Love Wins - sermon July 5th

Opening Prayer 

Lord, you love us into existence, and wish only that we are free to love you in return.  We are here on this weekend of celebration, grateful for freedom. We are grateful for the sacrifices of all those who have struggled to establish and protect this freedom.  God of love, even so, somehow so many of us are still not free.  We are enslaved by debt, or trapped in hurtful relationships; we are oppressed by prejudice and injustice and the abuse of power; and we are so often imprisoned by our own bad habits.  In every way that we are blocked from experiencing and living in wise love, we are not free.  Our prisons are sometimes of our making, but often from an unjust world too.

And so today we meditate on all the ways we as a country and as members of the human race have yet to become free. We set our hope on the unstoppable mercy of your great Love—Your Love that seeks only to set us free and teach us the ways of peace.  Including the whole world as one community, hear the prayers of our hearts.

Love Wins

Rev. Alison Longstaff, July 5, 2015

Bath Church of the New Jerusalem

Isaiah 55:10-13; Matthew 13:1-9; Heaven and Hell 57

These readings are included at the end of this document.

“As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” Isaiah 55: 10-11

When I sat down with today’s text, a bounty of meaning spilled out like so many jewels scattering across the floor.  I had to work to select only one or two gems to lift up and display, or we would be here for days. Still, I hope that somehow through this talk you will get a sense of the tremendous storehouse of beauty that lies hidden in the words. 

For a start, today’s text raises the age-old question about God’s power.  Just how powerful is God?  Since God is Love, the question becomes also, “Just how powerful is Love?”

The short answer?  “Pretty darn powerful!”

In a now, somewhat infamous incident, the Rev. Rob Bell, then pastor of the Mars Hill mega-church on the outskirts of Grand Rapids, Michigan, found that a quote by Gandhi displayed in his church had a note pinned over it.  The notice blocking the Gandhi quote said, “Reality check: He's in hell.”

This incident threw Bell into a crisis of faith.  On the one hand he well knew the traditional Christian teaching that only those who confess belief in Jesus Christ “go to heaven.” On the other hand, he had his own inner conviction that the God of love, the creator of every human soul, could not be so simplistic and exclusive. 

So, what was the truth?  Do only confessing Jesus-believers go to heaven, or do all good souls?  After much meditation, questioning, and research, Bell published his conclusion in what would be the controversial best seller, Love Wins. 

Bell’s book outraged many Christian conservatives, because in it he concludes that the God of Love opens heaven to every one of all faiths.  There is a reason he called his book “Love Wins.” According to all his best research and the voice of his heart, Love triumphs in the end, not ideology.

I think he’s on to something.

“So is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, it will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”

This small verse from Isaiah promises big things.  It tells us that God’s word will accomplish God’s will. God’s word will accomplish God’s will.  And what is God’s will?  Well, according to Swedenborg, it is that every created soul should go to heaven.  Every created soul.  Every one.  Sit still with that a minute.

It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”  I ask again, Just how powerful is God’s love?

“You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. Instead of the thorn-bush will grow the pine tree, and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.”

I love to dig into the Hebrew and Greek of the Bible.  I love to see what treasures come into view.  In today’s text, the Hebrew for “thorn-bush” sounds like “not-suits” literally meaning “the thing that pricks.”  Since everything in the Bible is speaking about our own lives and our own spiritual journeys, this “thorn-bush” then is anything in our life that scratches, stabs, and sticks into the spirit like a thorn.  “Pine” in the Hebrew here sounds like bear-oash, and means any noble, stately evergreen tree indigenous to the holy land.  Not only are these trees good for shade, they were the sort used to build their houses of worship. 

“Instead of the thorn-bush will grow the pine tree, and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.”

“Brier” or "sar-pad" is some unknown desert plant, something like a nettle.  It is something low and stinging, similar to a thorn-bush, but not the same.  “Myrtle” or "hadas" however could grow up to twenty feet tall when well watered.  It produces dark, scented leaves, star-shaped flowers, and an edible berry.  The myrtle signifies God’s blessings.  Which would you rather have in your spiritual life?  Nettles or these amazing myrtle trees?

