The Waking Dreamer: Unfailing Love

Showing posts with label Unfailing Love. Show all posts

Thursday, June 11, 2026

The Power of God's Love

The Power of God’s Love

Psalm 8, Matthew 28:16-20[1]

We have a complicated relationship with power. On the one hand, we seem to be fascinated with those whom we consider to be the most “powerful” people. Even to the point that our admiration can at times approach a kind of “worship.” There are many powerful people in this world who have an almost “cult” like following among their fans. On the other hand, we seem to be inherently distrusting of power. Especially when we believe someone is abusing their power. Anytime someone in power “bullies” those who are more vulnerable, we think of it as an abuse of power. And in our world we may see that kind of thing so often that we become distrusting of all power, regardless of how it’s used.

Our Scripture lessons for today speak to us about God’s power. The creation story in Genesis portrays God’s power to simply “speak” all things into existence. That’s a kind of power that most of us may want, but I dare say none of us would use well. But God most certainly used it well. That’s the point of the refrain that occurs throughout the creation story: “and God saw that it was good.” God used his extraordinary power to create a world and all the living things in it that was not only “good,” but indeed “very good,” as God observes at the end of the process (Gen 1:31). It may be hard for some people to imagine even God using that magnitude of power for good, but that’s precisely what the Bible teaches us! God always uses his power for good!

In our reading from the Psalms, we find this perspective on God’s power confirmed. Like many of us, the Psalmsinger found himself confronted by the majestic power of the God who created all the heavens and the earth simply with a word. I would say that the more we understand about how vast this cosmos really is, the more we are confronted by God’s majesty and power in creation. Even in ancient times, a simple glance at the night sky led the Psalmsinger to wonder, “what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” (Psalm 8:4). And yet, despite the fact that he frames his faith in the form of a question, we shouldn’t overlook the affirmation that lies behind it: God is mindful of us all; God does care for us, both deeply and continually. That is also the nature of God’s power!

The Psalmsinger had good reason to believe this. It’s the heart of what Hebrew Bible affirms about God: “I am the Lord God. I am merciful and very patient with my people. I show great love, and I can be trusted” (Exodus 34:6, CEV). It is the revelation God gave to Moses in the “cleft of the rock” when he asked to see God’s glory. And it echoes like a refrain throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, because it is the truth that serves as the foundation for biblical faith. The message of the Scriptures is that God’s power points us to the fact that God loves us with a love that will never let us go. It may be difficult for us to grasp, but the truth of our Scripture lesson is that we are constantly surrounded by the love of the God who is powerful enough to create all things simply by speaking the word. As one of our affirmations of faith puts it, the Bible leads us to believe in a God whose love for us is “powerful beyond measure.”

We see this theme of power reflected a little differently in our Gospel reading for today. It’s the story of Jesus’ final appearance to his disciples according to Matthew. When he appeared to them on a mountain in Galilee, he said something that would have been startling for them. And it should still catch our attention today: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Mt 28:18). We’re used to hearing that language because it’s part of the “Great Commission.” But in that day, “all authority” belonged to God. Any human being claiming “all authority in heaven and on earth” would have been viewed as directly contradicting God’s authority. In fact, there are many in our world to this day who struggle with the image Jesus as having “all authority in heaven and on earth.”

I think what made the difference is that it was the risen and living Jesus who made this startling claim. They had seen him die, and they had seen him alive more than once after he rose from the dead. It was the resurrection that confirmed that this authority had come from God. I think we could say that Jesus received this authority in response to the fact that he had “fulfilled all righteousness” as Matthew’s Gospel puts it (Mt 3:15), or in other words that he had carried out God’s plan to “set right” all things and all people by his death and resurrection. Because of that, God himself gave this authority to Jesus. So it is that, in the New Testament, there is no contradiction whatsoever between the affirmation that all authority belongs to God, and that God has given that authority to Jesus Christ.

One reason for that is because Jesus uses that authority to carry out God’s purpose in the world. That’s not something we expect these days. It goes against the norm in our day. In our world, “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”[2] That’s the way we view power. Many of those who have the most power in our day use it to benefit themselves. But Jesus used the authority given to him by God not for his own benefit, but to extend the peace, justice, and freedom of God’s kingdom to all people. And he continues to use that authority to fulfill God’s work of “making all things new” (Rev 21:5). And at the end of it all, Paul said that Jesus would surrender all authority back to God, so that God “will be utterly supreme over everything everywhere” (1 Cor 15:28, NLT), bringing the new life of God’s kingdom to everyone and everything!

I think the point of all this was to inspire confidence in those of us who follow Jesus in a world that is set against God’s authority and power, in a world that remains set against the peace, justice, and freedom of God’s kingdom to this day. We see that opposition almost daily. Part of the assurance that God’s love triumphs in this world through Jesus lies in the promise that “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Mt 28:20). Yes, we live in a world where the work of God’s kingdom isn’t complete. Yes, we live in a world where people continue to abuse power for their own benefit, and they hurt innocent people in the process. But rather than letting that cause us to doubt God’s purpose, or cause us to question Jesus’ power and authority, we can be confident because Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord is the one to whom God has entrusted “authority, honor, and sovereignty over all the nations of the world” (Dan 7:13, NLT). And with that authority, Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord rules right now over “everything in heaven and on earth, everything seen and unseen” (Col 1:16, NLT). And the promise is that “His rule is eternal—it will never end” (Dan 7:14, NLT).

When we get caught up in what’s happening around us in this world, we can easily lose sight of all this. We can wonder where God’s rule, God’s power, and God’s authority are in this world. It’s still there! Jesus the Christ and our Savior and Lord is reigning with “all authority” at the right hand of God, right now! And he promised that he would be with us until the end of the age, continuing to fulfill the promise of God’s kingdom with the authority and power that God has given him. And part of the promise is that the power of God’s love will never fade. The promise is that the rule of love that Jesus carries out in our lives now will never end. One day, the power of God’s love, the rule of love that Jesus carries out in our lives now will extend to all people and encompass everything. On that day, then the whole creation will return to where it was in the beginning, when God “spoke” it into being, and everything was “very good.”

