We all have memories of our early childhood that we only have because someone else gave them to us.  John Kennedy, Jr. said he only had one memory of his father’s White House years he knew for certain was his, looking through his dad’s oval office desk for candy.  All the other memories of those magical years someone else gave him through stories or pictures.  One memory I have only because 8mm black and white film gave it to me.  My dad had been making home movies of me walking toward him one summer day, barefooted.  At first, it’s just a silent celluloid record of a very cute little three year-old boy walking through the grass toward his dad.  Suddenly, I stop dead in my tracks, look down and start wailing.  I had walked, barefooted, right into a thorn patch.  Dad thought it was cute and filmed just a little too much of it for my mother’s comfort.  I’m not sure she ever forgave him.  But, it fore-gave me a father-son memory I wouldn’t have otherwise.  It takes me all the way back to the beginning, to one moment I had with the man who played the most formative role in shaping my character. 

Some scripture sends us forward or gives us visions of what we will become.  Other scripture takes us back, like home movies, to give us memories of our Heavenly Father’s love we wouldn’t otherwise have.  The text this morning does both.  It gives us a memory of love then sends us forward in the hope that only love makes possible.

First, it takes us back.  “While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.  God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.”  If we told each other about the day of our salvation, the day God rescued us from sin and hell, we might speak of our baptism, for example.  But, God has given us a memory of the day he rescued us before any of us could possibly remember.  Weak, ungodly sinners, the scripture calls us.  That’s in all of our histories.  What makes the gospel the good news is that, what predates the history of our weakness, sin and ungodliness is the history of God’s love for us in spite of our sin.

We may have memories of the first time we knew of God’s love.  Scripture has given us a memory of his love that predates our experience with it.  We need that memory.  It’s absolute proof that love is unconditional.  We had his love before we would even know we needed it.  We need that memory because there will be times we’ll need to go back to it so we can go forward with it into places we couldn’t go unless we knew we were loved.  Before we can go forward in hope, we have to go back to that memory of first love. 

It’s fascinating the way music can weld itself to certain moments, taking us back in our memory every time we hear it.  Every time I hear Floyd Cramer’s Last Date, I go back.  Not to a romantic moment, but, to a moment with my father.  I must have been about five.  Dad was lying on the sofa taking a nap.  I’m lying next to him.  But, I’m not sleeping.  I’m just lying there soaking it up.  Soaking up what it feels like to feel safe with my dad.  To feel loved.  To be at peace.  Last Date was on the stereo.  To this day, that melody strikes a very deep chord in me, in a place I can go back to and always feel loved.  Do you have a memory like that with your father?

Some don’t.  There is a place inside of all of us, soft, vulnerable, play dough like.  If hands of love mold and shape that place while it is still pliable, we live forever knowing we’re loved no matter what happens to us.  But, if hands of neglect or abuse mold and shape that place while it is still pliable, it sets up hard, like concrete.  Later, even if others later tell us we’re loved, their words just ricochet off into nowhere.  The tragic end of so many lives who were abused by priests in their vulnerable years, by people they trusted to love them, ought to serve as a reminder to all of us who are responsible for loving others in their vulnerable years.  How we touch someone when their heart is still pliable and moldable, for better or worse, they will feel the rest of their lives.  And, likely, they will also give to others what they received from us.

More marriages than we will ever know have been destroyed by people unable accept love from their spouse because they never got it, first, from parents who should have loved them and didn’t.  Their hearts set up hard, sad, angry, hurt, resentful and bitter.  Then, when they make a promise at the marriage altar to love another forever they find they’ve made a promise they’re totally incapable of keeping because they have no memory of being loved, ever.  They have no frame of reference for giving the kind of unconditional love marriage demands because they have had no experience with it themselves.  All the beautiful wedding music can’t override the melodies that take them back to moments of neglect or abuse. 

