I Am 'Other', Too

I Am 'Other', Too--February 19, 2019

"But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life." [Romans 5:8-10]

I am the "other."  The outsider.  The one on the margins.  The estranged one.  And so are you.  

Or at least, in a sense, we had all made ourselves estranged and distant from God, and yet God loved us while we were in that condition.

We have been looking all month long at how Christ is present with "the other," but it can be easy to think that means "a separate group of people from me."  We can imagine that there's God and me on one side of a chasm, and then over there, across the abyss, there are some pitiable, pathetic "others" who are far, far away, and that God is sometimes nice and chooses to throw "those people" a bone.  Good respectable religious folks have a way of assuming that they are already rubbing elbows with God--it's just those others who are so far off and in need of a smidge of divine pity.  We--you know, as in, "God and me and the other good, respectable religious people"--we will hold an occasional car wash or bake sale to help "those people," the "other," the marginalized or the needy, we say.

And in that moment, God turns to us and says, like in the old joke, "What do you mean, 'we'?"  

See, it's not that Respectable Religious people are all close to God while there are a bunch of miserable wretches far off somewhere else.  We were all--Respectable Religious folks, too--distant, estranged, and even, to borrow Paul's word for it, enemies, of God.   And God just wouldn't take no for an answer--God wouldn't let our estrangement be the last word on the subject.

That means from God's perspective, all of us messy humans are "the other," and not just "other" in the sense of being different.  We have all, in our various ways, turned from God and crossed our arms in defiant rebellion.  We have all, on our own, wandered away from God.  And we keep doing it.  It's not just that Christians say, "I used to be a rotten sinner, but now I'm a perfect peach!" Rather, it's that we are constantly making ourselves enemies of God all over again, and God keeps on being determined to love us even as enemies.

It is this radical idea from which the whole Christian faith flows:  God has chosen to love us even while we were and are enemies of God.  God practices the same enemy-love that Jesus taught about--in fact, that is the whole point of Jesus' teaching: that we are to love our enemies because that is exactly God's policy toward a whole world full of stinkers, sinners, "those people," and estranged messes.  God's love did not wait for us to turn to God first. God's love did not wait for us to start to behave first.  And God's love still does not turn off and on like a faucet depending on my behavior, my closeness to God, or my religiosity.  God's love embraced me--and you, and all of us--as Paul notes, "while we were still sinners," and indeed "when we were enemies" of God.

That's about as "other" as you can get.  

So not only does God embrace what it "different," but God even unabashedly embraces us when we have set ourselves dead against God's goodness.  Even in our acts of betrayal.  Even when we are going further astray.  Even when we are in the far country envying the pig slop.

For folks who have been hanging around the church for very long, it is very easy to think that the church is the club for good boys and girls who from time to time raise a bit of money or take an exotic field trip of charity to donate our used clothes with the real messes.  But the apostle here says that we're all the sinful slobs, the destitute distant children who ran away from home, the ones who stopped answering God's phone calls.  We are other to the extreme--the enemies of God.  

And yet, that's not because God declared it so.  We made ourselves enemies, estranged, and outcast, and God just wouldn't stop loving us anyway, not even as enemies.

So before anybody groans or rolls their eyes about all this "Christ is present with the Other" stuff, as though it doesn't apply to us, and before anybody says, "Why do we always have to talk about God loving the Bad People when I'm one of the Good Guys?" as they tip their imaginary white hat, we should be clear: we are the ones who have been estranged from God, and we are the ones who have been shown mercy.  We are the distant ones who have been brought near.  We are "those people", too.  And that means we don't get to start judging who else is too far to be within the reach of God's mercy.  If God's love went to a cross for us when we were enemies of God, well, then, God's love went to a cross for all the other enemies of God, too.

That's how grace works--the worthiness of the recipient is not a factor in the equation.  The goodness or badness of the beloved is not the issue.  Even as enemies, Christ gave up his life for us.  And in that moment--at the cross--God once and for all declared an unending love for all the ones labeled "other" or "enemy."  Not just folks wearing black cowboy hats and twisting mustaches.  No just people from far away.  Right there in the mirror.

I am the "other.' And so are you.  And if God has loved us in our "other-ness," well then, I suspect we can count on it to be God's ongoing policy for a whole world full of messes, too.

Lord Jesus, help us to recognize our Other-ness so that we will also recognize that you have loved and claimed and died for us anyway, already.