Tough Love

 What does God's love look like? Oh, I know, we can't actually see it; but some comparisons are better than others. I think that God's love looks like a... Well, you'll just have to read my sermon and see what I think!

Several years ago, a pastor named Rob Bell wrote a book about Christianity that caused quite a stir. People who read the book either loved it or hated it. Those who hated it claimed that Bell’s thinking wasn’t biblical. His harsher critics even accused him of being a heretic. That book led to Bell’s removal from the Mars Hill Bible Church, the church that he had founded in a suburb of Grand Rapids, Michigan and pastored for over 10 years. Despite the fact that under his leadership, that church had grown to a membership of nearly 10,000 people, many of its members decided that because of what Bell wrote in his book, he was not fit to lead a Christian congregation. What did Rob Bell write that caused such a ruckus? Did he deny that Christ was divine? No. Did he say that the Holy Spirit isn’t really a part of God? No. Did he claim that he himself was the Messiah? No. Well, then, what in the world did he write? In his book Love Wins, he wrote that God loves us, and that nothing in this world can ever separate us from that love.

God loves us? We all know that! Why, that’s the good news of the gospel! We Christians proclaim that as the very foundation of our faith! Jesus died for us because God loves us so much! So, then… what exactly was the problem? The problem was this: Rob Bell believes that God doesn’t just love us Christians, but that God loves everyone. Even more radical, he believes that God doesn’t just love us here and now, but that God will love us forever, regardless of who we are or what we have done, or said, or thought. He hates the picture of the Last Judgement that Michelangelo painted on the wall above the altar of the Sistine Chapel. In the very center of the painting is Christ judging everyone who has ever lived. Above Christ are the redeemed who are ascending into heaven; while below him, the souls of the lost are sinking down into hell. It’s hard to miss the message of this painting: God’s grace won’t last forever. There will be a time when God’s love for some people runs out; and when it does… well, they’re out of luck. Some people will be eternally “in,” while others will be condemned to eternal punishment.

This, then, is what all the ruckus was about. Rob Bell would say that although images like Michelangelo’s Last Judgement may be fine art, they don’t reflect reality. The reality, he says, is that God loves us today, tomorrow, and forever. Jesus died for us; and his resurrection proves God’s love for every single one of us! Nothing at all can ever separate us from that love. God will never condemn us, because God loves us! Now Rob Bell didn’t make that up. He got it from none other than St. Paul himself, who wrote in the book of Romans: “Nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:39) God’s love can withstand anything that we can do!

What does that kind of love look like, anyway? Most of us think of love in sentimental images like a mother singing a lullaby to her tiny baby who is cradled safely in her protective arms. Sometimes love does look like that. But if God is going to love us through thick and thin – and I join Rob Bell in believing that God does – that love is going to need to be a lot tougher than a fuzzy, pink baby blanket adorned with a picture of Hello Kitty. A love that can embrace even people like Attila the Hun, Adolph Hitler, and Osama Bin Laden has to be very, very tough. That kind of love has to be like a boxer who gets up off the mat again and again after he has been knocked down; patient and resilient enough to keep trying over and over for as long as it takes.

My favorite image of God’s tough love is a green plant that has pushed its way through the pavement of a parking lot and is blooming defiantly where it isn’t supposed to be. Take a look at any abandoned parking lot. It is filled with little green plants that are growing through cracks in the pavement that have appeared over weeks and months. Those cracks were made by the sun and rain and freezing and thawing of life; and no sooner does one appear than a little plant takes advantage of it. Once that plant has thrust its head through the crack, it’s very difficult to get rid of it. God’s love works the very same way. Many people never give a second thought to God’s love. They are so focused on power, money, and their own self-interest that they pave right over it with those other priorities. Those little seeds of love wait until life causes a crack or two in that pavement; and then, up they sprout! There is nothing tougher than patience and the resilience to try again and again until something happens. God’s love is just like that.

Maybe that’s the kind of love that we should be offering to other people in Jesus’ name. That was the advice that Paul gave the congregation at Rome in his letter to them. (Romans 12:14-21) “Don’t be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good!” We are all too ready to meet hate with more hate, violence with more violence, and negativity with more negativity. That’s one way that we got into the situation that we’re in now: polarized in our religion and in our politics, alienated from one another, and often downright nasty! What would happen if we kept gently poking at the pavement that separates us like God does with the tough love that never gives up? When we meet prejudice, for example, we could listen to what the other person has to say, gently state the truth that we are all God’s children, and let it go. But then, we could do the same thing again and again and again, patiently and persistently. What would happen if we filled the world with responses like that? What if we treated every single person like we were going to sit right next to them at Thanksgiving dinner? Their behavior might not change; but ours sure would. And I’m betting that sooner or later, their behavior might change, too.

It’s amazing what God’s tough love can accomplish. I heard a story once about Mother Teresa, surely a representative of God’s love. She had set up a meeting with a couple of corporate executives hoping to persuade them to donate to her mission in India. The executives had already decided that their answer would be “no.” Mother Teresa met them warmly, and patiently accepted their refusal to donate to her mission. “Let us pray,” she said. They all bowed their heads in prayer, and Mother Teresa prayed for her mission. When the prayer was finished, she asked them again for a donation. Again, their answer was “no;” and again, Mother Teresa responded “Let us pray.” This process of request, denial, and prayer was repeated several times until the executives realized that they would never get away from this persistent woman who showed such tough love until they did what she asked of them. Mother Teresa got her donation.

I’ll bet that if you think back over your life, you tried to pave over God’s love, too; only to find out that God crept into your life like a little green plant through a crack that you didn’t even know was there! Maybe that love didn’t come into your life through Mother Teresa, but I’ll bet that the process was similar; because that’s just the way God’s love is: tough, gentle, and persistent. “I am the Lord,” God told Moses, “the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin.” (Exodus 34:5-7a) If you ever doubt it, just look at the empty tomb on Easter morning. You’ll see the results of a love that is tough, gentle, persistent, and the most powerful force in the universe! Thanks be to God!