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.
[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).
No comments:
Post a Comment