Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message
Healing, Strengthening Love
April 28, 2021
In counseling people, I occasionally ask them what they imagine God’s idea of them is. The answers show a troubling, and scary consistency. Only a few think that God thinks highly of them. Frankly, some of these few scare me because they think it’s them and God against the world. Most people will confess that they believe in principle that God loves them, but almost universally believe God disapproves of them, is critical of them, or is deeply disappointed in them. I suppose that’s better than thinking arrogantly that God loves everything about them. But it is not any truer, and certainly not what Jesus taught us about God.
God created each and every one of us. We are God’s flock, and the sheep of God’s pasture; God’s folk, and the work of God’s hands. We are in God’s image. And when God creates, God looks at what God has made so far and says, as in each step of creation in Genesis 1: “How good it is!”
God loves you. God is proud of you. God is there for you, and hopes to finish God’s work in creating you. God sees you not as a police officer or judge sees a criminal, not as an abusive or manipulative parent or spouse sees the loved one they seek to change, but rather as a loving parent sees their children. God, like that crazy father of the two wayward sons, the prodigal and the priss, runs out and shamelessly hugs us and throws a celebration for us. Like that crazy old woman, she throws a party to celebrate the recovery of a coin, and spends more on the party than the coin is worth. Like a physician, God tries to heal and make us whole. God is crazy about you.
Simply sitting in the presence of such love and hopeful approval, simply contemplating love itself, both in the abstract and in the up-close-and-personal, is transforming, and will eventually heal us and transform our remaining flaws so that they become further reflections of God’s image, of our true selves that God intends in creating us. In thus finishing our creation, God says, as at the end of Genesis 1 “How very good it is!”
This is not from a doctrinal acceptance of the saving power of Jesus, or the authority of the Church or Bible. This is not from any of us affirming creedal faith in God. This is not from following prescribed rules and laws. It comes alone from the transforming power of God’s love in and of itself. There is no situation so dire, no failure so grave, no twisting of God’s image so distorted where God cannot continue in God’s great creative work, where the love of God cannot transform and heal. But the transformation worked by love is steady and relentless, and ends only in good, and more good.
As the preaching trope from the Black Church puts it: “Lord knows I ain’t what I oughta be, I ain’t what I’m gonna be, but thank God Almighty, I ain’t what I was!”
Grace and Peace. Fr. Tony+
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