[2] Famously penned by Lord John Dalberg-Acton, Letter to Mandell Creighton (5 April 1887), referring to the declaration by Pope Pius IX of the Roman Catholic dogma of papal infallibility. He said, “I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. … Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. … There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. That is the point at which … the end learns to justify the means.” Cf. Historical Essays and Studies, by John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton (1907), edited by John Neville Figgis and Reginald Vere Laurence, Appendix, p. 504. Accessed at http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lord_Acton.

Through Fire and Water

Psalm 66[1]

I find it interesting how popular music changes. What was edgy and “out there” when it first came out becomes more “mainstream” over time. When I was younger, “protest songs” and “rock music” were viewed as “edgy” and “out there.” Definitely so by my parents! But I find it interesting and almost amusing how the “edgy” music of my generation became the “oldies” of my children’s generation, and now some of it is so “tame” it gets played as “elevator music.” One of my favorite musicians from those days is James Taylor. Of course, he’s still around, still making music. But if you look at the progression of his album covers, his image has undergone quite a change. In the beginning, he was something of a defiant representative of the “hippy” counterculture. These days, he looks like any other “Baby Boomer,” and looks like he could be anybody’s grampa! I’m not sure what the James Taylor of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s would have thought of that!

One of my favorite “JT” songs is “Fire and Rain,” which was his first big hit in 1970. It’s a bittersweet song about coming through hardships, including the death of a childhood friend and his problems with addiction, to get to the other side and finding peace and even success. There’s a twinge of regret in the lyrics that I think many of us might be able to resonate with. Life is full of choices that we make, and the longer we live the more we have the chance to reflect on the path that has brought us to where we are. Hopefully, we find peace with that path. But at the same time, we always feel the losses we go through along the way.

Our Psalm reading for today reminded me of “Fire and Rain.” The psalmsinger looks back over the history of Israel’s interactions with God. And, although they had to go through some deeply troubling experiences, including slavery in Egypt, and their oppression at the hands of powerful nations like the Babylonians, they knew God was with them through it all. More than that, they knew God had brought them through it all. In fact, the psalmsinger uses language reminiscent of James Taylor’s song: “we’ve been through fire and water. But you brought us out to freedom” (Ps 66:12, CEB). As a result, the psalmsinger worships God for the “awesome works” he does for us (Ps 66:3-5). More than that, the psalmsinger worships God because his “awesome works” point to the awe-inspiring quality of God’s character. God is the one who “turns the sea into dry land,” so they could cross over from danger into safety. God is the one who reigns over all the nations, and he does so in a way that continues to draw “all the earth” into the song of praise.

This is the God who remains with us to this very day. This is the God who brings us through all that we may have to go through in this life. This God is the one who always hears our prayers, and the one whose “faithful love” for us never fails (Ps 66:20). But as with psalmsinger, it’s not only what God does for us that gives us this assurance, it’s also who God is. A similar passage from the prophet Isaiah expresses it well. It’s Isaiah 43:1-3. The prophet was speaking to the people of Israel while they were still in exile in Babylon. They had not yet come through the “fire and water” into freedom. It may have been all too easy for them to think that God had forgotten about them there (Isa 40:27-31)! But the prophet reminds them that God not only had not forgotten them, but he was with them. Hear how Isaiah says it:

“now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior” (Isa 43:1-3).

The God who created them just the way they were, the God who chose them just the way they were, was the same God who was with them wherever they went, and who would bring them through whatever they might have to endure. Even through the fires of adversity, even through the floodwaters of loss and suffering!

That promise through the prophet Isaiah demonstrates the same character of God the psalmsinger celebrates. He’s the one who reigns over all the nations, over all peoples, with “wisdom, power, and love,” as the song says it. And because that is the God who made us all, and the God who chose us all, that God is the one who will draw all the peoples of the earth to worship him for the awesome and awe-inspiring things he has done and continues to do (cf. Rev 15:3!). I realize this is a different way to talk about God. For centuries, the church presented God more as one who threatens to strike us in his anger than as one who promises to bless us with his love. The church has been more interested in detailing exactly what you have to do to “make it” into heaven than in worshipping God in such a way as to draw all people to join in the celebration. The psalmsinger’s words, “All the earth worships you” (Ps 66:4) are both true now and at the same time not yet fully realized. But the idea behind this Psalm, and many other biblical passages like it, is that who God is and what God does is so awesome and so awe-inspiring that it will inevitably draw “all the earth” into the worship of God.

I still remember the first time I noticed this language about “all the peoples of the earth” coming to worship God in passages like this. There are many of them throughout the Bible. It sounded too good to be true. But it’s there, over and over, in the Psalms, and the Prophets, and even in the New Testament. The idea is not that you can do whatever you want to because God is going to “save” you anyway. The idea is that who God is and what God does is so amazing and so awe-inspiring that it will inevitably draw all the earth to worship him! That’s a big promise, and a big hope!

We might wonder what our role is in all of that. I think the psalmsinger suggests at least one answer to that question: our role is to worship God. Some might think that’s a lame answer. But the psalmsinger won’t hear of it. Worship, from the perspective of the Psalms, is not only a way to remember that God is awesome and awe-inspiring. It’s also a way for us to draw others into the experience of God’s awesome and awe-inspiring work. As one commentator suggests, every time we sing “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” we are inviting all who hear to not only remember that Jesus died for them, but also to experience the love that God poured out for us all when Jesus died for us.[2]

When we join together for worship, we do so as those who know that we’re God’s beloved children. We worship as those who know that God loves us, always has and always will. We join together for worship as those who know that God made us just as we are, and he made us for a purpose that only we can fulfill in this world. We worship as those who trust the promise that like Jesus, we’re God’s beloved children, and he is pleased with us just the way we are. And we worship as those who know that this God will always be with us, come what may, even through fire and floodwaters. And as we join together in worship, celebrating the awesome and awe-inspiring God who loves us in this way, we create a place here in this sanctuary where all who join us can feel that all of this just might be true for them as well. As we join together in worship, we create a place where we not only we can feel like we belong, but also and especially where those who may feel “on the outside” of faith can feel like they belong. I would say that in these days of fear and hostility, it’s no small thing to create a place where all people can feel that they belong in God’s love!

