Love from the Center of Who You Are, Don't Fake it!

Wyoming Conference Youth Alive 2006
Camp Ladore, Waymart, PA

Love From the Center of who you are, don’t fake it!-Romans 12:9a, The Message

So, I have finally caught up with popular culture and have seen Napoleon Dynamite. I’ve been able to recognize the lines for a while. “Get your own tots!” “It’s a liger.” “Vote for Pedro” shirts. I’d read enough reviews to get the themes of the movie, but I’d never actually seen the thing. And here’s what I saw. I saw a guy that looks a lot like I felt at times in middle school and high school. The girl bailing on him at the dance brought back especially bad memories!

I saw a guy who was a lot like I felt, though I didn’t look much like him. And I’d expect that there are a lot of us here who have also seen the movie and something resonates.

Guys like Napoleon are socially difficult. Family situations are different; we have honest interests that aren’t part of the mainstream, we may have a lack of physical coordination, or we’re short, or round, or thin. We may have a laugh that is too loud. We may have an accent. There are a million ways in which culture marks us as different and “other”. And for those of us who are here, we also have this problem of being Christian, and some of the choices we make also set us apart. The culture makes us instinctively ashamed.

But who we are on the outside is very rarely who we really are. When I went to my 10 year high school reunion, I was voted most changed. In high school, I was nice enough, I guess. My freshman year picture, as my youth group will testify, had me with hair parted in the middle and feathered back. The part in my hair had gone over to the side by the time I graduated. I was in drama and choir, didn’t do sports, and got average grades. I was VERY interested in girls. Ten years later, I was round, bald, and had become a minister. More than one person didn’t recognize me.

How we look changes. How we look is not who we are. Hopefully not, anyway, because that is not what God intends. God intends our lives to be journeys to the center of ourselves.

Who we are is a bunch of layers. And the work of growing up is a process of digging through those layers, down to the place where we find out who we really are, who God designed us to be.

Here’s the top layer, the layer that people see first—the ominous “first impression”. Important to some, but not to us, not to God. For Napoleon, it’s the layer of glasses, hair, and jeans.

Here’s the next layer, the layer of who you are when no one is looking. Here’s our nose-picking, dancing-in-the-mirror, secret-dream selves that only a few people know about. This is Napoleon’s dancing in his room to the old videotape. It’s the Liger level. It’s your favorite food, your secret enjoyment of disco music. This is where some folks place the expression of their faith.

The movie stops there, but there are deeper levels. He and Kip live with their grandmother. Where are their parents? Why is Kip so much older? Why is grandma so grumpy? We never hear that story, but we know it is there, because every one comes from somewhere.

How did your parents raise you? Where was it? How do you remember that place? Does it show in what you do? Does it show in how you talk?

Then you descend through deeper layers. How you were loved, how you love, the stuff that happened to you that makes you angry, sad, depressed fall down to here. The way you act when you’re pushed, or provoked, or set off comes from here. The needs and addictions we have also sprout from here.

Then there is this layer of how we love, and who we love. It’s almost to the center, because this layer is the cover for the center of who we are. It’s the layer that shines like a light bulb, glowing but the light comes from a source inside us.


And then, at the very center, there it is. A small, glowing element. That small bright light. Remember the movie Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban? That scene next to the lake in the woods when Sirius and Harry are being attacked by the Dementors, and a small white light floats out of Sirius’ mouth, then is sucked back in? It’s like that.

That small white light is love. That is the center of who we are. The center of all of us is love. That’s the place where God is, and our lives are the journey to the place where we find it. As Christians, we have the advantage of a better map than most, and names for where we’re going.

Now that we’re there, and we’ve named it, what do we do with it? What is love? What does our road map say it is?
“Love never gives up,
Love cares more for others than for self,
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.”
(1 Corinthians 13:4-7, The Message)

That is the little tiny piece of God that is at our very center. Sirius is dead without it. Harry’s love keeps him alive.

And that’s the funny thing about this little spark of God. It burns much brighter when it is in contact with other ones with as little block as possible. It works like a magnet. It cannot be blocked from other sparks, no matter how many layers there are around it, but the less junk there is, the brighter it is.

Each of us here, each of you, truly do have this spark in side of us. And we can tell that we’re getting closer to it when we feel more like that list of what love is. We all have that potential. We all have that spark.

So when we really “love from the center of who we are”, we’re looking like God. We’re looking like Jesus.

Now I know that none of us are going to look like that all the time. But the closer we get, the more we look like God. And that is what he asks. Because we are his face on earth.

Harry sent out his Patronus spell from his center. Napoleon danced for Pedro’s skit out of that center. God is in our center. God is in your center. Each of you. And your life journey, your walk with Christ, is to get to that center. That’s where His heart is. That’s where He is.

Love from the Center of who you are. Don’t fake it. But drive for it. Strive for it. Get to it. That is our call as Christians.

