Where I come from, the real religion is basketball. Baptists, Methodists, and Catholics all take a distant back seat, because the real religion in the Commonwealth of Kentucky is basketball. No spring day goes by without every schoolboy finding his way to the hoops to do lay-ups and to dream about playing in Rupp Arena, wearing the blue and white of the University of Kentucky Wildcats.
And so this boy, at the age of ten, idolized the Fabulous Five. That’s THE Fabulous Five, the 1948 Kentucky club. Your school may have had a fabulous five, but it wasn’t this fabulous five. These were the originals. Bill Spivey, whom they always announced as standing 7 feet, one and one-quarter inches. Not sure why if you are already that far into the stratosphere that last quarter inch needs to be mentioned, but it was. Ralph Beard, the fastest thing on two feet. Cliff Hagan, every mother’s dream, with his dashing good looks and his deacon’s demeanor. These guys had a winning streak of twenty-five games, and I was obsessed with listening to them on my scratchy old radio. If the Lord had called me home to heaven that year, I would have asked that my mansion be built in Lexington behind the scorer’s table. It was a great season.
Now Kentucky plays in the Southeastern Conference. Incidentally, in case you missed it, they just this week won that conference title again, for the 37th time! The Southeastern Conference includes some fine teams, but it has its share of also-rans, the really bad clubs. And the baddest of the bad that year was Georgia Tech. Everybody beat Georgia Tech. Where Kentucky had won twenty-five games, Tech had lost twenty-five games. And now they were to play each other twice, home and home, first in Atlanta and then in Lexington.
Everybody knew how those games would come out. It was no contest. Georgia Tech was so bad, in fact, that Kentucky didn’t even put its Fabulous Five out to start the game. They were very confident.
But Georgia Tech pulled out a slowdown strategy against Kentucky’s patented fast break, and I remember sagging limply into my chair when the game was over and lowly Tech had beaten mighty Kentucky. I think the score was something like 58-55. Unbelievable, humiliating!
But never mind, we’ll get ’em next week, especially in Lexington. Nobody beats Kentucky in Lexington. Wrong! The very same thing happened. The worst of the worst beat the best of the best. Incredible! Everybody waited to see what Coach Adolph Rupp would do about this.
The very next morning he had the Wildcats out in the gym. And what do you think he had them doing? Learning some fancy new strategy? Developing some sophisticated new defense? Not at all. He had them dribbling the ball; shooting free throws; practicing passing; rehearsing defense. He had them working on the basics, just the rock bottom basics.
You see, they had gotten so good at what they did that they forgot to pay attention to the basics. They had become so sophisticated, so complicated, that they had lost sight of just the plain vanilla fundamentals. The coach knew that the reason they were defeated was that they had become so over-confident, so cocky, that they had abandoned the fundamental things you have to do when you play basketball.
It’s good to be accomplished. It’s good to know many things. It’s fine to be sophisticated. But if you have lost track of some basics, you’re going to lose out. It’s time to get back to basics.
The Lord Jesus said to the Church at Ephesus, you are accomplished. You’ve done some fine things. I commend you for it all. "But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first." Or, as another translation puts it, "You have lost your first love." Church, you need to go back to basics; you need to remember what church is all about. "I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first."
Let’s look at what the Christians at Ephesus had accomplished and see if we can figure out how they abandoned the love they had.
I
First, the Lord tells the church, "I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance." I know your works. You have been busy. You have accomplished a good deal. You have stayed by the stuff. And that’s great. But, in the midst of all your hard work, you have abandoned the love you had at first.
I think He is talking about the love they had for the world around them. The love they had for a lost and dying world. It was that love that motivated them to be a busy and working church there in Ephesus. But they had gotten so busy being busy they had abandoned their love for others.
Did you look at our church’s calendar for March? Jammed full, isn’t it? You could just about live in this church building if you went to everything that is offered. Somebody saw me toiling away in my office the other night and offered to move a cot in for me. We know what it is to be busy around here. "I know your works."
And more than that, we know what it is to be busy for others. Within just the past year and a half we have organized a marriage enrichment group, a single parent action group, the visitation volunteers, the SHARE team, and the Reclaiming Our Youth team. And there is more to come. We are living out of a vision of service to others. "I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance."
And yet, says the Lord, "I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first." It is tough to keep on loving the world when the world is unlovely and unkempt and uncooperative.
The volunteers in our Wednesday Club know this. They know that some of the folks who come here week by week try their patience and are hard to deal with. And even harder to eat with! But we keep working at it and praying about it, don’t we, because what would be the point of Wednesday Club if we did not love our guests? What would be the point of any service if we did not love those we were serving?
I had a pastor friend who liked to say, tongue in cheek, that he could be a great pastor if it weren’t for having to deal with all those people! Sermons could be flawless, the building could be clean, and the schedule could be predictable, if it just weren’t for these people! He didn’t mean it, of course, but it still makes my point. You and I are going to have a chaotic church, the more we get into ministries with the world. It won’t be easy and it won’t be neat. But if we get back to the basics and love them, authentically love them, ours will be a genuine church.
