Posts Tagged: Isaiah 63:9

“Identifying Love”

1-2 So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that’s where the action is. See things from his perspective.

3-4 Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life—even though invisible to spectators—is with Christ in God. He is your life. When Christ (your real life, remember) shows up again on this earth, you’ll show up, too—the real you, the glorious you. Meanwhile, be content with obscurity, like Christ.” (Colossians 3:1-4, The Message)

Love always identifies with whatever or whoever is the beloved. Do you love stuff? Then you identify with stuff? Do you love validation from others? Then that love becomes a part of your identity.

This is especially evident with parents. We identify with our children. It may not be an altogether healthy identification, but there it is. And it is (at least in part) an example of love identifying with what or who is loved.

The Bible—both the Old and New Testaments—indicates many things that are hard to believe. I am not now talking about garden-variety miracles such as feeding multitudes with a few fish and loaves or raising the dead. No, I am talking about a really big miracle: God’s miraculous identification with us in our sinfulness.

There are many things in the Bible that I have a hard time swallowing. One that always chokes me and chokes me up is that God not only loves sinners but also identifies with them. Ancient Israel was a bunch of rebellious sinners, like the rest of the world. Neither Moses nor the prophets were impressed with Israel. God didn’t pretend that the Israelites were a box of chocolates either.

But even though God disciplined his rebellious children severely, God never quite gave up on them. Instead, God identified with them. Isaiah, who points out that Israel is in exile because of their rebellion against God, also speaks repeatedly about God’s identification with Israel. For example,

“In all their affliction he was afflicted,

                        and the angel of his presence saved them;

             in his love and in his pity he redeemed them;

                        he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.” (Isaiah 63:9, English Standard Version)

God’s identification with the sinners God loves is more than hinted at in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, God’s identification with this whole messed-up species that calls itself homo sapiens (“knowing man”) becomes a laser-like focus in Jesus Christ. He hung around with sinners all the time and was criticized for it. The religious sinners were his most merciless critics. Of course, we always are, aren’t we!

At the cross, Identifying Love showed itself as Redeeming Love. The One who had hung out with sinners was now hung out to dry—or rather, hung out to die.

And die he did. But there is a persistent rumor that he did not stay dead for long. Yes, I know that is hard to believe, isn’t it?  But there are many of us who do believe it. On my better days, I do too. On my worse days, I don’t believe much of anything. Sorry, but that is true.

And, according to the Apostle Paul, when Jesus came out of the tomb we came out with Jesus. Identifying Love had so identified with us that we have already died, been buried, and been raised from the dead. It is not first and foremost about us identifying with Jesus. No, it is first and foremost about God’s identification with us in Christ.

So what do I do in the light of God’s identification with me and with the whole human race? There are many responses to such loving identification. One is simple gratitude. God, thank you, thank you, thank you, for identifying with me. Another response is to keep pursuing Christ. The verb in Colossians 3:1 that speaks of “seeking” or “pursuing” Christ is in the present tense. In the Greek language of New Testament times, the present tense suggests an ongoing, repetitive, life-style choice. We don’t “have” Christ in the way that we “have” objects that we can put in some drawer and dig out (if we can find him) when we need him. Christ is to be sought on an everyday and every-moment basis.

And there are the choices we make every day. Paul talks about those choices in the rest of the book of Colossians: such choices as telling the truth, being sexually pure, and forgiving others. A friend of mine pointed out that, on average, every person makes 35,000 choices every day.

The first choice of this and every day should be to dare to believe in the identifying love of God. That same daring choice should infuse the other 34,999 choices with meaning.

“The Perpetual Discomfort of Love”

“God is love.” “John, in 1 John 4:16)

“Love one another.” (Jesus, in John 13:34)

“Love your enemy.”  (Jesus, in Matthew 5:44)

“Love as I have loved you.” (Jesus, in John 13:34)

“In all their afflictions, he [i.e., God] was afflicted.” (Isaiah 63:9)

“. . . the perpetual discomfort of what love requires.” (Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation,

From the Center for Action and Contemplation

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgxwChSHbTfsDLWjVHvdPRmchKQSH).

The last quote above is from a guest meditation from Richard Rohr’s website.  Rohr asked a mom and dad to share their thoughts about parenting.  Mom got to go first, which is as it should be.  She spoke of “ . . . the perpetual discomfort of what love requires.”

Yes!

We tend to think that love is a wonderful, pleasurable, joyous thing.  Sometimes, it is.  More often, it is not.

Don’t get me wrong: Love is an adventure.  However, as Bilbo Baggins said, “Adventures are nasty things that will make you late for dinner.”  And who wants to be late for dinner?

Still, we need adventure in our lives—even if we don’t want them.  Especially then.

In Isaiah 63:9, the prophet Isaiah says to people in exile, “God has gone through all the troubles that our ancestors went through.”  The implication is that God is with the exiles, too.  Apparently we have a God who is also willing to endure the perpetual discomfort of what love requires.  Some theologians (of a certain philosophical bent) refer to God as “the unmoved Mover.”  Perhaps they are right in a sense.

But in an even more profound sense, God is precisely the very moved Mover.  It would seem that we have a God who has sought out the adventure of love, no matter how much perpetual discomfort there is for Him in that adventure.

It is the same for us.  Love is an adventure, no matter the perpetual discomfort.  However, if we go on the adventure, we will eventually discover that we have a Great Companion—the God who accompanied Israel in its painful quest, the same God who became flesh and dwelt among us.

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