I stumbled around the parking lot feeling terribly overdressed. It was Southport’s version of Vacation Bible School compressed into a Saturday and called the “Backyard Bible Blast.” It was designed to be a festival, a fun expression of community joy and hospitality but not just for the kids who attend our church, but the neighborhood as a whole. And the neighborhood came. Maybe not as many as we might have hoped because it was threatening rain for most of the day. But still there were plenty of little ones and not quite as little ones bounding from booth to booth, from games to displays, from food to farm animals, from bounce houses to a re-enactment of the nativity, and of course the dunk tank, which always seemed to have line of kids wanting to watch someone splash down in the tank of what had to be cold water.
Someone might ask so how is this a “Bible” blast? Besides the nativity re-enactment, it doesn’t seem terribly biblical. True, we didn’t read chapter and verse. We didn’t have a flannel graph off in the corner somewhere with Bible stories for kids. We didn’t sit them all down and sing a song that will echo around in your head for days afterward. No, maybe we should have just called it a Backyard Blast and been more honest about it. Except.
Except our job had never been to teach the Bible. Or to pound the Bible. Or to memorize the Bible. Those are good things (except the pounding thing - hard on the binding), but not our central task. No, we are called to introduce Jesus to any and to all. And we believe that the best way to do that is to act like Him first. To welcome, to invite, to encourage, to laugh with, to enjoy, to love. It is to be the faith we’re trying to share, to be that love we want to pass on.
That’s a very biblical idea. The Bible is, of course, full of all sorts of ways of communicating faith. But one of the most compelling is embodied witness. To embody the message is simply to live it. To live it powerfully and openly. Like Hosea.
Most folks don’t know Hosea well. He’s one of the twelve minor prophets tucked away in the back of the Hebrew Scriptures. Minor because the book that bears his name is shorter, not because he isn’t as important. He just doesn’t have as many words. Because he was called to live his proclamation. Hosea’s encounter with God begins not with “say this” but with “do this.” And his “do this” wasn’t performance art, like Jeremiah. No, Hosea’s “do this” was a life. Marry a prostitute, and have children with her. That is Hosea’s story. Loving an unfaithful woman. Raising a family. And here’s the deal, God said love her. Not, put up with her for the witness. Not just go with it for a while until the credits roll and you can take your bows on stage. No, love her. Go get her when she strays. Raise the children, your children, her children, when she abandons them to run back to her old life, because the pull is just too strong. Love her. And keep loving her. Keep loving her. Because I do, says the Lord.
Really? Way back then? We thought the loving God was introduced by Jesus. But this is long before Jesus. This is the God we sometimes fear. The God who puzzles us, troubles us. The God who seems so harsh, so angry. I’m not trying explain away a whole lot of difficult stuff in the Bible. I’m just trying to present to you the God that Hosea knew. Was there frustration there? Was there judgment? Yes, of course, that doesn’t stop even when Jesus comes to town. But it is always a judgment the arises out of love. We forget that. We struggle with that. We believe it, but don’t really ... you know ... believe it. We recite it, but it doesn’t seem to be a part of our being, our inner understanding, it isn’t in our soul. Yet, this is the God Hosea knew.
Hosea 11:1-9 When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. 2 The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols. 3 Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them. 4 I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them. 5 They shall return to the land of Egypt, and Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me. 6 The sword rages in their cities, it consumes their oracle-priests, and devours because of their schemes. 7 My people are bent on turning away from me. To the Most High they call, but he does not raise them up at all. 8 How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. 9 I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.
You are loved. That is the third and final essential truth I want to leave with the congregation I served these past two years. You are loved. Not as a matter of course, not because it is in the script, but you are loved with a love that staggers the imagination. God says through Hosea, through his life and his words both, that God’s love is not like the love we may be used to. It is not conditional. Not based on behavior, not conditional or limited. God’s love is not based on a false understanding of who you really are, a role you play, a mask you wear. God’s loved is a creator’s love, a parent’s love, the one who taught you to walk, who picked you up every time you fell and is willing to keep doing it. Every time you fall.
Hosea went out and brought his wife home every time she strayed. Every time she forgot the covenant she made with this strange little prophet, he waited patiently and loved continuously. Every time. Did he have harsh things to say in the name of God? Of course. But if you listen carefully, the harshness is in what they were missing. The harshness was the willingness to allow them to stray and to live on the consequences of their actions, live with the brokenness they had chosen. Because underneath it all was this compelling, constant, perfect love drawing them back.
Underneath it all is a compelling, constant, perfect love. You are loved. That’s a truth no one can take away from you. You can pretend you forgot it. You can believe your own doubts and your own insecurities. You can live as though you aren’t loved. That’s part of the freedom we have. We can walk away and pretend we aren’t. But there is nothing we can do to make God stop loving us. Nothing. It is why God does everything God does.
John 3:16-17 "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. 17 "Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
Remember that? Of course you do. Everyone knows John 3:16. It is the single most quoted verse in the whole Bible. It is scrawled on cardboard and held up in the end zone in football stadiums across the country. It is graffitied on rocks and walls on lonely stretches of high in the middle of nowhere. It’s on billboards and t shirts and buttons and patches and calendars with pictures of kittens or mountains. It’s everywhere. We know that verse. But. Do we believe it? Better yet, do we live it? Live in the truth of God’s motivating love? Live in the confidence that God is here, that Jesus walked this earth, that the Spirit meets us where we are not for condemnation but for love?
I was overdressed for the Backyard Bible Blast this afternoon because I had participated in a funeral for a colleague and friend, who had given his life in ministry and witness to the love of God. And he was remembered today as one who knew how to laugh. The best witness any of us can give to the world is to live knowing that we are loved, and then to love because of it. Love as you are loved.
This is my final word to Southport United Methodist Church. This weekend I say farewell to those whom I have loved and those who have loved me. And there is nothing I can offer them more important that this truth: You are loved.
Shalom,
Derek
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