A love that lets us leave

God gave them up to their passions. Delivered them over to their cravings. A God who says, “My people have forsaken me,” loves with a Love that lets us leave. No forcing, no coercing, just freedom. Because without freedom there is no love. But freedom in love is precisely the risk. These texts from Romans and Jeremiah invite us to imagine a Creator who, for the sake of love, allows freedom, allows their creatures to break their own heart. The God from these readings isn’t One who is just as well off without a relationship with humanity. This is a God who is Love, and who chooses to endure the pain that love and freedom inevitably bring. This is a God who is relationship—who is about relationship. With us.

God’s love story with us is one of sacrifice—culminating with the cross, but God’s sacrificial relationship is repeated over and over, all the way through the Bible. Think of the pain of allowing someone you care about to make their own mistakes, to learn their own lessons, to reap the harvest of what they’ve sown. God offers us the way of Love, of being perfectly loved, and then allows us to choose whatever path we want—even if it means choosing our own destruction. Even if it means God watches as we struggle and wrestle our way through the lies and distractions of this world, instead of crying out to our Source for help.

This is the agony of freedom in relationship. Agony for the one who allows the mistakes, and agony for the one who reaps what he sows. But freedom is necessary for love.

These readings from Jeremiah and Romans show God’s emotion as the Beloved people of God turn away, over and over again. But perhaps this is the truest depth of Love: this Love that allows itself to be abandoned. This Love who sighs as he watches his beloved bring destruction into her own life. This Love who grants freedom to the ones she loves, trusting that as they choose the lies and stories around them over the truth, they’ll eventually see the emptiness and pain of the death they’ve bought into. Love empties itself for us to have the choice.  Love offers us the choice. God offers us the choice. It is our choice whether we love God in return. And when we look to Jesus, we see the image of a God who loves us regardless of our choice—who does enter into our brokenness, our mistakes, and our weaknesses with tenderness and compassion. Jesus enters in—with Love, where we have abandoned it—and heals us.

So whether in a season of Lent, or a season of pandemic and isolation, or any a time of self-examination—it’s an opportunity to notice the spaces we’ve wandered, and the parts of us we bring to God for healing. May we have courage to see the ways we’ve turned from Love—from God’s Love. May the bitterness of our refusal be enough to remember the pure sweetness and goodness of being Loved by our Creator. And may we have the humility to turn back to Love’s open arms, who has promised to never leave us or forsake us.

A homily (one of my favorites) based on BCP daily office readings:

Jeremiah 2:1-13 (NRSV)

The word of the Lord came to me, saying: Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem, Thus says the Lord:

I remember the devotion of your youth,
    your love as a bride,
how you followed me in the wilderness,
    in a land not sown.
Israel was holy to the Lord,
    the first fruits of his harvest.
All who ate of it were held guilty;
    disaster came upon them,
says the Lord.

Hear the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel. Thus says the Lord:

What wrong did your ancestors find in me
    that they went far from me,
and went after worthless things, and became worthless themselves?
They did not say, “Where is the Lord
    who brought us up from the land of Egypt,
who led us in the wilderness,
    in a land of deserts and pits,
in a land of drought and deep darkness,
    in a land that no one passes through,
    where no one lives?”
I brought you into a plentiful land
    to eat its fruits and its good things.
But when you entered you defiled my land,
    and made my heritage an abomination.
The priests did not say, “Where is the Lord?”
    Those who handle the law did not know me;
the rulers transgressed against me;
    the prophets prophesied by Baal,
    and went after things that do not profit.

Therefore once more I accuse you,
says the Lord,
    and I accuse your children’s children.
Cross to the coasts of Cyprus and look,
    send to Kedar and examine with care;
    see if there has ever been such a thing.
Has a nation changed its gods,
    even though they are no gods?
But my people have changed their glory
    for something that does not profit.
Be appalled, O heavens, at this,
    be shocked, be utterly desolate,
says the Lord,
for my people have committed two evils:
    they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living water,
    and dug out cisterns for themselves,
cracked cisterns
    that can hold no water.

Romans 1:16-25 (NRSV)

For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, “The one who is righteous will live by faith.”

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools; and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

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