Loving God with everything we've got.

Brad Sullivan

Proper 20, Year C
Sunday, September 5th, 2010
Emmanuel, Houston
Amos 8:4-7
1 Timothy 2:1-7
Luke 16:1-13

“Hear O, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your Soul, and with all your might.” That’s Deuteronomy 6:4-5, and that’s really what our Gospel passage is about today. Love God with everything you’ve got. There’s nothing greater than that on earth, no higher purpose to which we are called or made. Love God with everything you’ve got. Everything else in life joyfully comes from that love of God.

When we really love God, can see our love of God expressed in concrete actions. We all know that. The more we love God, the more we want to do good to other people and love others as well. John tells us we can’t love God and hate our brother and sister. If we do so, we’re liars, and the love of God isn’t really in us. James tells us that faith without works is dead.

If we say we love God, but that love has no expression in our lives, then we’re likely just kidding ourselves that we actually love God all that much. When we love people, that love is shown in the time we spend together, the way we talk about those we love and the way we honor the ones we love. Jesus was telling his disciples in the story he told today that if we really love God, we’re going to live that love out. We’re going to put aside whatever we love more than God, and we’re going to show our love for God in the way we live.

Taking a look at the story Jesus told, there was the dishonest manager. He had no love of God. He had no love of other people. He loved money above most other things, and that’s why he was dishonest, so he could get more and more money. Then this accounting problem came up, and the rich man realized that his manager was dishonest, at which point, the manager realized he did love one thing more than money: self preservation, and he did a great job at it.

Knowing that once he was unemployed, he’d need some friends and get some folks to help support him, he showed incredible mercy to all of these people, cancelling their debts, reducing their debts. From their perspective, he was a great guy. He was a loving, generous, wonderful man who had taken their burdens and reduced them. He showed them compassion and mercy. He did exactly the kinds of things that God continually called his followers to do. Except that he did so out of selfishness rather than out of love for anyone but himself, but I bet he got a pretty good following from it. What I then wonder is, having given these seeming gifts of grace to the people, what kind of Gospel did he give them afterwards? Probably not much of one, and certainly not one in which loving God was everything. Then again, from their perspective, who cares about loving God, this dishonest manager took care of them.

That’s part of why Jesus warned against loving money more than loving God. Even those who are dishonest can gain a following and influence by acts of mercy, even selfish ones. When Christians, then, proclaim love of God and yet appear to love money or anything else more than God, why would anyone follow after Christ?

Maybe y’all are aware that to those outside of the church, we’ve got something of an image problem? We, Christians, are often called hypocritical or condemning, or just about anything but loving. Ozzy Ozborne on his most recent album has a song in which he’s wondering about God and asking the questions so many of us ask of why all this terrible stuff keeps on happening. Why don’t you do something, God? He’s got a great line in that song: “The rich, getting richer, paint you into the picture, give the poor immaculate deception.” – Ozzy Ozborne, Diggin’ Me Down

Now, from everything I’ve found, I think Ozzy is a Christian, but those lyrics are a pretty powerful statement about the perception of Christians. “The rich, getting richer, paint you into the picture, give the poor immaculate deception.” If Christians are seen as loving money more than God, then it is likely because we’ve ended up living that out in some ways in our lives. Maybe some of us, personally, have done so, maybe other Christians have, but we’ve got some work to do to restore the image of Christianity and the reality of Christianity, and our love of God lived out in the world.

What Jesus was telling his disciples was, ‘even selfish, dishonest people know how to live in God’s kingdom and to give mercy to others when it suits their needs. Can’t you, my disciples, do so out of your love for God?’ So, we’ve got some questions to ask ourselves as Jesus’ disciples. These are questions that we should continually ask ourselves to check in and see how we’re doing.

Do we love God or are there things in our lives that we end up putting in the way and loving more than God? If we love God, is that love expressed in our love for others? If our love of God is expressed in our love for others, do people also know that we love God?

By and large, I know the answers to these questions are all yes…and. Yes we love God and there things that we all maybe love a little more than God. What I’m talking about are those continual things that we know God doesn’t want us to do but it’s hard to get rid of ‘em so we keep on doing them.

