One Word
Luke 10:25-37
Sunday, July 15th, 2007
Pastor Bill

I got up the other day, and began my morning wakeup ritual, I turned on the TV to the Today show only to discover that Matt Lauer was going to interview Jesus Christ as his special guest? My curiosity got the better part of me so I decided to stay tune after one of many, many words from their sponsors. After each commercial break, Lauer would come on and say, “next I’ll ask Jesus to describe for me in ONE WORD what he believes would describe God.” Of course there were many things that came to my mind like, “I think this might be the second coming, which is even bigger news.” “Are seriously going to put Jesus on hold so we can hear a word from our sponsors?” I also wondered if Matt knew that Jesus is God. Regardless of that, you know how it goes with those morning programs. Next doesn’t necessarily mean next, but more like later… much later; and those “exciting” interviews only last thirty seconds, so needless to say I must have missed it when I went into the kitchen to get another cup of coffee.
  • What do you think Jesus’ ONE WORD might have been?
  • Is it Love?
You know, Love is central to the theme of the New Testament. It is relevant to the message of the Reign of God. It’s in the Ten Commandments. In fact God had Moses emphasize it many times. I believe God really wanted us to understand that what is most important is to love God with all our hearts, with all our souls and with all our might. God wanted us to get that into our thick skulls so much that we were asked to put this commandment on our fore heads, our hands, even on our homes (Deuteronomy 6:4-9). There is still a Jewish sect that places these black boxes on their foreheads even today.
  • It’s hard to love God all the time isn’t it?
  • What about your neighbor? Do you love them all the time?
  • Do you even love yourself?
  • Is love truly central to our Christian faith?
John Wesley used to struggle with his faith even while he was a pastor. He was raised in the church. In fact there were very few people in England back in the 1700’s that were as knowlegeable of the Bible as he was. But he knew that something was missing from spiritual life. There was still a hole until his big God moment at Aldersgate (please feel free to ask me about that anytime). Listen to what he said later on when he got it, I began to see that Christians are called to love God with all their heart and to serve Him with all their strength: which is precisely what I apprehended to be meant by the scriptural term perfection.” To him, following the great Commandment which is found Luke 10:25-28 is Christian Perfection and it is possible to achieve… but not on our own. Wesley said, “The ultimate goal of the spiritual life is the simple, single-minded love for God; it is the worship of God with the whole heart. To love God carries with it a love for and a commitment of neighbor.1

You know, I’ve come across quite a few Christians that really get upset about this message of love as the central theme of Jesus Christ. Why is that? So we argue about it. Maybe that’s why Jesus had to come to the earth to walk with us a while.

  • What is love?
  • Do we say love is God or God is love? Does it matter?
  • Why is love so hard for us to understand?
  • Is it something we can describe and then simply comprehend and become the most loving person on the planet?
  • Is it love between man and woman, or loving our children?

When I first met Dawn, I instantly fell in love with her. I had never experienced a love like that ever. Believe me all the other relationships were complete belly flops. I constantly thought of her and wanted to be with her. I wanted to share everything with her. She was incredibly beautiful both on the inside and outside. She still is. We would talk for hours, and I would actually LISTEN to her. But there was someone else I was constantly thinking about and that was God. I still want to share everything when God and like Dawn, I still get giddy just thinking about God. Within a week of knowing Dawn, I realized how awesome it is to love God, that this relationship was as close to loving God as it can possibly get.

  • For many people, love means nobody? What I mean is that they feel that nobody loves them.

I have this picture of this pouting little boy of the early 1900’s with the following caption, “Nobody loves me. I’m going to go out into the garden to eat worms. Yesterday I ate two smooth ones and one wooly one.” I still have my worm days, not as much as I used to, but they pop up occasionally. Do you have worm days?

