Immutable In Love

Psalm 138, CEB

1 I give thanks to you with all my heart, Lord. I sing your praise before all other gods. 2 I bow toward your holy temple and thank your name for your loyal love and faithfulness because you have made your name and word greater than everything else. 3 On the day I cried out, you answered me. You encouraged me with inner strength. 4 Let all the earth’s rulers give thanks to you, Lord, when they hear what you say. 5 Let them sing about the Lord’s ways because the Lord’s glory is so great! 6 Even though the Lord is high, he can still see the lowly, but God keeps his distance from the arrogant. 7 Whenever I am in deep trouble, you make me live again; you send your power against my enemies’ wrath; you save me with your strong hand. 8 The Lord will do all this for my sake. Your faithful love lasts forever, Lord! Don’t let go of what your hands have made.

INTRO

This week, we continue our Ascribe to God sermon series, a journey of deepening our understanding of who God is and how God is at work in the world. Each week, we will explore different attributes and qualities that we ascribe to God. We began by understanding God as an all-consuming presence. We were reminded that God is always with us, and when we allow God to truly consume us, we are perfected in love so that we might share God’s love with others. Last week, we examined what it means to serve an all-knowing God. To be known by God is an act of love as God seeks to be in relationship with us. Our call is to move toward a place of accepting, of asking God to know us so that we might give ourselves over more fully to God’s ways. This week, we continue our journey by examining a God who is immutable in love.

Over the past several weeks, God’s love has come up again and again. When attempting to describe God, it is normal that things we ascribe to or attribute to God would blur the lines. It is because God is who God is. It is because our language can’t accurately describe God. It is because we are mortals and will never be God. And yet we give thanks and praise to God for this.

Immutable seems like a strange word. In fact, most of us do not even use that word in our regular lives. However, God’s immutability, especially the immutability of God’s love, is one of the most agreed-upon theological understandings of God. Immutable simply means unchanging. Immutable is largely our way of comparing ourselves to God and the means by which we come to understand we are not God. We change throughout our lives. Our understanding of love grows and changes. How we understand love changes not just from childhood to adulthood but throughout life. I have a different understanding of love now that I am married than when I was dating…or one’s understanding of love grows more when they have a child. Yet God remains the same. And in our text, the psalmist gives thanks for God’s “loyal love and faithfulness.”

Psalm 138 creates a stark contrast between earthly kings and rulers and God. The psalmist writes the psalm in the midst of their political reality. In fact, the psalmist writes to create a picture of the one true king of the earth. Despite not living under a king, we can still draw contrasts with our political reality. So often, when we enter into election season, we don’t think about the qualities of a good ruler that scripture lifts up to us. In fact, we look into our own interests. We listen to politicians make promises that, deep down, we know they won’t and can’t keep. We even fight among one another and begin to call people out, “Surely, you can be a Christian if you vote for the Republican or Democrat party.” Because we elect our leaders in this way, we often find ourselves disappointed in the results. The truth is, if we constantly look to earthly leaders and governments for our comfort, then we will always be disappointed. Politicians, leaders, and governments of this world will always fail because they are human. Oh, by the way, this includes the church! The leaders on church council…the staff…your pastor…are all human…at some point, we will unintentionally disappoint one another.

In contrast to the leaders of this world, we have God. As we have talked about, God is all-consuming and all-knowing. We proclaim God to be high and holy. We believe that God is above everything. Yet we know that God knows us personally and communally. God desires to be with us so much that God sent God’s only son to live among us as a human. God also desires for us to feel God’s love in our lives. This love is strong. It is faithful and loyal. God’s love never fails. We proclaim this in our communion liturgy, “When we turned away, and our love failed, your love remained steadfast.”

Yet the love of God is more than the love we think about with families, close friends, or significant others. God does love us in that way. But the love that we are talking about is linked to a Hebrew word, hesed. Hesed is often translated as steadfast love and is linked closely with faithfulness. More accurately, one theologian describes it this way: It “is the loving commitment of God to act on our behalf at every moment in the history of salvation.” We see this in God’s action throughout the Biblical cannon. The same theologian offers examples of God’s love with Joseph in prison, the ways God leads Israel out of Egypt. It is also found in the psalmist’s proclamation in Psalm 23:, “Surely [hesed] will follow me all the days of my life.” And that’s just a few examples. Even in our own lives, we can see God’s faithful, steadfast, loyal love working in our lives.

