Love No Limit

A sermon written by the Reverend Scott D. Nowack and preached on April 22, 2012

at the First Presbyterian Church, Kilgore, Texas.

Love No Limit

1 John 3:1-7

What is the limit to the number of friends you can have?

There are many of us who have just a handful of friends while others maintain relationships with pages full of friends.  There are some who believe there is no limit to the number of friends one can have; that you can never have enough.  Is there a limit to the number of friends you can have?  If so, what is it?

Facebook once had a limit to the number of friends you could have.  The limit was 5000 friends.  There was a page on facebook entitled, “Raise the Maximum Number of Facebook Friends Allowed”.  Obviously 5000 friends is not enough for the creator of this page.  More friends are necessary, the writer claims, but not for in-depth conversations or the exchange of important ideas about the meaning of life.  No, the creator of the page wants more friends because the more friends on facebook the more fun games like Mafia Wars and Farmville will be.  More people playing, there will be more variations to the games and they will last longer.  More friends, more fun.

The professor of evolutionary anthropology at the University of Oxford, Dr. Robin Dunbar, did a study that shows there IS a limit to the number of friends human beings can actually have.  The magic number is one hundred and fifty.  More than that and we limited humans simply can’t keep track.  It doesn’t matter if the 150 are all in your neighborhood and you see them every day, or if you have connections with friends, neighbors and relatives across the globe.  If the number exceeds 150, relationships will start to suffer and meaningful contact will become more sporadic.  Dr. Dunbar concluded that human beings seem to be hard-wired to maintain a certain number of meaningful relationships at one time.  Dr. Dunbar has researched this so thoroughly that the phrase “Dunbar’s Number” refers to these 150 people who make up the inner circle of meaningful friends.

The good news?  God’s number is not Dunbar’s number.  There is no limit to God’s love.  There is no limit on the number of children in the family of God.  We are all not only called children of God, but in fact we are children of God.  “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called Children of God; and that is what we are.” (1 John 3:1)  God receives us as we are, transforms us by Christ’s righteousness and treats us like family, as part of the community of God.  And as children of God, we do what is right.  We do the right thing.

Surfing the internet I came across the headline, “World’s Largest Adoptive Family Revealed.”  I clicked on it and the story said, “Meet the world’s largest adoptive family—12 children taken in by caring Jan and Russell Walgamott, who also have four children of their own.  The couple started adopting 20 years ago but now claim their family is complete.

“We work as a team.  It’s not always perfect, but I wouldn’t have it any other way,” said 45-year-old Mrs. Walgamott, from Idaho.  The Walgamott family goes through 17 loaves of bread, 10 dozen eggs and 15 gallons of soup a week.  The children range in age from seven to twenty.

What a great blessing this couple has been and continues to be to so many children who needed loving parents.  But there’s even a limit to that generosity.  Even the most generous family cannot possibly embrace and love all the needy children of the world.

But God can.  God’s capacity to love and care for us is inexhaustible.  God’s love is an extravagant love.

God does not place a limit or a cap on how many people can come into God’s presence.  Facebook may cap the number of friends at 5000, But God doesn’t cap.  We may take a wrong turn, stumble and fall on our faces and God is disappointed in us.  But the good news is that whenever we seek God, acknowledging our sins and need for his grace and forgiveness, the door to God is wide open.  We are always welcomed home.  Jesus describes it best in Matthew when he says to us, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).

            God even knows us by name.  If we are children of God then God must be our parent.  If God is a good and righteous parent who loves us, then God must know us, too, and know us intimately.  What loving parent does not know the name of their child?  The parent knows and understands the child better than the child knows and understands themselves because children are not capable of complete self-knowledge.  There are so many things my two children do not understand about themselves.  On their own, they don’t know why they need to take a bath every night.  They think it’s fun, it’s playtime.  On their own, they don’t know why they have to eat good food and eat regularly.  They just know they’re hungry and thirsty.  On their own, they don’t know why they have to take a nap every day.  They just know they are tired.  But as their parents, D’Anna and I know the bath is for good hygiene.  We know proper food and eating the right things makes them healthy and strong.  We know that their bodies need a nap every day so they can stay healthy and rested to learn, grow and have fun.  God knows us like a parent knows their child.  We think we know ourselves, but God truly knows our hearts, minds and souls.  God knows us by name.  This is powerful news in a world where more and more of our relationships are lived out in the “virtual” world and not the real one.  We are more than a user ID or an avatar, we are children of God.

            As children of God, we are created in the image of God.  1 John 3:2 says, “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed.  What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.”  What John is saying here is since we are created in the image of God, we share some God-like DNA in each of us transforming us more and more from within into the likeness of Christ.  Just as infants mature into toddlers and toddlers into children and children into adults, so we too mature more and more into the image of God in Christ Jesus.

            Since there is no limit to God’s love, then God is able to maintain meaningful relationships with every single one of us.  Dr. Dunbar says human beings are only able to maintain healthy relationships with 150 people.  God’s number is infinite.  Everybody matters to God because everybody is a child of God.

