Grace to you and
peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen
Some of you may
be familiar with Eugene Peterson, a Presbyterian pastor and scholar, writer of
many books, and translator of the Message Bible.
Last week I ran
across the following on Facebook:
“Eugene Peterson’s son Leif said at the
funeral that his dad only had one sermon—that he had everyone fooled for 29
years of pastoral ministry, that for all his books he only had one message.
It was a secret Leif said his dad had let
him in on early in life. It was a
message that Leif said his dad had whispered in his heart for 50 years, words he had snuck into his room to
say over him as he slept as a child:
“God loves you.
God is on your side.
He is coming after you.
He is relentless.””
I love that
message.
It is truly the
heart of the Gospel.
We’d do well to
write it on our hearts and cling to it, throughout all our goings in and coming
outs.
Let it be the
first thing we think of each morning.
Let it be the
last thing we remember each night.
God loves you.
And as a lover
God wants only the best for you.
And God is on
your side.
How many times have we
envisioned God has an adversary, not an advocate? Someone to fear, not love?
God’s on YOUR
side. Remember that.
God is coming
after you.
The parable of
the Prodigal Son is one of my favorites.
Of course the
story line there is of the wayward Son who left his Father’s house to go to a
distant country, where all sorts of adversity befell him.
Finally, coming
to his senses, he returns home to repent before his father and beg to be
accepted as a slave and servant.
His Father,
however, had been waiting and watching for him, and when he saw him ran to
greet him, embrace him, and welcome him home.
All that is very
familiar to us.
But I think there
is one thing Eugene Peterson got right, that the parable had wrong.
“God is coming
after you.”
God doesn’t just
wait and watch, hoping that you yourself will decide one day to return home.
God is actively
seeking you out and pursuing you wherever you roam, and God will simply not
rest until he finds you.
Which brings up
Eugene Peterson’s final point:
God is relentless.
God will not give up on anyone as lost.
God will not give up on anyone, period.
God will not give up.
Not until all of
us are in his arms and embraced by his love.
“God loves you.
God is on your side.
He is coming after you.
He is relentless.””
In today’s Gospel
lesson Jesus speaks of the future in ominous tones.
“Nation will rise against nation, and
kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places
famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from
heaven. “But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you;
they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought
before kings and governors because of my name.”
Hearing stuff
like this can make us quiver with fear and anxiety about what is coming.
What does the
future hold and can we endure.
This last week I
wrote the following in my blog:
“One irreversible change that has occurred
globally is the interaction between diverse cultures and people. The
world is becoming smaller. And our experience of one another is
expanding. Advances in communication and travel have brought the world
closer together resulting in an experience of diversity never before
imagined. When I grew up in Irene, SD, our town was comprised almost
exclusively of Norwegian Americans. The next town over was Danish
American. And so it was across the Great Plains. During the time of
homesteading ethnic groups settled together. Interaction with other
groups and communities was very limited. The result was a sense of
homogeneity. Irene was Lutheran and exclusively White.
The question for the future will be whether we seek to cling to a tribalism that is a remnant of the past, or embrace a diversity of people that reflects the interaction between people of different ethnic, cultural, political and religious backgrounds. For the Church the implications are straight forward. We will either seek to maintain the exclusive claims and closed communities of the past or we will learn to thrive in a world that is pluralistic. Within the Church we will need to become more ecumenical, beyond the Church we will need to address interfaith relationships, and individually we will have to deal with diversity as a 'next door' issue.
I'm actually excited about the prospects for the future. I believe that the human experience will be richer for the diversity. But we will have to get over the desire to mandate conformity in order to enjoy it. Religious communities will not even be able to maintain homogeneity within their own membership ranks. That's not so bad, unless you’re compelled to fight about it.”
The question for the future will be whether we seek to cling to a tribalism that is a remnant of the past, or embrace a diversity of people that reflects the interaction between people of different ethnic, cultural, political and religious backgrounds. For the Church the implications are straight forward. We will either seek to maintain the exclusive claims and closed communities of the past or we will learn to thrive in a world that is pluralistic. Within the Church we will need to become more ecumenical, beyond the Church we will need to address interfaith relationships, and individually we will have to deal with diversity as a 'next door' issue.
I'm actually excited about the prospects for the future. I believe that the human experience will be richer for the diversity. But we will have to get over the desire to mandate conformity in order to enjoy it. Religious communities will not even be able to maintain homogeneity within their own membership ranks. That's not so bad, unless you’re compelled to fight about it.”
Is diversity
something that excites you?
Or is it
something that alarms you?
Are you prone to
embrace it?
Or to fight it?
When people from
every walk of life, and every corner of the world are thrust together there
will be conflict. There simply will be.
There will be
wars and insurrections.
Nation will rise
against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.
Jesus goes on to
say:
“You will be betrayed even by parents and
brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. You
will be hated by all because of my name.”
2,000 years have passed
since Jesus uttered these words. One
question is whether those events of which he speaks have already transpired,
for example, during the persecution of the Church in the first Century.
Or whether these
words warn us of a future that is yet to come.
It is both.
The early
Christians experienced these conflicts.
And as we become
more diverse as a society, and as the world finds itself brought together more
and more by travel and communication, the conflicts are going to intensify.
They will
intensify because human nature is to abhor diversity and seek conformity.
Amid all this
upheaval, amid all this turmoil, amid all the conflict and trials there are two
messages to remember.
The first is
Eugene Peterson’s message:
“God loves you.
God
is on your side.
He is coming after you.
He
is relentless.”
And the second
message is like it, but different in a very important way, that is, the message
that is so important for us, is also true for our neighbor.
“God loves them.
God is on their side, as well.
God seeks them
out.
And God will relentlessly
continue to pursue them until he can embrace them in his loving arms.”
In other words, “we
are in this together.”
There are two
things that are very difficult for us to embrace at the very core of our soul:
That God loves
me.
And that God
loves you as well.
And so we need to
remind each other of that message.
Day after day.
Year after year.
God only has one
message for us:
“I love you.
I’m on your side.
I’m coming for
you.
And I will not
give up.”
Amen
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