Chihuahuas and Cheesecakes

Ah, Valentine’s Day. It is the official day when we scramble to the store to find a card for our significant other, searching among the rows of ridiculous puns and Chihuahua laden cards professing a less-than-Shakespearean sonnet to a generic loved one.

None of them really work, but we buy one anyway.

If you have grade school children and this day falls upon a week day, then you know that you will spend the days leading up to this running back and forth to find the various constructive elements to create a box. 

A box adorned with pink and red hearts and glitter glue. A box that will return home full of, as one Facebook friend puts it – “Some candy and a bunch of colorful trash”

Yes, I do it to. I can describe these things because I go through it. It becomes somewhat of a chore – and perhaps more than that at times. It gets expensive. It is bothersome.

And it is wonderful.

When asked about the “greatest commandment”, Jesus quoted a bit of the Old Testament:

“Love the Lord Your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.”

He followed it up with some clarification: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

We tend to focus on the latter of the two sentences, and when we speak of “God” and “Love”, we speak of it in reference to God’s love for us, and not the other way around. God’s love for us IS important and a fundamental part of who we are, but listen to the prayer Jesus’ was referring to: This prayer he quoted from is known as the “Shema”, and the longer version is something like this:

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

There is no mention of loving your neighbor. There is no mention within the Shema because there doesn’t need to be. It was understood as a part of loving God.

To put it in an over-simplified, blunt sort of way, when you love someone, then you respect their stuff.

And the world, and everything in it – that includes everyone in it – belongs to God.

In the text in the book of Luke we are introduced to the man Zacchaeus, a Jewish man who is rather short in stature who has made some choices that are not popular. Luke mentions this, but many miss it. He states that Zacchaeus, I’ll call him “Zach”, is a tax collector. To make it more pronounced, Luke clarifies that Zach is a “ruler among tax collectors”, and that he is rich.

Ouch.

Let me clarify. Zach is a Jew, but he has chosen a life that serves the Roman empire. This would have been by choice. He is in charge of other tax collectors, so he is a leader. And he is rich. The important thing is not that he is rich as much as how he is rich. Tax collectors earned a commission on the taxes they collected. Zach got rich taking from the poor and giving to the rich, and leading a group of others to do the same. Zach was good at what he does, and what he does wasn’t good. In fact, it was a sin.

Zach wants to get a good look at Jesus, but the crowd wont part for him. I can understand why. Maybe Zach was afraid to enter the crowd. I can also understand why. SO Zach did what any reasonable person would do and he climbed a tree. And Jesus noticed.

“Zach! Come on down here! Ima stay in your house tonight!”

Can you imagine Zach’s eyes? The look on his face as everyone looks up at him from below?

I joke about his name, but this was no coincidence – you don’t really find those in the Bible – Zacchaeus is a well known Jewish name that means “The righteous one”, and this man lived a life that no one would have considered righteous. So Luke was making a statement by the very name, and the recognition by Jesus of that name.

And the crowd complains. As if in one massive groan, they lament – “Look! He’s going to be the guest of a sinner!”

Boy, this crowd doesn’t know Jesus, do they?

In fact, the Greek tells us that the word “Everyone” means that even some of his own disciples may have felt this way.

Zach, uncomfortable, looks to plead his case – “I give half my money to the poor, If I have cheated anyone, I repay them four times over!” This was big, too. There were laws for giving to the poor, and the standard was ten percent of one’s earnings. Certainly not HALF. And if you wrong someone, you are to repay them plus one fifth  - NOT four times over.

Christ’s response was that Salvation has come to this household.

And he wasn’t talking about Heaven. Salvation was an immediate change of being. Still is.

You see, Zach got it, and Jesus knew that.

Remember when I said that Everything belongs to God? In the creation poem we are told after each day that ‘God saw that it was good’, and at the end of the week – “God saw that it was VERY good’

In the book of John, we are told that “For God so loved the WORLD, that he gave his only son…”

That means the world, everything in it and everyone in it.

And so Zach was living out the Shema. Zach loved God, and Jesus knew it. This sinner had received salvation. Yes, I said that right. And no, that doesn’t mean he stopped being a tax collector.

