefully chosen words are not sturdy enough to bear the truth. We speak these words even when they do not match up with all that we know to be true. Barbara Brown Taylor says it’s the same way when “we speak of `sunrise’ and `sunset,’ although we know full well it is not the sun that moves. So why do we hang on to the old language? Because it describes how things actually look to us, or because the thought of `earthrise’ and `earthset’ gives us vertigo? The facts notwithstanding, it is easier to go to sleep at night believing that our perspective on the universe is the stable one.”

So in a search for some form of stability of faith, we must be honest and say that we speak not out of what is true and sure, but rather we speak out of what we hope for. Fred Craddock says that “if preachers decide to preach about hope, let them preach out of what they themselves hope for. They hope that the words of their sermons may bring some measure of understanding and wholeness to the hearts of the people who hear them and to their own hearts. They hope that the public prayers they pray may be heard and answered, and they hope the same for the private prayers of their congregations.

They hope that all those who come to church faithfully week after week may find at least as much to feed their spirits there as they would find staying at home with a good book or getting out into the fresh air for some exercise. At the heart of all their hoping is the hope that God whom all the shouting is about really exists.

They have hope that God exists because from time to time over the years they believe they have been touched by God.”

Roberta Bondi has smelled the very fragrance of God. It was a gift, pure and simple, that has carried her through a lifetime. Barbara Brown Taylor has tasted a stew rich enough to serve to any guest who gathers at her table. I will still hold a baby in the air and assure them of what I hope for: that God is indeed with them.

Perfect love casts out fear. Perhaps the pain and the groaning of this world is the groaning of God who seeks that perfect love with us and in us – God, hoping against hope, that we might make things right. May it be so.

Pastoral Prayer

O God, we pray that we might know your love, abide in your love, live out your love among your people. Why do we even believe this is possible? Because we hold tight to something beyond ourselves, something even beyond our words to describe – that might help us to make sense of it all.

We pray not for blind faith, but for thinking faith. Questioning faith. Searching faith – knowing that you are to be found more likely in the questions than in the answers.

Cast out our fear. Encourage our wondering. And teach us to love for it is the greatest commandment, or so said Jesus. May we live as he lived. May we love as he loved – believing that he best understood who you are, O God of Love. Amen.

I hope that no one sends this sermon today to my preaching professor – he would not like it. I will not even reference either of the passages read today in the sermon, so I suggest you listen closely to the reading of Scripture for it will stand on its own today.

Admittedly, I have pulled verses from I John chapters 3 and 4, which means that I left much unread – particularly the parts about sin, and punishment, and evil. I admit this to you upfront – not that they should be ignored or ripped from the pages. Merely that I cannot deal with it all today and today I’m dealing with Love.