God's Love (for you and everyone else) poured Into Your Heart and My Heart

Many have noticed that in the narratives of Jesus' resurrection appearances to his disciples, Jesus never says that, because he is risen, we also will rise. Jesus says this elsewhere (see, for example, John 11:25-26), as does St Paul. (See Romans 8:1; 1Corinthians 15:12-23) But the resurrection appearances in the Gospels are focused on mission. For instance, after appearing to his disciples and offering his peace to them, Jesus says to them, "As the Father has sent me, so I send you." (John 20:21) And at the conclusion of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus commands his disciples to, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you." (Matthew 28:19-20) 

We read of this mission in the Book of Acts, following a pattern repeated time and again. The Gospel of repentance and forgiveness is spread through face-to-face encounters. Not with an air of superiority, but in humility, requiring the evangelist to open their heart to their neighbour as the good news of God’s love is spread. 

 It is a beautiful culmination of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. God sent the Son into the world to save the world. For no other reason than love. And through the love of God we see in the crucified Jesus, we are invited to fall in love with God. To let God’s love re-fashion our hearts and minds, so that we can know the height and depth of God’s love for us. That is part of what it means for us to have God's love poured into our hearts (through the Holy Spirit). The height, breadth, and depth of God's love for you poured into your heart. And with God's love for each of us in our hearts - refashioning who we are - we also have God's love for every other person poured into our hearts. And whatever else we do as we spread the good news of Jesus, all of it is based on us opening the door of our heart to our neighbour as we share with them (and live with them) God’s love for us all.

Falling in Love With God on Good Friday

When love meets sin, the cross is the result. But when love meets sin, the opportunity to fall in love is offered to us. This is why it isn’t so strange to say Good Friday. And not so strange for the cross (of Jesus) to become the symbol of God’s love. And for churches to have crosses in and on their buildings. The cross of Jesus is self-sacrificing love for us. There is no remainder. Jesus, out of love for us, endures the cross for our good. And because Jesus is a victim of what he saves us from – sin - we are loved at even this low point of crucifying the Son of God. Literally or metaphorically crucifying each other is a low point and does not earn anything but condemnation. But God’s love doesn’t just hold at this point; God seeks us out at our lowest point of failure and saves us. (We are saved by the death of Jesus, the low point of human sin.) 

 In John’s Gospel, the opposite of sin is faith. Faith that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son for us. Faith is how we fall in love. And when we fall in love with God because of the cross of Jesus, we are on the path of faith. Continuing down the path of faith will bring more to this initial falling in love (for example, hope), but what is added along the journey will never be contrary to the initial conversion to God’s love. To have faith in Jesus is to be overwhelmed with love. God’s love for us, a love that goes so far as to be sent into the world of sin and be cruelly tortured, crucified, and killed. To have faith is to know that we are loved as we are (even if it seems unbelievable), and to grow deeper into that knowledge and love. God loves you and has poured that love into your heart. Think about that. God’s love for you has been poured into your heart so that you might come to know the depth of God’s love for you. (Romans 5:5) And more than this, God gave the Son for us, as we are, so that we can become more than we are. And if there are times when that might seem unbelievable, and times you can’t see God’s love for you, then look to the cross. And fall in love with God’s love again. 

 Simultaneously, to have faith in God’s love crucified is also to see God’s love for all people. To fall in love with the cross is to be on a journey of opening our hearts in love toward others. God loves me and seeks me out even while still a sinner? Yes. This changes us. Being loved transforms the human heart. (See Ezekiel 36:26) To love God and Jesus is to love all those whom they love. As St John says: 

Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. (1John 4:11-12)

The Found Parables – Sheep and Coins (Luke 15:1-10)

God desires all people to be saved. (1Timothy 2:4; 2Peter 3:9) No favourites. But how does that work with Israel as the Chosen People? Whatever it might mean, it doesn’t mean that Israel is chosen to the exclusion of everyone else. It might mean that all those who are saved will be included into Israel, but that is a different thing to saying that that the Chosen People are a small elite of the saved. The purpose of God choosing the people of Israel was not to specify a small band of people for salvation to the exclusion of all the other nations of the earth. The Chosen People were chosen to bring a blessing to all the families of the world (Genesis 12:1-3) And this universal love culminates in Jesus. Jesus is not a change in course; he is the completion of that original choosing narrated in Genesis 12. And in his life, death and resurrection he becomes the invitation to all people.

The invitation that delivered went out to all those who had ears to listen. Many rejected the call, and often these people were those who thought they were already included in the Chosen People. (Think of the opposition to Jesus displayed by the Pharisees and others in the Gospels.) But many did not reject Jesus. And, often, these were those least expected to be invited or accept the invitation. (The poor, the lame, the blind, see Luke 7:22; 14:21) And still there was room in the banquet! (To steal from a parable from Jesus about this very point. See Luke 14:15-24) So, those who, the Chosen People agreed, could never be invited, gained a guernsey to the banquet. (To borrow from Australian slang.)

