The sermon text is below the sermon audio…
Sermon “God’s GPS”; St. Stephen’s, Goldsboro NC
Sunday March 14 2021; The Reverend Alan Neale
Yesterday Wendy and I, with our friend Pat visiting from Philadelphia, travelled to Bath (sorry, Baa-th) and Washington. On the outward journey we passed some large attention-grabbing bill boards obviously funded by Christians. One read thus, “Follow God’s GPS! Gospel, pure and simple”.
And, as I was taught to say in South Dakota, “you betcha!”.
Friends, there cannot be a more pure, a more simple definition, rehearsal of the Gospel than that found in today’s Gospel reading – John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten son so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”. You probably started to mouth the words with me as I quoted the verse!
When Wendy and I were looking for a house in Philadelphia, for the church to buy as a rectory… one Sunday we strolled near Rittenhouse Square, we saw a For Sale sign, peeked through the letter box, jumped high to look in through the windows. But… we stepped across the road to view the house, we saw to our wonder in gold letters above the door 316 (three-sixteen), the number of the house. And this became our Rectory.
When I was looking for an address for my gmail account, I included my initials and added 316! It reminds me constantly of GPS (Gospel, pure and simple) and it often leads to engaging conversation.
When, in my early teens, I went forward at a Billy Graham crusade to give my life to Christ… I looked up, and there was the verse John 3:16 on a magnificent and glorious banner.
Dr. Graham once described this verse as “the Gospel in a nutshell.”
I believe this verse is holy ground, both the foundation and summation of our faith. It contains truth that can shape and motivate even the most burdened of souls; it contains truth that is ignored, debased even ridiculed at our peril.
What can I say to you about this verse? In fact, what cannot I say to you about this verse… but I respect you have plans for Sunday!
And then, yesterday, it occurred to me; to use Rudyard Kipling’s poetic verse to begin to expound this Scriptural verse.
Mr. Kipling wrote (in his Just So Stories, 1902), wrote these words:
I KEEP six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
I send them over land and sea,
I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me,
I give them all a rest.
What, Why, when, How, Where, Who? Here goes…
What? It is divine love that generates the message of this Scripture, it is divine love that reaches out to save, it is divine love that refuses boundaries and limitations. Agapeo (to love) – to wish well to, take pleasure in, to long for… always defined by God – a “discriminating affection which involves choice and selection”.
This is no passing affection, no short-lived fad. This ““Love is not love which alters it when alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove: O no! It is an ever fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken; it is the star to every wandering bark whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken” – thank you, Mr. Shakespeare.
Why? To rescue… rescue from perishing, rescue from death, purposeless and empty living. In Mark 4:38 the disciples fear that the sudden storm will destroy their boat and their lives. They turn to the Lord and plead, “Lord, do you not care that we are perishing?” And the word Mark uses is the same word that John uses; God cares that we are perishing… yes, He/She does!
When? Forever, for eternity, for world without an end. And know that eternal life for John speaks primarily of quality rather than quantity of life. A life may be long, almost interminable, yet filled with sadness, selfishness and self-obsession. To such a life God grants an eternal, divine, heavenly dimension.
How? Ah, here’s the rub… here’s where (forgive the metaphor) the “tire meets the road”. Agape love extends itself, expresses itself, expands itself in “giving”. And this giving demands self-participation and self-sacrifice; it is not the giving that is doled out to the poor from the comforts of a passing limousine, but the giving of one deeply engaged with, one with the benefactors of the gift… and by so doing their status is raised from mere recipient to worthy beneficiary! So God gives of her/his very self… “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19).
Where? Everywhere, everyone… the whole world (yes, He/She truly has the whole wide world in His/Her arms!). For John, the world is code for all that is hostile to God’s will. So, we could with integrity, reads John 3:16 as “God so loved the God-hating world”. Here is no time wasted while God cajoles, persuades, coaxes the world to be loved…. No, God goes ahead and does it, he enacts a preemptive strike… a preemptive strike of love!
I am reminded of C.S. 0Lewis describing his conversion while riding on the top of an Oxford ‘bus. He had the sense that he was “holding something at bay, or shutting something out”. He could either open the door or keep it shut, but to open the door “meant the incalculable”. He finally submitted himself to God, the most “dejected and reluctant convert in all of Christendom”. This happen in 1929, it was not until 1931 he surrendered himself to Christ – process, process, process!
And finally who? Who is the initiator, the creator, the architect, the prime mover of this colossal structure of grace, this impressive edifice of rescue, this most perfect expression of love… Who? It is God… there we begin with our admissions of powerlessness and our commitment to a Power greater than ourselves.
Mr. Kipling wrote these words mindful of his daughter Elsie; he concludes:
I know a person small—
She keeps ten million serving-men,
Who get no rest at all!
She sends’em abroad on her own affairs,
From the second she opens her eyes—
One million Hows, two million Wheres,
And seven million Whys!
Friends, no questions (no matter how profound, how numerous, how searching) no questions will ever exhaust the glories of this GPS – Gospel, Pure and Simple.
Thanks be to God. Amen