What do you think this text is promising?  I believe it the promise of what happens when God’s will is done in our lives.  Tangles and prickers become shelter and sweetness.  Stinging nettles become lush fruit trees.  This isn’t an old promise about a long ago and far away desert and some random plants, but about your life and mine, right here, right now. This is God’s promise to each of us that though we may encounter spiritual brambles in our spiritual journey—brambles which tangle and tear at our feet, and impede our way—we will eventually enter a land of giant, shady trees—trees which shelter our way, offer strength and protection, and all we could need to build spiritual homes. 

God’s word will bring about God’s will. This is what the text seems to be saying.  “So is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire, and will achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”

Let’s look closer.  The text talks about God’s word; about God’s word from God’s mouth.  Think of the mouth.  Think of all the things it is used for.  It is the way through which we communicate—through words and songs, through smiles and laughter, through touches and kisses.  From the most sublime words, to the silliest sayings, to the most intimate gestures of love—all this is the effected by the mouth. 

Have you noticed how babies bring everything to their mouths?  This is not because they have an eating fixation, but because at that stage the mouth and the lips are the most developed area on their bodies.  They explore with their lips the way a blind person explores with their fingers.  Later, their hands will catch up in sensitivity, but at the infant age and stage, it is all about the mouth. 

The mouth.  This passage is about God’s mouth.  What a powerful image!  What is God’s mouth?  It is the means by which God speaks to us; it is the means by which God laughs with us, sings with us, and the means by which God kisses you and me and every created soul.  “God’s mouth” represents all the ways God finds to communicate love.  It is Sacred Scripture, yes!  But it is also nature, creation, great art and music, the sound of a happy child, that certain lyric running through your head, that picture, that spoken word. It is every way God finds to touch our hearts both directly and through each other—that awakens our hearts to the reality of God’s great love.

“So is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and will achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”

Whew!  That’s pretty intense.  God is coming to you and to me, and there is no stopping that gentle, insistent love.

Let me tell you a story.  It goes back to when I was in seminary, and I was working on one of my first sermons.  Now, I can’t speak for other seminary students, but a mood had come over me while writing this sermon.  It was as if something slowly rose up inside me, and I felt very important.  I was going to do what a good minister should do—I was going to be sure to remind everyone that they were a little bit evil and ought to worry about it.  It was my job, you see, to point out all the ways people might be being selfish in life, so they could be warned and feel bad and do something about it.  Because they might otherwise go to hell!  So my sermon had a definite warning and scolding section, because that was my duty.

I brought this terrific sermon to a meeting with a supervising pastor. I showed it to him proudly, fairly sure of his approval.  He read it through, and looked very thoughtful.  He found a few positive things to say, and then said something which stopped me in my tracks.  He said something like, “It is always good to remember that it is our job to preach the gospel, which is the good news, which is that God is Love.”

My ego went down like a house of cards. But along with the crash of my ego came an overwhelming sense of relief.  This mentor had given me permission to stop needing to be one of the world’s jail wardens and watchdogs. I had picked up a burden God had never asked me to carry and never wanted me to carry. Once I set that burden down, what emerged was an amazing, bubbling joy.

It wasn’t as though I hadn’t heard this message before, I just hadn’t really understood it.  Suddenly a huge weight was lifted from my heart.  I didn’t have to scold and warn, I could preach all about the miracle of God’s love—and I could absolutely trust God’s love to do the rest.

There is an old saying that a preacher’s job is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.  But in my experience, just about everybody is afflicted.  Some may hide it better than others, but there is plenty of affliction to go around.  Most hearts are heavy—just look at the state of the world!  I think a healthy dose of God’s love is just about always the best medicine.  God’s love can accomplish all that it sets out to do.

Before this, I had been trapped in a common misconception.  This misperception is that THE TRUTH is somehow not really THE TRUTH unless it hurts.  Haven’t we all encountered that idea at some time or other?  “Tell me the truth” so often means “tell me the harsh, uncomfortable bit that I don’t want to hear,” eh?  In fact, one pastor I know, in another denomination, made his lead article in a church newsletter about telling visitors “THE TRUTH."  His message was about how we so often want to be nice to visitors who come to the church, but that eventually our job is to tell them “the truth,” which is that they are full of sin and need to repent and to work relentlessly not to be evil.  His main question in the article was how one might navigate that bait and switch.  He knew we wanted to be nice, and that niceness attracts people, but deep down he believed that the main “truth” people needed to hear is that they are full of evil and must remain vigilant to fight the dreadful darkness within.  That was essentially his message. 

