FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

September 20, 1992

8:30 and 11:00 a.m. Worship Services
John M. Buchanan

Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

Scripture
Hosea 11:1-11
Luke 15:1-10

“How can I give you up?...My heart recoils,...my compassion grows
warm and tender" -Hosea 11:8 (NRSV)

(eral Gata - ASdictim _ Grace

His father died when he was nine years old. Before that
time the young boy, Gerald G. May, now a practicing psychiatrist
and professor, was traditionally and_comfortably at home with
religious faith. He prayed to God and experienced childlike awe
and reverence and wonder. God, he says, was his friend. And
then the bottom dropped out. His father died. May had expected
that God would prevent things like that from happening or, at
least do something about it - keep him somehow in touch with his
father, for instance. \And when it didn't occur, when the reality
and enormity of the loss set in, the nine-year-old chose, he
says, to dispense with God. “I would take care of myself. I
would go it alone... Just as my father faded from my awareness,
so did God, and so did my desire for God."

B thewendwofethe story. In college, he fell in
love with literature and philosophy, went to™church on occasion
out of, habit or curiosity but without much meaning or satisfac-
tion. in Medical School he tried to make a God out of science.
And after a tour of duty in the Air Force in Vietnam, returned to
his medical practice, mainly dealing with alé6Hol and drtg™addic-
tion. 7 —

He noted quickly what practitioners in the field of_addic-
tion all know and that is that the going is very tough, that
there are no quick or easy fixes, that addiction is not a super-
ficial matter but comes from somewhere deep inside, and conse-
quently, people who recoyer, more often than not, do so as a
result of some kind of deeply spiritual experience. | Even if the
language is not traditional, May concluded, recovery’ was a
"turning to God."

As a result of that discovery he began to re-explore his own
spiritual experience, his early. decision that he could go it
alone, but he also was able to identify another motif - a life-

long fascination with art, with philosophy with anything related
to transcendence and spirituality. He was, he says, looking ;
for something, yearning for something which was absent from his

Tite. Tried (ak furl - ‘Hu. eave Prayar -

And that is when he comes to the notion that I find so

intriguing: YP Havespraimbedeit*orethetbubbetinecovem.

"IT am convinced that all human beings have an

' inborn desire for God. Whether we are consciously

religious or not, this desire is our deepest
longing and our most precious treasure. Regard-
less of how we describe it, it is a longing for
love. It is a hunger to love, to be loved, to
move closer to the source of love. This yearning
is the essence of the human spirit." [p. 1]

Now that is a bold theological assertion. Our deepest
yearning.is for God - € so ce of love. It is of the essence
of our humanness to love and to be loved and God has created us
that way! ~

If that is true, why isn't everybody happily religious? Why
isn't everybody a contented, trusting, joyful person of faith?
What happens? Wile Gerald May - life disappoints us; |hurt,
anger, resentment, fear, cause us to repress our basic longing
for God or to turn it elsewhere - addiction, for instance, which
May defines as attachment to, bondage to, enslavement to things,
people, ideas which restrict our freedom and our ability to love
and to be loved. That is, replacements for God, and for the
longing, yearning for God that is part of our basic humanity.

That God creates us for love - that God's basic disposition
toward us is love - that God's ongoing relationship with us is
fundamentally to woo us, to pursue us, to gently persuade us to
live in love - with God and with one another is, net~the oldest i gWwy
religious idea in the world but it may be the iboldest.> 2 1%

— Od

The oldest idea is that God creates us to be subjects who ee
will obey and who will reap God's anger and wrath when we do not”
obey. e ancient religions of the world postulate god or gods y!'
who make rules™and punish people with droughts, floods ™"pTagties
and military defeats when the rules are broken.\ Tt is not the
whole story, but there is about the ancient religion 6f Israel, a
little of that. The God of the Pentateuch can be described as a
God of unyielding legalistic justice.

But that is not the whole story. There is another motif in
our oldest. scriptures. Like the counterpoint in a “Gémplex Bach
fugue - this is a lovely counter melody which is necessary if we
are to hear the entire piece This motif is unique and revolu-
tionary and bold. It is that the God who creates and makes

rules, also loves: that God wants not only obedient people but
loving people who will reflect divine loye in their common
life... that God wants more than obedience... God wants a rela-
tionship, a covenant, a reunion, a reconciliation.