Back to basics. The Lord knows we are working hard. But He also wants to know that we love the world we are working so hard to serve.
II
A second step. A second way in which the Lord commends His church, but at the same time calls us back to basics.
"I know that you cannot tolerate evildoers; you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them to be false." "But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first."
The church at Ephesus had become very adept at discerning what was right and what was wrong, what was true and what was false. They had become expert at defining what they believed and what they did not believe. They knew their values; they knew very well who they were and what they wanted. And all of that the Lord commends. That’s good. You should do that.
But church, in your eagerness to discern right and wrong and truth and error, have you abandoned the love you first had for one another? Has it become easy for you to put each other down without trying to understand or love one another? Back to basics, church! Love one another, as I have loved you.
Friends, this is one of the areas in which we at Takoma still have work to do. We have, like the ancient church at Ephesus, become very adept at defining who we are and who we are not. We know what we stand for and what we are against, many of us; but have we abandoned the love we had for one another? Have we lost sight of something so basic that without it all our doctrines and our programs mean nothing?
Some of us have decided that worship should be quiet, ordered, structured, and, if at all possible, finished in an hour’s time. That’s a value that some have and hold to strongly and defend with all kinds of arguments.
Others of us have determined that worship should be vigorous, spontaneous, free, and never mind the clock. That’s a value that some bring from their background and others bring as a part of their personality. And they hold to that quite strongly and defend that with very sophisticated reasoning.
Fine. Define and decide, defend and declare, all day long. It’s all right with me. I agree with everybody and I agree with nobody. But the issue is, can we still love others who don’t see it the way we see it? Can we speak the truth in love? I am still haunted by the memory of my mentor, a pastor who taught me so very much, but who got fired from four churches during his career, because, as one person put it, "He did all the right things in all the wrong ways. He did not love his people."
You know the Scripture, "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am just like the noisy gong and the clanging cymbal. It means nothing." And he might also have said, though I like noisy gongs and clanging cymbals, if I do not have love for my brothers and sisters who have different needs, I am nothing.
Back to basics, brothers and sisters. The Lord knows we have become very skilled at standing up for what we want. But He also wants to know 1hat we love one another.
III
But there is one more level. There is yet a deeper way in which the Lord commends His church, but still calls us back to basics.
Reviewing: "I know your works" .. but you have abandoned your love for the world you are serving. "I know you have tested [what] is false" .. but you have abandoned your love for one another.
Now, "I also know that you are enduring patiently and bearing up for the sake of my name, and that you have not grown weary." "But ... I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first."
You have kept on keeping on. You have tried to stay loyal to Christian causes and your church. You have done your daily Bible readings and you have given your tithes and you have served on committees and you have called up the prayer phone every single day ... you’ve tried to do it all.
Anything wrong with that? Anything wrong with being a faithful, diligent, conscientious church member? No, not a thing. "I know that you are enduring patiently and bearing up for the sake of my name, and that you have not grown weary. You haven’t burned out, or at least you haven’t admitted it. You haven’t given up doing the right things.
But ... have some of us who have tried to be loyal and faithful, some of us who are church mice … have we abandoned even the love we had at first for God Himself? . Have we forgotten what it is just to be in love with the living Lord? Just to cast off the shackles of being dutiful and proper and correct, and simply to love Him, love Him with a pure and open heart. Love Him with heart and soul and mind and strength.
Oh, can you remember that rush of enthusiasm when first you knew the Lord? Can you remember those moments of wonderful passion, when you just did what you did out of sheer love and faith? I can remember, as a teenager, in my first job, being challenged to give one day’s pay to support our Baptist children’s home! One day’s pay; sounds like a lot. Well, I was making the grand sum of fifty-five cents an hour as a drugstore delivery boy, and one day’s pay came to about $5.00. I can still remember putting that $5.00 in the offering plate, with such joy and such excitement. I did it out of love. Couldn’t afford it, had lots of other things I could have done with it ... but it was done out of sheer love for God.
Well, I’ve given thousands of dollars to Christian causes since then. My wife and I have tithed and more than tithed to this church ever since we’ve been here. But I do not know that there has ever been, in all of that, the rush of joy I felt with that first $5.00. The hymn writer says, "Where is the blessedness I knew when first I sought the Lord? Where is the soul’s refreshing view of Jesus and His word?"
Oh, men and women, this morning let’s get back to basics. Let’s just let it happen for us. Take off the restraints and let it happen. Take off the shackles, get rid of the inhibitions. In the midst of being faithful, in the midst of doing all the right things, don’t miss the sheer energy of grace. Don’t abandon the excitement of His love. Love Him, because He first loved you. Delight in Him, because He has called you His own. Rejoice in Him, because to us to live is Christ and to die is even more Christ.
Back to basics. Back to a relationship, intimate and personal, with our Christ. Love Him, love Him, love Him, pure, free, wonderful,
intoxicating, joyful. Love Him.
For behold, what manner of love is this, that we should be called the children of God.
