By Reverend Laurie DeMott

The title of my sermon is, “That’s just the kind of God I am.”

The Atlantic Monthly carried an article once describing the philosophy and teaching techniques of an alternative school system known as the Waldorf School. Waldorf Schools are private schools that use a highly integrative and positive approach to learning, and the article focused on a school in California which used the Waldorf model to teach juvenile offenders. The program had a greater success rate than many other models had experienced and the author attributed much of their success to the undaunted optimism of the teachers.

“Why do they think these kids are so special?’ one observer remembers wondering when she first sat in on a Waldorf class. “Thousands of times I’ve sat with teachers and heard them say, ‘I want to kill Johnny,’ or ‘I can’t wait till I get home and can have a glass of wine.’ At Waldorf they say, ‘How can we help little Ronnie who is, you know, killing puppies now?’”

Unwavering optimism, unflagging hope; caring that remains steadfast even in the face of the most extreme challenges. Have you ever known anyone to love so resolutely? Have you ever really known hope that sprang eternal, hope that could not be quenched? Isn’t this how we describe the love of God – eternal, steadfast, resolute? Assertions of God’s everlasting love trip easily off of our lips, and yet there is also a disturbing element to a conviction in steadfast love. Do you feel a niggling scepticism toward the teacher who loves even the kid who is killing puppies? Does such love seem a little unrealistic? Should God’s love really extend as far? We talk about God’s steadfast love but then we wonder: does God really love the serial killers, the terrorists, or even just the family member whose caustic heart has caused us so much pain?

Does God really continue to love a person even if he or she fails to respond to that love time and time again?

If Hitler had recanted on his deathbed, would God have taken Hitler into the fold?

We may sing our hymns of praise, exalting God’s wondrous love, but when we leave the church and sit down in front of CNN, our questions pour out: how far does and should love go? When does continued hope in redemption become foolishness? What about justice and fair play? Isn’t love sometimes just plain unrealistic in the sullied world in which we live?

At Christmas time, we anticipate the coming of Christ into our midnight world with hope in the power of love to bring us light and new life, but is our proclamation of the power of this love to save us only wishful thinking as short lived as the Santa Clauses we put back into storage when the normal work-a-day world returns?

Underlying all of these doubts is our fundamental question of why God loves. We don't have any problem accepting or preaching the steadfast love of God when that love changes a person. When faith in Christ gets the drug addict off the street, when forgiveness brings a sinner to his knees to renounce his ways, when the persistence of our love finally breaks open the heart of a wayward child, we are ready to stake our faith on the power of God's love. But what about the love that fails to bring change in its wake? Why would God continue to love the unrepentant sinner? Why would God love a person who made a deathbed confession when it is too late to make restitution? Why did God continue to love the Israelites when they sinned again and again and again and again? They never seemed to get it right – God destroys the world in a flood and the first thing Noah does when he gets off of the boat is get so roaring drunk that he passes out. While Moses is on the mountain getting the ten commandments, the Israelites are dancing around a golden calf. Peter lies to save his own skin denying that he ever knew that man Jesus.

A minister leading a bible study on fear of failure asked the group, “Can you name some biblical characters who failed?” One person shouted out, “All of them!”

Humanity has a terrible track record, so why on earth does God continue to love? What good is it doing?

Ezekiel must have asked those same questions of God. The prophet has been warning the Israelites for years that they are headed down the road to perdition but they ignore him and keep on sinning, and sure enough, they get carted off to exile. But then God tells Ezekiel to assure the people that God will restore them to their home once again. I can imagine the argument: Ezekiel says, “Why, God? Why would you do such a thing? The people haven’t gotten it right for over a thousand years; so why would you keep saving them?" God answers, "It is not for the house of Israel that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name. I am the God who loves."

God will forgive and restore Israel not because of who Israel is but because of who God is: God is the God who restores, God is the God who redeems, God is the God who saves, God is the God who loves. The restoration of Israel after the exile has very little to do with who the Israelites are; but is has everything to do with who God is.

