Our theme is “Perfectly Imperfect.” Please check out the following videos to learn more about these Montreat Youth Conferences.

I hope you will keep me, and our entire conference in your thoughts and prayers as we minister to these youth. I have no doubt that these next weeks will shape and inform my ministry in ways I cannot yet imagine. I pray that we may, in our perfectly imperfect ways, create a space where youth are able to grow, questions, and know that they are beloved by God.

Perfectly Imperfect, the 2012 Conference Theme Video – click here.

A Day in the Life of a Youth Conference Video – click here:

You can also read more about Montreat by clicking this link.

    Happy birthday to the church!  We call Pentecost the birthday of the church because it was at Pentecost, the fiftieth day after Passover, that the disciples got up and got out to do what Jesus did: teach, heal, spread the good news of God’s love.

Today on our 2000^th-plus birthday, some might wonder whether we’re beginning to look our age.  Maybe we didn’t wear enough sunscreen; maybe we’ve spent too much time being couch potatoes; because in case you hadn’t heard, sitting is the new smoking.[1]  Last month, just in time to hit the newsstands for Easter, Newsweek’s cover story was, “Forget the Church: Follow Jesus.”   The cover shows shows a hipster, urban Jesus.  The story on the inside had this tag line: “Christianity in Crisis: Christianity has been destroyed by politics, priests, and get-rich evangelists.  Ignore them, writes Andrew Sullivan, and embrace Him.”[2]  Mr. Sullivan writes that the Christian Church in the United States is in big trouble.  It has lost much of its authority, and it’s too closely associated with the agendas of people who use Jesus to advance their own power.  As a result, according to a 2007 study, a whole generation of young people believes Christians are homophobic, judgmental, hypocritical, too involved in conservative politics, insensitive to those who are different, not accepting of people of other faiths – and old-fashioned.[3]  They say that organized religion in its present form simply doesn’t make sense to them.[4]

So should we “forget the Church,” as Mr. Sullivan proposes?  Not so fast.  Perhaps Mr. Sullivan has forgotten this story in Acts – a story the Church needs to remember.  This odd story, in which something utterly wondrous and completely unpredictable happens.  God happens.  The symbols tell the story: wind and fire and Spirit!  Suddenly the whole place was smoking, and the disciples began to look like so many oversized trick birthday candles, crowned with tongues of fire that even the mighty wind could not blow out.  We’re not told what they said.[5]  We are told, however, of the greatest of all miracles: the disciples went from being stunned and confused and immobilized to being so on fire with the Spirit that they not only begin to do what Jesus showed them how to do, they do it in ways that people from other cultures and who speak other languages can understand.

Maybe Mr. Sullivan forgot that Pentecost, as Walter Brueggemann wrote, is not just a remembered event, but an ongoing process by which the Spirit of God regularly rattles, bewilders, and turns the world upside down.[6]  Mr. Sullivan is right on with some of his assessments about American churches, but the fact that things aren’t easy doesn’t mean the end of the church, and isn’t even a bad sign – that’s the Spirit, on the loose.  Canadian pastor David Ewart warns that, “the Holy Spirit does not come to solve our problems but to create them.”  Think about it: without Pentecost, the disciples could have returned to their previous careers as fishermen.  Can’t you almost hear James and John explaining, “Sure, it was a wild and crazy three-year-ride, and that Jesus sure was a heck of a guy, but maybe we needed to get that out of our system before we could settle down into Dad’s business.”  Once the Spirit comes, however, that return to normalcy is no longer an option.[7]