The Banquet of Glory

John 11:32-40
Isaiah 25: 6-9

Last Tuesday night was Halloween. My wife and I took our son to trick or treat with his best friend and his family. It was a very good time—we got to know some new friends, and the boys had an out of their minds great time. They zipped from house to house as Batman, Anakin Skywalker, Obi Wan Kenobi, and the guy from the Scream movies all banded together to save the universe.

I think the Scream guy even had Jedi powers at one point, but I'm not sure. Sometimes they even forgot to trick or treat. But when they did remember, they were very enthusiastic. They would hide, and when the door opened they would jump out and holler "Trick or Treat!". The boys certainly honored the feast of all Saints in the most enthusiastic ways young boys can.

And when they got home, boy, was the haul great! Candy of every kind and flavor, and the trading began. The boy who had the peanut allergy gave away all of the Reese's Peanut Butter cups and the Snickers, and got more bags of chips in trade. There's a new candy that I am sure is made just for young boys—gummi-type candies that are modeled after some of the things people have to eat on the TV show Fear Factor. Each boy had to try one of those.

Halloween, for young boys, and I would imagine young girls, too, is a feast of fun and all of the foods they don't get every other day of the year. They would like nothing more than to plow through the whole bag as soon as possible, eating candy for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks until it is all gone. It's a childhood version of a heavenly feast. And it isn't even so much about the candy itself as just the freedom to do stuff they normally can't do.

That feeling of freedom, that feeling of unlimited joy that the boys showed on Tuesday night is, I think a foreshadowing of the joy that we will feel when we move from this world into the next. I had occasion this week to also meditate on our ultimate destination because on Halloween morning, I was privileged to celebrate the life of one of our parishioners. She was 92, survived by her three sons and one grandson; she lived a long life, and died rather suddenly. She was a long-time member of the church I serve, and knew that she was loved by God, and believed in Jesus. She was also loved here, and it was my saying "If you think you are loved here, you just wait!" that gave her sons the greatest comfort. They, as at times we all are, were unsure about where she was headed—is there a heaven? Is there a hell? Is there just a lightening of a physical body by thirteen grams and then a burial, with nothing to come after?

Well, we don't know for sure. Despite all the stories of going into and coming back from the light, we don't have documentary evidence of what happens next. We believe what we believe on faith. We believe, as Christians, that there is a heaven. Most of us believe that there is some sort of place other than heaven. Some of us Christians spend more time thinking about that other place, and the Bible calls it hell. But you know what? The word hell only appears in the Protestant Bible 13 times. Only twice is fire associated with Hell, once in Matthew, once in James. Heaven appears over 800 times. Which do you think God wants us to concentrate on?

If the evidence of Scripture is to be accepted, our face is to be turned toward heaven, because that is where God is. And of course, where your face is turned, there your travel goes. We acknowledge that there is a place where there is not God, and that is the place Scripture calls hell. But it doesn't help us or anyone else to fixate on what we shouldn't do in life. We are much more strongly guided, and in tune with God, when we concentrate on what we should be doing. Sure, a warning very now and again is useful. But a steady diet of threats and frights is not guidance. It is intimidation. This isn't how God works. We can be guided by Jesus to see God in a clearer way, the deeper we become God's people. Our goal, God's goal for us, is not to avoid hell but to achieve heaven. We fall short, but we behave much better when we are assured of God's love and forgiveness than if we are threatened by God's withdrawal from our lives. God is not a bad parent. God is not stingy with His love for us. He does not withdraw it from us when we fail. He reaches out even more, because we are his children, He loves us, and wants us to come to Him.

He wants us to come to Him freely, and by our own choice. He wants to be with us in a place that he has created, in a place where it is so good, so joyful that John writes about it in Revelation as a city of gold and precious gems. Isaiah writes about it as a banquet with rich food and well aged wine, where there is no hatred or death. And to get there, as Jesus says to Martha, if you believe, you will see the glory of God.

If you believe that Jesus came to save you, you will see the glory of God.
If you believe that God can work changes in you, you will see the glory of God.
If you believe that the Holy Spirit can lead you to greater and richer relationship with God, you will see the glory of God.

If you believe. That's a very sweet thing to say. Our believing depends on the day, doesn't it? If the morning coffee was good, no one made us angry this morning, and we feel competent in what we do during the day, saying we believe is easy enough. But there are times where we want to echo the words "I believe; help my unbelief!" There are times in our lives when it is exceedingly difficult to believe in God. God knows that, and the solution is to reach out to God more then. I know how hard it is to remember that in the middle of the problem, I've forgotten more than once, too. But there is no greater proof of your belief that to remember that belief in the midst of our trials. And that proof is just for us. God knows our true hearts, and is just waiting for us to figure it out.

If you believe, your faith will grow, your joy will increase, and when the time comes, you will feel joy like a seven year old boy trick or treating. You will be in the glory of the banquet, where the food is rich, the wines are clear, and all the candy is yummy, even the Fear Factor gummi-worms.