The Irrational Love of God

Five years ago, I was sitting in my office when I got a telephone call. His name was Don. I had never seen him before. He began the conversation in the strangest way.

“What do I call you?” he said.

Hmm. I guess that depends on your mood. But Kate is fine. Some folks call me Mother Kate if they want to be reminded that I am a priest. “Mother Kate, my name is Don. I have never been to church. Well, except for a few funerals and a wedding or two. I am 76. …

“yes?”

“I just went to the doctor because I’ve had pains in my back. I hate the doctor and don’t usually go, but it was really hurting…so he did some tests. ..

“yes?”

“I have cancer everywhere, Mother Kate. I have only a few weeks to live…

There was silence on the end of the phone.

“Is it too late to become a Christian?”

“It is never too late.” I said.

“Can you come over?”

Within a few hours, I found myself driving down a busy street. Off to the side were some apartments that I had never noticed before. I found his apartment tucked in the back of the complex.

He opened the door and let me in. It was dark and it didn’t smell very good. There was a long hallway that led into the living room. He had a large liquor cabinet and a huge flat screen TV, but not much furniture or decorations. This was an old bachelor pad. It felt lonely and damp.

Don asked me how to do this, how to become a Christian. “I don’t want to go to hell,” he said. ‘What if there is a God? Is it too late for me? Am I crazy?”

He proceeded to tell me all about his life, a life of incredible games and lies, women and infidelity. He had hurt many people. His ex wife no longer spoke to him. His mistress no longer spoke to him.

“I am such a mess,” he said. “I must be crazy for calling you here.”

“Don, we are all crazy in some way…” I said. “I’m just glad you called.”

I was struck by his faith, if you could call it that. Basically, the only reason he called was to try to get out of some kind of damnation at the last minute. He wanted, quite literally, to be saved. It was a selfish motivation, his fear and longing for salvation. It was all about him. But he was being honest and he really wanted to talk. He was working hard to find something more before he died.

He confessed his sins. We prayed. I told him to call in a few days. I said that I would try to get him to church, that someone would give him a ride. He thanked me. I closed the door.

You all know the story of the prodigal son. The prodigal son was selfish. He wanted to have fun. His left his father’s house to sow his wild oats. He partied, he made mistakes, he lived dangerously and tried all kinds of things. And then his money ran out, his luck ran out, and he decided to turn around and head for home. After all, it was better than eating pig slop.

The prodigal son did not head home for the love of his father or his brother. He just wanted a bed again, some food, a place to live. He realized that life at home had been better than life on the streets. He was still selfish, he was still about himself and himself alone, but he realized that home was the best place for him. So he turned around and headed home.

The prodigal son is walking back when his Father sees him from afar. And the Father runs.

He runs to the son. He does not wait patiently for his arrival. He does not ask him why he has returned. He does not get angry about being used for his food or lodgings. He doesn’t say a thing. He just runs.

He runs to his son with his arms outstretched and he embraces his son.

The Greek word for repentance is Metanoia. Metanoia, means turning towards God. It does not mean “getting it all right” or even “having all the right motivations.” Turning our faces towards home is enough.
There is a beautiful painting by Rembrant. The father is holding his son. The son is bald and dirty, he is kneeling before his father, and the father’s arms are on his son’s shoulders. And the Father has this look, of ultimate contentment on his face. There is not a trace of Where were you or what the heck happened to you or you are such a lazy guy or I feel used or all the feelings that I know I would have if my loved one ran off, spent all my money and then came crawling home. No, all the Father seems to be feeling is love, perfect and unbelievable love.

The love of the Father is irrational. It so unlike human love. It bears no grudges, expects nothing. All that the Father needs is for us to try to return. We don’t even have to get there! We can be way far off, but at least headed in the right direction and then there He is, running to us.

It is hard for us to understand this kind of love, the kind that expects nothing more than our desire to return. It is hard for us to understand the kind of unequivocal joy that God has for us. We don’t have to earn our way to God. We don’t have to make it back on our own, we just have to start, just try to get there and that is enough-God meets us on the way, running to us with outstretched arms.

One of my favorite stories is a story about Loren Einsley, the famous biologist. I wrote about this story in my Advent book. Never have I found a greater analogy for the love of God than this story.

Einsley was traveling in the Colorado Rockies. He was trying to capture a rare breed of sparrow-hawk. One day, as the sun was setting, he found himself walking by an old, abandoned stone cottage. He heard a rustling inside. “Ah!” he thought. “Just the right kind of place for a sparrow hawk to nest!”