What’s more, writes Ewart, the Holy Spirit doesn’t prevent failure but invites it.  Or, to put it slightly differently, the Holy Spirit invites us to view setbacks and even failures not as ultimate failure.  The problems that this world and the church face are too great, too complex, and too significant to imagine that we will hit upon the best solution the first time out … or maybe ever.[8]  Did the disciples, freshly inspired, solve all the world’s problems?  No.  In fact, right out of the starting box, people assume their fervor is the product of bottled spirits, not the Holy Spirit.  Peter had to defend the disciples with his sermon.  This invitation to the church to try in the face of failure means that once we’ve identified a worthy challenge, we have to experiment … and count on failing; innovate … and count on failing; invent … and count on failing again.  A middle school English teacher said, “I tell my kids to make a mistake every day – just not the same mistake!”  Each mistake, each set back, each false start, each failure is not to be lamented but learned from.  It is very, very hard to believe this in our success-obsessed culture, but the question really isn’t whether we’re successful, it’s whether we’re faithful.[9]

This perspective gives us the freedom to place ourselves on the side of those who are most vulnerable, even so-called lost causes, and to take great risks and dare great adventures.  Why?  Because we trust that resurrection only and always follows crucifixion.  And that whatever the results of our efforts, both our hopes and our future are secured not by our abilities, but by God’s good promise.[10]

You see, with the Holy Spirit at work, it isn’t all about us.  I was reminded of this a couple of weeks ago at the memorial service for Al, a man in his forties, a friend of mine from before seminary.  Al and his wife had been part of a church years ago but left, disenchanted, when the church split over a controversial pastor.  So I was glad to officiate, more or less, at the service held under one of those big white event tents on the parking lot at the Romberg Tiburon Center, San Francisco State’s oceanic research center where Al worked as a marine biologist.

I wasn’t sure what to expect.  There I was, under a tent in the parking lot in my pastor’s robe and my San Anselmo cross.  My words and prayers were unapologetically Christian.  I affirmed our faith that nothing in life or in death can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ, although I avoided some of the traditional language that makes sense if you’ve heard it a million times but make no sense at all otherwise.  It wasn’t church in any way we traditionally think of it, but it was community, a community that Al and his family had helped create.  A community of caring people who loved Al because, among other things, one of the rules he lived by, was, “Keep it real.”  Parsed, that meant maintain your integrity, don’t lose track of what’s really important, and don’t get too big for your britches.  For Al, part of keeping it real was that he’d refused “to put on the rat race jersey,” as his best friend put it.  Al’s 13-year-old son sang a song backed up by his dad’s best friend and his son on guitar.  The song was “Good Life,” made popular by the band OneRepublic,[11] and Al and his family had sung it to each other while Al was under hospice care, dying from a brain tumor.  The congregation, or audience – or whatever we were – clapped along as this kid whose father had just died sang a lively rock song about how life is good – even when it is short, even when things don’t work out.  The song echoed what Al’s friends said about him: That he was not afraid.  And his son was the best evidence that Al had taught this freedom and fearlessness to his children.  It was a moment of heartbreaking beauty I will never forget.

I left that event with more questions than answers.  But I was reminded that we clergy, we Christians don’t bring the Holy Spirit with us.  The Holy Spirit was there, not because I was there in my robe with my cross and my churchy words.  The Spirit was already there, doing the work of transforming hearts and minds through the outpouring of love and through the example of Al and his friends and family.  As one writer has put it, God’s Spirit is unrestricted: “God determines the time, the place, the channel, and the program content.”[12]  That is a great source of comfort – a source of relief for me.  It isn’t all up to us.  And as I listened to good people that I’m pretty sure haven’t stepped into a church in years, if ever, I had to agree with Mr. Sullivan that the work of the Spirit is not to maintain particular institutions or buildings but to transform hearts and minds so that the love of Christ is known and lived and spread.

