Truly, Madly, Deeply

Something is stealing my brain. I’ll bet it’s stealing yours, too. Its goal is to keep me from focusing. It doesn’t want my mind to give concentrated attention to anything. Not to the book in front of me. Not to the presenter trying to offer a lecture. Not to the road I’m driving down. Not to the environment around me. Not to my cat. Especially not to God. Especially not to prayer or meditation or Bible study.

It started with cell phones. I remember how strange it was when I started hearing people talking on cell phones regularly. I remember where I was. I was at a gas station filling up my car. There were 3 other cars at the pump with me. And two of the other people started talking, so I assumed they were talking to me, but, no, they were on cell phones. The four of us were all standing within 20 feet of each other, but none of us was really there.

Then it was the Internet. My first step away from a typewriter was a word processor, which I thought was about the most incredible device ever. It had this funky orange screen and you could type on it and then push a button and it would print out pages using this special paper that allowed you to burn words into it. Absolutely amazing. But it didn’t do anything else.

Now on my computer there is the constant temptation to check email. Check my Facebook. Chat with people. Check the sports scores. Watch the dancing baby video on YouTube. Giving the project in front of me my full attention is an effort. A challenge. A chore. Giving that sort of attention to God? It can seem like a fantasy. Can you relate? Something is stealing our brains and we are letting it happen.

So today we’re starting a focus in worship that I’m kind of calling the Truly, Madly, Deeply series. That was the name of a romantic comedy awhile back but I want to use those three adverbs as a way to describe the kind of love I want to have for God again. I don’t want a superficial relationship with God. I don’t want to settle for an occasional glancing reference to Jesus. I don’t want to blog about my relationship to God. I don’t want to refer to it as though it were an old fling that I’ve outgrown. I don’t want to be a stranger to God. I don’t want to settle for a kind of faux friendship – like maybe God is somebody I allow to see my profile on Facebook and to whom I’ll occasionally tweet but never really talk to. God deserves more than 140 characters of my life. I want to fall truly, madly, deeply in love with Her. And here’s the thing – I know God wants the same thing and has built me to love that way.

It’s easy to forget that we’re made that way. We like to think we can make it on our own and that we don’t need a relationship like that. We’re Americans, right? We pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Wasn’t that the essence of the Horatio Alger stories of the 19^th century?

Believing that has given us a great optimism about the future and a great sense of potential, but it can have some nasty side effects. There’s a scene in the television show The Simpsons where Bart Simpson finds himself sitting down to dinner with his family and the pastor of their church. He’s asked to give the blessing and his father groans, knowing that Bart is bound to say something inappropriate. Sure enough, what Bart prays is: “Thank you, God, for nothing. We worked hard to earn the money for this food. We bought it at the store and my mom cooked it. Amen.”

In its own satirical way, The Simpsons was pointing out what happens when we become a forgetful people. It’s the same danger Moses warned the people of Israel about when they were heading into the Promised Land after years of wandering in the wilderness. In Deuteronomy chapter 8, verse 17 Moses says, “Do not say to yourself, ‘My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.’ But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth.”

We think we can do it on our own. We think we don’t need to be grateful. We think we don’t have to return to the center, to return to God. We think that to love God truly, madly, deeply is to be weak or foolish or naïve. We think we can do it on. We think we have to do it on our own. We’ve been burned so often by things and people in which we placed our trust that we can’t risk going there again. We are told that we can’t trust others and maybe we feel like we can’t trust God. Have you ever felt this?

Jesus was starting to walk towards Jerusalem. He’s moving away from Galilee where he has been teaching and we know where he’s going. We know what Jerusalem means. It means the cross. It means the humiliation. It means the suffering. It means death. But it’s where Jesus has to go. It’s where God is going to set all things right.

So Jesus moves along on the border between Samaria and Galilee and he comes to a village where there are ten men standing at a distance and they are united by just one thing – they all have leprosy, a hideous skin disease. But it’s not just the disease that’s the problem. In Jesus’ day having leprosy meant a long, slow death and lifetime living on the edges of the village. People with leprosy were considered unclean. People with leprosy, if they touched anyone else, could make others unclean. These were isolated men who respected Jesus by keeping their distance when they called out to him.

