God can't stop loving us
27 June 2004 – Gwyn Owen: " What sort of God is this that when he has been touched has no control over his power to heal and reconcile?"
The reading was Luke 8:43-48.I suppose for all of us there are parts of the Bible that are special and call to us. Tonight's Gospel reading has been one that has inspired and haunted me for over 10 years. When I see my fellow Christians fall in love with the Bible I am always saved from cynicism by this passage. It contains for me all that is both glorious and mysterious. It sums up everything I understand about God and everything that I find so difficult.
We know that this woman – who must be understood to be the epitome of the little, the lost, the last and the least – this unclean, second class, useless creature came up behind Jesus. He would not have known she was there.
We can only guess at how she must have felt. We know that when she was caught she was full of trembling. But can we begin to imagine the hope? The desperation? The weariness and possibly the love that was in her heart and mind as she reached out her hand?
I suspect, in truth, many of us can. Because this is the same longing to be near God that is the true nature of our souls, our heart-breaking, unspoken, heart's desire.
But what I find most stunning about this passage, most humbling, most awesome, is not that in reaching out to the Christ this woman was healed. That Christ healed we already understand.
No, what is so desperately unnerving about it, so foolish in the eyes of this world, so outrageous in the eyes of Christ's church, is that she made no recorded act of repentance, she uttered no magical words of allegiance, she called no one Lord and we know of no promise that she made. In fact, as I have already said, Jesus did not even know she was there. Yet she was truly, madly, deeply touched.
Here we see, for me, the truest insight into the character of God that is contained in the Gospels, excluding perhaps his passion. Jesus said, "Somebody touched me, for I perceived power going out from me." What sort of God is this that when he has been touched has no control over his power to heal and reconcile?
What sort of God is that? I am thrown to the very ground, I want to rip my clothes, to cover myself in ash, the shame of being loved like this is too much to abide. This is love I cannot even understand, it is not love as I have know it.
This is not a God who weighs us in the balance and in some act of spiritual juggling decides upon our worthiness or the extent to which he will reveal himself to us. No, this shows us a God who when we reach out to him cannot stop himself from loving or us. Simply, it is not in his nature to withhold himself from us.
And yet in this mystery lies in the most disturbing fact, because that day we know that hundreds must have touched him, yet of all those who were pressing to be near him only this woman was healed. Why her?
Or would it be more accurate to say that only she was healed in this miraculous way? But all were changed by his touch. Would it be possible to extend this outpouring of love to all? I think so, I pray so.
If we are to choose to have faith in a God who cannot stop himself from loving, healing and reconciling, then indeed all who touched him that day were healed, were reconciled, were loved. Maybe the fruits of that love never saw the sunshine in this earth, maybe they did. Who knows? All I can say is that in my life I have been sustained by God much more than I give him credit for and healed in ways that I will never know or tell of.
So perhaps this is my message for tonight: that God's love is not meted out like the sugary treats of a parsimonious sweetshop owner to the good children, but is in fact given to all, everywhere. All who reach out for him. And although we do not see that power at work in our livess, our faith is that this power is what sustains us and indeed heals us.
We live in a world that craves the sensational. Many of our churches preach on the miraculous healing of this woman and yet miss the whole point, seeking golden glory and ignoring the hidden truth of His love. That God, in no way, can stop himself, can stop the power that is in him from flowing out into his creation. When we reach one inch towards him he rushes like a father towards a lost child.
Is this a true aspect of love, that it does its work, for the most part humbly, silently and unseen? Love that needs no trumpets blown, no reckoning made, no balance to be paid. Are we loved so that we do not even know it?
We should not be as this world is but we should place our faith firmly in such a generous God, who as we reach out to him is in his own ways reaching out and embracing us. Indeed, before we were born we were held and sustained by this love.
We are like people dying of thirst floating in a crystal lake. Held up and surrounded by the very thing we crave the most. Unwilling, unable or even too stubborn to turn and soak up the quenching water.
We may also search our own hearts and question the nature of the love we give. Do we keep a reckoning? Do we think long and hard before we love? Do we only love those who love us? Where is the reward in that? Even sinners love those who love them. So I say to you, love all those who come to you, pray for all those who touch you. You are his healers also, your faith is called on now to make others well. Go in peace.
Rev. Gwyn Owen, the Vicar of Stockwood, Bristol, England.
