Transformation Series, Week 1
Love Enough to Give It All
Matthew 22:34-40
A massively built woman with wild hair came storming into the clerk’s office and slammed the door shut behind her. She thrust a piece of paper at the clerk, she said, “Did you or did you not issue this license for me to marry Jacob Jones?”
The clerk looked at the document carefully, and replied, “Yes, ma’am, I believe I did. Why do you ask?”
“Because,” she said, “he has escaped, and I want to know what you plan to do about it!”
Run, Jacob Jones! Run, and don’t ever look back!
Real love can only be found where there is freedom. As children grow older and begin to wrestle with faith issues, I have often heard them ask, “Why didn’t God make everyone so that they would all love him and obey him?” And the answer is simple: “Where there is no freedom, there can be no love. So from the start, God gave us the freedom to choose whether we would embrace him and follow him, or push him away and live for ourselves. Really loving God, or really loving another person, is simply opening your life to that person — sharing yourself with them, and allowing them to share themselves with you.
But there is a tremendous amount of confusion in our world today about what real love is. We use the word “love” so casually, so carelessly. How many times have men said to women "I love you," when in truth they only wanted to share their bed, or – in the case of the ladies whose stories we hear on Unsolved Mysteries – the men were only after their savings accounts or real estate.
So many things go parading as love in our society that, as a nation, we have lost touch with what love really is. Think about the TV shows that have used the word love to attract an audience: The Love Connection, The Love Boat, Love and War, and that old show Love American Style, the soap opera "Loving" . . . but how often did viewers see real, selfless, sacrificial, committed, long-term love on these shows? I remember that some time back one network advertised their daytime soap operas using the theme "Love in the Afternoon," but I suspect what they really broadcast was "lust in the afternoon," or "lying, cheating, and fooling around in the afternoon." Rarely have I seen real love depicted on TV or in the movies.
But for you – for the Christian – it is vitally important to know what real love is, because the two most important duties of the Christian concern real love.
What we find in Matthew 22 is a familiar story. A lawyer came to Jesus. This wasn’t the kind of lawyer we have today. This was an expert in the Jewish religious law. Elsewhere Matthew calls these people "scribes." The scribes or lawyers copied the Scriptures by hand, and actually counted the letters on the page to make sure nothing was left out. They were also responsible to copy and know the commentaries on the law. Theirs was not an easy task.
So here is a person who is intimately familiar with God’s law. He has copied it by hand over and over. He has memorized it. He has read and copied what other people had to say about it. And he comes to Jesus and asks, "What’s the bottom line? Out of this huge body of material called the Jewish Law, what is the most important commandment of all?"
And Jesus says, "Love" – "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself."
What is the bottom line on what God wants for us? ...having a life that is open to God, and open to other people, an openness to God and to others that we could also call “love.”
In our Transformation study books this past week, we read about and reflected on the problem of having a “hard heart” — a heart that is closed to God’s will, closed to God’s voice, closed to the needs of other people. And we read in Ezekiel that God’s plan and desire for us is to work a miracle of grace that softens and opens our hearts to Him.
But what does that look like? What does it mean to have a life open to God?
First, loving — having an open life — is an attitude of the heart.
Sandra Palmer Carr, in the devotional booklet "The Upper Room," told about rocking her younger son, Boyd, who was then four years old. They were in a high-backed rocking chair, and Boyd was looking up at his mom as the rocked.
Suddenly, he lifted his little head, stared straight at his mother, and became very still. Then he cupper her face in his tender little hands and said almost in a whisper, "Mommy, I’m in your eyes." He had seen his own reflection in his mother’s eyes, and it was a startling discovery. Sandra stopped rocking and held Boyd in that same position for several long moments, then said quietly, "And I am in your eyes too!" Then he leaned his head against her contentedly and she resumed rocking.
Occasionally, in the days that followed, Boyd would check to see if his discovery was still true. "Am I still in your eyes, Mommy?" he would ask as he reached up to take her face in his hands.
Sandra thought about the love of God for her and said, "In life’s uncertain moments, it is comforting to know I am still in my heavenly Father’s eyes."
