SERMONS

Exodus 1:8-14; Deuteronomy 17:14-20
Jeremiah 23:5-6; Romans 8:18-24

The Reverend Angela L. Ying

There once was a bear so filled with love that whenever he roamed the forest and came across another living thing, he would give it a hug.

Everywhere he wandered, the bear shared his love – hug by hug.

He even hugged creatures that bears have been known to eat.

This bear could meet the roundest little rabbit, and he would just stop, smile and give it a great big hug.
No creature was too big…
Too small…

Too smelly…

Or too scary to hug.
But what this bear love to hug most were trees.

The bear never met a tree he did not like.

Big trees…

Little trees…

Apple trees…

Pear trees…

Peach trees…

This bear hugged them all.
One day while the bear was trying to hug a beaver and a tree at the same time — he noticed a man with an axe walking into the forest.

The bear followed the man until he stopped at one of the tallest, oldest and most beautiful trees in the forest.

The man spent so much time looking at this magnificent tree that the bear thought the man must love trees, too.

But to the bear’s horror, the man started to chop the tree down…

For the first time in his life, the bear did not feel like hugging at all.

Then, just as the bear was about to sink his teeth into the man, the bear stopped.

The bear realized that no matter how angry he was, the bear simply could not eat the man.
It just was not in his nature.
The bear sighed…
And then he decided to do what he did best…

He gave the man a HUG!
The man was not used to getting real big bear hugs, so once the bear let go, the man dropped his axe and ran far, far away.

And do you know what the bear did next?
The bear smiled and gave the tree a great big hug.

The tree felt much better.
[from Big Bear Hug by Nicholas Oldland]

As you listened to the story, who are you more like?

The bear so filled with love…
The creatures and trees being hugged…

The tree, which has taking time to grow for years and yet finds it can still be vulnerable…
The man with the axe…
And what would happen if I told you:
Love is in YOUR nature.
Love is in YOUR nature.
Love is in YOUR nature.
Would you believe it?
Love is in OUR nature.
Do we trust it?

Knowing love is in your nature, would you act differently?

Knowing love is in your neighbor’s nature and in my nature, would you live differently?
I wonder if you and I actually do trust that love is in our nature, but we so easily forget.
When someone attempts to tell me that love is in my nature,

a part of me wants to believe it — and to believe it wholeheartedly. And that part of me grows and blossoms as I experience the embrace of God who is love.

And yet, a part of me… still wonders, still worries if the one sharing this about me really knows what they are talking about.

True?

And this part of me, I need God and my family, my friends and my faith community to help me in my unbelief. For this part of me can keep me stuck.

Stuck in my own destructive ways that become so familiar that they are comforting.

For left to my own means, out of my deep fears — without consciously knowing — I will get the axe out — forgetting the beauty, the immense beauty God holds in me, in you and in God’s creation.

Perhaps, we have become so far removed from the love that is in our nature — the love that God has breathed in each one of us. So much so that we come to see the beautiful old trees in our lives as things we are “entitled” to — Entitled to chop down.

True?

Looking at the world, it seems we often act more like the man proudly carrying a big, heavy axe into life than the bear so filled with love, don’t we?

We carry our heavy axe, we convince ourselves, as protection, not knowing what we are capable of destroying and swing at anything that gets in our way — cutting down anything that may be or become of use to us.

And if we do not cut it down, we might go behind the scenes, and try to get someone else who will go out and cut it down for us.

Is this really in our nature — or something we have gotten use to, something that is familiar though very destructive —- because we know what it is like to be vulnerable and to have to face being cut down and made into something we are not. And we are afraid.

BUT — To Love is in our nature.
Remember the stillpoint as we began a journey of Manna and Mercy: You are born in love, by love, for love.
Not to harm.

Not to kill.

Not to destroy.

But… To love.
This is what God wants.
This is what God hopes for us.
This is the God we keep running away from because we are not used to a real embrace that tells us who we are and whose we are. God’s Beloved.

So we run…

We run far, far away from God whose nature it is to LOVE.

Sure God can wipe us out.
Sure God can put God’s teeth in us.

But God weeps and sighs and knows it is not in God’s nature to do this.

So, God keeps loving.
And what do humans do?
Take a look at the scriptures.
Humans respond by acting like “BIG DEALS.” Humans not only think like Pharaoh, who thought he owned everything, humans start acting like they are Pharaoh with the military behind us.
Humans make a BIG DEAL. Which inadvertently means, we think there are others who can be seen as “small deals.” And thus, the disparity and inequality between Pharaoh with his big deals on top, and various big deals and ordinary citizens in the middle. And on the bottom of the pyramid, making up most people, are the slaves who lived under heavy oppression. A system divided by big deals and small deals, rich and poor, oppressors and oppressed.
“How do humans know if they were big deals?

They know by bossing other humans around, by piling up stuff, by dominating nature, and by reaching glorious heights… they knew by having more points than other humans in their scoring system. Humans gathered into groups, clans, tribes and nations. These collections of humans became extremely enthused about their group being better than other groups. Thus, humans invented oppression and war. Oppression involves setting up a system so one group can use another group for its own advantage. War involves killing humans in another group until they surrender.
God groaned. Planet Earth groaned. All living things groaned. The whole universe, its harmony disrupted by the egoism of the human species, wept.

You can bet God thought of snuffing out the humans. However, when considering the destruction of the human race, God wept and said, “I will not! Can a mother destroy her child, her delight, her joy?”

It is not in God’s nature not to love.

So, God in passionate love, decides that instead of terrorizing humans into submission, God will do what God does best — LOVE and begins “the long story – a story of friendship, passion, promise, disappointment, hope and self-giving love. A story of God mending the universe.” (from Manna and Mercy by Daniel Erlander).

Even when humans act and become oppressive Pharaohs.

Even when the oppressed are liberated and spend forty years in the wilderness and when they forget, they ask for a king to rule over them when God tells them Israel will become the very Pharaoh’s Egypt they left.

Even when the Assyrian Empire, the Babylonian Empire, the Persian Empire and much later the Roman Empire, in Jesus’ time came to be formed…

God weeps. God sighs. God loves.
And the amazing thing is this… that even as empire existed around him, Jesus taught, preached and lived LOVE.

In the days, weeks, and months ahead, will we remember we are born in love, by love, for love… to LOVE.
For that is God’s hope and in the words of the Apostle Paul to the Romans “as the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains” ready to give birth to something new — can we not make a big deal.

Rather, begin the long process to love and be so filled with love that, created in the image of God, we come to experience in our life long movement from empire to earth community — from our every day movement from big deals and small deals to loving as Jesus loves — we discover to our amazing surprise
…To love is in our nature!