He crept inside. Sure enough, nestled on top of a bookshelf by an open window, there were two sparrow-hawks, a male and a female. He crept slowly to the bookshelf. Taking an old chair, he stood up to the level of the birds. With one hand, he shined a flashlight on them. With the other hand, he reached out and grabbed the female.

The male jumped on his hand and began biting him furiously. He let go of the female and she flew through the window. He dropped the flashlight, trying to grab the male with his other hand. The bird continued to peck and claw until his hands were a bloody mess. Finally, he succeeded in capturing the male. He put the bird in a small black box that he carried with him. It had holes for air, but it was small. Just big enough to hold the bird, but small enough so that the bird could not flail around or hurt itself. He took his prize back to the camp.

That night, Einsley couldn’t sleep. He kept thinking about that bird and about his mate, who was long gone.

Early the next morning, he got up and surprised himself. He took that little black box and brought it out to the field next to his campsite. Just as the sun was rising, he took the bird out of the box and laid it on the grass. It lay there for an entire minute as if it were dead, then in an instant, it shot upwards. And Einsley said that, at that moment, he heard a scream the likes of which he had never heard before. The female came hurtling down to meet her mate, screaming in the sky. They danced in the air together.

When we turn to God, when we repent and turn towards home, God responds like that sparrow-hawk. God comes running to us, hurtling down to meet us wherever we are. And when we die, if we ask for Jesus, he comes screaming to us to dance with us in the air. For we were lost and have been found. We were dead and now we are alive. We were entrapped in lives of obsessions and selfishness, trapped inside little boxes of our own design, and now we are free.

After the private confession sacrament that we offer in the church, when the penitent is absolved, the priest says And now there is rejoicing in heaven for you were lost and are found you were dead and now you are alive in Christ Jesus.

Three days after I visited Don, he called me.

“Mother Kate,” he said. “I was sitting in my easy chair. I don’t know if I fell asleep or what, but I saw the most beautiful man. He was dressed in a brown robe. He was walking to me and smiling…” Don began to cry over the phone. “Mother Kate, I have never seen anything like it. He was so beautiful. He was SO BEAUTIFUL. Who was that? Am I loosing my mind??”

(Isn’t it funny how people always ask if they are crazy when they start experiencing God. I have to do a lot of convincing that mental illness is not what it’s all about. God is just so scary, so other, that often we wonder if we have just gone and lost our minds.)

“Don, you know who it was . You tell me.” I said.

He said, in a small voice. “It was Jesus, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, Don, yes it was Him!!”

“Oh my God, I never knew he was like THAT!...But I’m such a jerk, I’m such a mess. Why would he come here??”

“Because you invited him in, Don. Because you asked for him…”

Don never even made it to church, two days later, he was dead. Jesus came for him, just at the last moment.

His funeral was a mess because his ex-wife and his mistress would not look at each other or speak to each other. Each was still in their own little box of misery and anger, still too full of themselves to know what had happened to Don.

But I knew. I knew that he has torn himself out of that tiny black box of despair just in time to meet his Maker.

And Jesus ran to him -- flew to him -- screaming and crying with elation. And He held Don in his arms.

As God will hold you too. If you just try to Come to Him.

Our Relationships Are Us

Mark Anshutz is the retired Rector of St. Michael and All Angels Church in Dallas Texas. When he was there, it was the largest Episcopal Church in the nation, with some 10,000 members. He had a staff of 63 people. When Mark retired, he decided to pick a few young priests across the nation and coach them. In this way, he thought he could make an investment in the future of the church. About two years ago, I met Mark at a clergy conference in Kansas and he offered to coach me. It was an offer that I couldn’t refuse.

We speak once a month about my life hear at the Cathedral. He is an amazing gift to me because he offers wise counsel and fresh perspective, a combination that can’t be beat.

This past week, we spoke for our monthly session. He asked me what kind of disciplines I was taking on during Lent. I was ready for this question and proud to answer it! I told him about what I was giving up, and what I was taking on. I expected him to be impressed, but instead, he said…”What else?”

“What do you mean, what else?” I asked.

“What relationships are you going to reconcile?” he asked. “You didn’t mention that.”

Mark made me mad, but I realized that he was right. I was only looking inside myself, examining how I was praying, how I was eating. But our relationships are the spiritual landscape of our lives. I could not simply look inward, I had to look outside myself too. I had to look at how I was relating to the rest of the world.

I felt overwhelmed. I mean, there was that woman back in Wichita that I just didn’t seem to get along with. Should I call her up out of the blue and apologize for.. well, I wasn’t really sure what?
Part of Lent is getting to know yourself. That’s what Jesus did when he stepped out into the desert. But getting to know yourself means being able to identify the people who push your buttons. Because, believe it or not, they are the ones that we learn the most from.