And the ancient voice who perhaps best presents this. radical
and subversive notion is the prophet Hosea, a fascinating charac-
ter. \ Letene=tebi~eyousa=biteaboutehim. “He lived in the gth
Century B.C. He was a farmer, a -------- , a husband and father
of three children. \ He not only had. fallen in love with a woman
with a shady reputa ion, he was convinced that God wanted him to
marry her. So he did.| Sometime after thewbirth of his third
child, the bottom fell out for him. \ His wife left - ran off with
another man and then another man and’then another. |The law, was
clear - the relationship was over. She was to be cast out forev-
er. But Hosea didn't want to do it, couldn't do it. \ He still
loved his wife, He was crushed, disappointed, devastated, but he
made a radical, subversive decision. \He would not do what the
law - what common propriety, the 8th Century version of "Family
Values" dictated, what everybody assumed God expected in the name
of traditional morality. \ Hosea decided to go after _her with
compassion, forgiveness and love - to win back his beloved. And
that, Hosea had the temerity to announce, is precisely the way
God deals with us. \ Some of the loveliest and most moving poetry

in the bible will be found in the words of this ~tragic but stead- Lps~
fast love - which has God saying things like... |"How can I give ace 10
you up?... My heart recoils within me. My compassion grows warm

and tender" and portrays God-like a parent, or grandparent, lift-
ing an infant to her cheek.

The distinguished Jewish scholar and philosopher, the late
Abraham Herschel, said it is the boldest religious concept in
history... the "astonishing fact of God's love... a God whose
basic and eternal disposition is love... a God of tenderness and
mercy... a God with whom healing and reconciliation, not harm and
destruction finally prevail." [The Prophets, Hosea, p- 44-49]

It is still a boldwidea - a lovely idea. The 14th Century
mystic, Meister Eckhardt said that human beings are created out
of the laughter of the Trinity. What a lovely thought. That
there is divine latghter at our birth} that our creator is our
gentle and loving’ source of Ref

It is still a provocative and_bold notion that there is
something_about God's love for us that is reflected _in our love
for God, ier, our yearning for God, or, our resentment at God's
disappoi ting us, or, our anger, at God's absence, or, our empti-
ness, because we conclude long ago that we have to take care of
ourselves and to it alone. |/ The bold underpinning of Hosea's
theology is that God's love “for us is reflected in the human
heart in a longing for God, which often takes the form of a
yearning for love. _ ,

or peed te fee “2 QChiall,
Cad Crm, afta wo —

9, 190

y

In an yg of stories he described a God who is
absolutely committed to finding the lost, to bringing home the
wandering sheep, to welcoming_the wandering child. The setting
of those stories is very important.

F wxow all the tax collectors and sinners were coming

/ near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the

scribes were grumbling and saying 'this fellow
a welcomes sinners and eats with them. '"[Luke 15]
Cae |
They were appalled that Jesus so freely associated with

social and religious outcasts... And it was in response to their
elitist, exclusive piety that he told the unforgettable ‘stories
about” the shepherd who leaves his flock to go after one lost
sheep, and the old woman who turned r house upside down and
inside out to find one lost coin. Gan you imagine the raised x
eyebrows at that? "Did I hear right? Yahweh is an old woman?")
And the third tory, about a household and two sons - one of wh
runs away from his parents' love and the other of whom stays home
and allows resentment and anger to separate him from his parents'

love. pie a. py +, > ~m ot @ Last

Pa

"There is joy in heaven when one sinner repents - or is
found = or returns home" \Jesus told his proper and indignant
audience. rt is customary to assume that he was lecturing them -
the Pharisees and scribes - the religious.folk: lecturing them
on the topic of not excluding the sinners, the social outcasts,
the ones who don't follow all the rules, obey all the laws, live
quiet and socially acceptable Lives. || One wishes Pat Buchanan
would spend some time reading Luke_1 before he declares, in the
name of Christian religion, a "cultural war." One wishes, Pat
Robertson would consult Jesus on the topic of excluding people
who disagree with his notions of morality. One has the sense
that there is no room for the people Jesus spent most of his time
with in the party, or - if I heard it right - in the political
system.

The traditional interpretation was that the purpose of
Jesus' stories about God's inclusive, pursuing love, was to
persuade the Scribes and Pharisees to Yighten-up, give the sin-
ners and tax collectors and prostitutes.a break, let them in the
Kingdom theologically if not the Temple physically.

But now I believe the purpose of these wqueanrut stories was
to break through to the Pharisees and Scribes,\ to tell them that
God loved them, and that God's loye. wanted to find a—home in
their. hearts, that God was pursuing them because \they were lost,

they had replaced _ their own yearning for love with & poor substi-
tute-- religious” zealotry, ideological and theological orthodoxy,
religious and social propriety.

