CELEBRATING:
SERMONS
18 - Oct 2009
A sermon delivered by Rev. Gordon How
"God's Polygraph Test"
If I were to share with you this morning my spiritual
autobiography, (which you will be relieved to know we
do not have time for) the story of how my relationship
with God has grown over my lifetime would not have as
chapter headings each of the Christian doctrines I have
come to understand. Forgiveness, judgment, healing,
hope, life beyond death are all matters about which
I have some understanding. However, the turning points
in my journey with God have each been about a deepened
understanding of the importance of love.
I was taught in Sunday school at an early age that "God
is love". It was in one of those United Church
Sunday Schools that were so crowded new building had
to be and were constructed to provide enough room for
all the children! Remember those days? Some of us do.
I learned through a Bible memory verse that of the
three theological virtues-faith, hope and love-the greatest
of these is love. I learned through another memory verse
called The Great Commandment that the greatest commandment
of all is to love God with all one's being and your
neighbor as yourself. And it is through this commandment
that we are to understand all scripture; love is our
interpretive key to all matters of religion and all
matters of life.
I learned all these things as a child in church but
not until I had life experiences to embody these words
did my life seem to have some traction in matters spiritual.
My life's discovery so far has been that when one's
spirituality and one's religious beliefs and practices
are grounded in love, one can truly experience God.
I think I first discovered this in Edmonton when as
a 10 year old boy with a BB gun, I wounded an innocent
robin, shot it only half dead and was left with the
guilt of dealing with a wounded bird in the hand…
In that growing-up incident filed with power and guilt
and then forgiveness, I began the mystical experience
of knowing that in spite of my mistakes, I was a beloved
child of God. This eventually led to the conclusion
that every other person in the world was also one of
God's beloved creatures.
A second powerful turning point for my journey about
the central importance of love was when I read stood
alone as a supposed student minister - but without even
a whiff of experience - in a little church in Port MacNeill
- too green and untested to meet a commitment in ministry
I had had made. I remember trying to sing The Crusaders
Hymn - because it was where the New Curriculum Senior
Youth study book fell open. (And in case you haven't
put it together, that's the Hymn we just sang.) Again,
a second time, I knew that I although I was alone, and
the church was empty and the little village silent,
I was a beloved creature of God.
A third turning point for me was the two day visit
I had with Jean Vanier in his village in France - where
Vanier's L'Arche homes began and where he stepped out
of the norm and the comfortable to be with the wounded
in spirit, mind and body. Just being there with him,
talking and eating with him and seeing what it all meant
to give yourself to the mentally challenged and socially
rejected, it became utterly clear to me that human beings
have the choice to live in the house of love or live
in the house of fear.
Which one of those two houses is our dwelling place?
This determines what kinds of questions we have in life,
what values we bring to our work and play, and what
kind of relationships we have in life. The opposite
of love is not hate, the opposite of love is fear. Jesus,
according to the first letter of John says that "Perfect
love casts out fear." Whenever I have found myself
anxious in life the question I've tried to pose to myself
has been: Where in my life am I now living in the house
of fear? What am I doing that impedes my understanding
of being loved by God?
And when I meet someone in deep depression, or hurting
from a life threatening illness or a deeply felt loss;
whenever I read or hear of a nation or a leader threatened
with chaotic downfall - I wonder, what is it that is
impeding their understanding that regardless of this
"hell" they live in, they are loved?
The last incident I want to describe on this journey
took place in 1988 when the United Church of Canada
was struggling at great cost and with great publicity
in the matter of the place of homosexual persons within
the church. I was the lead United Church bureaucrat
for BC at the time. Our national church was meeting
in Victoria and it was wrestling this matter to ground
then - (as our sisters and brothers in the Anglican
Church are now struggling 20 years later…)
The whole thing was difficult for me - until I sat
one evening and somewhat by chance read I John:4. I
read the words we just heard Anna read for us: "Those
who do not love know nothing of God for God is love;
those who abide in love abide in God and God abides
in them. There is no fear in love for perfect love drives
out fear. To fear is to expect punishment and anyone
who is afraid is still imperfect in their love. So if
you say you love God but hate your sister or your brother,
you're a liar. For you cannot love God whom you have
not seen, if you hate your neighbor whom you have seen.
If we love God, we must love our sisters and brothers
as well." It became clear that this is God's lie-detector
test! If you say you are a person of God, if you say
you love God - then the only test for whether that claim
has any authenticity is not what you believe about doctrine,
not what you say about God, not what you say about Jesus,
not what you say about the Holy Spirit.
