2 Epiphany 07 C

Seven-year-old Johnny had finished his summer vacation and gone back to school. Two days later his teacher phoned his mother to tell her that Johnny was misbehaving. “Wait a minute,” Johnny’s mother said, “I had Johnny here for two months and I never called you once when he misbehaved.”

Let me ask you this morning, what does God think of you? Does he think of you as someone who is always misbehaving? Does He think of you in less than flattering terms? Often people will perceive that God views them the way they view themselves. I’ll never forget the story the late Rodney Dangerfield once told of a report from his psychiatrist. “You’re crazy,” the psychiatrist said. Dangerfield protested, “If you don’t mind, I want a second opinion.” The psychiatrist said, “All right, you’re ugly, too.”

Many of us have so believed the reports of others about ourselves that we begin to think that is what God must think about us. Sometimes we tell ourselves that if we just did better then God would feel better about us.

Subconsciously, we begin to try to bribe God into loving us by trying with all our will power to do what God wants (or what we think He wants). We figure that if we do enough good things God will look on me differently.

The story is told of a man on trial for murder who bribed a member of the jury to hold out for the lesser verdict of manslaughter. After debating for several hours, the jury finally brought in the verdict: “We find the defendant guilty of manslaughter.” The murderer sought out the juror he had bribed to thank him and asked if he had found it difficult to influence the others. “Yes,” replied the man, “I had a most difficult time. All the rest of them wanted to vote, “not guilty.”

We can spend so much time and energy trying to bribe God into loving us or thinking well of us that we never realize what God really thinks of us.

How can we know what God thinks of us?

If we try to figure out what God thinks based on our feelings then we are sure to languish in despair more often than not. Our feelings often cause our minds to think in an irrational way. For example, if a person feels jealous his mind may tell him that he must resort to violence to get rid of that jealousy. Sometimes we feel lonely so our minds tell us to solve that loneliness in wrong relationships. Sometimes we feel rejected by others so our minds tell us to get over that rejection by over indulging in eating or drinking, or some other mode of escapism.

Our minds can be manipulated by our feelings. So it is very easy for our feelings to tell our minds that God does not love us, or is mad at us, or does not think very highly of us.

If we try to figure out what God thinks of us by our circumstances we are destined to often have a low opinion of ourselves and God’s love for us.

Many of the ancients believed that if God loved them and was pleased with them then they would be blessed with good health, prosperity, happy relationships and a freedom from calamities.

Unfortunately, many people today feel that way as well. They seem to base their view of how God sees them upon how well their life is going. If things are going good that must mean God is pleased with me. If they are going bad then He must be angry or displeased with me.

A woman came to me many years ago with a story unlike any I had heard before. She recounted how her husband and one of her children had died tragically, how she was very low on resources and faced the possibility of having to go live with a friend. She had an auto accident and was facing many medical problems. She felt like God was mad at her or that she had displeased God in some way. This woman was speaking out of her pain, and she was portraying God as an unloving punisher.

It is hard to explain to a person going through all of those awful things that God is not like that at all, that these are all things that happen in a cursed and fallen world, and that ultimately the only hope of redeeming these tragic things is God.

I wanted to try to help her to see how God really sees her. I want to try to do that with you as well.

In order for us to have a correct understanding of how God sees us we must look at the only known and verified revelation of God speaking to His people – the Bible.

In the beginning God created man and woman. They lived in paradise but they decided to rebel against the holy God. Thus, sin entered into the world. From that moment on, although God loved his creation, He was forced to relate to men and women differently. In order to keep His holiness uncompromised by sin, people were to live according to His law and have faith in Him. Because they continued to choose to break His law He was forced to punish them for their disobedience.

When it became apparent that human beings were never going to be able to keep His holy law completely God chose another means to reach out to His rebellious human beings. It was a means based not on the goodness of men and women, but upon His great love for all people.

Scripture says in John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him will have everlasting life.” St. Paul says in Romans 5:8 “While we were still sinners Christ died for us.”

