For God So Loved The World

A few years back, I was in downtown San Francisco.  I love coffee and the hotel was out  so I set off down one of the long hills searching for a Starbucks.  I seemed to notice people were heading down the hill however I was too focused on my quest.   Soon, I found myself surrounded by thousands upon thousands of people.

I was in the middle of the annual Gay Pride Parade. I could not move because there was so many people  I panicked because I do not like crowds, I needed coffee and I had a meeting in 45 minutes.  I was stuck.  I sort of hopped up and down to get a better view.  Glimpsed an opening, put my head down, lowered the shoulders and pushed.

The crowd seemed to give way and I popped out in front of a well dressed man in his 40’s.  I was quite proud of my crowd maneuvering so I proudly smiled.  He looked me right in the eye, sneered and said: “Sinner! You are going to hell!” I was a bit surprised at his assessment because we hardly knew one another.

He then raised his hand and he was holding a book.  It was the most holy bible, with a round sticker - John 3:16.  He shook the bible in my face and said - “Jesus is coming back - if you don’t repent, you are condemned.”  and then “you need to find Jesus?”  I felt like saying: “Is Jesus lost?” Yet not wanting to agitate him further I said  “Yes, I have, have you found Jesus?”

He gave that look like I was an idiot with such a stupid question and said gave me a sharp “of course”  I then asked “for what?”  We have read one of the most familiar passages. It is on billboards, stickers and signs at sporting events.   In many ways it has come to represent Christianity; both the good and the bad.

It is a breathtaking description of God’s love; God sent his son into the world because of that love.  Yet it has been used to exclude and reject.  I have been asked how can such a beautiful passage be turned from God’s open accepting hand to a pointing, condemning finger.  From love to rejection.  Acceptance to closed doors.

Maybe it is because we are afraid, despite our statements of faith, to know a living God that is present in our lives.  We tend to like the Jesus of 2000 years ago, because he is distant and we can pick and choose what parts of his message we like. When Jesus becomes frozen in time, we can control him and create him in our own image.

We then have God who looks like us, thinks like us and acts like us. We create a God who lives in the same country and likes everything we like and hates everyone and everything we hate.  Who can blame us.  We want God on our side.  Yet that type of faith is easy, because we really do not have to live the message.

We begin to worship Jesus instead of following Jesus.    Jesus never asks us to worship him.  He always points to the Father and the beautiful Kingdom and then asks us to follow him.   If we only worship Jesus, we never really know him. He becomes a thing to look at rather than to live with.

If we only worship him, his words become like etchings on stones rather than inscriptions on our hearts. Following him requires that we bring him into our lives, so we can hear his voice, feel his touch, watch his movements, do what he truly does.  And it is there that we are transformed.  If you take one thing away from faith it is this:  we believe in a living and loving God.

Not a statue, not a story, not the distant past or an easy set of rote biblical passages.  We believe in a living God. And that means that Jesus is continually breaking into our world, into our lives, daily, hourly, moment by precious moment. God so loved us that he sent his son into our world not only 2000 years ago, but throughout eternity.

God thought more of us than we believe possible, that is why he is constantly breaking into our lives.  A theologian (1) wrote: "The world has been irreparably changed by Jesus Christ.  The gospel breaks our train of thought, shatters our comfortable piety, cracks open our capsuled truths.   The flashing spirit of Jesus breaks new paths everywhere.

In entering human history God has shattered all previous conceptions of who God is and what man is supposed to be The life he has planned for us is his life, like he lived."  Christianity makes no sense  if we only believe God in the past instead of a real presence right here and right now.

The man shouting condemnations on the street must of experienced the love of God in some way.  I wanted to know “why he found Jesus?”  It cannot be to reject, isolate, and condemn God’s creation.  If he listened to Jesus’ works, looked into Jesus’ eyes, let Jesus break into his life - hate, rejection and condemnation would be impossible.

If he followed Jesus he would know that Jesus did not ask anyone to change before he met them in their journey.  He met people where they were in life - sick, healthy, lost, sinning and questioning.  He did not condemn them.  He met them and they were either healed or transformed. It was his presence, his acceptance that caused change.

I am constantly attempting and failing in following Jesus. I have all these faults, thoughts and biases.  I do not need to be saved once.  I need Jesus to save me daily.  I need him to break into my heart again and again, so that I do not condemn, I do not judge, so I do not create God in my own feeble, faulty image.

I have to live Jesus, so that I can try, really try to be so much like his Christ.  God so loved the world that he sent his only son. It is the most powerful message in the world. Far more powerful so than money, fame or might.  Imagine if we lived it like we say it.  To experience the risen Christ, new, again and again.

There is a story by Alice Walker that speaks of our tendency to talk God but not to live Christ.  It is of an old black woman, who has been worn down by old king cotton. In tattered rags she makes her way "down the road toward the big white church.” The good church folks are shocked. The reverend reminds her pleasantly that this isn’t her church, "as if one could choose the wrong one.”

She brushes past them and finds a seat near the back. Inside it is very cold, colder than usual.  She ignores the request of an usher to leave, but she is finally thrown out.  She is stunned, until she spies a familiar face coming down the road. She grins toothlessly and begins to giggle.

It is none other than Jesus, and he is walking toward her.  Jesus is breaking into her life.   The two of them walk on together.  She tells him her troubles, and he listens kindly, smiling at her warmly.  Under their feet the ground becomes like clouds, and they walk on without ever stopping. They are home.

The people in church never knew what happened to her. Some said they saw her jabbering to herself and walking off down the highway all alone. "They guessed maybe she had relatives across the river, some miles away, but none of them really knew.” "None of them really knew.”

That day in San Francisco the man looked at me for a moment with a questioning look.  He lowered his bible and turned away.  I pray he was thinking of why.  As for me, I was  thankful for him.  Because he was right.  I needed to find Jesus.  I was such in a rush to find coffee and make an appointment, he was breaking through and did not notice.

It could be at a VA Hospital, workplace, school, a mall, prison or at dinner with the family.  At that moment it was right there and right now on a sidewalk among thousands of people.  So I stopped, sat down and looked for Jesus.  In the middle of an enormous crowd.   I was among all the people that God so loves, that he sent his son.

Gay, straight, black, white, brown, yellow, immigrant, american, illegal, young, old, democrat, republican, christian, hindu, muslim and jewish, sinners and saints. Jesus breaking through.  God’s love and this beautiful passage is too profound and inexplainable to break it down into a formula of who is in or who is out.

Too bigs for signs, buttons or simplistic phrases. It is new and life changing, day in and day out.   So the next time we think we know what God wants - stop, listen and look for Jesus.  Because God so loved the world, God so loved you, that Jesus is breaking into the world right now - for you.  Find him and then become something new.



(1) Brennan Manning 
 Alice Walker's The Welcoming Table