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[silence] [music] This is Glendale Presbyterian Church People Moving Power. This tape includes the reading of Scripture and a message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman,

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titled "It is Never Too Late to Love." This is the last in his lengthy series on the Kindnesses of Calvary. As soon as the voice stops on this side of the tape, be sure to turn immediately to side number two for the remainder of the message.

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This tape is copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Any public or commercial use, in full or in part, requires the advanced written permission of Dr. Thielman. The private use of this material for the spiritual gain of yourself or others is heartily encouraged.

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If you would like a catalog listing additional tapes available, write to People Moving Power at the address on this cassette. [music] [Singing the National Anthem]

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Let us continue in our worship by giving reverent attention to the reading of God's Word as it is recorded in the Gospel according to Luke, the 23rd chapter, beginning at the verse numbered 50. Now, there was a man named Joseph from the Jewish town of Arimathea. He was a member of the council, a good and righteous man who had not consented to their purpose and deed, and he was looking for the kingdom of God. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then he took it down and wrapped it in a linen shroud and laid him in a rock-hewn tomb where no one had ever yet been laid.

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It was the day of preparation, and the Sabbath was beginning. The women who had come with him from Galilee followed and saw the tomb and how his body was laid. Then they returned and prepared spices and ointments. May God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his holy word. Let us pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. It is almost necessary that the terrible events on Calvary come to a conclusion which is in some measure a relief.

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What happened on that spot outside Jerusalem was so hideous and so horrible that I submit it is almost crucially necessary that the end of it not be like all the rest of it. I wonder if we could bear, if we could imagine or emotionally face up to a last act on Calvary which would be as unspeakingly brutal as what went before. We praise God that it is not necessary that we should do so. For the last act on Calvary belongs to a Jew named Joseph from the town of Arimathea, a mountain village in the northwest corner of Judea. Joseph was a man described in scripture as generous, just, kind, and gracious. And the last deed done on Calvary is his.

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It comes almost as a sigh of relief, as a touching act that somehow takes from us at least part of the hurt that we feel from the whole event. Joseph, you see, went to Pontius Pilate and begged the body of Jesus. It was the custom in those days for those crucified to be left upon the cross until they were eaten by birds. And when this process was almost at an end, a fire was lighted at the base of the cross which quickly consumed the cross and whatever was left upon it, reducing it to ashes. Joseph couldn't bear the thought that that would happen to Jesus. So very bravely, with great courage, he went to Pilate and asked for the body.

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And Pilate, probably because he was still angry at the Jews and wanted to spite them, gave the body to Joseph. And he buried it in his own tomb, a tomb located in a garden. It must have been a very luxurious and rich tomb, for only tombs of that kind were located in such beautiful places. Nicodemus helped Joseph with the burial. He provided the spices. But it is important that we recognize that there is very little similarity between Joseph and Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a man who lacked confidence in himself. But Joseph had sufficient confidence to stand up in the Sanhedrin and vote against the Sanhedrin when they condemned Jesus.

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Nicodemus had certain anxieties because of his age. But Joseph is described in Scripture as one who was always looking for the kingdom, whose eyes were open, whose head was pointed straight ahead, and who was thinking not of the past but of the future. Nicodemus was a man who did things fearfully. Scripture tells us so. But Scripture tells us also that Joseph, in courage, went before Pontius Pilate. Nicodemus was afraid he might lose his fortune. Joseph did not hesitate to turn over to Jesus a tomb and a garden. Nicodemus had certain anxieties about his social position. Joseph risked all of that by making a public request for the remains of this prophet from Galilee. Nicodemus was, to at least some degree, influenced negatively by those about him who were always thinking negatively.

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But it is noted in Matthew 27 of Joseph of Arimathea that he was one of the disciples of Jesus. He fellowshiped, you see, with the people of God, with those who thought positively, and that spirit was captured by him. It is not surprising then to notice that Nicodemus being too careful loses everything, and Joseph of Arimathea, willing to risk everything, is given by God the last act on Calvary, this moment of tenderness and kindness, this opportunity to say at that time and to all those who have read the story since that it's never too late to love. When Joseph stood on Calvary, he came to understand that love is stronger than hurt. It's very hard for us to contemplate Calvary and all of its awfulness, even though we're 2,000 years removed from the event.

