Preached by Pastor Grant Lynn Ford at the Sunshine Cathedral mcc, Fort Lauderdale on Sunday, March 25, 2001

The Foreword

George Regas writes: "Remember the story of Beauty and the Beast? When the beautiful princess kissed the ugly beast, he was transformed." 

"There is a beast in all of us -- in every nation, in every home and church -- that part of us we are ashamed of or driven to hide or deny. But Jesus says love is a live option. The beast can be kissed. We can be transformed. Love can change that ugliness into something beautiful."¹

The Written Word

The Light of the Ages
Joshua 5:9-12

⁹The Holy One said to Joshua, "Today I have removed your shame and rolled away your blame." The place where they gathered has been called Gilgal, the circle of worship, to this day. 

¹⁰There on the plains of Jericho they celebrated the Passover, while the many who had been circumcised recovered from their surgery. 

¹¹The next day they began to eat from the gardens and grain fields of the area, making unleavened bread and roasted grain. ¹²The manna which had fed them in the wilderness ceased to appear on the very day they began to eat from the crops of the land. 

The Light of Ancient Wisdom
Tao Te Ching, 9 (Mitchell)

Fill your bowl to the brim 
and it will spill. 

Keep sharpening your knife 
and it will blunt. 

Chase after money and security 
and your heart will never unclench. 

Care about people's approval 
and you will be their prisoner. 

Do your work, then step back. 
The only path to serenity. 

The Light of the Master Teacher
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-14 (abridged)

¹Tax collectors and other disreputable people started to hang around when Jesus preached, listening intently. ²The religious and civic leaders were distressed, saying, "Can you believe it? He encourages these people to come around. He even eats with them, treating them like old friends!" 

³Jesus responded by telling a story: ¹¹"There was a man who had two sons. ¹²The younger one said, 'Father, I want right now what's coming to me." So the Father divided the property between them. ¹³It wasn't long before the lad packed his bags and took off. He spent wildly wherever he went, living it up. Soon the money was gone, and he was far from home, ¹⁴broke and alone. About this time there was a bad famine, and he couldn't get a decent job anywhere. ¹⁵So he took a job slopping hogs. ¹⁶He was so hungry that he would have eaten the pods of the carob-tree in the pig slop, given half a chance. ¹⁷He hit bottom, saying to himself, 'At home even the hired hands have all they can eat, and here I am, starving to death! ¹⁸I'm going back. I'll tell my father: 'I've wronged both God and you. ¹⁹I don't deserve to be called your son. Take me on as a hired hand.'"

²⁰He got up and went to his father. "While he was still a long way off, his father saw him. His heart felt like it was in his throat as he ran out, embracing his son and kissing him. ²¹"The son said, 'Father, I've wronged both God and you. ¹⁹I don't deserve to be called your son.'"

²²"But the father cried out, 'Quick! Bring some clean clothes. The best things! Put them on him. Put the family ring on his finger, and shoes! ²³Then go get that grain-fed heifer, and butcher it. Let's have a barbecue. Let's celebrate! ²⁴My boy is here -- given up for dead, but he's alive! We thought he was lost, but here he is!'" What a party they had!

The Confessed Word

The grace of our Master Jesus -- the love of God in the Unity of Spirit -- be with you all. 

Fountain of Grace: You are the one who loves us, beast and all. You see in us the angel waiting to be released. Your prophets and holy ones down through history have called to that angel. Your Son Jesus told us we could live lives of love, and then showed us in his own life and death. 

Yet we still cling to our self-deception of ugliness and woe. Lord, have mercy. 

We see our failures as sins instead of lessons for growth and change. Christ, have mercy. 

We resist your grace and your invitation to start again. Lord, have mercy. 

This morning, however, we simply acknowledge and gratefully receive your love. We allow this love to transform our vision of ourselves and of others. And suddenly we can see beauty where only frightfulness was seen before. When we keep our eyes on Jesus and his loveliness, our vision is fully transformed. We see, we feel, we experience your love. So we fearlessly pray in his strength and name. Amen.

The Proclaimed Word

I'm reading a series of mysteries by Diane Mott Davidson. My current selection is Dying for Chocolate. I've completed her first book, Catering to Nobody, and I will next read The Cereal Murders. That's spelled C-E-R-E-A-L. 

One of the features of Ms. Davidson's books is that when the main character, a caterer-turned-detective, refers to something she is cooking (while also working to solve a mystery) she gives the recipe, right in the middle of the novel. It's absolutely delightful! 

So my daughter Terri and I have decided to write a book of recipes and sermons. For instance, today's recipe would be 'Roasted Fatted Calf' or Standing Rib Roast with Glazed Potatoes accompanied by an Apple and Sweet Onion Salad served on Baby Greens with Tangerine Dressing. Anyone getting hungry? 

