Wow, I'm really not doing well. It's only the 9th day of Lent and I've already missed two of them.
Fortunately, there is grace.
Also, yesterday I spent the better part of the day traveling, so there is that.
"Sometimes the Good News turns into Good Advice."
I heard pastor Carlos Rodriguez say that sentence in his sermon tonight.
I was struck by how often the church does that.
We take this amazing message about this amazing Jesus, this radical who completely redefined what it means to love someone, and we make it something it never was meant to be.
The Good News - the message of Jesus, alive for the world to know - we tell people that.
And then once they decide that's the Jesus they need, we start giving them all of these RULES. The Good News becomes a set of rules to live by so that God will be pleased with them. And suddenly, it's just good advice, rather than gospel.
Well .... Jesus wouldn't like that.
Jesus definitely doesn't approve of her.
That isn't what God wants.
Is it?
Or is it us?
Because I think the problem isn't them.
I think the problem is us.
Jesus' only list of who was in and who was out was "all are in."
If you wanted to be part of Jesus' movement, that's all it took.
You didn't have to clean up your act first.
You didn't have to fix the sins in your life.
You just had to want to be in.
Shouldn't that be what the church is about?
Shouldn't we be pronouncing from the pulpits and the coffee bars that Jesus wants you just like you are?
God isn't into playing games with people.
This isn't a bait and switch situation.
This is a God who craves relationship with God's people.
And that's it.
I used to hear a phrase that said, "Jesus loves you just as you are, but he loves you too much to leave you that way."
I think that might be the most warped theology of Jesus I've ever heard.
What parent would ever say something like that to their child?
OF COURSE we love our children exactly as they are!
Do I wish that some of Ella's choices were different? Sure.
But I would never ask her to change who she is!
She is exactly the way God made her to be and I am insanely proud of who she is!
I cannot imagine that God sees any of us any differently.
So why do we go around proclaiming what it is that God loves and God hates?
Why do we waste our breath telling people how to "get right with God?"
Why do we turn them off to a God who is begging for their attention?
Because the problem is us.
We're afraid that letting "them" into the club will make our membership less somehow.
If "those people" are beloved, then what have I worked my whole life for?
If "they" can get in, what difference does it make what I do?
Rest, my friends...
Rest in the knowledge that there is not a single thing you can do to earn God's love.
You can't earn it because you already have it.
More of it than you can imagine.
So maybe stop spending so much time trying to figure out who God loves more and just let God love you. And them. And me. And your worst enemy.
That is the Good News, after all.
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