Past Sermon

Sermon Title: "When God Loves Us Anyway "
Date: March 26, 2006
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  John 3:14-21

Last Monday, after I had selected the scripture lesson for this Sunday and done my preliminary sermon homework, I was driving along, remembering some story that I thought would fit the theme well.  I couldn’t remember all the particulars, but I thought I could probably relate it to you well enough to make my point.

Later that evening, after picking up a book at church, I randomly opened it to the very story I had no idea where to find!  Here it is:

“Sometime after World War II, during the reconstruction of Europe, the World Council of Churches wanted to see how its money was being spent in some remote parts of the Balkan peninsula.  Accordingly, it dispatched John Mackie, who was then the president of the Church of Scotland, and two ministers from another rather severe and pietistic denomination, to take a jeep and travel to some of the villages where the funds were being disbursed.

“One afternoon Dr. Mackie and the other two clergymen went to call on the Orthodox priest in a small Greek village.  The priest was overjoyed to see them, and was eager to pay his respects.  Immediately, he produced a box of Havana cigars, a great treasure in those days, and offered each of his guests a cigar.  Dr. Mackie took one, bit the end off, lit it, puffed a few puffs, and said how good it was.  The other gentlemen look horrified and said, ‘No, thank you, we don’t smoke.’

“Realizing he had somehow offended the two who refused, the priest was anxious to make amends.  So he excused himself and reappeared in a few minutes with a flagon of his choicest wine.  Dr. Mackie took a glassful, sniffed it like a connoisseur, sipped it and praised its quality.  Soon he asked for another glass.  His companions, however, drew themselves back even more noticeably than before and said, ‘No, thank you, we don’t drink!’

“Later, when the three men were in the jeep again, making their way up a rough road out of the village, the two pious clergymen turned upon Dr. Mackie with a vengeance.  ‘Dr. Mackie,’ they insisted, ‘do you mean to tell us that you are the president of the Church of Scotland and an officer of the World Council of Churches and you smoke and drink?’

“Dr. Mackie had had all he could take, and his Scottish temper got the better of him.  ‘No, dammit, I don’t,’ he said, ‘but somebody had to be a Christian!’” (footnote 1)

Why is it that some people are willing to go out and offer a spirit of love and charity and acceptance, even when they might not like the person or the action so much, and others are so ready to condemn?  When I was looking for a new quotation for the bulletin board out front last Friday, our secretary said, “Oh, I have a good one here.”  I took one look at it and said it went perfectly with my sermon theme.  It is from Mother Teresa:  “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.”

It was just as providential that I received in the mail from the Hour of Power this past week this little booklet containing a sermon by Dr. Robert Schuller, entitled “The Greatest Love Ever Given.”  Commenting on today’s text, he writes:

“Many Christians know John 3:16 by memory, for it is the foundation of the Christian faith, but few know, let alone live as if they believe [the next verse] John 3:17:  ‘GOD SENT NOT HIS SON INTO THE WORLD TO CONDEMN THE WORLD, BUT THAT THE WORLD, THROUGH HIM, MIGHT BE SAVED.’

“It is shocking, shameful, and surprising how many of us think that God would condemn us.  Why?  Where do we pick up these messages?  God does not condemn people.  If that were so, He could have done that quite easily through Jesus when He sent Him to earth.  But He didn’t.  God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world.

“We, as humans, find it difficult to understand such a loving reaction from a Holy God.  We are often much too quick to find faults and shortcomings when we find someone falling short of our expectations.  Sometimes we do this because we think more highly of ourselves than we ought.  But many times, more often than not, we are responding to our own insecurities.  When we don’t feel good about ourselves, when others around us look so much better, or when we want to be in control, we quickly begin to criticize, complain, and condemn other persons around us.”  (footnote 2)

Do you want to know what I think?  In spite of what we do, I think God loves us anyway.  Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night.  Was he afraid to be seen during the day because he was a leader of the Pharisees?  Or did he lie awake at night troubled by not knowing what he must do to inherit eternal life?  In spite of his questions, his doubts, his misunderstanding of what Jesus was telling him, I believe God, and Jesus, loved him anyway.  It must have made some difference.  Later in John’s gospel, when the temple police and chief priests wanted to arrest Jesus, it was Nicodemus who said, “Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it?” (7:51)  And after the death of Jesus, it is reported that Nicodemus joined with Joseph of Arimathea in preparing the body of Jesus for burial.  Did this man feel condemnation by God, or Jesus?

Our salvation, our establishment in life, is not by our doing, can’t be.  We cannot do for ourselves that which we need doing.  We can’t be good solely by our own efforts.

The good news is that God does for us that which we cannot do for ourselves.  Jesus asserted the most sublime verses of Scripture when he promises that all who believe in him shall “not perish but … have eternal life.”  He goes on to remind us of that which we so often forget:  God did not send Jesus into the world to condemn it, but to save it through him.

Not to condemn.  Although our pride, our silly presumption about ourselves deserves condemnation, we receive not condemnation, but salvation.  Our great sense of direction in life is but our stumbling in the dark, much as Nicodemus may have been trying to find the light through Christ.  Into our darkness, Christ brings us light, shows us the way to eternal life.

“Christ never promises peace in the sense of no more struggle and suffering.  Instead, he helps us to struggle and suffer as he did, in love, for one another.  Christ does not give us security in the sense of something in this world, some cause, some principle, some value, which is forever.  Instead, he tells us that there is nothing in this world that is forever, all flesh is grass.  He does not promise us unlonely lives.  His own life speaks loud of how, in a world where there is little love, love is always lonely.  Instead of all these, the answer that he gives, I think, is himself.  If we go to him for anything else, he may send us away empty or he may not.  But if we go to him for himself, I believe that we go away always with this deepest of all our hungers filled.” (footnote 3)

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…”

Footnotes

1)  D.T. Niles, told at the sesquicentennial celebration of Princeton University; repeated by John Killinger, Pulpit Digest, July/August, 1992, pp. 12-13.

2)  Robert H. Schuller, “The Greatest Love Ever Given,” from Power Thoughts, Harper/Collins Publishers, Inc., 1993.

3)  Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life, Harper, San Francisco, 1992.