The eCrozier

St Paul writes in Romans: “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” Even though we sin against God and defy God, God still loves us. But why? People who don’t think about that question probably haven’t given much attention to their sinfulness. If we think that we’re basically OK, that we’ve done nothing to draw us away from God, then it wouldn’t make any sense to wonder why God loves us. We’d conclude that God should love us because we deserve nothing less – we’re that lovable.

So, our question wouldn’t be “why?” but rather “why not?” For this question to gnaw at us, we must know ourselves to be separated from God by our sin. I fall into this category. Like the writer, Frederick Buechner, I see the Gospel of Jesus as bad news before I see it as Good News. Buechner writes: “The Gospel is the bad news that we are sinners; that we are evil in the imagination of our hearts; that when I look in the mirror each morning what I see, at least in part, is a chicken, a phony, and a slob. That’s the bad news.”

I don’t share this so some people might have the satisfaction of saying: “I just knew bishops were like that.” No, I share it because it’s the truth. But I also share it with some concern because we live in a culture where people have lost the capacity to hear such truth. People love to hear celebrities talk about how awful they were, how addicted they were, etc. There’s a certain voyeurism in our obsession with other people’s sin. But that’s not the real problem. The real problem is that there’s no repentance in such talk. It’s merely a way for people to say: “Isn’t that just awful.”

So, when I agree with Frederick Buechner that I too am “a chicken, a phony, and a slob” you might be tempted to say: “Isn’t that nice, I saw someone like that on Oprah once.” But it’s not the same. That’s why I’m concerned with letting you know what I see when I look in the mirror. Not because you’d discover I was a sinner – good Lord, that’s not news – but because I run the risk of placing my bad news (and yours) in the wrong context, namely Oprah and not the Bible.

We must place our bad news in the proper context: The Gospel of Jesus and not our culture. The Gospel can only be good news after we first face the bad news. As Buechner writes: “The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the news that we are loved anyway, in spite of our sin – that we’re cherished by God, forgiven, bleeding to be sure, but also bled for.”

But why does God love us anyway? The Bible never says why. It’s as if that’s a ridiculous question even to ask. The Bible assumes that it’s simply God’s very nature to love us.

In the middle of the 20th century, the great theologian, Karl Barth, was taking questions from a group of seminarians in Chicago. One seminarian wanting to show off asked Barth to tell them the greatest truth of the Christian faith. Barth smiled and said, “Jesus loves me this I know, cause the Bible tells me so.”

+Scott