The Depth of God's Love

 The Depth of God’s Love

Philippians 2:5-11[1]

Sometimes our faith can seem to contradict the reality of our lives. Or perhaps it would be better to say that the reality of our lives seems to contradict our faith. Last week we talked about Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension to the Father as the crucial event by which God is working in the world to make everything new, already here and now. Just as the light dispels the darkness, Jesus spoke of his being “lifted up” as depriving the so-called “the ruler of this world” from any and all power. But in reality, that’s something we all have to choose to believe, and choose to see in this world. And I choose to believe that’s the truth about God and the truth about us and our world. But as I mentioned last week, there’s all too much evidence that the darkness in this world is just as deep and just as powerful as ever.

 However strong our faith may be, there is a dark side to life that I think most of us would rather avoid. But whether we’re willing to look at them or not, there are dark places all over the world. There are dark places in our country, in our State, in our county—and in our town! For some, the darkness consists of a loneliness that may feel like it’s choking the life out of you. For others, it may be a sense of grief that you just cannot process. For still others, it may be a job that’s suffocating, or addictions that slowly erode the soul. For all too many, the darkness consists of mistaking what may feel good right now for “happiness.” However much we may believe that God is truly in the process of making all things new right now, there remains a dark side to life.

It’s no wonder that most of us would rather avoid facing the darkness in our world or in our own lives. But the hard truth of the matter is that the only way to overcome darkness is to have the courage to face it squarely. And that usually means taking a journey into that darkness that can be painful and frightening. The only way out of the darkness that we feel trapped in is to go through it. As we allow ourselves to wrestle with the pain and fear and doubt within, the very process itself heals us. And as we become healed, we grow strong enough to recognize the darkness without giving in to it. We grow strong enough to enjoy the freedom to live in the light. We grow confident that our faith is not misplaced, but rather that we have good reasons to believe that God is working in and through us for good right now.

I believe that’s a part of what our New Testament lesson from Philippians for today is about. It’s about Jesus’ journey into the very heart of the darkness that oppresses the human family in order to set us all free from its power. That journey led him not only to give up his rightful place with God to become a human being, just as vulnerable as the rest of us. His journey took him farther than that: he not only “emptied himself” to become human, he also subjected himself to the humiliation of a cruel execution and actually tasted death for us all. He went into the very abyss of all the darkness and suffering we can experience in this world and took it upon himself.

If we had not heard this story all our lives, I think at least some of us would venture to ask why Jesus would do such a thing. When you look at our world and the darkness in it today, you do see a few brave souls who are willing to enter some aspect of it, at least for a time. But the idea of someone actually taking on all the darkness of this world strains our ability to understand how anyone could possibly do such a thing. In the death of Jesus on a Roman cross there is something more going on than simple human compassion in action. In Jesus we see the depth of God’s love in all its life-changing power at work. I think that’s the key to understanding how Jesus could take on all the darkness in this world. And we learn from this that God’s love is a love that will not rest until it reaches out to every dark place we can possibly go to bring all of us back home to the light.

Of course, that answer is also a part of the faith we’ve been taught all our lives. But it seems to me that if we think about it, this too raises questions that may not be easy to answer. If we’re honest with ourselves, we have to at least wonder why this particular expression of God’s love was the one chosen to set us free from the darkness. Many have tried to understand this in human terms and imagine that Jesus volunteered to take God’s wrath toward us all on himself. The idea is that his death was the punishment that we deserved. It’s embedded into our faith not only through Scripture, but also through the hymns we sing. But I don’t find that perspective to be very compelling. That only reinforces the idea that we have to cower in fear before an angry God who may strike us down at any moment. And I don’t think that’s what was going on when Jesus embraced his death on the cross.

Jesus embraced the suffering of the cross because that’s who God is: a God who loves us enough to suffer for us so that we can be whole. The God of the Bible is not an angry God, but rather one who constantly suffers on behalf of his chosen people. That’s the lesson of much of the Hebrew Bible. And beginning with some of the prophets, and especially in Jesus, we see that love extended to the whole human family. That’s how the God of the Bible chooses to love us all, time and again. And the God of the Bible is a God who never quits loving us this way. Part of the mystery of our faith is that it was God who was suffering on our behalf on that cross. St. Paul said it this way, “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19). Somehow, some way, it’s God who takes on the suffering we endure when we wander into the dark places of this life. That’s the depth of God’s love for us all!

