Reckless Love

The Scandal of Grace in a Performance-Driven World

John Newton

• Publisher: Church Publishing
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781640650268
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Its momentum building, the "Jesus Movement" is unfolding, with Episcopalians longing to embody our branch of the movement in the world. John Newton's contribution is this look at God's reckless love. His aim is not for the head, but for the heart, to connect people with their passion and love for Jesus Christ, reawakening what may be dormant, because ultimately, it is not clever ideas but passion that mobilizes people. The Jesus Movement is not about our move toward God, but about a God who is for us in Christ Jesus, constantly moving toward fragile and broken humanity, recklessly loving us in all seasons and circumstances. Newton draws heavily from the gospels, and speaks to the grace of God in Jesus Christ. Each chapter begins with a gospel passage used to challenge the way we think about God, love, morality, grace, mission, evangelism, and the church. Three discussion questions in each chapter and the book can be used as a 10-week study, with groups discussing two chapters at a time. Chapters are intentionally short, and each unpacks a specific episode in Jesus's life that illuminates the reckless love of God in Christ.

Chapter 1

Reckless

“Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.” And he said, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!” (Mark 4:3–9)

The first home I ever purchased had only one flaw: a barren front yard. I did not consider this to be a problem when I purchased the home, as I figured I would plant grass. However, I quickly learned that planting grass is hard. Recklessly throwing down a few squares of grass seed won’t yield a plush green yard.

Planting grass, I later learned, would require loosening the ground and then meticulously raking the ground into a thousand little furrows. I would then need to scatter seed carefully and evenly. Next comes the wheat straw to hold in the moisture before watering, which of course is its own science. If you water the yard too much then the seeds will wash away, but if you fail to use enough water the seeds will never grow.

My front yard remained barren for the three years I lived in that house. I never planted the grass, but my research yielded loads of information about horticulture. I learned that a careful farmer is cautious and strategic, diligent and methodical, calculated and selective.

I find it shocking that Jesus’s most famous parable is about a farmer who lacks these qualities. The farmer in Jesus’s story is reckless. He throws seed around like it is confetti on New Year’s Eve. Seed falls on the path, the thorns, the rocky ground, and some in good soil. The farmer in Jesus’s story is wasteful and lavish and anything but calculated. The real shock comes when we discover who this farmer represents: God.

I used to believe that the purpose of this parable was to warn the faithful about the pitfalls of wealth and distraction. I read it as Jesus’s way of encouraging me to be the good soil. Christians weren’t supposed to be materialistic, shallow, and hard of heart like the rest of humanity, who represent the bad soil. This, I thought, was the parable’s meaning—that a Christian has a calling to be good soil unlike the rest of the world; what Christianity offers is a road map on how to become good soil. This was a well-known truth in my church growing up.

Jesus did not tell parables to confirm well-known truths, but rather to shatter well-known truths.

When Jesus told the parable of the sower, everyone in his audience assumed they knew who God favored, that is, the “good” soil. God favored the right, the respectable, the religious, and people who kept the Law. This was well-known truth to anyone who knew anything about religion in Jesus’s day. Only a fool would dare question this truth.

Was Jesus Christ himself such a fool?

On multiple times Jesus went on public record to state that God looked more like a reckless farmer than a stern and calculated judge. Jesus never spoke of a careful, cautious, strategic, diligent, methodical, calculated, and selective farmer looking only for the best soil to invest in. The God Jesus revealed looks more like the farmer in this parable: reckless with love, wasteful even, and in a terrific hurry to sow love wherever—simply because the nature of God is to sow love everywhere.

This is not a parable about good soil, but about a recklessly gracious Sower. It is a parable about a God that goes about recklessly sowing love wherever, irrespective of conditions. God, it seems, could not care less about return on investment.

Our experience of Christianity pivots on our understanding of this parable. “Do you not understand this parable?” Jesus asks. “Then how will you understand all the parables?” (Mark 4:13). If we get this parable wrong, we get the gospel wrong.

This is the question the parable of the sower confronts us with: do we know the reckless love of God that is perpetually poured out upon every human life and every ounce of creation in all seasons and conditions?

Imagine how exciting and transformative churches would be if they poured love into their community like the farmer in Jesus’s parable. How spiritually rich and full of joy would our lives be if we loved and blessed the people in our lives with the same reckless abandon with which God blesses and loves us?

