“God saw everything that God had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.” (Genesis 1.31 NRSV)

It is in the core of my faith that this simple text in the first chapter of Genesis is unswervingly true for all generations: “God saw everything that God had made, and indeed, it was very good.” Good.

The problems arise when humanity looks around and utters something like, ‘Not good enough.’ or ‘Why not better?’ or ‘Good according to whose standards?’ or even, ‘Good, but why good?’ Adam and Eve wanted to know more than the ‘good’ they could see, Cain is offended by the ‘good’ in Abel, others after them strive to accumulate the ‘good’ of the land for themselves, others find ways to control the ‘good’ in the less fortunate. Some abuse the ‘good’ in others, others go to war for the ‘good’ they believe they deserve, others battle that the ‘good’ they believe to be true in themselves become the ‘good’ which is true in everyone else. Prophets warn that denying the ‘good’ in others offends the God who sees the ‘good’ in all, Israel is liberated from Pharaoh to become the ‘good’ of God in their own land – and eventually are enslaved again because they could not see the ‘good’ in others or themselves. Jesus comes to name the ‘good’, the reconcilable heart and soul of who each person is and, though many believe in the ‘good’ He does, many fear the vision they see in the mirror of His life – and crucify the ‘Good’ among us believing it will make them better.

Good.

There are some among us this day that maintain, maybe even many among us who maintain, that everyone and everything is broken and sinful and that it is only through faith in Christ that we can be made whole. Yet, on this evening as I write of ‘good’, I find myself wondering if it is, in fact, faith in Christ that allows us to see ourselves as God has seen us from the beginning of time . . . as ‘good’, and with the recovery of God’s declaration in our souls, with the touch of Jesus’ spit and mud laden fingers upon our hearts, our sight is restored and our faith becomes unencumbered of anything less than ‘good’, making way for everything which allows the ‘good’ to shine through us. Hence, healing is the product of ‘good’, even as ‘good’ itself is the naming of God.

Good.

I know, it is all sort of a ‘thick’ thing, this rattling on about ‘good’, yet I find myself consumed by this notion is this Lenten season. What is it that God sees in us, which quite apparently we do not or can not see in ourselves, that requires God to come to us in Jesus, affording all people the ‘Lens’, if you will, to see in ourselves and others what God sees from the beginning? Repeatedly throughout the Gospels, Jesus looks at the crowds and has compassion on them. Repeatedly throughout the Gospels, Jesus sees the marginalized persons of the community and calls them unto Himself, granting them . . . not some sort of fairy tale wish, but the very essence of what makes them fully human and divinely complete. Repeatedly throughout the Gospels, Jesus invites those whom He teaches to envision, even embody, a community, not radically different, but imperatively complete or fully ‘good’, where every person has a name, a gift, a purpose, a meaning, all given by the God whom, from the beginning of time, has announced the ‘good’ in them for they and the rest of the world to discover.

Good.

What happens to the conversations of the bigot, the prejudiced, the greedy, the power-hungry, the self-righteous, or the uncaring, when the essential understanding of the ones over which these groups would seek leverage is that they are first and foremost ‘good’? What happens to all of the religious arguments over how much water it takes to baptize, transubstantiation or consubstantiation (symbols of body and blood or Body and Blood), genuflect or no-genuflect, eternal light in the sanctuary or no eternal light, stations of the cross permanently built into the edifice or put up and taken down according to the season, one baptism for all or baptism only by tradition, who is in and who is out, women voting or silent, a ‘man’s church’ or the people’s church . . . . . what happens to all of these arguments if ‘good’, God’s ‘good’, what God sees in all things, is where we begin our conversations?

Good.

Is it remotely possible that the greatest enemy the institutional church today faces is, in fact, the lack of ‘good’ that it can see in anyone else but itself and its own self-interest? Is that not essentially what Jesus had to face in His own time in the midst of the Jewish community? ‘Good’ is not pie-in-the-sky: it is what God sees in all things, if we believe what we declare to be right and true and holy in the very book maintained to be, ‘Divinely Inspired’. ‘Good’ is what we see paraded down the streets of Jerusalem with a cross on His back. Betrayal, desertion, denial, trial, beating, humiliation, and nailing Him to a cross, are the things we do to God when we betray, desert, deny, try, beat, humiliate, and nail the very ‘good’ God sees in us in seeking something better from the world in which we live or the governments in which we trust.

Good.

We can run away from the ‘good’ God sees in us, but we cannot outrun the ‘good’ which is God in us through Christ – and that, my friends, is the Good News of the Gospel. In Jesus Christ, the man of Nazareth, our crucified and risen Lord, God has come to us and shared our inmost goodness, declaring from an empty tomb, “ . . . and indeed, it is very good.” Even death cannot separate us from the Goodness of God – any more than we can force death to do the work of separating us from the goodness God sees in us. God has nothing to do with anything that is less than ‘good’ and you, my friends, you are what God sees as eternally ‘good’.

Good.

This Lenten Season, it is time for the Church to claim the good which is God in us. In proclaiming the Christ of our faith, in walking the paths He treads, we proclaim and walk the ‘good’ which God sees in all people. Therein is the fullness of community. Therein is the healing of the nations. Therein, is the resurrection for eternal life.

Good.

I love the sound of that word, especially when I hear it on the lips of God through Jesus, “Father, forgive them . . .” they have forgotten the ‘good’ You have named them to be.  I love the sound of that word as it calls me to live in the ways of the Spirit who goes with us all. As in the words of that dear old Psalm, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord [the fullness of God’s Goodness] for ever” may this Lenten journey allow us the time to acknowledge, own, and live the good that God places in everyone – and in so doing, come to a deeper understanding of the Good which is God coming for us in the obedience of Christ our Lord.