The polygraph test about whether I love God is one
thing and one thing only: whether I love the man or
the woman or the child in front of me. And if I hate
one of them, I am lying about loving God. I realized
then and there that from then on my challenge would
be to find ways to love those people who disagree with
me on this and other important issues, or I will not
know the fullness of what it means to love God. I realized
that it would mean I would have to learn the stories
of those who opposed our church's stance, learn about
their fears. And while still disagreeing with them and
engaging in conversations about values and political
issues, I had to learn to love them - that is, love
their being but not love their thinking.
In these present times, as I look over the religious
map of the Western World, I see the religious right
leading us into what I consider the idolatry of what
they claim is "right thinking" rather than
what I hear God's spirit saying about the importance
of "right loving".
William Sloane Coffin once asked in a sermon, "Are
we called to obey God's power or are we called to obey
God's love? If, as so many people do, you see obedience
as obedience to God's power that will certainly provide
a lot of order in your life. You will
stress correct belief, you will stress right behavior,
you will hold certainty dearer than truth, but you will
be putting the purity of dogma ahead of the integrity
of love."
Coffin went on to say, "The trouble with this
understanding of obedience is that it represents a childhood
model of living. Fearing confusion, wanting direction
- a child looks for supervision, a child wants a superior
power to provide order to direct its destiny. Most of
all a child wants protection, and so it is with childish
adults (as distinguished from childlike adults). Childish
adults want God to do their thinking for them so that
they slavishly search Scripture often for answers to
non-biblical problems. And childish adults want God
to keep their children safe no matter how fast someone
else drives. And they want God to save the human race
from self-destruction no matter what fiendish weapons
we invent, deploy and threaten to use.
"Childish adults like children crave protection
not only from the elements but from fate and from others
and from themselves. To view obedience as obedience
to God's power is really a form of disobedience, for
it is an attempt to return to God the freedom God gave
to us. God gave us this freedom precisely so that our
relationship with God and with one another would not
be one of power, but rather be one of love." (Coffin,
William Sloan, sermon at National Cathedral, January
11, 1998) .
I close with a story with which anyone here over 45
can identify and anyone younger who has heard of the
assassination of John F. Kennedy can appreciate. Ernest
Campbell was the minister of a large University congregation
in Ann Arbor Michigan when JFK was assassinated and
the whole of the USA was thrust into turmoil and the
whole world into bewilderment and disappointment.
You recall that Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for
that assassination and soon after he, too was, murdered.
A member of Campbell's church phoned him a few days
after JFK died and suggested that one thing their church
might do to partially redeem the tragedy would be to
provide the widow of Lee Harvey Oswald, her name was
Marina Oswald, with an opportunity to improve her English
- because Mrs. Oswald had expressed a desire to stay
in the USA and learn the language better.
The layman and the minister agreed to act but not
to bring the matter before the whole congregation. So
they gathered a representative few from the congregation's
Council and got in touch with Marina Oswald. In due
time and with the cooperation of the FBI and others,
Mrs. Oswald went to Ann Arbor. She slipped into town
at night by train while a battery of reporters were
awaiting, 'hawkishly', at the airport. She lived with
a church family that took seriously its devotion to
God and its love for people.
After a while, when finally pressed to do so, the church
issued a press release - and the mail began to come
in! Some were quick and hot to say that this was unpatriotic
(and you know how strong is the condemnation of "unpatriotic"
in the USA). Others told the church its action was unwise,
and still others said it was unfair and grossly un-American.
One woman said that she had belonged to a church for
forty years and what it had done for her in all that
time could be written on the back of a postage stamp!
Rev. Ernest Campbell answered every letter, feeling
this to be an obligation of the congregation's ministry.
And to every person who had been critical, he wrote:
"The one thing you haven't shown me is that what
we have done is unlike Christ."
As John wrote: "You cannot love God whom you
have not seen, if you hate your neighbor whom you have
seen."
Come, spirit come, our sprits long to be made whole.
Let inward love guide every deed; by this we worship
and are freed. Our hymn reflects the central and primary
importance of love. # 372.
Sermon Resources: I John 4, J.E. Bacon, W.S. Coffin,
T.E. Campbell.
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Shaughnessy Heights United Church
congregation is a Christian faith community respecting
each other in our diversity and reaching out to all
who seek God’s love.
1550
West 33rd Avenue,
Vancouver, BC V6M 1A7
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Tel:
604-261-6377
Email: admin@shuc.ca
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