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Did you know there are physiological expressions for all of our emotions? We all have particular internal experiences of our emotions, our adrenal glands start pumping and our heart rate increases, maybe we get a stomach ache or our hands get clammy. But the embodied response to our feelings is not just internal, we show what we are feeling with our actions. Whether it’s an automatic response or a learned habit, we reveal what we feel. When we feel angry, we clench our muscles, often we see this in the jaw and fists of others. When we feel joy, we open up and turn towards, we see this in wide eyes and smiles. When we feel shame, we turn in and away, we see this when people drop their heads and struggle to make eye contact.
At First Loved we talk about emotions quite a bit, because we believe that as human beings (created in the image and likeness of God) we have a unique access to the depth of emotions that God feels. And that is very good news! It’s good news because feelings are not inherently bad or wrong or ‘sinful’ - they are an inherent part of being like God. How feelings are experienced and expressed by people can tell us important things about God, but they can also lead us to believe things that are not true. Shame, for example, is the feeling we associate with the belief “I did not measure up” - I ‘sinned’ or did wrong, caused harm, and so I am less worthy of full measure love. Shame has a mirror emotion of disappointment, which is the feeling we associate with the belief, “you did not measure up.” If we are feeling shame, we assume and project that others are feeling disappointed. When we feel shame, we assume and project that God is disappointed. When we turn away in our pain, anger, shame, we presume that God turns away in pain, anger, and disappointment.
This physical expression of shame and disappointment is so rampant that it makes its way into our theology, our sermons, and our songs. A popular modern hymn written in the 1990s called “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us” includes this line: “How great the pain of searing loss – The Father turns His face away, As wounds which mar the Chosen One Bring many sons to glory.” For 30 years this beautiful song has been repeated in the worship services leading up to Holy Week, and has perpetuated this idea that in the moment of Jesus’ greatest human suffering the Father “turns his face away.” If we had been there and seen what was happening, we would have probably turned our faces away in pain, anger, sadness, and shame - so we attribute this physical expression to God and thus fill in the emotional blanks.
Friends, this is troubling because it requires us to disregard much of what we know to be true of who God is and how God responds to human suffering. In our wounded, bent, and broken humanity, when we witness suffering we recoil and turn away, but the compassionate and gracious God turns toward and draws near. In the beginning, in the garden, when the people are deceived, do wrong, and experience fear and shame for the first time - God calls out to them. People hide, God seeks. Throughout the Psalms we hear the phrase, “make your face shine upon us” - when God turns toward us it saves us, restores us, and gives us peace (Ps 4, 31, 80). Jesus, who is filled with compassion for those who are suffering (Matthew 9:36, 14:14, 15:32), was compelled to reach out and heal and draw near to those who were hurting (Mark 1:41). Jesus physically expressed the love of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15).
Besides all those examples, that tell us God does NOT turn away from us when we are hurt, Jesus himself refers to Psalm 22 while he is suffering on the cross. Feeling abandoned, scorned, and rejected, Jesus speaks the first line of the hymn, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus, and the gospel writers who recorded him saying that, knew that this particular psalm of lament goes on to say this: “For [the Lord] has not turned away from the suffering of the one in pain or trouble. He has not hidden His face from him. But He has heard his cry for help.” (Psalm 22:24) Jesus tells us what we have heard time and again in scripture. That God is not disappointed or ashamed of our woundedness, that God compassionately and empathetically responds to our cries for help, that God is for us and not against us - especially in our suffering.
As we are healed and transformed by being loved first, our emotions and how we express them become conformed to God’s emotions and expressions (Romans 8:29, Colossians 3:10). Our favorite definition of Righteousness at FLM is ‘conformity to the being and doing of God’. So for this Lenten series, let’s go back to Psalm 103 and in light of what we know about how God turns toward us, here is a personalized version of verse 6, “The Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.”
Beloved, [insert your name here ____________], I Yahweh, the compassionate God, am compelled to move toward you in love. All I do is to draw you into alignment with my love and how I express that love. I make right all that has gone wrong for you, ____________, because I see, I care, and I move toward you when you suffer.
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