20th Sunday after
Pentecost /
Isaiah
5:1–7; Philippians 3:4b–14; Matthew
21:33–46
Rev. Gayle M. Highness
If You REALLY Loved Me …
I’m going to give you the first half
of a sentence and, in your mind, I want you to fill in
the rest. OK, here goes:
Imagine you are talking to someone
you love, and you say, “If you really
loved me, you would ________. Or, if you prefer the negative, “If you really loved me, you wouldn’t ________.
There are thousands of ways a person
could complete that sentence. For example, a mother might say, “If you REALLY
loved me, you would clean your room.” Of
course, a kid might say, “If you really loved me, you wouldn’t MAKE me clean my
room.” But then the mom could say, “Well,
I DO love you and you STILL have to clean your room, because, of course, sometimes
love means making children do what they don’t want to do.
In Fiddler on the Roof, the patriarch Tevye, sings the question to
his wife, Golde, “Do you love me?” She sings back, “Do
I love you? For twenty-five years I've washed your clothes, cooked your meals,
cleaned your house, given you children, milked the cow. After twenty-five
years, why talk about love right now?”
She calls Tevye
a fool for asking, but he persists with his question. And Golde
replies, “For twenty-five years I've lived with him, fought with him, starved
with him; twenty-five years my bed is his, If that's
not love, what is?”
All of us like to hear the words, “I
love you.” They are wonderful words and I highly endorse using them frequently. But
what’s more important, saying the
words, “I love you?” Or doing them?
If someone says, “I love you,” but
never talks to you, or listens to you, or gives up anything for your sake, or
worse yet, betrays you or does things they KNOW will make you unhappy, you’d
really have to wonder about their love for you.
That real love
is shown not only in words, but also in actions, is not a profound insight. We
understand this easily when it comes to a spouse or a child or even a
friend. But when it comes to loving God,
human beings don’t always see this so clearly.
In our reading from the prophet
Isaiah this morning, we hear a love song that turns out to be about God’s
relationship with His beloved people
“He
dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a
watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it.” And after all
that, God expected the vineyard to bear sweet and tasty fruit, but instead, it
yielded only sour, rotten fruit.
God expected the fruits that would
naturally flow from people who loved him – fruits of justice and righteousness
that come from obeying God’s commandments.
But God’s people had turned away from God and so their actions showed
self-interest and yielded bloodshed and cries.
God’s words reflect sadness and
disappointment in the response of his beloved, “What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it?”
he asks. “When I expected it to yield grapes,
why did it yield wild grapes?”
What is God going to do about this? Nothing. He’s going to stop
caring for the vineyard. He’s going to remove his hand and let nature take its
course. He’s done with this one-sided
relationship that is not really a relationship at all.
It sounds cruel at first, but isn’t
that what we would call “tough love?”
Isn’t it something like those parents who make the very painful decision
to stop protecting and enabling their wayward children and just let them suffer
the consequences of their actions, in hopes that they will finally “see the
light” and mend their ways?
Think back to the sentence I started
with, but this time think how God would fill in the blank if God was talking
directly to you: “If you REALLY loved
me, you would _________________.” OR “If
you really loved me, you WOULDN’T ___________.
If God were completing that sentence
for me, he might say, “Gayle, my precious
child, if you really loved me, you would look forward to spending time with me
in prayer and meditation as a joyful time when you could tell me about what
happened yesterday – your joys and regrets – and what are your plans for today
– your hopes and goals. You wouldn’t think of it as meeting an obligation.”
Or God might say, “My dear child, if you REALLY loved me, you
wouldn’t worry so much – you would have more trust in my promise to be with you
and give you the strength and wisdom to do the things I have created you to
do.”
You know about the old “honey do”
list that some women have for the men in their lives? In a way, the “honey do”
list can be like the end of the sentence, “Honey, if you REALLY loved me, you
would do _________.” But if our whole relationship revolved around the honey-do
list, it wouldn’t be very satisfying for us OR for our honies.
It’s not so different with God. If
we see God’s commands as a “honey do” list for us. Or if our prayer life is only a “honey do”
for God, something is missing. Finally,
it’s not just words and not just actions – it’s a relationship and springs forth
both words and actions.
This is what Paul is talking about
in his letter to the Philippians. Before
Paul met Jesus on the road to
But Paul found out that “being” and
“doing” all these things he thought were so good, was just a bunch of crap –
that’s the literal translation for it! What really mattered “was the surpassing
value of knowing Christ my
Lord.”
Paul had to let go of the idea that
he could make himself good, “in order
that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my
own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ.”
Paul’s life had been transformed by
his relationship with Jesus. But he knew
God was not finished with him yet. Like
human relationships need continual tending, so does our relationship with God
in Christ as long as we are on this earth.
Paul knew that he would one day be
face to face with Jesus in heaven, but he also knew he was not there yet so, he
said, he presses on to make that resurrected life his own, “because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”
“I
want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his
sufferings by becoming like him in his death,” Paul said. So he forgets what lies behind – the
old life of sin – and “straining forward
to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly
call of God in Christ Jesus.”
The God who planted and tended the
vineyard so lovingly and faithfully, only to see his grapes go sour, never gave
up on his people. He continually sent
them signs and messengers to call them back to himself, and finally he sent his
own Son, knowing he would also be rejected, but from that very rejection would
come the salvation of us all.
If God were completing the sentence,
he would say, “If you REALLY loved me,
you would give yourself completely to me, being united with me even through
death so that you can be with me forever in heaven.”
God loves us so much. And like any lover, God wants us to love him
in return. He doesn’t just want our
words, and he doesn’t just want our actions.
He first wants our hearts! And
once God has our hearts, the words and actions will follow.