[2] Cf. James L. Mays, Psalms, 222.

Tuesday, July 02, 2024

The Waiting Place

Lamentations 3:19-32[1]

Most of us are familiar with the classic by Dr. Seuss, “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” It’s a wonderfully encouraging look at life’s journey. The idea is that, especially when you’re starting out, you really can’t even begin to imagine the places your journey will take you. And the theme is that “Wherever you fly, you'll be best of the best. Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.” But then, of course, he adds, “Except when you don't. Because, sometimes, you won't.” And one of those times he mentions is when you find yourself in what he calls “The Waiting Place.” The “Waiting Place” is for people “Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or No or waiting for their hair to grow.” Even Dr. Suess calls the “Waiting Place” a “most useless place.”[2]

We’re not a people who like to wait. For anything. It’s irritating at best, because time spent waiting seems like wasted time to us. At worst it can be infuriating, because nothing brings out the worst in us quicker than having our plans or expectations thwarted. And waiting is one of those things that can definitely thwart our plans! Our instant economy has spoiled us. We’re used to getting whatever we want right when we want it. If we do have to wait, we tend to take out a smartphone or another device and dive into the screen. The idea of just waiting quietly and patiently seems to be a foreign concept to us.

But waiting is part of life. And through the ages, those who have taught us the most about what it means to “walk humbly with our God” have made it clear that learning how to “wait for the Lord” plays a central role in spiritual growth, if you’re interested in that kind of thing.[3] In the Bible, “waiting” is an expression of faith. We “wait for the Lord” in faith because we recognize that much of our lives is out of our control. But more than that, we “wait for the Lord” because that’s how we grow stronger in our faith. It’s a bit like the concept of leaving a portion of the ground fallow for a season as a means of restoring and enriching the soil. Or the fact that in Winter, trees that appear to have gone “dormant” are doing some of their most important growing. They’re sending down roots to seek out nutrients, growing deeper and stronger underground while it may seem to us like not much is happening. Waiting for the Lord is how we send down deeper roots to grow stronger in faith.

The prophet Jeremiah knew about the value of waiting for the Lord, as we saw in our lesson from Lamentations for today. Much of Lamentations is not particularly uplifting. It came from a bitter time in the history of the people of Israel. The Babylonians had invaded the land, and the city of Jerusalem was under siege. The famine that resulted led to shocking atrocities. When he looked around, what he saw was his nation in ruins, his beloved city of Jerusalem besieged, and his people seemingly abandoned by God. Much of the earlier part of Lamentations contains the outpouring of his grief. At the end of it all, he could say, “Everything I had hoped for from the Lord is lost!” (Lam 3:18, NLT). Imagine the prophet Jeremiah saying that! It sounds like he had given up not only his hope, but also his faith!

But the prophet turned a corner precisely when all seemed lost. Although he could say that he would never forget that “awful time,” he remembers the most fundamental affirmation about God in the Bible, the bedrock of faith: “The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning” (Lam 3:22-23, NLT). It’s phrased in different ways in different verses, but this is the essential expression of faith in the Bible: God’s love never ends, and we can always count on him to be faithful. So, despite all the bitterness and the grief Jeremiah had been through, he could hold onto his faith: “I still dare to hope” (Lam 3:21, NLT).

We might wonder what made it possible for him to have such a dramatic change of heart—from “everything is lost” to “I still dare to hope.” If we listen carefully, he tells us. It wasn’t some spectacular vision from God, nor was it the presence of an angel that gave him new hope. The situation hadn’t changed. What changed was his attitude. And he made that change by waiting for the Lord. I think he show this was what made the difference when he affirms that “it is good to wait quietly for salvation from the Lord” (Lam 3:26, NLT). To be sure, waiting for the Lord is no easier than any other waiting. In fact, it may be harder! We may often suffer from doubt or anxiety. But what makes it “good” to “wait quietly” for the Lord is that’s how we learn that “no one is abandoned by the Lord forever” (Lam 3:31, NLT). I think in light of what the New Testament teaches, I would say that “no one is abandoned by the Lord ever”!

We live in a world of “perpetual motion,” 24/7/365, year after year! “Waiting” is what we do when we’re helpless to change the situation. We “wait” only when it’s the only option. “Waiting” calls to mind boredom, or anxiety, or restlessness. But in the Bible, “waiting” for the Lord refers to a posture of trust. To “wait” for the Lord in the Bible refers to trusting God’s unfailing and faithful love when everything in life seems to have given way. This may remind you of one of my favorite hymns: “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” I suspect that some of you may share that opinion. You may know that it’s based on this passage. It might seem surprising that such a wonderful encouraging hymn could come from such a bleak and dismal situation. But if you look at it from the biblical perspective, it’s not surprising at all. With all due respect to Dr. Seuss, the “Waiting Place” is not a “most useless place” after all. In fact, it may be one of the most useful places for growing our faith. That’s because the “Waiting Place” is where we learn again that God is faithful always! Always has been, always will be. It’s where we learn again that God is always for us, never against us. It’s where we learn again that God loves us with a love that never fails, no matter what.[4]

[2] Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go! 1990.

[3] Cf. Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out, 91: “Waiting … is the foundation of the spiritual life” (quoted from Simone Weil, First and Last Notebook).

[4] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II.1, 385: “[God] is wholly Himself and true to Himself in the fact that he is true to us.”

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

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.”

