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Sunday's Sermon
Oct 29, 2006
1046
UNCONDITIONAL
The Rev. Dennis Posno

I don’t have a story to tell today.
This message is the story.
It is born of years of experience.
It is born of my personal experience with the sacred.
It is born of my personal relationship with God through Jesus.

Someone has wisely written that “God explained is God explained away.”
And a friend said to me the other day that
“Definitions belong to the definer, not the defined …”
that they say more about us than the thing we’re defining.
The truth is, we can’t explain God or define God or fully understand God.
How can the painting comprehend the artist?
How can the cup of water fathom the ocean depths?
How can the creation understand the Creator?
How can our little minds and our small hearts grasp what I call
the Master Mind and the Master Heart of the universe.

Nevertheless, having said that ~
that God is the ultimate mystery that we cannot absolutely grasp ~
still, we try.
And for me, there is no doubt in my mind
that however else we may speak of God ~
however else we may attempt to define or explain God …
however else we may struggle to understand who or what God is ~
experience tells me that it is Love that defines God.

1. It is love that defines God best.

Throughout the pages of scripture, particularly in the Psalms,
the author attempts to put into words the “Love” he has experienced,
knowing that our words are so inadequate …
that our words are so limiting.
Listen to what he writes …

“But I trust in your unfailing love.”
“Show me the wonder of your great love.”
“… for your love is ever before me.”
“ … for he showed his wonderful love.”
“Your love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens.”
“ … you, O God, are my fortress, my loving God.”
“The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.”
“The earth is filled with your love, O Lord.”
“His [God’s] love never quite.”

In a paraphrase of Psalm 36, the author writes in part:
“God’s love is meteoric,
his loyalty astronomic,
His purpose titanic,
his verdicts oceanic.
Yet in his largeness
nothing gets lost;
Not a man, not a mouse,
slips through the cracks.”
Having read those passages again this week blew me away.
In a most remarkable passage of scripture,
the author of 1st John writes:
“God is love.”
Not ~ God practices Love.
Not ~ God shows Love.
Not ~ God gives Love.
But ~ “God is Love.”

And in the life of Jesus, whom John describes as “The Word made flesh,”
the Love that God “is” comes to life.

Jesus’ life was so God-filled
that when people saw Him
it was as though they saw God Himself …
Jesus’ life was so God-filled
that when people heard Him
it was as though God Himself was speaking …
Jesus’ life was so God-filled
that when people were with Him
they felt as though they were in God’s very presence.

A teacher, when her class was doing art,
told her group of grade three children that they could draw anything they liked.
So with a blank sheet of paper and their boxes of crayons,
the children started drawing.

As she was going up and down the rows
she stopped at one little girl’s desk
and asked what she was drawing.
“Oh,” she said, “I’m drawing a picture of God.”
The teacher replied, “But no one knows what God looks like.”
The little girl answered, “Oh, they will when I’m finished.”

When the people saw Jesus, they saw what God was like.
And what they saw was Love.
What they saw was the word “Love” made flesh.

And when we speak of that Love in our day
the word we use to describe it
appears nowhere in scripture.
But the language of scripture, in countless ways, points to it.
When we speak of that Love in our day …
when we experience that Love in our lives …
perhaps the adjective that best describes God’s Love is “unconditional.”

How many times have you heard that word?
How many times have you used that word yourself?

2. It is the “unconditional” Love of God,
born of our own experience,
that blows us away.

So, as I usually do, I looked up the word in my “Canadian Oxford Dictionary,”
and this is how the word “unconditional” is defined:
it means “not subject to conditions; complete.”

I also looked up “unconditional” in my “Roget’s International Thesaurus,”
and this is how it is defined:
it means
“all-embracing
all-encompassing
unqualified
unrestricted
all-out
absolute
without reserve
limitless
without strings
perfect.”

Unconditional Love is given without expecting anything in return.
It is simply given because that’s the way perfect Love is.

It’s the kind of word that you could say,
as President Ryan of Jesus Walk said last week,
“Amen to that!”

The God who is Love calls us, in Jesus, to be loving …
calls us to turn the other cheek …
calls us to walk the second mile …
calls us to forgive without counting the cost
or without counting how many times we have forgiven …
calls us to be merciful …
calls us to be a neighbour …
calls us to welcome the outsider.

And if the God who calls us to love like that
doesn’t love like that,
then what’s it all about?

Here is a truth I believe:
All of the things Love calls us to be, God, who is Love, already is.

3. And just who is this unconditional Love for?
On whom is it poured out?

If God’s Love, as Jesus lived it, is “unconditional,”
then it is a Love that is given to everyone.
And who does that every one include? Every one!
Every one of the more than six billion people who live on the planet!
Why can I say that?
And how can I say that without watering down the faith?

The remarkable thing about Jesus ~ once you strip away
all of the theological and doctrinal stuff we have wrapped Him in …
once you move past the narrow ways in which some interpret
the God He came to reveal ~
is that no one was excluded from His Love
and no one was excluded from God’s Love.

Jesus never turned anyone away.
There is no instance in scripture
where Jesus rejects anyone, for anything.
And more than anything else,
it was to the outsider ~
to those who were lost ~
that Jesus came and proclaimed this Love.

Isn’t that the thing that draws us to Him?
Isn’t that the message He wants us to grasp?
Isn’t that the Love He wants us to experience?

God’s unconditional Love means just that:
it is unconditional.
No one is excluded.
And it is given without strings attached.

Are you ready for this?
It is given to those who profess Jesus as Saviour and Lord
and it is given to those who don’t.
It is given to those who live lives that honour God
and it is given to those who don’t.
It is given to those who walk in Love’s way
and it is given to those who don’t.

