In most cases, the love of a parent for a child is unconditional….but the like? Oh that’s conditional…there are times we really don’t like the people we love.
Is God, as the ultimate parent, any different? I don’t think so. I know God loves us, but I’m not sure God likes us all the time.
Consider our reading from Amos.
The visions Amos had were clear: God was none too happy with Israel. Established ramrod straight as if on a plumb line the people had gone askew and God, well God was disappointed, angry and perhaps at wit’s end. Right then, God didn’t like God’s people too much.
So God sends this tree dresser, this gardener, a regular guy out to tell the truth: God loves you but God sure doesn’t like you so much right now. And as the reading tells us, “the land couldn’t cope with everything he was saying.” Or, in an older translation, “the land couldn’t bear all his words.”
The people didn’t like what they heard. The people liked being loved, but they didn’t like being held accountable.
Sometimes it’s really hard to accept love—because with love comes great responsibility, responsibility to nurture that love, to respect it and to heed its demands. So the Israelites shut Amos out, despising and rejecting him— they truly couldn’t bear the message being shared …they didn’t want to hear that with God’s love comes expectation. They didn’t accept that Love is a two way street.
Today’s Gospel gives us another glimpse into what happens when we, as recipients of God’s great Love fail to live up to our end of the bargain.
Herod is a sad sap. Now remember this isn’t the Herod of the nativity story, that Herod was ruthless and sure of himself. This Herod? Not so sure of himself. And even though he was attracted to John’s message he didn’t follow John as he may have wanted because, although Herod was King, he most certainly didn’t wear the pants in the family, so although John’s words made his heart burn, fear of his wife made his very being quake so instead of following John, Herod is manipulated by his wife and ends up giving her what she wanted: John’s head on a platter. At that moment, in that situation, Herod had a choice, follow the Love of God as he received it through the words of John or follow his pride and his social standing to adhere to his manipulative and vengeful wife’s hatred.
By denying what he was feeling about John Herod has rejected God. Herod has taken God’s love and simply said, ‘no thank you.”
How often do we choose to save face only to break God’s heart?
The Israelites of Amos’ time did it, Herod did it and you and I do it.
We love God. We know God loves us…but that love so easily fades to the background when we’re faced with the “expectations” of this world, the “expectations” of our own social circle, the “expectations” of our family. How often do we choose the “socially expected” way, the way that will make the fewest waves, cause the least amount of relationship strain instead of the way of God?
When we do that, God doesn’t like us too much.
When we cross the street to avoid the homeless person, God doesn’t like us too much. God doesn’t expect us to give them money, God simply expects us to look them in the eye and to treat them as the human being—the beloved child of God they are.
When we hear someone demeaning the dignity of another human being based on the color of their skin, the name they call their God or the gender of their beloved and we fail to confront that person for their intolerance and hate, God doesn’t like us too much.
When we participate in the destruction of this, our glorious planet, when we are too lazy to recycle, to cheap to demand our food be produced in environmentally sound ways, when we drive bigger and bigger cars, regardless of the cost to earth, God doesn’t like us very much.
When we fail to confront the loved one whose self-destructive behavior is destroying everything good in their world, God doesn’t like us very much.
When we fail to do one of the simplest things we can do to give life to another, by giving blood and by being an organ donor, God doesn’t like us too much.
With love comes great responsibility. To truly love God and to fully accept God’s love of us, we must make the difficult choices, we must speak the hard to hear words.
Herod couldn’t do that—even when face to face with a prophet, face to face with a messenger from God, his heart burning with a recognition that this man brought him something no amount of fame fortune power or prestige could give him couldn’t do that. He rejected the love of God and killed the messenger, all for a few moments of temporal glory and family peace.
Israel in the days Amos, wouldn’t accept God’s love. They doubted, they feared they lost their faith and in so doing, they made God mad. Not mad enough to remove God’s love, but mad enough to make them mighty uncomfortable . God still loved them, but they were too caught up in the here and now to remember that love and to spread it.
We’re no different.
With God’s love comes great expectations. We must let our hearts burn with recognition, we must set out to love and serve the Lord in all we do. We must gather here proclaiming God’s love and then leave here showing the world that love in all that we do and with all whom we meet.
For this is what God likes, a people who know they are loved and in turn love each other in God’s name. When we do that, not only will we be loved, but we’ll also be liked.
Amen.
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