What message are we hearing from the church in America today? Is it truly good news or is it bad news? Is it full of fear or hope? Is it showing a way of punishment or a way of grace? Is it showing God as vengeful or God as loving?
The church says, “Come be a part of us. Be like us.” But if “being like us” means being judgmental to the group of teenagers walking down the street, feeling superior to next-door neighbors, fearing the politician who is taking away so-called rights, and self-aggrandizement over inclusivity, not many are going to want to join.
Not that it’s just about joining. Jesus wasn’t trying to get more and more people to join his group of disciples. No, he was about bringing abundant life to all. He was spreading the good news of hope and grace through “extravagant tenderness.” As Gregory Boyle says, “The disciples aren’t sent out to create an institution fortified by uniformity, just another tribe highly defended against all outside forces. Certainly, Western Christianity goofed some things up: it fostered separateness; it bet all its money on the “sin” horse; and it relied so heavily on external religious exercises. Clearly, we are being propelled into the world to cultivate a movement whose ventilating force is an extravagant tenderness. The disciples didn’t leave Jesus’ side with a fully memorized set of beliefs. Rather, theirs was a loving way of life that had become the air they breathed, anchored in contemplation and fully dedicated to kinship as its goal.”
Father Boyle’s words are packed with meaning! Take some time to read them again. Christianity should not be about calling people to separateness, to self-aggrandizement, nor to sanctimoniousness. Rather, it is a call to a loving way of life, with a goal of promoting kinship through extravagant tenderness. I love those words! They are full of good news!
That word “extravagant” pops up again in these verses from The Message: “Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that! (Ephesians 5:1-2)
This is the good news: God loves me, God loves you, and God loves us! Believing that good news then enables us to live with extravagant love. This is not a love that is manipulative, that only “loves” in order to get something, We don’t reach out to our neighbor in order to get them to come to church. We don’t reach out to our friend in order to get them to be like us. We love just to love (period). We love because God loves (period).
And what is God’s love like? Listen to these words from Brian McClaren: “The God imaged by Jesus exerts no dominating supremacy. In Christ, we see an image of a God who is not armed with lightning bolts but with basin and towel, who spewed not threats but good news for all, who rode not a warhorse but a donkey, weeping in compassion for people who do not know the way of peace. In Christ, God is supreme, but not in the old discredited paradigm of supremacy: God is the supreme healer, the supreme friend, the supreme lover, the supreme life-giver who self-empties in gracious love for all. The king of kings and lord of lords is the servant of all and the friend of sinners. The so-called weakness and foolishness of God are greater than the so-called power and wisdom of human regimes.” God is the supreme lover not the supreme dictator! Following this God will lead us down the way of extravagant love. A love that is not trying to get people to respond in a certain way, but a love that just loves.
So, once again I ask the question, what message is the church in America bringing, good news or bad news? I want to be part of a message of good news. Promoting this good news will not come from my striving effort but only from a relationship with a loving God who loves me, believes in me and works through me. Nothing I do or don’t do can separate me from this love (see Romans 8:38-39). And as Desmond Tutu echoed, “God is transfiguring the world right this very moment through us because God believes in us and because God loves us. What can separate us from the love of God? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” Amen.
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