Many of us people enjoy reading the newspaper and one of the best parts of the newspaper is the funnies. Most people like the funnies and turn to them first. People have their favorite cartoon strips and pick up their newspaper and turn to their favorite cartoon.

For decades, the favorite cartoon strip was one called, Peanuts, starring Charlie Brown. And, of course, Lucy, Linus and Snoppy. What many of you know is that the author of this cartoon strip, Charles Schultz, who recently died, was a Christian. Charles Schultz was a devout Baptist. Schultz often used his cartoons to express the Gospel. In the cartoon strip, Peanuts, Lucy always symbolizes original sin; she is always doing something bad. You watch Lucy enough and you realize that she will hurt someone around her and then blame it onto them. Charlie Brown is always a loser. He is always doing something wrong, not quite measuring up, missing the mark, not getting it quite right. Charlie is you and me. And Snoopy the Dog is often the Red Barron figure. He is often the Jesus figure, who usually comes to the rescue. The story of the cartoon strip, Peanuts, needs to be read on two levels: on the human level that is often funny; but also on the divine level, where we can read a hidden message, a coded message, for our lives.

One of the best cartoon stories that Charles Schultz ever wrote was the one entitled, “The Little Red Headed Girl” or “I Love You Charlie Brown.” I would like to tell, not read, this story for you today as an illustration for the sermon, and I would like you to listen on two levels, both the human and the spiritual level. The story goes like this:

Charlie Brown was in love. Linus knew it because Charlie Brown wasn’t feeling very well lately. His stomach was upset; he was distracted; and Linus had seen Charlie looking over at the little red headed girl on the school bus one day. Even more important than that, one day Linus saw Charlie playing the daisy game. You know the daisy game: she loves me, she loves me not, she loves me, she loves me not. Linus figured out what was going on, and so he approached Charlie and spoke to him bluntly: “You like the little red headed girl, don’t you Charlie?” Charlie was so upset. He was flabberghasted. He was embarrassed. Now another person knew that Charlie Brown was in love with a … girl. Well, that same day, Charlie Brown went to school, and the teacher asked Charlie to come up in front of the whole class room and read his report to all the kids in the class. Charlie was upset by this; he was flustered, frustrated, frazzled and he fumbled his papers around to find his report. In his frustration, Charlie finally decided to read the first page, the top page, regardless of what it said. Charlie read aloud: “Dear little red headed girl, do you like me? Yes or No. Charlie Brown.” O No. He read the wrong paper. The whole class laughed at him and there is nothing worse than having the whole class laugh at you. … Well, the next day was the last day of school, and Charlie couldn’t go all summer long without knowing if the little red headed girl liked him. He HAD to know. It would be a long, long summer, if he didn’t know. What would he do? Charlie made his plans. He would go early the next morning and get on the school bus and ask her directly if she liked him or not. He set his alarm clock early, so as not to miss the bus. It was four o’clock in the morning that the alarm went off and he felt like he had been run over by a herd of elephants. He got up, went to the bus stop by 4:30 in the morning and waited on a bench. While sitting on the bench, waiting for the bus, Charlie dosed and then fell fast asleep, only to be waken by the roar of the bus engine as the school bus pulled away from the bus stop. He saw the flash of the little red headed girls flaming red hair in the back window of the school  bus as it pulled away. O no. Rats. He missed the bus. He failed again. Charlie finally got to school, was late, was tardy, had to get a slip, but he was in the same class with her all day. Suddenly, the day was over and he had one chance left. Only one. The ride home on the school bus. The school bell rang; he shot out of the school, and he stood there in line as the hordes of kids kept pushing and shoving and crowding around him, but he squeezed onto the bus. Where was the little red headed girl? The bus started to pull away from the curb, and there was the little red headed girl there on that curb, waving to him or someone on the bus. O no. Failed again. Another crushing blow. In the confusion, he put his hands in his pocket, felt a piece of paper that shouldn’t have been there. Somebody must have bumped into him and put that note in his jacket pocket.  He opened the note. It said:  “Dear Charlie, I like you Charlie Brown. The little red headed girl.” Oh. Charlie was so happy. He jumped. He danced. He clicked his heels in the air, and he read the note again, “I like you Charlie Brown.”  Charlie felt so good inside, and now all summer he would be happy because he knew he was liked by that little red headed girl. After all, isn’t that what life is all about?

