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How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways
Sermon by Sandra M. Thomas
September 30, 2007, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill

Isaiah 36:7-16
Colossians 3:12-17

“…in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.”

The air is fresh, a few leaves are falling, yellow and red mums are blooming, the Phillies are still fighting, the Eagles are playing the Giants – feels like homecoming. If you’ve ever gone to homecoming and left the bleachers to step back into the halls of your old high school – it’s amazing how narrow they are – how short the lockers are. The bulletin boards announce strange events, the desks have changed – there’s a new library – clearly it is someone else’s home to which you have come back. They loved you here once because you were clever, or funny, or sweet or studious. They love you here…now…via pledge cards and alumni fund-raisers, long-distance telemarketers and magazines with news of who has died. In this holy place where you grew and were shaped, almost no one remembers your name.

The end of the book of Isaiah is a homecoming story – joyful but not fun, wonderful but disconcerting, long overdue and all too present….full of dizzy confusion. Isaiah attempts to interpret the meaning of this powerful experience. It must have felt something like the homecoming scene in Gone With the Wind , where Scarlett returns home to Atlanta and finds the family home in ruins, the crops burned, most of the slaves run off, her mother dead, her father demented, and her two sisters sick with typhoid. Home is not the place it was when they left.

Perhaps, as the exiles stumble wearily home, the scene is also something like the homecoming that opens the public television series The War where a weary soldier quietly walks across fields as dawn breaks and slips into the back door of his own home, where things look strangely different and wonderfully familiar. While absent things at home have change – he has changed - having seen the other side of the world and things no person should ever see.

Isaiah writes of deportees weary from years of waiting, homesick, weary, without a place to worship, with a God who must have seemed paltry and powerless in the midst of Babylon’s magnificent temples –statutes of gold – undreamed of wealth and power.

Their home land had been left in shambles – thousands died in battle or of starvation and disease, some executed, other fled for their lives…..the finest of Jewish leadership (political, ecclesiastical, intellectual leadership) were selected for deportation. Their numbers were not large – about 4600 men + their wives, children and servants. These deportees suffered hardship and humiliation – living not with mind and influence but with labor and sweat – supporting themselves to a modest extent but even the most faithful fought despair, fearing that God had turned his back on them….wondering if some mortal sin had cause God to cut Israel off in his wrath. It was a spiritual crisis as deep as human beings know. Yes, they were coming home, but to what? to who? why? To see what foreign occupation had done to their land? Perhaps to have their deep wounds salved with the knowledge that while God had not been with them, neither had God stayed at home? To return to widespread, embarrassing unfaithfulness among those who were not deported?

Isaiah was the voice that interpreted the scene for them. Isaiah was the voice speaking for God that said: My weary, desolate people: “How do I love Thee, let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach…. ” Let me say that another way, because some of our neighbors criticize poetry in sermons and want only scripture. Isaiah writes in a multitude of ways about God’s active love for them, even when they do not deserve or understand:

The counting continues throughout scripture to lost sheep, fallen sparrows, wayward women, greedy men, strangers and foreigners, slaves and free, the grief-stricken and the rejoicing. Sometimes our faith is challenged because God does not act according to our expectations, our specifications, or our timetable. At these times, God may seem very distant. But, God works in strange and surprising ways. As a God counts out the ways in which he loves us – he asks that we trust.

Was it all perfect – this homecoming? Not at all. These were a rag-tag group of traumatized people stumbling home when home had been destroyed. Being greeted by those who had lost hope and been unfaithful …. all bringing their spiritual wounds, questions and doubts with them…..not sure who to trust …. very not ready to entrust themselves with total abandon into God’s gracious care. (There are verses in between those I read to you!) Counting the ways we have not believed that God loves us. The returning home people we meet at the end of Isaiah are not unlike us – stressed, weary, uncertain. And the God who greets them is the same God who greets us – one who may have not been around when we were living in the dark, but seemed far, far away, who left us oh, so alone…..not because he didn’t care. Perhaps because he was busy working things out…like so many fathers….doing good rather than talking about it…. planning with great excitement the day when he would run to us on the road shouting “How do I love Thee….let me count the ways.”

