Love

Scripture to be read: Romans 5:5-8

Summertime brings bright sunshine and dark storm clouds. Summertime provides endless heat and the joy of cool, refreshing swims. Summertime offers moments of relaxation, but for most of us, it is anything but an entire season of vacation. In fact, summertime can be surprisingly busy. Many of you may know well just how busy summer can be: Grass needs to be mowed, weeds need picked, flowers need water, bills need paid, children need rides, and vacations need planning, organizing, and execution. As we approach the summer midpoint, it may become apparent that summer is not the season of quietude it often gets cracked up to be. I hear all the time, “I can't wait for summer, then I can relax,” and “All I need is a vacation.” And this is often true, a vacation can be a rejuvinating experience. But if I remember correctly, half of my summer vacations as a child seemed awfully tedious. We had to drive and visit relatives. We slept on foreign beds and ate strange food. Many times I would hear my parents talk about how tired they felt after our vacations.

The truth is vacations are only a brief absence of the usual stresses. Vacations are not void of all stress or hardship: Motels must be booked, flights planned and bags packed. Kids have to be rounded up and alarms must be set. And through it all, the money we spend is never far from our minds. We still must keep a watchfull eye on our wallets to ensure we don't fall victim to a vacation that produces new and uninvited debt.

So here we are amidst the busyness of summertime. The sun is shining, the days are hot, and the air conditioning is running as fast and hard as it can... in fact I have had several air conditioners pass me on the interstate as I travel. They were being run so hard they actually left altogether. But seriously, summer is here and stress is not entirely relieved, if at all. Responsibility does not cease at the beckoning of a season. Rather it fluctuates to demand new responses from us. We don't have to pay for heating, but the cooling bill sure isn't fun. We don't have to shop for christmas gifts, but the summer activities of the kids seem to require as much or more preparation, transportation, time, and effort.

Maybe this is not how you have typically seen summer. We all experience our days in unique and distinct ways. But my summer has been this way. As you may know, I have been working at a summer camp in Indiana; as much as fifty hours a week. I have few days off and yet travel in my spare time to Perryville to begin the transition process to student pastor of this church. There is housing to be taken care of, cell phone coverage to switch, substitute teaching applications to complete, graduate school research to be undertaken, and much, much more. What ever happened to the quiet summer of work and play I had envisioned during spring? It dissipated as visions of grandeur often do when confronted with reality.

My summer has been busy. Yours probably has been too. In fact, if you judge your summer by the academic schedule, halfway was quite some time ago. Summer went by quickly. And as summer has raced by I have found myself in ever increasing need of peace and tranquility. The desire for solitude and quietude echoes in my heart. It may do so in yours too. Don't you find yourself in those busy moments wishing you could escape to the peace of silence and self-reflection? Sometimes I'm so busy I don't have even have time for those thoughts to spring up. Have you had summers like that?

I hope you can identify with me as I paint the background of this morning's message. I believe this is not unfamiliar territory. I sense that many of you are or have been right here with me. At this juncture it is important to explain that the busy, chaotic, and hectic nature of the summer is not an inescapable imprisonment. We create and construct the conditions that bring chaos, stress, and endless streams of activities into our lives. We are concerned with all our life-dreams, goals, and aspirations that we pack our lives to the brim with an unending number of things. These things are the events, activites, and plans that will turn all our dreams and desires into accomplisments and achievements.

Accomplisments and achievements are not bad in themselves, they are great. But the American way of life has created a society and a culture on the “go.” We are on the move, tackling one task, then another. Moving from responsibility to responsibility, chore to chore, errand to errand, task to task. This is where I have been... this is where I have lived. This is where many of you have been. This is where many of you are. And for some, this is where you will be soon enough. And as I drove to Perryville this week thinking to myself what message I would bring before you all, God tapped me on the shoulder just hard enough to get my attention. And God said: “Michael, I Love you.”

Now this may not seem that profound or amazing. I have known since Sunday School as a small child that God loves me. I have given lessons about God's love and enjoyed songs celebrating the endless Love of God. But for that moment, in the middle of a busy and stressful summer, God said “I Love you” and it struck me.

“Wow.” I whispered outloud to myself. And after those words registered... I stopped. I had just pulled into the driveway here at church, and I didn't get out to unload my stuff. I didn't think about all the things I had to accomplish in the few short hours ahead. No, I just stopped. I didn't try to relax, I didn't make plans to have no plans. And I thought about what it meant for God to say “I Love you.” And I think that this is what God wants for you to hear today: “I Love you.” So take a moment to stop. I mean let's all just stop. Right here. Right now. Everyone close your eyes and listen to God as he tells you: “I Love you.” Let those words sink in. Let God speak to you and truly listen. God is saying: “I Love you.” You don't have to do anything for this Love. There are no strings, fine print or further details. It is always available and never ceases. God Loves you.