Now some of you may be feeling like I’m only taking you further down the “rabbit hole.” The love of God poured out for us in Jesus on the cross is indeed, as one of our confessions puts it, a mystery beyond our understanding.[2] So if you’re wondering how God could suffer for us on the cross, the only answer is a short one, though it is far from being a simple. The answer is that in Jesus we see the mystery of God’s love. It’s a mystery how God could suffer for us on that cross. In Jesus, we see the God who is the redeemer of the despised, the savior of the hopeless, the one who chooses the unwanted. It bears repeating: the death of Jesus on a cross shows us that God’s love reaches into the very depth of any darkness into which we can go and will not rest until we are all back home with him.

The good news of the Gospel is that there is no depth of suffering that Jesus did not reach in his death on the cross. Truly does our affirmation of faith state that “An abyss of suffering” has been “swallowed up by the suffering of divine love.”[3]  That means Jesus’ death on the cross has set us free from all the darkness we could ever experience —the loneliness, grief, agony, alienation, cruelty, abandonment, estrangement, despair, shame, rejection, and self-destruction. Jesus has taken all of that on himself. God has taken all of it into his love. For me, that means that no one can sink so deep as to be beyond hope, beyond the reach of God’s love. However far we may fall, the love of God has already been into the depth of the abyss in Jesus Christ and is waiting there to bring us back home.

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[1] © 2024 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 3/24/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] The Book of Confessions 2016, Confession of 1967 9.15, p. 289.

[3] “The Study Catechism,” question 45 (approved by the 210th General Assembly of the PCUSA, 1998).

Now is the Time

Now is the Time

John 12:20-32[1]

Our faith makes some pretty big promises. Of course, the biggest promise is that if we trust in Jesus, we’ll go to heaven when we die and spend all eternity in the presence of his love. For some of us, that may have been what drew us to faith in the first place. But the problem with that promise is that we really have no way to test it in this life. We won’t “know” whether it’s true until we die. In the meantime, we do have reasons for confidence in that promise. The most important one is that Jesus defeated death on the cross and God raised him to new life on that first Easter Sunday. But then, that did happen a long time ago. So I can understand why some people may have doubts about it. We also have the experience of Jesus living “within our hearts” as the hymn puts it. But again, that’s not something easily demonstrated to someone with questions.

There are other promises that do relate to this life, however. One of them is a promise that we often use in our Assurance of Pardon: “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Cor 5:17). I think the point is made a bit clearer in the New Living Translation: “anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” We might be tempted to think that this is just one particularly dramatic promise. But that’s not the case at all. It’s one of the themes of the Christian faith: those who trust Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and who entrust their lives to him become whole new people. We heard it last week in our lesson from Ephesians: “because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ” (Eph 2:4-5, NIV). It’s the promise I like to use when we observe Ash Wednesday: just as God raised Jesus from the dead, so we too may live a new life (Rom 6:4).

Of course, the problem is that there’s a lot about our lives that doesn’t look or feel very “new.” We might very well agree with the objection quoted in 2 Peter: “From before the times of our ancestors, everything has remained the same since the world was first created” (2 Pet 3:4, NLT). Or even before that, we might agree that “there is nothing new under the sun,” as the “preacher” of Ecclesiastes put it (Eccl 1:9). I’m afraid that’s one of the changes that’s taken place in the last generation or two. People have lost the optimism that used to define our culture. At least for some of us. These days skepticism is much more widespread. I’m not talking about conspiracy theories. I’m talking about the fact that my children’s generation, and the generation after that, look at the world and they see the rich getting richer at their expense. They see people abusing power for their own benefit, regardless of whom they hurt. They see a world that doesn’t look like there’s much reason to believe in the promise that God is “making all things new” (Rev 21:5).

This point of view relates to our Gospel lesson for today. Jesus makes a pretty big promise in this passage. He says, “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (Jn 12:31-32). It’s a pivotal point in John’s Gospel. The Jewish leaders have just made the decision that Jesus must die to keep them from losing their position and power. Up to this point, Jesus says his “hour has not yet come.” But now, the way events have unfolded convinces him that he has indeed come to his “hour.” But then just what that “hour” means takes a little more attention to John’s Gospel as a whole.

The theme of Jesus’ “hour” in John’s Gospel signifies that Jesus has a sense that his life and ministry are heading toward a conclusion. We saw something like that a few weeks ago in Mark’s Gospel when he told the disciples there that he “must” be handed over, rejected, killed and then raised from the dead. In John’s Gospel, the idea is similar, but a little different. We see a glimpse of that in our lesson when Jesus speaks of being “lifted up.” Of course, we would understand that to mean being “lifted up” on the cross to die. But the whole idea here is that the “hour” toward which Jesus is heading is the entire set of events that would lead to him “glorifying” God, and through which God would “glorify” him: his death on the cross, his resurrection from the dead, and his ascension to return to his place in God’s presence. That gives the idea of being “lifted up” a whole different meaning.

