This morning I want to talk about loving yourself …
about seeing yourself as a person who is worth something …
about understanding that your life, whoever you are, matters.
It just may be, as I said to the children at the time of the baptism today, that
“To the whole world you may just be one person.
But to one person you may just be the whole world.”

As I think of our faith
        and as I think of the God of our faith that we know in Jesus,
                perhaps this is the thing that is so compelling …
                        the thing that draws us to God’s heart …
                                the thing that can fill us with a sense of self-worth …
                                        the thing that can make all of the difference in the world.

We witness it in story after story that Jesus told
even as we witness it in moment after moment that Jesus lived.

We witness it in the love Jesus showed to those whom no one else would love.

We witness it in the way he healed and helped and instilled hope in people.

We affirmed it when we stood and said in the Affirmation of Faith:
“In this love
there is no sin so large that God cannot forgive it …
no life so small that God does not value it …
no life so lost that God cannot find it …
no life so broken that God cannot mend it.
No life.  Not mine.  Not anyone’s.”

And in all of this we can say, “This is what God is like.”
In all of this we can say, “This is who I am because God loves me.”
For Jesus, I believe, every time he was with someone,
it was as though he was saying, “You are the most important person in the world.”

There is truth in the thought that God loves the whole world.
There is also truth in the thought that as God loves the whole world
God loves it  ~  one person at a time.

And when it comes to loving yourself,
it begins when you realize that someone loves you and values you.
And when you can love yourself, you can then find a way to love others.
You value others because you are valued.
                                                                                                               
Now I must confess that there are times when we may not feel as though we are.
There are times when we feel we don’t amount to much at all.
There are times when life has sidelined us         
and we wonder whether it’s worth getting back in the game.

But let me tell you something.  You are.
And the Christ of our faith never out of his way to let you know that.

This is one of the most beautiful stories I know.
And the woman it is about must have been a beautiful person to know.

Many of you will know the name of Ethel Waters.
I only know about her from what I have read about her life
and, years ago, listening to her sing at the Billy Graham Crusades.
The song of faith which became her signature song was
“His Eye Is On The Sparrow.”
She is a woman I would have loved to have known.

Some years ago, Hollywood paid tribute to her in a gala evening.
Clips of her old movies were shown.
Her music was played and sung.
But the greatest part of the evening came when Ethel Waters  ~
joyful, bubbly, open, honest  ~
told people she was as happy as she was
because Jesus was in her heart.

She revealed that night
a big heart
a great soul
and a trusting faith.

Those who didn’t know her, of course,
would only see her soaring on wings like an eagle …
they would only see the blossoming rose that her life had become.
They wouldn’t have known about the desert that was much of her life.

This is the Ethel Waters they didn’t know about.
She had everything going against her.
                Her mother was just 12 years old when she was raped
                        and 9 months later delivered Ethel.
                                A child gave birth to a child.                     
She never knew her father.
                                                Her mother, who worked for white people,
                                                        never earned more than $6 a week.

She was raised in a succession of rat-infested, bed-bug-plagued shanties
in a slum, red-light district.

She never had a bath tub
        or a bed of her own.
                She slept in a chair or on the floor …
                        wherever she could lie down.

She was big-boned and awkward,
was never cuddled or kissed as a child
and was convinced that her mother barely tolerated her.
She was told as a child that she was ugly.

I’m sure she must have thought many times
“Nobody cares for me or about me, so I guess I’m not worth loving.”

As soon as she could go alone
        she would earn what pennies she could
                running errands for pimps and prostitutes.
                        By the time she was 7 she knew all there was to know about the business.
                                When she was 13 she was pressured into a marriage by her mother
                                        but it dissolved almost immediately.

Where was there hope for this hopeless little girl?
She wasn’t loved much.
And no doubt she must have thought that there wasn’t much about her
that made her loveable.

When she was old enough she got a job in a saloon,
a hang out for drunks and criminals.
And there, when she was 17,
she got her first chance to sing in public.
And from there, from this most hopeless of beginnings,
she climbed her way through the squalor and drudgery of cheap vaudeville.

But somehow this unpromising girl,
born into a hopeless world
and I’m sure overwhelmed at times by hopelessness itself,
not only had the talent but also the inner resources
to rise above those miserable circumstances
without being spoiled by them.

Somewhere in the midst of this she came to a place  ~
a glorious, liberating, I am worth something place.
Somewhere in the midst of this she found a faith in Jesus
and she discovered in Him that she was a person worth loving.
Somewhere in the midst of this she found the grace to love herself.

She grew into a remarkable woman of faith  ~
not unlike Jesus who grew in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and humanity  ~
grew into a star on broadway and the movies.
Her signature song had been “Stormy Weather” …
and she had certainly weathered many storms in her life.

The night she was honoured
someone asked her to sing that song.
She answered by saying:
“No, sir, I’m never going to sing ‘Stormy Weather’ again as long as I live.
I can’t.  I can’t.  I don’t have stormy weather anymore.
I have peace in my heart because Jesus lives in me.”

But she came to a place where she could no longer sing it,
        would no longer sing it,
                and instead sang another song which became her signature song  ~
                        “His Eye Is On The Sparrow”
                               
Listen to the words …

Why should I feel discouraged,
Why should the shadows come,
Why should my heart be lonely
And long for heaven and home,
When Jesus is my portion?
My constant Friend is He:
His eye is on the sparrow
And I know He watches me.