But it also occurred to me that a community drawn together around a single event or person for one afternoon can’t sustain a life of faith or the ongoing work of Christ.  It can’t sustain a life of striving to be faithful to what we know about Christ and what we learn together about Christ over a lifetime of prayer, study, community and service.  Especially when the Holy Spirit doesn’t solve our problems, but creates them, and when the work we are called to do is work that we know will fail, at least by society’s measures of success.  There is a wonderful old story about a member of a church, who used to attend services regularly, but stopped.  After a few weeks, the minister decided to visit him.  It was a chilly evening, and the pastor found the man at home alone sitting by a blazing fire.  Guessing the reason for his pastor’s visit, the man welcomed him, led him to a comfortable chair near the fireplace, and waited.  The pastor made himself at home but said nothing.  In the silence, he contemplated the dance of the flames around the burning logs.  After a few minutes, he took the fire tongs, carefully picked up a brightly burning ember and placed it to one side of the hearth all alone.  Then he sat back in his chair, still silent, the host watching all this.  As the one lone ember’s flame flickered and diminished, there was a momentary glow and then it was cold and dead.

Not a word had been spoken since the initial greeting.  The pastor glanced at his watch and got up to leave.  He picked up the cold, dead ember and placed it back in the middle of the fire.  Immediately it began to glow once more, with the light and warmth of the burning coals around it.  As the pastor reached the door to leave, his host said, with a tear running down his cheek, “Thank you for your fiery sermon.  I’ll be back in church next Sunday.”

I’m not telling you this story to get you to show up for church every Sunday.  OK, maybe I am, a little bit, but the real point is, as John Wesley put it, there is no such thing as a solitary Christian.  That’s where Newsweek’s cover story, “Forget the Church,” is dead wrong.  Following Jesus means being part of a community.  This Pentecost installation Virginia Thibeaux designed for our sanctuary is called, “Gathered and Scattered.”[13]  The Holy Spirit started a movement on Pentecost, and to sustain that movement, the community gathers and scatters, gathers and scatters, gathers by the power of the Spirit to learn and pray and be fed and inspired, and scatters by the power of the Spirit to do Christ’s work, understanding we also will meet the Spirit when we get there.

We are in the middle of the ongoing Pentecost.  As Greg Love once said to me, the only place to avoid change and growth is in a coffin.  Only God knows what the church will become, but it probably won’t look like the church we grew up with, and I’m not talking about worship style here; I’m talking about something much more fundamental.  The change may take a couple of generations.  Some of us here may not see it, but we can hope for what we can’t see, as Paul put it.[14]

And we can be open to the winds of the Spirit.  We can be open to speaking and learning all the languages God speaks – not just church language, but the language of our neighborhood, of young families who are too busy, of single parents and people out of work, of people marginalized by the culture and people who are skeptical about religion, people who hold weddings at wineries and memorial services under tents in parking lots.  It’s significant that the first act of God’s Spirit at Pentecost honors the diversity and individuality of the people who hear about Jesus, throwing open the doors to people the disciples couldn’t even have imagined.

So, to rephrase Mr. Sullivan, “Follow Jesus, and join with the Holy Spirit in reinventing the Church.”  It began with Pentecost.  It did not stop there.  The Spirit of God promises to continue to stir and energize imagination and faith and hope.  May God help us to remember this promise as together, as a church, we face the future, with its challenge and its hope.  Amen.

In a letter to Redwoods Presbytery Members, The Rev. Dr. Robert E. Conover writes: “Yesterday at our stated meeting, the presbytery voted by a 74/18 majority to express its opposition to the imposition of the rebuke to the ruling by the Presbytery Permanent Judicial Commission, and upheld by the Synod PJC and General Assembly PJC, that the Rev. Dr. Jane Adams Spahr had acted contrary to the Constitution of the PC(USA) when she conducted same gender marriage ceremonies…The motion was very thoughtfully crafted and carefully worded to express the presbytery’s opposition.  In other words, the vote of the presbytery was effectively a collective dissent by an overwhelming majority of members present…While the action of the presbytery yesterday does not undo the judicial decision, it does express the presbytery’s collective opposition to the imposition of the rebuke.  The position of the presbytery by yesterday’s vote is clear.  The decisions of the Presbytery, Synod, and General Assembly PJCs are also clear.  Does this create some ambiguity?  Possibly, but it is hardly the first time people of faith have been confronted by ambiguity, and I have every confidence that we will remain firmly grounded as we find our way through it…  Same gender marriage is at the forefront of society, national politics, and the church.  The Presbytery of the Redwoods has displayed repeatedly, and did so again yesterday, a way of being and behaving in the midst of challenging issues that is an example for both the church and the world: openness, grace and respect, even in the midst of profound disagreement and pain.  I trust this to be the way of Christ for the life of the world.”

