God's Big Love

All of the lessons in yesterday's worship service pointed to the enormity of God's love - for all nations and all people. This sounds amazing, right? However, when Jesus suggested that God's love is extended to outsiders, to foreigners, misfits and actual sinners, even his hometown crowd became enraged enough to throw him off a cliff. It's hard for us to wrap our minds around a love that big.

During the children's time, worshipers were invited to think of someone who is especially difficult to love and to write the name down on a piece of paper. I had two slips of paper, so I wrote down two names. Sadly, I think if I had more paper, I could have filled them all.

Could we imagine God's love enveloping the hard-to-love in our own lives?

Later in the service, as people came forward for communion, they placed the names in a basket right before the body of Christ was placed in their hands. It wasn't intended as an exchange, but it felt like one - it's impossible to put a wafer into a hand that's clinging to something else. As I stood there proclaiming, "This is the body of Christ, given for you," I could feel those two names burning a hole in my alb pocket. I couldn't wait to add them to the basket. After the meal, we prayed for those people who have hurt us, disappointed us, betrayed us, enraged us, frightened us. We prayed for our own hard and broken hearts and gave thanks for God's enormous one.

This morning, I peeked at a few of those slips of paper before deciding what to do with them. I was not surprised to find the names of politicians, troublesome co-workers, pesky neighbors. I was heartbroken to see how many slips of paper hit much, much closer to home:

"Dad"
"Mother-in-law"
"My brothers"
"Me"

Loving others can be so hard. In the midst of all that is broken in our world and in our own lives, we pray for God's embrace of the unlovable, the unforgivable, the outsider, the broken and the broken-hearted, you and me.