Note: This sermon is adapted from a fragment of a story I saw online, but I don’t remember where.
The plaque hung there for many ages. Each time someone new arrived in heaven, the first stop on the get acquainted tour was God’s Truth plaque.
Here, the tour angel would say, “Read this. It’s the only thing you need to know to have a wonderful eternity here in heaven. I know, it’s only a few words, but it’s the only rule. It’s God’s Truth.”
And people would nod and smile and say, Got it!
Then one day a rather rambunctious angel who was still learning to fly and getting used to the size of his wings, got a little out of control, swerved too close and knocked God’s Truth plaque off the wall.
And it fell, and it fell and it fell, finally hitting a rocky outcropping on the top of the highest mountain on earth. It broke and the pieces flew… in opposite directions.
One big chunk of it, with half of the inscription on it, fell into the middle of a village of somewhat quarrelsome people. It landed with a thunk in the town square and everyone ran out of their houses to see what it was. They picked up this big chunk of plaque; it took two of them to do it. Someone else brushed off the stardust and the yet another read the inscription.
You are loved, it said.
Wow, the people said. Surely this is a message from God! How else could such a thing happen? God has sent us a message. God loves us.
And they were so overjoyed to learn that God loved them that they began to be kind and loving toward each other. They took care of each other. Everyone was everyone else’s neighbor. No one in the village lacked for anything because everyone shared what they had.
But over time, things began to change. You know how humans are! They tend to forget what are sometimes important details. In this case, they began to forget that what had fallen into the town square was, in fact, a piece of something bigger.
Indeed, it was so beautiful and wonderful in and of itself, it was quite easy to lose sight of the fact that it had once been part of something bigger. Even the jagged, broken edge began to look as if it was meant to be that way!
And so a piece of God’s Truth became ALL of God’s Truth to the people in the village. And the oddest things began to happen! People began to slip back into their quarrelsome ways. Jealousies broke out over whose house God’s Truth fell closest to and over who got to it first, who picked it up, who brushed it off, who interpreted it best, and so on.
So the most powerful people in the village decided they better take charge of it, and they built a huge altar—because they had money—they built a huge altar that reached up to the heavens and they put the fragment of God’s Truth, which had become for them ALL of God’s Truth, on the very top to keep it safe.
You have to wonder why—if they believed it really was God’s Truth—they thought they had to protect it, as if God couldn’t or wouldn’t, but… you know, human beings!
And so things changed in the village again, and in place of loving and caring for each other came arguing over who owned “the truth” and who in the village had earned God’s favor and who was most deserving to be blessed with plenty and who needed to fix their own life so as not to be a burden on the community, and on and on.
And sure enough, eventually other villages in other countries heard about this, and they want a piece of the pie--or plaque, as the case may be--too. Next thing you know, violence and wars are breaking out. The people of the village have come to see themselves as “special people” whom God had chosen to love and bless above all others. And so they were willing to kill in order to preserve their standing and possession of what they had come to think of as ALL of God’s Truth.
But in that village lived a little girl who did not like what was going on. She kept thinking, there’s something wrong with this picture. If we are loved, she thought, then how can we be so unloving? How can we be jealous of each other?
Why do we think we are so special when we are willing for some people to be poor when others have plenty? Who is “we” anyway? And how does being loved by God entitle us to judge others? We didn’t earn this. It fell into our laps!
And wasn’t this message from God a piece of something bigger? Didn’t it have broken edges?
And so she set out and searched far and wide. She traveled the earth looking for another piece of the puzzle. And sure enough, she finally found a chunk of a plaque sticking out of the top of a sand dune. And it looked to her like the same material and the words on it the same style as those on the piece in her home village.
So she picked it up, brushed off the sand, and headed home. And when she got there, she went straight to the high altar, climbed to the top, and put the piece she was carrying next to the piece that was already there.
And sure enough, the broken edges matched! The two fragments fit together perfectly.
And now the plaque reads, “You are loved. So is everyone else.”
My friends, I probably should just sit down and shut up. I think the point is clear. But… you know we humans.
First, the story is not original with me. I read a fragment online, don’t remember where, and I made it my own with lots of cool details.
Second, it is the best allegory I can come up with at this time to convey the meaning of the death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. As our lessons today convey, it’s all about love, unearned, completely gracious, boundless love.
So I leave you with this question: How would our lives, and therefore the world, change if we lived as if we really believe that God loves us, and everyone else too?
AMEN
