Hello Friends,
Mark Gladman,
Monk in Docs and you are on Day 15 of the series God is an Today I want to hone in on.
I guess it's a sentence.
That we see in scripture,
But if we're not careful.
.
.
We can just allow it to stop being amazing.
And that sentence is,
God is love.
And it's probably one of the most important things.
That the Christian tradition has ever said about God.
And I think because we've just heard it so often,
We've kind of You know,
We've domesticated the wildness and the amazingness of that,
And we've just turned it into a nice sentiment that we stick on greeting cards and put on our walls and all that sort of thing.
It's something we say,
I guess,
When we're trying to reassure ourselves that God's being nice.
But this is actually an enormous claim about the very nature of reality.
God is love.
Because if that's true,
Than everything.
Changes because it means that when we ask,
What's God like?
We don't go straight to,
You know.
This powerful.
Being up in the sky or a celestial ruler intervening in the affairs of human life,
We're actually being asked to look at love because love tells us something about God and if you flip it God tells us something about what love really is.
Because Christian love.
Isn't just being affectionate and sentimental or liking someone.
At its deepest Christian sense,
Love is the giving of the self for the sake of the other.
Love is something that moves outward and it creates space for people and it makes room and it gives itself away,
Which means that if God's love Then,
Self-giving.
Is who God is.
It's not just happening every now and then.
It's a core of what God's about.
And so,
This takes us somewhere that can sound a little bit out there,
But it's quite practical,
And that is that God is relationship.
Now,
In Scripture,
We hear this expressed usually as Father-Son Spirit,
Which straight up does not mean that God is masculine it's about relationship okay so you could say mother-daughter technically but I guess Jesus was male But this also is not saying that there's three separate gods who cooperate with each other either.
And it's not this divine individuals sitting around the table trying to get along with each other.
This is,
I guess,
At the core of what Christians have called Trinity.
This is communion.
This is relationship.
This is mutual indwelling and eternal giving and receiving.
And at the very heart of reality then.
We find not.
Just this single isolation,
But it's actually communion.
Relationship is there.
Which means that.
.
.
The deepest truth about existence.
Is Relationship,
Love,
Gift,
Communion,
Community.
And so suddenly,
When you think about it like that,
The Trinity isn't just some sort of obscure puzzle that we try and solve all the time and come up with analogies for like,
You know,
The apple pie and.
.
.
What is it,
H2O?
Water,
Ice,
Steam,
Whatever.
This is actually a revelation about what reality is like.
If God's love then we are not created by a God who's fundamentally alone.
And that's important.
We're created by love.
From love.
And we exist within.
Love,
So the spiritual life.
Is this beautiful awakening to that reality.
We spend a lot of our lives trying to establish ourselves in society.
It's kind of like what we're brought up to,
I guess,
Try and do.
To make a platform for yourself in whatever that looks like for you,
And to make yourself become significant and secure your place in the world.
Convince others basically that you belong and you have a part to play and that you're important and whatever.
But Christianity comes along and says,
Yeah,
But.
.
.
You actually begin with belonging.
You already belong.
And you awaken to the love in which you already live,
Which means there's nothing to prove.
And this connects with everything that we've been exploring over the past,
What,
14,
15 days.
God's grace,
God's already saying,
Yes,
God is home.
God is love.
They're not different ideas.
They're windows that look into the same mystery.
Grace is what loves look like when it meets the undeserving like me.
Amazing grace,
How sweet the sound that saved a wretch.
Yeah?
And home,
Home is what love feels like when we stop running away.
Belonging.
Belonging is what gives us,
What love gives us before we've done anything.
And God is love.
Those two things together and watch your head explode.
But there's something else here too.
If God's love then love is not an idea.
Love has to become flesh,
Which takes us back to Jesus because the Christian tradition,
You know,
Doesn't just sit with God loves humanity.
It also believes God became flesh and dwelled among us,
Walked around Galilee,
Touched lepers,
Ate with sinners,
Welcomed the children,
Wept at the tomb of his friend,
Washed the disciples feet,
Forgave enemies,
Surrendered power and went to a cross.
And so Maybe the cross isn't the moment where an angry God finally becomes loving.
Maybe the cross is the moment when we see just how far this idea of God is love,
Just how far divine love is willing to go.
Love looks like Jesus.
Cause God is love.
And this is where This statement can get really dangerous because if we say God's love.
.
.
We have to allow that statement to challenge our images of God.
If the image of God that we imagine is cruel,
Then the image of our God probably needs to die.
And if the image of God we have is a God who keeps score.
Or a God who needs to be appeased all the time.
Or a God who delights in the punishment of people.
I mean,
These images of God,
They all deserve to die.
Uh.
.
.
Because Christianity.
Gives us a test.
And that test is,
Does this look like Jesus?
And even that's not the end,
Because.
.
.
We began this whole thing with us talking about God is more.
So whatever we say about God,
God is more.
So even when we say God is love.
.
.
God is more.
Not less,
More than our definitions and experiences in theology,
And even more than our ability to comprehend.
Love is the closest word we have.
So,
The journey of faith.
.
.
Is learning to live as though that is true,
That underneath everything.
Underneath our fears and our shame and our need to prove ourselves,
There is love.
And that love isn't somewhere or waiting for us,
But it's at the heart of reality.
It's here and it's now.
And if God is love,
Than maybe the deepest truth about you.
Is that you're a beloved creature.
Learning how to live inside the love from which you came from.
You're not.
A sinner trying to become worthy?
You're loved.
That's who you are and where you are and have been all along.
I guess in short,
Don't try and solve God.
Don't try and define love.
Just sit with that sentence.
Ease.
Love.
It's almost a prayer.
Ask the question,
What would change in me?
If I actually believe that.
If this weren't just an idea,
And it wasn't.
.
.
Just a proposition?
If it wasn't just a sentence in a book,
What if this was reality?
God is love.
A reality that you are living in because you are living in God.
And because of that you are living in love.
And it doesn't just mean that you let love work through you,
It means that you are literally immersed,
Surrounded,
Held by love.
Even now.
And as you hold that idea,
May grace,
Peace and of course love envelop you and hold you,
Today and always.
Grace and peace,
Friends.
Will continue tomorrow.
Bye for now.