Are you ready for this?
It is given to the saint
and it is given to the sinner.
For there is truth in the statement that
“Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.”
It is given to those who have found their way
and it is given to those who are lost.

Are you ready for this?
It is given, to use the language of scripture, to the righteous
and it is given to the unrighteous.
It is given to those who see themselves as the insiders
and it is given to the outsiders.
It is given to those who live up to faith’s expectations
and it is given to those who have miserably failed them.

It is given ~ unconditionally.
This
all-embracing
all-encompassing
unqualified
unrestricted
all-out
absolute
without reserve
limitless
without strings
perfect
Love
is for us all.

And thank God it is.
Because if it wasn’t
then all of us,
all of us,
and everyone,
everywhere,
would never experience it.

Why? Because all of us have failed that Love:
in our professions of faith we have not lived up to …
in our claiming the Love that really has not claimed the way we live …
in our righteousness or self-righteousness that sits in judgment of others …
in our exclusion of the outsider and the marginalized …
in our condemnation of those who don’t believe as we believe …
in the small ways in which we interpret the larger Love of God.

We have all failed that Love.
And we will fail it tomorrow.
And the next day.
But that Love will never fail us.
As the Psalmist put it, “God’s love never quits.”

4. So what can that Love do in our lives?

If it is Love that accepts us as we are
it is Love that also hopes for all that we can become.

If it is Love that shows us the way to live
it is Love that forgives us when we fail to walk in it.

If it is Love that can enlarges us
it is Love that still holds us close when we are small:
small in our love …
small in our believing …
small in our living.

If it is Love that waits at the end of the road
as the father waited for the progidal son in the story Jesus told,
it is Love that will never tire of waiting.

If it is true that “People need loving most when they deserve it the least,”
it is true that God loves us like that.

As Desmond Tutu once said, “Nothing is too much trouble for love.”

5. And here’s the final thing I want to say.

I am a follower of Jesus.
I have given my life to Him
as He has laid down His life for me.

I am a follower of Jesus.
I have said yes to Him
as He has said “Yes” to me.

I am a follower of Jesus.
I have given Him my love
as He has given His unconditional Love to me.

I am a follower of Jesus because He loves me
and because He says, in word and in deed, that God loves me.

I am not a follower of Jesus because He is some kind of eternal insurance agent.
I am not a follower so I will get into heaven and won’t go to hell.
What a frightening God that is.
That God is a God who loves with conditions,
and my following is also a love with conditions.
I cannot believe it is the same God whom Jesus called Father.

I am not a follower of Jesus because I think I will get anything out of it:
that I will get my miracle … that my illness will be healed …
that my money issues will be resolved … that my problems will disappear.
God is not a divine bargainer
who operates on a “quid quo pro” basis ~
something for something.
When God gives, it’s something for nothing.

I am a follower of Jesus
because His Love and God’s Love have claimed me.
I am a follower of Jesus
because I have experienced that His way, Love’s way, is the best way.

Annie Sullivan, known as “Teacher” to a deaf and blind Helen Keller,
was once trying to explain Love to her …
trying to explain the unexplainable …
trying to describe the indescribable.
This is what she said, and later wrote:

“Love is something like the clouds that were in the sky
before the sun came out.
You cannot touch the clouds, you know;
but you feel the rain
and know how glad the flowers and the thirsty earth are
to have it after a hot day.
You cannot touch love either;
but you feel the sweetness that it pours into everything.”

I am a follower of Jesus
because even though I can’t touch Love …
even though I can’t put it in a bottle and save it for a rainy day …
I have felt its sweetness
as it has been poured into my life.

I am a follower of Jesus because, as William Sloan Coffin wrote:

“What is finally important
is not that Christ is God-like,
but that God is Christ-like.
God is like Christ.
That’s what we need to know, isn’t it?”

That’s all I need to know.

I am a follower of Jesus because, as Frederick L. Collins wrote:

“Always remember
there are two types of people in this world:
those who come into a room and say,
“Well, here I am!”
and those who come in and say,
“Ah, there you are!”

Jesus has come into our world and said, “Ah, there you are.”
And my life, my heart, the deepest part of who I am ~
longing for such value that only unconditional Love can give ~
has said to Jesus, “Ah, there you are.”

I am a follower of Jesus
not because of what I can get from Him
but because of who I have become because of Him.
I have experienced “the extravagant dimensions of Christ's love.
Reached out and experienced the breadth!
Tested its length!
Plumbed the depths!
Risen to the heights!
I have lived a full life, full in the fullness of God.”
And I love Him.
Unconditionally.

SOLI DEO GLORIA

SCRIPTURE
Ephesians 3:14-21 (The Message)
My response is to get down on my knees before the Father,
this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth.
I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—
not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—
that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in.
And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love,
you'll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus
the extravagant dimensions of Christ's love.
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.

God can do anything, you know—
far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us,
his Spirit deeply and gently within us.

Glory to God in the church!
Glory to God in the Messiah, in Jesus!
Glory down all the generations!
Glory through all millennia! Oh, yes!

Footnotes

Psalm 13:5 NIV
Psalm 17:7 NIV
Psalm 26:3 NIV
Psalm 31:2 NIV
Psalm 36:5 NIV
Psalm 59:17b NIV
Psalm 103:8 NIV
Psalm 119:64 NIV
Psalm 136:1 ff NIV
Psalm 36:5-6 The Message
1 John 4:16 NIV
John 1:14
Anton Chekov
Psalm 136:1 The Message
Mary Crowley
Ephesians 3:17-19 The Message