Growing into Love--May 16, 2023

Growing into Love--May 16, 2023

[Paul said to the people of Athens:] "Since we are God's offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent..." [Acts 17:29-30]

For all the cute smiles, big eyes, and their way of saying the darnedest things, children can be just plain selfish. And I say that, not only as a parent, but as a former child who now realizes that I could be pretty self-absorbed.  

Look, I'm not here to bash "this younger generation" as somehow particularly more guilty, even though I know it's fashionable to criticize whoever is the youngest for not being as virtuous, dedicated, or polite as their forebears.  I think it's just a human thing--we start out with a predisposition to think we're the center of the universe, and it's only with the course of time and development of maturity that we learn to think of others more empathetically.  And because we don't see all the complexity of the grown-up world, we often don't realize how much those grown-ups are doing for us, all the time, when we are the kids.  Dinners get made and dishes get washed, seemingly by magic, or we assume that the adults who do these things for us do them because they think they are fun.  Clothes, shoes, toys, and food all appear without our awareness of the labor that went into earning the money that bought them and then went to the effort of getting them.  And pretty much we can be oblivious to anyone else's concerns but our own as kids.  

Now, our parents, our grandparents, and the rest of the circle of people who have loved us into being, they all know this in advance.  [They realize, if they are wise, that they were once the childishly self-absorbed ones themselves, once upon a time.] And yet that community of adults who love us chose in advance not to kick us out of the family, or to hate us, or to give up on us even at our most insufferable moments.  They looked forward to a time when we would grow into maturity, and they chose not to hold every little slight against us.  [To be sure, there are plenty of times that children have to deal with consequences of their actions and words, but there's a world of difference between that and being expelled from the family or cut off from love.]  In other words, the ones who loved us when we were at our worst were willing to overlook those times, to decide not to hold them against us, in the hopes of our arriving at a future time when we had outgrown those childish modes and left them behind.

In other words, while it is reasonable for parents or grandparents to expect their kids to grow into kind, responsible, and thoughtful adults themselves, those older generations are willing to put up with a lot of garbage in the meantime until the youngers ones come into their own.  There will come a time for what the apostle famously called "putting away childish things," but the way to get there is a posture of grace that doesn't keep weaponizing the wrongs of children.

If you and I can recognize that we have been loved this way in our own formative years, and if perhaps you know what it is like to extend that same graciousness to children, grandchildren, nieces, or nephews of your own, then you're in the right frame of mind to understand the claim here from Paul's speech in Acts 17.  Many of us heard this story this past Sunday, where Paul speaks with the people gathered at the Areopagus.  And in this passage, Paul makes the claim that God has treated all of the world with the same gracious lack of grudge-holding that our parents extended to us.

All of us--that is, every human being of all times and places--are offspring of God, Paul says.  We are God's own children, in other words--and like children, we can be pretty self-absorbed and oblivious to what's going on around us.  We aren't very good at picking up after ourselves; we can be rude and obnoxious.  And we're always pushing at boundaries thinking they don't apply to us.  All of that, on a worldwide scale--and yet, Paul says, for all of human history leading up to the coming of Jesus Christ, God was willing to put all of that on hold.  No grudges held. No guilt piling up for centuries of human crookedness. No accruing compound interest on our mounting debts to God for our sins and trespasses.  God chose not to keep record against humanity because, well, we've been like immature children... who are nevertheless children of God.

Our parents and grandparents were willing to be gracious with us as kids, not because we were "never really that bad," but because we were their children and they loved us--and love doesn't keep record of wrongs, in order that we might grow into maturity.  And Paul says that all of humanity counts as "God's offspring," so God has been forbearing with all of us, too.  And now that Christ has come into the world, there is a new way of being.  We are invited to grow out of the selfishness that made us little stinkers as kids and to step into a mature kind of love that cares for others, views the world with empathy, and, yes, knows how to bear with the selfishness of a new generation of little ones.  As with children growing into maturity, God's intention is not to leave us self-absorbed and immature forever, but to bring us to loving the way God loves--which is to say, the way Jesus loves.

With the coming of Christ into history, humanity has a new opportunity to grow up in love, and to see the ways God's love has been gracious with us all along--not holding our wrongs against us, and not letting our past wrongs disqualify us from growing up into Christ-likeness.  Now, Paul says, we can see how we've been show grace.  And now, at last, we can act like people whose love has come to maturity.  

Sometimes what it takes to love others without keeping score or holding grudges is to see how many times someone else chose not to keep score on you when you didn't even realize it. In other words, when we see later on with clarity how we have been loved without our awareness at the time, we become capable of loving [as God does] without needing to keep a tally of demerits or deserving.

I'm reminded of the closing lines of Ada Limon's achingly beautiful poem, "The Raincoat," where she reflects about sacrifices her mother made for her in childhood when she had medical issues and her parents got her care she needed.  Limon writes about one day, now as an adult the same age as her mother was in those childhood memories:

"I saw a mom take her raincoat off
and give it to her young daughter when
a storm took over the afternoon. My god,
I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her
raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel
that I never got wet."

That's just it.  In our times of childish irresponsibility and oblivious self-absorption, we don't realize how much others are doing to love us into being--and how they do not keep score at all they are doing for us.  But the circle isn't complete until, through the eyes of mature love, we see how much was done for us, and we become capable of loving as we have been loved first.  We can turn in a new direction--which is what "repenting" is really all about--and we can grow into the love we have first come to know maturely in Christ.

Today, with courage, let's take an honest look at our past and see how God has set aside our immaturity and selfishness without zapping us for it--and let's grow in a new direction, toward the love of Jesus, like sunflowers straining for the sun.

Lord Jesus, thank you for the ways your love did not keep score against us. Let us grow now to love like you--to love the way you have first loved us.