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Unfailing Love

Psalm 89; Luke 1:26-38[1]

I think there’s a lot of confusion out there about love these days. We say, “I love you,” but what we really mean is “I’m lonely and I want you to comfort me.” Or “I think you’re incredibly attractive and desirable.” Or “Will you please just do what I want?” Or “I’m really excited to have such a great looking guy/girl with me; my friends are going to think I’m important.” Love is about wanting, desiring, or having. I think part of the reason for this is that we associate “love” so completely with romance. As a result, love has everything to do with feelings of infatuation or attraction or desire. That approach to love has many people spending their lives running around looking for their own personal holy grail of “love.” But when we do that, we tend to lose sight of any aspect of love as a choice, love as a gift you give to another person.

I think part of this confusion comes from the various “myths” about love that are out there. For example, there are many who live their whole lives looking for “the one.” You know, the single solitary individual out of the population of the world, which consists of enough people to fill roughly a thousand cities the size of the Chicago metro area! Another “myth” about love is “happily ever after.” It’s the fairy-tale ideal that when you find “the one” you’ll spend your lifetime in honeymoon bliss. I do think that people can live happily ever after, but it doesn’t look like “honeymoon bliss.” One of the silliest love-related myths I’ve ever heard comes from the tagline to the 1970 film “Love Story”: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” What in the world does that even mean? If you’re human, you’ll always be in a position of needing to say you’re sorry. If anything, love means you continually say you’re sorry, and you keep coming back and saying you’re sorry no matter what!

The Bible teaches us about love in many ways— through its practical teachings, through the stories of God’s love for a wayward people, and most importantly through the life of Jesus, who gave himself completely for the sake of us all. Our lesson from the Psalms for today begins with a celebration of God’s love: “Your unfailing love will last forever. Your faithfulness is as enduring as the heavens” (Ps 89:2, NLT). As we’ve seen over the past weeks, affirmations like this in the Psalms are often set in the context of the disappointments, the hardships, and the afflictions the people of Israel suffered. Their faith enabled them to confess that God’s unfailing love lasts forever specifically in those times when their circumstances could have led them to conclude that God had “forgotten” them. But the truth of who God is in the story of the people of Israel is that God never forgot them. His love for them never failed, even though their love for God failed time and time again!

The clearest demonstration of God’s love for us all in the Bible is found in Jesus: his birth, his life, and his death for us all. As you may know, there is some serious theology behind this statement. Theology that took centuries to formulate, and to some extent is still being shaped to this day. We call it the incarnation, the belief that in Jesus, God somehow came to share the fullness of our experience with life, including its joys and sorrows. Just the fact of Jesus’ birth as the Son of God demonstrates God’s love for us, because God chose to enter this world as one of us. But there’s more to it than that. Because the idea is that everything Jesus did was a reflection of who God is. And that includes dying on the cross. If the one who died on the cross is God incarnate, then that means God took into himself everything that prevents us from being the people he created us to be. That kind of love as expressed in the fundamental affirmation of our faith that God demonstrates his love for us in the birth of Jesus may be hard for us to grasp.

Our faith in Jesus as God incarnate is an important basis for understanding God’s love for us. But I doubt seriously that most of us come to the place where we truly believe that God accepts as we are through learning about theology. I think most of us learn about God’s love for us because somebody at some point in our lives showed us that kind of love. That’s where the Bible’s practical teachings about love come in. One of the clearest practical statements about love comes from the Apostle Paul: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful” (1 Cor 13:4-5). I know, we use this Scripture primarily at weddings. But Paul’s not talking about love only in the context of marriage. He’s talking about love as a way of life, love as a basic attitude toward other people, love as a commitment to following Jesus’ example.[2]

That’s easy to say, but as we know, it’s incredibly difficult to practice consistently. How do we follow Jesus’ example by loving each other the way he loved us? How do we give our lives away for the sake of the kingdom of God and for the sake of others without losing ourselves entirely? I think at least part of the answer is that we can only give ourselves away in love when our lives are grounded in God’s unfailing love. We can only practice this kind of love for others when we know that God loves us unconditionally and irrevocably, always has and always will. Even with that foundation for our love, I think we have to admit that loving others in this way doesn’t come easily for us. To be sure, we can love our families this way, but I think we also must admit that we all have to learn to love other people the way Jesus did.

If we pay attention to the way Jesus’ first disciples learned to love, I think we will discover that the way we learn to love like Jesus did is by coming together as a fellowship of people who are trying to learn how to follow Jesus’ example.[3] Whether it’s feeding the hungry, or clothing the poor, or comforting the sick and dying, or just listening to someone enough to really hear him or her, to love as Jesus did means to give of yourself without thinking about “what am I going to get out of this?” 500 years ago, the translators commissioned by King James translated the Greek word for love, agape, with the word “charity.” They were following the lead of ancient scholars who translated the Bible into Latin, and who used the word caritas. While “charity” has implications in our day that may be misleading, the basic idea is one of relating to other people with genuine, heartfelt care and compassion.

As with the other lessons of Advent, we may look at our world today and wonder where that kind of love can be found. It’s there in many ways, but the disturbing truth is that the way we humans treat one another all too often has very little to do with love. The promise of Advent is that God came into this world in the birth of Jesus to show us how much he loves us, and that he always has and always will love us in that way. If it sounds impossible that God could come into the world in the birth of Jesus, I’ll remind you what the angel said to Mary: “nothing will be impossible with God”! The fact that God would go to such lengths to show us that we are all loved, that we always have been and always will be, is the definitive demonstration of God’s unfailing love in the midst of a long and wonderful history of God showing us that God’s love for us never fails. And it’s that love that God shows us, throughout history, in the life of Jesus, and in the lives of our friends and family, that teaches us how to follow Jesus’ example of love. That unconditional and irrevocable love, that assurance that God always has and always will love us in this way sets us free to share love with others.

[2] I like Jürgen Moltmann’s definition of love in The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation, 255: Love means combining “respect for the other person’s freedom” to be an individual “with deep affection for him or her as a person.”