Thus ends the story about Charlie Brown and the little red headed girl. And this classic story about life is a parable, a story that has two levels of meaning. The story is about Charlie Brown, but more importantly, we know that the story is about us, is about you and me. The story is an answer to an important question in life: am I liked? Am I loved? Do you like me? Do you love me? So simple. So basic. So important to all of us. … Many of you remember the daisy game, where you removed petals from the daisy flower as you said: she loves me, she loves me not, she loves me, she loves me not. Is there any adult who didn’t play that game as a child? She loves me, she loves me not. The point is: we still play that game today. Am I loved? Am I not? Am I liked? Am I not? Do you like me? Do you love me? Do you respect me? And in the game of life you come to the conclusion that you are liked or loved or admired by a person, you click up your heels and dance because you know that you are loved. On the other hand, if you know that you are not liked, loved or appreciated by that important person or persons, you don’t feel like dancing.

Jesus said: “A new commandment I give to you: that you love one another as I have loved you,” thereby fulfilling the law, thereby fulfilling the fundamental need found in the other person and yourself. The need of all human beings is to know that we are liked, loved, and appreciated. Love one another.

We, as human beings, have many needs in life. We humans have fundamental needs that have to be met in order for us to survive. We have these very basic needs of air, water, food, and shelter. But I would like to suggest to you this morning that we have another fundament need: the need to experience love, God’s love, the need to receive love and the need to give love. The need is for the quality of love, God’s love, Jesus’ love, the love of the cross, not love from the movies, the comic strips, the malls. We all have a need to experience genuine love; that is, to receive love, and to give love. And it is always in that sequence: to first receive love and then to give me. You can’t give you what you first haven’t received. … This need to experience love, to receive and give love, is as necessary as water, air, food and shelter. You can’t survive as a human being without water, air, food and shelter. Likewise, we as human beings cannot survive nor reach our full potential unless we experience love, to give and receive love. O yes, you can survive with less. You can survive on a lot less and still be human. You can survive having a minimum diet and having your minimum physiological needs met. You can meet your minimum social needs, your minimum sexual needs, your minimum work needs. You can survive on the minimum but you will never reach your full potential as a human being unless you experience love, God’s love, receiving love and giving love.

Let me explain. For an example: if you have an apple tree at your house and all it does is produce beautiful apple blossoms, is that tree fulfilling its full potential? Obviously, not. The apple blossoms smell good, but is the tree meeting its full potential? No. Second example: let’s say that you have a tomato plant and this beautiful tomato plant grows bushier and bushier, thicker and thicker, leafier and leafier, greener and greener, and this plant grows to be the bushiest, leafiest, greenest plant that you have ever seen, but it doesn’t produce any tomatoes. Would you say that this particular tomato plant was fulfilling its full potential? Obviously not. How about a meadowlark. Let’s say that you see a meadowlark fly and do all kinds of acrobatic tricks in the air and fly the highest that a bird can fly, but the meadowlark never sings. Would the meadowlark be realizing its full potential? Of course not. Just as the meadowlark was designed by God to sing beautiful songs and just as the apple tree was designed by God to make luscious, sumptuous apples and just as the tomato plant was designed by God to produce big red tomatoes, so you and I have also been designed by God to love. To experience love. To receive and give love. That is our God given design. That is the way that God made us. We are made in the image of God; we are like God; and we have been designed to love. And it is only then that we reach our full potential as human beings. Only when we experience love, giving and receiving love, do we become fully human. I mean, a tomato plant with out tomatoes? How ridiculous. An apple tree without apples? How ridiculous. A meadowlark without singing? How ridiculous. A human being without love, divine love, experiencing love, receiving and giving love? How ridiculous. You can settle for less in your life, but your life won’t be very good nor very fulfilling. You would be like apple trees with only blossoms and not apples, a tomato plant with only leaves and not tomatoes, a meadowlark who only flies and never sings. God has made you to love, and only in loving, experiencing love, receiving and giving love, that you find your true self, your true potential and true humanity.

