I Won't Walk Away

I Won’t Walk Away

A sermon delivered by Rev. Peter T. Atkinson

August 13, 2017

at Bethany Presbyterian Church, Zuni, Virginia

Jonah 2: 2-9

Matthew 28: 16-20


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Let us pray,

Help us to see despite our eyes

Help us to think outside of our minds

Help us to be more than our lives   

For your eyes show the way

    Your mind knows the truth

    Your being is the life.

Amen.

As we continue this series about Love, defining it without confining, we will start with this week and next week getting into more of the specifics about love. In the first sermon in this we looked at how love is one of those infinite words that is hard to define. It is hard to put into words what exactly it is and be specific about it because when you do so you tend to leave much of it out, but that the way to break through those limitations is with poetry and with narrative, for they each bring to bear experience, which is constantly occurring, new and distinctive in and to each one of us. So last week, we looked both, taking the metaphor about God is love, and hashing it out against one of the Biblical poems about God, Psalm 136, recalling the chorus about the “steadfast love of the Lord” Ci Laolam CHosdi. . . and then we looked at the sweeping Biblical narrative of God’s actions, relating them, each of God’s actions to what then must be aspects of love. If the purpose of the last two sermons was to push outwards, expanding the definition of love, it was, but at some point you must begin to reign it in, because despite the fact that Love is infinite, i.e. without ends, it does not mean that love is everything. If Love was truly everything then it would really exist, no we can discern that which is and that which isn’t love, and so since we have pushed the limits outward, now I want to begin to talk about aspects of exactly what love is, not that it is only this, but that is really this. I want to introduce this idea by looking at the Old Testament Lesson first. This is the famous prayer of Jonah from the belly of the great fish. Jonah 2: 2-9.

 “I called to the Lord out of my distress,
    and he answered me;
out of the belly of Sheol I cried,
    and you heard my voice.
³ You cast me into the deep,
    into the heart of the seas,
    and the flood surrounded me;
all your waves and your billows
    passed over me.
⁴ Then I said, ‘I am driven away
    from your sight;
how^[a] shall I look again
    upon your holy temple?’
⁵ The waters closed in over me;
    the deep surrounded me;
weeds were wrapped around my head
⁶     at the roots of the mountains.
I went down to the land
    whose bars closed upon me forever;
yet you brought up my life from the Pit,
    O Lord my God.
⁷ As my life was ebbing away,
    I remembered the Lord;
and my prayer came to you,
    into your holy temple.
⁸ Those who worship vain idols
    forsake their true loyalty.
⁹ But I with the voice of thanksgiving
    will sacrifice to you;
what I have vowed I will pay.
    Deliverance belongs to the Lord!”

Now I use this story and episode and prayer to bring out one of the great aspects of love, and that is its steadfastness. We paid homage to it last week with our reading of Psalm 136, the steadfast love of the Lord endures forever. . . What God is saying, what God is doing, What God is showing through His actions is in fact, I will not walk away. I will be with you. I will be faithful to you. I will be your God. And he shows this again and again. Once Adam and Eve falter, God shows up, asking “Where are you” though Cain has murdered, he is marked, though Jacob is a swindler, though Abraham makes mistakes, though the Israelites, having just been freed, mutter and ask to be put back in their chains. Though during the time of Judges, the people forget and turn away from God again and again. Though Saul, then David, then Solomon all sin in the eyes Of the Lord he is still faithful and steadfast, remembering the covenant that he made, even in the face of the Exile and the destruction of the temple, as the Prophet Ezekiel teaches, and as we looked at in Bible Study on Monday, God is still in charge, still ruling, still upholding his covenant, he has not gone anywhere, and he says that “they will know that my name is the Lord.” God is still present, no matter what may befall, because love is unconditional, steadfast, and therefore, will not walk away.

And this continues to be the case in the New Testament as well, look at the last words of Christ in the Gospel of Matthew, this being the lesson for this morning, Matthew 28: 16-20, some call it the great commissioning because it gives the disciples their job to do, but it does one thing more.

¹⁶ Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. ¹⁷ When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. ¹⁸ And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

I am with you always to the end of the age. I am with you, I will be with you, I will not walk away. And it isn’t a conditional statement, it is not I will be with you if, you are faithful, you are true, you go to church, you lead sinless lives, you follow my commandments, sure he has commissioned them, they, we are to make disciples of all nations and Baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but the next statement is predicated not with a so, or a therefore, but with a “remember” don’t forget I am, definitely, assuredly, bet your life of it, I am with you to the end of the age, always. . . the steadfast love of the Lord endures forever. God is with us, we may run like Jonah, we may turn away, we may cheat, be unfaithful, forget, but it changes nothing about God, God always shows up, and is always with us. His presence is sure, steady, unwavering and true, and therefore one of the necessary aspects of love is this steadfastness, this notion that says, come what may I will be here. And we know this. . . two reasons we know it. One is that we see here God doing it, and the other is that it truly is one of the great human needs in the world. We have the need to have other human beings say to us, I will not walk away, why? Why is that? . . .