[3] Cf. Richard B. Hays, First Corinthians, 232. He says that the actions that define love “are learned patterns of behavior that must be cultivated over time in the context of a community that models and supports such behavior.”

Wednesday, September 06, 2023

My Hope is Built on Nothing Less

Psalm 36:5-6[1]

It was a conversation like countless others. And the key question was, “If God doesn’t answer my prayers, what’s the point of trying to live for him?” Of course, the real question was about when “God doesn’t answer my prayers by giving me what I want.” To be sure, this was someone who was desperate—desperate—to find a way to save a loved one. The prayer wasn’t about landing a better job or buying a dream home. It was about saving a life, and the lives of all those affected. Surely God wants the same thing we want when it comes to something like that. And if God doesn’t come through for us when we pour out our hearts in prayer, then why pray at all? More than that, why even make the effort to hold onto our faith?

My answer was one that didn’t satisfy. My answer was that, like Job, we may ask the question, “Why?”, but we may never get an answer. My answer was that we cannot tie our faith in God to the outcome of our prayers. My answer was that we can’t know why God sometimes answers our prayers the way we hope, and sometimes doesn’t. When we’re desperate to save someone we love, that’s not what we usually want to hear. But in my experience, the reason we pray is because we place our hope in God’s love for us that never fails. The reason we keep practicing our faith is to remind ourselves that, come what may, God’s love for us never fails. The one thing we can always hold onto is the hope that God’s love for us never fails. Our hope is based on nothing less!

You may have noticed that we’ve been saying the same Assurance of Pardon all Summer. I don’t normally do that, but I wanted us to have the chance to really let the ideas of Psalm 36:5-6 sink into our hearts and minds. I like the way the New Living Translation puts it: “Your unfailing love, O LORD, is as vast as the heavens; your faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds. Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the ocean depths.” It’s one of my favorite Bible verses. It reminds me that we’re never outside God’s unfailing love. God’s faithfulness continues to embrace all of us, come what may. God’s purpose to set things right stands as unshakable as the highest mountains. And God’s work to right all wrongs will one day sweep over the whole world.

That’s a lot to take in, so let’s break it down. First, “Your unfailing love, O LORD, is as vast as the heavens.” This affirmation starts out with God’s character. The fact that God’s character is defined by “unfailing love,” “faithfulness,” “righteousness,” and “justice” serves as the basis for everything we believe. This Psalm reminds us that our hope is based on nothing less than who God was and is and ever shall be, world without end! And the starting point for that hope is that God’s love never fails and never ends. More than that, the Psalmist says God’s love is as vast as the heavens. It extends to everyone and everything everywhere in all creation. This is the quality of God’s love: God loves us all with a love that will never let us go. The amazing kindness and generosity that God continually shows us every day isn’t accidental.[2] It’s based on who God is: “Your unfailing love, O LORD, is as vast as the heavens.”

The next affirmation is, “your faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds.” That might seem obvious to us, but in a time when people could only speculate what was up there in the sky, the idea was that God’s faithfulness extends even beyond the limits of our knowledge. Like God’s love, God’s faithfulness extends to everyone and everything. In a world where promises are made to be broken, it may be hard for us to believe that the God who loves us is completely trustworthy and reliable. But this is another of those foundational declarations about God: God is the one who never, ever gives up on us. Whether or not it comes when we expect it, God will make good on every promise.[3] “Your faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds.”

The next affirmation is “Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains.” We assume that God’s “righteousness” also refers to his character. And it does. God is the one who always does what is right. But it goes beyond that. God is also the one who is always working to make all things right. You have to read carefully, and it’s sometimes hidden in our English bibles, but God’s character as “righteous” leads him to always work to make things right.[4] And because this is a matter of who God is, his intention to make all things right in this world is as firm and unshakeable as “the mighty mountains.” You could sooner bring down Mount Everest than you could thwart God’s purpose to make things right! “Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains.”

Finally, this verse affirms that “your justice [is] like the ocean depths.” We’re familiar with the idea that God’s character is “just.” But it may not be one that we find comforting. For us, “justice” equals punishment. But in the Hebrew Bible, God’s justice sets out to help the helpless and to heal those who are hurting. God’s justice brings peace to those who are oppressed and freedom to those who are bound in any way. Even when it comes to those who may be in the wrong, God’s justice comes as grace and mercy. God’s justice is about his determination to right all the wrongs in this world. And this intention is as powerful and unstoppable as the force of water in the ocean! “Your justice [is] like the ocean depths.”

This is the reason why I keep putting my faith in God, no matter what life may bring. It’s because God’s unfailing love upholds everything and everyone in all creation! That includes the whole universe![5] I keep hoping for God’s kingdom to prevail despite all that’s wrong in this world because God is always faithful to everyone, everywhere! When what is happening feels discouraging or even beyond the limits of my faith, I remember that God’s purpose to set all things right is as firm and sure as the mighty mountains! And I also remember that God’s justice, peace, and freedom will one day sweep over the whole world like the waters of the ocean! When life is such that it feels like “all around, my soul gives way,” I return to this verse to keep anchoring my faith and my hope on nothing less than God’s unfailing love, faithfulness, righteousness, and justice! I hope that this verse might inspire you to do the same!

[2] Cf. H.-J. Kraus, Theology of the Book of Psalms, 44.

[3] Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 115:God is the one on whom we can continue to rely “all the way from promise to fulfillment.”

[4] Moltman, Theology of Hope, 204: “The ‘righteousness of God’ is God’s faithful love directed toward the goal of setting all humans right with God, with themselves, with each other, and with the whole of creation; thus it refers to God’s redemptive purpose to bring about a new creation.”

[5] James L. Mays, Psalms, 156: the “attributes of the LORD are said to be cosmic in dimension. Heavens and clouds mark the upper limit of the world; mountains of God and the great deep are terms of immensity.”

