God's Kind of Good--September 24, 2020

 God's Kind of Good--September 24, 2020

"Good and upright is the LORD; 

     therefore he instructs sinners in the way. 

He leads the humble in what is right, 

     and teaches the humble his way. 

All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness, 

     for those who keep his covenant and his decrees." [Psalm 25:8-10]

God is good.  (Feel free to add your own reply, "All the time," call-and-response style, if you want to.  I'll wait.)

Okay, so God is good. (Even my childhood table prayer that force-rhymed "good" with "food" said so, too.)  But--what does that mean?  What does that look like?  How would I recognize the goodness of God?

Well, the ancient poets have some thoughts about that.  They point us in a really important direction: they show us grace.  In these verses from Psalm 25, we're shown that God's goodness is seen in the way God meets mess-ups and helps them start over.  Not just that God lets people have a second chance (which by itself is grace), but that God helps to teach and lead us in new ways, when our old ones have been dead-ends.  God's goodness is seen in God's choice to walk beside "the humble"--or "the lowly," as other translations put it, which is to say, the nobodies, the not-good-enoughs, the unacceptables, or as Howard Thurman put it, folks "with their backs against the wall" and to lead them on a good path.  That's how you know God is good:  God lets us begin again, and actively helps us to do it when we are in a bad spot.

Now, I want to ask us to stop for a moment and just let that sink in, because that's not always how Respectable Religious Folk have thought about God's goodness.  Often, it's been just the opposite--there have been lots of voices over the centuries who said that you know God is good because God can't tolerate bad people.  They have said that God's holiness and righteousness mean that God's first reaction on seeing sinners is to want to zap them.  In fact, our older brother in the faith Martin Luther had a huge realization on this very point: when he read Bible passages about "the righteousness of God," for a long time, it made him afraid, because he had always been taught that God's "righteousness" meant that God is so perfectly good and moral and holy that God must destroy and punish anything less than perfection.  And part of Luther's discovery (from, you know, actually reading biblical writers like the psalmist here) was that God isn't a Cosmic Building Inspector, issuing citations for everything that violates code and then leave us to our own devices to try (and fail) to fix them.  God doesn't have an allergy to sinners that makes the Almighty break out in hives any time someone messes up, either.  God doesn't immediately execute wrath and judgment the moment anybody jaywalks or relapses.  Instead, God helps us up again.  For the folks whose own actions or choices led them to fall down, God stoops down and helps them get on their feet again.  And for the ones who have just been down in the pit for as long as they can remember, God climbs in and helps pull them out, too.  That's God's kind of goodness--not zapping the unworthy for their unworthiness, but helping us to start over on a better foot.

Of course, there's still something in us that is used to picturing God as some ruthlessly efficient executioner.  A lot of what passes for Respectable Religion today is still built on the idea that God's "goodness" and "righteousness" are primarily something to be afraid of--because, they say, God cannot tolerate being in the presence of sinners and must vanquish transgressors wherever God finds them lurking.  And instead, if we actually read the Scriptures, they frame God's uprightness and goodness as a source of hope.  God, they say, isn't the bouncer of the club telling people who don't measure up that they aren't allowed in; rather, God is the One who finds the broken and heals us, finds the failures and gives us a new start, finds the ones who have been thrown away and calls us beloved.  That's what God's goodness looks like.

Now, what will we do in light of goodness like that?  It is so easy for us to hear verses like this and only take them as far as, "Well, that's good news, because I'm a sinner. I'm glad God forgives me," while in the very next breath have absolutely zero compassion or mercy for the people next door, or down the road, or sleeping in their car under a bridge after falling off the wagon again.  It is really easy for me to sing, "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me" without ever considering that such grace extends to people I don't want to give second chances to.

I was talking with an acquaintance of mine not long ago about a situation she knows where a dad is raising three kids all under five alone, and how his past from decades ago means he can't find a decent house for them to live in, because his criminal record prevents him from getting into a better place for his kids.  He's working while also taking care of the kids, and he has turned his life around from the old habits that got him in trouble before, but our system has no way of letting him fully restart, even though he is trying with everything he has to raise his kids well and to care for them.  And I know, I get it, I can hear the voice welling up inside that wants to say, "Well, he shouldn't have made whatever mistakes he made before when he broke the law."  And yet, when I look to the Scriptures, they don't picture God saying, "Your mess-ups will haunt you forever, and there is no real escape from your past," but rather, I hear them saying, "God's kind of goodness means we can start over again."  I guess we have to decide whose voice we will listen to on the subject of what makes God "good"--is it some rigid need for punishment of wrongdoing, or is it God's commitment to helping sinners (like me) start over again?

And if we dare to let the psalmist shape our thinking, will we let God's goodness make us into people whose goodness is seen in the ways we love and accompany folks with their backs against the wall?  Or will we be one more crowd of Respectable Religious people whose "righteousness" makes everybody around us afraid to talk to us?

I know at least who I want to be today.

Lord God, you are good, and your goodness surprises us in the ways you reach out to set us back up on our feet..  Let your goodness fill us so that we can share it with the world.