A Glimpse of Boundless Love
Homecoming at Mulberry UMC, Otto, NC
Ephesians 3:14-21
Thank you for asking me to come preach for Homecoming. One of the joys of preaching for homecoming is that it is an opportunity to reminisce, to ponder how God has been active in my life. I realized this when I took to heart someone's suggestion that you would like for me to reminisce and share some of my story. As I thought back to Homecomings of the past, one of the most powerful things that happened was the sharing of stories over lunch, sharing that expressed the joy and sorrow of a journey we call faith. So today I will try to share some of the story of my faith journey with you. One of the things we realize when we look closely at our faith stories is that we do not make this journey alone. Our story isn't our own and my story doesn't belong just to me. My story is a story of God at work in my life through many of you.
This invitation to preach Homecoming is also another sign of your love and support, which has been a special blessing as I started serving as a pastor. Your words of encouragement have affirmed this new direction of my faith journey. But what meant the most to me was your prayers as I began this stage of my journey. Knowing that you were praying for me on your own and here at church, on those first few Sundays, was a source of comfort and peace.
Those prayers were what I thought of when I discerned that the prayer for the Ephesians was going to be the Scripture lesson for today. I know that my extended family – not just those who are my aunts and uncles and cousins, but all of my brothers and sisters in Christ who have called Mulberry home and who came today because I'm here – have offered similar prayers for me over the years. Many of you began offering those prayers when you committed to live as examples of Christ and surround me with love when I was baptized.
You began the work of showing me love in your actions, in your words, and in the songs you sing. One of the first ways we learn about and proclaim God's love as children is singing "Jesus Loves Me". Aunt Veva sang with us every week when we were little. "Jesus Loves Me" and "Jesus Loves the Little Children of the World" were two of the songs we sang most often. Whether I grasped the concept or not, those words were being placed in my memory. They are words that shaped the lens through which I examine what I think about Jesus, his love for me, and his love for others.
Later in Sunday school, I would learn Bible stories and discuss what they meant. Over the years, we talked about Jesus' love and what it means to faithfully live as a disciple, but what made the most difference is the love that my teachers shared with me. They listened and took an interest in what was going on in my life. They offered words of affirmation and encouragement. Their actions and their words re-presented Christ's love.
Every week, whether we had "preaching" or not, we had a time of worship – worship that included singing hymns, reading Scripture, and praying together as a congregation. These three elements have shaped my faith. They have provided me with an example of what it means to live together as a community of faith bound together by worship, a basic knowledge of Scripture, and phrases from hymns that continue to sustain me and help me express my faith. One of the songs we sang frequently was "I Love to Tell the Story". I mentioned this to my Spiritual Director who didn't miss a beat and said, "That's what you are doing." I hadn't really thought about how I was living out what I grew up singing. It is a hymn that has come to mind often as I prepared for today. This hymn expresses wonder and awe of Jesus' love and the need to keep hearing and telling that story, even to those who know it best – which is where I find myself today.
Not only did I learn that Jesus loved me, but also that faith was something that grew over time with our growing knowledge and wisdom gained from experience. I even learned that it was good to question how what I was learning from school, even in science, related to the Bible stories that I was taught as a child. One afternoon while we were mowing the church yard and cemetery, and Mrs. Foster was cleaning inside; I took a break. I sat down on the steps where Mr. Foster was sitting. We began talking and he asked me what I thought about evolution and creation. When I've shared this story, people often ask how I answered. I don't remember exactly – what I remember clearly is the question. It still amazes me that he would want to talk to me – a teenager about and really care about what I thought. Maybe that was what was most important – learning that it was okay to think about science and theology. Mr. Foster's question was one that forced me to do just that – think about what I believe and why, and how it relates to everything else around me.
This is how I spent much of my faith journey – thinking about what I believe. I could do that because I had been provided a firm foundation and a safe environment - an environment where I was loved. What I didn't realize at the time was just how much I was loved. I had always received affirmation for following the rules and meeting expectations, which can create a sense of earning love by doing what is expected, what should be done, or what is my duty. This connection between affirmation and achievement can blur the difference between approval and love. This meant that on some level I kept trying to earn God's approval and love. I kept serving in whatever church that I attended out of a sense of duty, not from a sense of gratitude, love and devotion. I knew Jesus loved me, I had been singing those words since I was very young, but I knew them in my head, and only thought I knew them in my heart.
