Pastor Rich's Sermon, Sunday, September 2, 2001

Have you ever heard someone describe something he or she did by saying, “It was a labor of love.” Perhaps you have spoken these words yourself. So let me ask you what qualifies as a labor of love?

Any mother might say that childbirth was a labor of love, particularly if they were in labor for 24 hours or if they delivered a 12-pound baby, as Diane did.

Volunteers might say that offering their time and their talent is a labor of love. Whether they do it through some specific organization like the church, Interfaith Network of Care, the local hospital and school. Or whether they do it to by themselves helping a neighbor in a time of need. We could spend our entire worship time giving examples of labors of love.

By doing such we would find that we our labors of love are similar in nature to God’s labors of love. Let’s take a look at this morning’s reading particularly Jeremiah 2:5-7.

This is what the Lord says:

“What fault did your fathers find in
me, that they strayed so far from me? They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves.
They did not ask, ‘Where is the Lord who brought us up from Egypt and led us through the barren wilderness, through a land of deserts and rifts, a land of drought and darkness, a land where no one travels and no one lives?

I brought you into a fertile land to
eat its fruits and rich produce.
But you came and defiled my land
and made my inheritance detestable.”

God, through Jeremiah, is reminding the people of Israel of His labors of love. God brought them up from slavery. God led them through the wilderness. God brought them into the Promised Land. God was pricking their memory. He was taking them back to a time when they were close to Him.

Why, because it is very apparent they had forgotten, as Vs. 13 points out,

“My people have committed 2 sins: They have forgotten me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”

A spring of living water or rainwater collected in a pit, which would you prefer to drink?

It is mind boggling that someone would choose to drink water from a cistern when he or she could drink water from a fresh spring. Yet we all do it every time we turn from worshipping and trusting God to worshipping idols. The idols I speak of are money, power, prestige, religious habits or systems, whatever transitory thing we put in place of God.

We live it a society of social climbing. We dress for success. We want to hang with the right crowd in school. We want to win at all costs. The Bronx Little League epitomizes the extent to how far we will go. They reveal how easy it is to forget God’s labors of love. How tempting it is to exchange God’s standards for living for the seat of honor. We do this in spite of the warning that comes from God in Jeremiah and from God through Jesus when he said,

“For everyone who exalts himself will
be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

God’s labors of love revealed in Jeremiah 2, revealed in Jesus Christ, revealed in the working of the Holy Spirit, call us to labor for God. Rather than aiming for prestige we are to look for a place where we can serve. We do this when we seek to daily drink from the spring of living water, God. When we humble ourselves. Humbling ourselves is not an act of self-degradation. It is realistically assessing ones talents and committing them to the service of God and each other.

This needs to be done daily. For as long as there is life there will always be the danger that we will repeat the sins of the Israelites. We will forget God and we will dig our own cisterns to drink from: cisterns that will offer temporary pleasures and satisfaction; cisterns that cannot offer you or me the life giving water that only God can.

Let us constantly recall God’s labors of love. How God brings us up from our sins. How God leads us. How God brings us into meaningful relationships. Particularly, let us constantly recall God’s labor of love, the cross. Let us not only remember. Let us be challenged by God’s labors of love so that we may humbly do labors of love in return.