In a brief conversation with a friend recently, I heard the story of how she happened to get to the church she had been a part of for years. The story included an explanation for why she and her husband left one church for another. In short, they left one church because, in her words, “We left the Sunday morning service angry with God every week.”
It’s a sad commentary on the preaching that some Christians endure that God ends up looking as though it thrills Him to know that people are going to end up in hell – some kind of eternal damnation from which there is no escape. Not to discount the reality of the error of living apart from God. I just can’t find a way to think – and neither can Scripture – that such reality makes God happy.
One of the lectionary readings for this coming Sunday is Psalm 130. One of the songs of ascents, Psalm 130 was used by ancient Jews as they made the long journey to Jerusalem for feasts – like Passover. It is sometimes called a penitential psalm, because at the heart of its words is a cry of despair. That despair is rooted in the psalmist’s own recognition that he is a sinner. “If you kept a record of our sins” is recognition that our need for God is ultimately beyond description.
The psalm ends with a picture of God my friend apparently never heard from the pulpit of the church she once attended. “Israel, trust in the Lord, because his love is constant and he is always willing to save. He will save his people Israel from their sins.”
If scholars have judged correctly, these words were sung as faithful Jews entered Jerusalem. One can only imagine what would have been in their minds and hearts as the Day of Atonement came and Israel’s high priest would sprinkle blood on the Mercy Seat. Compare that to what you and I have experienced because “once and for all” the Lamb of God has taken away the sins of the world.
How do some Christians get off track and somehow think that God rejoices in condemning? Even the psalmist – who could only dream of what you and I have experienced in Christ – understood that God’s “love is constant and He is always willing to save.”
God pursues us like no other. Every time I think about God as a “pursuing God” I think about Jacob. He seems to be such an unworthy character when it comes to being loved and used by God. Yet God never gives up on him!
The season of Lent reminds me that when I looked in the mirror this morning, I was looking at a Jacob of sorts. For I, too, am such “an unworthy character when it comes to being loved and used by God.” But the story of my life is that of Jacob – “yet God never gives up on him.”
It’s heartbreaking that my friend did hear that about God – but a source of joy that she knew that kind of God wasn’t the one who revealed Himself in Jesus of Nazareth. It is equally sad that such false witness to God – the God whose “love is constant and He is always willing to save” – still gets spewed from place to place.
Lent is convicting – we cannot help but remind ourselves of our unworthiness. But, in that conviction, we discover a God who forgives even us!
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