This universalism continued in the church. Baptism was offered to all people, not an elite. There were no preferred candidates: all were sought out, to the very ends of the earth. (See especially Matthew 28:19; Galatians 3:28; Colossians 3:11) But there were other religious views that infected the church and attempted to subvert the universal call to salvation. Their agenda was elitist, and restricted the fullness of God’s love to a select few. Here is the parable of the Lost Sheep from the Gospel of Thomas. (A second century Gnostic Gospel.)

Gospel of Thomas, Saying 107. 

 Jesus said: The kingdom is like a shepherd who had a hundred sheep; one of them, the biggest, went astray; he left (the) ninety-nine (and) sought after the one until he found it. After he had laboured, he said to the sheep: I love you more than the ninety-nine.

That’s not the good news of Jesus. The religious impulse behind this distortion was successfully opposed in the second century A.D. But it is a useful contrast between an elitism that distorts the gospel and the universal call to salvation that is embedded in the whole Jesus event.

And just to show how far that distortion is from the good news, the trajectory of scripture and the tradition that follows it is to say that we are all lost! Not just the preferred sheep, but all of us. And all of us are being searched out by Jesus. (There aren’t any 99 righteous left behind!) But even then, the Gospel is sure that God doesn’t love the lost more than any who might still consider themselves in no need of repentance).

At the end of each of the parables in Luke 15:1-10, it is repeated that there is more joy in heaven over one repentant sinner than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance. (Luke 15:7, 10) That doesn’t mean God loves the repentant sinner more. The repentant sinner might love God more than the unrepentant righteous person, but that is a different matter. (See Luke 7:47-48)

There are no favourites. God wants all to be saved. But equally, there are none who are beyond salvation. God’s desire is not easily thwarted. That’s why we have Jesus, crucified and risen.

The Triple Revelation of the Cross (Mustard Seeds Poetry 5)

 Poetry by Ann Nadge, inspired by the post (April 17, 2025), The Cross of Jesus: A Reflection on Love, Judgement and Obedience (Part 2).

 

“Behold humanity!". This is what 

we do to each other, and this is what 

we have made ourselves into. Our fall is revealed in the flesh 

of one of us, Jesus Christ. 

 

This is a double revelation: 

God so loved the world 

that he sent his only Son. 

In Christ God suffers and dies 

at the hands of sinners 

to show us who and what we are. 

There is a third revelation: 

In the crucified Jesus, who dies for love, 

we see our true humanity, 

distorted humanity in his wounds. 

His wounds (the price of love) 

reveal to us the love that is 

our true calling. We are invited 

to look at the cross, the revelation 

of love and our need of God's healing love, 

to be set on the path of faith. 

 

 Look and live. We see what we are 

in the broken body of Jesus; 

we see on the cross the true 

humanity to which we are called - 

A faithful humanity, obedient 

to the loving will of God 

for the sake of others.

The Lord our God, the Lord is One (Mark 12:28-34)

South Australian Year 12 school exams are just around the corner. When I sat for my Year 12 final exams over 40 years ago the outcome wasn't particularly noteworthy. I had already peaked at school, a year or so back. The problem for me was that I couldn't see the point of what I was doing. Not that the benefit of schooling was lost on me. And I could see possible pathways ahead. And there wasn't and still isn't anything wrong with any of those pathways. It's just that I wanted the answer to the "Why?" behind the options of life. I lacked a comprehensive meaning to bind it all together, a meaning that could infuse my life and make a more complete (rather than relative) sense of any particular path I would take. A way of sifting what was on offer, and finding my place in a deeper and broader meaning. 

It still reminds me of a few pages in Walter Kasper's, The God of Jesus Christ (1), on the ancient world's quest for 'the One' lying behind the multiplicity of the world around. Without a binding, unifying 'One' behind the multiplicity the plethora of 'stuff' around us teeters on meaninglessness, amounting to arbitrary and haphazard encounters. They might have a relative meaning, but without the meaning of a unifying force behind them, the bits of our lives eventually appear arbitrary or haphazard. Like the horizon which makes the foreground comprehensible, without a background of unity the multiplicity of the world 'would be nothing but a dust-heap piled up at random and lacking any order and meaning." (p. 235) That's what my future felt like, all those years ago. (I couldn't verbalise it like that back then.) 

Another example. Sometimes a young person attempts to consume as many experiences as possible, hungrily, voraciously, as though in the cumulative consumption of each experience one will find meaning. Sometimes this happens at the other end of life, after a realisation that one's days are numbered. Not necessarily anything wrong in any of the experiences, but in the end, a life of cumulative, relative experiences or meanings is, in my experience, not enough. Living is more than discrete experiences, no matter how many and varied.

And if we were to think of this unity behind the multiplicity as 'the One' (and we wouldn't be alone in the history of religion and philosophy), we would not be referring to a numerical oneness. It is the oneness of unity, completeness, providing an overarching meaning and purpose. Unity, but also uniqueness, for there can be no other, no other source, no other comprehensive meaning, or else we are back to multiplicity. And this 'One' is universal in its completeness and uniqueness, 'the One' for all peoples.

