Loved Back to Life

Loved Back to Life--April 27, 2018

"But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ--by grace you have been saved--and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." [Ephesians 2:4-7]

Think for a moment of someone whom you know loves you.  You pick the relationship, but it has to be someone you are wholly certain loves you.

Got someone in mind?  Someone who reminds you that, for whatever else may be said about you, you are beloved?

Ok.  Let's do a thought experiment.  

Let's imagine (or maybe just remember) a situation where you blew it with this relationship in your life.  You just plain blew it.  Maybe violated trust.  Maybe said harsh words you could not unsay as much as you wished to once they were breathed into the air.  Maybe let down or disappointed.  Maybe took the other for granted.  Maybe ignored when you should have spent time.  Maybe broke their heart.  We have all done it, and probably in all sorts of ways, in this life.  To parents and children, to spouses and friends.  We have blown it with the people who love us, and chances are, we are not done with it either (we are notoriously slow learners).

Now, let me ask: does the person you had in mind, someone whom you know loves you, does this person stop loving you when you blow it?

No.  The answer is no.  Part of the scandal of genuine love, as opposed to some chintzy counterfeit, is that the current behavior of the beloved does not factor into the equation.  Genuine love simply embraces the beloved, even when they are stinkers.  And yes, even if the beloved has effectively burned bridges from their side.  So whether it is my kids muttering angry threats because they don't want to go to bed, or your parent saying something raw and unfiltered without thinking how it could hurt you, or the friend who bailed out on you when you needed them, you do not stop loving them even when they damage the relationship.  That's why it hurts, after all, when the damage is done--you still love them, after all, regardless of what they do.  And as the old adage goes, you cannot love someone who cannot hurt you--or to put it in the positive, loving others always means being vulnerable to the possibility that they will burn the bridge from their side.  

Ok, so in a sense, the person you are picturing in your mind, whom you know in your bones loves you--you know that their care for you does not depend on what you bring to the picture.  On the days when you are a great son, daughter, spouse, friend, parent, or whatever... and on the days when you are a colossal failure. Love does not depend on the "worthiness," you could say, of the beloved--only on the choice of the one who loves.  In a weird way, that means that in our closest, most important, and most deeply held relationships, hold even in spite of ourselves, and regardless of our contributions.  

And yet, at the same time, the people you picture in your head--whom you know love you--these people love you in all the particularity of you.  It's you--and not just you as a random placeholder--whom they love.  It's you with whom you share stories and memories, thoughts and hopes.  It's you who are called beloved, and you don't fear that you will be forgotten along the way and left aside. Parents don't go to a different house every night after work and switch out a new set of kids for the old.  True friends don't disappear on you without warning and then blow back into your world when it suits them.  It's you in all of your you-ness that is beloved, after all.

So then, we know what it is, you and I, to be loved, and in that experience, we know that being truly beloved is, at one and the same time, both not about what particular things I bring to the relationship, and at the same times, exactly about me in all my particularity.  I am loved as I am, for who I am, but also regardless of what I have done.

Now, here's the amazing thing at the heart of the Good News:  that is precisely how we are loved by God in Christ as well.  We usually get it all backward--we sometimes talk as though God only loves "the world" in the abstract, without the details of who you and I are. And we also sound as if God's love is conditional, dependent on our good behavior, sufficient prayer, or keeping of rules.  But that's not how genuine love works.  

Ephesians makes that clear, in case we doubted.  God loved us "even when we were dead in sins," which is to say, even when we have burned all the bridges and turned away from God.  God loves us, and has loved us all along, regardless of what we have done, what we have said, or how we have blown it.  God's love does not depend on what we bring to the picture, and so it's like we were as good as dead on our own... but that didn't stop God from still loving us.  Like any real, true love, it is given without condition or fine print.  Even when we have said to God, "You're dead to me," God doesn't say it back to us.

And that is the second half of the wonder here in these verses--that God so loves the you-ness of you as to raise us to new life.  God doesn't just love "people" in the abstract, as though all God wanted was a crowd of placeholders, seat-fillers, and extras milling around heaven.  But because God loves you, it means you are not replaceable.  It is you as you that God chooses.  It is me as me.  So even when we have burned bridges with God and made ourselves as good as dead to the divine, God refuses to let that be the end of things.  So, Ephesians says, God has "made us alive together with Christ" already.  God doesn't just want "someone to love," like in the old Jefferson Airplane song, as though it's just a placeholder to occupy some empty place in God.  God chooses you.  God has loved--and still loves--you.  So even when you and I remove ourselves from relationship, blow it big time, turn away and cross our arms indignantly, God does the resurrecting from God's side.  God has already rebuilt the burned bridges from God's side.  God has already raised us to new life when we had made ourselves as good as dead.   That's how God's love works... because that's how genuine love works.

Today, remember this much: just like the other people in our lives who love us don't give up on us, regardless of what we bring to the relationship, God's love embraces us as we are, and raises us to life again when we have blown it.  The resurrection of Jesus doesn't just mean that Jesus is alive--it means that God refuses to give up on us... on me... on you. 

God loves us back to life.

O God, thank you for loving us.  Thank you for loving us as we are, in spite of us.  Thank you for loving us, precisely because of who we are, too.