I sing because I’m happy.
I sing because I’m free.
His eye is on the sparrow
And I know he watches me.

She could love herself because Jesus loved her.
She was worth something, not because the world said so, but because God said so.
God loves the whole world.
But God loves the whole world one person at a time.
Ethel Waters knew it because she experienced it.

To the whole world she may have been just one person.
But to the God of her faith, the person that she was, was the whole world.
And because of it, she could love herself.

Ethel Waters’ story is repeated
time after time
generation after generation
in life after life.

I was interviewing a bride and groom some time ago
        and in asking  the bride about her days of growing up in her family
                she spoke of an unhappy childhood
                        that had been marked and scarred by one sentence
                                that her father had spoken to her
                                        not once, but repeatedly.

Now we all know the expression
        that we often used when we were kids.
                The defensive words:
“Sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me.”
But we know that’s a lie.
Sticks and stones will break your bones.
                  And names? 
We can carry the scars of the damage they do for a lifetime.

The young bride told me her father repeatedly said, “No one will ever love you.”
Listen to that again.
Her father repeatedly said, “No one will ever love you.”

I cannot imagine the pain those words must have caused
or the scars those words must have left.
I cannot imagine.

But a miracle happened.
The missionary E. T. Niles once wrote,
“God appears to a hungry person in the form of a loaf of bread.”
God appeared to this young woman in the form of a man who said,
“I love you.”
God appeared to this young woman in the form of a man who said,
                “I love you so much that I want to share my life with you …
                        give my life to you …
                                live my life with you.
                                        Marry me.”

And suddenly, after years of wondering whether she was worth loving,
after wondering if her father just might be right ~ that no one would ever love her ~
her miracle appeared in the form of a man who saw something beautiful in her.

Because she was worth the loving she could love herself.
Perhaps for the very first time.
Although to the whole world she was only one person,
to this one man she was the whole world.

There is a story about a woman, a nameless person,
who years ago went to an orphanage and asked,
“Is there an orphan here that nobody wants.”
The matron of the orphanage said,
”Indeed there is.
She’s ten years old, ugly to look at,
and she has a terrible hunched back.
She is sickly, ill-tempered, cross and irritable.
The only thing beautiful about her is her name  ~  Mercy Goodfaith.
We have long ago given up hope of getting her adopted.”

The nameless woman said,
“That’s exactly the child I want  ~  Mercy Goodfaith.”

Thirty-five years later,
when the head of the Orphanage Inspection Department was checking out orphanages,
he turned in a report about one particular orphanage which read:

“This orphanage is outstanding. 
It is exquisitely clean. 
The food is wonderful.
And all of this is attributable to the matron of the place,
out of whose soul oozes love.

“When I dropped in for an unexpected inspection, it was dinnertime.
At the close of the dinner the matron said,
‘Now boys and girls, let’s do what we always do after dinner,’
and with that they all moved to the living room.
One of the girls sat at the piano
and all the children started singing songs.
The matron herself sat in a big, over-stuffed chair
with huge armrests that were about a foot wide.

“Two little girls sat on one arm of the chair, two boys on the other,
and two other children sat on her lap.
(The other children sat near her  ~
      wanted to be near her.
              The love in that room sang out
                      as clearly as the songs they sang.)

“Never did I see such beautiful eyes as those in that matron.
        So beautiful that I almost forgot how ugly her face was
                and how huge and gruesome was her hunched back.
                        Her name was Mercy Goodfaith.”

“God appears to a hungry person in the form of a loaf of bread.”
Miracle of miracles.
God appeared to a little girl that nobody wanted
in the form of a woman who took her
not just into her home
but into her heart.
One little girl that nobody wanted
became the object of a great love.

And because she came to see that she was worth the loving
she could love herself.
Although to the whole world she was only one person,
to this one nameless woman Mercy Goodfaith was the whole world.

That’s the miracle of the love of God in Jesus.

It is for the least and the last
and the left out and the left alone and the pushed aside
and the unclean and the unwanted and uncherished
and the despised and the rejected
and the judged and the judged not to be worthy
and the not worthy to be loved
that Jesus came.

It was for all who belonged to no one to whom Jesus said, “Come with me.”

And His love gives us the power to love ourselves.
And it is from this place  ~
from this place of being loved
and feeling worthy of love  ~
that we can learn to love one another.

We’ll sing about it in a minute.
“Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so” we’ll sing.
“Jesus loves me, this I know, as he loved so long ago” we’ll sing.
“Jesus loves me, still today, walking with me on my way” we’ll sing.
“Yes, Jesus loves me! Yes, Jesus loves me”
will be the words that fill this holy place

Thank God for our Saviour.
Let your “security be in God’s promise
to be near you always
and in the knowledge
that God will never let you go.”

 

SOLI  DEO  GLORI

THE READING OF HOLY SCRIPTURE       Psalm 23    Psalms/Now
The Lord is my constant companion. 
There is no need that God cannot fulfill. 
Whether his course for me points
                to the mountain tops of glorious ecstasy
                or to the valleys of human suffering,
        God is by my side.
        God is ever present with me. 

God is close beside me
                when I tread the dark streets of danger,
                and even when I flirt with death itself,
        God will not leave me.

When the pain is severe
              God is near to comfort.
When the burden is heavy
               God is there to lean upon.
When depression darkens my soul 
                  God touches me with eternal joy.
When I feel empty and alone
               God fills the aching vacuum with power.

My security is in God’s promise
                to be near me always
        and in the knowledge
              that God will never let me go.