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But think how it must have been for him to have stood there and to have watched the whole hideous thing happen. He saw it with his own eyes. And somehow or other, in the midst of all the terror of it, he got a vision of the love of God. And we're all looking for those kinds of visions. Did you hear about the little youngster in church who, during the sermon, wrote a note on the back of an envelope? Large, uneven letters going uphill. And the note, then turned over to the child's mother and father by the youngster, read, "Dear Mother and Father, I love you. Do you love me?

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If you do love me, draw an O around yes. If not, draw an O around no." And there were a yes and a no. In a very real sense, that's the petition of every man. We look into the face of whatever God we own as our own and we say, "Do you love me?" And Joseph, standing on Calvary, somehow saw what happened there as a great, big, bloody circle around yes. And as he looked at that love of God and saw what it cost, it came to him, perhaps for the first time, that love is often three parts pain.

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You know, as long as you love only yourself, only what hurts you will hurt you. But as soon as you love someone else, whatever hurts them will hurt you. And the larger you extend the circle of your love, the larger you extend the capacity for being hurt, until your love, when it becomes broad enough, can become nothing less than three parts pain.

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This is true especially of us as the children of God. An insect is more sensitive to pain than a flower. An animal is more sensitive to pain than an insect. A higher animal is more sensitive to pain than a lower animal. A man is more sensitive to pain than an animal. A spiritual man, that is a man who knows God as Father, Christ as Brother, and the Holy Spirit as Comforter,

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such a one, loving like God, that is with a love that is as wide as all the world, and as deep as all men's sin, and as high as all men's inspirations, when a man has that kind of love in him, God's love in him, so that he's stretched like God was stretched, then he finds out how much pain and hurt there can be in love. There's always in that kind of loving, you see, a cross. But that kind of loving is stronger than hurt.

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There are some who contemplate the pain in love and say then it's better not to love. If love hurts so much, then why bother? Why open oneself to all of it? But that's not very profound reasoning. You know, I have never yet heard a mother and father who were laying away the dead body of their child say,

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"Well, we wish the child had never been born and we had never come to the place where we loved it. At least it would be easier on us now at this time than the broken hearts we're presently enduring." I've never heard a fellow who was chasing after a girl, wanted her hand in marriage, wanted her with all of the desire that was in him, only to see her choose someone else.

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I've never heard a fellow say, "Well, knowing what I'm going through now, I wish I'd never met her. I wish we'd never spent time together. I wish we'd never held hands. I wish we'd never touched hearts." I've never heard a man talk like that after such a thing. I have not read in the paper of any young widow married perhaps for only a few months

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and then her husband goes off to Vietnam and loses his life there. And I've never yet seen, recorded, or heard any young widow having gone through a thing like that saying, "Well, I wish I'd never met him. I wish we hadn't been married. I wish we wouldn't have had those few months together. I wish it never would have happened. Knowing what I know now and I heard of it, I wish I'd never seen him."

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No. The poet's quite right. It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. It is better, but it is not easier, because love is often very costly. You know, when Joseph stood there on Calvary, I'm sure he didn't feel much like loving.

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This kind of love, you see, is much deeper than feeling. It has to be. Two ministers were talking about love and about Jesus, and the younger of the ministers said, "I wonder what it would feel like in your mind to love people the way Jesus did." And the other minister, the older one, replied, "One would never know,

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because if we were loving the way Jesus did, we would be concentrating so totally on the people we were loving and on their needs that we would have no knowledge at all of how we ourselves were feeling." The kind of love, you see, which comes from the cross and which flowed into Joseph of Arimathea and then out through him into the act of kindness which was his, that kind of love is beyond feeling.

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You want an illustration of it? There was a woman who was married to a man who did not believe in Jesus Christ, and she was trying to win him. Now, that's the most difficult mission field in all the world. There's none harder. She took tapes to him, she gave tracts to him, she left books where he would find them.

