Love Beyond Reason
Keith M. McFarren
November 1, 2026
John 13: 31-35
1 Peter 1: 21-22
   
Did you or maybe your children have a Raggedy Ann or Raggedy Andy doll
when you were growing up?  Or something
comparable.  Raggedy Ann and Andy were
pretty much indestructible.  You could do
just about anything you wanted to them and they always bounced back for
more.  And because they were virtually
indestructible they were passed down from child to child and sometimes from
generation to generation.   And over a
period of time, it started getting worn out.
It got dirty and got stains and smudges on it and maybe even the
stuffing would start to come out of the seams.

 
 But no matter how beat up and
tattered it was or no matter how dirty it was there was no way in the world you
would ever get rid of it.  That beat up
old doll was special.  Kind of a family
heirloom.  And if you’re like us you took
that old raggedy doll or that stuffed animal and put it in a box to keep for
years and years to come.  It had become
special.  There were a lot of memories
attached to it and there was no way in the world that you would ever get rid of
it.
   
There are two distinct truths about human beings.  First, we are all rag dolls.  We’re flawed.
We have stains and we are dirty. We’re wounded and broken and bent.  Ever since the Fall of Mankind, we have been
living on the raggedy edge.  
   
We choose to lie and cheat and deceive people when we should be speaking
the truth.  We deliberately betray others
when we should be showing them love and loyalty.  We find fault with others when we should be
giving praise to someone who deserves it.
We lie, we cheat and we hurt others and in doing so, we even hurt
ourselves.
   
But I want you to know that despite all our indescrepancies, we are just
as important as the old rag doll that you put in the box and vowed to never
throw away.  No matter what you’ve done
or what you’ve said or who you have hurt or no matter how dirty and torn you
are, you are still very important.  And
that’s because you belong to God…you are God’s rag doll.  God knows all about our raggedness.  He knows how we got to be who we are and yet
he still loves us.  
   
I want to talk a little bit about love this morning.  Psychologists tell us that the excitement of
being in love increases your heart rate.
Love causes your face to glows; your lips look more red and even the
circles under your eyes become less noticeable.  
    The Greeks had a word for
this kind of love.  It’s the word “eros.”  When we hear the word “eros” we have a
tendency to think about the word “erotic” but the word “eros” means more than
just sexual love.  Eros love is the kind
of love we give to something that satisfies our wants and our needs and our
desires.    
    We give eros love to
something that wins our hearts and admiration.
It’s the kind of love that makes us “ooh and ahh” over a little baby or
a beautiful woman... or a handsome man.
It’s a love reserved for the best of the best.  Eros love is reserved for whatever gives us
happiness and satisfaction or gratification.
   