Tuesday, March 21, 2023

Oppportunities

Opportunities

John 9:1-42[1]

It doesn’t take long for those of us who live in this world to learn that bad things sometimes happen to good people. In fact, sometimes what happens to good people in this world is downright evil. I personally think that makes praying “deliver us from evil” in the Lord’s Prayer all the more relevant for all of us. For me, at least, one of the reasons I look to the Lord’s Prayer is because the evil in this world can cause us to struggle with our faith. In fact, more than one good soul has turned away from faith because of the evil that has come either into their life or the life of someone they care about. And there are many sensitive souls among us who struggle to believe in a loving God simply because there is just so very much violence and injustice in our world.

I would say that one part of this experience that makes it particularly challenging for faith is the pain and fear we may have to carry as a result of the bad things that can happen to us. When those “bad things” truly rise to the level of “evil,” they tend to leave a wound. And wounds like that can run deep and sometimes they never fully heal. Or if they do heal, they remain very sensitive to certain triggers. And that kind of pain naturally leads to fear. But I would say, from my experience with fear, that it always cuts us off from the one source of true healing: our God whose love for us never fails. We cannot know what the future will bring, whether good or bad, but if we’re going to live in faith rather than staying shackled to our fear, we’re going to have to learn to find the good that God brings even out of the hard things in life.

Our Gospel lesson raises this issue for us right from the start. The lesson tells us that as Jesus “walked along, he saw a man blind from birth” (Jn 9:1). The fact that this man was born blind led Jesus’ disciples to ask him what must seem to us a strange question: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (Jn 9:2). I think the question must sound strange to our ears because we don’t see a disability like blindness as a punishment from God. But it was common in that day to think of the suffering in this world as a direct result of somebody’s sin. And so they could entertain the possibility that a person could sin even before they were born in order to explain something like this.

That kind of cause and effect approach to sin and suffering had a long history with the Jewish people. It started with the Ten Commandments, which say that God punishes “children for the iniquity of parents to the third and fourth generation” (Dt 5:9)! And, of course, it was the premise for much of the history of Israel in the Hebrew Bible: when the king did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, so did the people, and they suffered for it. And it’s the assumption that Job’s so-called “friends” made: if you’re suffering in any way you must have done something wrong. So they stubbornly kept trying to convince Job to admit his sin to find relief from his suffering.

But Jesus explodes that assumption about sin and suffering. He refused to accept the premise of the disciples’ question, that someone must have sinned to cause this man to be born blind. Instead, he answered them bluntly, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned” (Jn 9:3). I think Jesus was carrying forward a point that had already been made in the book of Job. Job maintained his innocence, even though God reminded him that when he asked the question “why?” he was asking more than he could begin to understand. But God upheld Job’s integrity. In fact, at the end of the story, God’s anger was kindled against the friends for insisting that God was punishing Job for something he’d done wrong. God rebukes them, saying, “you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has” (Job 42:7). Even Job’s questions were more true to God than their assumptions about sin and suffering.

In our Gospel lesson, Jesus not only denied the assumption that suffering must have been caused by sin. More than that, he pointed his disciples in a completely different direction. He insisted that this man was born blind “so that God’s works might be revealed in him” (Jn 9:3). Now, I would have to say that this point of view could also be abused. But I think what Jesus was trying to do was to turn people away from obsessively looking for someone to blame when things go wrong in life. Instead, I think Jesus wanted them and us to look for the good that God can bring even out of the worst things that can happen to us. Of course, in this particular situation, I think Jesus said what he did in part because he knew he was going to restore this man’s sight.

One of my favorite parts of the Study Catechism that we use with the Confirmation Class and in worship is the affirmation that God brings “good out of evil, so that nothing evil is permitted to occur that God does not bend finally to the good.”[2] It’s a wonderful promise that helps us look for the good that God can bring out of suffering. But it can also present a challenge for our faith. After all, not every blind person has their sight restored. And more often than not it can be very difficult, if not impossible, when something bad happens to us or someone we love to even consider that God could bring good out of it.

But I would say that this is one of those places where our faith becomes more than just words we recite together on Sunday morning. To be able to look at this life, this life with all the suffering and hardships it can bring, and put our faith in the God whose love for us never fails is perhaps the greatest challenge we will face. Partly, that’s because we may never see the good that God brings out of the bad things that may happen to us. The catechism does say that God bends the evil that occur “finally” to the good. To leave open the possibility, the hope, that God will bring good out of even the worst things that have happened to us in this life is to take a step beyond a life of pain and fear into a life of trust. To do so is to recognize that our lives are in God’s hands, and that we may never know what opportunities, what good things, God can create from the hardships we suffer in this world.

[2] “The Study Catechism: Full Version with Biblical References,” Approved by the 210th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, USA (1998), question 22.

Tuesday, June 14, 2022

God's Love Overflowing

God’s Love Overflowing

Proverbs 8:1-11, 22-31; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15[1]

When you think about religion as our human efforts to worship and serve God, you would think that a concept so basic to the human experience would be consistent across the board. But the opposite is true. The cultures of the world throughout history have held many beliefs about “God.” In ancient religions, the “gods” were simply a picture of human impulses on a large scale. But while the “gods” may have embodied the best human qualities, they also embodied the worst. Other cultures have approached their understanding of “God” through nature, and some even found their way to a “benevolent” notion of God. But our notions of “God” have always been as varied as the human family is.

Even in the Christian faith there are very different images of God. Some see God as a stickler for rules, always eager to punish those who go astray. And in many cases, those who understand God like that have come up with all kinds of things you have to do in order to stay on God’s “good side” so you can go to heaven when you die. Others have such a casual view of God that they turn the creator of the vast universe into their “buddy.” And they think this “buddy” of theirs is a personal “genie in a bottle” who will make their every wish come true. How you understand God makes a difference!

