As we continue on our Advent journey and we prepare ourselves so that God can be born again in us, I have a question for you:
Do you feel safe with God?
If you are like most of us, the answer is yes and no.
You might say we have an on again off again relationship with God.
When we experience grace, we feel safe.
But then we remember our humanity, our flaws, and we falter. We hear John the Baptist’s cry to repent and we think maybe God won’t forgive us.
Maybe we’re fooling ourselves about mercy.
It’s no wonder that happens. Some of the stories in the Old Testament have planted in us a wariness about God.
In these stories, if you displease God, you get swallowed up by the earth, you are struck by lightning, you suffer famine, pestilence or God kills your first born or requires you to kill your first born.
(This part is a paraphrase) [I remember when my daughter Carrie was about 5 years old and I went into her room and I found her, sitting on her bed, pulling her eyelashes out, one by one and placing them in a little pile. I realized that she was exhibiting some sort of awful stress so I sat down next to her, put my arm around her and gently asked her, “Honey what’s wrong?” She asked me “Mommy, if God asked you to kill me, would you do it?” She had heard the story of Isaac and Abraham that day in Sunday school and was trying to understand it. Obviously there are some stories in the Bible that should not be told to 5 year olds! Carrie and her eyelashes represents the child in all of us.]
So when we hear the Good News of God’s love we want to believe it, we long to feel safe.
But what do we do with all those disturbing Old Testament stories?
What if we see the Bible as a book about humanity’s growing understanding of the nature of God?
In early civilizations including the Ancient Middle East, the understanding of God was-if you are good, God will be pleased and will make good things happen to you.
If you are bad, God will make bad things happen to you.
There are lots of places in the Old Testament where we read of this kind of thinking.
But then we get to Job. Job was a good and righteous man, yet bad things happened to him.
Throughout the Old Testament we see humanity struggling to understand God and to answer the questions-
What is the nature of God?
Can I feel safe with God?
Finally God decides to enter our reality- to reveal God’s nature to us.
And what is revealed is a God of love and compassion- a God who forgives, forgives his friends who betray and desert him and deny him.
A God who forgives even as he is dying-forgives the ones who kill him.
“Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”
Even after this revelation, on occasion we see writings in the New Testament in which the author slips back into an Old Testament way of thinking about God.
Paul is the most notorious. He slips back into legalism now and then. But then he remembers again- “Oh, yeah, that’s right, it’s about grace.”
The Bible is a collection of books that reveal humanity’s growing understanding of the nature of God. And it is the story of individuals who grow in understanding of God.
Haven’t we all at some point in our journey had something bad happen and asked “Why did God do this to me?”
And haven’t we somewhere in our minds at times, thought that we could earn God’s favor by being good? And haven’t we all at times had an “aHa” moment when we experience God’s grace and said, “ Oh I get it, it’s a gift, God loves us all.”
And haven’t we all, like Paul, had moments when we forgot the good news and have to learn about grace all over again.
So this Advent, I want us all to feel safe with God.
Safe enough to say, “Maranatha, come Lord Jesus.”
I want us to remember this Advent that God does not love us because we are good, but God loves us because God is good.
And when we let the reality of those words sink in-we feel safe.
We think God will love us if and when we change. But the truth is God loves us and then we are empowered to change. What makes us want to change and able to change is God’s love.
If we really believe that, then we will feel safe with God.
Today’s scriptures are full of Good News images of God.
Listen to Isaiah- Comfort, comfort my people.
Let me take care of your brokenness, just receive my love and grace, surrender to it. Then the change you long to see in yourself will be possible.
I was recently at the airport and I saw a mother and a toddler waiting for their plane. He was running around, had lots of energy, running between the seats, around the people. He tripped over a briefcase and hit his head on the seat. His mom didn’t scold him for running around, she scooped him up and cradled him in her arms, clutching him to herself. She kissed his bruised forehead and repeatedly was saying, “There, there, Mommy’s right here.” The more he cried the more she spoke the comforting words.
God is like that young mother who scoops up and kisses her injured child and speaks words of comfort, “There, there, Mommy is here.”
Comfort, comfort my people.
We can feel safe with God--we are loved unconditionally.
In that case-- Maranatha, come Lord Jesus, God be born in us again-we are safe with you.