Many newspapers are covering this important story. You can read a few of them them below:

LA Times: California presbytery defies church, backs minister in gay weddings 

Washington Post: Presbyterian churches ignore commission, won’t censure SF minister who performed gay marriages 

Marin IJ: Presbyterian church representatives refuse to rebuke former San Rafael pastor in gay marriage dispute

And the PCUSA begins to deal with some of the unknowns in the article below.

 PCUSA:  Redwood Presbytery votes to oppose GAPJC decision rebuking Spahr for performing same-gender marriages

And the story was also covered by KTVU, you can see the news broadcast below:

SAN ANSELMO: Church leaders refuse to sanction Presbyterian…http://www.ktvu.com/videos/news/san-anselmo-church-leaders-refuse-to-sanction/vHJgJ/

“After 9/11 occurred and our government decided to go into Afghanistan, there was a lot of controversy — especially living here in San Francisco,” explained Wood — now 79 — in recounting the origins of a project now called Bare Roots.

“I was looking for something we might do at our church that could bring us together, that everyone, no matter their political leanings, could agree on and that would be positive,” Wood said.

Read the rest of this article on the PCUSA News and Announcements. 

   Our New Testament lesson is Acts, Chapter 10, verses 44 through 48.  These verses at the end of Chapter 10 of Acts are just the end of a longer story and we need a quick catch up before we hear this morning’s passage:

Cornelius, a Roman army officer and Gentile in Caesarea, a believer in God but not a Jew, has a vision that he is to send for Peter, one of the apostles.  It so happens that Peter, a devout Jew, has a vision as well.  He’s praying on the roof of his friend’s house in Joppa, anticipating a fine meal being prepared by his hosts.   He falls into a trance and sees a sheet being lowered down from the heavens, filled with all of the foods that good Jews aren’t supposed to eat – animals considered to be “unclean.”  He hears a voice: “Get up Peter, kill and eat.”  Peter responds, “No, way!  I’ve never touched this stuff, let alone eaten it!”  And he hears an answer: “What God has made, you must not call profane.”  This happens three times, which is God’s way of saying, “And I really mean it, Peter.”  And while he’s still trying to figure out what it is that God means, Cornelius’ men are knocking at the door to invite Peter to Caesarea.[1]

Now, a good Jew wasn’t supposed to hang out with Gentiles, but the Holy Spirit gives Peter a nudge out the door.  He travels to Caesarea, meets Cornelius and realizes this Gentile is having a genuine experience of God.  Peter starts preaching about this God who’s giving Cornelius visions, and about how Peter has been awakened to a reality he never understood before: “I truly understand,” he declares, “that God shows no partiality.”[2]  But before Peter can finish his sermon, the Holy Spirit short-circuits the usual order of things, and that’s where we pick up the story.[3]

So now reading the passage:

⁴⁴While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. ⁴⁵The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, ⁴⁶for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God.  Then Peter said, ⁴⁷“Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” ⁴⁸So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.  Then they invited him to stay for several days.

Even on the Gentiles.  Even on us.  This passage reminds us that the question of whether the Jews were included in God’s plan for salvation wasn’t remotely a concern for the early church.  The Jews were a given, regardless of what they believed or did – they were, after all, God’s people.  The burning question for the early church was whether non-Jews were included.  The very earliest church was basically a Jewish sect, but in the book of Acts, the Holy Spirit is whittling away at this assumption, and this change was not easy.  To adapt from Jewish into non-Jewish cultures required excruciating growing pains.  Did new followers have to be circumcised – as adults?  Did they have to follow Jewish dietary customs?  People had strong opinions about how to answer these questions and none of them were answered unanimously or without a struggle.

