16

God Loves You*

*Right-now You, Not Potential-You.

Jesus was getting ready to make something of an inaugural address. He’d be done in less than twenty minutes, if the number of words we have recorded are any indicator. It would come to be known as the Sermon on the Mount.

And as far as God-Men preaching, it was good.

But the congregation hearing this sermon was a disaster.

The sermon begins in Matthew chapter five. At the end of chapter four we get a who’s who of those in attendance. There are Jews from Judea, Jerusalem and the Galilee. Adjusting for the glaring absence of a middle class, this means there were scores of farmers, fisherman and masons, a sea of blue collars, gathered with the religious elite from the holy city. Those elite would have representatives from the Pharisees – a Hebrew term that means separatist. These were the traditionalists who knew who was clean, who was pure, and what needed done about their imploding world. Antithetical to the Pharisees were the majority group, the Sadducees. These were the scriptural literalists, demanding people just do what the Bible says and stop believing everything else, which were lies. Also present were those from the Decapolis; the Ten Cities. This collection of city states had very little in the way of a semitic population, and would have brought a little Roman, Pagan flavor to the mix Jesus was addressing.

Then there were newly healed paralytics, wondering what they were going to do for cash now that they couldn’t beg.

Recently healed epileptics, thankful, though stepping cautiously in habitual anticipation of their next episode.

And the freshly exorcised demoniacs, having to themselves their own mind and will and desires for the first time in forever.

Jesus sits down on the hillside, clears his throat, and speaks, teacher to class.

Happy in their Spirits are the very ones you think should be sad. The poor. They’re the possessors of the Empire of God!

Happy are those who mourn for better days. They’ll get it.

Happy are those who don’t try to muscle their way into everything. They’re already in the Will.

Happy are those who are starved for more than just dinner, but for things to be as they should be. That meal will soon be served.

Happy are the merciful. The best kind of Karma is coming there way.

Happy are those who’ve made their hearts pure, not just their outward behavior. They are the ones who will see the God the pretenders pretend to know.

Happy are the ones who make and keep peace. They, not the ones who attack others in God’s name, are the children of God.

Happy are the ones persecuted for making things better, because they are establishing residence in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Happy are the ones slandered and troubled by others for associating with what I’m about. They’re in good company, because even the prophets of God had tough lives and we celebrate them for it.

This was a confusing way to start a sermon. It seemed clear that Jesus wasn’t laying out pathways for God’s love. Instead he seemed to be contradicting social norms. The very people they thought should be dubbed pitiful, pathetic, anathema, were given the opening lines of the sermon and presented as having what we thought was reserved for the chosen few.

The rich were cocking eyebrows.

The well educated were waiting for the punchline.

The dregs were scratching their dirty heads.

Jesus continued.

You are the Light of the world. You are the Salt of the Earth. You are a City on a Hill.

When he said “you”, he used a plural Greek term. It wasn’t to any one person. Rabbi Jesus said “Y’all”. Without qualification, asterisk or caveat, Jesus just told the whole group they were the plan. I can imagine the cliques on the hillside. Rich here, poor there, fisherman gathered over there, plumbers squatted down with their pants just low enough for a show for anyone behind them, religious leaders up front. The first verse of the chapter calls them “crowds,” with an s. Why pluralize a plural unless you want to communicate that the crowd didn’t think of themselves as one, but several. Pockets of differently valued and valuing people.

And Jesus called them y’all.

Something that must’ve irritated those who thought of themselves as having earned higher favor and something that staggered those who were literally conceived of as less human for their lack of stuff.

When God called Moses he complained that he talked too much bad and not good at words enough to for speaking.

When God called Gideon he objected on the grounds that he was a wimp from a family of wusses.

When God called Jeremiah, he explained to God that he could do what was asked because he was just a wittle boy.

Paul was often accused of being a first century version of the Wizard of Oz; pretty eloquent in his letters but embarrassingly underwhelming in person. Add to this he was complicit in the arrest, murder and orphaning of Christians before he became one himself.