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She quoted portions of the sermon to him, she invited the minister for dinner and prompted the minister in advance as to what he should say to encourage her husband. She did everything she knew how, and of course as she did this, she just alienated the man. He became more and more convinced that she did not like him as he was,

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and feeling this way, he became resentful and antagonisms arose. She came to see her minister about it. And after relating the story, he said, "This is what you should do. Tonight, when your husband is watching television, you should go into your bedroom

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and you should put on the most beautiful negligee that you have, and the sweetest perfume that you own. And then you should come out, and you should climb into his lap, and you should put your arms around his neck, and you should say, 'I love you more than I have ever loved you in all my life.'

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Are you able to do that?" And she looked at the minister and she said, "Oh, if he would laugh at me then, I think I would die." And the minister said, "Well, are you more concerned about your feelings than you are about your husband? Are you more concerned about your being humiliated than you are about your husband?

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Are you really more worried about how you might feel in response to what he would say? Are you willing to risk your embarrassment, to risk your feelings? Are you willing to be hurt enough? Are you willing to let there be pain in love, for without pain there isn't love?

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Are you willing to love like that, the love that's stronger than hurt and pain?" And she was, and she did. And beautiful things are now happening there. But they only started to happen when she understood just how costly love can be.

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That's what Joseph discovered on Calvary. He loved enough to care for the body of Jesus, and that love was stronger than his hurt. Something else. Joseph learned on Calvary that love is stronger than hate. I'm sure he must have had tremendous anger as he stood there that day.

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This was no milk toast. This was a strong man who was willing to come before Pontius Pilate with his requests and deface the Sanhedrin and vote against them. This was a courageous individual, and I'm sure there was a hostility in him that day

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that wanted to lash out at someone for what they had done to his friend. But you see, Joseph had learned about love from Jesus, so he'd come to understand just how tough love has to be, the kind of love that is stronger than hate.

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I once heard Vince Lombardi, the coach of the Packers, say in a television interview that his players had respect for one another. He said, "My team members love one another." And you know, I liked his use of that word.

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That's what the New Testament means by love, not the silly sentimentalisms and the hearts and flowers that a lot of people try to make love into. Love is a tough, enduring thing, like a professional football team that gets together and works together and stays together, win or lose or draw.

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With that kind of commitment, that's what love is. That's what Paul's talking about when he says in 1 Corinthians, "Love never loses its patience. Love never becomes possessive. Love is never touchy. Love has endurance."

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And then he goes on even more intensely, "When there's nothing else to trust, love trusts. When there's nothing else to hope for, love hopes. Love, he says, outlasts everything."

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And then to underline that thought, he says, "One thing still stands when everything else has fallen, and that one thing is love, tough love." And Joseph learned about that on that green hill far away,

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on that green hill which wasn't green but sun-baked, which wasn't a hill but only a pile of rugged rocks, and which isn't far away but is a part of every man who has tried to bring his love above other people's hatred.

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The only way you can do that is to see what Joseph saw there on Calvary, the love of God shown to him through the cross. There was a certain girl whose name was Gertrude, and if she wasn't the ugliest woman in the world, she was one of them.

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There were many who said that she was the homeliest person they'd ever seen. Really, even her wrinkles had wrinkles, and of her figure it would be best to leave the whole matter unopened. She spent no time with others, had no boyfriends.

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The telephone never rang. She never had much fun. And so she became bitter and narrow and hostile and closed in, not much contact with other people. That's the way she wanted it. Now it happened that they moved into her town a beautician whose name was Mr. J.

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He was reputed to be the finest beautician in all the world. The things he did for women were remarkable. He could take some pretty sorry-looking objects and make them very special indeed. Now Mr. J. was a compassionate man, and he heard about Gertrude.