I would say he was thoroughly trapped in the false belief that truth has to hurt.  Where is the gospel?  Where is the good news?  I have to say, I am helped by remembering that God’s love is far more powerful than the darkness any day. Please don't point at the darkness and tell me to be afraid; point at the light and offer me hope.

That notion—that the way to heaven must be hard and full of struggle, and that we haven’t had a spiritual experience unless we’ve been made to feel bad about ourselves—is rampant throughout the Christian world.  But it is a false notion. 

Suffering and feeling bad about ourselves is an inevitable part of our human condition. But it isn’t innately spiritual. Suffering is just suffering.  It can help deepen our spiritual experience, but it isn’t necessary in order for us to become deeply spiritual.  Neither is deprivation of comfort somehow spiritual, nor is poverty, nor is celibacy. And self-loathing blocks us from feeling God's love unless it can be healed back to neutrality. Every experience life brings us can teach us, but negative experiences and suffering do not need to be sought to prove we are spiritual.  They will find us, regardless!

This is the same false principle that says that a “real truth,” like a “real man,” must be battling something or conquering something or punishing something to be REAL truth, just like the (senseless and hurtful) idea that a man must be rough and hard and a bit of a bully to be a real man. 

Boys of all ages continue to tease and bully other boys if they show any signs of softness in our culture. This is a practice so deeply ingrained in our male culture that it is hardly even questioned, yet it is pervasive and deeply damaging to the male psyche. I believe that this is a reflection of our false idea about what truth is supposed to be. If you asked, “What would Jesus teach our boys?  I’m guessing “Turn the other cheek” would be a lot more like it, not “Have bigger guns than anybody else.”

It is love, not harshness that conquers all.  Listen to our text: “[The] word that goes out from my mouth…will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”

Those are phrases of absolute power, yet they are devoid of intimidation or coercion. 

Love and wisdom together accomplish God’s purpose.  The Word, proceeding from Gods mouth, which is everything and every way God communicates love and wisdom with us, will accomplish all it sets out to do, with gentleness, persistence. 

I hope you collected even a few gems from the bounty in today’s text.  The more time I spend with God’s Word, the more I see that the Bible is one big love letter from God. Every single phrase in today’s passage overflowed with the story of the God’s great love for us, and of that love’s infinite power to effect God’s will. 

Without bullying or force, without harshness or brutality, Love will do what it sets out to do.  However you understand that, it is the gospel. 

Love wins indeed!  : D

Amen

Originally preached July 10, 2011, Kitchener, Ontario. Revised

Closing Prayer

We have gathered together in the spirit of love and freedom. We have rested our cares in God’s strong and powerful hands.  We have reflected on the way God’s Love sweeps us all towards heaven as gently and relentlessly as the sun calls the seeds to grow. May we remember this as we go forward into our week ahead, that though life may wrap brambles around our feet, God is working powerfully to turn them into shade trees and shelter.  May we remember that every prickly person and stinging word we encounter can some day be transformed into compassionate angels and warm encouragements.  May we seek to see the ways we sting and ensnare others, that we might be healed, and instead give smiles of encouragement and a helping hand.   For what we give we will receive, and what we would receive we must give.  In gratitude for all that You give us, Lord—for freedom, for love—may we learn to give freely in return.

The Readings

Heaven and Hell 57

You were created that you might come into heaven and become an angel. Anyone who has goodness from the Lord within is a kind of angel-on-earth.  What you have in common with an angel is that your inner nature is designed in the image of heaven, and so far as you are living from good will guided by a faith in God, you become an image of heaven. Mortals on earth also have an outer nature shaped by the culture of the world around you; yet so far as you are living from genuine good will toward others, your outer nature will be subordinate to heaven and will serve heaven. When this happens, the Lord is present with you in both worlds, just as if you were in heaven. 

Isaiah 55:10-13

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. Instead of the thorn-bush will grow the pine tree, and instead of briers the myrtle will grow. This will be for the LORD's renown, for an everlasting sign, which will not be destroyed.

Matthew 13: 1-9

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop--a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. He who has ears, let him hear.”