THE LAST RIVER MILE

It occurred to me the other day that my faith may have come full circle.

When I was a child, about two years before the invention of dirt, my parents took me to Sunday School at a large church in the suburban St. Louis, Missouri area. One of my earliest memories there is hearing the phrase, “Love one another.” Vague as that may have been to me at the time, I remember making the connection between this Jesus guy and love. He was the link between how much God loved me and the way I was suppose to love other people. Even Jesus’ death and resurrection, frightening as all that was to four and five-year-old kids, somehow expressed this uncommon level of love. Without fully understanding all this, I remember liking it. Our longing from birth is to be loved, after all.

As time went on, though, I began to hear more emphasis on specific benefits Jesus offered. This became a long list: getting to go to heaven, getting various specific blessings, getting problems solved, receiving healing, getting rescued from dire situations, and a host of other perks. I even started to hear Jesus invoked for getting your team to win on the playing field, getting an election to turn out the way you want it, and getting your country to win a war. It seemed to me that many people connected themselves to Jesus just for the personal fringe benefits of that connection.

This no doubt contributed to the short time I spent away from organized religion. I just wasn’t very impressed by something that boiled down to little more than gaining reward and avoiding punishment. If that’s all it is, I thought, how is a follower of Jesus any different than Pavlov’s dog? Did Jesus go to the cross just so we would respond the right way and behave correctly?

I am more impressed by those drawn to Jesus, those who exemplified Jesus, and those who promoted Jesus apart from any personal benefit to themselves. Google St. Francis of Assisi. That’s an example of someone immersed in God’s love and radiating God’s love apart from any personal gain. It’s not that certain benefits of a relationship with Jesus aren’t there. But they are not the primary motivation or the main aim.

I’m impacted by a character in the Bible, Job, who lost any and all outward benefits and blessings. He said, “Though he (God) slay me, yet will I hope in him…” (Job 15:13.) What would it be like to have faith like that? I once heard someone ask this discussion question: “Do you love God and love others so much that you would give up your own salvation so someone else could have it?” (This is a hypothetical question: salvation doesn’t work this way!) What would it be like to not only not be motivated by the perks of a relationship with Jesus, but to be willing to give t up those benefits up or another?

Since I’ve retired I’ve spent a lot of time with the writings and thoughts of those who are in the contemplative Christian trajectory: Richard Rohr, James Finley, Brian McLaren and others. For them, God as the embodiment and definition of foundational love undergirds and defines everything and everyone. They speak of being welcomed so deep into this love that one can’t help but long for everyone to experience it and know it. It is to hunger for and to be enveloped in a love that the circumstances of the world cannot give, nor can they take it away.

So, it’s almost like I have circled back to the faith of my childhood, and yet entered into it as if for the first time. Pealing everything else back, it’s about loving God and loving others as God loves us, made known in Jesus. Everything else answers to this.

I’ll see you around the next bend in the river.