Because We Need It--June 17, 2021

Because We Need It--June 17, 2021

"Human beings, of course, swear by someone greater than themselves, and an oath given as confirmation puts an end to all dispute. In the same way, when God desired to show even more clearly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it by an oath, so that through two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible that God would prove false, we who have take refuge might be strongly encouraged to seize the hope set before us." [Hebrews 6:16-18]

Let me tell you about Charlie the Stegosaurus.

When I was a kid--couldn't have been more than six or seven years old--my mother made me a stuffed dinosaur out of primary-colored cloth, whom I proceeded to name, "Charlie." (You know, like you do.)  Charlie was unquestionably mine, made literally by hand as a gift from my mother for Christmas, and there was going to be no doubt that Charlie was mine.  Literally no one else on earth had this dinosaur, unlike, say, my G.I. Joe or He-Man action figures, which were all identical to millions of other exact copies available at toy stores and malls across the country.  Charlie was uniquely mine.

But, being a kid of six or seven years, I was worried.  How could I know that there was no possibility that Charlie could get confused with someone else's stuffed toy dinosaur?  What if we went to a park and some other kid's mom had made him a blue stegosaurus?  What if we got them confused and didn't know whose was whose?  (Maybe I had recently seen The Parent Trap and had this irrational fear of identical things being unwittingly switched?)  I wanted a further step, in writing, to make it clear that this particular plush blue stegosaurus was my Charlie.

So I asked my mother to print the name "Charlie" on the bottom of his bright red cloth belly, and my mother smiled, hoping that would satisfy my need.

It did not.  I was worried about the possibility that some other hypothetical child who also had the same taste in stuffed dinosaurs, and whose hypothetical mother also made them an identical stegosaurus, would also have picked the name "Charlie" and had it written on his dinosaur's belly, too.  

So I insisted that my mother write, "Stevie Bond's Charlie." on this toy's underside... which she did.

And then I insisted on the date--just to distinguish mine, in case the other (again, still completely hypothetical) kid was also named Stevie Bond.  My mother, God love her, indulged me.

She even added a heart at the end to make it utterly completely undoubtedly unique, and with that she assured me that this dinosaur was unmistakably mine.  No further graffiti on the belly of the dinosaur was necessary, she assured me.

Well, of course, none of those additional things were necessary for the dinosaur's sake.  He was already mine simply by virtue of having been given it by my mother who made him.  Charlie the Steogsaurus was mine all along as a free gift, simply on my mother's say-so, and because of her labor to stitch it together for me.

The writing?  That was all because of my need to be super-duper absolutely sure that this gift belonged to me--even though the giver herself had already assured me it did.  But she was willing to to through all that extra rigamarole because of my need to have assurance that it was so.  And so, because the nature of the giver was gracious, and because she wanted me to be at peace, rather than obsessed with worry that this gift might somehow disappear on me, she went to those extra lengths.

It turns out that God is a lot like the mother of a six-and-a-half year old kid who is fussing over the need to know his stuffed dinosaur is really his forever.  The writer of Hebrews talks about the way God makes promises, and God ends up sound a lot like my patient mother, going to extra lengths to make sure we know that those promises are secure.  That's why there is this whole business about how God makes oaths and swore by God's own self back in earlier biblical stories.  It's not because God needs all those extra gestures to make some heavenly magic work; it's not that oaths are like spells governed by invisible forces.  It's that God knows how to speak our language, to approach our level, and to relate in our terms.  God knows that we human beings have developed special ways of assuring each other when we really mean our promises (this is necessary in a species like ours, because we are so very adept at lying), and so when we really really really mean something, we swear an oath or sign a contract or seal a covenant or notarize a document.  All of this, from God's vantage point, is rather like a little kid asking for all sorts of tedious wording written on the bottom of the gift that was already his, but God is willing to indulge because we need the peace of mind.

So ours is a God who swears that the promises God makes are true, not because God needs the oath to keep heaven accountable, but because we are the sorts of insecure little children who are terribly afraid the promises won't hold... and God wants us to know we can trust a divine promise.

In an important sense, so much of what we do in our worship life as Christians is just like that--they are words we need for our sake, not for God's.  God knows our sins before we have spoken them out loud--but we need to admit them, lay them out, give them to God, and hear God's forgiveness, because we need the assurance we are forgiven.  We need to be re-storied into life by the Meal of Jesus, not because God needs us to keep offering some kind of ritual sacrifice (which was, in fact, what some of medieval theology taught), but because this is God's gift and we need to be fed and forgiven again.  We need the assurance of God's love spoken to us, not because God needs to be reminded to keep loving us, but because we need to know it hasn't changed.

All of this--like so many words written in black Sharpie ink on the belly of a plush stegosaurus--is what God does for us, because of our need.

What a gift of grace it is to know we are loved like this.  And what a gift it is to know God is willing to keep on assuring us of the certainty of God's promises.

Lord God, we admit that we are needy--indulge us and assure us that your love is certain, your promises unfailing, and your faithfulness is unrelenting.  Go to those lengths, we dare to pray, because we need it.