Fatted Calf! I suppose there's more to the story than this. But it's an amazing picture, with the longing father greeting his wayward son, crying out: "Quick! Bring some clean clothes. The best things! Put them on him. Put the family ring on his finger... and shoes! Then go get that grain-fed heifer -- the fatted calf -- and butcher it. Let's have a barbecue. Let's celebrate!"

What joy in the heart of the father, who, in Jesus' wonderful story, represents God, our loving, patient Father who waits patiently while we foolishly assert our freedom, and finally come to our right minds, and come home. But we come home no longer as a little child. We come with maturity, life experience, and hopefully, the wisdom of enlightenment. 

By the way, this is a different picture of God than we have received from the First Testament. Early on Abraham's heirs have held faith in a terrifying God who would kill you if you got out of line. This was a God who required blood sacrifice if you made a mistake or a lousy decision. No wonder Abraham was so quick to take his son Isaac up to the mountain to offer him on the fires of the sacrifice! But remember the rest of the story: it was God who intervened and told Abraham: "Don't lay a hand on the boy." Yet it was the understanding of our earliest ancestors that God commended Abraham for being willing to sacrifice his son. What a different picture Jesus paints of 'Who God Is'! Jesus portrays God as the loving parent waiting on the porch until the son came home. 

He also told another beautiful story along with that one, about a woman who had lost a coin. She swept the house clean until she found it. All that trouble for one coin? But wait! That coin was part of her dowry. She wore those coins on her forehead; they were part of her identity; hers and hers alone. So when that coin was lost, part of her identity was lost. No wonder she excitedly called the neighbors over for a party, crying, "The lost has been found!" 

In Jesus' story, who is the woman? God! Who is the lost piece of identity, the coin? You and me! The American folk hymn puts it this way: "What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul! What wondrous love is this, O my soul! 

The Apostle John supports this idea when he writes: "God made the first move, sending the Unique Son into this world-system so we might experience real life because of him. Now that's real love: not us loving God first, but God loving us from the beginning, and continuing to love us even when the Son had to pay the ultimate price for our foolishness, our fears, our failures. So how can we respond to such love? By loving one another!" 1 John 4:9-11 

By the way, please note that Jesus is not afraid at all to refer to God in both masculine and feminine word-pictures: the loving father, the searching women. With today's emphasis on inclusive language some people are still nervous when referring to God in feminine language. But not Jesus, who even uses a female metaphor to describe himself "as a hen gathering her chicks under her wings." So it's not surprising in the First Testament to hear God use a self-descriptive metaphor: "Like a bear robbed of her cubs..." Matthew 23:37; Hosea 13:8

But back to today's story. Did you notice that the son considered himself lost and separated from his father. The father never separated himself from the son, however. In just the same manner, we often say that we have drifted from God, that we have turned our backs on God, that God is far away. 

Yet the Psalmist asks on our behalf: "Where can my feet carry me to hide from your Spirit? Where can I run from you?" David then answers his own question. "If I fly to the highest heaven, you are there. If I make the deepest chasm of the earth my cradle, you are there. If I take wing with the dawn and fly to the other side of the ocean, it will only be because you have led me there, holding me tightly with your sure hand." Psalm 139:8-11

It is we who think we are lost. It is God who is there with us all along, loving us and wooing us back to the Beloved, calling us back to a right way of thinking and feeling. 

The Apostle Paul wrote: "I'm thoroughly convinced that nothing -- death nor life, the present nor the future, positive or negative spiritual influence, things high or low, not a thing in all the Cosmos -- nothing can ever come between us and the love of God that has been made real to us by Jesus our Master." Romans 8:38-39

Does Lent have a message for us? Does the sacrificial death of Jesus make any sense at all, cruel as it seems? It does when we hear Jesus say: "There's no greater love in all the world than to lay down your life for your friends. That's what I've done!" John 15:13

"What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul? What wondrous love is this, O my soul?" 

And what should our response to such love be? Should we happily take it for granted, grabbing everything we can on the way? Or is there another response? 

What was it that the Apostle John said? "So how can we respond to such love? By loving one another!" 1 John 4:9-11 

There's the answer. Only in becoming the loving, giving, caring person that Jesus is do we appropriately honor the love that's been shown to us. Loving. Giving. Caring. Anything short of that and we're not getting the message at all. 

Thomas Merton wrote, "The plain truth is this: love is not a matter of getting what you want. Quite the contrary. The insistence on always having what you want, on always being satisfied, on always being fulfilled, makes love impossible ...Love is not a deal, it is a sacrifice." Love and Living

This is the love to which we are called. It is the love which was first given to us and for us. When we respond by loving in return -- by loving the Divine in ourselves and in our neighbors -- we experience all that God is. This is the infinite bliss of heaven! And it's available to us right here, right now. 

And that's the truth! 

The Giving Word

Amy Carmichael put it so well when she said: "You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving." 

The Final Word

It was Martin Luther King, Jr., who said: "Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend." 

¹ George F. Regas, Kiss Yourself and Hug the World (Waco: Word Books, 1987), p. 43.