Part of the twelve steps in Alcoholics Anonymous has to do with confession and reconciled relationships. You might ask yourself, what do relationships have to do with Alcoholism? Well, evidently, a person can’t give up their unhealthy addiction until they say that they are sorry for all the ways in which their addiction has led them to hurt others. In other words, you can’t be truly well if you are not reconciled with your neighbor.

Sometimes the people that we do not get along with can tell us the most about ourselves. And if a relationship wont reconcile, and we cannot let go of it, we can spend years embroiled in something that is a stumbling block in our journey to God. How can you love God more when you are obsessed with your neighbor?

The Pharisees were obsessed with Jesus. They had spent their entire lives studying to become the religious authorities of their day. And then this young man comes out of nowhere, teaching new and radical things, and people were following him! Jesus threatened the very identity of the Pharisees. They were so afraid of Jesus that they are wanted to kill him, but instead they communicated with him in a dysfunctional way. Instead of telling him that they were angry and afraid, they told him that Herod was angry and wanted to kill him. What a perfect triangle! All of this game-playing made Jesus mad.

“You tell that old fox for me that I am safe everywhere except in Jerusalem…” and then Jesus’ anger turns to sadness. “Oh, Jerusalem, he says, “City that kills the prophets. Would that I could gather you together like a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you would not.”

I have a painting on the wall of my bedroom. Jesus is sitting on a hillside, looking out over the city of Jerusalem. He looks sad. His hands are folded as if he is absorbed in prayer over the city. He looks lonely.

I wonder what it is like for God when we do not get along. It must make God very sad.

Sometimes, on a Saturday morning, I will sit and watch my kids fight over something silly. At first I will get mad, then I just get sad. I mean, who cares who has the channel changer or who is first finishing their cereal? Why do we fight so much? I want everyone to come together and hold each other, but with three boys that’s about as likely as my dog traveling to the moon. So I watch those that I love argue and I find it sad.

Imagine how God feels. Whenever human beings disagree and can no longer listen to one another, God must grieve. God looks upon us with sadness.

Abraham was told that his descendants would be as many as the stars in the sky. But God did not tell him that they would war with one another. Maybe God knew that this would break Abraham’s heart.

When I visited Israel, JD and I went to Egypt for a few days. We met three Israeli soldiers on the train. They were so great: funny and kind, thoughtful and full of questions about America. We decided to stay the night in Terabin, on the shore of the Sea of Aquaba. We ate dinner right by the shore and then talked into the night. We told them that we had stayed in the Old City of Jerusalem by the Cathedral of St. George. “You stayed on the Palestinian side?” they asked. They were appalled. “With those animals?” I had never seen such hatred up front. They thought of Palestinians as animals. The same guys who laughed with us and ate with us. They were so threatened that they could not see clearly.

When we get afraid, our vision is skewed. We will do anything to bring ourselves security. So we forget that we are all children of Abraham. And we aim to get rid of the other.

Jesus wishes that he could gather us together like a mother hen. Just sweep his wings over us and find us bumping shoulders again, looking in each others’ eyes, for we no longer see one another.

Our country is in a period of serious anxiety and fear. The fear is created by three major factors: the threat of terrorism, the downward economy and the rapid development of technology. Fear and anger are two sides of the same coin. When a person is afraid, they are more likely to try to protect themselves and feelings of anger will rise quickly and sometimes unreasonably.
In this time of fear and anxiety, it is no coincidence that our country is politically divided. The Democrats and Republicans no longer know how to speak to one another civilly. Discourse gets hateful and personal fast. Why? Because we are afraid. We don’t even watch the same news channels anymore. We are constantly fighting and our ability to listen and learn from each other seems almost non-existent.

Christ was crucified because he was new and different, because he scared people. But he was able to see people for who they were, pagans and Jews, Samaritans, prostitutes and criminals- he saw the person not the position. He was able to see the human being behind the issue because he was not afraid.

Who are you scared of? Who do you no longer listen to? Who do you need to reconcile with?

Ever since I was a child, I have loved the image of two ants standing at the base of Mt. Everest. One ant says to the other. “I think that ant hill is as big as four ant hills!” The other ant, who is maybe red and not black, says “No. It is as big as FIVE ant hills!” They look at one another with anger and fear and the fight begins. But in reality, the mountain is so far beyond their comprehension that neither of them can even begin to fathom it. Nevertheless, they fight with one another over who is right.

This Lent, maybe we should all make sure that we are listening with an open mind to someone who radically disagrees with us. Maybe we should all strive to see the person behind the issue.