Now, from our perspective a couple of thousand years later, the question of whether we should eat a bacon cheeseburger might seem trivial.  But, there’s that line, “God knows no partiality.”  No partiality.  And then Peter’s declaration that we cannot withhold the symbols of inclusion in the church from anyone who so obviously shows the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  This hits us – the church – where we live right now.

First of all, it hits us where we live because, at least for the most part, in this room, we are the Gentiles.  We are the ones that everyone thought should be excluded, would be excluded, of course, because Gentiles were idolatrous pagans; not heirs of God’s covenant, and so not held to the same moral standards – we were the “them” in this scenario, the outsiders, the ones who were unclean.  In the movie, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” the father, Mr. Portokalos, mutters in Greek to his daughter’s Anglo-Saxon boyfriend, “When my people were writing philosophy, your people were still swinging from trees.”  Peter and the apostles had that same sense of superiority about pretty much everyone else including the Greeks when it came to holiness and righteousness, the standards by which God judges people, according to the psalmist.   Everyone else, everyone outside the covenant was profane.

But this encounter between Peter and Cornelius changed the course of Christianity forever.   It opened God’s plan for salvation to the whole world – to you and me, who would never have been welcome if the Holy Spirit had not planted this vision of God’s impartiality into their active imaginations.

And this story also hits home because when Peter declared, “God shows no partiality,” he also put us on warning: the rules were changed for us, so that we could come in – who are we, then, to prevent God from blessing the whole human family?   Who are we to stand in the way of God’s love?[4]  Who are we to say, “These are the rules.  These have always been the rules.  They always will be”?  Peter thought he knew the rules.  They were right there in Scripture.  But the movement of the Holy Spirit, present in us and among us and between us even now, trumps everything.  How dare we claim to know more than the Holy Spirit?

Last Wednesday, the President officially announced his support of gay marriage.  This followed a very controversial vote in North Carolina that bans gay marriage and any other type of “domestic legal union.”  I know and love people who have strong feelings on both sides of the gay marriage issue, and so I proceed with much care for both.  Those who have spoken loudly against gay marriage declare that being gay is against God’s intention, and they quote parts of the Bible that appear to speak against it.  Those on the other side of the issue, and I count myself among them, point out the contextual nature of the Bible, the lack of any understanding in Biblical times of a loving, gay monogamous relationship, and the fact that Jesus said absolutely nothing – nada – on the topic.  And the fact that we ignore many of the other archaic rules in the Bible, without blinking.

I believe we should give more attention to the movement of the Holy Spirit in today’s passage.  The vision Peter received clearly re-defines what is understood in the Old Testament.  You could say God changed God’s mind here.  Or, more accurately, you could call it the Holy Spirit at work in the church.  A Holy Spirit that constantly surprises, inspires, and guides people toward the gospel.  A Holy Spirit that falls on the very people you thought were living against God’s will.  A Holy Spirit that lifts up and sanctifies all people through the grace of Jesus Christ.[5]

Peter’s revelation in Acts 10 was that “he was only a mortal.”  What humility!  Peter noticed the movement of the spirit and realized that it was God, not himself, that had the power to judge. … This does not deny the importance of justice, or of living according to morals.  Rather, it declares that what that means is discovered through living in community together, through discerning God’s will together, allowing the Holy Spirit to lead.

Wherever you may stand on the issue of gay marriage, I urge you to take note of Peter’s example, to be open to being surprised by God, to be surprised by the “other” – because you – we – used to be the other, the ones who were profane.  Could it be possible that North Carolina’s Amendment 1 or California’s Prop 8, broad strokes of “religious” morality, would have been on the sheet God descended from heaven?  Could it be that God is telling us to be careful whom we call “profane” or “unclean?”

