Category: Love

There is a question many of us sometimes ask ourselves.  Does Jesus know me personally?  Am I a name to Jesus or am I just a number?  Perhaps the best place to find the answer to this question is in Chapter 15 of St Luke’s Gospel.  There Jesus leaves us in no doubt.  He has a personal knowledge of and concern for every individual person, without exception.  Jesus knows us by name and calls us by name.

Imagine there are one hundred people and one strays, one wanders away, one gets lost.  Our response might be to cut our losses and stay with the ninety nine.  After all to lose one out of a hundred is a pretty good record.  Not so with Jesus.  He does not stay with the ninety nine.  He knows the ninety nine are ok.  He goes off in search of the one who has strayed.  In fact he does not rest until he has found the one who has got lost, until he has brought the one who has wandered back to the ninety nine.  Jesus is adamant, “The Son of Man came to seek out and save those who are lost.”  This is how he understood his ministry and his mission.

It has been said that if there was only one person living on the earth Jesus would still have come into the world, that he would have lived, died and rose to new life for that one person.  Every single individual is important to Jesus.  Jesus forgets no one, neglects no one, excludes no one.

Sometimes we can feel lost in the crowd.  Surrounded by a lot of people many of whom seem important, we can feel small and insignificant.  In the family of Jesus no one is small and insignificant.  In the family of Jesus everyone is unique, everyone is important, everyone is special.

There may be times in our lives when our self-esteem is very low and our confidence is shattered.  During these times it is natural for us to feel that we do not really matter.  The truth is, despite the way we feel, we do matter.  We matter to others and we certainly matter to Jesus.  Jesus will never give up on us.  He has invested too much in us to give up on us.  Jesus will always keep faith in us.  Indeed during those times when we withdraw into isolation and loneliness he actively pursues us.  He comes searching for us. This is why the poet Francis Thompson was able to describe Jesus as the Hound of Heaven.

 

Jesus once told a parable about a landowner who hired labourers to work in his vineyard (See Matt 20:1-16).  Some started work in the early morning, some at midday and some in the early evening.  In his generosity the landowner paid exactly the same wage to all who worked for him during the course of the day.  The actions of the landowner do appear to be unfair, even unjust.  Those who worked all day in the blazing hot sun received the same wage as those who worked one hour in the cool of the evening.

Today’s employers would certainly not get away with this approach to remuneration.  Ours is a culture of trade unions and worker’s rights and hourly rates of pay.  It is a culture of entitlement.  But Jesus’ parable is not about human rights and entitlements.  It is not about human justice.  It is about God.  It is about God’s abundant goodness and generosity. God isn’t generous towards us on the basis of what is right and fair and just.  God is generous towards us because we are his children, his sons and daughters whom he loves equally.

What Jesus is teaching us in this parable is this: we cannot buy or earn God’s love.  God’s love is free.  It is a gift, a pure gift offered to all without exception.  This is what we mean when we say that God loves us unconditionally.  There are no conditions attached to the way God loves.  The little word ‘if’ is not in God’s dictionary!  In practice this means that the Christian life is not about winning God’s approval and God’s favour.  It is not about making ourselves acceptable to God by our good deeds and our efforts to please him.  When we love we do so in response to God’s love for us; not in order to make God love us.

The renowned Lutheran theologian, Paul Tillich, has described the experience of being saved as our acceptance of the fact that we are accepted unconditionally by God.  God’s salvation is free and we must accept it freely.  The Father’s love is gift, not achievement.  Those who came at the twelfth hour got the same wage as those who came at the first hour because God does not love those who came at the twelfth hour any less than those who came at the first hour.  This is what we mean by radical grace.

Whether we are aware of it or not there is a huge hole inside of each of us that we are constantly trying to fill, often without success.  This hole has a major influence on the way we live our lives.  Our problem is we try to fill this hole with the wrong things.  We think that possessions and work and popularity will take away our inner ache and satisfy our longing for happiness.  The truth is they don’t.  Accumulation, achievement and human approval cannot fill our empty hole.  To believe otherwise is an illusion and a false philosophy.  We human beings have a terrible habit of looking for happiness in the wrong places.

The hole inside of us can only be filled by love.  It is the experience of  unconditional love that takes away our inner restlessness.  This is why God is the only one who can fill our empty hole.  Only God is unconditional love.  God loves without requirements and without restrictions.  To let ourselves be loved as we are by God is the only way to satisfy the yearning in our hearts.

To let myself be loved unconditionally by God is to know that I am enough.  When I am able to say, “I am enough” I am able to say, “I have enough.”  If I am not able to say, “I am enough” I will continue to want more.  I will want more and more possessions, information, success, recognition, approval, power. To be able to say, “I have enough” is a sign that I am filling my inner hole with the right kind of love.

Of course the culture we live in today does not make it easy for us to say, “I have enough.”  Our culture is driven by capitalist and consumerist philosophies; by making money and spending money.  It is notable how often we are referred to in the media as consumers.  Our culture is also driven by a work ethic that has us measure our worth by what we do, by our achievements and successes.  Then there is the impact of social media sites like Facebook that feed our desire for attention and the approval of others.  There are powerful forces at work in our lives that want us to fill the hole we have inside with the wrong things.  It takes a lot of self-awareness to recognise these forces and much courage to say ‘no’ to them.

There are two ways to fill the hole we have inside.  One works, the other doesn’t. The decision is ours to make!