I could talk about those that live in far away countries that have known nothing but war and bombs all their lives.

It could be a word for that friend of mine who's hanging on by her fingernails. Her husband just left her with three small children and no money. It could be a personal word.

Maybe it would be a sermon for the young starting out -- to help them avoid all the pitfalls that surely will come. I don't know.

Maybe it could be a word for old folk who find so little hope in their last days in this time.

But perhaps it should be a sermon for all of us today. There's a great deal of mean-spiritedness that stalks the land and perhaps this would be a good last sermon.

The more I thought, I remembered a story from the life of Jesus. It began, I think, that first hard day of adulthood when he packed his bags and left home, and that's always a hard thing. Two gospels tell of what happened that day. Mark first told it and then Matthew followed it with his gospel.

The first thing Jesus did was to go to John and to ask him for baptism. And so Jesus stands shoulder high in the Jordan River with John the Baptist. John baptizes Jesus. And then the strangest thing happened. The wind blew. Both gospels say that after that a voice came. The voice of God speaking and that voice said: "This is my beloved son."

Henri Nouwen, the Roman Catholic writer, has said that this is significant. For that word, beloved, was like a golden string that Jesus followed for the rest of His life.¹

You may have read Toni Morrison's beautiful novel entitled, Beloved. Her story dates back to those awful slavery days in Ohio in 1873. A black slave-mother had lost her two-year-old child and is utterly devastated. The man who carved tombstones tells her that he will carve a tombstone for her, if she can come up with a name in ten minutes. But he says she can only use seven letters because the stone is so small. She wanted to use those beautiful words the preacher had used at the funeral: "Dearly Beloved," he said over and over, but they were too long. And so she asked the man, "Could we use the word 'beloved'?" And so the man thought, "B-E-L-O-V-E-D." And he carved those letters on that tombstone.²

Early in the story, two gospels carve into the granite of their stories these same letters: B-E-L-O-V-E-D. This is significant. They appear a second time much later when Jesus stood in a hard place. The cross loomed before him. There would be misunderstanding and suffering and cross and even death. And on the Mount of Transfiguration Peter, James and John heard a voice -- the voice that spoke to Jesus a second time, saying, "This is my beloved son..." In the light of that word, Jesus was able to leave the mountain for the valley and the hard days and finally even death. And He was able to do it as a conqueror, because I think He remembered those seven letters. You are beloved.

If this were the last sermon I were to preach, I think I would begin right here. Why would I choose this word? Because in his face we see our faces if we look closely. And if we listen, ever so closely, I think we'll hear that word as our own. We, too, are beloved -- all of us and each of us.

What would happen if we could claim this word for our own? I think it might do for us just the thing that it did for Jesus. It would send us out into the unknowns of our days knowing that it need not matter whatever comes, that we shall make it. Because, like Jesus, we will be anchored by a word: We are beloved.

But you might say, what about those other messages that we have heard? They come all the time. Sometimes whispers, sometimes shouts: "You're no good. You're ugly. You're worthless. You'll never amount to anything. You're lazy. You're nobody." All of us have heard these ugly, ugly words. And the problem is that we have fought against these words all our lives.

But most of our fighting simply exhausts us. We've tried to cancel out those ugly voices with jobs and success and money and things and cars and houses and accomplishments.

Right after Christmas I stood in a check-out line of a department store. The woman in front of me had filled her cart to overflowing. I wondered if I would ever get home. She had on a full-length mink coat and every hair was in place. She told the clerk, as she piled the clothes on the counter, "My family didn't get me any clothes for Christmas. They said I had plenty. Well, I'm showing them today." And she showed them. When she flipped out her credit card, her treasures amounted to $1,200.00. I've never seen so many clothes in my life. It took her a whole shopping cart, filled to the brim, just to get to the car. As I saw her leaving and slowly pushing that cart, I wanted to run after her and say, "Lady, it'll never, ever make you somebody." I know and you know. Because you see, all of us have tried it. Work. New suit. Job change. Degrees and diets. We all want to be somebody -- but we never find it down any of these roads.

