Our God is a Loving God

** One of the tasks on my bucket list is to write a sermon., so here goes...

In 1964 I was excited to learn the fabulous Beatles would appear on the popular Ed Sullivan Show, a program Dad seldom missed. To say Dad did not LOVE the rock and roll group is an understatement. As they sang their hits and the young ladies in the audience screamed, my father bluntly told me John, Paul, George, and Ringo should be arrested. Before being deported they should be given haircuts. Having a sense of humor, whenever the “Fab Four” sang “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Dad, after plugging his ears with his fingers, screamed, “No, no, no!”

One Beatles song I particularly liked was “All You Need is Love.” Whenever Dad was out of the house I'd play that record with the volume turned up. However, when Dad was home, I was smart enough to hide that record and all my rock and roll recordings in my underwear drawer; otherwise, Dad would have taken a hammer to them!

Of course, the Beatles exaggerated; we do need more than love, but loving and being loved are essential to our well-being. Thankfully, our Lord is the essence of love. John 4:8 and 4:16 reassures us of this. God created us and this world because of His love for us, and that is why He allowed Jesus to die on the cross.

The people in earlier societies did not envision many of their mythical gods to be loving deities. Ancient Sumer, located in present-day Iraq, is considered the first civilization, going back more than five thousand years ago. The Sumerians believed in many gods, but their deities, they thought, created us not out of love, but to become their slaves.

Their male gods, we are told, had personalities much like those of mortal men, so you can imagine them lying around their heavenly abode, drinking beer, ordering pizza (with extra goat topping), and watching some form of ancient football. However, there were also goddesses; no doubt, they wanted the guys to get off their duffs and do some work.

One of the gods thought up a way to get the chores finished and still be a lazy bum. The gods came to earth, where one of them began scooping clay from a river. The others watched in amazement as the leader began to shape the clay into what would be called human beings.

Each Sumerian city had a head priest, and each city had a fabulous religious temple called a ZIGGURAT. Our God, the true God, speaks directly to each of us, especially through prayer. The Sumerian gods, however, spoke only to the priests, so regularly the head priest in each city would gather the most wonderful foods to take with him into the temple as an offering to the gods while he received orders from those on high.

Today we have several remaining statues of Sumerian priests. It's interesting to note that each one is more than slightly overweight. I guess we know who ate the goodies.

The priests then gave each citizen his or her working orders. Maybe you didn't want to dig a canal in the blistering desert, but you did it, nonetheless. Slaves who did not cooperate would be destroyed by their angry gods. They could drown, have a tree fall on them, or be bitten by a poisonous snake. Therefore, you did your work out of fear.

Our mighty God has rules for us, and He has consequences for those of us who choose not to obey. Yet, unlike most of the gods of ancient Sumer, Egypt, Greece, and the Roman Empire (before it turned to Christianity), the essence of our Lord is LOVE.

We are commanded to love the Lord, and He commands us to love one another. Loving others is comparatively easy when the others are much like ourselves, but God orders us to love all his children -male and female- black and white- liberal and conservative. This is difficult for many of us, but we are even to love Michigan fans, regardless of how delusional they are.

Therefore, all folks should be welcome in this church because it is the house of the Lord, and our Creator loves each and every one of us more than we can comprehend.

By the way, Dad never accepted the Beatles, but he did sort of come around with another rocker, Elvis Presley. A year or two before he died, Dad said, “You know that Elvis guy you like so much? Well, I've been thinking; if I don't have to hear him or see him, I guess he is okay.”

Fortunately, our God always wants to see and hear from you. As an old spiritual song says, “Take it to the Lord in Prayer,” for our God is a loving and caring God. More than anything else, these attributes set the Lord apart from the mythical gods of ancient times.