So much of what I believed was only in my head. It was deeply etched into my memory, but I'm not sure that I really understood it. I understood the meaning of the words, but I didn't experience them or connect to them with my heart. I had been offered love as the foundation of faith, but really didn't fully know – in my head and in my heart - the extent of Christ's love for me.
Someone once said that to me that the distance from head to heart is a long journey, when it is a journey of faith. It was for me. When we moved to from Knoxville to Waynesville, I was exposed to theology that questioned what I had been taught as a child. I was forced to really think about my faith. I began to realize that for me faith was really what I thought not what I experienced in my heart. I began seeking to learn more about prayer and to practice different ways of praying. I took a class that was less about learning what was in the Bible and more about learning about how I related to what was in the Bible.
One afternoon after yet another meeting "doing the work of the church", I was talking to a friend who asked me what God expected of me. I quickly accessed from my head knowledge, Micah 6, verse 8, "…to do justice, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." She shook her head, and asked me what God would say to me. I had no idea what God might say to me – maybe that he loved me, maybe what still needed to be done. Her response changed the way I understood God's love. She told me that God would tell me "you are my beloved daughter with whom I'm pleased." I'd never thought about God being pleased with me. I had been so busy trying to earn God's approval that I was missing the joy of being loved by God and responding to that love.
That conversation challenged me to redefine the extents of God's love. God loves me even when I haven't met other's expectations, when I haven't achieved what I think I should be able to do, and even when I fail. God's love is far greater than something I can earn. I cannot earn God's love. I cannot even understand the full extent of God's love. The prayer for the Ephesians includes the petition, "I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth of and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."
For someone who likes to think, and sometimes thinks too much, it is a bit of a shock to realize that faith is all about something that I can never comprehend. God's love must be experienced. God's love is something that we don't have words to accurately describe. This love offered to us by Christ must be experienced in our heart and known in our heads and even then we only have a glimpse of the extent of this love.
Mulberry had provided me a glimpse of that love and I will always be thankful for the love that I experienced and the lessons that I learned here. But, my experiences here and the lessons I learned were only the beginning of a journey that will last a lifetime. A journey on which, even as I continue to grow by adding to the knowledge in my head, I must remember to connect that knowledge to what I experience in my heart. Only then, can I be filled with the fullness of God and live the abundant life Christ offered.
I cannot fully understand the full extent of Christ's love for me, but on this journey we are often blessed with glimpses of Christ's love for us and realize that all we can do is stand in awe of this love that knows no human bounds. The more we learn, the more we know we have to learn. I think that Katherine Hankey, the author of "I Love to Tell the Story", might have understood this because in the last verse she states that even those who know the story of Jesus' love best hunger and thirst to hear it again. We need to hear and tell this story over and over again. We need to experience this story anew, because at different times on our journey we need to be reassured of God's love for us.
Our journeys will have many moments when we realize that we only thought we knew how much God loved us, or the extent of the love we have in Christ. I've been richly blessed because Mulberry offered me glimpses of Christ's love throughout my life. Many of you have been faithful examples that shaped me and prepared me for this stage of my journey. You have often prayed for me to grow in Christ, to be strengthened, and to be filled with power. Your prayers have helped me experience and share this story of Jesus' love.
Even though I know that you are the ones who know the story of Jesus' love for us, I encourage you to explore Christ's love the way Eugene Peterson paraphrases the prayer for the Ephesians: "Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God." You don't have to go on a great adventure to explore Christ's love, you only need to reflect on your journey and to look around at each other. Just remember that this is a life long journey where we cannot possibly reach the end of God's love for us.
Therefore, I offer this prayer:
Gracious and loving God, who binds us together as one great extended family, grant us a strength that comes from the power of the Holy Spirit filling our very beings and the peace that comes from the assurance that Christ dwells in our hearts through faith. Lord grant that our faith may be grounded and rooted in the love Christ showed us. Grant us the power to begin to know and experience the full extent of the love of Christ even though such love is far beyond what we can understand. Grant that as we grow in your love we might be filled with the fullness of your Spirit to live the abundant life you offer us as your beloved children, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
