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.

Hating the New Thing in a Different Way

Loving people as they are seems like a rather straightforward idea. However, for the most part, it seems that we love people as they are but we also expect they will change. Specifically they will change that thing that we do not love. We might love our children, but expect they will grow out of some unfavorable behavior (like throwing tantrums). We might love our parents, but expect they will grow out of treating us like we are perpetually ten years old. We might love our partner, but expect that over the years they will change and put the dang seat down!

We might even love God, but expect God to change in how God interacts with the world (like eliminate sin).

The thing about loving people as they are but expecting them to change is that we will never love them.

If the person you love changes in the way that you would hope they would change, then you will find some other feature about that person that you wish they would change. It is an endless cycle. We will not be able to love them because we will end up hating the new thing they become in a different way.

You child grows out of throwing tantrums, but now they repress their emotions and you wish they would change that. Your parents treat you as an adult, but now they are pressing you to have children of your own, and you hate that. Your partner finally puts the seat down, but now you are annoyed that they let dishes “soak” for three days!

Even when God eliminates sin, God now welcomes the former sinner into the kingdom and you wish that God would see that “those people” are freeloading on forgiveness.

We are faced with the paradox to love people as they are and not expect them to change, or never loving them at all.

Pressing Hot Buttons Through Christ

Acclaimed negotiator and Harvard Law School professor Roger Fisher had a thought experiment where the nuclear codes of the United States should not be located in a suitcase handcuffed to an aid. Rather, they should be surgically embedded into the chest of the aid. The aid would carry around a knife. To access the codes, the President must cut open the chest of the aid. Fisher thought that if the President was unwilling to kill one person then the President had no right to launch a bomb to kill millions.

Clever. So clever in fact that Fisher wrote, “‘When I suggested this to friends in the Pentagon they said, ‘My God, that's terrible. Having to kill someone would distort the President's judgment. He might never push the button.’”

We talk about things in our society as being “hot button” issues. Our language gives us the sense that humans are so easily triggered that if we were to push them we would become hot. I wonder if part of our problem is not the issues we discuss, but that we image being so easily set off that it is like pushing a button. If we are going to stick with the button metaphor, perhaps we can take a page from Roger Fisher’s book - move the location of the button.

Can you imagine the hot buttons of your life being embedded in the heart of another? Could you imagine embedding the hot buttons of your family behind your heart? Could we create the conditions such that we are aware of the costs of pressing the button before the button is pressed?

Perhaps that is what Bonhoeffer was getting at in the book Life Together where he says, “Jesus Christ stands between the lover and the others he loves.” and “Because Christ stands between me and others, I dare not desire direct fellowship with them.” The idea being that ever Christian relationship always is mediated by Christ who stands between the two people. And so when I look at the face of the other, I see Christ first. And when they look at me, they see Christ first.

What if we understood the the “hot button” always resides on the other side of Christ. That we have to hurt, remove or even kill and “go through” Christ in order to press the hot buttons. Would we be willing to press the button knowing it comes at the harm of Christ?