Full Revelation-True Love-The Ultimate Valentine's Day Present

Harry Hughes (my dad).
September 11, 1937-January 30, 2011

My father was a real delight in my life.  He was raised on a small family farm in west-central Indiana, graduated from high school, and became the first member of his family to ever attend college.  He met my mother at Purdue University and they dated for several years before marrying on June 4, 1961. They raised three children together, the best they could, within the Lutheran and Presbyterian traditions of the Christian faith. I am the middle child, having sisters that flank me in ages.

I never knew my dad to be a person of secrets.  He lived a relatively transparent life and was an intensely loyal person, working for JC Penney for nearly thirty-eight years.  He was a man who loved his family deeply and was very committed to the community in which he lived. I never questioned whether or not my father loved me.  I always knew that he loved me, my sisters, and my mother. As I flex my memory muscles this afternoon, it is hard for me to remember a single tennis match, basketball game, band concert, or other school or church event that I was involved in that he was not present. I am sure that he missed a few events, but I have no recollection of any...

Dad was never afraid to show emotion.  I remember that he cried when my two grandfathers died. He cried when he and my mother dropped me off at the airport in St. Louis as I was preparing to fly to South Korea for a year long deployment in the US Army.  I can also remember him crying as he was walking my sisters down the wedding aisle.  Dad was over 6'3" tall and weighed around 230 pounds. He was a big guy, yet he was never afraid to tell his children that he loved them, and in appropriate times (in his mind) to cry in front of them...

I don't know how many college dormitories and apartments he helped to move my sisters and me into over the years, but he surely could have received an honorary degree in "moving furniture sciences." His longest move was when he moved my younger sister from Macomb, Illinois to Syracuse, New York.  I helped with the Macomb loading, but he did most of the physical work on the Syracuse end himself.  He would do anything for his children.

In contrast to my relationship with my father...

I recently watched a fascinating documentary movie on the life of former spy William Colby titled,"The Man Nobody Knew." Colby, born in 1920, had served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II behind enemy lines, and then later served for decades in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).  He would eventually be nominated by President Gerald Ford to become the Director for Central Intelligence from September 1973-January 1976.

The movie was directed and narrated by his son, Carl Colby, and told the story of both Colby's public and personal life. Colby married Barbara Heinzman in 1945. They had five children together and raised them within the Roman Catholic tradition of the Christian faith. The documentary weaved Colby's family life, through interviews with Barbara and former coworkers, as his public work life took him and his family from Sweden--> Italy --> Washington, D.C. --> Vietnam --> back to Washington, D.C., --> back toVietnam--> and then finally back to Washington, D.C. where he stayed until his public service retirement in 1976.

The storyline driving the documentary was centered on the assertion that while William Colby worked around some of the same people for many decades, and raised his family within the Roman Catholic tradition of the Christian faith, nobody really knew him.  That is, William Colby, who was a master spy, lived a life of secrets.  Layer upon layer of secrets bathed both his personal and work relationships.  The life of keeping secrets took its toll on these relationships as he never felt like he could truly open up and be honest with those he loved the most.  Carl Colby stated on at least two occasions that I remember from the film that his father never said "I love you" to his children, nor did his father show much emotion at any time toward any of the children.

The storyline held my attention, I believe, because it revealed a man deeply torn and living in two separate worlds at the same time.  William Colby loved the United States and felt a deep calling to serve her through the intelligence services to protect her and her great ideals.  At the same time, it seems, he did love his family and want the best things for them. He raised his children in the faith of the church, yet was not ever able to fully come to terms with how to raise them in an emotionally sensitive environment.  Indeed it wasn't until two weeks before his father's mysterious death in 1996 that Carl ever received any kind of note from his father expressing some sort of regret regarding how he had raised his children.
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The church I serve in Kansas City, Missouri has been on a long journey through THE STORY. Beginning back in September, 2014 we have been reading an essentially chronologically abridged edition of the Holy Bible.  Divided into thirty-one chapters, THE STORY, tells the story of salvation history in a manner that will hopefully wet the appetites for those who read through it, who will then go back to the actually Bible and begin prayerfully reading. The first twenty-one chapters of THE STORY are rooted in the Old Testament.  The last ten chapters are based in the New Testament.  Throughout this journey the congregation is reading and studying the book in small groups, and then I am preaching a pericope from that week's reading on Sunday morning.

This week we entered into the New Testament, chapter twenty-two. THE STORY blends readings from Matthew, Luke, and John regarding the birth of Jesus.  My preaching for Sunday is rooted in John 1:1-18, commonly referred to as "the prologue." To prepare for this week's sermon, I went back to the September 14, 2014, sermon video, which was the first Sunday I preached THE STORY at worship.  I was reminded, by myself!, that:

• God is a creative God.  That is, God has a particular vision for his creation and will go to great lengths to see that vision accomplished. 
• God, who spoke creation into existence "ex nihilo" (out of nothing), knew before creating that his creation would reject his plan and vision.
• God, who loved and chose/predestined us in Christ Jesus before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1) went about the process of creation knowing full well that his greatest act of creation (humanity, made in the imago dei) would reject him and his plan/vision.
• God, even in the midst of the fall (Gen. 3), promises redemption to his creation.
• God knew that this promise of redemption must be fulfilled in himself--and God knew before creating out of nothing, that this would be necessary.
• God knew, and created anyway!, knowing that he must die in order to save... 

The Old Testament is the story of God covenanting with his people, assuring them of his promise to redeem, and pointing them to the coming fulfillment of his promises in the Lord Jesus. The Old Testament spans at least two millennia in length, yet the witness of the Scriptures is amazingly consistent. The God who created the heavens and the earth out of nothing is the same God who would reconcile the brokenness and disobedience of his created beings in order to see his vision of creation through to fruition.

Karl Barth wrote (and I don't have the exact reference in front of me right now) that the incarnation of

the Lord Jesus into the world is God saying "no" to our "no."  Or, in other words, Jesus' birth in Bethlehem two thousand years ago is the result of God rejecting our rejection of him. In the birth of Christ Jesus we are shown that God's love is greater than our selfish disobedience.

In John 1:1-4 (ESV) we read, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that has been made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men." The Word is not created, but rather, is eternal.  The Word is part of the divine economy of God, along with the Father and the Spirit.  What is remarkable about the opening lines of John is his assertion, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father  full of grace an truth." (1:14, ESV)

In other words, God fully became a human being in order to lay down his life to reconcile his creation back to himself, so that his vision and intention for creation may come to pass. In the incarnation of the Word into flesh (the person and Lordship of Jesus), God rejected our rejection of him.  He committed himself fully to his creation, to the people he had made in his own image. He became a human being so that he may suffer on our behalf so that we might be saved from the ravages of the brokenness that our sin had brought into the world. He bore the wrath of God's holiness and divine judgment upon himself that we may be made found innocent in God's eyes.

Unlike William Colby, who refused to be vulnerable in front of his family, God-in-and-through-Jesus fully gave of himself on our behalf.  This is the greatest act of love the world has ever known. The Apostle Paul writes, "Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross..." (Philippians 2:5-8, ESV) God, in a sense, in the death of Jesus on the cross, became the very definition of vulnerable, in order to seek and save the lost.

This is what Valentine's Day is really all about.  It's not about candy, dinner, a romantic night, or receiving a nice piece of jewelry.  Rather, Valentine's Day is about real, true, passionate, abiding love.  There is no greater love than the love for us in Christ Jesus the Lord.

Happy Valentine's Day!                             Soli Deo Gloria!