            God’s love is big enough to cover us when we do wrong, when we make mistakes.  1 John 3:5 says, “You know that he was revealed to take away sins”.  Sometimes, like children, we behave badly.  We can be stuck up, selfish, snotty, complaining, whiny, pessimistic, irritating pains in the “ba took is”.  When we behave like this, it’s called sin.  The Bible calls it sin.  God calls it sin and the apostle John reminds us that when we behave selfishly, we are to remember that Jesus died to take away the consequences of these lapses of behavior.  The Apostle John reminds us that God has provided a solution for when life slips off-track, when we slip off-track.  God’s love knows no limit.

            So what are we to do with this good news of God’s unlimited love for us as God’s children?  We worship the God from whom all blessings flow; we benefit from the never-ending, bottomless source of mercy and grace.  Now we get to offer some of that love and grace to the people we encounter every day.  There is no Dunbar number on caring and demonstrating God’s love and forgiveness to others.

            We recently had surprising news that someone had driven their car into our brick wall church sign.  All of us scratched our heads at first wondering how in the world did someone get their car to do that?  What a freak accident!  Well, this happened a week ago this past Friday.  Last Sunday afternoon the young man who had crashed his car into the sign came here to the church looking for me.  He came to apologize and express how sorry he was for what happened.  I wasn’t here Sunday afternoon, so I called him on Monday to get his story.  We had a great conversation.  He shared what had happened, about how embarrassed he was and that he drove away from the scene because he didn’t know what to do.  He simply panicked and came to his senses a few blocks away.  He came by the church on Tuesday morning to introduce himself to me.  He expressed his desire to make amends, to make things right, to do the right thing and help fix the damage from the accident.  We made arrangements to meet at the church on Friday to clean up the remnants of the sign.  True to his word, he was here on Friday and as you saw as you entered church this morning or drove by this weekend, the old sign is cleaned up and the site is ready for a new one.

            I share this story because as the Apostle John says, “Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as God is righteous” (1 John 3:7).  This young man who was involved in this accident knows he is a child of God because he lives it out.  His God-like DNA is easily seen in his character and his actions.  It is God’s love in him that enables him to do what is right, to be righteous in the eyes of God and all with eyes to see and hearts to understand.

We are called as children of God to show God’s amazing love, grace and forgiveness to all people.  God asks us to receive this love so that we can share it as Jesus does.  When we say that we are members of the Body of Christ, we are saying that we wish to follow Jesus, to serve Jesus and to live as Jesus did.  What Jesus did was to offer love with no limits.  We are asked to love as freely as Jesus did.  That is my prayer for each of us here today because this is the good news of Jesus Christ.  Amen.

A Theological Pep Talk

A sermon written and preached by the Rev. Scott D. Nowack on May 20, 2012 at the First Presbyterian Church, Kilgore, Texas.

A Theological Pep Talk

1 John 5:1-6

            

We’ve all heard motivational speeches or “pep talks” before. They are designed to get an individual or a team excited and energized to take on a specific job, to complete a project, or to play an important game. The pep talk is one of the tools of a good coach. Success will come to a coach who can inspire his or her players to play their very best, to the best of their ability; one who can teach and train their team to work toward a particular goal together, to be all that God created them to be.

There are numerous examples of pep talks. There are ones we remember from our childhood; coaches who taught and cared for us, as if we were their own children. There’s Knute Rockne at Notre Dame inspiring his players to win one for the gipper. There’s Vince Lombardi setting the tone for his successful Green Bay Packer football teams declaring that success will come if they focus on three things and three things only: their family, their religion and the Green Bay Packers.

It’s not just in sports. There’s the president’s speech in the movie “Independence Day” before attacking the alien invaders when he speaks boldly to the people, “We will not go quietly into the night. We will not vanish without a fight…Today we celebrate our independence day.” And the crowd goes wild. They are pumped up! That’s the power of the pep talk.

One of my favorite pep talks was told by the late Fred Rogers (of 'Mister Rogers' fame), a Presbyterian pastor, given while addressing the National Press Club. He said that he knew that the room was filled with many of the nation's best reporters -- men and women who had achieved much in their lives. Rogers took out his pocket watch and announced that he was going to keep two minutes of silence. He invited everybody in the room to remember the people from their past --parents, teachers, coaches, friends and others -- who had made it possible for them to reach this point. As the seconds ticked away, he could hear, all around the room, people sniffling as they were moved by the memories of those, coaches if you will, who had made sacrifices on their behalf and who had given them countless gifts, the voice of wisdom and encouragement. They coached us to do our very best and leave the results up to God. And now those coaches stick with us as our inner voice leading us through the joys and challenges of life.

The same could be said for our own journeys of faith. According to professional coach Julie Bell, founder of the Dallas-based coaching firm Mind of a Champion, “In order to put my best out there, I have to make my thoughts obedient to Christ, to ‘maximize’ every occasion for Christ.”