The Psalmist proclaims that this is true even in the hard times of our lives. The Psalmist writes, “Whenever I am in deep trouble, you make me live again; you send your power against my enemies’ wrath; you save me with your strong hand.” None of us are exempt from difficulties in this life. At one time or another, we have all been through difficulties: a divorce, a serious illness, the death of a child, a near-death experience. Our congregation has been through difficulties together: COVID-19, disaffiliation, (Ryan) choosing the color of the carpet.

Sometimes, in these difficult times, we turn to other gods. We think that our God is not near to us. We take things into our own hands as we turn to the idol of individualism. We believe that we have to take care of ourselves and that we can do it all by ourselves; maybe we distance ourselves from the work of the body, we isolate, we make demands about this or that. In these moments, we are never truly satisfied. Yet through it all, God walks alongside us. Sometimes, it is difficult to see, and we may be more worn down after the storm, but God has loved us through each and every difficulty in our lives. God’s love works through the hands and feet of others. God’s love works through the kindness of neighbors or through the faithfulness of our church family. Oftentimes, it is when we reflect on the difficult times we, like the psalmist, can offer praise to God for God’s never-failing love.

When faced with the realities of a God who is immutable in love, we realize that we must respond. But if our love is imperfect, if our love fails, how do we respond to God’s perfect love working in our lives? We do so by responding to God’s love with love. When we allow God’s perfect, immutable love to work in us, we become more perfected in love. The more perfect we are made in love, the more we will respond to God by offering love. We offer love back to God through praise. This requires vulnerability on our end…a willingness to hear the other…a willingness to look internally at where one is looking purely after then ownself own self-interest….or even sometimes it’s found in accepting the love of others as an embodied expression of God’s love. Love is transformative.

This Psalm is a psalm of praise for God’s love. The psalmist literally offers up praise and thanksgiving to God because God has been faithful to the psalmist. We model this in worship each and every week. Part of why we worship God, part of why we offer up praise and thanksgiving to God is for who God is and how God has worked in our lives. And in doing so, we recognize that we give praise to God not just individually, but as a community too.

But the last verse of the psalm also shows us another way that we can respond to God. In asking God not to let go of what God’s hands have made, the psalmist recognizes that our call as Christians is to do everything out of love for God. In other words, we use our time, talents, and gifts because God has gifted them to us in love. Even our daily lives and our vocations we have because God has led us to them in love. To put it another way, our Christian vocation calls us to view even the jobs that we have through a different lens because we are Christians who have been loved by God. Theologian Martin Luther believed that no matter our job or occupation, we are to serve our neighbor through that work as a means of expressing our love of God. Luther wrote about this idea, saying, “The same is true for shoemaker, tailor, scribe, or reader. If he is a Christian tailor, he will say: I make these clothes because God has bidden me do so, so that I can earn a living, so that I can help and serve my neighbor. When a Christian does not serve the other, God is not present.”

As we are perfected in God’s love, our work will begin to look more and more like the praise we have in our hearts for God. The whole tone and outlook of Psalm 138 doesn’t just show us God’s immutable love, but it demonstrates to us how we ought respond to God’s love. It reminds us that we ought to praise God, share God with others, and live according to God’s purpose for our lives as we serve our neighbors in our daily lives. This also means we must allow others to use their gifts and serve us too. As we do this, we allow the immutable love of God to work in and through us so that others might be drawn to God as well. For even in our daily lives, we serve as ministers spreading God’s love to the far corners of the world.

And even when we fail to be all that God wants us to be, God stands ready to love us through it. Loving others this way, thinking about our jobs in this way, loving customers or clients or coworkers even when they are difficult; it’s hard work. Yet what makes God so worthy of our worship, so worthy of our praise is that God’s love IS truly immutable. The fact that God loves us even when we struggle to love others makes God even more worthy of praise and thanksgiving. Because even in our failure, we try again. We love again because God loves us.

The immutable love of God continues to work even in me, even in you, even in us. Thanks be to God. Amen.