There is a sense in which John’s Gospel presents Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension to the Father as the crucial event by which God would change everything. Jesus says it this way in our lesson: “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (Jn 12:32). The fact that Jesus will draw all people to himself also means depriving the so-called “the ruler of this world” from any and all power whatsoever. Just as the “light of life” that Jesus has brought means that the darkness has been dispelled once and for all, so also Jesus’ “lifting up” on the cross, in the resurrection, and at the ascension deprives the powers of evil of any further ability to control our lives.

Well, that’s a really big promise, isn’t it? And the truth of the matter is when we look at the way life goes in our world, we can see all too much evidence that the powers of evil are thriving as much as ever. How many people in this world are affected right now by war, hunger, poverty, addiction, or abuse? How many more are subject to injustice, violence, and oppression? When you look at the fact that those who align themselves with evil in this world seem to be gaining power, not losing it, it can make you wonder whether we can trust Jesus’ promise at all.

But I think it comes down to how we choose to look at things. We can choose to focus on the negative things in this world. We can choose to focus on the negative things in our lives. And when we do, it should come as no surprise that we see a lot of evidence that life in this world is getting worse, not better. Or we can choose to look at things differently. We can choose to look for glimpses of “the beginning of the fulfillment” of God’s promise to make everything new again.[2] We see it every time someone stands up in the midst of all that’s wrong with this world and demonstrates their hope by choosing to make a positive difference for others. We see it every time someone turns away from all that would keep them trapped in darkness and chooses to believe that God loves them and to live their lives in the light of that love.

We all constantly stand before that choice. Whether to focus on all that’s wrong and surrender our lives to the control of those who would harm us and others. Or to focus on the good things that show God is indeed already working among us to make all things new. Jesus’ “hour” came for him to “lifted up” in his death, resurrection, and ascension to reign at God’s right hand. Since that time, the time has come for us everyone in every generation. And so, for us now is the time to decide what we believe is truly real: the hatred, violence, corruption, and oppression in this world, or the new life that God has begun in all of us through Jesus. We can choose which one we believe, and now is the time to make that choice. Now is the time for deciding whether we will give up our lives for the sake of others. Now is the time to decide whether we will open our eyes to see the “beginning of the fulfillment” of God’s promise to make all things new among us and around us already here and now.

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[1] © Alan Brehm 2024. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 3/17/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. Henri J. M. Nouwen, Sabbatical Journey: A Diary of his Final Year, 166-167: “life is not empty waiting. It is to wait full of expectation. The knowledge that God will indeed fulfill the promise to renew everything … makes the waiting exciting. We can already see the beginning of the fulfillment. Nature speaks of it every spring; people [speak] of it whenever they smile; …and all of history speaks of it when amid all devastation and chaos, men and women arise who reveal the hope that lives within them … .”

Every Hour I Need You!

Every Hour I Need You!

Psalm 107:1-22[1]

You may have noticed that we talk a lot about God’s “unfailing love” in our worship. As is the case with other elements of our service that I repeat week after week, that’s an intentional choice on my part. My understanding of God based on the central affirmations of the Bible is that God loves us all with a love that will never let us go. God loves us all, along with the whole human family, with a love that is unconditional, unchanging, and irrevocable. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu puts it (and as I am fond of quoting), “There is nothing you can do to make God love you more. There is nothing you can do to make God love you less.” That’s my understanding of God’s love, but it’s also an understanding that’s based on and informed by almost 50 years of studying the Bible.

A statement like “50 years of studying the Bible” might sound impressive. It might sound like after 50 years of personal, professional, academic, and spiritual study of the Bible, I should have it all down. But I don’t. There are still lots of questions that I can’t answer. There are still questions about God’s unfailing love that I can’t answer. One question that I often struggle with is the fact that the Bible speaks about God’s love in “expansive” language. For example, as I’ve mentioned before, one of my favorite verses is Psalm 36:5, which says that God’s “unfailing love is as vast as the heavens.” The idea is that there is nothing in all of creation that’s beyond the reach of God’s unfailing love. It’s a comforting reminder. But when I think about the vastness of all creation, I can sometimes wonder with the author of Psalm 8, “what are mere mortals that you should think about them” (Ps 8:4, NLT)? How can my problems really matter to a God whose love fills the whole universe?

