Love To Stinky Face--October 28, 2024

Love To Stinky Face--October 28, 2024

"Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, 'For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.' No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus." [Romans 8:33-39]

One of my favorite theological treatises is a children's book entitled, "I Love You, Stinky Face."

The premise is a child being put to bed by his mom, and when she says to him, "I love you, my wonderful child," the son asks whether there are any situations that could arise which would negate that love. "What if I were a big, scary ape?" he asks, wondering if she would stop loving him then, only to be told that if that happened, she would comb all the tangles out of his fur, make him a banana flavored birthday cake, and say, "I love you, my big scary ape."

The son imagines all sorts of alternate scenarios: what if he were a giant skunk whose name was, "Stinky Face" (hence the title)? What if he were an alligator? What if he were a dinosaur, a swamp creature, or an alien? And to each reply, the mother answers, no matter what could happen in this life, she would always love him. He would always be her son. Those other changes could not undo the claim of love.

The story ends with the child satisfied that there is nothing he could do or be that would undo her claim of love, and he says, finally, "I love you, Mama," to which she offers the same reply as always: "And I love you, my wonderful child."

In so many words, that's what God says to us, forever and always. Paul the Apostle thinks up as many possible scenarios as he can to ask whether any of them could trump the power of God's love for us in Christ, and his conclusion is that not one of them--and not even all of them put together!--can separate us from God's love in Christ. As tedious as those verses might sound to our ears, reading through it like a laundry list, it's really Paul's way of making sure there are no exceptions, no fine print, no unconsidered possibilities, and no unlikely alternatives, where God's love does not hold. And the point, after all that rattling off of angels, rulers, powers, height, depth, and so on, is just like the conclusion of "I Love You, Stinky Face": there is nothing that can undo God's claim of love on us. Nothing from outside can get in between us, and nothing from inside me will change God's mind about me. In Christ, God only and always ever calls me, "wonderful child."  Like the song by Sara Groves puts it, "You cannot lose my love."  And it's true: we can't.

Now, that by itself is a thought to let sink in for a bit, because to be truthful, there have been lots of time that religious folks have inserted their own exceptions without God's permission. There have been voices who insisted that if you were divorced and remarried, God's love did not claim you any longer, or that people with AIDS were receiving God's wrath and were ineligible for God's love. There have been times that religious folk said if you committed suicide, that could prevent God's love from applying to you anymore (because, they said, you couldn't go to a priest to get proper forgiveness afterward), or if your parents weren't married, or if you weren't married but had a kid, or that if there wasn't a record on paper of a sufficient amount of water being sprinkled on your head by a religious professional and you died in infancy, you were also doomed to be cut off from God's love. As clear as Paul makes it here that "nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus," for the last two millennia, we Respectable Religious folk have been looking for ways to shoehorn in some limits, exceptions, or conditions to that exhaustively unconditional promise. All too often we have tried to suggest that we can be separated from God's love in Christ based on what we've done, who we love, what we think, what our bodies are like, or where we've come from. And frankly, that has to exasperate the apostle, because he has listed everything he could think of to insist that nothing--literally nothing--can separate us from God's love in Christ. Not even if we were all giant skunks named Stinky Face.

And to go one step further, Paul has tried to make it clear that God's love cannot sputter out because of even death itself. Not our death, and not Christ's--because he is risen from the dead now and can never die again. Jesus' love won't give out because of what we do, and it won't give out because of his own limitations or lifespan--because he is risen forever and is beyond the grip of death.

That makes the love of Jesus even more powerful than a mother's. Because, to be blunt about it, the bedtime conversation between a parent and child only lasts so long. At some point, kids don't think they need to hear the unconditional promise again. And at some point, time or distance separate parents and children. At some point tables turn and children take care of their parents, or as memory becomes foggy, grown children become the ones who tell their moms and dads, "I love you no matter what," and then at some point, death even interrupts that scene, too. The people who promise us from childhood on up that they will love us forever are not immune to death, and so even that promise of a parent, the closest thing most of us ever get to an unconditional promise of love from another person, has an asterisk and the condition added, "...as long as I am alive."

And that, dear ones, is what makes the love of Jesus qualitatively different. Jesus' kind of love has already gone through death and out the other side into resurrection, which means that God's love for us in Christ has no expiration date--not based on our death, and not based on Christ's. Because Christ is risen, he will never succumb to death again, and that means God will never stop saying, "I love you my wonderful child," of us. And even though we will have to deal with death ourselves, Christ's resurrection assures us that he does not let go of us even when we breath our last. We shut our eyes in this life hearing him say, "I love you, my wonderful child," and we wake to him saying it all over again in the resurrection life. Nothing can get in between.

Go ahead, imagine the most extreme possible scenario--becoming dinosaurs, skunks, aliens, monsters, or all of them put together--no matter what, God's love for us in Christ will not give up or give out.

Now, live this day confidently, because you are beloved.

Lord God, let us dare to trust the power of your resurrection and the strength of your love.