Why Jesus Loves You

In case you have not heard this Good News, Jesus loves you. We all are sinners and we all fall short of the Goodness of the transcendent God in the Holy Spirit. In fact Jesus loves you so very much that even as a sinner, even before you or I repented, Jesus was willing to die on a cross. Most people would be willing to die for a family member, some may be willing to die for a friend. Few would die for a cause. There is just one that I know who died for the sake of all - including the enemy.

What this means is that you and I do not have to be perfect or pure in order for Jesus to love us. Jesus loves us first and then, in response to this radical acceptance of God’s love, we cannot help but change how we live and move in the world. And therein lies the overlooked reason why Jesus loves you.

Before we get to that reason, let us reflect on disciple Judas.

Judas was the misguided or even malicious disciple of Jesus who was so ashamed or distraught in his actions that he committed suicide. This disciple could not see any way out, he was so lost that he thought he had to be perfect or clean before Jesus would love him. Judas missed the point entirely and as a result is now the name we call people who are among the worst of the worst. So much so that in Dante’s telling of Hell, the fourth round in the lowest circle of Hell is called Judecca - and it is reserved for the traitors to lords/benefactors/masters.

It takes a lot of courage to love the traitor. It takes a lot of grace to see the on who betrays you is also a child of God. It takes a lot of mercy to overcome the hate harbored toward the one who betrays our trust. One might even say it takes divine love.

You and I are able to love family, friends, and even neighbors just fine without the help of Jesus. Jesus loves you so that you have the courage, grace and mercy to love the one who betrays you.

Jesus loves you so that you can love Judas.

And if that is not a humbling thought, don’t forget that someone probably thinks you are Judas.

The Christian Telos

There is a quote making its rounds on my socials that states, “The test of Christianity is not loving Jesus, it’s loving Judas.”

It is a clever turn and change of expectations. It is the sort of thing that preachers love to do if we are creative enough to come up with it.

The quote points out the telos of the Christian life. Telos is a fancy word that means the target or the end or the goal. For my doctoral work, I have had a decent number of conversations with people about what they would say the telos of the Christian faith is. One might imagine that there are numerous ideas. Some say the goal of the faith is to get to heaven. Some say it is to repair or restore the world. Some say it is to have a relationship with God. Some say it is to conformed in the likeness of Christ others say it is to glorify God.

The United Methodist Church suggests a telos “to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” The denomination recently splintered from the UMC (the Global Methodist Church) suggests a telos “to make disciples of Jesus Christ who worship passionately, love extravagantly, and witness boldly.”

According to theologian and scholar Roberta Bondi, the desert mothers and fathers taught the telos of the Christian life is love. The goal of the faith is love. More often we think that we do some loving action in the service of something else. That love is a means or a way to another goal. I love my child, so that they might… Or I extend love to someone else so they will… In this way, love is not the telos just the means or way we reach another telos.

When we treat love as a means to an end, then we run the risk of not loving in order to achieve the desired end. We might do unloving actions in order to achieve the telos of say, truth. But if love is the goal, then truth will bent for the sake of love. Not love for the sake of truth.

For instance, the famous scene in Les Misérables where a thief steals silverware from a bishop but then is caught. The authorities bring the thief back to the bishop so there may be a set of charges brought against the thief, but the bishop says the silverware was a gift from the priest. In fact the bishop then tells the authorities that the thief forgot the candlesticks.

In this famous illustration of grace, the truth was bent in the service of love. The bishop understands the telos is love, not truth. If the telos was truth then the bishop would have laid the charges against the thief, but this does not happen. The telos is not truth but love.

The quote from above points out the telos of love. The test of the Christian is our ability to love - especially the thief, betrayer, and enemy. If the goal was something else then we would only need to love Judas for the sake of something else greater.

But, as Paul says, the greatest of these things is love.

There is no greater telos.

The Comic Book Collector - A Parable

There was once a man who collected a particular comic book. He buys the newest comic book each week it comes out and faithfully puts it into one of those clear bags to help preserve it. He has been doing this for years and his collection is almost complete. Every edition except #3. He has never been able to find issue #3.

In all his travels, he visits every comic book store he can find. He attends festivals and conventions in an effort to find issue #3. No matter where he turns, no one has issue #3.

After a while, the man brings his entire collection to the publisher. He speaks with archivist of the publisher and shows off the entire “almost complete” collection. Even the archivist has never seen such a compete collection of this comic and is impressed. The man asked the archivist if it is possible to have a copy of issue #3 from the archives. To which the archivist says they will look into it.

Two weeks later, the archivist called the man and said, “Good News my friend! Your collection is complete!”

The man became confused and said, “Thanks for the call, but I still am missing issue #3. How is my collection complete?”

“At the time of these early editions, the typesetter made a mistake and it turns out that your issue #4 is technically issue #3! The whole printing system is off by a number and so that makes your collection complete!'“ exclaimed the archivist.

At the sound of this Good News the man grew angry and said, “I have searched high and low for issue #3 and everyone has kept me from getting it. And now even you are in on these efforts to thwart me! I know there is an issue #3 out there and I will not let you keep me from getting it.”

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Maybe you can understand the reaction of the collector. Maybe you too have heard someone say to you, ‘you are complete and beautiful!’ but you refuse to accept or hear it. Many of us, myself included, are convinced and addicted to a sense about ourselves - that we are incomplete. We cannot accept that who we are is loveable and complete. We believe that there is an issue #3. That there must be something “out there” that we are missing, and that only if we had it, then we would be complete. When we are confronted with an idea (the Good News) that we are complete, we resist and even reject the idea. We are dependent on the story we have told ourselves that we are incomplete. So addicted in fact that any news to the contrary is not “good” at all.

"For We Are Consumed By Your Anger..."

“For we are consumed by your anger;
by your wrath we are overwhelmed.
You have set our iniquities before you,
our secret sins in the light of your countenance.”

— Psalm 90:7-8

At first reading, some might read Psalm 90:7-8 and think, “God is so mad at us that God will destroy us and we should be afraid of how angry God is at us.”

The problem is that when we take a verse or two and do not look at the overall arc of scripture we really can miss the much bigger point. In this case, the bigger point is that no matter how much we want to think that God is angry with us, God is not angry with us.

I know this can sound like I am speaking crazy since the “Scripture clearly says” that we are consumed by your (God) anger. How could this be a verse that testifies to how God is not angry with us?

The words here indicate that perhaps we are not consumed (as in that we are being destroyed) but that we are consumed (as in it captures our imagination) with God’s anger.

Humans are consumed, convinced and sure with God’s anger.

Maybe we are consumed with God’s anger because we believe, deep down that God cannot really love us. We are angry people and so God must be angry. We project ourselves onto God and thus violate the one of the big ten (thou shall not make graven images). God’s ways are not our ways and yet we are convinced/consumed with the idea that God must be angry.

God is not angry at you. You do not anger God - your actions are not significant enough to make God angry. Maybe we want to believe God is angry with us to convince ourselves that our actions are much more important then they really are in the grand scheme of things? Maybe we are convinced that God is angry at us as a way to exert some feeling of power and control? I mean what could be more powerful than to be able to get under God’s skin?