Well, what is this love? Well, love is not easy to define. I mean, can you capture the waves of an ocean in a fishing net? No. Can you capture a beautiful butterfly by dissecting its wings and beauty? No. Can you capture love by writing a poem about it? Shakespeare wrote one hundred and fifty sonnets trying to capture love and after one hundred and fifty sonnets later, he could not define it. There are some things in life that are so mysterious and so big that you cannot capture them even in words, and that is the way love it. Love is so big. Love is so mysterious that you cannot capture it in words, but when you see it, you know it. … I see it all around me every day of the week.  I see it in the grief of Claire Tronson, there at the bedside of his dead wife whom he love for sixty five years, and you could literally see the love inside him and between them. I see love all the time. I saw love in Ellen Heffner as she spoke with a homeless man, Willie Sam,  on the downtown streets of Seattle. I see love in Orlie Sorenson who is a tutor for the ministry, Kid Reach that tutors neighboring kids in reading and math. Orlie’s student couldn’t come to tutoring because of a conflict with a school baseball game. What does Orlie do? Goes to the baseball game where people ask, Is that your son’s grandpa? “O no, it is his tutor from church.” I see it all the time. I still cannot define it nor have any of the poets of life, but I know it when I see it. That is the way love is: fleeting, mysterious, incomprehensible, elusive, when you try to define it, but love is a reality, a fact of life, a way of life.

To experience love, to receive and to give love, is to have the Spirit of Christ’s love inside of you. Where you say, I will forgive you no matter what. I will love you no matter what. I will forgive you no matter what. I will be gentle with you no matter what. I will be with you no matter what.

This past week, I again read a quotation by Morris Niedenthal, who teaches and preaches at the University of Chicago. He says that Jesus accepted people just the way they were, but he never left people just the way they were because he loved them  . Jesus always made them better. So often on Sunday morning, I say to a child at the communion rail as I bless them and trace the sign of the cross on their forehead, “Receive the sign of the cross upon your forehead so that you would know that you are baptized and that God loves you just the way you are.” But Jesus never leaves that person just the way they are. Jesus always makes people better. Jesus never accepts people just the way we are and leaves us just the way we are and always makes us better. Or to put it another way, Jesus sees beneath the soil to the seeds of human possibility. Or, Jesus sees inside the seeds to the possibility of what we can become.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the Roman Catholic theologian, once wrote: “Sometimes after the mastery of the winds and the waves and the tides; after the mastery of the sun and the sea and the laws of gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And when we harness the energies of love, for the second time in human history, we shall discover fire.” … What if we harnessed atomic fusion? Wow! But what if we harnessed the energies of love? The world would then be transformed.

This quality of love that I am talking about is not some impossible ideal. It is not some form of idealistic behavior that is confined to Disneyland, fantasy land and fairy land. I see it in the lives of people in our parish. Now, I hate to admit it, but I have to admit it that I do not see any ideal families today. I see no ideal husbands, no ideal wives, no ideal children, no ideal pastors. I see no ideal anyone. What I see here today is a bunch of real people with real struggles with real problems with real sinfulness. In this real congregation, I see real loved lived out. I know it when I see it. I see this quality of love in so many of you and this quality of love says: I will love you no matter what, I will forgive you no matter what, I will forgive you no matter what, I will take care of you no matter what. My life is yours. I see that again and again in this congregation.

Do you know the length of longest sermon that was ever preached? The Guinness Book of World Records keeps records of everything, including for the length of the longest sermon ever preached. How long was that sermon? 60 hours and 31 minutes, by a Unitarian preacher. You think my sermons are long. How about 60 and one half hours? But there is another world record. What was the shortest sermon ever preached? It was by Rev. John Albrecht, an Episcopalian priest, from Lake Orion, Michigan, and he spoke the shortest sermon ever given on record. He uttered one word, Love. And sat down. That was it. No more. Some parishonier it was the best sermon he ever gave.

Love, as Christ loves.

Charlie Brown. One day Charlie fell in love with the little red headed girl. He fell in love with the little red headed girl, and he didn’t know whether she liked him or not. He was trying, desperately, to find out if she liked him. He went to so many subtle and not so subtle extremes to find out whether or not he was liked, whether or not he was loved. On the last day of school, he missed the bus, was down hearted, down in the mouth, so sad. Charlie, in his grief, looked into his hand and discovered a note that said, “I like you, Charlie Brown. Signed. The little red headed girl.” Charlie’s jumped into the air, danced and clicked up his heels, for that is the way life is when you know that you are loved, are genuinely appreciated, are deeply liked. You begin to find your true self, your true identity.

What would ever happen if you personally discovered and harnessed, not power of the wind and the waves or the sun and the seas, but you harnessed the power of love in your life. You, for a second time, would discover, fire. Amen.


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