Many years ago, there was a television drama called “Family” about the trials and tribulations of two parents and their three children. In one episode, the teenage son is treated badly by his best friend and, as events unfold, the son comes to a point where he has to decide whether to help out that friend in spite of how his trust had been betrayed. The father advises his son not to help, worrying that the boy will once again be taken advantage of.

“Why should you put yourself on the line like that?” the father argues. “He hasn’t been a very good friend to you.”

The son looks his father in the eye and says, “I’m not talking about what kind of friend he is; I’m talking about what kind of friend I am.”

The young man declares that his friendship doesn’t arise out of a mutuality or reciprocal relationship but it comes from something inherent in himself. If he does not act in friendship, even to one who has betrayed that trust, he would somehow be less than himself.

So it is with God, says Ezekiel. God restores us, not because we have been good enough to deserve it but because of something inherent in the nature of God's being.

Why does God love us? Because God is love. To not love would be to stop being God.

“It is not for your sake, O house of Israel,” God says, “that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name.” God’s whole character is at stake, and so God restores Israel to goodness so that the world will understand that God is love.

It is this essential nature of God as a God of love that disturbs us because it confronts the more utilitarian view of love that we carry in our heads. In American society, we treat everything – even abstract values like love – as commodities. We judge love on the basis of its usefulness, its trade value on the market. It’s all right, for example, to love a boy who is killing puppies if loving him will change him because then love is useful -- it can buy change; it can buy improved social order -- but when love doesn’t work and change does not happen, then our society dismisses love and chooses another tool that will buy what we want. Maybe hitting him will make him change. Or maybe isolating him will make him change. Or maybe killing him will make him change or at least restore the social order. Love is just one of many commodities that we have on the market which we can use to buy the kind of society we want and so love can be picked up or discarded at our leisure depending on what we want to accomplish.

In the most recent issue of the Atlantic Monthly, an author argues that some of last year's economic collapse can be blamed on the growth of a popular form of Christianity called the prosperity gospel. Prosperity gospel churches tell their congregations that if they have enough faith, if they pray hard enough, God will ensure that their lives will prosper. "Many of those attending these churches," the author said, "are low income people who embraced this preaching and took on mortgages they couldn't afford in the belief that God would ensure their success if they only believed." I don't know whether the author's argument that the prosperity gospel contributed to the housing collapse is legitimate or not, but I do agree that for millenia people have treated God's love for us as a commodity which when employed with faith will produce corresponding results, whether the results be a redeemed sinner or the means to pay an unrealistic mortgage.

Ezekiel, however, declares that God is not just using love when it's strategically wise. God does not love only when it is reasonable to love, only when it is effective to love, only when it is expedient to love.

God loves when it accomplishes nothing.
God loves when we continue to turn away.
God loves when it is foolish to love, God loves when it is useless to love, God loves when everyone else has stopped loving because the love is getting us nowhere.
God loves because God is love and if God did not love, God would cease being God.

And what hope that gave to the people in exile – what hope that gives to us in our broken world! If God loves us because God is love and cannot not love then there exists in our world a constant power of love which cannot be damaged, cannot be controlled, cannot be eliminated or struck down by any human failing. This is the story of Christmas -- when the streets were too crowded for Christ and all of the inns full, God found a stable in a forgotten barn out back through which to enter our world, because God's love will come no matter what. And years later when the powers of the world nailed that love to a cross, and darkness threatened to engulf us , God's love stepped out of that tomb to live again. There is nothing we can do to stop God's love : if all of the churches were to close their doors tomorrow; if every person at the same moment turned to cruelty, the absolute truth of love would continue, because God doesn't choose to love; God is love and there is no sin so great, no darkness so deep, that can undo the very nature of God.

“It is not for your sake that I will act,” says the God who is perfect love, “but it is for my sake.” God loves -- eternally, perfectly, steadfastly -- because that’s just the kind of God God is.

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1 “Schooling the Imagination”, by Todd Oppenheimer, “Atlantic Monthly”, Sept 1999.