, %

40Ve

Gerald May argues that we have a way of dismissing our
yearning for God and substituting instead - other attachments.
These attachments, he says, are addictions. They limit our
freedom and our ability to love and to be loved. They become god
for us. He writes:

, :

_ "T am not being flippant when I say that all of us
suffer from addiction...the psychological, neuro-
logical, and spiritual dynamics of full-fledged
addiction are actively at work in every human
being. The same processes that are responsible
for addiction to alcohol and narcotics are also
responsible for addiction to ideas, work, rela-
tionships, power, moods, fantasies and an endless
variety of other things... Addiction makes.idola-
ters of us all, because if forces us to worship
these objects of attachment, thereby preventing us |
from truly, freely loving God and one another."

[p- 3, 4] =

Wayne Oates has written very helpfully about a dynamic which
is distressingly familiar - he calls “workaholism" addiction to
work. In The Confessions of a Workaholic Oats speaks_for many of
us by revealing that he had trusted his work, his professional
expertise, his physical strength, his ability to work longer and
harder than anybody else, to make him happy, to mELHG him peace,
to save his soul. And it doesn't work. orper

The message of faith is that the source of aration = OF;
if you prefer, peace, fulfillment, joy, is God i1alone, that God is
the source of love, /that God loves. you_and wants. you to trust
that love, \to live_tn that love, to answer than ‘love, by loving
God and by loving your neighbors.

The message of faith is that God wants you fo say Yes to
something elemental about yourself + that you need and yearn for
love - to be Toved_and to love: The message of faith is an
invitation to claim your hunger, your longing, and not repress it
or piace it.

lew

It is not an insistence that you say words you do not mean,
or claim to have experiences that you have not experienced.
That's what makes many of us most uncomfortable with the "in your. eit
face - are you saved?" approach toevangelism. In a wonderful ; ‘
essay the late Joseph Sittler described his own’ discomfort when aw
people started to talk about their private and powerful religious “toou!
experiences. He wrote: F ae

_— a i A itl

\ "I have not seen any burning bushes... John ei YY

Wesley's "strangely warmed" heart at Aldersgate 4 vie

Street - this is not my street... There is a 6 Dovt —
precision that is born of knowledge... and there cud
is a precision born of deprivation... just to sa

hunger and thirst is a kind of negative benedic-
tion. Hunger, unabated, is a kind of testimony to
the reality of food. To want to have may become a
strange kind of having."

[Grace Notes and Other Fragments. The view From

Mt. Nebo, p. 147] ave a

A ly i”
Perhaps you are somewhere in all of that. [Z47)
Perhaps you were dis ointed by loss or tragedy and decided
long ago that you had to go it alone - but you continue to won-

der... < _ ah sim dN

Perhaps you keep flirting with faith, wanting to be brave
and autonomous and self-reliant, but your heart stops - unac-
countably on occasion,,and your breath quickens” When you see
beauty, or hear beauty and you ffnd tears in your eyes and a lump
in your throat when you hear a great hymn, or see a child's
innocent trust, or watch with wonder, an act of human courage.

Perhaps. you are addicted and knoW,it, or more likely. don't _ {0 gar
know it, except that you are working harder and harder, giving MA or?
more of yourself, your health, your energy, your soul, your love, wi
your relationship, and it doesn't feel right.

Or perhaps like the Pharisees and Scribes you are tradition-
ally and comfortably religious, but without much passion.

Perhaps the only thing you know of the reality of God, is a
void, a felt incompleteness and perhaps the only experience of
love in your life is the palpable absence of loves” F

We are, all.of us, the psychiatrist said, somewhere in that,
and the first word to us is a g66@ word, namely that the empti-
ness, the absence, the longing, the yearning - is, itself,” God's
love working in our hearts, gently and instantly seeking for us,
pursuing us, coming after us. —

And the second word. is.even better. It is that because this
gentle love is actually God, it will not give up, will not aban-
don us, will not ever cease pursuing us until one day, in our
heart of hearts, we say yes to it, yes to God, yes to our spirit-
uality, yes to our need to love and to be loved, yes, that is, to
our essential nature, “And then find ied | "For the
love of God." “—™ -

So hear the ancient and good words again:
"How can I give you up...

My heart recoils
My compassion glows warm and tender."

and when the shepherd comes home, he calls his friends and
neighbors, saying to them: =" nee:

a
"Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that
was lost."

++ ettteett

O God of mysterious love; find us when we are lost, search
for us when we stray in dry desert wasters, claim us, redeem
us, and bring us home to you. Through Jesus Christ our
Lord. Amen.