God loves you already

RCL Year B, 1 Lent Well, Lent has begun. It is a season of renewal and penitence, a season when we are encouraged to look more closely at our lives, to readdress our balance of time and energy, to focus more intently on our relationship to God and to each other. Often we use Lent […]

RCL Year B, 1 Lent

Well, Lent has begun. It is a season of renewal and penitence, a season when we are encouraged to look more closely at our lives, to readdress our balance of time and energy, to focus more intently on our relationship to God and to each other. Often we use Lent as a time for each of us individually to work on our connection with God, but historically it is meant as a season for the whole community of the church. In the ‘invitation to Lent’ in the Ash Wednesday service we hear that in this season those preparing for baptism, for initiation into the community, intensified their readiness for baptism at Easter. And in this season those who had been ‘separated from the community because of notorious sins’ – whose actions had hurt the community, and thus they had been excommunicated for a time – were welcomed back into the body of Christ. In other words, Lent is a time for welcoming and welcoming back, growing and deepening our bonds with one another and with God.

On Ash Wednesday I encouraged you to look at this season as a time to work on relationship. Whatever disciplines you’re taking on or things you’re giving up, my suggestion is that you let the focus be on clearing the space and time to be in real loving relationship with other people – those in your own home and those you don’t know – and with God. Too often we can focus on weight loss or Bible reading or limiting our time on Facebook as if those are ends in themselves, Lent just another chance for self-improvement and self-focus. Instead, I encourage you to clear away what truly gets in the way of relationship and love, to focus your intention on doing what builds and grows love.

And luckily, one way of getting that message is to be attentive to the Bible readings we’re hearing in church. In our readings throughout this season we get to hear a lot about God’s love for us, especially in the form of covenants God makes with God’s people. A covenant is an agreement – like a contract but more than a contract. It is an establishing of relationship and the terms of that relationship. It’s a word and a concept used pretty heavily in scripture, particularly in the Hebrew scriptures: the people of Israel are people of the covenant, in a binding relationship with God based on commitment one to the other. God commits to be Israel’s god, and Israel commits to be God’s people. As Christians we understand the grace of Jesus’ death and resurrection as the new covenant with humanity: the relationship is now founded on different terms than it was before. But each form the covenant takes throughout scripture attests to God’s love for us.

Today we heard in the reading from Genesis about the first covenant, God’s promise made to Noah after the flood. The flood story is one that we tell so often in Sunday School that we can forget its deeper, darker import. It’s not just a story about an ark and some animals and a rainbow. It’s a story of God deciding on a new way of relating to us messed-up human beings. For the flood happens because God is grieved at the evil and wickedness of the people he has made – God suffers and sorrows over what has become of his beautiful creation, and so God determines to make a new start. God wipes out all but a remnant of that creation and starts again, and sets the rainbow as a promise that things will be different this time. It’s a frightening story, the idea that God could become so disgusted with us that God would simply want to wipe us out. But that’s not the whole story either. God doesn’t completely start over, make a whole new earth and creation – God preserves a part of the old to start with again, the same old spoiled creation the earth had before. And with the rainbow, God promises to limit Godself, never again to destroy the whole earth. Instead, God promises to live with the compromised and sinful and yet still beautiful mess that his perfect creation has evolved into. The rainbow is there not as a sign to us of this, but as a reminder to God – when God sees it, God will remember the covenant.

It’s also notable that the promise God makes, the covenant with Noah, is actually a covenant with all of creation, the whole earth. It’s not just with people. All of creation has been compromised by human sin – all of creation is out of whack.  The whole earth is ‘corrupt in God’s sight and filled with violence,’ as the flood story begins – a long ways from the original creation, when God calls everything good. And God is sorry he made human beings, because the whole earth is corrupted because of us. The Noah story reminds us that God is in relationship not just with us humans, but with all of creation – and that our behavior and actions toward creation matter to God. In the litany of forgiveness we say on Ash Wednesday, we confess our waste and pollution of creation. Our bad stewardship of the planet is not just sad for the generations to come – it is a sin against God.

But despite all of this, it’s as if with this covenant promise to Noah, God chooses to love us unconditionally from this time forward. After the flood, God promises that never again will he destroy it all, ‘for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth.’ It’s like God realizes that we can’t help ourselves. Nothing has changed in humanity or creation from before the flood to after. Humanity doesn’t get better; Noah doesn’t make any promises to God about what his descendants will do differently. Instead, it is God who decides to act differently. God says, I’m going to quit trying to change you – I’m going to love you the way you are. God chooses to continue to suffer and grieve our hardness of heart rather than to force us to be who he wants us to be. God allows even further the risk that we will turn away, and thereby allows us the freedom to love in return

It is a hard teaching to allow in to our hearts: God loves us no matter what. God does not love us in ignorance of how bad we really are; God knows all too well the depths to which human beings can sink. God does not promise to love us as long as we shape up and improve; God’s promise to limit God’s power of destruction is because God knows we can’t improve. Instead, God re-engages with us on newer, deeper terms – the way a marriage broken by infidelity can restart again with deeper love than before. God sees just how bad we can get, and God chooses to love us and stick with us anyway. What a message for us as we begin our Lent.

Because, get this: You might be hearing this thinking, yeah yeah, God loves you, the same old story we always hear, but what does it really mean to me? Well, you are not the exception to this. God doesn’t love everyone else except for you. Whatever stuff you’re carrying around with you, whatever darkness or bad memories or pettiness you have hidden away, none of that is an obstacle to God’s love for you. We make obstacles to relationship; God doesn’t. We might have all kinds of problems letting that be so; we might barely if ever make time for God in our lives; we might feel guilty that we don’t do more. Well, here’s yet another chance. The love God has for us doesn’t depend on our attention or right living or good theology. The foundation to our relationship with God is that God loves us, in full knowledge and acceptance of who we really are.

So let that be your discipline this week: instead of trying to be a better person or control your impulses or do good things so that God will be happier with you, start instead with the knowledge that God already loves you. God already loves you. Sit with that a little. See how much you can take that in. Try it for a minute today, as you wait to come to receive communion. Build up a little more each day – tomorrow try it for a minute and a half. God loves you. Now let that love redeem you. Amen.