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Sermon based on Matthew 22:37

Loving God:  Command or Promise?

"Love God with all your heart... all your mind... all your soul." "...love your neighbor as yourself."

I cannot read or hear these words and not share with you this morning a personal testimony. It's impossible for me not to do so. If I didn't share this slice of personal history it would be dishonest of me by omission, for these words touch me at a place deep in my soul.

I need to go back about eight years to Kansas City. I woke up one morning, specifically the morning of Saturday, March 12^th, 1992 feeling something that I had never really felt before. When I rolled out of bed that morning I felt nothing! I mean I felt nothing! I felt totally empty! I've always been a person of passion, a person of deep feeling and conviction about many things. But I woke up that morning feeling nothing! I don't mean I felt exhausted! I don't mean I felt tired. I don't mean I was stressed and needed a break! I mean I felt nothing! I felt no passion for anything or anybody: for God, for my ministry, for the congregation - for anything! My passion was gone - and it wasn't just a temporary thing - I could tell it - was really gone! The fires that had burned within me for my whole life were as cold as ice! The intensity to which I was accustomed had evaporated. It's really hard to describe other than to say I felt like I was nothing but a shell - just a shell; a form with no substance; a body with no life. I pictured myself, of all things, as an egg, only empty on the inside. An empty egg that had been gutted of all the inner potential for life. All there was left of me was the very thin, fragile outer shell, and beneath that thin layer of shell was nothing - just a vacuum; a gigantic empty space as big as the universe! If I felt anything I felt like I was a phoney - a sham - a charade - a counterfeit!

I went to my church study to finish my sermon out of a sense of duty, not out of passion or love. I finished it because I always finished it! For you see I never failed, I wouldn't let myself fail! Failure was not a word in my vocabulary. I had been on a mission for my entire ministry to love God and to love my neighbor and to meet everybody's needs if it was the last thing I would do. As I sat and reflected on the sermon I had written, interestingly on these very words of Jesus, I became aware that I could not preach that sermon. At that moment I felt like I couldn't face anybody - let alone stand in front of 800 people and preach a sermon. It was about then that some feelings did well up from within me: Feelings of dread! And fear! And confusion! And despair! And failure! A feeling of being totally vulnerable. So, I sat at that very desk at which I had just written a sermon on these very words of Jesus, and I wrote my letter of resignation; and then I wrote a letter to Marcia and David. I left my resignation in the church council president's mailbox; and then I went home and left the letter for Marcia and David; and then I climbed in my car and I drove off with the intention of never coming back! I couldn't face anybody any more. I was empty - and because I was empty I felt like a sham and a failure - so I ran! I couldn't live a lie!

The next 36 hours were the most critical and crucial hours of my life! Things could have gone any number of directions. I had very definite thoughts of suicide. But every time I seriously had a thought of suicide I would began to cry: and I cried and I wept and I wept and I cried. And the crying, I believe, got me in touch with something deep inside, I don't know exactly what - but something . I thought of and I felt a little like Job of the O.T. when he ranted and raged at God and his three friends. I shouted and I screamed at God! "What's wrong with me, Lord? Why do I feel like such a failure? Where are you Lord? I don't feel you, or sense you, or perceive you any more! Have I ever really sensed your presence, or have I been living a lie, and have I been a sham all these years? Are you even there? Do you even exist? Is the Christian faith a gargantuan delusion? Have I been deluding myself?"

This catharsis went on for 36 straight hours. I didn't know it at the time, but all the crying and screaming and weeping and gnashing of teeth was a gift from God. Unaware of it, my venting and purging was beginning to open a fissure in my life that would become a door, through which the Lord was soon to enter in a new way!

After 36 hours in the car I was spent. Now I was exhausted. I hadn't slept. I didn't even know where I was, exactly! It ended up I was somewhere in western Texas. And somewhere in this Texas wilderness between Lubbock and El Paso, on a lonely highway in the middle of nowhere, by this time in a stupor, sort of on auto-pilot, something happened! Suddenly from the back seat of the car someone suddenly put their hand on my shoulder! Shocked and startled I turned to see who was in the back seat, and no one was there! It was so real! And then, I felt a presence - I can't explain it any other way. I felt a presence: a loving, caring, compassionate presence filled my 1988 Ford Taurus Station Wagon! I was not alone in that car and I knew it!

