These are the opening words of what we call the Gospel, the Good News. Among Biblical quotations, those words are probably most often quoted and most easily recognized.
But sometimes it doesn’t seem as if God actually loves the world.
I could show you images and clips of news that paint this world in the darkest terms, with not a lot of hope. Even with some bright spots in the story, it seems we often desperately wish that there were an escape tunnel where we could just run and get away from the terrible, daily, depressing news.
This is the very world that God so loves. It’s not the first time that things have looked so dark, and felt so desperate to so many people. The cycle has always been there: seasons of hope and optimism followed too soon by seasons of more misery and despair. God so loves the world, even in such times. Maybe especially in such times.
Since the beginning, humans have complained that God does not deliver from all trouble and pain. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that God loves the world at all. Because he allows it to go through these cycles.
Bertrand Russell, a philosopher, said that our only choice for dealing with the injustices and suffering of this world is to build our lives on the “firm foundation of unyielding despair.”
“Unyielding despair?” Is that the best we can hope for? Do we have to take his word for it? Or is there another word? Are there other choices?
God so loved the world that through Jesus the Christ he entered into his own creation once again—living among his creation and suffering with the creation that hurts, that waits, that cries out for justice and redemption.
Jesus the Christ was anointed by God as a human to live the pain and suffering of this world without first eliminating it. Because of his great love, he experienced and lived humiliation and discomfort from the beginning of his life.
In the greatest expression of his love he submitted himself to the cruelty and death that humans often live by—when despair is all we have left . He felt the depths of pain and the realization that God would not deliver him from it at all.
The human birth of Jesus and the human resurrection of Jesus are the ultimate evidence of how God shows his love: not through instant deliverance from every and all suffering, but through the presence and closeness of relationship and identity. And most importantly through the ultimate deliverance from the power and rule of death.
So what are the actual outcomes of love? Will that love eradicate and replace our despair?
His birth as a human and his resurrection as a human assure us that justice for all, life that never ends, and ultimately satisfying joy are the outcomes of “For God so loved the world…”
Merry Christmas to each of you!