I've been to many weddings - and even funerals! - where the couple has chosen Corinthians 1 from Paul's first Letter to the Corinthians, as a way to express how they love each other, and also as an abiding inspiration for them to use to help them deepen their love for each other. But if we think about those beautiful words, they're also a description of the perfect, unfathomable way in which God loves you and me! We have seen God's love for us in God's joyous creation of this magnificent universe. We have seen God's love for us, God's loving eyes, loving voice, loving hands, loving feet, loving sacrifice, in the vulnerable person of Jesus. We have experienced God's love for us in the many gifts the Holy Spirit has lavishly poured over us.
"Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."
In his book "Jesus the Forgiving Victim," James Alison invites us to spiritually place ourselves in the Presence of God and allow ourselves to experience the way God's eyes look at us with love. But not just with love - with genuine liking! Yes, God not only loves us, - God LIKES us! I'll use Alison's words, because they are so meaningful.
"What does it mean to realize that the One looking at me is doing so in a way that is patient? So, not looking at me in a hurry, impatient with my slowness and waywardness, needing me to get things right already. Able to take time, not needing to correct me yet; approaching me without edge, gently, in a way that is not out to get me, doesn't need to put me down - that is a kind regard.....They aren't determined that I shouldn't have too good a time, since that will make me big-headed, nor are they only wanting me to be successful so that they can feel successful through me, as though I were a means to their end.
"They (God's eyes) are genuinely hugely glad, if I get something right, since they genuinely want my good, for no other purpose than that they like me...
'Love does not insist on its own way.' What a very extraordinary thing to say! We are talking about the regard of God, the eyes of the Creator of the universe, looking at us, the one to whom we pray 'Thy will be done.' Yet the presence and regard of love is not in rivalry with our will. It is not someone trying to steamroller us, getting us to do something we find awful....This presence of love has been prepared to put itself under us, and from that vulnerable place actually wants to join us in discovering OUR way, so that it's rejoicing and saying 'Oh, that'll be fun! I wonder where she'll take it?' 'Why would that be interesting? You really want to do that? OK, I'm with you!'
"This regard is not irritable or resentful - and don't we know what it is like to be held in an irritable or resentful regard! We're always too much or too little, but we don't measure up. Whereas someone who is not irritable is saying 'You know, you're just right! What fun it is to be with you! Are you having a wonderful time? That makes me sooooo pleased!' Love doesn't rejoice at wrong...- no sense of 'I'm just waiting for you to trip on some banana skin, and then you'll get your come-uppance.'....This regard doesn't take any pleasure in my discomfiture, is not at all keen to see me getting things wrong 'so that you'll learn', no smug satisfaction in my mistakes and my follies; rather it is just beaming when I get it right....
"This regard, this presence of love, bears all things. What on earth is it like to bear all things? We can bear a certain amount of other people's sickness, other people's betrayals, their infidelities. All these things we can bear to a certain extent, though it's a great strain. So what is it like to discover that all my sickness, all my slowness, all my laziness, all my infidelities, are being borne by someone for whom I am still, just as I am, an exciting project?
"This same love believes all things. It believes in me as an investment that despite all the evidence is going to give fruit. When I occasionally say something aspirational, that I would really like to be true, that I would really like to become and to achieve, but which is pretty unlikely given who I usually am, this regard (God's regard for me) doesn't say 'Oh yeah, that's the kind of thing he says when he is in a good mood, but it's just a flash in the pan, we know what he's really like.' But. no, the regard of love takes me at my best, most aspirational, word, and believes in me over time so that the rest of me can catch up with the wild-card dream that I would have difficulty recognizing as myself. The regard of love says 'It is going to be so much more fun to take you at your most daring, and make that true, rather than tease you and belittle you for having ideas above your station.'
"Believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. So love doesn't take no for an answer, doesn't recognize things being closed off, shut down, instead it is constantly reimagining us as potential, as adventure. Love (in the person of Jesus) has already occupied the place of shame and rejection, of being a non-person in our midst, so it doesn't allow itself to be deflected by my hostility, looks past my anger, my resentment, my taking myself too seriously. Love (in Jesus) is prepared to occupy the place of the loser, to endure loss, to be dead. Love not only puts up with all that, but while going through it all never loses sight of a me I often give up on, myself, a me by whom this lover wants to be enriched forever.
"This, all this, language of Paul's, is filling out dimensions of the regard of Jesus the Forgiving Victim in our midst. This is the space which Jesus has opened up for us so as to show us how God looks at us. It is as we find ourselves being looked at in this way, as we sink in to allowing this regard to tell us who we are, that we find ourselves impelled from within, contagiously, to do the same for others."
James Alison's words make clear that God not only loves us, - God likes us! God delights in the quirky, unique people we are. God enjoys being with us, wants to share our time and our company, believes in our dreams for ourselves. God doesn't want to control us. God simply wants to help us to live into those dreams, become all that we can be. God's eyes, God's regard, is always a safe place to be. A place where, warmed by the sunlight of those eyes, we can continue to grow. "And those liking eyes, made even more alive for us by having shared our story from within, look at us and say 'Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." (Alison).