Gracious God, you hate nothing that you have made, so keep us forever in the knowledge of this great love ☩ in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
This warmer weather has been a nice change. Baseball is again being played and early flowers are budding. All of this means one thing: spring is nearly here. And along with Spring break and March Madness often comes spring cleaning – when we realize that we didn’t quite make the progress on the New Year’s resolution to be better organized and so, bolstered by warmer weather, we spring to action.
We’re promised that being better organized and having less clutter will bring us more joy and clarity in our lives. Words like “minimalism,” “essentialism,” “clutter,” and “tidy” have all surged in usage over the past decade as many of us are searching for something that will bring some order to the chaos and messiness of our lives. And to be clear, I’m not criticizing any of this. I dare you to find anyone in this room who is more organized than I am. I use a planner that keeps my tasks and schedule in order. My desk is almost always clear of clutter and I can be ruthless when it comes to throwing away or donating things that I deem “unnecessary.” My email inbox never has more than a handful of messages in it. And I remember a few years ago I was driving some youth around for Christmas caroling and one of them asked me if my car was brand new – it’s not, it’s 10 years old. I said “No, why do you ask?” Her response was “I’ve just never seen a car this clean before.” Some might call it neurotic, I call it serenity, but the point is that I’m all about limiting the clutter.
And if you read the advice of professional declutters or minimalist advisors, they’ll generally say that there are two primary reasons to keep something around: is it beautiful or is it useful?
Some of us might be in the category that world would call “beautiful,” but we all know that beauty fades and what is considered beautiful changes often. From Scripture, we know that the way God evaluates beauty is more than skin deep. We might consider things like complexion, physique, and symmetry as we evaluate beauty standards, but that’s not how God sees us. God looks upon our hearts.
In the Litany of Penitence that we will pray, we confess that we have not loved God with all our heart, mind, and strength; we have not loved our neighbors as our selves. Instead, we are prideful, self-indulgent, selfish, fearful, negligent, and judgmental. In other words, we are sinners. Yes, we are made in the image of God, but in both things done and things left undone, we mar that otherwise beautiful image in which we are made.
And when it comes to usefulness, it seems like, as a whole, we’re pretty useless. Do you all remember during the early days of the pandemic lockdown in 2020 when nature had a chance to catch its breath? Air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions decreased in a way that would have taken years of regulations to achieve.
One of the consistent themes of Scripture is the story of how we, humans, tend to muck everything up. We make idols, we exploit the vulnerable, we forsake the needy. A lot of people remember Martin Luther King noting that the moral arc of the universe is long but that it bends towards justice. Well, it seems that our greed, violence, and short-sightedness bend that arc in the wrong direction.
It’s really not a stretch to wonder if our planet would be better off without humans. But that’s simply not a question that God ponders. As the Collect for Ash Wednesday puts it, God “hates nothing that God has made.” We know from the Creation poem of Genesis that God saw all that was made, including humans, and deemed it all “very good.” In the book of Wisdom, we read “For God loves all things that exist, and detests none of the things that God has made, for God would not have made anything if God hated it.” The prophet Isaiah conveys God’s word to us: “Thus says the LORD, he who created you: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine… You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.” While we might like to declutter and get rid of junk, thanks be to God that God is a hoarder who has chosen to keep us around.
In Psalm 103 we heard about this preserving and abiding love of God: “The LORD is full of compassion and mercy, slow to anger and of great kindness.” That last word, “great kindness,” it’s a word that is used 127 times in the Psalms to describe God’s character towards us and is often translated as “loving kindness” or “steadfast love.” It’s the same word that’s on the banner out front – “love mercy.” One of the essential characteristics of this word is the idea of steadfastness, dependability, or being unconditional.
God does not love us because we are good, because we are beautiful, because we’ve done the right things and avoided the wrong things, or because we’ve said good prayers. No, God loves us because God has made us and God does not hate anything that God has made. We are chosen and we are loved, even if we are dust.
While God despises our sins and longs for us to live in peace, harmony, and charity, God can handle our sloppiness and messiness. God isn’t a spring cleaner, God is a hoarder and fiercely clings to each of us and all of us together.
However, God does not intend to just leave us in our mess or have us figure out to clean ourselves up. No, God lovingly cleans us just as a mother would take a damp washcloth and tenderly wipe the dirt off her toddler’s face who has been playing in the mud. In Psalm 103 we hear that as high as the heavens are above the earth, that’s how far-reaching God’s mercy is. And as far as the east is from the west, which is infinitely, so has God removed our sins from us. Both horizontally and vertically and in any way that you can imagine, you are chosen, cherished, loved, and forgiven.
Your sin has been put away and you belong securely in the love of God. There’s nothing that you need to do in order to earn your belovedness; no tasks you have to do in order to remain God’s chosen. You are, forever and always, loved by our hoarding God who casts no one aside and hates nothing he has made.
Lent, which begins today on Ash Wednesday, has historically been the season of the Church Year in which we prepare for Baptisms at Easter. If you have already been Baptized, we always renew our Baptismal Covenant at the Easter Vigil. If you have not yet been Baptized and feel the love of God within you desiring to be plunged further into your chosenness, speak with me about preparing for Baptism at Easter.
One of the things that we say at Baptism is that the person who is being joined to Jesus is “sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever.” Sort of like Andy’s toys in Toy Story that all have Andy’s name written on them, marking them as his cherished possessions, Jesus’ name marks us all. Or, as we read in Colossians, “Our lives are secured by Christ in God.” Meaning not only is some part of us known and loved by God, but the entirety of our lives belong to and are watched over by our Good Shepherd. No matter what we are facing, God is with us in the difficult times, the joyful times, the restful times, and the trying times. We are not left alone, for we are forever marked and sealed by the love of Jesus.
This means that our homes belong to God, our children, our marriages, our jobs are things God cares about and holds dear. Our fears and our dreams belong to God, as do our accomplishments and our failures. Our pains, our mistakes, our triumphs all are wrapped in this steadfast loving-kindness and mercy of God.
There was a French artist in the 20th-century who was pioneer in what was called the Readymade movement of modern art. Marcel Duchamp became famous for putting together ordinary objects and elevated them to being considered “art” simply because he, as the artist, had chosen them. One piece is a bicycle wheel affixed to the top of a sitting stool. Another is literally just a snow shovel that he put a title and signature on. What made these items beautiful and useful was the fact that they were chosen by the artist.
Beloved, our God, who is most certainly an artist, has chosen you in love. And coming to realize and accept that you are embraced by the One who created all things will do so much more to transform you into seeing yourself as the gift that you are more than giving up chocolate or any other Lenten disciple will.
You belong to God, not because you’ve done anything to secure your place there, but because Jesus has brought you into the very heart of God. There is nothing to do other than to enjoy your forgiveness, rejoice in your chosenness, and share your belovedness. Our belonging in the love of God is steadfast and we are forever at home in God’s beloved community, for our God hates nothing that he has made.