That’s why we observe “Trinity Sunday.” It’s a day for us to recall that there are important reasons we worship one God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I realize that may sound like a “stretch” to some. A lot of people these days think it doesn’t matter what you believe, as long as you have some kind of faith. But I would insist that the Bible bears witness to God in this unique way of understanding that we call “Trinity.” And it’s not just about making sure we follow the Bible. Believing in, worshipping, and serving God as “Trinity” makes a big difference in what your faith and your life look like.

Our scripture lessons for today point out some of the reasons why it’s important that we understand God in this way. In our lesson from Proverbs, we get a better glimpse of what it means to say “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” There is something intimidating about the notion that God created all the galaxies we can see with the new James Webb Space Telescope. But our lesson shows us a different side: God enjoying creation and delighting in the human family. Creation was not only an expression of God’s power, but also of God’s love, overflowing in the beauty of the world that is “very good” (Gen 1:31). Part of what it means to believe in “Trinity” is that we see God not only as all-powerful but also as one who takes great delight in loving all creation.

Our lesson from John’s Gospel reminds us of what it means to say, “I believe in Jesus Christ God’s only Son our Lord.” As we’ve seen in our journey through John’s Gospel during Easter, Jesus’ whole life was one act of demonstrating God’s love for us. By coming in human flesh, he showed us what God’s love looks like. By serving “the least of these” (Mt 25:40), he demonstrated God’s love for everyone. And by giving his life on the cross, Jesus revealed just how far God is willing to go to draw us into the embrace of love shared eternally by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Part of what it means to believe in “Trinity” is that we know God’s love for us through Jesus Christ.

Our lesson from Romans reminds us of what it means to say, “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” God not only poured out his love when he created all things “very good.” And God not only poured out his love by sending Jesus to show us what love looks like in real life. God also continually pours out his love in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. Again, as we have seen in John’s Gospel, the Spirit is our constant companion, the one who leads us to faith, who shows us the truth of what God is doing in and among us, and who guides us daily. Part of what it means to believe in “Trinity” is that we trust that God’s love for us means that he continually accompanies, guides, sustains, and empowers us.

In the Bible, it takes all three, God the Creator, Jesus the Redeemer, and the Spirit who sustains us, to fully understand who God is. If it’s true that “God is love” (1 John 4:8), it should come as no surprise that the one God who is three—Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer—exists in a relationship of love and community. This is the image of God in the Bible: God in relationship, God in community, God involved in our lives. This is central to our faith, because the love shared between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is the basis for everything God does in our lives, for all that God does in our community of faith, and for all that God does through us as we serve others.

The point of the Trinity is that God is a God of love—not just love that observes from afar, but love that reaches out to us and seeks a relationship with us. The God who creates and redeems and sustains us is a God who shows us a love that is constantly present among us, that gets involved in our lives, and that takes action to fill our lives with love. About twenty years ago, the PCUSA commissioned a study of our understanding of God as “Trinity.” That doesn’t take any kind of stretch of imagination! The (inevitable) report encouraged churches to explore ways to include affirmations of our faith in God as “Trinity,” using the range of expressions in the Bible and in the history of the Church. And the overarching theme was framed in the title of the report: “The Trinity: God’s Love Overflowing.” I can think of no better way to understand God: love overflowing in and through all creation and in and through every one of our lives!

[1] © 2022 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm Ph. D. on 6/12/2022 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE. For a video recording of this sermon, check out my Pastor Alan YouTube Channel: https://youtu.be/q6bP3CkiA0Q

Monday, March 28, 2022

God's Mercy Never Fails

God’s Mercy Never Fails

Luke 13:1-9[1]

How we view “salvation” makes all the difference in how we view God. When we make it about sorting out who goes to Heaven and who goes to Hell, it’s hard to see a loving and merciful God in that. In fact, that whole way of looking at salvation seems to fit more with a God who is “jealous” and “angry.” When we make salvation about where we’re going to wind up in the end, we make God out to be a God whose anger “devours” all who provoke him, a God whose “wrath” wreaks “vengeance” upon those who go astray. That’s the God of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” I would say that version of “salvation,” and the view of God that goes with it, inspires more fear than it does hope.

While you can find plenty of Bible verses to back up that view of God and salvation, I would say it misses the whole point. The essential revelation of God’s character in the Bible is what God declared to Moses in the “cleft of the rock”: “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Ex 34:6). That message resounds throughout the Bible, especially in the Psalms: “O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever” (Ps 136:1). And the message of salvation is that this God whose very character is mercy and grace is working to draw us all into his infinite kindness, and his love that never fails. This understanding of salvation, and the view of God that goes with it, inspires hope!

Once again this may seem like a strange way to introduce the Gospel lesson for today. But I would say that how we view God is at the heart of making sense out of this passage. We hear Jesus saying, “unless you repent you will all perish,” but I think we must do a double take because it doesn’t sound much like Jesus! I believe what’s going on here is that Jesus was confronting the self-righteousness of the people who brought up the fate of the Galileans. In the setting of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus has been talking about the importance of the proper response to the kingdom of God: repentance and faithfulness. These folks came to Jesus assuming that because they agreed with him, they were much better off than the “poor” Galileans who “must have done something to deserve their fate.”

I think that’s why Jesus adopts a rather harsh tone here: “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did” (Lk 13:2-3). I think he was confronting them with the casual way in which they painted those Galileans as “worse sinners” because of what happened to them. God doesn’t work that way. And Jesus was confronting them for thinking of themselves as if they didn’t need to repent. But in Luke’s Gospel Jesus proclaimed that God’s love demands a change of heart from all of us that changes our lives!

The fact that Jesus emphasized the urgency of this change for everyone may still sound strange to us. But I would say that’s why Luke’s gospel combines Jesus’ warning about the urgency of repentance with the parable of the fig tree. It might not seem obvious, but I would say that the parable is meant to balance the demand for repentance with the assurance that God’s mercy never fails. The reason we might miss that is because we tend to think that the owner of the vineyard who came expecting fruit from the fig tree represents God. And we think that the gardener seeking more time represents Jesus. I don’t think that’s the point. In the parable of the fig tree God is both the one who demands that we change our hearts and lives, and the one who patiently draws us toward that change in his kindness, mercy, and love.

