Friedrich Nietzsche once famously wrote that “Those who
stare too long into the Abyss may find the Abyss staring back at them.” The
saying means that those who dwell too long on the negative things of life can
find that negativity haunting them in ways they never expected. I know
precisely how this feels as the world has continued to drag my spirit down with
its constant barrage of setbacks and terrible news.
I spoke about this in my sermon on Sunday; about feeling
tired and burned out by all the bad news in the world and in my life. I am
trying to find the hope in the midst of it all, because it is there. There are
signs galore that God is at work even in the midst of disaster.
Sometimes however the biggest struggle is when I realize the
“Abyss” isn’t just out there in the world; it’s in here, inside me. When my own
mistakes and failures come back to haunt me. There are two examples of that in
my life, one in my family and another amidst my work at Canadochly. In both
cases, I’ve been called on the carpet for errors and mistakes I’ve made, which
is never a good feeling. But what am I to do here? I am human and I am prone to
err as anyone. The things of which I stand accused are things of which I’m
guilty. There’s no escape here. No pleading innocence. I’ve genuinely screwed
up. And that can be a heavy burden to bear.
Where is the hope to be found within? Where is God at work
within?
St. Paul wrote at length about these very questions in the
text from Romans that’s appointed for this week. (It’s definitely one of those
Holy Spirit moments that as I’m sitting here, dining on ashes, that this text
would be one of those appointed for the Daily Lectionary.) Like me, Paul seeks
to do good. Paul wants to be a benefit to the world, to other people, and to
the Church. But like all of us, he stumbles from time to time.
“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do…For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.”
How many of us could say the same thing about ourselves? We
all carry the burden of who we are and what we are. We can all fall into traps
of our own creation, traps formed by our idiosyncrasies, our anxieties, our
vices, our ignorance, our pride, and a whole host of other realities about
ourselves. Satan has a frighteningly easy job when it comes to making us fail;
we do a very good job of it on our own without any help at all.
This is, as Paul writes accurately, the reality of sin. What
wretched people are we! Seemingly forever trapped between good and evil, torn
by these two halves of ourselves that work against one another. But Paul also
recognizes that what we are is not always what we will be and he gives thanks
to God for the work that God does within each of us to bring us out of death
(sin) into life (righteousness.)
There was a time when I loathed using 1 Corinthians 13 as a
wedding text, but I’ve come a full 180 degrees on that. The reason is because
of what that text really means and it ties in quite nicely with what Paul is
talking about here in Romans. “Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then
face-to-face.” It is a text about transformation. It’s about who we are is not
who we will be. And how does that transformation come about? It comes through
God’s love for us.
So here again, I find myself drawn to the truth of that
saying from Brennan Manning that I’ve quoted so often of late. “God loves us as
we are, not as we should be, because none of us are as we should be.” How true
indeed. God loves us in our sin and in our righteousness. God loves us when we
do good and when we do evil. God loves us when we succeed and when we fail.
The hardest thing for many of us to do is to forgive
ourselves our faults. But a huge part of the Christian life is to see people as
God does and to love them (in as much as we are able) as he does. That includes
OURSELVES as much as anyone and everyone else.
My friends, can we love ourselves as we are loved? Can we
forgive ourselves as we are forgiven? These are not always easy things to do. In
fact, they can be among the hardest things we are called to do as Christians.
God loves you. God loves me. And because of that love, he’s
not finished with us yet. He still at work in the midst of our lives, blessing
our successes and forgiving our failures, drawing us every closer to that
moment when we will no longer “see in a mirror dimly.” We’re an imperfect
product that God continues to refine and mold and transform. But he will never
stop working on us, because we are his precious ones. We are his beloved. He
loves us. To him, we’re worth every effort. Amen.
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