Opening our lives to others means that we have them in our eyes. Our attention is focused on them in a caring way. In his first letter, John wrote, "We love because God first loved us." By first loving us, God taught us how to love. Maybe we could say, "Because God first had us in His eyes, we are able to have others in our eyes."
Real love — having an open life — is an attitude of the heart.
Secondly, loving — having an open life — is something you do.
I have probably told you about the little boy who entered the family room after suppertime. Dad was weary from a hard day on the job. He had the recliner kicked back and was reading the paper. The little boy inched up beside his Dad and said, "Daddy, I love you."
"I love you too, son," the father replied, and he continued reading the paper. But this didn’t satisfy the boy, so he went around the other side of the chair and began rubbing his daddy’s arm. "Daddy, I love you," he said.
And with the slightest amount of impatience in his voice, the father again said, "I love you, too, son." But still the little one was not satisfied.
Suddenly the little boy came crashing through the newspaper onto the father’s chest, reaching his arms as far around his dad as he could, and he said, "Daddy, I love you and I’ve just got to do something about it."
When we really love, when we open our hearts and lives to others, we are drawn to them. Real love cannot sit back and observe. It calls for action.
Ron Barbaro, a top official with Prudential Insurance has a heart controlled by Christian love — he has a life that is open to God and to other struggling human beings. Ron noticed the many people suffering from AIDS who were abandoned by their families. But after the person died, the families were all-too-eager to collect the life insurance money. Ron said, "That’s wrong. Those dying people paid for that insurance and they should have the money." So Ron helped institute a policy that allowed people dying of AIDS to get their life insurance money in advance to ease the suffering of their last days. Love calls for action.
I read about a lady named Nancy in Philadelphia who is confined to a wheelchair. But she has a heart filled with real love and she wanted to do something for others. So Nancy ran an ad in the paper. The ad says,
If you are lonely or have a problem, call me. I am in a wheelchair and seldom get out. We can share our problems with each other. Just call. I’m ready to listen.
The results are amazing. Each week she has at least thirty calls. She spends her days comforting and counseling hurting people. Love calls for action.
Loving — having a heart and life that is open to God and others —
involves caring attitudes,
involves caring actions, and, finally . . .
This love, this openness to God and others that Jesus says is the heart and soul of God’s will for us, is the world’s only hope.
If we don’t demonstrate and help others in our world find real love, if we don’t model for them and help them develop hearts that are open to God’s grace and God’s peace and God’s voice, then the cycles of despair and violence and hate and empty living we see around us will never end.
• I don’t see an end to the greed and hate that leads to violence and war, except in the love of Jesus.
• I don’t see an end to the irresponsibility and immorality that leads to shattered lives, except in the love of Jesus.
• I don’t see an end to the selfishness and self-indulgence that leads to crime, except in the love of Jesus. Real love--Christ’s love--is the answer.
Most of you know the name Corrie ten Boom whose story, The Hiding Place, has inspired millions. Not many people know about her equally courageous nephew, Peter van Woerden.
During the days of the Nazi occupation in Holland, Peter transported Jewish children under the cover of darkness from their home in Harlem to other secret hiding places where they were saved from the Nazis. Peter was eventually caught and spent several months in prison. After the war, he and his musical family travelled throughout Israel, singing and witnessing for the Lord. When he had a massive heart attack, they rushed him to Haddasah Hospital in Jerusalem. The doctor on call that day skillfully saved his life.
After he recuperated, Peter expressed his gratitude to the medical staff. He struck up a conversation, and as they talked about the Holocaust, the doctor suddenly burst into tears. For as they shared stories, the doctor realized and told Peter that he was one of those children that Peter had rescued. Now, years later, their paths had providentially crossed, and one of those whom Peter had saved from death was there to save him. Peter van Woerden and Corrie ten Boom have modeled for us that love — that kind of life that is open to the call of God and the needs of others — that can change our world.
Bottom line.... What is it that God desires from us?
Jesus says it’s love — a heart and life that is open to God and to others.
Not a calloused hard-heartedness, but a soft-hearted love that involves
• caring attitudes,
• caring actions,
• and that is ultimately our world’s only hope.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart
and with all your soul and with all your mind,
and love your neighbor as yourself.