For those of you who are not on Facebook, besides the little tidbits about what’s going on in their lives, people often post links to other websites: news stories, humorous articles and photos, and a whole variety of videos, some of which are informative and others of which are entertaining.  Once again I am wishing we had a functioning projector because there are times when a picture is worth a thousand words and this is one of them.  Last week a friend posted a link to a video with the caption, “Skip your morning meditation and watch this instead.”  It was a five-minute video of a baby’s first bath.  The woman bathing the newborn may have been a nurse or a doctor – we can’t tell who she is, but we can tell by her slow, calm and caring touch that this is not the first infant she’s bathed.  But the camera is focused on the baby, who melts into the woman’s gentle strokes.  The water must be just the right temperature because the baby stays drowsy and calm.  The baby is the picture of trust, of comfort, of someone being loved well.  A number of people left comments on the video, including, “Imagine if everyone knew kindness, compassion and love like this.”   Another commented that the way the woman held and touched the baby made it clear that she recognized the amazing gift of life expressed through this child.[6]

If Peter lived today, instead of in first century Palestine, and if he had access to the Internet, I imagine that this video would have been his vision, rather than the sheet of unclean food.  I imagine that he would hear a voice saying, “Look at the baby, Peter.  You are trying to decide whom to wash in the waters of baptism, whom to include, in whom my Holy Spirit rests.  You look at my people and you see gay or straight, light skin or dark skin, Republican or Democrat, capitalist or socialist, Muslim, Christian, Jew.  When I look, this baby is what I see.  Every one of you is more the same than you are different.  Every one of you is precious; every one is an expression of my amazing gift of life.  Look at my children, Peter.  My blessing and my Spirit rest even in them.  And, even in you.”

May it be so for each of us.  Amen.

Still, I understand the difference.  Parents tend to feel self-conscious about a crying child, and tend to worry about distracting their fellow worshipers.  I know that when my own children were small, I was very relieved to have a nursery available, because that one hour in church was precious quiet time.  It really is hard to concentrate on a sermon when your 1-year-old is doing her best imitation of an air raid siren.  And while some parents want to stay in the pew and deal with the cranky child as best they can, others really would rather retreat to a “crying room,” like our Fireside Room where we have closed circuit TV broadcasting the worship service.

So what’s the balance?  How do we make families feel genuinely welcome?  This summer we’ll try an approach we’ve been talking about for a while.  We are going to unbolt the second-to-the-last-row pew (on one or both sides of the aisle – we’ll see what works) so that there is floor space between the last pew and the pew in front of it where small children can play quietly – not silently, but quietly – during worship.  We’ll come up with some quiet games, toys and art materials; maybe put a rug down to minimize the clatter of toys on the hard floor.

This will allow the children to worship with their parents, to begin to learn age appropriate worship etiquette, but most importantly, to experience being part of the worshiping community.  Before children are able to make sense of a sermon that appeals to adults, they can still become accustomed to the sounds of worship; they can feel the words and music wash over them in ways that touch the heart even if they don’t speak to the intellect – yet.  Children can watch their parents and the other adults participate in the liturgy.  They can feel the welcome of the church family that has promised to nurture them.  They can begin to feel at home in worship.

I started attending worship with my parents when I was about 6 or 7 years old.  My mother kept lemon drops or Lifesavers in her purse.  I was free to draw all over the worship bulletin.  I played plenty of games of tic-tac-toe in church, later graduating to hangman.  When my daughters were teenagers at my last church, all the middle school and high school youth sat up in the highest pews in the farthest corner of the back of the balcony.  I know many notes were passed and many giggles shared.  And at the same time, those kids felt at home in worship.

Watch for the moving pew.

My favorite activity was going on the cargo net which was over a creek and held up to forty people at a time!

