This tape contains the teaching presented at the Friday Night Prayer and Praise Service held at Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia on May 31st, 1985. The speaker is the Reverend John W. Howe, Rector of the Parish, and the title of his talk is The Embrace of God. 

Have you ever gotten into an argument with somebody maybe it started over something very small, very insignificant, and yet somehow like a dirty snowball it built, and very shortly you found yourselves really polarizing and accusing and defending yourself, and suddenly that person was 100% wrong and you were 100% right. Of course, he saw it just the other way around, And that's what makes it so frustrating, isn't it? Is that you know he's wrong, but he doesn't see it, right?

I mean, have any of you ever had that experience? One guy over here didn't raise his hands. I would like to meet you, sir, right after the service.

Because you are either a saint or a liar, And in either case, you need to see me. You know, we're just like little kids, aren't we? I took the family down to Fredericksburg last weekend, and we haven't been down there for about six months.

And John and Jess, who are 10 and 8, got in the back seat. Usually Kathy sits in between them and keeps them separate from each other. And John got in the middle and Jess was sitting next to him and they began playing a little card game.

And I thought to myself, how lovely. I mean, six months have gone by and something wonderful has happened and these two children of mine are playing this beautiful game with each other. And that lasted about four minutes.

Mommy, John cheated! well she did it first you ever hear that conversation and of course either mom or dad has to sort it out and the strange thing is that mom and dad fairly quickly discover that both of them were wrong which neither of them could see they only saw the other one is wrong and mom and dad still love them both. I wonder if you think it's just possible that God sees us that way.

That it's just possible that God, who is our Father, looks at the problems that we, great big grown-up adults, have with each other in somewhat the same kind of a way. That sticky situation that you're involved with in which it seems to you that you've done everything so correctly and that other person has been such an awful person and has abused you so terribly that somehow God sees it just a little bit differently. That he sees your point he knows you've been hurt but somehow somehow he sees what you don't see he sees the other person's point as well he sees the other person's hurt as well he knows you're both wrong and he loves you both do you think it's possible that God's embrace is big enough to enfold you and that awful other person at the same time.

The prodigal son comes home. The father greets him with a wide embrace, throws a party, And the elder brother is offended. And the father says to him, Son, don't you know that everything I have is yours?

And you can have a party any time you want it. But my embrace is big enough to include your younger brother as well. Everything I have is yours, but it's also his.

What a difference. The father looks from afar and the elder brother looks down. Right?

Ever have such a problem with somebody that you said, I just, I will never be able to forgive that person? Maybe it was your father, your mother, somebody who wounded you incredibly deeply. Maybe a friend.

Maybe one of your kids. Maybe somebody you worked with. I will never I cannot and yet God is able to are our standards higher than God's there was a song back in the 50's that was popular it was not a very terribly profound song but there was one little phrase in it it was called He do you remember it?

it was recorded by a blind singer named Al Hibbler and there was just one line and it said, though it makes him sad to see the way we live, he'll always say, I forgive. I forgive. I suspect that on judgment day our greatest astonishment is not going to be our surprise at all the other folks who get in.

But it's going to be our total horror at seeing ourselves the way we really are, and then hearing God say, I knew that all along. And I loved you anyway. I love you anyway.

It makes me sad to see the way you live, and yet I forgive. That's what the good news is all about. Listen to this.

1 Corinthians 3, starting with verse 10. Paul says, according to the grace of God given to me like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation. The foundation was Jesus.

I preached the gospel. I was the first one to bring the gospel to you. And I laid the foundation of the gospel.

And he says, another man is building on it. If you read back, you see that Apollos has come in. Paul came and evangelized and then he moved on.

and Apollos came and he's pastoring and he's building on the foundation that Paul laid. And he says, Let each man take care how he builds on it. For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

Now, if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man's work will become manifest. for the day. That means the judgment day, the day of Christ's judgment.

The day will disclose it because it will be revealed with fire and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

That's powerful. Don't misunderstand that. He is not saying that we're going to earn our way into heaven, not for one moment.

Salvation is by grace. It's the gift of God. You can't earn it.

If you try to, you're probably going to miss it. The foundation on which we build is that of the free gift of Jesus Christ. But we build on it.

It's a free gift, but we build on it, and what we build will be tested. and it may or may not survive, that which we build in our lives, which is worthless, is going to be destroyed. We'll get through if we've put our trust in Christ, we ourselves, but that which we've invested our lives in building will be tested and if it's worthless, it'll be destroyed.

