My dear friends,
In the mid 1990s the film Jerry Maguire was served up as an antidote
to the culture of greed rampant in the U S sports industry. Tom Cruise
starred as a glossy 35 year old sports agent working for a major sports
management company. After suffering a nervous breakdown as a result
of stress and a guilty conscience he writes a mission statement about
the dishonesty in the sports management business and how he believes
that it should be operated. His co-workers are touched by his honesty
and greet him with applause, but the company bosses fire him. To cut a
long story short, he ends up marrying one of the few people to believe
in him but with old habits dying hard he ends up driving her away and
spirals downwards in anguish and self-pity. Towards the end of the
film, having come to his senses, he is determined to show his wife how
he has changed and how much he needs and loves her. In a long,
impassioned speech he declares his love and rabbits on until she
manages to shut him up and she then delivers one of the classic film
lines: ‘You had me at “Hello”.’
She knew he was penitent, knew he had changed: she had forgiven and
accepted him the moment the first words were out of his mouth. Echoes
of the Prodigal Son returning to his father and finding the father’s
undeserved but freely given forgiveness and love. And in the self-same
way I can see God, when we turn to him, responding in much the same
way as Dorothy in Jerry Maguire: ‘You had me at Hello.’
I’m sure that like Jerry with his long, impassioned, well rehearsed and
unnecessary speech we spend a lot of wasted time trying to convince
God of our worthiness, or bemoaning our unworthiness, or wallowing
in other –inesses and miss out on the fact that he longs for us to know
the joy of his pure love toward us. In the first of John’s three short
letters toward the end of the New Testament (1 John chapter 3 verse 1)
he writes: ‘See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we
should be called children of God! And that is what we are!’
On the subject of returning, on Sunday 25th September, two big things
are happening. The 11 am morning service is returning to an earlier
time slot. The new time will be at 10. It is also ‘Back to
Church Sunday’, the largest single local-church invitational initiative in
the world. Thousands of churches around the UK take part in what is a
pretty simple method of evangelism: inviting someone along to
something we love. There are many people who used to attend a church
and for one reason or another haven’t been for many months or years.
Some would love the opportunity to have a reason to come again and
see what is new and what is the same. Please see the article on page 4.
We may feel that we have left God out of our lives for a while, or
allowed a previous closeness with him slip away. You may like to read
the words of the Prodigal Son’s progress in Luke chapter 15 (or, hire
Jerry Maguire on DVD and watch that . . . ) May we know the
peace, the hope and the deep down cleansing joy of knowing that
whenever we turn to God with an open heart – his answer would be as
clear and simple as: ‘You had me at Hello’.
Jonathan
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