We do things when we love someone, don’t we? We seek them out, we look toward their well being. When they are sick, we care for them, when they grieve, we grieve. If the ones we love need help, we go to help them. This is called compassion, from the Hebrew word meaning “womb” or it’s synonym, empathy. Like a mother to her child, we protect and care for the ones we love.

We tell them we love them. God does the same for us. God does not first determine our worth, but instead, responds to us with undeserving and relentless grace and understanding.

THAT, my friends, is LOVE.

We love because God first loved us. It is a marvelous wonderful thing, and it is a two way street.

A two way street where one lane is often empty.

In a truly cliché gesture, my wife receives on an annual basis, a gift of chocolate covered strawberries and an assortment of three chocolate covered personal size cheesecakes (although one could argue that ALL cheesecakes are personal size). This year she also received a box of chocolate covered truffle cakes.

And she will smile as though it is some great surprise, and then she will make a comment about how she is on a diet, and I will say “I know” and they will nonetheless disappear within the next day or so (because, as we all know, chocolates given in love have no calorie count – scientific fact)

I do not give my wife this gift because it is required of me to do so. She would not leave my side if those precious strawberries did not arrive. She would not be angry if the cheesecakes did not miraculously manifest on the doorstep.

I do this for a different reason. I do this because, I find great joy in seeing her eyes light up, in seeing her smile. As much as I hate it when people take pictures of their food and plaster those pictures on their social networking “wall”, I do not complain, because she does this only to things which bring her great joy or concern – and chocolate covered cheesecakes never brought anyone concern.

I do this because I love her, and to remind her that I remember what she likes, and that I will not forget what makes her happy.

“And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart…”

You are not required to pray. You are not even required to go to church on a weekly basis. Maybe that is news to you, and I hate to be accused of as the one who made the weekly attendance drop, but simply showing up in the pew won’t get you into heaven. Heck, “getting into heaven” should be the least of any Christian’s concerns.

Things like praying and going to worship are the chocolate covered strawberries and cheesecakes that God loves so much. Prayer is the participation and recognition that God is an active and consistent part of who we are and what we do. When we pray to God, and when we do it right, we are saying “I remember you are here, that you love me, and that you want to help me, and I know that if it is right, you will”

Worship is equally important. I often hear that worship is a personal thing that requires no church. Yes, maybe occasionally, but Worship in Church is the reminder that we are part of something bigger, a conscience community of children who are loved by, and who love God. We care for one another because we are God’s children and to care for one another is to show God that we love God. It is essential – not REQUIRED for reward, but essential. God WANTS us to be together, here, and now, and as God explains in Luke, “How long I have wanted to gather you up as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.” Do you need better imagery than that to come to church?

Maybe you have been ignored by someone you love. Perhaps your sibling, or child, has not called or spoken to you for long stretches. Perhaps you feel taken for granted at times. This must be how the God who loves us feels when we do not participate, when we do not call God on a regular basis, when we do not get together with our family.

Zacchaeus loved his extended family, and he loved God. Zach went out of his way to care for the poor and make things right if he made a mistake.

This is why we do mission. NOT because we believe our “reward will be great”, but because something within us is “moved with compassion”. We love others and take care of others not because we are commanded, but because we love the God who loves us.

To quote James, we show our faith by our works.

We buy God Chocolate covered strawberries, and cheesecakes, and stupid little cards with Chihuahuas on them. And we do this by praying, worshiping, and by loving those around us – even when it is difficult to do so.

I pray that you find this love for God. This passionate, burning love for the God who made you and claims you for her own. I end this sermon on the love of and from God with some words from Augustine, one of the most brilliant and influential early theologians, who found his love for God late in his life:

Late have I loved you,

Beauty so ancient and so new,

late have I loved you!

Lo, you were within me,

but I went outside, seeking there for you,

and upon the worldly things you have made

I rushed headlong,

I, misshapen.

You were with me but I was not with you.

They held me back far from you,

those things which would have no being

were they not in you.

You called, shouted, broke through my deafness;

you flared, blazed, banished my blindness;

you lavished your fragrance,

I gasped, and now I pant for you;

I tasted you, and I hunger and thirst;

you touched me, and I burned for your peace.

Now THAT, my friends, is one heck of a valentine.

Amen.