What if this present were the world's last night? Ask John Donne. What if it were?

What if this present were the world's last night? And that day arrived and your life was tested, how much of it would survive? C.S.

Lewis, has a very lengthy comment on that question in a book entitled The World's Last Night. And he says, someday, and what if this present were the world's last night, someday, an absolutely correct verdict, if you like, a perfect critique, will be passed on what each of us is. We have all encountered judgments or verdicts on ourselves in this life.

Every now and then we discover what our fellow creatures really think of us. I don't, of course, mean what they tell us to our faces. That we usually have to discount.

I'm thinking of what we sometimes overhear by accident or of the opinions about us which our neighbors or employees or subordinates unknowingly reveal in their actions and of the terrible or lovely judgments artlessly betrayed by children or even animals. Such discoveries can be the bitterest or sweetest experiences we have, but of course both the bitter and the sweet are limited by our doubt as to the wisdom of those who judge. We always hope that those who think so clearly that we are cowards or bullies are ignorant or malicious.

We always fear that those who trust us or admire us are misled by partiality. I suppose the experience of the final judgment, which may break in upon us at any moment, will be like these little experiences but magnified to the nth degree. For it will be infallible judgment.

If it is favorable, we shall have no fear. if unfavorable, no hope that it is wrong. We shall not only believe, we shall know, know beyond doubt in every fiber of our appalled or delighted being that as the judge has said, so we are.

Neither more, nor less, nor other. We shall perhaps even realize that in some dim fashion we could have known it all along. We shall know, and all creation will know too, our ancestors, our parents, our wives, our husbands, our children, the unanswerable and by then self-evident truth about each will be known to all.

I do not find that pictures of physical catastrophe, that sign in the clouds, those heavens rolled up like a scroll, help one so much as the naked idea of judgment. We cannot always be excited. We can, perhaps, train ourselves to ask more and more often how the thing which we are saying or doing or failing to do at each moment will look when the irresistible light streams in upon it.

That light, which is so different from the light of this world, and yet even now we know just enough of it to take it into account. Women sometimes have the problem of trying to judge by artificial light how a dress will look by daylight. That is very like the problem all of us have, to dress our souls not for the electric lights of the present world, but for the daylight of the next.

The good dress is the one that will face that light, for that light will last longer. I think the Lord would say to us tonight, and would say in a very personal way to each one of us, several things. First of all, that if there's room enough in His embrace for some of the folks whom we feel pretty unkindly about, toward whom we're pretty uncharitable.

If there's room enough in his embrace for some of them, we need to make room in our embrace as well. And then secondly, we need to re-examine some of the self-justifications and some of the defenses in which we've been 100% right and that awful person has been so wrong. Probably weren't 100% right.

Maybe 7%. And then thirdly, don't we need to pay just a little bit of attention, a little bit more perhaps to what the Lord would say about what we're doing, what we're doing, what we're thinking, what we're feeling, even our attitudes? you know it's not what other folks think it's not even what we think of ourselves Paul went on to write to the Corinthians he said I don't even judge myself because there's only one person I play to an audience of one there's only one person whose judgment matters and that's Christ how awful think if it were not right this minute and we've been playing all these games, caring about what other people thought or defending ourselves and blaming others.

What if it were right this moment? What if this present were indeed the world's last night? What have you built on that foundation?

Have you built with gold and silver or with hay and stubble? You say, praise God, by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. But what you built, is that going to last?

Or is it going to be destroyed? James said, Let everyone be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. For the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God.

Play to an audience of one. Who judges us in love? Whose embrace is big enough to overcome all the little petty bickerings and problems?

But who does judge? Will it survive? Let's be quiet before the Lord for just a moment.

Maybe there's one person that God brings to mind and maybe it's recent or maybe it's very old and experience years gone by and we really are like little children bickering with each other. And the Lord would sort it out and say you're both wrong and I love you both. to whom have we been playing whose opinion have we valued what if this present were the world's last night Father God forgive me for being unable to see the other person's point forgive me for justifying myself and blaming him forgive me for defending myself and blaming her forgive me for thinking that I've been so correct and that other person so wrong Lord I desire to play to you tonight and I desire that my life would be built of gold and silver and that it would stand the fire and that you'd be exalted in my life for Jesus sake Amen