And its funny, I had been thinking about what message could speak to you this morning. I was so concentrated on finding a topic that would be transformative and profound, and God said “stop looking for what everyone else might need... because what I have to give, you need as well.” And then I decided to share with you what God shared with me... the simple and beautiful words: “I Love you.” Think about that: God Loves you.

And here are some verses to illustrate how some responded to the realization of God's Love. This is how they describe it:
Psalms 36:5
Jeremiah 31:3
Ephesians 2:4-5
Romans 5:5
Romans 5:8
Psaml 100:5

And then there are these words, which we probably all know by heart. They are famous words from the Gospel of John. But I am not going to read all of them, just the first part of this famous verse:

John 3:16

Guess what? You and I, we are that “World.” And here is the amazing thing about God's Love: It is absolute, unconditional, endless. We don't have to ask “why?” There is no reason attached. There is no justification that needs to be made. God just Loves you. The verses talk about a ceaseless, powerful Love, that pre-exists all of our insufficiencies. It doesn't matter what we do, God still loves us. In fact, the word unconditional is only understood in terms of the absolute. An unconditional Love is one that is absolute. Love is there no matter what conditions exist. We can be as terrible or wonderful as anyone in the world, and God still Loves us. There is nothing we can do, no place we can hide, nothing will ever blockade the Love of the Most High God. God IS Love. People have tried to grasp the nature of God's existence. How did God come to be? Or how is it that God can just be? One thing we do attest to: God is. Some of us don't know or have an explanation for how God exists. We just affirm: God is there. God just IS. And because God is Love, Love is just there. We don't know how it got there, but it just is. God simply Loves us.
There is a story about a man from San Diego I recently read about that speaks about the very nature of God's Love for us:

Every single day, Art hears some kind of gay joke or comment made by the people he works with. This may not bother some, but as a 26-year veteran of the police force, Art says he doesn't appreciate the comments nor does he tolerate it - especially coming from those sworn to protect everyone. "It just tears me apart to hear those things from my peers because now it's about my daughter," Art says.

Believing that he was open-minded and accepting of all kinds of people, he was put to the test two years ago when his wife, Pamela, told him that his oldest child is gay. "My wife was helping Michelle move home from college when I got, 'the call,'" Art says. "I was up all night...in turmoil...thinking what had I done wrong? Maybe I was too hard on her...all these things about me". Art says when he realized that this wasn't about him but about his daughter, that's when the acceptance began. "I picked up the phone and told her, 'I don't understand this, but I love you.' It was important that my daughter knew that I loved her no matter what."

The father of three, went on to say that having a child doesn't mean you can place conditions on how to love them. "When I had my daughter, I didn't say I am going to love this child as long as she is this, this and this," Art says, "I saw her and I knew that I loved her more than anything else in the world. Just because she is gay, it doesn't change anything. "My daughter is a beautiful girl who is entitled to be who she is. I'll support her until I am not around, and I am not going to apologize for that. I love her and I always will."

This is not a story about the morality of homosexuality. This is a story about a man who didn't want his daughter to be something that she became, and then, Loved her still.

God entitles us to be who we are. It is the simultaneous Gift and Burden of Free Will. But despite how we fall, despite becoming people that God may not want us to be... God still Loves us.

This simple Truth is an easy one to overlook. Busy schedules and hectic, stressful lives can cloud our minds from the animating reality of God's unconditional Love. But today, I ask that you would reapproach the concept of God's Love. Let God saturate you with the Unconditional Love that God offers. Let the Love of God resonate in your heart, and let it bring you to a place of peace, quietude, tranquility and self-reflection. Re-evaluate yourself in the light of God's Love. You have endless worth to God because God endlessly Loves you. This is a revitalizing and stimulating Truth, one that needs our attention. So I hope this morning your minds have been focused on the Love of God. I hope and pray that this reminds you of the unconditional worth you have as children of God. Art realized that his love was not dependent on whether his child would be this, this, or that. God too does not care what you are or have become, he simply Loves you regardless.

May your summer be colored with the Love of God. May your lives be filled with God's Love and may it overflow to the people around you. May you be re-energized by the value and worth God finds in you as God places God's Love upon your entire being. As you leave here this morning and return to the busyness of summertime, remember: God Loves you. And if necessary, as I know it was for me... just stop. Just stop and hear God tell you: “I Love you.”