That tension lies at the heart of what the Bible teaches about God. God is so far beyond us that his love can extend to the vast reaches of the whole universe. But God is also so close to each and every one of us that his love reaches into the everyday details of our lives. Another of my favorite Bible verses says it this way: “I am the high and holy God, who lives forever. I live in a high and holy place, but I also live with people who are humble and repentant, so that I can restore their confidence and hope” (Isa 57:15, GNT). It may be hard for us to understand how God’s love can extend to everything in all the vast universe and also at the same time can relate to the everyday concerns of our lives. But that is precisely what the Bible affirms about who God is and how God loves us.

I think our lesson from Psalm 107 for today addresses this question. The whole Psalm is a reflection on God’s love for people in various real-life situations they may have faced. And the point of it all is that God “is good to us, and his love never fails” (Psalm 107:2, CEV). Just to make sure that the message sinks in, there are several “stanzas” to this Psalm that demonstrate God’s goodness and unfailing love. The Psalmist reminds us that God’s love is such that “To everyone who is thirsty, he gives something to drink; to everyone who is hungry, he gives good things to eat” (Ps. 107:9). God’s love means “He breaks down bronze gates and shatters iron locks” to set free those who are unjustly imprisoned (Ps. 107:16). God in his love can “turn deserts into lakes and scorched land into flowing streams.” (Ps. 107:35). God’s love is such that “When you are suffering and in need, he will come to your rescue” (Ps. 107:41). The idea is that there is no situation in which we may find ourselves that God’s love cannot reach us and restore us.

More than that, this Psalm reminds us that God’s love for us is such that he seeks us out when we’re lost. That seems to be the point of spelling out the various real-life situations in the Psalm. The point is not only that God helps those who turn to him, but rather that God himself actually seeks out those who are in distress. Of course, there’s a balance here as well. God seeks us out, but it’s also up to us to turn to him. There’s a “refrain” that repeats through the Psalm. In each and every challenge, it says, “You were in serious trouble, but you prayed to the LORD, and he rescued you” (Ps. 107:6, 13, 19, 28). No matter where we may find ourselves in this life, we can turn to the Lord and ask him for help. And when we do, what we find is that God is always seeking us out in all the places of distress, shame, and even danger into which we may have wandered or gone astray. This is also what it means when the Psalm affirms that God loves us with a love that never lets us go.

The promise is that no matter where our lives may have taken us, God not only seeks us out, but he restores us to life. Of course, one of the big questions that I can’t answer is what to make of it when we turn to the Lord, and nothing seems to change. We go on being hungry and thirsty, we go on wandering in the wilderness, we go on suffering and there’s no rescue from it. It’s one of the biggest questions with the Bible’s teaching about God’s love, and I don’t think anyone can really answer it. Sometimes we turn to the Lord and call out to him to help us, and all we seem to get in response is silence. But I think it’s important, especially in those times, for us to hear the message of Psalm 107: God is always “good to us” and “his love never fails.” Even and particularly when it seems like God has turned a deaf ear to our cries for help, even and particularly when we feel like God has abandoned us instead of answering our cries for him to help us, we need to remember that God loves us with a love that will never let us go.

Some of you may wonder why I spend so much time preaching on passages like this one from the Hebrew Bible. I know that there’s a tradition of preaching from the Gospel lessons every Sunday in the Presbyterian world. I would answer that question by saying that in my opinion we have to understand the Bible as a whole in order to understand any of its parts. The foundations for the faith that Jesus proclaimed in his life and ministry are found in the Hebrew Bible. Without an understanding of how Jesus viewed God, we can easily turn everything he said into a rigid system that restricts access to God’s love only to those who “live up” to a certain standard. In other words, the very same kind of system for which Jesus challenged the Jewish religious leaders of his day. The point of his challenge was that God’s love is unconditional, unchanging, and irrevocable for everyone, not just for those who “measure up.”

For me, the lesson of this passage is that wherever we may find ourselves in this life, whether in good times or in hard times, the truth about us is that God loves us, always has and always will. And the truth about us is that we can look to God to care for us in any and every hardship we may be facing. When I read this Psalm, I think of that great old hymn, “I need thee every hour.” I think that’s the lesson of this passage for us today: every hour of every day, we all need the Lord. We need the Lord’s love in our lives every hour of every day. We need to know that the Lord is looking out for us, no matter what circumstance in which we may find ourselves. We need to be able to trust that there is nothing we can do to make God love us more, and there’s nothing we can do to make God love us less. And that love isn’t just some nice sentiment. It makes all the difference in our ability to cope with all that we may have to face in our lives. We can face it all knowing that God is always “good to us” and “his love never fails.”

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[1] ©2024 Alan Brehm.  A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 3/10/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church.