stay in love with God

from my sermon on 12/12/10 from Colossians 2:6-7, finishing up John Wesley's 3 Simple Rules

Kissing. I want to talk to you today about kissing. Now, you may be thinking that this is quite a leap as we finish up the 3 simple rules of John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement. But those 3 simple rules are: do no harm, do good, and stay in love with God. That’s not too big a stretch to go from kissing to staying in love with God.

When we think of God, we may have many images: Creator, Shepherd, Judge, Redeemer…but I wonder how often we think of God as Lover.

Rueben Job who wrote this book on Mr. Wesley’s 3 simple rules helps us in this regard. Mr. Wesley said to practice the “ordinances;” things like worship, scripture, prayer, fasting, and communion. Rueben Job says by following these spiritual disciplines we stay in love with God.

Worship for some may be drudgery. “I have to get up on Sunday morning, I have to put on dress clothes, I have to go to church.” There was a little girl who was just learning to attend worship. After going several times with her parents to church, she then went to her grandparents church, a big cathedral. It had marble floors and pillars. It also had plaques along the wall. The little girl asked her grandparents what the plaques meant. “Oh, they are memorials to those who died in the service.” The little girl hesitated before asking, “The contemporary service or the traditional service?”

What if going to worship meant dating God, getting to know God in an intimate way? At Sunday School this morning one young woman said that she grew up in the church in Texas. When she went away to college it was a long way off in California. She didn’t know anybody. She attended worship services at her new place of living. She said, “when I went to worship, it was like going home.”

Another woman I once knew was baptized in the church and confirmed in the church, but really stayed away from church for decades. Then she found the UMC and heard that we were about love and not laws, about relationships and not rules. She thrived in this environment. She loved attending worship. She grew in grace. She became a new person. She found a poet John O’Donahue who had the words for her, “May I have the courage today, to live the life that I would love, to postpone my dream no longer, but do at last what I came here for, and waste my heart on fear no more.”

In staying in love with God, worship is dating God.

Scripture is encountered in worship, and in Bible study, and in personal devotions. Several years ago, I went back to my seminary, Perkins, for Minister’s week. Many scholars presented many wonderful papers, but what I remember most is what Cecil Williams said. He was the pastor of Glide Memorial UMC in San Francisco which had a ministry to the homeless, those with HIV, etc. If you say the movie, the Pursuit of Happyness, you saw this pastor and church. On the same pew would sit a bank president and a prostitute. Cecil quoted a scripture that I had read many times, but I had never let get to me. It was Isaiah 43:4, “Because you are precious in my sight and honored, and I love you.” The people in his congregation needed to hear that. I need to hear that. Maybe you do too.

Every morning I go to a little book that directs me to a piece of scripture. I stay with that passage until I find something that resonates with me. I try to breathe that verse all day long. Today, it is from Matthew 11, “I am sending my messenger before your face to prepare the way of the Lord.” I think that I would be crazy if I didn’t practice this.

In staying in love with God, reading and hearing scripture is like getting a love letter from God.

In prayer, we may be good at asking God for things. The pastor was delivering the prayer in the worship service, when it was interrupted by a loud whistle. After the prayer, a mom leaned over to her son, “Gary, was that you?” “Yes.” “Why did you whistle right then?” “Well I was praying to God to teach me how to whistle, and right then He did!”

In praying we may not be as good when it comes to listening for God. Once I was trying to teach a man about how to listen for God by practicing my form of breath prayers. I was trying to help him clear out all of the clutter so he could hear God. As we went along he said, “You know that I am a recovering Catholic. I grew up learning rote prayers. I always thought of them as punishment! You would go the priest and say, “Father, I have sinned….” He would reply, “Say 3 Hail Mary’s and 5 Our Father’s.” Now I know that I could have used those as breath prayers to listen for God.”

In staying in love with God, prayer becomes pillow talk.

The discipline of fasting we may not practice so much these days….or do we? How many times have you waited dinner? “I know you are hungry kids, but daddy isn’t home yet. We’ll eat when he gets here.” How many times have I been in the surgery waiting room with the parents whose child is in operating theater? “Would you like to get something to eat?” I ask. “No, we’re not hungry,” they say. Fasting is waiting on the one you love.

Fasting may be literally going without eating food. I recently encountered a pastor who went on a Daniel fast. For 21 days, he did not eat meat or fat or sugar or milk; he mostly ate fruits and vegetables and grains. He did it with his wife, then with the church leadership, and then with the whole congregation. Amazing things happened in the church. Fasting is not a manipulation of God. It is waiting on God. It is done in conjunction with prayer.

Fasting may also may mean going without other things. I know a man who….listen up you guys…went through the football season without watching one football game on TV so he could devote more time to his family. Others might fast from spending so much time on the computer or from cursing.

In staying in love with God, fasting is waiting on the one you love.

We have the sacrament of communion here month after month at this table. I wonder if we take for granted the power of the risen Christ in this meal. I once helped with a spiritual retreat for young men. One of the young men was outstanding in every way: he was a scholar, he was an athlete, he was active in his church. He was also a perfectionist. He never felt good enough. He felt he never did enough good for God to love him. On the 3 day retreat we had communion once each day. At the closing communion after hearing about God’s grace, God’s unmerited love for him, he said, “Every time before when I took communion, it has always tasted bitter. Now for the first time, it tasted sweet.”

In staying in love with God, communion becomes like dinner out…and God picks up the tab.

So John Wesley called such things ordinances. We don’t like that word. It sounds like laws. But what if we dug deeper and found that such ordinances are what bring order to our lives? What if they brought the harmony we desire in intimacy?

We have these 3 simple rules. We don’t like that word either. It also sounds like laws. But various Christian communities have had a “rule,” a code of conduct, a pattern of living. What if these rules helped us find the way of life?

And what does the Colossians passage have to do with this? It says that we are to continue to practice what we have been taught so we may thrive as Christians. We are to walk in the way that we learned, or in other words to stay in love with God.

And what does all of this have to do with kissing? I got this sage advice from Phoebe the Clown a long time ago at a clown workshop. She said, “Shaking hands is good. Hugging is better. But kissing….kissing is the best of all. Why not the best?”

Why not the best? Stay in love with God.