May 21, 2000
The idea of being lost in wonder, love, and praise has always been an intriguing idea and one that, every once in a while, I have experienced. John writing in both his epistle and the Gospel today almost at the end of the Easter season speaks to us words of great reassurance and comfort as we prepare to celebrate the Ascension and prepare ourselves for the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.
In the first epistle of John, we have these wonderful words to speak to us in the moment of our grief, our sadness, our despair, our hopelessness, our sense of loss. When John writes to us, "By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us, for God is greater than our hearts and he knows everything." The one who condemns us is not Christ, it is not God, it is our hearts. This is probably an idea that most of us realize when we think about it — even when we think that God is going to be angry with us, or that God is punishing us for some long ago sin or infraction of some rule or another.
John reminds us that God sent his son into this world to save the world, not to condemn it. The world through him would be saved — that his death, resurrection and ascension is sufficient for the salvation of the whole world, and that our hearts are lying to us when they condemn us. I have been a priest now for 24 years and in those 24 years I have heard an awful lot of people who have shared burdens of guilt with me, who have told me that they were not worthy to receive the blessings of God, frequently because of some long ago youthful indiscretion that is forgotten by everyone but that one person, and long ago set aside by our Lord.
Sometimes our hearts condemn us because of the sins of others — the sins of those others who tell us that we will never measure up. Rather than assume they are wrong, we assume that we are unworthy. Some condemn us for voting the way we vote, living where we live, working where we work, believing the way in which we believe in the Lord. We wander around with this sense that they may be right, that we, in fact, may be incorrect, and our hearts condemn us, rather that saying, "Wait a minute, God is large. God is the God of variety. God has brought people to believe in him through every conceivable method."
If we look at the plants of the earth, why do we need so many? We need green plants to convert carbon dioxide back into oxygen so we can breath. They need us to convert oxygen back into carbon dioxide so they can breath. Why do we need more than one kind of plant to do that? God loves variety. Look around us in this desert where there is so much variety. Travel the earth and see all the varieties of green things, all performing the same vital function for us, but all giving us something different in beauty. Look at the faces around you, there are no two the same. Even identical twins have differences.
And so, when someone says to us that we don't believe correctly or our thoughts are not exactly right because they don't agree, why do we believe that, instead of believing that God has given a variety of ways of understanding? Our hearts say, "doubt." In creeps the doubt and the lies that say we are not worthy, and we wander around with this free-flowing anxiety that says I may or may not be worthy.
Some of us know what survival guilt is — having been in a terrible accident where some were killed and we lived. We feel guilt because we are the ones who lived and someone else died. That's one of the things I wrestle with quite often because when I was shot down in Vietnam, three of my crew members died and three lived. You wonder why that happened. So as we come back, we struggle with these doubts that Satan plants in our hearts to condemn us, when the arms of Christ are spread out broad to embrace us with his love and, ultimately, to answer the questions of why things happen.
John reminds us that God knows us completely better than we know ourselves and that his purpose in Jesus Christ is to forgive us, to restore us, to bring us to himself even when we're hurting. God knows us more completely than we know ourselves and yet, he does not condemn us. Instead, he takes away all the stain and all the brokenness and all the guilt that we could ever contain and removes it completely. We are reminded by John in his letter and his gospel, and over and over again throughout the scriptures, that God's posture towards us is one of absolute, undying, unremitting love, and forgiveness, and care. While our sins may hammer nails into his hands and feet, while our sins may drive the spear deep into his heart, he continues to stretch out his arms of love to embrace us and to hold us fast.
If you have ever had a two-year old (or been one), think about the time the two-year old will throw a tantrum and kick and scream at his parents. The parent will hold close the child to keep his arms and legs from flailing so that no one gets hurt. They are not the arms of punishment, but the arms of protection. So, God treats us that way. We flail around in anger and frustration about the circumstances that life has dealt us. We feel guilty about being that way, but God embraces us to his bosom to protect us and to keep us from injuring ourselves.
No one of us can avoid the pain of sins committed. No one of us can consistently choose to do the right thing. That's not what is important. What's important is that Jesus chooses to forgive us, to call us home, to seek after us and to bring us back. He chooses not to leave us orphaned and desolate. He chooses not to leave us in despair, but to adopt us as his children and heirs, to raise us up to a new plateau of hope and grace and peace. As he says to his disciples today in the gospel, he sends his Spirit to be present with us as his first gift of love, his first gift of hope, his first gift of reconciliation.
Here in mid-Easter, we are reminded again that Jesus promises to us his love, that Jesus promises his comfort with the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, knowing us perfectly and loving us. As you allow his love to sink deeply within your soul, you will find it both cleansing and forgiving to do his will and to live his life and, eventually, maybe even our minds and our hearts can come together. So often, we are frustrated like Paul when he writes to the Romans, "The good that I would do, I cannot, and the evil that I hate is what I wind up doing." Remember he says, "Who is to rescue us from this?" And, he immediately answers, "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord." Our Lord eventually brings us to be able to do what our hearts desire and what our minds want, not because of our power, but because of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
So, let us take the words of John to heart, both in his epistle and in the gospel today. The Lord believes in us, the Lord loves us, and we are simply called to believe in the Lord and love one another. AMEN.
The Rev. Dr. Robert Certain
rgcertain@stmargarets.org
21 May 2000