06-29-23

ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
June 29, 2023
This coming Sunday, we are going to look at some of the baggage we carry, specifically in the form of guilt, fear and anger. Not in every case, but in many situations, people have convinced themselves that God wants them to carry the weight of these emotions. I’m not suggesting these emotions are not legitimate in some situations, but too often we have a skewed perception of God that leaves us thinking faithfulness is equated with crushing guilt for every bad thing we’ve done; a deep-seated fear of God’s ultimate judgement; a need to be angry at someone, specifically ourselves. Of course, each of these manifests itself in strange and harmful ways. This is one of those moments when it is good to remind ourselves of the poetry found in Psalm 103, where we read:

How far has the Lord taken
  our sins from us?
Farther than the distance
  from east to west!

All the destructive ways we have come to understand religion, specifically the ways we have diminished the goodness and belovedness intrinsic to our humanity, God has tossed as far as the east is from the west. Yet sadly, we continue to cling to these ideas in the belief that they are what religion is all about. I think Jesus came to reinforce that life is intended to be lived in the joy of knowing our goodness and belovedness in the eyes of God.

I can grip tightly to the very things you, Beautiful and Life-giving God, have said have no claim over us. It is so easy to believe that religion should make us feel a little guilty, with some self-loathing and a dose of misguided fear. Yet Jesus came to announce the gift of life in hopes that we would know its intended abundance. Amen.