None Should Perish

A Few Thoughts from Bren
September 2018

I found this in my notebook — God is not resigned to losing anybody. There was no indication where it came from. Usually, I jot down the name of the book and the page number when recording notes, but there was nothing there. I don’t think I am the author so, “Good author, though I don’t know your name you captured my attention and imagination and sent me looking.” I knew I had read a similar sentiment about God somewhere in Clarence Jordan’s writing. I found it in “The Father’s Pursuing Love” in The Substance of Faith, a collection of Jordan’s sermons. I highly recommend the book.

What if God’s pursuit of us is not limited by space and time? What if the redemptive process does not stop even with death? Clarence admits that “we’re on very uncertain ground here,” but he does go on to use Scriptural references for his musings.

What is the nature of God? Jesus came to give us insight into that nature. He may have asked [and still asks], “You hear what I am teaching you? You see what I am demonstrating for you?”

Clarence points to three parables in chapter 15 in Luke’s Gospel to underscore more about God’s nature. What does the shepherd do when he loses one of his hundred sheep? He looks for her. How long does he look for her? He looks for her until he finds her.

How about the woman who had ten coins, but lost one? She picks up her broom, lights a lamp and sweeps “until she wears out her broom, until the lamp went out, until her husband came home.” Does she quit sweeping to make her husband and herself something to eat? No. She keeps sweeping until she finds that coin.

The third is the familiar The Parable of the Prodigal Son. Clarence suggests that we call it The Parable of the Father’s All Pursuing Love. In Jesus’ culture, a son could ask for his inheritance ahead of his father’s death. If given, the father was then dead to the son even though he was very much physically alive. The son, too, was dead to the father — the relationship was broken. What does the father do in this parable? He waits. And, against all cultural norms, when the son comes home the father declares him alive. How long does the father wait? He waits until the son comes home.

God is the shepherd, the woman, and the father. God seeks the sheep, searches for the coin, and waits for his “dead” child. Clarence goes on, “Doesn’t [this] say to us that God in his relationship to us is not bound by time and circumstances?” Then he points to First Peter where between the crucifixion and the resurrection, Christ descends into Hades and preached to the people there. Clarence asks, “Why would he preach to them if there was no chance for their redemption?”

“This is what the resurrection is trying to say to us — that the grave is not the final answer. The grave has been swallowed up in victory, death has lost its sting,” writes Clarence.

My heart fills to overflowing when I think of being loved like this. My heart fills to overflowing that this is the nature of the Creator of the universe. Like Clarence, I’d like “to be an implement in God’s hand, an agent of his in shedding his love abroad to people.” I’m imperfect at it, but there is something about the collective at Koinonia through the years that has been just such an implement. People come here and feel, if only for a bit, this pursuing love of God. I think they get an inkling of it not being “the will of God that any should perish.” Perhaps they go from this place loving their neighbors and their enemies just a little bit more. Maybe they go from this place knowing a little bit more about God’s nature.

Let it be so.