Becoming a reckless lover of all people is much like planting grass: easier said than done. We feel pain when our love falls on rocky, arid, or weed-infested ground. We want to give up and to stop loving when that happens. It hurts when the people we love don’t love us back, and our great temptation is always to layer our heart in protective armor to ensure that we don’t get hurt again. We hedge our bets by loving selectively and methodically. We are calculated lovers. We scout out the good soil and invest our love there.

The God we know in Jesus Christ refuses to love selectively. Jesus Christ, hanging naked from a cross with arms wide open, pronounced forgiveness on the mocking crowds. Jesus’s whole life, indeed his every act, was a living display of the parable of the sower. Jesus Christ is God’s Seed recklessly sown throughout the world. There is no corner of creation where this love is absent.

God’s reckless love is counterintuitive. People who exhibit true inner goodness are precisely the people who have learned that they don’t need an ounce of inner goodness for God to love them. These fortunate ones know that God recklessly and perpetually sows love into the lives of thorny, rocky, and hardhearted people. They understand that only God’s reckless love smooths the rocks, dulls the thorns, and softens the heart.

What might it take for you to begin living a less calculated, methodical life and to love a bit more indiscriminately and recklessly?

We extend reckless love to others only to the extent that we know and feel the reckless love that God has for each of us. We are empowered to sow seeds of love only to the extent that we know the One Seed, Jesus Christ, sowed throughout creation, buried deep beneath the earth, raised on that first Easter morning, and now bearing fruit throughout the world in preparation for a great harvest of love at the end of the age.

Discussion Questions

1. Why do you think Jesus spoke in parables? Do you think Jesus told parables to shatter well-known truths?
2. Do you believe that some people are “good soil” and that others are “bad soil”? Why or why not?
3. Do you believe that God is “reckless” with love? Can God be reckless and calculating at the same time?

Chapter 2

Forgiveness

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax-collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax-collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ But the tax-collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Luke 18:9–14)

I have a confession: I love to sing, though I cannot carry a tune to save my life. In worship, I try to sit as close to the choir as possible so that no one can hear me sing. I want the nailson-chalkboard croaking that some pastorally refer to as “my singing voice” to be drowned out by the loud, harmonious, and perfect voices of the gifted choir. With respect to musical ability, the choir is righteous and I am unrighteous. I may not be able to carry a tune, but when I sing next to the choir they always carry the tune for me.

I have not always been privy to the knowledge that my singing wasn’t up to snuff. There was a time when I deemed myself a fabulous singer, and the long process of learning to tell the truth about my lack of musical ability has been rocky. One instance from seminary comes to mind. I was worshipping next to a friend, just singing my heart out, when he irritatingly nudged me during the service and asked me to sing a bit softer. I reminded him that the Bible teaches that God wants all people to make a joyful noise unto the Lord. “Not some people,” I said smugly, “but all people.” His reply was that, after hearing me sing, he was convinced that God could never will such a thing. I just assumed he was jealous of my vocal giftedness.

My self-image as a gifted singer finally crumbled last year. I was the guest preacher at a church—a routine Sunday visitation as far as diocesan work is concerned. During the offertory hymn, I sat in the chancel and sang my heart out. My eyes were closed, my voice was exalted, and I was making a loud and joyful noise to the Lord. I suddenly noticed that the rector was standing over me, frantically searching for something inside of my alb. I looked up to find that the congregation was lost in a fit of laughter. Most people had their faces buried in their hands trying to get the hysterics under control. My heart and my voice sank when I realized what the rector was trying to do: turn off my microphone. I had forgotten to turn off my lapel mike after my sermon, and suffice it to say that my amplified rendition of the descant in “Seek Ye First” was not preparing people’s hearts for Holy Communion. In that moment, I was finally able to see myself accurately. I was not a gifted singer after all.

Jesus struggled mightily with religious types who refused to see themselves accurately. In Luke 18, one pious man stands out as being particularly blind. This Pharisee performs a host of respectable religious activities, but his heart isn’t properly tuned in to the heart of God. Jesus tells this parable to remind us of something our hearts often refuse to admit: namely, that in the symphony of God’s creation, all people are singing off-key. Furthermore, it is precisely the human race’s tendency to sing off-key—whether we call this lack of attunement to God the human condition, sin, brokenness, fragmentation, or our shadow side—that Jesus came to heal in the most counterintuitive sort of way. Rather than offering encouragement, coaching, a law superior to that of Moses, or even motivation to try harder, Jesus “fixes” our dilemma by forgiving us. Jesus dies for the sins of the entire human race. Jesus offers us mercy, throws a party, and then invites us to do the same for one another.