And this is why I've chosen this old story of Jesus standing in the River Jordan. If we could hear what Jesus heard, it might just carry all of us through. "You are my beloved." And yet we know that closing the gap between what God says and the realities around us is not easy. And so our task is to become what God himself has called us. We really are to try to live up to our names.

We can't do this alone. This is why we need the Church, to help us hear this voice when so many other voices call us to lesser things. We need the church to help us listen clearly again. To hear the songs and the prayers and the silence and the scripture and even sermons. And the great hope is that in listening we might just hear this other voice that heals and cleanses and helps and guides all of us.

If you've ever heard that word you'll come back to it again and again. You'll return over and over until it begins to crowd out all those other destructive voices.

But it doesn't stop there, I don't think. Jesus took that word and gave it away to everyone he came in contact with: lepers and prostitutes and disciples and common people and children. They all loved Him because He gave them that word for themselves.

And that's our task too. Remember the old spiritual: "This Little Light of Mine ... I'm gonna let it shine ... let it shine ... let it shine." That's our job.

One of the great American writers of this century was a man named Raymond Carver. He wrote marvelous stories and poems. But like so many creative people he was haunted with many demons. He was an alcoholic and along the way he lost a great many things that he loved. He almost died in 1976-77 of the ravages of drink. But he came back, sobered up, married another poet, Tess Gallagher, and they had some very good years. He dedicated his last book of poems to her. I love the dedication: "Tess. Tess. Tess. Tess."

But in September of 1987 Carver discovered that he had lung cancer. And what followed was ten months of terrible struggle with chemotherapy and hanging on until his death. But during those days he wrote some of his finest poetry. After his death, his widow published his last book of poetry, called A New Path to the Waterfall. The very last poem in that book might just be a benediction for us all. He called it "Late Fragment". Looking back, he wrote these words:

And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?
And he says,
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to fell myself beloved of the earth.³

Isn't this the great dream of all of us? To come to the place where we can call ourselves beloved and to feel that someone else acknowledges that, too.

Once there lived a little black woman on a dirt road with little of the world's goods. But one of her sons became the greatest football player the county had ever seen. He was wonderful. And, from across the country, coaches and scouts beat a path to that little house on that dirt road. Everybody wanted to sign him for their school. Finally, he signed with a great university in a great ceremony with TV cameras and news columnists from everywhere.

The morning he was to leave, his mother got up early and fixed a huge breakfast. Finally it was time to go. His bags were on the porch and the mother looked at him with all her pride and all her love. And she reached up and hugged him so he would not see her tears. And as she hugged him, she whispered in his ear, "Son, remember who you is. Remember who you is." And he turned away so she would not see him cry, and walked out the door, picked up the bags and went on his way.

Remember that other story. Jesus standing in the water of the Jordan. And remember that the wind that blew and the voice that came. If you listen closely you might just hear your name called too. Remember who you is. Remember you are beloved. It is the best word that I know.

Bud Knoedler: Roger, thank you for that wonderful sermon.

Roger Lovette: It's good to be with you.

Knoedler: Well thank you. I'm sure it won't be the last time you'll be here. As I was listening to your sermon I was impressed by the fact that we have become a very secular society, where the influence of the church and the teachings of Scripture are really an offence to many people and ignored by most, I would say. But history teaches us that with every major trend there's usually a counter-trend. In our secular culture, do you see evidence of a counter-trend, of a renewed search for or interest in matters of faith?

Lovette: I think there's a great hunger today in people's lives to find answers to the questions of their own lives and some of the great searing problems that we're dealing with today. I think it takes a lot of different forms. You know, we're selling a great many religious books. There is in our neighborhood a religious "superstore" bookstore. It looks like a grocery store, where people are coming and buying all kinds of books. Now some of these books deal with things like New Age, but I think that whole movement is trying to define some answers for problems of life. And William Bennett's book, Virtues, for example, is a best seller. It's because people are searching desperately for something to hang on to.

