“A Love Story”

“A Love Story”

Text: John 3:1-17

©February 17, 2008 by C. Edward Bowen at Crafton United Presbyterian Church.

One evening a teenage boy and girl went out on a date together. They had gone out to eat and to a movie, and they had had a really good time. Well, as the date was about to come to an end, as the boy walked the girl to her front door, he took her hand and as their eyes met, he said, “Can I kiss you?” But to his great surprise, the girl just stood there, smiling, not saying a word.

“Oh,” the boy thought to himself. “I know what the problem is. I didn’t use the proper grammar. I shouldn’t have said, ‘Can I kiss you?’, I should have said, ‘May I kiss you?’” So the boy took a deep breath, looked the girl in the eye again, and with proper grammar he asked her, “May I kiss you?” But still the girl just stood there, smiling, and not saying a word.

Well, as you might imagine, the boy was frustrated and confused and so he blurted out, “What’s the matter? Are you deaf?” The girl just smiled and said, “What’s the matter? Are you paralyzed?”[1]

Are we paralyzed? When it comes to kissing the world around us, when it comes to showing God’s love to people, are we paralyzed? Right here in this passage that we just listened to from the Gospel of John, one of the best-known and most cherished passages in all of the Bible, we’re told in no uncertain terms that God loves the world. And so if God loves the world, and if we’re supposed to be God’s people, why are we so often paralyzed? Why are we so often paralyzed when it comes to showing God’s love to the world around us?

A major problem today is that there are many churches around that aren’t interested in announcing God’s love to people. Instead, they’re really quick to tell you who God hates, who God disapproves of, who God is against. And amid all the Bible-thumping tirades that you come across, there’s a message that those churches seem to go out of their way to ignore, and that message is this: that God loves the world. In fact, God loves the world so much, the Gospel of John says, that God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through him.

But as far as some churches are concerned, that’s just not a message they’re interested in communicating. For instance, maybe you’ve heard about the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. They’re the congregation that sends church members all around the country to protest at the funerals of servicemen who have been killed in Iraq. They stand outside funeral homes and at the edge of cemeteries and heckle the mourners. And their logic for doing that is this: They figure that the reason that men and women are dying in Iraq is because it’s God’s way of punishing the United States for being a sinful country and for being ignorant about the Bible. But even though a judge in Maryland recently fined that church $5 million for harassing people, the church says it’s not going to stop. They say they’re not going to stop letting people know how angry God is and how much God hates what’s going on in our world.

But is that what God wants us to be doing? Are we really supposed to be in the business of announcing to people God’s anger, wrath, and vengeance? I don’t think so. No, I believe that our first and primary mission is to be in the business of announcing to people God’s love, announcing to people that God loves the world.

Over the years many people have read these words in the Gospel of John and assumed that all that truly matters is that you “accept Jesus into your heart.” Over the years many people have read these words in the Gospel of John and assumed that all that truly matters is that you believe in Jesus, that the rest of the world can go to heck in a handcart, because as long as you believe in Jesus, when you die you get to go heaven, and that’s all that’s important.

But nowadays even many conservative Christians, like Charles Colson, are saying that just “accepting Jesus into your heart” is not the whole story of what Christianity is all about.[2] Yes, accepting Jesus into your heart is a part of what Christianity is about, but there’s more to it than that. If we really want to be serious about being disciples of Jesus, then we can’t just keep God’s love in our hearts – no, we need to allow that love to shape what we do with our lives so that we might then reach out and share that love of God with the world around us.

From history class in school, you’re probably aware that there were certain times in American history when religious revivals took place. Sometimes those periods were called Great Awakenings. They were times in American history when, seemingly all of a sudden, a large number of people had a renewed interest in the Christian faith and flocked into churches. But historians note that every time we’ve had a real period of revival, or a real period of Great Awakening, not only was it a time when people’s hearts were touched by the love of God, but it was also a time when that love of God had a major impact on the world outside of the church.

For instance, the so-called First Great Awakening took place from around 1730 to 1740 as people rushed to hear great preachers like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. And a result of that period of religious revival was not only that people had their hearts touched by the love of God, but that period of revival also led people to see that changes needed to take place in their society, in the British colonies here in North America. And in large part, that First Great Awakening was responsible for motivating those early Americans to bring about drastic changes, eventually resulting in America’s independence from Great Britain.