A rock song popular a couple of years ago sings clearly enough of the pain too many know firsthand, of living with no memory of a father’s love.  “Father of mine, tell me, where have you been?  I just closed my eyes, my whole world disappeared.  Father of mine, tell me where did you go?  Tell me what do you see, when you look back at your wasted life and you don’t see me?  I will never be the same.  I will never be sane.  I will always be weird inside, I will always be lame.  (Everclear, Daddy Gave Me a Name).”  Some will always feel weird inside in a place they should feel loved.  They’ll always be emotionally lame and even act out that way unless someone gives them a memory of love they wouldn’t have had otherwise. 

This is one reason I keep preaching the gospel.  The truth that, “At the right time Christ died for the ungodly,” is powerful enough to save people (Romans 1:16).  At the right time, God loved us, at a time before our time and before we were loved or not loved by anyone else.  God loved us that much, that long ago.  To find love, to hear it for the first time, pure and clean, we may have to go back, through a gospel memory, to the time God loved us before we knew it.  To the time when, the hands of our creator’s love were the very first to touch us.

The gospel cannot undo the damage of those who didn’t love us.  But, it has the power to save us from more than just hell.  It has the power too, to touch and heal us where we are emotionally lame from having no memory of being loved.  It can’t undo old, sad memories.  But, it can give us new ones.  Memories of being loved before we knew it and a future full hope that only being loved can give.

First, the scripture takes us back.  Then, it sends us forward.  “Since we have peace with God . . . we boast in our hope . . . and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”  The hope that, “having been reconciled to God through the death of his Son . . . will we be saved by his life.”

Nancy bought me a tomato plant a while back.  We don’t have a garden.  We have a tomato plant in a back porch pot.  We’ve had one tomato.  The birds have had one, the dog another.  It’s a miracle we’ve had any.  By the time I get home most days, the sun has all but left me with fried green tomatoes.  Something in me won’t let that plant die.  I pour on the water every day.  I give it long drinks.  Within a few minutes, its leaves stand stout and strong, reaching toward the sun again, instead of hiding from it.  Like, now that it’s had loving care poured into it, its full of enough hope to face another day’s heat.  Poured into our hearts, we’re told, the love of God is.  Like long, cool drinks on a hot summer day, renewing our strength for the rest of it.  Pain and suffering, even death, the scriptures tell us, only set the stage for hope to do its best work.

Like Bess Herron getting her hair done in the Wedgewood beauty shop last Tuesday.  It was the first time in over six months she’d been out of her room.  She stopped laughing long enough for us to pray.  Last thing I saw her doing was smiling, ear to ear, getting her hair done, two days before she slipped away, at 93.  Dressing up for a future she knew was short.  Dressing up anyway, because she knew her future was more about the hope she had in the Christ who had given her many love memories than the life she had left here.  So she lived, every blessed minute, until she died to live again.  I don’t spend much time in beauty shops.  But, I wonder if I’ll ever step into one again without the smell of permanent waves taking me back to that memory of Bess staring at death, and just smiling.  Smiling at death and her future full of hope beyond it.

Love gives birth to hope.  God, through his Spirit, keeps pouring it into our thirsty hearts, over and over again, like cold water on a hot day.  Long drinks he gives.  Refreshing.  Full of hope. 

If you could, what one day in your life would you go back and relive?  I’d like to go back to a few of those times I stepped in thorn patches and step differently, erasing memories of sinful missteps.  But, we know.  We can’t go back.  We forever carry with us memories of what might and should have been.  The really good news is that we don’t have to go back.  God’s love has come to us where we are to bring us back to him.  “Reconciled to God,” it says.  Found, rescued, by love where we were and brought back to the one who loved us before we knew we needed it.

I’m sure my father came and rescued me from the thorn patch that day.  I’m sure he did.  I just don’t remember it.  The last thing I remember is crying, in black and white 8 mm.  But, I’m here.  I’m not stuck there anymore.  His love didn’t abandon me.  His love came and got me there so I could be here. 

Some people have those memories.  Others do not.  Some fathers left their children stuck in thorny, sad and hopeless places.  The gospel has come to give us all the memory of a Heavenly Father who never will.