So I think that while we are a secular culture, there are people out there that are hungry and are searching, because the things they try to give themselves to, as I talked about in the sermon, are simply not enough. I think that even when Christianity has been a minority that Jesus said, "You are the light...You are the leaven...You are the salt." Even though you're in a minority, you can help preserve society. And I hope we're still doing that.

Knoedler: Roger, this search which you seem to indicate some people are taking, seems to be taking a direction other than through established churches. Is that true? Or let me say, why is that?

Lovette: Well, I think there's a lot of disenchantment with mainline denominations, which concerns me, because even Baptists are a mainline denomination. But "out there" there are all kinds of para-church experiments -- going on in this state and other places -- that are drawing people by the thousands. And I think that what will happen to a lot of these experiments is that they will become bridges to bring people back into the church. But I also think the mainline churches have got to realize that this is not an intramural game we are playing, but we are to take our pointers from our Lord, that we are to reach out and touch the common people. I think we have lost touch with a lot of people's lives. I think that our message simply goes over the top of their lives and we've got to come back to that.

Knoedler: Roger, when we follow up on that we've lost touch with the people, what can the churches do today to make the message more attractive?

Lovette: Well, I think the first thing we could do is to preach in ways that deal with real people and real ideas. I think that's what Jesus did in His parables. I think that all we do in worship must be structured for the people. That doesn't mean that we become fatty. It doesn't mean that 18th century English music is the only music there is in the world. There's a term we use today, "Eurocentrism", which -- if you're not European and you're not white -- is not exactly right. I think we've got to break through all that.

There are 65 language groups in Birmingham, Alabama. Would you believe that? 65 different languages are spoken in that southern city. Now we have to come to terms with that. If that's true in Birmingham, what would we say about Chicago?

So we've got to address the plurality of people's lives at all kinds of levels and not just assume that they all come in at the same place. And I think we've got to do a lot of drastic revisions in everything. We can't assume very much, for one thing. We've got to begin at elementary levels on the mission field.

Knoedler: Roger, many major denominations have been experiencing what has been generally called the "Renewal Movement". Is this happening in the Southern Baptist church, and what does it mean in the lives of individuals who are part of this?

Lovette: The Southern Baptist Convention has had a lot of problems. But one of the things that has happened is a growth of Southern Baptists called the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which is a new group that has formed in the last few years. That group has experienced great vitality, because they try to do what I'm talking about now. They've addressed the issues of our time. They try to be sensitive to people's needs. They try to preach in relevant ways, even though that's a hackneyed term. They've tried to meet people where they are.

And there's a lot of vitality in my own congregation. A little church in the inner city this last year built a gorgeous new sanctuary in a place where nobody said it could be done. And all the TV cameras came in and everybody in the city was amazed, because this is a growing, vital place. Two blocks from projects, two blocks from the University community, and somehow they're meeting in this little church. And it's a good thing.

Knoedler: Your present church is a multi-racial church?

Lovette: Multi-racial, multi-cultural.

Knoedler: And how is that working?

Lovette: Well, very slowly. But we are bringing people together and it's working very well. This church came out of the struggle of the 60's when one of the churches would not integrate. So we said, "We're going to have an open congregation." And we have kept that for 25 years, so this is no new thing. It's working. It has worked and it continues to work. And, of course, we have our struggles, but the church is a marvelous place that is drawing people from all over the county. It's an interesting thing.

Knoedler: Well, if it doesn't happen in the churches, there's not much hope for it happening anywhere else, is there?

Lovette: We've got to be the leaven in the loaf, the salt of the earth.

Knoedler: That's correct. Roger, thank you for these comments. I'm glad we had a few minutes to talk about some things that are vitally important.