But when you’re a broken down and worn out like a rag doll, “eros” love
isn’t the kind of love you need.  When
you’re broken down and worn out, you need something stronger than that.
    We need a love that makes us
feel like we’re worth something no matter what we look like or what we’ve done
with our life.  We need a love that turns
rag dolls into priceless treasures…a love that makes us precious and valuable
beyond our wildest imagination.  
    We need a love that goes
beyond all reason and all understanding.
And there is such a love that goes beyond all reason and
understanding.   It’s called the love of
God.
    God knows all about us.  He knows that we’re nothing but a bunch of
beat up old rag dolls with the stuffing coming out.  The prophet Isaiah knew it thousands of years
ago when he said, “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all
our righteous acts are like filthy rags” (64:6).  
    So God proposed a little out
patient reconstructive surgery for each of us.
He decided to take us to a place to get all of the old dirt and stains
off of us…a place where we could get sown up and cleaned up.  
    God, through Jesus, took us
to the cross.  He took us to the cross to
get the dirt and the grime and smudges off of us…a place where the stuffing
could be put back in us so that we can start all over fresh and new and
clean.  That’s the kind of love God has
for us.
    It’s called “agape” love…a
kind of love that is hard for us to understand.
It’s the unconditional, never ending love that God has for each of us…despite
who we are or what we’ve become.  It’s
the love that says you don’t have to be beautiful for me to love you.  It’s the love that says you don’t have to be
a winner for me to love you.   It’s the
love that says you don’t have to be perfect for me to love you.  
    It’s the kind of love that
says I love you so much I was willing to have my son die for you.  It’s the kind of love that gives hope to
people like you and me…the rag dolls of the world.
    So we know that God loves
us.  But what about us?  What do we give back in return to a God that
loves us with a never -ending, unconditional love?  How do we repay God for his unconditional
love?  
    There are two commandments
in the Bible that form the perfect response to God’s love to show God just how
much we love him.  Two commands that can’t
be separated – they have to stay together.
What we give back to a God that loves us is to “Love the Lord your
God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength; and Love your neighbor
as yourself.”
    We are to love him with everything
we have and at the same time, we are to love all the other people of the world
with everything we have.  In everyday
ordinary terms he is saying, “Love me and love my rag dolls.”  If we want to love God, we also have to love
his people – all of them – with a special emphasis on those that the world
normally casts aside.
    Did you ever notice that in
Jesus’ day it was the rag doll people, the people who were down and out and
torn open at the seams, who were the most open and accepting of his love.  
    Luke tells the story of
Jesus eating with a Pharisee named Simon who had a typical Pharisee’s attitude –
an attitude that said I am better than everyone else.
    While they were eating a
woman entered the house whom Luke says was a “sinner” or an “immoral woman” which
was in all probability a polite way of saying she was a prostitute – which
means she had a terrible reputation, a rag doll who had been through the mill
and probably had the stuffing knocked out of her.
    But the thing of it is she
wasn’t born a prostitute.  She had been
someone’s daughter, someone’s little girl.
She had had hopes and dreams for the future…a good job, a husband, a
family and a home in the country.  But
for some reason, the bottom fell out of her life and now she lived in the
gutters of society.  
    Everyone in town knew her
and knew what she did so you can imagine the looks she must have received when
she walked into the house in front of all the disciples and the holier than
thou Pharisees, but at the same time can you also imagine the courage it must
have took to even come into the presence of all these people.
    She walked over and stood at
Jesus’ feet and with her head down she slowly raised it and she looked into his
eyes and rather than seeing hatred or contempt from this holy man...she saw
love.  And tears came to her eyes.  And she began to cry.   Maybe she began to cry because she
remembered how life was in the good old days.  

    Maybe she remembered the
innocent little girl she used to be.
Maybe it was because she was remembering what she had become.   Maybe she began to cry because she was sick
and tired of being kicked around and having dirty smudges of sin all over her
body.  
    She brought out some
expensive perfume and rather than anoint Jesus’ head as was customary, she
began to anoint his feet with a mixture of perfume and her tears.
    And then she did something
unimaginable – she let her hair down – in public, in front of Jesus.  This in itself was a social no no.  A respectable Jewish woman always kept her
hair up in public - she never ever let it down.
Only a whore, only a prostitute, would do such a thing in public.  But she had done it so many times before and
each time she did it another scar and another wound and another smudge was
added to her rag doll type body.  
    So today she would let it
down once more.  But this was the last
time.  The days of being a bent and
broken scuffed up rag doll were about to end.
I have a feeling that on this day the seams of her body were just about
to burst.  
    Here was a woman who had
defied God for years.  She had butchered
the Ten Commandments.  She was the
epitome of the word “infidelity.”    
    But Jesus understands
repentance.  Not just repentance…but
heartfelt repentance.  Jesus understands
that where there is heartfelt repentance the work of judgment has already been
done.  This was a woman who knew who she
was and she knew what she had done and she knew that Jesus knew all about her
and above all else, she knew that she was sorry for all she had done.        
    She knew that she had had
enough of this rag doll lifestyle...and in spite of all she had done she knew
that Jesus loved her.  “Your sins are
forgiven.  Your faith has saved you; go
in peace.
    “She may be a rag doll,” Jesus
is saying, “but that rag doll belongs to me.
She may be ragged but she is not worthless.”    
    Through our heartfelt
repentance, Jesus will take your rag doll body and your rag doll soul and he
will clean it up and fix it up.  He’ll
take away all the dirt and the grime and he’ll remove all the stains and he’ll
sew up the seams where your stuffing seems to be coming out so that you’ll be
like brand new again.
    He’s willing to forgive and
he’s willing to forget.  For no other
reason than he loves you.  God’s love…it’s
a love that is beyond all reason.