The above is not unrelated to Jesus' use of Deut 6:4-5 in answer to a question about the commandments: Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one. (Mark 12:29) But my discussion above is not the source of Israel's affirmation of the oneness of God. Israel encountered God, and through that encounter over the centuries came to see that the God of Exodus and Exile is also the God of creation: one, complete, unique, and universal, transcendent if you like.

But there is more to the story of this encounter. In Christ God revealed to us that 'the One' is love. The unity and completeness that is the source and ground of creation is love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. (Not just loving, but God is love. See 1John 4:7-12.)

And encounter is where my story after Year 12 took me. I encountered God in Christ afresh, and over the years have come to discover 'the One' behind the multiplicity, the God who brings a unity and completeness, meaning and purpose to what is otherwise teetering on the arbitrary. It was a  journey from both ends, in the beginning the implicit search from the dead-end of multiplicity without unity, and then from the other end the active encounter with God in Christ (who is the unity implied in the dead-end).

My story is not unique. Many people feel the "dust- heap piled up at random and lacking any order and meaning." But the One beckons at the end of the cul-de-sac of disparate multiplicity, if we can feel it with heart and mind. Then we have entered the ground of encounter.  We need encounter to break through the cul-de-sac from the other side, so to speak. And in and through that encounter (whatever form it might take) integrate the past of relative incoherence into a concrete meaning and purpose transcending any single experience or meaning. Coming to Christ is an encounter, for it was only in encounter - cross and resurrection - that we learnt that God is love, and that love is the sole criterion for meaning and purpose, as Jesus says in today's Gospel reading.

1. Kasper, Walter. The God of Jesus Christ. New York: Crossroad, 1988

On God’s Love, Spiritual Discipline, and the Freedom of Patience

In Jesus and the Spirit the Father has shared with us God’s (the Holy Trinity’s) own life with us. Not just that God loves us, but much more than that. God is love, and we live in that love. There is not another face of God inconsistent with the face of Jesus. The Breath/Spirit of God is the Spirit of that Jesus shared with us. What we see in Jesus – this is what God is, really. Moreover, there is nothing more that the Father can give us. There is nothing more intimate than the Son and the Breath/Spirit of God. Everything we can receive has been given. There is nothing God is withholding, waiting for us to earn. Everything is given – what more can there be than the love that is God? The effect of what God has done in Jesus and given in the Spirit is still working its way through our lives and, indeed, the whole of creation. But we have been and are lavishly blessed by God. 

 To live into what has been so lavishly bestowed on us requires new habits of thought and feeling, and this means practicing the spiritual disciplines to allow the sense of the presence of God to blossom. That makes it sound like hard work. And while part of the Christian calling is to learn some new habits of awareness and gratitude, the answer is not always an intense discipline, but a freedom and patience that waits for God in our lives. This might sound strange, but often the less intense we are while faithfully engaging in the spiritual practices the more likely the presence of God will be unveiled in our life now and in our past. After all, joy can’t be manufactured, it is a gift.

Authenticity, Worship, and Confession

 Christians seek, among other things, authenticity. So what makes authentic worship? Scripture links authentic worship to our lives outside of worship. Our love for God is expressed in worship just as it is expressed in our lives. In gratitude for what God has done for us, our lives are to express God’s love through the practice of righteousness and justice, faith, and mercy. That is, we are to love God by obeying God’s commandments, a love expressed through worship as well. But it is not so much that worship must be accompanied by a life of righteousness, mercy, etc, but that without a congruence between our lives and what God commands the worship of God loses its authenticity. Worship and our lives are not separate silos; lives of righteousness and mercy are the precondition for worship. That’s not a call to try and earn God’s love in our lives, but a call to live lives of gratitude by practising mercy and love in faith. 

So a precondition of authentic worship is authenticity in our discipleship day to day. And that’s a problem. Whose life is one of perfect obedience? Does this mean that our worship is necessarily inauthentic? Confession in worship can help us out here. In confession, we come as authentic sinners confessing authentic sins to an authentically loving and forgiving God. And God’s forgiveness is ahead of us in this. It is not that we repent and confess our sins and God forgives us as a reward. God’s love is already waiting for us and does not need our confession first to then be able to forgive us. God loves us now, so we confess in the knowledge of that love. And so confession and absolution become an expression of authenticity and the means to seek greater authenticity. We acknowledge who we have made ourselves into, and in this context of forgiveness and love need not hide from who we are. That’s authenticity. And we can begin to unravel what we have made ourselves into via this path of authenticity. That’s authentic change. 

 In other words, confession is an aid in avoiding hypocrisy, an archenemy of authenticity. We don’t have to come to worship ignoring our failure to live authentic Christian lives. Instead, we can come to the God who is rich in mercy as an authentic sinner who is authentically forgiven. It is, after all, not the perfection of the pure that makes the angels rejoice in heaven, but, if I could rephrase Jesus, the sinner authentically repenting.