God sounds really angry in today’s reading from Isaiah. Ticked off to the max about those ungrateful Israelites, recently freed from Exile and now absolutely ignoring—turning a deaf ear-- to God’s reaching out. It’s a sad reading actually, for in it we hear God God! imploring—begging the Israelites to pay attention, to turn back toward the Divine. God cries out “HERE I AM!” And what do the Israelites do? They ignore God. And what does God do? God gets angry. Really really angry. It’s one of the most vulnerable protrayals of God in Hebrew Scritpure.
When I was a practicing psychotherapist clients would come to me with “anger issues.” They wanted me, as their counselor to help them get rid of that anger. They’d become frustrated—angry even---when I told them that anger is a secondary emotion, that to get rid of it we must dig below the surface, where the anger is and get to the real issue, the primary emotion. More often than not the anger was masking some other feeling, something that would make the person much more vulnerable like sadness or fear.
That’s why we use anger—to go on the offensive, to cover up our vulnerability. To protect ourselves.
We all do it. Even God.
There is no more vulnerable position in the whole world than telling someone that you love them. God is telling us all the time: I love you. I love You I love you. And when we ignore that love? When we ignore God? Well, I think God gets very frustrated, very hurt and, in turn very angry.
All God wanted was for the Israelites to respond, to remember that their freedom, that their very life began and ended in the arms of God. But they didn’t listen, they didn’t hear, they didn’t respond.
Do we?
Do we hear God’s pleas? Do we listen to God’s calls to us?
Do we reach out and meet God halfway?
Remember, God isn’t some isolated Creator who sits atop a throne dictating the ins and outs of life. God is all about relationship. God is a spinning and spiraling source of light and life out of which—from which—all life is emitted. But it doesn’t end there—it isn’t all about God giving to us, it’s also about us giving to God. That swirling spinning source of light and life gives life but is also fueled by, enhanced by, fed by the love and the light we give back. God really wants us to respond. God really wants us to interact, God really wants us as part of the Divine dance of creation.
And when we don’t respond, when we fall silent, God grieves, God laments, God gets sad. And sometimes, God gets angry.
Because God, to paraphrase Sally Field at the Oscars, God really really likes us. And God wants to spend time with us.
So God takes any opportunity—every opportunity-- to reach out to us and then? Well then God waits. God waits for us to receive God, to accept God, to be in relationship with God.
Often those of us who look, on the outside, to be God’s chosen folk—people to whom life has been very good, people who have been abundantly blessed----people like you and me----are the ones who neglect our relationship with God the most. It’s not that we forget God, it’s not that we deny God, we just kind of take God for granted.
And when we take God for granted we’re not listening, we don’t hear God’s calls to us.
We became so numb to God that God had to come to us in the person of Jesus Christ to a.) get some understanding of the human condition from inside the human condition and b.) shake us up by breaking every boundary and busting through every limit. From the healing of the sick, to the embracing of children, to the respect for women, to the touching the untouchables and all the way into and then out of the tomb, God in the person of Jesus Christ came to upset the status quo and shake the foundations of life to it’s very core. Last week this boundary breaking and limit busting involved a sinful woman, two weeks ago, a Roman Soldier and this week, the Gerasane Demonic.
This man with a Legion of evil spirits, demons—nowadays we’d call it schizophrenia or psychotic mania---is so sick, so crazy, so possessed that he lives among the dead in the cemetery. The townspeople avoid him and fear him for no chains seem able to hold him. He is so horrified by himself that he begs, BEGS Jesus to release him from his torture. He has nothing to lose so he goes directly to God and reaches out his hands saying, embrace me, Lord. Release me Lord, help me Lord. He reaches out and he is healed. He asks and he receives. He is open to the Love of God, he listened, he heard and he received. Once again, the work of Jesus isn’t in the mainstream but on the outskirts the fringes of society. Once again, Jesus teaches us, the in crowd through the faith of those on the outside, looking in.
So what are we to take from these readings? —that God has feelings too and that God’s love is reserved especially for those who are the most ill, the most needy among us?
No. I think what we’re to take from today’s readings is much more basic. I think the primary message in today’s readings is that God’s Love is for everyone. It’s what Paul says in his letter to the church in Galatia: there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer man or woman, there is no longer Pharisee or Gentile, no longer Gay or straight, no longer mentally stable and mentally ill, no longer, black or white, no longer rich or poor, no longer Christian or Muslim, no longer us and them. There is only God’s beloved. You, me, us, them. Beloved by God. Forever. No matter what.
So, the take home message from today’s readings is this: God is always calling out to us, God is always reaching for us. May we, in turn hear God’s calls, may we accept God’s touch, may we receive God’s Love. Amen.
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