Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places
Ephesians 2:4-10
David Beckett, D.Min.
St. John United Methodist Church

When Benjamin Franklin was only 16 he published a series of essays now known as "The Dogood Papers." In these letters the widow Silence Dogood announces her availability for marriage and sums up her characteristics: "To be brief, I am courteous and affable, good humored (unless I am first provoked,) and handsome, and sometimes witty."

The placing of "personals" in the classified pages has become a common practice since the days of Ben Franklin. Here are a few "love ads" from the NEW YORD REVIEW OF BOOKS. "Here I am unusual and good-looking 37-yr old woman, sitting alone in my Manhattan apt. wondering where all the aware, caring, generous, stable and adventurous gentlemen are." Or how about this one for getting right to the point: "Eastern University professor, sympathetic temperament, modest income, seeks WEALTHY WIDOW for satisfying life." It is not just people looking for mates who advertise in the classified pages. An advertisement for a "loving pastor" that appeared in the 1903 Methodist Reporter reveals the kind of love it was looking for in their pastor. "Must have small family, if any, and be able to furnish a horse and come to church unassisted. Must not be afraid to work, have no hobbies, have a good clear head, a warm loving heart and big feet."

We are a people looking for love in some pretty strange places: the classified, the small ads, the back pages of life. Our problem is that we don't understand that God has created us with a built-in need for love. And we have lost a biblical perspective of what kind of love we need to satisfy this built-in need. Until we come to grips with the kind of love the Bible says will fill the emptiness in our hearts, we will continue to look for love in all the wrong places. Some high school sophomores were given an assignment to write as essay outlining their definition of love. Among their responses was this one: "Life is one thing after another. Love is two things after each other." Another student wrote, "Love is the feeling in your stomach of butterflies wearing roller skates." The one that took the prize, however, was this one: "Love is that feeling you feel when you feel you are going to have a feeling you have never felt before."

You and I may not advertise for love in the want ads, but we do look for love in some pretty wierd places, don't we? Where are you most likely to look when you need to be loved? Or let's put it this way. Where do you go to fill the empty spaces of your inner life? I would suggest at least three wrong places where folks like you and me continue to search for love.

The first is possessions. Somehow we allow ourselves to be deceived into thinking that love, meaning, and fulfillment can be found in new homes, new cars and trucks, new boats, and new toys. Oh, we never say to ourselves, "I need some love today, so I think I'll go out and buy some new fishing gear." But it is true that some of our spending habits are a direct desire to fill the void God has placed within each one of us.

A reader seeking advice recently sent Ann Landers this letter: "Dear Ann: I've got to decide between a new car and getting engaged. I love the girl, but every night when I go to sleep I dream about the car. What should I do?"

Donald Shelby gives a powerful illustration of the predicament most of us have who live in our consumeristic, materialistic society. He tells of participating in the annual "Shopping Spree" sponsored by the Salvation Army. With funds provided by donors who make the event possible, underprivileged children were allowed to shop, within a certain dollar limit, at a local Sears store. Community leaders were matched with individual children, and instructed to guide the child in filling a shopping list which he or she brought from home. One little boy, with arms loaded, had come across a huge teddy bear which he wanted very much. What was he to do? Take the bear, but his arms were full? Should he give up what he had chosen and go for the bear? Tears of frustration welled up in his eyes as he had to choose.

The problem here is in our grabbing and reaching, rather than our catching and receiving. A little girl accompanied her mother to the country general store. After the mother had made a large purchase, the store manager invited the girl to help herself to a handful of candy. The child held back. "What's wrong. Don't you like candy?" the manager asked. "Yes, I love candy," the child replied. Whereupon the man put his hand into the jar and dropped a generous portion into the girl's cupped hands. Later the mother asked the girl why she had not taken the candy when it was first offered. She answered, "Because his hand was bigger than mine." The secret lies in wanting what God wants to give us. Our problem is that we want what God knows is not good for us. But if we want what God wants for us, then we don't need to grab. All we need do is hold out our hands and receive God's love and say, "Thank you, Lord."