It seems that religion portrays faith as a way of becoming the kind of person that the Universe will find acceptable and good, but the Source Material paints a picture of God not really being hung up on our evaluations.

It’s almost as if God loves people more than God loves the standards people feel so ashamed about failing.

There’s a quote on the lips and bumpers and on the internet that represents a certain kind of thinking well. It’s a pretty good quote.

“God loves you the way you are, but God loves you too much to leave you that way.”

It presents to me an including God who approves of the hymn “Just as I am” but who also has in mind that I will allow the overhaul God knows I so desperately need. There’s enough warmth and truth in this for me to respect it.

But there’s another angle in it to consider as I learn compassion in trade for the desire to control and conform others to my view.

This faith was summarized as love of other. It all hangs on compassion for the other as we want compassion for ourselves. On this hang every law and every tradition, according to who we hold as the Author of it. But many of us have come to believe subtly that the goal is to get right. To change. To surrender to God so that we can be what we were made to be.

Again, there’s some truth in there, but not enough to correct Jesus and say it all comes down to me changing.

I observe people’s pushback on the bumper sticker like this: If God’s real goal is to change me, isn’t this saying God has chiefly in mind to make me into someone else, which means God loves what I might become but is less into me now?

And doesn’t this mean that others, who God has been able to subdue and augment over time, are more acceptable to God than I am in my current pre-changed state?

And doesn’t acceptance equal love in any of our other relationships?

And so doesn’t this mean this is all really a sneaky way of saying God actually loves everyone to different degrees, based on how much they’ve become someone more in conformity with God’s preferences. And, therefore, God’s love is as finicky as mine?

And, what if I don’t want to be like the people God allegedly approves of more? What if what’s presented as “surrendered to God’s will and therefore more in divine alignment” is repulsive to me?

Jesus’s public ministry begins on a hillside and is staggeringly inclusive and gracious.

And the end of his public ministry, found at the very end of the gospel of Matthew, is the same.

“…the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain Jesus told them to go to. When they saw him, alive and well, they fell down and worshiped him. But some of them doubted. And Jesus approached and said to them, “All heavenly and earthly authority has been given to me. So go, make students of all nations, immersing them into the united reputation and character of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to live by all I have commanded you to live by. And know that I am always with you, always.”

Worshipers and doubters. Arms raised and arms folded. Blessed assurance along side eh, I’ve been reading Bart Ehrman, so….

To “them” he spoke. “Them” without distinction. Because compassion for people as they are was Jesus’s whole religion. Despite our familiarity – and our preference– for love being more rooted in a what best promises a return on investment, true love and compassion are actually something else. A prerequisite for change called love is something many of us left as soon as we didn’t have to go to church anymore as younger people.

Perhaps what slowly changes us is learning that even if we don’t change, we are as loved as anyone ever was. Maybe the peace that comes from recognizing I don’t have to behave desperately anymore is what changes me, rather than rules telling me to stop it or else. Maybe that insatiable hunger for acceptance and validation is satisfied when I understand that my performance and achievements don’t buy me love. I am loved because I exist, and therefore there’s noting to extract or persuade or steal. Maybe seeing myself in light of unconditional inclusion helps me to stop settling for superficial responses to my appetites. Maybe I stop believing all I am is appetites altogether.

Maybe what we call “sin” – which in a faith summarized by the Love of other must be defined by the withholding of Love from the other – is remedied by our decreasing desire to use and abuse others. Maybe both St. Paul and Sir Paul were right: Love is all we need.

A lot of garbage, foolishness, sin, and insanity has fallen off me as I have come to learn that Compassion doesn’t cordon off human beings into groups variously close to acceptance and rejection. Rules and ultimatums made me great at masking. Love makes me treat people better. Especially in that some of my junk has stayed with me like wine stains in the rug as a reminder of how hard it is to be human. Just enough calibrated self-awareness to help me resist the self-righteous zealot who wants to make everything a damned pecking-order again.

Good news; We don’t have to change to be included. Nor do we have to include only the changed. Everybody on the hill is invited. Compassion believes that people are all salt and light and beauty under layers of evidence to the contrary. Love is enough to make us everything we already are.