Likewise, from about 1800 to 1830, during another period of revival, during the so-called Second Great Awakening, the love of God that people felt in their hearts again had an impact on the society. And this time that spiritual revival was the spark that got things in motion to eventually bring an end to slavery.[3] In other words, when the love of God really enters people’s hearts, that love of God doesn’t stop there. Instead, that love of God enters people’s hearts and then pushes them out to share that love with the world in powerful ways. That love of God pushes people out to make a real difference in the world.

My impression, though, is that by and large that’s not happening in many churches these days. When you flip through the local newspaper and read about area churches, what are the churches doing? Most likely they’re playing bingo, having a fish fry, or holding a rummage sale. Don’t get me wrong: there’s nothing inherently evil or sinful about bingo or fish fries or rummage sales. But many people nowadays look at different churches and they don’t say, “Boy, look at how the people in that church are filled with God’s love, and look at how they’re showing that love to the community around them to make a real difference!” No, many people nowadays look at different churches and say, “That’s a good place to play bingo” or “That’s a good place to go and eat” or “That’s a good place to go and buy low-priced used underwear.”

We’re here as the church of Jesus Christ not because God loves the church, but because God loves the world. And so especially in recent months we’ve been trying to get ourselves into the mindset that that is where we need to be. And in the relatively short time that we’ve been putting an emphasis on doing that, on getting out of the church and getting in to the community around us, it’s been rather amazing what’s already begun to happen.

For instance, one of the things I’ve been doing this year is attending the meetings of Crafton’s borough council. Doing that is certainly not the most exciting way to spend a Wednesday night, and there aren’t exactly stand-room-only crowds that show up. But at each meeting they have a place on the agenda where they allow people from the community to speak. And so at one of their meetings in January I got up and talked for about a minute and a half about the food pantry, to make sure the council members were aware that we have a food pantry, and to make them aware that we’re constantly in need of donations so that we can keep helping people in the area.

Well, I have to admit that I was somewhat shocked when the local newspaper, the Signal Item, came out the next week and my speech was the headline on page 3. And because of the article that was printed in the newspaper, the next day a woman from the community called up the church, said she had no idea that so many people in Crafton needed help with food, and she has gone on to organize a community-wide food drive that’s going on right now, and she’s enlisted the public library and one of the local businesses to help with the collecting. I believe that just goes to show that if we’re willing to step outside the church and try to spread the word about God’s love and what God is up to, there’s no telling what’s just waiting to happen.

In the same way with the rest of the church staff, we’re encouraging everyone to get out of the church and get in to the community. And so Tricia, our Outreach Coordinator, has been making extra visits with older adults in the area. And because of those visits, she’s now been invited to meet with the Tenant’s Council at the Crafton Towers senior citizen highrise to discuss with them about how our church might get more involved in building relationships with and showing God’s love to the older adults who live there.

Likewise, we’ve been encouraging Mike, our Coordinator of Youth, Family, and Young Adult Ministry, to get out of the church and in to the community. And so this last week Mike went and met with the principal at Crafton Elementary School. And one of the results of their meeting is that the school is going to be willing to work with us so that eventually on Wednesdays we’ll be able to gather up the Youth Club kids at the school and walk them down as a group to the church. That’s something that we haven’t been able to organize in the past, and since we haven’t been able to supervise the kids walking from the school to the church, the parents of a lot of the younger kids at the elementary school have been hesitant to let them come to Youth Club. But now, by building on that relationship with the principal, we’re looking forward to substantially increasing the number of kindergarteners, and first and second graders who are going to be able to come to Youth Club and experience God’s love.

God loves the world. And because God loves the world, God’s love can’t stay bottled up inside our hearts or inside our church building. No, God loves the world, and so that means that our job, our mission, is to take that love of God that we’ve experienced in our lives and carry it out to our neighborhoods, out to our schools, out to everywhere we go. And if we dare to do that, there’s no telling what kind of great and amazing things are just waiting to happen.