One of the greatest coaches of the first-century church was the apostle John, the author of three New Testament letters. In his first epistle, he says to his fellow Christians, "the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments" (1 John 5:3). John knows that if we let our minds wander, we will naturally fixate on the attractions and temptations of a culture that clamors for our attention and affection. But if we are intentional with our thinking, focused on the love of God and the commandments of God, then we'll be set up to do our best as followers of Christ.

Coach John begins his “pep talk” with love. He says, “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God and everyone who loves the parent loves the child.” (1 John 5:1) We are all a part of God’s family. We become a part of this family when we come to trust in Jesus Christ. At the very center of this family is a series of intimate relationships between God and Jesus, God and God’s children, Jesus and God’s children. It is a love that flows freely within the family of God. John goes a step further. Love is not just warm, fuzzy feelings. It’s an attitude that requires us to be intentional about our thinking and our acting. “By this we know that we love the children of God,” says Coach John, “when we love God and obey his commandments” (5:2). We must show love through action, the action of remaining obedient to God’s commandments. Talk is cheap without loving action.

This brings us to Coach John’s second point: obey. If you are an athlete or a dancer or a musician, you know if you want to perform well, then you have to obey your teacher, trainer and coach. Think about a time in your life when you did something you thought you would never be able to do with the help of a coach or trainer or teacher. I heard a story once about a priest named Jim who decided he wanted to run a marathon although he had no running experience. A friend who had run several marathons agreed to coach Father Jim in his training for the marathon. He coached Father Jim to not do everything all at once. He instructed him to run and walk, run and walk, run and walk, one hour at a time, three times a week.

The first time Jim went running he went for three minutes and had to stop. He was totally out of breath. He walked for several minutes and found the stamina to run for another three, then walked seven and ran three. Over the next month, his running increased and his walking decreased until he could run for an hour straight. And then it increased to two hours. His coach told him, “If you can run two hours, then you can run four hours. If you can run four hours, you can run a marathon.”

He was right. After six months of training, Father Jim competed in his first marathon and finished with a respectable time of four hours, twelve minutes. Because Jim obeyed his coach’s instructions, his commandments if you will, he became enamored with running. Five years later he found a way to use his running to show God’s love for others. He joined a team of runners who took part in a marathon to raise money for an organization in South Africa who were combating the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

Talk is cheap without loving action. What holds true for long-distance running holds true for the Christian faith. Coach John says, “For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments” (5:3). What happens to Christians who walk the road of faith? Is it an easy road or a difficult one? Will we grow and be successful with every step we take? We will indeed have times of growth and success, but we will also stumble and fall, travel down the wrong path, crash into other people, get injured and collapse from exhaustion. A life of obedience is a life of struggle, one that can exhaust us, discourage us and sideline us with spiritual shin splints and other debilitating conditions.

But there is a promise that Coach John spells out for us as his third point, “If we keep getting up and moving forward, we will have victory in God.” Obeying God’s commandments is difficult, but they were created to help us to do our best and succeed as children of God. In the movie, “Glory Road”, that re-tells the amazing story of Don Haskin’s first season coaching men’s basketball at Texas Western University in El Paso. He was the first division one coach to start five African-Americans in a game, including the National Championship where they beat Kentucky. At the beginning of the season, Coach Haskins wanted his players to play a more conventional style of basketball stressing the fundamentals of solid defense, ball control and working for the good shot. As the season progressed, he realized that his players weren’t responding well to his style. They wanted a more open style that was less rigid. When they changed up their style of play, everything changed. They began to have success on the court and were getting noticed by fans across the country. It wasn’t all peaches and cream for them. It was 1965 and racial prejudice was at a fever pitch. They were harassed wherever they went, booed, spit upon, and one of the black players was beat up in the bathroom at a restaurant. But they persevered; they carried on and made their way to the National Championship. As the big game is winding down, Coach Haskins tells his players, “We are two minutes away from a national championship. Right now it’s not about talent, it’s about heart. It’s about who can go out there and play the hardest; who can go out there and play the smartest…They’ve been here before. They’re not going to give it to us. We’ve got to get out there and we’ve got to take it. Take it!” And indeed they did and the world has never been the same since.

Coach John says, “For whatever is born of God conquers the world” (5:4). Coach John inspires and motivates us by stating that our loving and gracious God has already set us up for success: Jesus to believe in, a family of God’s children to love and commandments to obey. These three great gifts empower us to persevere when life gets difficult, when the world pulls us down. If we base our lives on the belief that Jesus is the son of God, then we’re going to be victorious in the face of any challenge. When we come to this table here today and take part in this holy sacrament, we are inspired and motivated to be the person God calls us to be. Again it doesn’t mean that tough times won’t come our way, but we can face them with the promise that no matter what happens, no matter what life drops in our laps, we live with the promise that “nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39).

In the face of life’s challenges, Coach John and psychologist Julie Bell tell us to make our thoughts obedient to Christ. This means focusing on the love of God, obeying his commandments and expecting to be victorious over the world. We may stumble across the finish line, bruised and bloodied by our journey. But with God’s help, we will be victorious.