The story of Isaiah is a story about our God even more than it is a story about people of old. It is a story about God’s love – far more important than the details of our unbelief. The core of Isaiah’s message is shouted in these last chapters Trust God….Yes, such trust is difficult to muster, particularly in the midst of a crisis but we must hold on to the hundreds of words of love that have been sent our way and are yet to come.

Listen, as on a more everyday level, God also whispers “How do I love thee, let me count the ways.” ….as in this story by John Shea Tom, eleven, was the first one in the door of the 31 Flavors. He announced to everyone in the store, “I get the window on the way back.” Alice, the oldest at thirteen, followed. She …looked like she would rather be anywhere but where she was. Next Janet, who was nine, was shoved through the door by Jeff, who was aggressively eight. Next came the biggest of the group, a man by the name of Daddy, who was holding the hand of the smallest of the group, a boy by the name of Paul. They all lined up in front of the plate glass wonderland. “Whatever you want,” said the father. His arms spread out, indicated all 31 flavors. “I want a scoop of rocky road and licorice in a cup,” grinned Jeff, the eight year old. “Daddy, Daddy, Daaddy!” Janet, the nine-year-old was puttering. “That’s what I was going to get. I told Jeff in the car that I was going to get that. That’s why he got it.” “Janet, I’m sure they have enough rocky road and licorice for two,” the great mediator assured her. She glared at her father. Meanwhile Tom had conned the teenage girl behind the counter into giving him a taste of pralines ‘n’ cream and double chocolate. He was now pushing along into banana fudge and pineapple swirl. “Tom!” shouted his father. Tom backed off and returned the little pink tasting spoon to the girl. His father said only one word, but the communication was unmistakable. They had had the conversation before.
“Daddy,” said Alice in a refined voice, “Ill have two scoops of lime sherbet in a cup.” She got her ice cream and drifted away from her embarrassing family toward a group of teenagers in the corner.
Paul, the five-year-old, had said, “Daddy,” three times and tugged vigorously on his father’s pants before he looked down. “I want bubblegum peppermint,”
“Don’t get the bubblegum peppermint,” coaxed his father. “You like chocolate chip.” “I want peppermint bubblegum.” Paul’s voice moved toward tears. “O.K. But you are going to finish it,” said the father doing his imitation of a stern parent. The father turned back to Janet, who was pouting in the corner. “What’ll you have, honey?” “Vanilla.” Her voice was as cold as the ice cream. Jeff said, “Boy, this rocky road and licorice is good.” “Jeff!” said the father. It was the same one word conversation he had had with Tom. Jeff walked away. The father bent down for a private conversation with Janet. “Janet, honey, don’t cut off your nose to spite your face. Get the rocky road and licorice.” She looked at her father as if he were the dumbest man on the face of the earth. He knew nothing about life. “Vanilla in a plain cone,” she said adamantly. She would not be denied the wrong done to her. Tom was pacing up and down in front of the glassed-in choices. “You’ll have to make up your mind,” said his father. “O.K. I’ll have a hot fudge banana split with four scoops of ice cream—chocolate, double chocolate, chocolate ship, and chocolate ripple. “No extra nuts?” suggested the father. “Extra nuts!” said Tom excitedly. “And two maraschino cherries for my son,” added the father. “I don’t like this bubblegum peppermint,” came a voice from the floor. “Give it to me, Paul,” said the father. “And give him a scoop of chocolate chip in a plain cone.” The teenage girl behind the counter hurried it up. The father licked the bubblegum peppermint. He didn’t like it either. Then, out of the wealth of his pockets, Daddy paid for it all. The father was herding his children out the door when Alice, his oldest, said, “Daddy, I’m going to stay with these kids I met.” He looked over at the teenagers in the corner with that steely parental appraisal that withers all wrongdoing. “Be home by five.” He was startled by the tenderness in his voice. From outside came Tom’s voice, “I said I have the window on the way home.” The father turned immediately and pushed out the door, for his children needed him.

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