I want to share a conversation I read from Donald Miller’s book, Blue Like Jazz. Donald and his friend were sitting up on the roof of the huge house they were living in. Donald is one of those who is not a relationship kind of guy. He is afraid of close relationships, especially marriage because the very thought of marriage is frightening because he does not want to lose his freedom. Here’s the conversation-

Paul: Marriage is the most beautiful thing I have ever dreamed of, Don, but it isn’t everything. It isn’t Mecca. My wife loves everything about me; she accepts me and tolerates me and encourages me. She knows me better than anybody else in the world, but she doesn’t know all of me, and I don’t know all of her. And I never thought after I got married there would still be something lacking. I always thought marriage, especially after I first met her, would be the ultimate fulfillment. It is great, don’t get me wrong, and I am glad I married her, and I will be with her forever, but there are places in our lives that only God can go.”

Don: So marriage isn’t all that it is cracked d up to be?

Paul: No, it is so much more than I ever thought it would be. One of the ways God shows me God loves me is through her, and one of the ways God shows her God loves her is through me. And because she loves me and teaches me that I am lovable, I can better interact with God.

Don: What do you mean?”

Paul: I mean that to be in a relationship with God is to be loved purely and furiously. And a person who thinks himself unlovable cannot be in a relationship with God because he can’t accept who God is; a Being that is love. We learn that we are lovable or unlovable from other people. That is why God tells us so many times to love each other.”2

  • Do you love others so that they learn that they are loveable?
  • Do you still feel unlovable?

You know, the other night someone asked me if “ONE WORD” was love. I smiled and said wait and see. I really thought it was the one word. But now I am thinking that maybe that is not the word, it’s close but God is deeper than that. I think there is a word that describes God’s love, so maybe there is a different word that is perhaps that ONE WORD. Maybe we need to take a closer look at the rest of Luke 10:25-37.

The story of the Good Samaritan is a well known story by most church goers. When Jesus first told it, I can only imagine how upset people were with him for even mentioning it. I’m sure they blurted out every curse imaginable to him. The curses probably had something to do with sand fleas. I think we are numb to that story in our current context. But what if we replaced those characters with American soldiers, chaplains and doctors and claimed replaced the Samaritan with an Iraqi soldier, or worse, a member of Al Qaida? I know, it’s infuriorationg. I have a friend propose that. We all thought he was being very unfair, and that that had nothing to do with that story. He had several curses about fleas thrown at him too. But think about it. Maybe he’s on to something. Maybe this story is about God’s love for us. God loves all of us and wants to care for all of us.

  • Can you look at that story with Jesus glasses for a moment?
  • Do you see God’s crazy love? Are there favorites in God’s eyes?
  • Can we love our enemies as well as accept love from our enemies?
  • God sacrificed Jesus for us even while we were enemies. Even for those that hated God. Now that is mercy. That is sacrifice. That is unconditional love. That is a love that is unwarranted. That is GRACE.

Maybe GRACE is the ONE WORD.

  • Maybe God loves us even if we are unlovable, unworthy, unchurch-like.

I was preaching a sermon entitled “FIREWORKS” a few 4 th of Julys ago. I know, it’s not a very creative title, but hey, it was about the works of the Spirit. Anyway, it was Communion Sunday, after the service, this guy came up to me and told me that he did not take Communion. I asked him why and he told me that he was in the army and he had just gotten home from Iraq. He believed that he had done too much over there (whatever that meant), and that he was too unworthy to take part in this holy sacrament.

I told him that none of us was worthy of taking communion, but we do it anyway, because of GRACE. God loves us anyway and there is not a thing we can do to change that.

I believe that the Reign of God is here now and not yet. It is all about love.. all of it. But we cannot just be loving on our own. The only way into the entrance of Heaven is through Jesus Christ. I believe that once someone embraces Jesus, they know Love, true love that is a gift of the Holy Spirit. Once we have the Spirit, we can love…

Now that is GRACE.

1From The Letters of the Reverend John Wesley, ed. John Telfor, 8 vols. (London: Epworth Press, 1931), vol. 3, pp. 120-21 as found in Thomas A. Langford, Practical Divinity, Theology in the Wesleyan Tradition, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998), p. 33.

2Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz, ( Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2003), 146-7.