Peering through the clouds, using a sideways glare, I tried to see if God was watching. I was worried sick and running scared because I thought I had been caught. I do not recall in the least what I had done. Perhaps, I had punched my younger brother. That seemed to be a regular, enjoyable sin of mine. Perhaps, had looked at a girl with lustful intent. All the sudden girls were all around and I could not help but look. Or perhaps, it was the huge, enormous sin of not changing the toilet paper roll after using the last sheet. Whichever it was, I was certain that God peered around the clouds and saw what I did. I was waiting for retribution to fall from the sky in the form a falling piano or flying tractor trailer. I do not know exactly where I got the idea, but it never, never crossed my mind that God just might choose mercy instead of retribution.
It is strange that I had this vengeful conception of God, because my pastor was a great Lutheran preacher, so good was he that he is soon to become bishop in Minnesota in the next couple of years I am certain, and he preached God’s grace all the time. He made the love of Jesus Christ very real, even for a small child, using examples of parents and loving dogs. For some reason, after listening to him I knew that my dog Sparky loved me no matter what, he slobbered up my face after-all, but I was not convinced concerning God.
How we see God is so important, because we will follow the God we hold in our hearts. There is the phrase, “be careful what you do, your children are watching.” And, I think that this is true for God also, except I am not certain that we watch God all that closely. We will strive to be like the God we hold in our hearts. If we hold to a God of vengeance, not only will we worry about whether or not we are being perfect, we will also likely worry about whether or not everyone around us is being perfect. If they are not, they will deserve to be punished, and we will make certain that happens. I am not saying that justice is not important and that God does not care about justice, but I suspect that giving out vengeance because God has been personally hurt by what we did is not usually God’s way.
It is going to be hard to follow the advice of Paul in Romans to “Love your neighbor as yourself” if we never believe that God actually ever followed by that same rule. We will be judges if we are certain the God is only a judge. However, by the same token, we will put our lives on the line for another person if we are convinced that God has done the same for us.
Fast-forward a year or two when I was in the Jr. High locker room and a classmate was being pushed around in the shower. Stepping in between the classmate and the bully, I took a shove, slid across the floor on a nice film of soap, and ended up on my rear-end in the gutter of the shower. Laughter ensued of course, it is Jr. High after-all, but the laughter was now on me and my classmate was able to slip away safely. This really was no doing of my own, it was God. At some point, someone allowed me the grace to stop running from God and understand that Jesus Christ stuck his neck out for me in a big way. It was more than his neck. He stuck his whole body out for me on the cross. I learned what it meant to “be loved,” and it made a difference for that classmate.
“Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.” These words of Paul make no sense if we don’t believe God acts the same way. But life is different when we understand that Jesus Christ loved all of his neighbors (the whole world) as much as himself; dying for everyone’s sake on the cross. Life is different when you are told that you are loved.
Instead, of running away from a God who was going to drop a piano on my head, I would have used that same amount of time to go and pick flowers for my neighbor (she was a cute golden-haired girl, just a year younger than myself). Or I could have gathered more of those violets and shared them with the cute girl’s great grandmother. Life would have been different if I would have known that God loved instead of despised.
You are loved by God, more than God loves Godself. That is the message of the cross. You are loved. And, it makes a difference in how we see the world, in how we see other sinful people like us walking around, and how we act towards them individually and as a church. But, that will be the subject of next week’s reflection. Just know today that God is a God of mercy. You are loved. Allow yourself to “be loved.”
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