A second place many of us look for love is in KNOWLEDGE. We all have a God-given hunger to know how things work; plants, animals, our bodies, our mother earth, and the whole universe. But in our desire to know and understand we need to leave room for the mystery of God. We cannot understand everything. Some things just don't make sense according to the principles of human logic. One of the great theologians of this century, Karl Barth, confessed to a recurring dream. He saw himself arriving at the Pearly Gates pulling a child's red wagon in which were stacked all of his life's writings. He believed the dream was telling him that in the final analysis, all his knowledge, all his theologizing, was mere child's play compared to God's great grace. God has created us with a curiosity which drives us to know and understand the world in which we live. We need to affirm the quest of science to know. But all of our eggs must not be placed in the basket of science. Knowledge will not save us. It will not improve the condition of the human soul. And it will not give us the love we need. Only a relationship with God can satisfy our need for love.

Those of you who are teachers will appreciate this humorous rewrite of the scriptures. It’s been around for several years and you may have heard it already. Then Jesus took his disciples up the mountain and gathered them around him, and taught them saying, "Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are they that mourn. Blessed are you when you suffer. Rejoice for your reward is great in heaven." Then Simon Peter said, "Do we have to write this down?" And Andrew said, "Are we supposed to know this?" And James said, "Will we have a test on this?" And Phillip said, "I don't have any paper." And Bartholomew said, "Do we have to turn this in?" And John said, "The other disciples didn't have to learn this." And Matthew said, "Can I go to the boy's room?" And Judas said, "What does this have to do with real life?" Then one of the Pharisees asked to see Jesus' lesson plan and inquired of Jesus, "Where is your anticipatory set and your objectives in the cognitive domain?" And Jesus wept.

A third place you and I look for love is within ourselves. The ethic of self-love is pervasive in our culture today. According to Robert Bellah's "Habits of the Heart", the number one reason why people go to church is simply to feel good about themselves. During my student pastorate I had the opportunity to practice preaching on a large congregation. I say practice, because I still have my early sermons and there's only one or two I would ever preach again. Some of them were pretty bad. I remember one woman who said to me once, "I always feel good after one of your sermons." At first I thought this was a nice compliment. But then I got to thinking, "Is this why I preach...so that people can feel good?" And so I began to bring my preaching more in balance with the scriptures where the message for us is not just a word of comfort but also a word of challenge. So there will be times that the word from this pulpit will upset, disturb, and prick at our consciences as well as soothe and comfort us.

We are a people with a fixation on self-preservation and self-gratification. Outward appearances mean too much in our culture. A cartoon once appeared in the "New Yorker" in which a man had just walked past a sign that read, "Prepare to meet thy God!" The next frame shows the man stopping before the mirror of a vending machine to brush his hair and straighten his tie. Do we really think that on the day we die and will meet God face to face that God really cares if our hair is brushed and dandruff-free, or that our body is well toned from months of workouts at the local gym, or that cosmetic surgery has smoothed out all the wrinkles?

To be sure God desires that we be good stewards of our bodies. But we have perverted this notion into an attitude where the human mind and body deserve the best care money can buy. The problem as I see it is that this attitude enables us to spend billions of dollars a year on hair care products while children in developing countries are starving to death. It doesn't make sense.

We can look for love as hard as we want. We can turn to possessions, knowledge, and self. We can even spend a lifetime looking for it, but we will never find it there. No matter how much "love" we think we may find there, we will always want more. These things will never satisfy us. But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our sins, made us alive together with Christ...by grace you have been saved through faith. This is not your own doing; it is the gift of God. Ephesians puts this love-inspired activity in the present tense...these are gifts we can receive today. God's loving activity is not just bottled up for some future use. It is being poured out on us at this very moment.

When we lived in Soldotna there was a time when parsonage water pump shorted out and we had to get our water from other sources for a while. I placed a bucket on the ground to catch the water dripping from the roof. The water was there for us, free for the taking. But we had to place a bucket in the right place to receive it. And it filled to overflowing.

God wants you and I and every person in this world to receive God's grace and love. It is always there, free for the taking. But we have to stop filling our buckets with the false love found in possessions, in knowledge, and in self. And we need to place our buckets under God's shower of love. And it will fill us to overflowing.