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So he called her and asked if he could come to see her. She was absolutely astonished that Mr. J. would want to come to see her, that this master of beauty would want to come to see someone as ugly as she was. It was beyond her imagining, and she was a little bit fearful about the whole thing,

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but she agreed and he came. Now there were many who said that Mr. J. could work miracles, but everybody agreed that the greatest miracle he ever worked was the one he worked on Gertrude. Why, she came out of his shop beautiful.

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From head to toe she was transformed. She was lovely. Everything that wasn't there was now there. And everything that shouldn't have been there wasn't there anymore. And she looked beautiful, and everyone who knew her before was astonished at the afterwards.

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She went about, of course, with a whole new attitude with regard to the world. She saw it as beautiful because now she was beautiful. And she entered into all kinds of friendships and associations. Her life took on enthusiasm and joy,

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and she spent a good part of every day looking in the mirror and just contemplating how beautiful she was. As she did that, she became sensitive to the fact that not everybody was as beautiful as she was. She began to wonder why they didn't do something to improve their appearance.

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I mean, after all, some people just don't seem to have any taste. And some people don't really take much care of themselves. And then after thinking those kinds of thoughts, she began to verbalize them. She wouldn't hesitate to say to someone, "That's the wrong lipstick for you."

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Or, "If you'd spend a little more on your clothes, you'd look a little better in them." Sometimes her remarks were so cutting and critical that she made people who weren't ugly feel ugly. Once Gertrude reduced a young lady to tears. And in the midst of the weeping, the young lady looked at her and said, "Gertrude, tell me.

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Who is it that fixes your hair?" And Gertrude paused and thought and thought. But for the life of her, she couldn't remember the man's name. Whenever we forget what Jesus did for us on the cross,

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what the love of God shed abroad in our lives at that tremendous cost has done, whenever we forget how ugly we were and what he made of us, then and only then can hate triumph over love. But as long as we keep the vision of the power of that love before us and what it did in us,

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then we can never hate. For no matter what ugliness we see in others, it will be of nothing when compared to the ugliness we have seen overcome in ourselves. We will remember that God was spendthrift in his love,

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left his arithmetic at home, and ran right into the red, blood red, for us in his loving. That's what Joseph saw in Calvary. And seeing that, he could only love. And loving, he defeated hatred.

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Now that kind of love is also healing. And it makes things whole. Calvary, you know, was a place of brokenness. The bodies on the crosses were broken.

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The morals, the sense of truth and honor of those who perpetrated the deed, smashed to pieces. And the spirits of the friends of Jesus, people like Joseph, they were broken too. Calvary was a place of brokenness. This old man Joseph had pinned all his hopes on Jesus,

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and now he saw Jesus pinned like a butterfly to a card. And his hopes were in smithereens within him. But in the midst of that kind of thing, he determined to do something. To do something that was loving.

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And because he did something, he began to heal. Love is always something that you do. It is not abstract. It is not a feeling of affection for humanity.

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The Old Testament and the New Testament speak of love never in terms of this kind of vagary. They always speak of love in terms of deeds done. We owe a lot to the Swiss theologian Karl Barth. But he wrote no page which is of greater significance to us than this.

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In the fourth volume of his Dogmatics, discussing love, he says, "It is the concrete and not the abstract loving of someone who is concrete and not abstract." Love is rolling up your sleeves. Love is getting your hands dirty.

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Love is something that you do. Like Ellen and Gene Siemens and Timmy. The Siemens wrestled with God in prayer about whether they should become foster parents or not, and finally they decided that it was his will that they did.

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And so they became foster parents, but they almost gave it up when they received the first child the county gave them to care for. It was Timmy. It took 48 hours for Timmy to come into the world. He finally came cesarean.

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During the difficult birth process, there were times when he was without sufficient oxygen. They were quite sure that severe brain damage had resulted and they expected him to be a hydrocephalic. Convulsive spasms shook his little body at least one every minute. His head was terribly scarred, the wounds of the forceps in the process of birth.

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And one other interesting thing. He never made a single sound. Even when he got shots for the four weeks he was in the hospital and he got a whole lot of them, he never made a single sound.

