As best I can tell, my friend from another pastorate years ago failed to communicate that sense of “joy in his presence” to his kids.  When our families were together, from the tone of his voice and his ways of discipline, I always got the impression that his children were more of an interruption than a blessing.  I don’t think he enjoyed his children.  I don’t think he liked them being around.  And, I think they knew it, too.

So, it didn’t totally surprise me when he called this week, heartbroken at the direction his children, now in their early 20’s, have chosen to take with their lives.  He and his wife, as we tend to say, “raised their children in the church.”  Which doesn’t mean that they literally lived in the church building though some of us would say that our parents took us to church so often that it sometimes felt like we lived there.  What he meant, of course, was that he and his wife had done everything they could to transfer their faith to their children along with the moral standards it upheld.  Now, his children have chosen a totally different direction, pretty much a godless one, if by “godless” we mean living as though there is no God.  And, my friend’s heart is broken.  Mine would be, too.

Now, before I go any further, please understand that I am not judging, in the sense of condemning, my friend and his wife for the way they raised their children.  We all have opinions about how other parents could be better parents.  We’ve all had those private conversations with our spouses on the way home from a party or some family event where we dissected and psychoanalyzed someone else’s parenting skills.  But, in the still of the night, if we’re being honest, what troubles most of us the most is our own parenting and our own fears about how our kids will turn out despite our best intentions and efforts.  We judge others only at the great risk of having to live with the terrible self-condemnation of our judgments coming back to haunt us someday.  When they come back to bite us in the . . . heart!  So, this is not judgment, but hopefully, compassionate observation.  I don’t think my friend liked his kids.  And, despite everything else he and his wife did to raise them as Christians, I think that sense they were not liked by the two people they depended on to like them more than anyone else in the world had more to do with shaping the lives of my friend’s children than anything else, even my friend’s profound faith in Jesus.

Think about it.  Who do we tend most to emulate in life?  Who do we most want to be like, want to be with and want to please?  Who do we find ourselves subconsciously mimicking almost to the point of losing our own unique identity in theirs?  Like little boys who follow their dads around while they are mowing the lawn, pushing their toy lawnmowers just behind dad’s, or like little girls who play dress up with their mom’s makeup and high heels.  Isn’t it those people who not only love us, but who also like us that we most want to be like? 

Sometimes, I think the reason the church has trouble attracting the unchurched is because they hear us say that we “love” them but they also sense that we don’t like them.  We love them because God obligates us to love them.  But, we don’t like the way they live, which means, we don’t like them.  We can make all the holy platitudes we want out of it, but when they hear us say, “It’s OK to love the sinner and hate the sin,” they don’t feel loved or liked.  Since most of us would have a hard time distinguishing between who we are and how we live, how do you think our unchurched neighbors feel when we use “hate” in the same sentence to describe our love for them?

“Honey, I love you, but I don’t like the way you dress or comb your hair and I don’t like the way you cook or drive or keep house.  But, even though I don’t like the way you handle most of your life skills, I love you with all my heart!”  I cannot for a minute fathom saying that to my wife and expecting her to feel loved, among other consequences.  Besides the fact that I do happen to like the way my wife dresses and cooks and handles her basic life skills, the more I love her the more I like her, too.  And, I think she knows it.  And, I can honestly say that nothing has had a more profound influence in helping me to grow and mature and become all that Christ has created me to be than the fact that, as much as I know Nancy loves me, I also know she likes me.

As an aside, every time I meet a married couple whose marriage is coming apart at the seams, despite how much the one who is being left protests his or her love for the spouse who is leaving, the spouse who is leaving is pretty certain that, loved or not, they weren’t liked very much.  There is just something of divine origin in us that is repulsed at the thought that we are repulsive to someone else and is drawn like a thirsty horse in the dessert to the well of love that tastes like a cool, life-saving stream of appreciation and gratitude.  Otherwise, how do you explain the way sinners and tax collectors and prostitutes and adulterers and fornicators and on and on were repulsed by the religious institutions that represented God but drawn to Jesus like a magnet?

Jesus likes me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.  Yes, Jesus loves me.  But, Jesus likes me and you, too.  In all sorts of ways he has let us know that he is glad we are here, that we have value in his eyes and that our presence is a joy and not a burden to him. 

I didn’t used to know that.  With my mind, I believed that God loved me.  I even preached that.  But, in private, I knew the truth about what is was asking of God to love me.  So, I was pretty certain that, though he loved me, in the sense that Jesus died on the cross for me 2,000 years ago, he’d rather hang out with someone else who had their act together better than I did mine.  But, the more and more I’ve preached the gospel about this Jesus who was, of all things, a friend of sinners, the more, of all things, I’ve actually started believing he’s my friend, too!  Believing that, in Christ, my sins are separated from me as far as the east is from the west.  That Jesus paid it all.  He loves me so much, and since my sin doesn’t matter anymore, what’s not to like?  Jesus is glad I’m here.  He takes joy in my presence.  I’m not a burden to him, but a pleasure.  And, the more I believe that, well, the most interesting thing has started happening.  The more I believe that Jesus likes me, the more I’ve started wanting to be like him.  Isn’t that something?

This is the 4^th week of our 40 Days of Purpose Campaign.  We were created to become like Jesus, we are celebrating.  Yes, we were.  That happens partly because God intends it to.  It is his will that our character become more like that of our creator and less like the sin that corrupted his creation.  If anyone ever asks you, “What is the will of God?” you can tell them.  “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.  For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family.”  God’s will is a great big family with you a part of it.  You.  Yes, you!  And, the more time you spend in that family, the more you’ll start looking like your older brother, Jesus.  The more you’ll begin to think and act like him, the more you realize how much he likes you being in his family.

