Scripture text: Mark 6:1-13
Having the political opinions that I do and hanging out in the circles that I frequent, I hear a lot of scuttlebutt from atheists and agnostics about religion and religious people. As a pastor, I’m trained to be a reasonably good listener, trying to discern what is mere griping and what is legitimate critique. I have to say that they’re spot on more often than not. They say that religion tears people down, Christianity in particular, and I have to admit that often times they’re very right about that.
There is a vocal group of Christians who go on and on, from podiums and pulpits, that will tell you that God will only love you if you’re perfect. And if something about you or your life is not perfect, then God hates you. God hates you if you’re poor. God hates you if you’re not pretty. God hates you if you vote for the wrong people. God hates you if you’re different. And the events of your life, they say, are reflective of that. If you get sick, then it must be because you’ve failed and God is angry with your failure. If you have a setback at work or school, God is punishing you for some sin. And on and on it goes.
Far too many of us have internalized this message. Far too many of us have come to believe this lie. And we use it to bludgeon ourselves constantly over faults both real and imagined. We beat ourselves up for mistakes and weaknesses. And then we turn that bludgeon on others, going after them for all their flaws. Tearing at each other, bringing each other down. We do this all the time. Dog-eat-dog world.
The atheists are right. We tear each other down and religion is the reason why.
It’s nothing new. Two thousand years ago, in the time of Jesus, there would be much we would be surprised by. How a different a world it would be culturally, but here is one thing that we would not find surprising. The Pharisees, those guardians of propriety that they were, told much the same message as that vocal group of Christians that so many of us have believed. God only loves you if you’re perfect and if you’re not perfect, if you’re poor, sick, flawed in any way, then God hates you.
That was their message. Follow the rules, our rules, rules that we’ve cribbed from Scripture but we’re the ones who decide which ones are important and which ones are not. The rules are arbitrary, capricious, yet by them you can determine whether God cares about you or not. Do as we say, be proper, pure, and perfect, or else.
And then along comes Jesus. This carpenter’s son who goes amidst the poor and the downtrodden and brings a radical message: God loves you as you are and not as some religious bigwig thinks you should be. And he’s in their midst and he’s paying attention to them and he’s teaching them and he’s caring about them. And when the sick are brought to him, the blind, the lame, the leper, he doesn’t chide for their sins, he says “God loves you” and to prove it he lays his hand upon them and their ailment is cured.
God loves you as you are and not as you should be. That’s what religion is supposed to be about. That’s what our faith teaches. And how far we have fallen from that wondrous message. Far too often we have not been disciples of Jesus as much we’ve been disciples of those long dead Pharisees and taken up the mantle of being this generation’s “guardians of propriety.”
That’s not our job and it was never our job. And perhaps it is fitting to see in today’s Gospel lesson what our job really is. Jesus, after his work is done in Nazareth, sends out the disciples to go ahead of him and deliver his message to the places he intends to go. He tells them to do as he’s done: proclaim good news and heal the sick and that they will do this with his authority and power.
It’s a prelude, in many ways, of what will happen on the mountain of ascension, when Jesus speaks those words of instruction to all his disciples, to go into all nations and make disciples by baptism and teaching and that he will be with them in spirit and in power wherever they go. His words echo across the generations, calling us anew to this work.
I can tell you first hand just how important this work is. I have felt very keenly my own flaws of late. I know how imperfect I am, because I know how broken my body is in the midst of this illness. And that temptation is always there to listen to the words of those guardians of propriety that tell me that I’m worthless and a failure because I’ve succumbed to these symptoms. But I know instead that God loves me with a love that cannot be measured or described adequately in human language. He loves me as I am and not as I should be because you have told me that. You have told me that in your support and in your prayer, in your kind words, your compassion, and your friendship. You have been the kind of Christians Christ has called us to be.
And what Jesus is asking of us is that we not just be that with the ones we know and we’re very good at that part. But be that instead with everyone we encounter, no matter how different they are or how flawed they are. We know what the world does to us. It does that to everybody. Do know what power we have in the truth we’ve been told? Imagine what we can do for people if we say and do what Jesus has taught us, that God loves us as we are and not as we should be.
This is evangelism, people. We treat that as such a scary word and yet this is all it is. Showing people how much they matter to the one who created them. That’s what Jesus did. That’s what his miracles are about. That’s what his table fellowship, who he chose to eat with, that’s what it’s about. Telling people they matter, that they’re loved, that God loves them as they are and not as they should be. And it’s what the cross is about. St. Paul says that “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” While we were still imperfect, flawed, mistake-making, prone to error, God loved us enough to endure the cross for our sake. He didn’t have to fix ourselves for him to do that. He did it anyway out of that love for us.
Christ tells us that. The Scriptures tell us that. We tell that to one another. Now we are asked to tell that to the world. God loves us, all of us, as we are and not as we should be. Simple message. Profound truth. Amen.
Author's Note: I owe a great debt, not just for this sermon, but for much of my preaching to the late great Brennan Manning. It was he who popularized the phrase "God loves you as you are, not as you should be." I'm including below a YouTube video of one of his sermons. It's well worth the time to watch and listen. He says this truth with great clarity.
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