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Well, to cope with someone like Timmy was more than the Siemens had bargained for. But they took him home. And they determined that the only thing they could do was to love him. To love him 24 hours a day.

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So every moment that Timmy was awake, they loved him. They took shifts loving him, holding him, cuddling him, playing with him, talking to him, praying for him out loud, hour after hour after hour. Two weeks after he was home, they took him back to the doctors for the first examination.

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And the doctor said that some progress had been made and he seemed better. And for the first time that day when Timmy got his shot, he cried. And they kept on loving and loving. It was four weeks later before they had the next breakthrough.

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Gene had the practice of getting up two hours before he was to go to work to spend those two hours playing with Timmy. One morning he was playing with him in bed and when he got out of bed, he took the little boy and put the little boy down on his back on the bed.

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Now Timmy always had his fists clenched like this and his hands up in front of him quivering like this you see with the spasms that would shake his body so regularly. But that time when Gene laid him down, he unclenched his hands and he threw his arms wide. And for the first time, he smiled.

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In another six weeks, the progress was considered to be so astonishing. No evidence of water on the brain, no meningitis, even the brain damage which was evident at the beginning disappearing steadily, the spasms, the convulsions becoming less and less severe.

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The county decided that they could put the child up for adoption. And then the Seamans faced a new problem because you see, Timmy had been loving himself. They couldn't bear the thought that someone else would adopt him.

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And so they made him their own. Timmy is two and a half years old now and he's a perfect little boy in every way. And the doctors say it is a miracle. But the Seamans say, no, no, it's just the healing power of love.

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Now if Thomas Harris, who wrote the bestseller "I'm Okay, You're Okay" is right, then there's a child down inside each and every one of us. And that child, like every other child, wants to be loved more than anything else in all the world. It is when we discover the need for love in one another

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and then do something about it because love is something that you do, that we heal, that we make whole what is broken. What Joseph gave to Jesus was a lot more than a tomb and a garden. He gave him his very self.

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He offered himself in such a way that the love of Christ flowed through him and that love led him to do what he did, that act of kindness, just burying the body, but that was the beginning of the healing. Joseph stood on Calvary hurt, but he saw Jesus' love when he was hurt,

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so Joseph loved. Joseph stood on Calvary hated, but he saw Jesus' love when he was hated, so Joseph loved. Joseph stood on Calvary broken, but he saw Jesus' love when he was broken,

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so Joseph loved. And as he loved, he discovered what God teaches us about love, that love is often three parts pain, that love is not a matter of ecstatic, uncontrolled emotion, not a thing of healing, but a thing of discipline and of self-control,

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and that love is no vague idea wrapped in pious sentimentalisms. It is instead something that you do. That's what led Joseph to his kindness. And oh, how we need Joseph.

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How is it that the song goes, "What the world needs now is..." At least it seems to me that it's only those who love like Joseph. It's only those who love like Joseph's Lord, who have anything at all to say to that young teenager from Glendale, California,

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who last week wrote these words to me. "Somehow, somehow pot and pills and assorted academics aren't enough for me anymore. I'm tired of a four-hour high or a twelve-hour trip or a book that changes all of my life for the better part of a week.

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I'm tired of hearing about Christ. I'm tired of Buddha. I'm tired of Ralph Nader and Richard Milhouse Nixon and the Rolling Stones and Hugh Hefner

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and all those distant men with their distinct philosophies that somehow worked for them. Somehow I am not them. And I need," he wrote, "I need something more, more than a pill or a promise or a pipe or a poem.

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I need the hard stuff. I need love." In the midst of a twentieth-century calvary, it's too late for anything else.

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But it's never too late for love. Well, by the way, did you know there's a legend that says that Joseph was thrown in jail because of what he did for Jesus? And that three days later, when Jesus rose from the dead, he went personally and released Joseph from prison.

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That's what the legend says. And then the two of them went off somewhere together. Let us pray. Our Father God, help us to understand not only in our minds, but with all of our beings,

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that the love of God is extended toward us, and the love of God must be extended through us. If the world is to be saved, help us to know that it's never too late to love.

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For we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.