-Jared

Read Zach’s reflection

Read Diana’s refelction

View photos

A few weeks ago, I found myself scanning across the local radio dial in my car on a trip to San Jose when I came across a new radio station which was playing music from the 1990s. While I was in middle school in the 1990s, it was also when I started getting into music. And one of those bands I found myself enjoying at that time was called The Dave Matthews Band. If you haven’t heard of The Dave Matthews Band, they are a band predominately from the 1990s which are known for being an alternative rock band who use a lot of non-traditional musical instruments ranging from violins, fiddles, and flutes in their music. While the majority of themes in DMB songs vary, a lot of their songs deal with issues like appreciations of life to more human justice issues, from violence and racism. But one of my favorite songs from the band is called “Everyday.”

The music video for this song is also probably one of the best music videos out there as well. While the video only has the band members singing the song in the background, the video shows a stocky, yet warm-hearted, geekish looking man in his 30s on the streets of New York City going up to strangers and offering to give people hugs. At the beginning of the video, the young man is finding it difficult for people hug him. After all, making eye contact with strangers is something hard to do in New York City, let alone hugging strangers. But after awhile, a clean cut man goes up to him, takes up his offer, and hugs him. A few moments later, an older woman in her 80s hugs him. Then a group of young African American men playing basketball hug him followed by a group of tough New York Firefighters, to even a skeptical, yet willing, late night talk show host Conan O’Brien who hugs him when the young man walks onto his set. While this video is simple and doesn’t contain any scripted words, fancy action scenes, or flashy graphics, it shows us just everyday people, everyday strangers, loving one another as the band sings the song with the lyrics in the background, “All You Need Is, All You Want Is, All You Need Is, Love. Everyday.”

This morning our scripture is all about love. In this passage that Martha and I have read for you, we find ourselves at a point in John where we see Jesus talking with his disciples not only about God’s love for them, but also their need to love others. In a sense, Jesus is painting a pattern for them. A pattern that is saying that as God has loved him (Jesus) he in turn, loves them. And since he loves them, they should not only remember that love Jesus has for them, but they should also pass this love onto others. “As God has loved me, so I loved you,” Jesus said. “This is my command, Love one another.”

I am sure all of us here have at one point or another have seen T-shirt shirts or bumper stickers which read, “Jesus Loves You,” or even sung this simple song at Sunday School or Vacation Bible School in your youth with the same title. In fact, when noted theologian Karl Barth was once asked about his most profound discovery about God, he surprised an audience of listeners by answering them by singing , “Jesus loves me yes I know for the bible tells me so.”

But while everyone has heard and knows the phrase “Jesus Loves You,” the truth is, do we really believe it? Granted, we have been reminded of it by slogans, the silly songs, and even those charismatic late night cable televangelists. But is it really true? Are we really loved by God? Am I Loved by God?

Despite this question sounding so simple, the reality is this: it’s a question that many people are struggling to answer. Everyday, people ask themselves, “If God really loves me, then why do I feel so much guilt in my life? If God loves me, then why do I live with so much regret? If God loves me, why do people say I am going to Hell for who I am?

And while we know we live in a fallen world where sometimes there is anything but love everyday, we also find ourselves struggling to understand why is it that sometimes we see people who talk about God’s love and the need for us to love others but it sure doesn’t appear that they are doing it themselves? Much more, if God’s love is supposed to be unconditional, then why is it sometimes presented by many as being conditional much like a contract—only being offered to a selected people who hold up their end of a bargain to do select things.

Recently, Rob Bell, a Christian author and pastor, wrote a book entitled “Love Wins.” The premise of the book outlines Bell’s view that many have distorted the idea of God’s love and forgiveness by making it seeming conditional, something that only can be obtained by those who believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

In his book, Bell writes, “First, I believe that Jesus’s story is first and foremost about the love of God for every single one of us. It is a stunning, beautiful, expansive love, and it is for everybody, everywhere. That’s the story. “For God so loved the world . . .” That’s why Jesus came. That’s his message. That’s where the life is found.”.