The tax collector and all the other disreputable types in the Gospels loved Jesus’s program of forgiveness. It was the religious establishment that gave Jesus pushback. Forgiveness struck them as unfair and regressive, threatening even, and I can’t help but think that we often feel the same way. We love that God has forgiven us, but Hitler? Our ex-husband? Sex-trade traffickers?

We find forgiveness and mercy just as threatening as the religious types in Jesus’s day. We love the idea of forgiveness, but when we have been wounded, or when we see the most vulnerable members of our population being wounded, the last thing we want to do is extend forgiveness. Forgiveness seems offensive and wrong. Our world teaches us to earn, achieve, perform, measure, count, evaluate, and weigh the evidence. It may be a harsh world, but we all know the rules of the game. We invest and expect a return. We earn and expect a reward. We give a little and we get a little. Good guys are rewarded, and bad guys are punished. Reciprocity keeps the old creation balanced. The mutual scratching of one another’s back is all we know. Perhaps what makes Jesus so scandalous is his insistent and annoying reminder that all that we know is dead wrong with respect to the kingdom of God. Jesus refuses to play by the rules of our game.

Jesus’s message of forgiveness and mercy for all will forever remain incomprehensible to a person who does not know that they are a sinner. When we admit that we are sinners, we do not make a moralistic judgment but a theological judgment. We number ourselves among those in need of mercy and forgiveness. We stand with the worst and call them brother and sister.

Talk of sin has become a stumbling block for many, most likely because of the word’s baggage. We are accustomed to thinking of sin as bad conduct that can be overcome by knowledge, discipline, and prayer. The problem, of course, is that the Pharisee that Jesus lovingly critiques has built his whole life around knowledge, discipline, and prayer. His virtue is what blinds him to the reckless love of God.

The Bible never talks about sin as bad conduct that we can overcome. Sin is a condition from which we need to be rescued. In asking us to confess our sin, scripture and the Church are not trying to stir up feelings of shame and inadequacy. The irony of self-hatred is that it is a clever form of pride, a way of exalting ourselves. When we hate our self, or are ashamed of our self, we elevate how we feel about ourselves over what the Bible insists is true: namely, that we are recklessly loved by God and cherished in God’s eyes, sheep for whom the Good Shepherd gladly laid down his life.

If we know that we are sinners, we know our need for rescue. We do not focus primarily on the world’s need for rescue, or how deeply our coworker, spouse, or political leaders need to be rescued. Like the tax collector, we beat our breast and pray, “Lord, have mercy on me!” We come to see ourselves more accurately and we acknowledge the sin that infects our heart. In confession, I come to see that, ironically, my greatest problem is me.

In 1965, Flannery O’Connor published a short story called “Revelation.” The main character in this story is Ruby Turpin, who, like the Pharisee in Luke’s Gospel, is blinded by her virtue and doesn’t see herself accurately. She can spot just about anyone’s sin but her own. At the end of the story, Ruby has a revelation. She sees a vision of a road that runs from the earth to the sky where the souls of the redeemed are processing into heaven. This is how O’Connor describes Ruby’s vision:

She saw … a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were tumbling toward heaven … clean for the first time in their lives … battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom [Ruby] recognized at once as those who, like herself … had always had a litt...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: Sight
• Chapter 1: Reckless
• Chapter 2: Forgiveness
• Chapter 3: Beggars
• Chapter 4: Baptism
• Chapter 5: Saints
• Chapter 6: Faith
• Chapter 7: Discipleship
• Chapter 8: Repentance
• Chapter 9: Character
• Chapter 10: Evangelism
• Chapter 11: Compassion
• Chapter 12: Joy
• Chapter 13: Reconciliation
• Chapter 14: Endurance
• Chapter 15: Freedom
• Chapter 16: Betrayal
• Chapter 17: Waiting
• Chapter 18: Power
• Chapter 19: Hope
• Chapter 20: Gift
• Scripture Index