Amazing Love

I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience confirms it by the Holy Spirit— I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen. (Romans 9:1-5, NRSV)

Twenty five or so years ago there was a house on U. S. Highway 98, at Highland View just west of Port St. Joe, a little bungalow with a front screen porch, across the highway from St. Joe Bay, back a bit, facing the road and bay. A family lived there, not anyone I knew, but God knew. One night the house caught fire. Everyone got out apparently, until the young mother realized that her five year old daughter was still in the burning house. She broke loose from those around her and dashed back into the house to save the child or die with her. The house collapsed and they both perished in the inferno. The burned out ruins sat there for a long time, always to me in passing, a memorial to love that is deeper than life itself.

It is not all that unheard of to read or hear that a parent has died saving or trying to save a beloved child. And only one who is a parent could know the intensity of the love in which each child is cherished; love that is indescribable, beyond telling. It is close to “Love divine, all loves excelling,” Charles Wesley’s hymn. Wesley gets near it again in his incomparable salvation hymn “And can it be that I should gain.” The first verse ends, “Amazing love, how can it be, that thou, my God, shouldst die for me.” It was truly parental love.

This is the intensity of love that Saint Paul expresses so passionately in our second reading for the upcoming Sunday, July 31, Proper 13A. He anguishes that Christ is not accepted by his own family, from whom Christ comes and to whom Christ belongs. Paul says that he himself would willingly be cut off from Christ if that would bring those he loves to Christ. That’s amazing love.

TW+