Let’s take a look at football. There’s nothing wrong with football. I love football. I love playing football, I love watching football, and often when I watch football, I get angry at the other team. Heck, I get angry at my team if they when they make a bone headed play. I’ll be all upset talking to my family or to the TV. “What were you thinking that was such a stupid thing to do?” I’ll get all worked up over these 18, 20 year old young men playing a game. That’s not love of God. Love of God is nowhere in that kind of passionate, virile, angry, vicious love of football.

Loving football in that way is loving football more than God. Now if God were to ask me or any of us who love sports in a similar way, “Do you love football more than me, Brad?” “No! Of course not, I love you, God!” “Well Brad, when you act that way during football games and feel that way during football games, you show that you love football more than me.”

There’s probably nothing that if held up side by side, and presented in one moment that we would chose over God, but life isn’t usually lived by decisions we make in earth shattering, God invaded, moments of clarity. Life is lived in the little things we do, the decisions we make, and the habits we form. Do we choose love of God in every aspect of our lives?

Sometimes we’ve got to change the way we do things if we’re really going to love God. I’ve got to change the way I watch football, the way I drive, the way I get irritated at things, and yes, even the way I spend my money, if I’m really going to love God with all of my heart, soul, and might.

So, do we love God above all else? Yes we do, and we’re going to ask him to help us with those areas where we don’t. Loving God, do we let that love be shown in our actions and do we let that love be known in our words?

In his book, The Hole in Our Gospel, Richard Stearns, recounts his experiences as President of World Vision, a humanitarian organization that serves children and impoverished people worldwide. In recounting a conversation he had with a Christian pastor in Cambodia, he wrote:

“Pastor, living in a country that is more than 90 percent Buddhist, how did you come to be a Christian?” The story he told me was confirmation of the power of the whole gospel in action.

“Five hears ago,” he said, “World Vision came to our community and began to work. I was suspicious of these outsiders to our community and was convinced that they had their own hidden agenda. You see, in Cambodia, since the genocide by the Khmer Rouge, we are always distrustful of strangers. But these people from World Vision [also Cambodians] set up a TB clinic to care for those suffering from TB. They improved the schools our children attended, and they taught better agricultural methods to the farmers to improve our yields. But I was still suspicious and even angry, convinced that they were up to no good. Why would these strangers help us? I thought.

“One day I decided to confront them, and I went to the World Vision leader and demanded to know why they were here. His answer took me by surprise. He said, ‘We are followers of Jesus Christ, and we are commanded to love our neighbors as ourselves. We are here to show you that God loves you.’

“I said in response, ‘Who is this Jesus Christ that you talk about?’”

The man then brought a Bible and the two of them began talking about Christianity. Over the coming weeks, the man who had been so suspicious became a Christian and then went on to share the Gospel with his community, starting a flock of 83 people in his village.

People lived out their love of God, and they proclaimed that love when asked, and so this man became a follower of Jesus and a pastor to his community. Are we willing to profess our love of God to others? Why wouldn’t we? It’s uncomfortable. Are we choosing comfort over love of God?

People might not like it. Well we don’t have to cram anything down people’s throats.
“Do you love Jesus?”
“No.”
“Well then you’re going to hell.”

Nowhere in that exchange was love of God ever even mentioned. That’s not proclaiming love of God. When people notice, however, that we might be living our lives differently than other people they know, we simply tell them we live this way because we love God. That’s kind of a scary thing to do. Love can be a scary thing, but let’s look at it this way. I have no problem telling people I love my wife, my children, my parents, my other family and friends. Now I’m not just going to walk up to a complete stranger and say,
“Hi, I love my wife.”
“Ok, that was creepy,” they’d probably respond.

When family and friends get brought up in conversation, however, I’d have no problem telling someone I love my wife. Why would I have a problem telling people I love God?

So, here’re our assignments for the week. Here’s what to take home with you. One: pick a time to ask yourself or together as a family to discuss what you love more than God. Two: think about, pray about, discuss, how you might remove that thing so that you might love God first and foremost. Three: practice professing your love for God, and try every day this week to recite of Deuteronomy 6:4-5, “Hear O, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your Soul, and with all your might.” Amen.