"The Deepest Hunger of the Heart"

June 9, 2024

Luke 3:21-22

Broadway Christian Church

David A. Shirey

            Here’s a Bible trivia question for you. According to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, what were God's first words to Jesus?  The answer is found in the account of Jesus' baptism. Luke says, "Now when all the people had been baptized and Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form, as a dove, and a voice came from heaven, 'You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased'" (Luke 3:21-22). 

            "You are my beloved."  Is there any belief more central to the Christian faith than the belief that God loves each and every one of us unconditionally-- that we are each beloved in God's eyes? Augustine said, "God loves each one of us as if there was only one of us to love." Or as someone else said, “If God has a refrigerator, your picture is on it.”

            That’s a hard thing to comprehend. No wonder there are many who, though they believe there’s a God, have a hard time believing there’s a personal God who cares for each and every one of us. One man said,

“I believe there must be a Big Mind behind the Big Bang. But I’m only one of five billion people on this planet. This planet is but one of nine planets in our solar system. Our sun is but one of a hundred million galaxies in the known universe. Granting what we know about the vastness of space, it’s a stretch for me to believe that we matter to God.[1]”  

It's a stretch, all right. We don’t even get personal mail -- it’s all junk mail addressed to Resident-- and we’re to believe there’s a God who cares for us personally? That’s precisely the head-shaking awe David expresses in one of my favorite Psalms when he looks up into the night sky, sees what he sees, and asks,
            "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars,
            which you have set in place, what are human beings that you are mindful of us, mere mortals that you care for us?” (Ps 8:3-4).

It’s hard to believe the creator of the Universe would call every one of us Beloved.

            But the truth of the matter is that deep down inside every one of us longs to hear God say, "You are my beloved, with you I am well pleased." I think I mentioned to you a while back how years ago a friend sent me a book of poems by a writer named Raymond Carver. He stuck a sticky note on the cover that said, "See poem on last page."  Carver died while in his fifties after a long battle with cancer, and the poem on the last page, simply titled "Late Fragment,"[2] was among the last things he wrote. The verse is also inscribed on his tombstone.  The words of the poem are:     

            "And did you get what

            you wanted from this life, even so?

            I did.

            And what did you want?

            To call myself beloved, to feel myself

            beloved on the earth."

What was true for Raymond Carver is true for us all: We all want to feel beloved on the earth. I heard once that Orthodox Jewish men wear the yarmulke on their heads because it represents the hand of God resting upon them, blessing them.

            Isn’t it true that from birth through our teen years and on into adulthood the deepest hunger of our hearts is to know that we’re beloved, that the favor of someone else rests upon us? Human beings are born hungering for love. Scientific studies have shown that infants who are not held, cuddled, rocked, and touched-- loved—are emotionally scarred. Think of the expressions we use to speak of children for whom that primary hunger of the heart is not met. What do we say?  "She's starved for affection." "Poor child. He's aching for someone to love him." "She's craving attention."

            It's not a hunger that goes away when a child reaches adolescence. The great 20th century theologian Bruce Springsteen had a song out when I was in college titled "Everybody Has a Hungry Heart." The truth it conveyed was that the unconditional need for love never goes away. In adolescence the key questions simply turn to matters of acceptance. Am I all right?  Do I belong?  In a word, Am I beloved?

            On into adulthood the hunger persists. Next time you're in a bookstore go to the section designated "Self-Help" and see all the shelves floor-to-ceiling addressing issues revolving around building (or rebuilding) healthy self-esteem. And is it any wonder? Let someone grow up listening to all the voices in the world tell them they are not good enough, not smart enough, not attractive enough, not successful enough, not whatever-enough, and soon enough it all adds up to self-rejection: I'm not enough. This is all to say that from birth through our teen years and on into adulthood the deepest hunger of the heart is to know that we’re beloved, that the favor of someone else rests upon us, that someone else is well pleased with us.

            Do you think it made any difference to Jesus that the first words he heard from God were, "You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased?"

            Do you think it made any difference in terms of the single-minded devotion with which he carried out his ministry that he knew deep within that he was beloved by God? Do you think it made any difference in the confidence with which he came before God in prayer that God had told him from the start "You are my beloved Son?"

            Do you think it made any difference in terms of the courage and perseverance that welled up from within when the persecution began and the questions arose and people turned against him and his own disciples misunderstood him and one betrayed him that Jesus remained convinced through it all that in God's eyes he was Beloved?