How incredibly ironic I thought to myself after awhile! Here I am at the lowest, darkest, most despairing place of my entire life feeling like a total failure, lost in the wilderness, on the edge of despair, and it's now that I finally sense the loving presence of God like never before! For the first time in my life I felt loved! Accepted! Forgiven! The only thing I had done different was admit I was empty and had run away!

But from that moment on a clarity began to slowly emerge. From that moment on I began to realize that I had spent my entire life running away from God; running away from letting God in Jesus Christ simply wrap his loving arms around me. From that moment on I had to admit that there was a frightened little boy that lived inside of me that had been running all his life. You see, I grew up in an alcoholic home where conflict and abuse abounded. I was never really sure, as a child, that I was loved. And as a child I "reasoned" this way. I concluded that I must not be lovable, because if I was lovable these horrible things, these abuses wouldn't happen to me. There must be something wrong with me! And you see, the only way I knew how to combat those feelings of inadequacy was to be perfect! In those days my passion, my enthusiasm, the fires that burned within me were fanned and fueled by an injured, broken, frightened little boy who was going to make himself lovable come "heck or high water" - striving to love God by being the perfect pastor; striving to love my neighbor by meeting everybody's needs and pleasing all the people all the time!

In those days when I heard these words to "Love God" and "Love neighbor" I took them as commands to do... do... do... do... do... and if I did enough then I would be acceptable to God and to others.

The day after I graduated from high school I left home. I got out of there. That's all I could think about! I started running that day, and I had been running ever since. And what I had been running from more than anything were the demons that lived inside of me; the demons that had been driving me to perfection; the demons that haunted my heart and soul and kept whispering in my ear that I wasn't lovable. And all of my striving and all of my trying, and all of my running had finally, at 43 years old, carried me into the wilderness where I was empty and alone. After a life-time of doing, of spending myself - one day I woke up EMPTY and ALONE! The tank was empty; the fuel cells were spent; the batteries were dead!

But you see out of that death came new life! That serendipity in the car in the wilderness was a whole new beginning for me - an authentic rebirth. In the ensuing months I went into counseling to begin understand - more than understand - to embrace and to heal the frightened, wounded little boy inside of me, "Joey" I call him. In the ensuing months I began to allow the light of Jesus' love shine on his darkness for the first time.

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your HEART, and with all your SOUL, and with all your MIND."

I believe I loved God with my MIND. Intellectually, I understood the Gospel and had accepted it! Intellectually I knew what the Gospel was about, and I could preach inspiring sermons and I had a fruitful ministry.

But my HEART and my SOUL were another thing. You see, the heart of that little boy "Joey" had been broken, and the soul of that little boy had been wounded and he had never healed. In my MIND I knew God loved me and I loved God - but my heart and soul couldn't believe it; couldn't accept it - for they were deeply hurt, and I hated myself! So for 43 years I lived my life driven by a broken heart and a wounded soul - and I was going to prove to God and myself that I was lovable by being the perfect pastor loving God and loving neighbor - and, you see I failed - for one day I woke up empty and alone in the wilderness.

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your HEART, and with all your SOUL, and with all your MIND."

So how do we do that? Is it a matter of doing? Or is it something else?

You see, these words were first spoken, not by Jesus, but by Moses speaking to God's people when they were in the wilderness. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind," Moses told the people. "Keep these words in your heart," "Keep these words in your heart," he said to them. But how do we do that? How do we love God when we find ourselves in the wilderness. How do we love God when our hearts, minds and souls are broken, and injured and sick and sinful? You see, I know that you know about the wilderness too. My story isn't unique. There's not a person in this place this morning who hasn't spent some quantity of time wandering in the wilderness: lost, disoriented, confused, wounded, despairing, feeling like your going in circles, empty, guilty, grieving! We all have our stories! And there is not a one of us here this morning who won't spend some time there again - maybe you're there right now!

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