There’s a balance to be struck here. It’s true that God’s love demands of us all a heart-felt change that results in a different way of living. But it’s also true that the God who is working to make all things new is kind beyond measure, infinitely patient, and merciful without fail. That means God never stops seeking to draw us to himself. Like the gardener in the parable of the fig tree, God is continually “cultivating” our hearts to produce the “fruit” of living in a way that lines up with God’s love.

Of course, if God is simply sorting out sinners and saints, none of this makes much sense! I realize that view of salvation has been around for a long time. But it’s way too simplistic. And the end result is that people live in fear of their “eternal destiny” all their lives. The biblical view of salvation is that the God whose very character is mercy and grace is always working to “cultivate” our hearts, always working to draw us into his infinite kindness, and his love that never fails. We may have to wait to see the fruit of what God is doing in our lives, but it all flows from who God is. I believe that’s worth waiting for!

Yes, when God’s love takes hold of our hearts, it demands that we all change our lives. I think that’s why Jesus spoke the way he did to those who came to him looking to be congratulated for their “righteousness.” Jesus was reminding them that God’s love demands that we all change our lives. But at the same time, the Bible’s primary teaching about God is that he is infinitely patient, and merciful without fail, giving us the time we need to make that change. I don’t believe we have to live in fear that we may at any moment step over some line that will exclude us from God’s love. Rather, I believe we can remain hopeful as we wait to see salvation fulfilled, because God’s mercy never fails!

Sunday, April 25, 2021

Safe and Secure

John 10:1-18[1]

Much of what we do in this life is directed toward our sense of security. We choose the neighborhood in which we live based on whether it feels “safe.” We may install fencing or external lights or even an alarm system to enhance our feeling of security. We work to find a job that will provide us with the opportunity to work productively for as long as necessary to ensure that we will have a stable livelihood. We have insurance policies to enable us to meet our major medical needs and to protect us in case of unforeseen damage to our cars or our homes. And we save up a nest egg to try to make sure we can retire as comfortably as possible.

For all of our efforts at feeling “save and secure” in life, however, the hard truth is that none of them are foolproof. Career, home, and finances can be swept away in the blink of an eye. In a very real sense we are all like the rich farmer Jesus used to illustrate the fragility of our lives. He saved up so much grain that he had to tear down his old barns to build bigger ones. But Jesus pointed out that his life could be snatched away at any time. The things he had stored up for himself could not provide ultimate security. The same thing is true for us. We cannot know what today will bring, let alone tomorrow. Finding security in the things we have only serves to distract us from the vulnerability that we all face in this life. We have to find our security elsewhere.

In our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus declares that he is the “Good Shepherd” who cares for, protects, and even lays down his life for his flock. He is the one who “calls his own sheep by name and leads them out” (Jn 10:3). He is the one who enables them to “find pasture” and “abundant life” (Jn. 10:9-10). Unlike a “hired hand,” Jesus as the “Good Shepherd” protects the sheep from all dangers, even at the cost of “laying down his life” for them (Jn. 10:11-12). Jesus knows those who belong to him in the same way that Father knows him and he knows the Father (Jn. 10:14-15). And he not only “lays down his life” for the sheep, but he also “takes it up again” (Jn. 10:18). Thus he remains the “Good Shepherd” for all time.

Part of what’s going on in the background of all this is that Jesus is engaging in a not-so-subtle criticism of the Jewish leaders of his day. Like the prophets before him, he saw the people of Israel as God’s “flock,” and the leaders were intended to be “shepherds” who cared for them. Instead, as the OT prophets pointed out, these “shepherds” were often more concerned about their own welfare than the welfare of the people. In fact, in one place, God speaks through the prophet Ezekiel to say that he would rescue the “sheep” by sending his “servant David” to “feed them and be their shepherd” (Ezek. 34:23).

I don’t think anyone in Jesus’ day would have failed to hear the criticism of the Jewish leaders in what Jesus was saying. Time and again they demonstrated that they were more concerned with maintaining their own religious rules than they were with the welfare of people—especially those who were hurting. I also don’t think that anyone in Jesus’ day would have failed to hear in the statement “I am the good shepherd” an allusion to God’s promise to send one who would be a true shepherd for his people by caring for them. I think Jesus was saying that he had come to offer true and lasting care and protection to his people.

There are two aspects to that care in this passage. First, Jesus says, “I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father” (Jn. 10:14-15). We find our safety in Jesus because of the relationship he has with us. Part of what’s behind this is the idea that those who belong to him are “his own” because they have been “given” to him by the Father. But the other part is that Jesus says he knows those who are “his own” and they know him in the way that Jesus and the Father know each other! We are “safe and secure” in Jesus’ hands because we share the same relationship with Jesus that he shares with God!

The second aspect of Jesus’ care in this passage is found in that he says, “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (Jn 10:11). Now, at first glance, this makes perfect sense. But when you think about it, if the shepherd “lays down his life,” who will be there to protect the sheep? I think that’s why Jesus also says, “I lay down my life in order to take it up again” (Jn. 10:17). In fact, he says that he has received the “power” or perhaps better the “authority” to do so from the Father. In this respect, then, he can be the one who lays down his life us, and because he has “taken up his life again,” he can also still be the one who is there to protect us from any dangers.

The hard truth of life is that all our efforts to secure our lives will ultimately fail. No amount of protection can keep us from the fact that we will all have to face death someday. But because we have a “Good Shepherd” who has laid down his life for us and has taken it up again, we can trust him to keep us “safe and secure” even in the face of death. More than that, because we share the same relationship with Jesus that he shares with God, we can trust him to walk with us every step of the way, no matter what life may bring. That not only means that we have a constant companion and guide, but that “no one can snatch” us out of his hand. Because Jesus is our “Good Shepherd,” we can trust that we are safe and secure in his hands!

The Waking Dreamer