            When the cross loomed large and he went up on the mountain with Peter and James and John – after he was transfigured, he heard God's voice from heaven say, "This is my beloved Son" (Mt 17:5).

            Do you think it made any difference in terms of the way Jesus faced his suffering, dying, and death to know that he was beloved by God? 

            I think it made a difference! I believe Jesus lived as he did, prayed as he did, withstood criticism and controversy the way he did, faced suffering and death the way he did because of the blessed assurance he’d received early on that he was beloved by God.  

            How about us? Would it make any difference if we, too, could hear a voice from heaven say, "You are my beloved son/daughter, with you I am well pleased?" 

            I know that's what I hungered for growing up. As a teenager, I was a fence post with acne. On top of that, I got cut from the basketball team, was too skinny for the football team, and held the school record for third place finishes in the mile run on the track team. Quite a resume, huh? I didn't think too highly of myself because I believed nobody else did. So, I slunk around stoop shouldered. Head hung at half-mast.

            During those years, I was a reluctant attender at Central Christian Church in Warren, Ohio. When I was growing up, I had a choice every Sunday morning of going to church with Mom or staying at home and working around the house with Dad.  Going to church was the lesser of two evils.

            After worship, as my mother, who was a deacon, cleaned up the sanctuary, I’d stand at the back of the church and wait for her, leaning on the wall.  There was a man in that church named Mr. Joe Ross, an elder in the church, who sought me out after worship on Sunday. He'd find me, come up beside me, put his arm around me and sort of squeeze my shoulder and say, "David Shirey, you're something special. And don't let anybody tell you any different." At first I brushed it off. Yeah Pops, right. Just an old man blabbing. But he kept seeking me out Sunday after Sunday after Sunday throughout my freshman and sophomore years until I began to think to myself, "Something special? Hmm." And I started to stand up a little straighter and put my shoulders back a little more.

            What was happening, I now see, is that I was beginning to hear through Joe Ross' voice the voice that looked down from heaven the day his son was being baptized and said, "You are my beloved son; with you I am well pleased."  I was beginning to hear through that blessed man's voice the voice of the One who said through the prophet Jeremiah, "I have loved you with an everlasting love" (Jeremiah 31:3).  Because that humble, sincere man of God made it personal, I began to believe that the God he seemed to know personally personally loved me as well.   

            Mr. Joe Ross sought me out and said those words to me throughout my junior and senior years. I graduated in late May. The Sunday before I headed off to college, I stood in the back of the sanctuary. Waiting. Then I looked across the sanctuary and saw Mr. Joe standing next to some freshman kid. Short, squat. Geeky looking. Frank somebody or other. I saw him put his arm around that kid and squeeze his shoulder and I could read his lips as clear as day. He said, "Frank, you're somebody special and don't let anybody tell you any different." 

            I thought to myself, "You two-timer! What's up with that? You don't do that to every kid, do you? I mean, it's not as if everybody is something special, is it?”     

            That's about the time Mr. Ross looked up, met my eyes, smiled, and winked.

            Late that fall at college, I received a letter from home. I took it up to my dorm room, sat on the bed and opened it. Inside there was a newspaper clipping. I read it:

Joseph Ross, 83, of Warren, Ohio, died Wednesday at Trumbull Memorial Hospital after a brief illness. Mr. Ross was an Elder at Central Christian Church, a friend of this community's youth, a lifelong supporter of the YMCA and Boy's Club. He is survived by...

            There I sat at 18 years old, strapping young man, sitting on my dorm bed, crying.

            I think about Mr Ross often. If he were here, I know where I’d station him on Sunday mornings.  He’d be standing at the door greeting people as they come in and as they leave.  He’d know exactly what to do and say. He’s not here, though.  But you are!  Do you think you could do what Mr. Joe Ross did?  Extend the Broadway Welcome to everyone you see.  Be the voice through whom others know they’re beloved by God, loved with an everlasting love, something special.  You can’t imagine the difference you and this church can make in others’ lives as a result.

            Broadway, thank you for this year of Sundays during which you’ve received Jennie and me with such warmth and welcome. We’re going home and you’re poised for going onward and upward, but we’ll be back.  We have three anchors in Columbia:  our daughter, our son-in-law, and a church.  Until then, if you remember anything I’ve said, remember this: Broadway Christian Church, you’re something special. And don’t let anybody tell you any different.

            Let all God’s beloved say AMEN.

[1] George Hunter,  Church for the Unchurched, p. 45

[2] From A New Path to the Waterfall, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1989.