Divine Tenderness

All preachers stand on the shoulders of others, and this morning I am particularly indebted to Nikki Mathis, a priest in Atlanta, Georgia for the way she expressed the ideas in this sermon.[i]

The Rev. Mathis points out the tenderness of God displayed in the compassion and actions of Jesus the Christ. It is the tenderness that welcomes desperate women who take their healing into their own hands, and irrational fathers who insist that daughters can be raised from the dead. It is the tenderness that calls as disciples people who have acted as traitors to their own people, and which hosts dinner parties that others see, at best, as morally questionable.

With the evidence of such attentive, transformative, and healing love in the gospel this morning, why, she asks, do we find it so hard to truly know divine compassion?

Why is it often so hard for us to do the work of disciples, which is learning and living on an ever-deepening level—a seen-in-our-daily-lives, actionable level—learning and living the truth that God is love, that we are loved, and that the only path to wholeness and fulfillment is the doing of that love? I say “doing love” because love is a verb, and it’s what we’re made for. 

It’s just that simple… but not at all easy.

It sounds great, doesn’t it: falling further into the endless depths of God’s tenderness and sharing that with others (all others). But how exactly are we supposed to do that?

How are we supposed to do that when our own life experiences, or simply watching 15 minutes of any news network, can so quickly plunge us into betrayal, heartbreak, and despair?

How can we believe in “love” when we have been brought up in families, or have had friends or partners, claiming to be Christian whose ability to love is quite poor, even if they are trying their best? 

How do we do “love” when we have suffered systemic injustice, presented to us as the best we deserve—as if any of us deserve racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia. 

If any of you are blessed enough to have had all your family and friends always love you well; if you’ve never had anyone reject you, treat you unfairly or cruelly; if no inexplicable tragedy has ever happened to you; then this sermon is not for you. 

This sermon is for all of us who have experienced depression, fear, and deep loss. This sermon is for all of us who’ve had those with power over us use shame as motivation and exclusion as a way to maintain status quo.

Because the reality is that those of us who want to learn to give and receive divine tenderness are going to have to deal with the falsehoods, the wounds, the craziness of love that is not love. 

Jesus is inviting us to unlearn ways of life that do not nourish us or strengthen the bonds of beloved community. 

We are invited to abandon unquestioning agreement with questionable beliefs and wrestle with the scriptures, exploring the language and values of the cultures from which they came without abandoning faith.

Or we may need to reexamine the history of natural disasters being named “Acts of God,” indicating that divine love is deadly and arbitrary. Or worse, being declared God’s punishment as if God is angry and vindictive.

We may need to unravel the way we have been harmed by others wielding biblical texts or beliefs in divine retribution as being synonymous with how God loves and acts in the lives of God’s beloveds. 
As Jesus calls Matthew the despised tax-collector so Jesus calls us his disciples to practice this re-learning: inviting us to know and extend God’s tenderness beyond our ‘own’ people to all people however different from us.

On Tuesday you’re invited to come to Movie Night. Over a potluck we will watch the film “The Shack”. This is not a great film. It did not win any academy awards. But what it does is explore God’s tenderness, God’s especial love for each one of us as individuals as Mack, the protagonist confronts God, unlearns his anger, and learns about forgiveness and hope and love.

This morning, in God’s tenderness we’re invited to the dinner party of the communion table, surrounded by the motley crew of other fallible human beings. Here we are invited to learn—with the Holy Spirit’s help—to see human dignity and the face of God in all people, even in our enemies, simply because that’s also what God sees in us. 

We’re all receiving healing as we touch the garment of listening to and learning from the stories of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, year after year after year. As we listen and learn, Jesus takes us by the hand, raising us from the living death of settling for anything less than a bone-deep knowing that we’re absolutely adored by the One who made us, regardless of what others might say or what we may think of ourselves. 

Let me repeat that: Jesus takes us by the hand, raising us from the living death of settling for anything less than a bone-deep knowing that we’re absolutely adored by the One who made us, regardless of what others might say or what we may think of ourselves. 

We cooperate in our own healing, our un-learning and re-learning as we allow the Spirit to lead us into discipleship. Discipleship means something different for each of us: learning the tenderness of God perhaps through a contemplative prayer group; perhaps through a group Bible study; and then living our learnings through relationship and service. We cooperate with the Holy Spirit by doing less doom-scrolling and more handholding. It is in relationship that we receive more of who God really is: inexhaustible, relentless, transforming love. 

But let’s not get it wrong… This process of re-learning, receiving, then doing divine love doesn’t fix everything. It doesn’t make suffering and evil suddenly cease to exist. Nor will we get satisfactory answers for why life seems unfair, why bad things happen to beloved people, or why our particular and communal roads to forgiving and being forgiven might look different from our neighbors’ roads.

But what we will get is this: the voice of God on a ever-reverberating loop, saying, “I am Love. You are beloved. You are made to love and be loved. And no matter what, I’ll always be with you.” “I am Love. You are beloved. You are made to love and be loved. And no matter what, I’ll always be with you.” 

And that my friends, is enough. That is healing. That is God’s ineffable tenderness.

the Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall
 


[i] https://www.episcopalchurch.org/sermon/learning-tenderness-proper-5-a-june-7-2026/