But let me tell you what lepers know. People with leprosy didn’t have any illusions about who they were or what it took to survive. They could not believe that they could make it on their own because their illness forced them to see something that it takes some other people a lifetime to realize – that they were absolutely dependent on a community that could provide what little resources they could beg from them. Survival on their own was not an option. They knew their limits and they knew that it would take something bigger than themselves to get by.

Jesus saw them, but he didn’t heal them right away. No, he tells them to go show themselves to the priest, which is what you would do if you hoped to be declared clean from a skin disease. On the way to the priest, they were all healed. Their exile was over. They could now go on to live.

One of the men paused before beginning his new life, though. Just one. He turned around and went back to Jesus. He wasn’t even a member of Jesus’ race. He was a Samaritan and not a Jew. But that’s the one that returned and fell down at Jesus’ feet. He could fall down at Jesus’ feet now! He didn’t have to call from a distance. He didn’t have to holler out for mercy from the edges of the crowd. He could fall down at Jesus’ feet and he did. He praised God and he thanked Jesus. Truly, madly, deeply.

Jesus was startled. At least he seemed to be. He was startled to see who had come back – this foreigner whom Jews considered to be outside the covenant with God. But he said to the man, “Get up and go on your way. Your faith has made you whole.” The Samaritan had found his way to true wholeness. He hadn’t just been healed; he had gotten in touch with something much deeper. He had gotten in touch with that part of himself that was restlessly waiting to respond to God and to connect him to the grace that makes all things new.

How do I know that there is such a place in the human heart? How do I know that we are made that way? Because the Bible tells me so. Psalm 65, my favorite psalm, begins with words that can be translated like this: “For you, praise waits in still repose, God.” For you, praise is waiting. There is a place within me, within you that needs to praise the living God. There is within me a place waiting to respond to grace. There is within me a song of joy that needs to be lifted up and a hymn of thanksgiving to be sung. ‘There’s within my heart a melody, Jesus whispers sweet and low. Fear not, I am with thee, peace, be still, in all of life’s ebb and flow’? Do you know what I’m talking about?

And we are letting the Internet eat our brains? We are letting the distractions of this life take away that joy? When what our souls desire more than anything else is to love God truly, madly, deeply.

O, I know, there are cares and woes, aren’t there? There are trials and temptations, aren’t there? There are losses we grieve, loved ones that we miss. There are dreams yet unfulfilled and there are moments of darkness and despair. There are relationships that need mending and challenges that need tending. There are addictions we can’t seem to overcome and there are children who worry us, parents who just can’t understand. There are money woes and school issues. There is low self-esteem and high gas prices. There are moral failings and unfinished business. There are cats. There are so many things that can keep us from God.

That’s not all there is, though, is it? You know your blessings. You know that if you wanted to or needed to you could start counting them this moment and never finish. Some of them are as obvious as the sun in the morning sky. And some are unseen but no less real.

You don’t have to count your blessings, though, to know how grateful you are. All you have to do is look into your heart, because praise is waiting there. God is waiting there and even if we lost all the world, we would not lose this grateful heart because it was given to us by Jesus Christ, who knew you didn’t have a lot of things to count to know that you were blessed. In the end, stripped of everything he had, he stretched out his arms and blessed us and blessed God. He loved us truly, madly, deeply, with everything he had.

You can love like that, too. You can because beyond all the distractions and all the things that call us away to the circus in the city, you have a heart that knows how to love truly, madly, deeply. It may be untrained. It may be unused. But it’s there. And no brain-eating evil can take it away. There’s within my heart a melody, Jesus whispers sweet and low. Fear not, I am with thee, peace, be still. Thanks be to God.

Luke 17:11-19

As he began to go toward Jerusalem, he passed through the middle of Samaria and Galilee. And when he entered a certain village, ten men with leprosy approached him and stood at a distance. They called out saying, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us."

Upon seeing them, he said to them, "Go, show yourselves to the priests." And as they were beginning to go they were made clean.

Now one of them, seeing that he had been healed, retuned with a loud voice praising God, and he fell on his face at his feet, thanking him. And he was a Samaritan.

Jesus responded by saying, "Weren't ten made clean? So where are the other nine? Could no one be found returning to give praise to God except this foreigner?" And he said to him, "Rise, go; your faith has saved you."