Without cost you have received without cost you are to give.
Some years ago, I had a conversation with my spiritual director,
and it always has lingered with me
as it was one of the most powerful conversations I had.
It changed my view of God and the world in a good way.
The context of my life was that I was working two jobs:
at the diocese as a vicar general
and as a pastor of a large parish
working well over 90-95 hours a week, every week.
He said “Brendan,
there's nothing you could do to make God love you more.
And there's nothing you can do to make God love you less.”
I think he felt I was working harder to get God to love me more!
And there was some truth to it!
We have this temptation that we can work our way to heaven,
we earn our way or merit our way.
If we this or do that then we are going to get into heaven.
Yet we know that God's love is not dependent on our actions.
God loves us completely already.
God loved us into being.
God’s love sustains us now, and God will love us for all eternity.
When we realize and allow that to sink into our souls,
it changes everything in our lives.
What we do, we do out of gratitude for God;
our way of saying thank you for all his goodness to us.
This way is easier as nothing becomes work for us.
It's not hard to follow the commandments,
because we're doing it out of love and gratitude
It is really powerful to think that God first loved us
and God loves us even, especially, when we are sinners.
That's the very message that Saint Paul is trying to get across
to the Romans in today's second reading; God loved us first
and that Christ gave his life for us even while we were sinners.
All is grace.
It just sounds so simple
but we tend to have layers of baggage.
We still think God operates on transactions
and our church, by the way, has enabled that.
Unfortunately, in many ways for hundreds of years,
if we say a certain number of prayers for a certain number of days,
then God will give us that request. Right.
That's a transactional God.
But God loves us completely already.
There's nothing we can do to make God love us more.
It sounds all great in theory,
but we have to bring it down to a practical personal level.
Let me illustrate with a personal story
about my father in honor of Father’s Day.
It was one of the days that I realized my father loved me completely,
why that changed my life and how it changed.
Here is the incident.
It is a silly, but powerful one.
When I was younger, about 15 years old,
I was training really hard for rugby
and I was practicing my jump in my bedroom.
The room I was living in with my brothers
had this beautiful big antique wardrobe.
It was one of my father’s prized possessions.
I was practicing my jump
by jumping up and touching the top of the wardrobe,
come back, then touch the top of the wardrobe.
Up and down and I was trying to do 100.
I got to about 97 and my legs were getting a little bit weak.
I reached up and touched the top
and whatever way I touched it, I held on to.
I grabbed the top and I came down with a piece of the wardrobe in my hand. This big old block of wardrobe in my hand.
I look up at this thing and thought to myself,
“How in God's name am I going to explain this to my father?”
My father had just come in from work and dinner was ready.
So I went down and I said,
“Dad, I want to show you something upstairs before dinner.”
He responded quickly, “No, no, no. Dinner is ready.
Let's have dinner first.”
I am thinking to myself the regular punishment was to do without food,
and I figured I needed to sacrifice my dinner and get this over with.
We went upstairs.
I always remember his reaction.
At this age I was taller than him.
He looked at the piece of wood, looks at me
and then looks up at the top of the wardrobe.
Then looks at me again and says,
“How in God's name did you do that?”
I explained how I did it and I always remember what he said,
“Ohh, you silly boy.
It’s just a piece of wood.
Let's go have dinner and we'll fix it after dinner.”
That may not seem all that powerful,
but to a boy who loved his father
and didn't want to disappoint his father,
that moment was pivotal in my life.
I'll remember it forever
because he modeled what it meant to love and to forgive.
Let’s look at what he did as they are the stages of forgiveness.
He acknowledged what happened be truthful:
You silly boy! I was totally silly!
Then he put it into the context of life, he says.
“It's just a piece of wood. Let's go have dinner.”
Let's move on. Let's get past this and we'll fix it later.
That's a good model for forgiveness in our lives.
It's a good model for love in our lives.
From that moment onwards, my relationship with my father shifted
because I realize that if I could damage his prized wardrobe
and he still loved me,
then there was pretty much nothing I could do
that would stop him from loving me.
That changed everything inside of me;
the direction of my whole life changed.
I felt like Teflon man.
Nothing could stick to me.
When we feel loved like that, we become different.
That's the type of love God has for every one of us.
There is nothing we could do to separate us from his love.
If we could only internalize that reality, it would change everything.
To really let that message of God’s love into our hearts,
it changes everything.
We become a disciple not because we're meriting God’s love,
but because all is gift or grace from God.
Like the gospel says,
“without that cost we have received,
without cost we are to give.”
We are not doing it because we merit his love,
but because we already have his love.
Therefore, we are doing it because we feel loved.
And that ought to set our hearts on fire.
When we realize that, as we come in here this morning,
we sit and think about that for a few minutes,
then we ought to be jumping for joy as a result.
Then we ought to be bouncing out of here as we leave.
Then we witness and spread that love.
Without cost we receive and without cost we are to give.
You're called to love others in that same unconditional, radical way.
And how do we do that?
Maybe we model it on the forgiveness that my father gave me
and accept God’s love for us first.
Then we look at the context in our lives
and we forgive others and we let go.
It's my firm conviction that if we could
become witnesses like that to all those around us,
maybe especially those who are lost,
as the gospel says to the lost sheep of Israel.
For us that would be the lost sheep who are not coming back to church.
And there are many of them.
If we could be a powerful witness.
To love them, not guilt them or shame them,
but to love them where they are
and see them as people who are disenfranchised,
people who need to feel the love of.
Most especially the people who on the farthest extreme.
The people who are the farthest away.
People who may feel disenfranchised for different reasons.
Maybe it is because they're married and divorced.
Maybe it is because they are gay or their son,
or their daughter is gay.
Or maybe it is because there is some other brokenness in their life,
or that they are immigrants, and they don't have legal status.
It doesn't matter the reason that they are disenfranchised,
we are called to love them.
I had the great grace of having a father in my life to love me
and I could understand and feel a father’s love.
There are so many in this world who don't have that example of love.
They don't have a father who is able to love them that way.
That is where you and I come in.
If you and I could be that person
who can love them where they are.
Then we become a beacon.
We become a testimony.
We become a witness to the gospel that we hear today.
We become ambassadors for Christ.
There are many of the lost sheep.
There are many without a shepherd.
If we could allow God's love into our own lives
and to feel that exuberant love allowing it to transformer us.
Then we can go out of here joy-filled
loving others wherever they are.
We spread God’s love.
Then we will have lived the gospel completely.
Without cost we have received. Without cost, we are to give.