What does it look it in his family?  An email the Kenny Cheshier sent me this week gives us an indication.  I’m reading it to you as he wrote it with only the names changed to protect the humble.  “A young mother and her children have been kicked out of their apartment.  When I asked some people around here to pray for them, you wouldn’t believe the response.  One deacon offered to pay for the family to stay in an apartment for the week.  Five other families offered to let the family come and live with them as well, in order to avoid their living in a shelter.  Last Sunday, another deacon gave me a check for $200.  I had the opportunity to give the money to this woman this week.  She’s crying because she’s unemployed and she’s grateful.”  That’s what it looks like in the family where people are beginning to look more and more like their older brother, Jesus. 

In becoming like Jesus, we do have a choice.  We can choose to live another way.  That won’t change how much he loves or likes us.  It will break his heart because he had a better idea for us.  But, because he loves us, he won’t force himself on us.  That’s why the scripture says that his transforming into a Christlikeness is something that happens to people who love God in response to his love for them.  And, the more I preach the gospel, the more I’m convinced that the only reason people choose not to love God is because, for some reason, they’ve never known how much they were loved, even liked, by God himself.  Sometimes, that’s our fault, the church’s fault, I mean.

I’m sure it’s happened many times since then, but I only specifically remember one other time Halloween was on Sunday.  I was a little boy, probably about eight or nine.  We were visiting my grandparents in Pasadena, Texas.  You do understand, I’m talking about sometime in the early 60’s.  It was back when football coaches couldn’t have practice after 6:00 on Wednesdays so students go to church for prayer meeting, that kind of thing.  Anyway, the churches all got together in Pasadena and somehow got the city to pass an ordinance that Halloween would be observed on Saturday, October 30 instead of on Sunday, October 31, since it was a Sunday. 

Somehow or another, not everyone got the word.  Sure enough, we were sitting in my grandparents’ living room on Halloween night, Sunday night, when the doorbell rang.  A little kid was standing there, all decked out in some spooky costume saying, “Trick or Treat!”  And, my grandmother, with a pretty scolding tone in her voice, told this little kid, “It’s Sunday.  We had Halloween yesterday!”

and slammed the door shut in his face.  Now, my grandmother was a wonderful, Christian woman.  I hold her in highest esteem.  But, I wished then, even then, and I’ve wished since then, that she’d just given that kid some candy.  I’ve often wondered if her rudeness in communicating the importance of the Lord’s Day communicated to that kid that God loves him but that she didn’t like how he was living. 

This next Friday, the Texas State Board of Education will decide which textbooks will be used for sex education in our public schools for the next nine years.  Yet, because of the pressure of religious organizations who fear that education somehow or another equals encouragement to live immorally, out of the 160 textbooks being considered for approval by the Texas State Board of Education this next Friday, not one has any information in it about preventing unintended pregnancies or sexually transmitted diseases.  Instead, their message to students is that they should simply abstain from having premarital sex (George Mason, “Theology of Sex,” Dallas Morning News, Wednesday, October 27, 2004, p. 21A).  I believe in abstinence.  I also believe that expecting unchurched people to adopt the values of our faith before they belong to the family of faith is not only one of the most ignorant positions a person can take but also one of the most unloving “we love you but hate your sin” positions as well.  Believe me, the world knows when we don’t like it, no matter how much we say we love it.  Maybe more of the world’s sin lies at our feet than we would ever care to know.

We won’t be like Jesus until we first know how much Jesus likes us.  And, if we want to be like Jesus, we will have to commit ourselves to loving, and liking, the people loved enough to like.  You want proof?  Hear the gospel!  “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross.” 

If we are going to be like Jesus, that will involve our choice to use our power to empower others.  If, for example, just the churches in this nation made a commitment to empowering those who live in despair and hopelessness with no light at the end of one generational tunnel after another, we’d not have to send one army overseas to defeat terrorism.  Being like Christ doesn’t mean waiting on the world to become more like us until we love it but loving it as it is, making the world feel that it belongs to us before it believes like us.

It’s been the hardest thing for me to get used to.  Back when my grandmother didn’t give any Halloween candy to that kid, little boys and girls really dressed up for church.  Even up through my high school and college years, young men wore suits and young ladies wore dresses to church.  On Sunday nights, for no theological reason I was ever given, we dressed down.  But, even then, tennis shoes or sandals and especially shorts were never seen in the sanctuary on Sunday.  We dressed in what we called our Sunday best because, I was told, we were coming into the presence of God, as though we weren’t in his presence while we were mowing the lawn or taking a bath, with nothing on at all to hide the truth.  Well, I guess it goes without saying that things have changed because people have sure changed clothes.  Look around.  To this day, I do wish that people would at least iron the shirt after they take it out of the dirty clothes bag before wearing it to church.  But, I can’t tell you how long it’s been since anyone asked me for fashion advice. 

And, I can’t tell you how preaching the gospel is slowly transforming my love for people into a like for people, even for people who are not like me.  The gospel about how Jesus put on our dirty, wrinkled flesh and wore what we wore so that we might live where he lives.  He must not have dressed very well, either.  Isaiah saw it coming.  Centuries before Jesus lived, Isaiah wrote about Jesus in the fashion section of his prophecy, “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:3).  Jesus would have never made the cover of People’s sexiest men of the year edition.  But, the strangest thing is that more people have wanted to look like him than any person who ever lived.  Why do you think that is? 

Why would Jesus have dressed like we dress, lived where we lived and died like we will die someday? 

Why would Jesus do that unless he not only loved us but he really liked us, too?