While Bell’s book has gained a wide popularity and much needed press, it also has gained tremendous criticism and Bell himself has also received a great deal hateful responses for his theology of unconditional love, not by those outside of Christianity, but from those in the Christian community. Bell’s argument about God loving and accepting all has brought him so much response from people who not only reject Bell as being a heretic and preaching a perverted gospel, but has him labeled by many as being a man who is leading people to Hell for his views on God’s love.

Even though this is such a bold statement by many who say that preaching unconditional love is an unforgivable sin, we must take a moment and ask ourselves, does even unconditional love exist in the first place? And if so, where did unconditional love come from?

One of the ways in which theologian John Calvin often described our relationship with God was that of a loving parent who loves their child. While there are many other ways to view God, I often like Calvin’s imagery of God because it provides for us an imagery of how God loves us in our own lives. And even though Calvin discussed the loving parent as being a father or a mother, I think it would be safe to use a person as a loving parent with anyone whom believed in us, who unconditionally loved us, and someone who no matter what we did in life, was always there for us. Maybe for some of you it was your father, maybe for others it was your mother. Or maybe it was an uncle, an aunt, or maybe an older sibling. Regardless, whom ever that person was in your life who always embraced you with love, its this love we felt from that person, the love we shared with that person, and the love that despite no matter what may have come between the both of you, that continued to exist because it was a love that couldn’t be restricted, relegated, or revoked. It was a love that was always real and a type of love that was always unconditional.

Recently, I heard a story on the public radio program, “This American Life” about a man named Roger who was from the inner city neighborhoods of Baltimore. The man, in his late 30s, grew up without a father and was raised by his mother. While Roger had a great deal of love for his mother, he spoke about how much he had hurt her when he was younger by getting into trouble. “At first, in my early teens I was into stealing,” he said. “Later, I found myself getting into drugs, and then into the Baltimore city gangs. And when my mother tried to convince me to get help, I didn’t listen to her because I was mad. And even though she had patience for awhile, she eventually turned me into the police after she learned of a shooting I was involved in. During most of the time I was locked up, I had nothing but anger towards her, anger that she betrayed me and didn’t love me anymore. But you know something,” he added. “She never stopped loving me. Even when I told her that I hated her and hoped she would die, she still loved me. And after all I have been through in my life, after all the hate I felt, she was the only one who continued to love me unconditionally. That is what love is.”

While theologians, scholars, and those in the church will continue to argue about the conditions one must receive God’s love for many years to come, the reality is this: even in our world, a world filled with brokenness, despair, anger and hate even by those in our own religion, unconditional love exists. All of us here at some one point or another have seen this unconditional love in our own lives. Maybe for you it was seeing a way someone forgave you when you did something wrong, maybe it was a way someone reached out to you when you were in terrible need, maybe it was someone who nurtured and comforted you when everyone else turned their back on you. Whoever this person may be, no matter what the circumstances were, in this moment in life, you saw unconditional love, unconditional acceptance, unconditional hope. This my friends is what God’s love is like. A loving parent who loves us no matter who we are, no matter what we may say or no matter how angry may be—like Roger’s mother, our God never stops loving us.

And if we can see it in the lives of those who mean so much to us, then we know it must have come from somewhere. Because unconditional love, a love that surrounds us no matter how fallen or broken we may be, can only come from someone who has no limit, no restrictions, no required merits on how much they can love us. Because love is everlasting, its always open, its always forgiving. And its so strong that even Jesus gave a son to die for us so that we could have such an unconditional, a such divine love.

And while sometimes it may require bumper sticker slogans, silly songs, do what ever you can to remember that God loves you. Even remember the words of Fred Rogers, from Mr. Rogers Neighborhood who once said, “when I tell children at the end of my program they are special, I mean it. Because they made it a special day by just being you. There’s no person in the whole world like you. And God loves you just the way you are.”

Links:

Dave Matthew’s Band Music Video for song “Everyday”:  Click Here

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