Now for the answer I want to have a little bit of fun this morning and change it up. I want to show how this aspect of love isn’t something that the church has a monopoly on, but something that every human being understands and knows, and I’m going to show it through some songs, showing how the idea that love means, not walking away, and being steadfast is something that human beings know very well at their very core, even if they for some reason of history do not connect it to God. . . we affirm and we do connect it to God, and the way God made us, so why do we have the need to have other human being say to us, I will not walk away. . . .

Why? why? Tell them that its human nature.

Why? why? Does he do me that way? (If they say);

Why? why? Tell them that its human nature.

Why? why? Does he do me that way?

You see, its there, right, human nature, the way God made us is why we need love, and why we can seek for our greatest needs and wants to get a further understanding of what love is. We know deep down there is something in us that is empty without someone else, and that being abandoned is one of our greatest fears.

Don Williams puts it this way

G) ‘Till the rivers (C) all run (G) dry,

‘Till the sun falls (C) from the (G) sky,

‘Till life on (C) earth is (G) through,

I’ll be (D) needing (G) you,

Paul Simon tried to write the opposite, but we know that it is folly just when we hear it. . . he writes

I Am A Rock, I am an island.

And a rock feels no pain;

And an island never cries!

No that song is about the folly of a human being thinking that he can live on his own, that he can some how shield up and protect himself from love.

[Verse 1]

Please,  lock  me  away  and  don’t  allow  the  day.

Here,  inside  where  I  hide  with  my  loneliness.

I  don’t  care  what  they  say,  I  won’t  stay 

in  a  world  without  love.

This writer, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, of All you need is love fame, knows that living in a world without love just doesn’t work for human beings, we aren’t made that way

So what remains is the question of love, the statement of love that works both ways. The question of Love, as I put in the bulletin as the meditation for today is quite simple, as captured by my favorite songwriter, Townes Van Zandt

If I needed you, would you come to me?

Would you come to me and ease my pain?

If you needed me, I would come to you

I'd swim the seas for to ease your pain

And swimming the seas to ease pain, must not only work when everything is sunshine and lollipops but also through the hard times. . . the rain. . .

On a perfect day, I know that I can count on you

But when that’s not possible, tell me can you weather a storm

 ‘Cause I need somebody, who will stand by me

Through the good times and bad times, who will always

Always, be right there

Sunny days, everybody loves them,

Tell me baby can you stand the rain,

Storms will come, this we know for sure

Tell me baby can you stand the rain?

So love may be intimidating to us, it may be something that is great with meaning, a word that we dare not uses to often for the very reason that it means not walking away through the hard times, maybe even forever. Robert Earl Keen puts it this way

Love's a word I never throw around

So when I say I'll love you til' the end

I'm talkin about until the day they lay me in the ground

Love's a word I never throw around

I actually said it to my wife in this way. . . from Frank Sinatra

Today I may not have a thing at all, 

Except for just a dream or two;

But I've got lots of plans for tomorrow,

And all my tomorrows belong to you.

I’m going to finish now with two songs, two songs that I think really capture this aspect of love the best. One is from the secular world and rings of it, and the other from the gospel world. Let me start with the secular one first. Listen to this, this is from a song by Jewel called “I Won’t Walk Away” aptly titled for today don’t you think. . .

Wrong or right be mine tonight

Harsh world be damned, we’ll make a stand

Love can bind, but mine is blind

Other’s stray, but I won’t walk away.

That is it, other’s stray but I won’t walk away, If you needed me I would come to you, I would swim the seas for to ease your pain. I can stand the rain, come what may, I will not walk away. Wouldn’t it be great to have someone say this to you? Have you ever dared say it, and mean it, while saying it to someone else. . . . such is the stuff of the love of God, as is shown in this gospel classic.

Once I stood in the night
With my head bowed low
In the darkness as black as could be
And my heart felt alone and I cried
Oh Lord, don't hide your face from me

Like a king I may live in a palace so tall
With great riches to call my own
But I don't know a thing
In this whole wide world
That's worse than being alone

Hold my hand all the way
Every hour, every day
Come here to the great unknown

Take my hand, let me stand
Where no one stands alone

Take my hand, let me stand
Where no one stands alone