How does God view us? He loves us and He has showed His love for us by becoming one of us in His Son. He showed His love even further by having His Son die on the cross for you and me in spite of what you and I have done or may do in our lives. He died for us if we have lived a good life, and he died for us if we have lived a bad life or somewhere in between. For you see, Scripture proclaims, “There is no one righteous in the sight of God. For all are sinners.” But did God reject us because of that? Hardly. In fact, He went even further when He promised all one had to do to receive this love is to receive the giver of that love, Jesus Christ, to turn away from their sins, all they know is wrong and turn back to God.

The wedding in our gospel lesson is a fitting image of what God thinks of you. He wants to be married to your spirit. The Church is His bride and He is the bridegroom. He gives us the new wine of His Holy Spirit to convince our hearts of his love and to empower us to effectively minister in His world. If our hearts experience this love from God then our minds can become convinced as well.

I remember when I first experienced the outpouring of the Spirit, or should I say, the infilling of the Spirit in my life. It was a time when I first came to realize how much God loved me and how much Jesus did to show that love. I felt overwhelmed by the love of Jesus. It was as if a river was unleashed within me. I think I can understand Jesus’ use of the phrase “river of living waters” because of what I experienced with Jesus.

Listen to the words in Isaiah today speaking in images of how God sees us. “For Zion’s sake (God’s people) I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her vindication goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a burning torch. The nations shall see your vindication, and all the kings your glory; and you shall be called by a new name which the mouth of the Lord will give. You shall be called a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem (headband of royalty) in the hand of your God. You shall no longer be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate; but you shall be called My Delight is in her, and your land Married; for the Lord delights in you.”

Fay Angus in her book Running around in Spiritual Circles tells the following story, “In the middle of the hard-nosed journalism that finds its way onto the editorial page of the Los Angeles Times frequently is found a piece of tenderness to match, if not better, sermons preached from many pulpits. Letters to the editors of large city newspapers reflect a potpourri of the best and the worst of us. This father’s letter was the very best of us.

‘When my daughter was thirteen years old she suddenly changed. She became hostile and rebellious and in the course of the next three years she went on a rampage. She was expelled from high school, ran away from home twice (once she was gone for as long as a month without letting her parents know where she was), was arrested for burglary, and spent some time in Juvenile Hall. During that period of her life, her father was at a total loss as to how to deal with her. In his letter to the Los Angeles Times he wrote:

However, I knew that, reprehensible as they were, her actions were not the ‘real’ her. All I did was continue to love her. This does not mean that I condoned her behavior or made excuses for her. When I picked her up from police stations in the middle of the night, I treated her with sympathy and respect, for I knew her self-condemnation was sufficient. I wrote to her in Juvenile Hall advising her that the only way she was going to get the ‘freedom’ she so desperately wanted was to abide by society’s rules. The one thing we did not do was to give up on her or reject her.’

After she was released on probation, her father took her to work with him and paid for her helping out. He sent her to counseling and, as she was interested in art, he enrolled her in art school instead of sending her back to the pressure of her peers in high school.

He acted out his love by being there, walking beside her rather than pushing against her. By the time she was seventeen, she had made a complete reversal and was reintegrated as a happy member of the family. The father still gets birthday cards and Father’s Day cards that say, “Thanks for sticking with me, Dad.” He had the art of gently being there.”

What does God think of you? First of all He loves you, but He does not force His love on you. Many choose to reject His love. To those who continue to reject His love in Jesus, He has no choice but to let them go the way of separation from Him for all eternity. But to those who choose to accept Him and His love, to receive the gift of His love in Jesus, he says this, “Nothing will ever separate you from My love. Not your feelings, not your mind, not your circumstances, not your relationships, not death, not what you do. Nothing will separate you from My love. I love you. I see not what you do so much, because I see you through My Son. I see you not as you are in yourself, but as you are in Jesus. I see you not as you are but as you will be. I desire to have a close relationship with you!”

Won’t you let God love you today? Wont’ you look for His love even when things aren’t going good? What more could God do than what He has already done to show you that He loves you and that you are His special creation?