"Belief: Accepting God's Invitation Into Love" | Christy Stang, Seminarian | March 14, 2021
May I speak in the name of the Creator, the Christ, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” “For God so loved the world.”
John 3:16 outlines an invitation into love. This invitation into love is not something that humanity has never known, because God represents the essence of Love. This is not an introduction to love, but a return to our source. As God’s creation, without Love, humanity does not exist. If God, the essence of Love, is our creator, then Love is woven into our DNA. God and love are inevitably part of who we are, whether we acknowledge it or not, and when we turn away from love, we turn away from ourselves. God wants to ground us in who we are meant to be, to restore us to unity and connection with the universal and divine love that shaped the galaxies. It reminds me of the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15--coming home to his father was not an introduction to a love he had never known, but a return to a love that he had turned away from. A return to Love.
In this season of Lent, a season about returning to God, about pushing aside barriers and identifying obstacles that are keeping us from the all-encompassing love of God. We are from love, and belief in God means recognizing God’s love as our origin. St. Augustine addresses this in his Confessions, saying, “my God, I would have no being, I would not have any existence, unless you were in me” (4). That is our identity as humans--that we are loved, and we live into our own authenticity when we accept God’s invitation of love. The Gospel passage also states that “Those who do what is true come to the light.” This Gospel passage speaks to authenticity and transparency. When we are grounded in who we know we are as beloved children of God, our identity does not conflict with the light. But if we cannot accept that we are loved, we find ourselves in the shadows.
Thinking about those shadows, the Gospel clarifies that “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” The Gospel story is not about condemnation but invitation. Scripture has often been used to argue for condemnation, but our God made manifest in Jesus Christ invites us into love, and that includes love for ourselves. That means accepting how God sees us--as beloved rather than condemned.
The return to Love through Jesus is a way to define Christian belief. Belief as Christians means recognizing that God loves us, and that God’s love was made manifest in Christ’s incarnation. It does not mean that we understand or can articulate everything about God, but that we trust in God. The Greek word used for belief in John 3:16 is
Πιστεύων which can mean to trust, rely on, or put faith in, as well as to believe. Nothing in that definition about having it all figured out. Nothing about needing to be able to articulate an entire systematic theology of your faith.
The creeds canonized in the Episcopal Church, the Nicene Creed and the Apostle’s Creed, as well as our baptismal covenant, say nothing explicit about how much God loves us, since the word “love” is not even in the creeds. But this credal way of believing that is founded on details and a systematic explanation of our faith is not the only facet of belief that God calls us into. Belief according to the Greek roots of the New Testament is relying on and putting our trust in God’s love, both through trusting who God is and recognizing who we are.
When I was doing my clinical pastoral education at a hospital in Minnesota this past summer, I had one particular patient who I spent probably a total of ten hours with, and I learned a lot from her about identity and spirituality. I would visit her almost every day on her request and we would go on adventures outside together, talk about what was hard for her that day or what made her sad, and she would frequently complain to me about how deafeningly loud the ventilator in her room was. I visited most of my patients only once and then they were soon discharged, but this patient was longterm, due to her various health complications. She was a Native American in her 50s, specifically a member of the Eagle tribe within the Ojibwe tradition, and she had an intricate tattoo of an eagle on her back that she would eagerly tell me about. Part of the reason we spent so much time together is that she would frequently request sweetgrass or sage for her smudging ritual, which is a prayer ritual in the Native American tradition to call upon ancestors. We would close the door to her room to prevent the smoke from going in the hallway, and then she would carefully light the bundle of either dried sage or sweetgrass, blow on it gently, and then close her eyes as she held the ceramic bowl just below her face. In the introduction to her prayers, among other things she would say her name in Ojibwe, which she explained to me afterwards because I didn’t speak the language. Then she would go on to pray for the people in her life and move the bowl to allow the smoke to spread over as much of her body as she could reach. In this process, it struck me that her name, her identity, was an established part of her prayer and part of her spirituality.
In thinking about love and prayer together, I remember my patient’s prayers to her ancestors, and that for her, her name and her communications in prayer went hand in hand. She knew that her identity was part of the process of prayer and her belief in her Ojibwe spirituality. The sense of belonging that she felt in her tribe was central to her faith. Similarly for our context as Christians, our sense of belonging in God’s love is connected to our faith. God invites us into belief--not a belief that only focuses on details, but a trust grounded in identity, grounded in knowing that God’s love is written on every molecule in our bodies. A trust that God will always invite us into love.
Belief in God is not only accepting God’s love, but accepting that we are loved. God so loved the world and God so loves the world, and the invitations into God’s love are everywhere. God’s love invites us into eternal life through trusting in God, but God also invites us into love in even the smallest moments in our everyday lives. In the warmth of the sunshine. In the hopeful smell of spring in the air. In a conversation with a friend. In a hug from a loved one. In the verses of Scripture that remind us how precious we are to God. Love embraces us in everything we feel and experience, grounding us in God’s invitation. As we continue in this season of Lent, may we continue returning to God’s love. And as we pray may we remember our identities as my patient remembered hers in her prayers. As we strive to return each day to God’s Love, may we remember what God calls us--and that is beloved.
Amen.