Let Love be Genuine (Proper 17A epistle)

 

Let Love Be Genuine (Proper 17A)
31 August 2014

8:00 am Eucharist with Holy Baptism; 10:00 am Sung Eucharist
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)

Jeremiah 15:15-21; Psalm 26:1-8; Romans 12:9-21; Matthew 16:21-28

God, give us hearts to feel and love,
take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

What is wrong with this picture? 

“Let love be genuine,” says St. Paul in today’s epistle.  But then he adds, “hate what is evil.”  “Feed and give drink to your enemy,” he says, and then adds, “by so doing, you will heap burning coals on his head.”  “Bless those who persecute you, … never avenge yourselves,” he says, but then adds, “leave room for the wrath of God.” 

The Psalm today says “I love you, God,” and then adds, “and I keep away from worthless people, and do not associate with the deceitful.  I have hated the company of evildoers; I will not sit down with the wicked.”  Jeremiah says, “Remember me, Lord, and visit me,” and then adds, “punish everyone who troubles me.” 

What is wrong with this picture? 

We hear in scripture that God is love.  But these passages today focus on the wrath of God.   We are taught to love our enemies, but these passages tell us to hate the wicked, or at least avoid them, and ask God to punish and destroy those who do us wrong.

It is a problem we find again and again in the Bible.  “I am a jealous God, visiting the sins of the wicked on their families for four generations!”—this about sums it up.   But even in these same ancient texts others have problems with the image.  Some try to soften it by saying “He is a loving God, slow to anger and of great patience!”  Others just focus on God’s loving kindness and covenant faithfulness, and leave the mystery of wrath alone. 

People try to reconcile these texts, somewhat at odds with each other, by saying that God loves the sinner but hates sin, or that love is demanding and sets boundaries, or that the wrath of God, the demands and punishments meted out by a just and angry God, are reconciled by Jesus taking the place of the wicked on the cross and suffering in the stead of those who have faith in him, thus “satisfying” the “wrath of God.”      

But these are cheap and wrong-headed ways of reconciling the irreconcilable. 

The problem with them is that they retain the basic image of God as anger, rather than as love.   The wrath of God is what destines us, in this view, to a burning lake of fire and brimstone for the eternities, unless that anger can somehow be placated and satisfied. 

    

When I was young, one of my high school debate partners regularly gave in the interpretive reading event Jonathan Edwards’ sermon, “Sinners in the hands of an Angry God.”  It was always a hit, in part because of the campy way he delivered it, one that underlined just how different the Calvinist take of God is from our age’s.  I repeat pat of that sermon here, to make sure you see exactly what the doctrine of the literal wrath of God is: 

“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.  …[T]here is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God’s hand has held you up. … O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder…”

Yikes. 

This is not God as love.  And it is not the God that Jesus taught. 

For Jesus, God is a loving parent, our abba or papa. 

For Jesus, God is a healer, a physician, not an Emperor, policeman, or a judge in a court of law. 

For Jesus, we should not try to avoid the wicked, but try to help them.  We must reach out and help others, because “it is not the well that need a physician, but the ill.”    He taught that it was not uncleanness we needed to worry about, but rather unkindness, cruelty, and abuse of others. 

For this, he was accused of being a sinner himself, spending all his time with whores, drunks, and greedy traitors.

When we talk about the wrath of God, it is important to remember that this does not describe the heart of God.  Talk about any of the emotions or passions of God, and you’re affirming that God is more than us, not less.  God’s wrath as an idea reminds us that justice is a basic character of God.  But it does not describe the heart of God:  to take such an image literally would be to say that God is as messed us as we are, unable to detach from our fears and limitations, and willing to engage in abuse to make a point or satisfy an interior rage.  No.  “The wrath of God” describes how things feel to us when we are alienated from God. 

The odd thing about today’s scripture lesson from Romans is that in Greek, Paul does not say “make room for the wrath of God.”   All he says is, “make room for wrath.” 

The idea is that in wickedness there is a naturally-built in suffering.  It may look and feel like punishment or pay-back from a person we have offended, now angry and raging at us.  We see again and again in scripture the idea that illness is a punishment from God.  But Jesus taught that suffering and illness come from opposition to God, not from God’s willing it.  If God has any intention in it, it is to give us the chance to help. 

C.S. Lewis, in talking about that image of God’ anger, Hell, imagines that Hell is in fact created by our own refusal of God’s grace.  He puts it this way, “In the end, when all is said and done, there are two groups of people:  those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, ‘alright, have it your own way.’” 

Sisters and brothers, there is so much we do not know, about God and about ourselves.  Since scripture is more like the field notes of God’s people than a stenographic record of the words and thoughts of God, we end up having divergent and sometimes contrary teachings in them.  That’s why it is so important as we read the varying teachings of scripture to settle ourselves on a firm foundation—and this is the life and teachings of Jesus: God is our loving parent.  God heals.  What matters is that we accept God’s grace and call.  This means having in our hearts firm assurance even as we may run into real suffering and pain that life brings.  Keep open hearts and minds, and let God heal and set things right in God’s good time.  Let love be genuine.  Recognize our own anger and pain, and still choose to accept God’s grace, and even our selves be agents of grace.  The way Jesus puts this is stark: follow him, pick up our cross and suffer along with him.  We must forgive, and not seek vengeance.  We must make room for wrath, that is, trust that wickedness is its own worst punishment, an illness that needs itself to be healed. 

In the name of Christ, Amen.