St. Paul Lutheran Church, Minden, Nebraska
Sunday sermon – Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 10, ’09
“From Connecting to Connected”
Text: 1 John 4:15,16
Connecting, disconnecting! Connecting, disconnecting.
It’s what happens in my office when I turn on my computer. I go on-line, check e-mail, open e-mail, read e-mail, close e-mail, go off-line. Telephone rings, I answer the phone, talk on the phone, hang up the phone. I start work on a sermon, stop work on a sermon. I’m in the office, out of the office! Connecting, disconnecting!
How many of you have been there, done that? This graduation weekend, this Mother’s Day, the more I think about it the more I see connecting, disconnecting as what happens in all our lives.
For high school seniors graduation is not just a joyful time to celebrate, an important milestone to reach, connecting with family & friends. There also comes a big “disconnect.” After 4 years, 8 years, 12 years of students passing each other in familiar hallways, students connecting with classmates by way of class activities, school spirit, sharing highs & lows -- after all that comes graduation and graduation not only means seniors moving on, going in different directions, but behind it all there’s this thing called “disconnecting.” Last day; close the book; out the door; done with high school!
This Mother’s Day, we also remember it happens in homes, families too! During the years of children growing up, going to school, most mothers, fathers make it a point to stay connected with their sons & daughters even when their sons & daughters sometimes wonder, sometimes struggle with what it means to be connected to their moms & dads.
Connecting is good – good to have a home to come home to; good to have mothers who understand & love their children even if their children tend to drive them up a wall. But disconnecting too is a challenge – not just children leaving home but in love mothers being ready and willing to let go.
Isn’t that why some new moms’ cry – not for the pain of giving birth but for the joy of connecting, holding their newborn baby healthy & strong. And some moms will cry again years later when their babies head off to college or leave for the service or get married or move away!
And where does Christianity fit into all of this? The answer provided by the apostle John in 1 John 4, in the epistle reading for this Sunday is that where Christianity fits in is that the Gospel of Jesus Christ demonstrates that no one works harder at connecting & being connected & staying connected to us in spirit & in truth, in generous mercy & forgiveness, in self-giving love than God Himself.
First is the joy, the grace of God connecting! I don’t know how else to say it, except to say that God is NOT a holy, busy, righteous all-knowing, all-powerful God who keeps to Himself, who closes the doors when school is out or who holds back His love when people are too busy or turned in on themselves.
No way! From the opening chapters of Genesis at the beginning of the Bible to the closing chapters Revelation at the end of the Bible, the Word of God makes it pretty clear again & again that what God loves most to do is to make contact with people. God’s most fervent desire is to connect with people and for all the people God dearly loves to be connected to Him, close to Him, confident in His presence & trusting His promises!
I remember from the Peanuts Cartoon strip that a smart little boy named Linus Van Pelt had this thing, had this innocent, “over-powering crush” on this favorite teacher, Miss Othmar. Which leads me to ask who remembers from their days in Sunday School, who has figured it out from listening to the teaching of Jesus, from reading the New Testament letters of Paul & John that in the same way God has got this thing for us. God has got this holy, overpowering “crush” on us to be close to us, to connect with us, reach us, embrace us; love us.
As I read and study the Scriptures the picture of God I get is no high-level bureaucrat, no divine CEO, no far-off wizard who hides behind a curtain pulling levers & pushing buttons - but thru Creation, thru the Exodus, thru the words of the Psalms, thru the voices of Prophets, thru the birth, the life, the death, the resurrection of Jesus Christ God is determined to make good on His promise to connect with us; love us, cleanse us, save us, recreate us, get close to us.
That’s why I have never liked expressions that refer to God as “The Man Upstairs” or “Someone up there must be looking out for us.” What 1 John 4 is saying is: Forget about God being “The Man Upstairs” or “Someone up there.” Forget about God being a great force, a prime mover, an abstract idea, a first prince-ple. The Lord our God, who is one Lord, one God, is intensely, whole-heartedly, lovingly personal.
When we pray “Our Father who art in heaven,” that’s not a phrase to locate where God is but it’s a phrase by which we’re saying, “Our Father who is in charge of all things.” To pray “Our Father in heaven” is not calling out to God who is aloof from this troubled world, but calling out to Him in whose arms we can let go of worrisome things; let God be God; let God’s love be love for us!
“Not that we loved God, writes the apostle John, but that He loved us, and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins”,
That God loves us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins means “God of His own will & by His own choosing, chooses to be, wills to be shockingly, undeservedly, graciously, attentively, personal, caring, close.” First, is God connecting! First God initiates the connecting.
Second is God abiding, God staying connected, now and forever. The apostle John writes, If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
The biblical word for God connecting and staying connected is the word Jesus used of Himself and His relationship to His disciples, the word, “abiding,” abiding love, abiding in love, abiding in Christ & Christ abiding in us.” In the life, in the ministry, in the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God is determined to abide with, to remain with, be connected to us no matter what. In the life & ministry of Jesus, God does not push to be first in our lives but God wants to be at the center of our lives, even as God the Father & Jesus the Son are the center of each other’s being & loving.
Can we learn a lesson from a mother’s love for her children, from a mother connecting & staying connected? Imagine this poetic picture of a farm mother at her best, connected, watching, waiting.
She always leaned to watch us, anxious if we were late.
in winter by the window, in summer by the gate.
Although we mocked her tenderly, who had such foolish care,
the long way home seemed much more safe because she waited there.
Her thoughts were all so full of us, she never could forget
And so I think that where she is, she must be watching yet.
Waiting till we come to her, anxious if we are late!
Watching from heaven’s window, leaning from heaven’s gate!
If a mother’s love is an indwelling, abiding love, watching, waiting for her children, so much more so is God the Father’s love in Christ an indwelling, abiding love, always watching, always waiting.
In chapter 14 of John’s Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples of his departure: “I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.” (14:3) Jesus says to his disciples, “And you know the way to the place where I am going.” (14;4)
“How on earth do we know the place where Jesus is going?” the disciples ask. Jesus’ response, Jesus’ promise is that He and the Father will make a “dwelling place” with the disciples. The disciples will live with the Father and the Son forever.
We often hear this passage from John 14 read at funerals, and well we should because here Jesus speaks of abiding, of dwelling, remaining, connecting with us not only now but being connected always!
23 years ago, in May of 1986, one of salesmen for Memorial Gardens in Arlington Heights, Ill. who sold my mother the wide, flat, ground-level, bronze cemetery marker with my father & my mother’s name plates on them; that salesman said to my mother,
“Mrs. Becker, without any additional charge you get to choose a word or short phrase to put between your name & your husband Harold’s name. What word or phrase would you like?”
My mom chose the word always, because that word best described mom & dad’s love for each other, their love for family, their love for God, and their abiding in Christ & Christ in them that they knew would bring them together again in heaven.
“Always!” Jesus promises that one day when all the graduations are over, when all the children are on their own, when our work is finished, when our reason for loving & being here is done, with Christ abiding in us & us abiding in Christ, when we come to our last hour, we too shall “always”, eternally abide in Christ.
In a world full of connecting & disconnecting; when we need connecting & reconnecting to the love of God & to others we love, God who so relentlessly, unashamedly, graciously seeks to make contact with us and DOES make contact with us in Christ in this life God shall abide with us always and forever.
And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
