The Enemy in the Mirror--March 17, 2023

 
The Enemy in the Mirror--March 17, 2023

"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 can't help but think of the punchline of that old Pogo cartoon that goes , "We have met the enemy... and he is us."

That line lands like a punch for me, not just as a riff on the words of Oliver Perry from the War of 1812, but as a wake-up call.  When we talk about people being "enemies," it's not just other people I don't like.  I have been... and sometimes still am, "the enemy."

Even when it comes to God.   Yikes.  That's a hard pill to swallow.

It's hard--but necessary--to hear that the "enemies of God" aren't some OTHER people, you know, who don't measure up to MY expectations or seem worthy to ME.  I've been the "enemy of God"--and yet, that never stopped God from loving me, not even exactly at the point where I've been turned away dead-set against God's ways and love.  God's love includes enemies... which includes me.

That has a way of humbling us, doesn't it?  It sure is easier on the ol' ego to imagine that "the enemies of God" are some 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.  It's easy to think that at best God might sometimes choose to throw "those people" a bone, and at worst that God has those "enemies" locked in the divine target sights and is preparing to unleash a ruthless, bloodthirsty assault of lightning bolts or locusts at them. 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... or a dose of divine vengeance. "We"--you know, as in, "God and me and the other good, respectable religious people"--we get to stand in judgment of the ones "WE" have deemed as God's enemies. 

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 have in some way or another 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.

This is the radical idea from which the whole Christian faith flows: God has chosen to love us even while we were and are enemies of God--all of us. If that doesn't let all the air out of our arrogant self-righteous religiosity, I don't know what will. 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.

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.  Or, even worse, the watching world has heard us do nothing but condemn the ones we've labeled sinful slobs, worldly lost souls, or rejected reprobates.  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've met the enemy, and it's us--we've been 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 and complains, "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 twirling their villainous mustaches. No just people far away on the other side of the chasm. Right there in the mirror.

When we realize that we've been the enemies of God--who are loved yet enough for Jesus to lay down his life for us while we were enemies--it removes any ground we thought we had for looking down on anybody else.  You can't get any worse or more estranged than being an enemy--and yet, it is precisely "enemies of God" for whom Christ gave his life.  May that love change our perspective in this day.

Lord Jesus, help us see the lengths to which your love has gone for us... so that we may extend love to those around us we have been tempted to look down on or keep at arm's length.