The Purple Blob of God's Love

 9-20-20 

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our savior Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

You may remember that I might have mentioned Pine Lake Lutheran Camp in Waupaca Wisconsin… once or twice before. They, like many camps across the country, have suspended normal camp, and instead need to support themselves in creative ways, such as offering individual all those empty cabins to families for some vacation time. And when I heard Pine Lake was doing the same, we jumped at the chance to support this place that had been integral to my own call as a pastor. As we walked around the camp, I fondly remembered the songs, games, evening campfires, and funny skits we would do as a staff, especially one of my favorites, the Purple Blob skit.

It goes something like this – a single person goes to the front, pretending to carry a large purple blob with both arms. They narrate how much the LOVE big purple blob. In succession, various individuals enter, chat, and ask to have some of the blob. When the blob-carrier refuses, their friend goes away sad, and each time, the blob gets smaller, until eventually the blob is small enough to fit in the palm of their hand. Terrified their beloved blob will disappear, the person decides to try something different: to share. All the same people come back through, one by one, this time given some of the blob, which is shown to get bigger, and bigger by how wide everyone’s arms are. At the very end, unable to contain the blob any longer, the Big Purple Blob is tossed into the audience.

This skit is both bad math….  AND good Lutheran doctrine. One of our core Lutheran tenants is idea that we are at the same time both sinner and saint. The fancy Latin way to say this is simil iustus et peccator. One hundred percent sinner in desperate need of God’s grace. And one hundred percent saint saved by that grace in our baptisms. One hundred percent AND one hundred percent.  You might remember that I talked about it this spring over Facebook live…. Only 6 months but feeling like a million years ago.

This is Purple Blob Math… God’s math. It is math that doesn’t make sense to us and the world that we live in. And there are other examples of God’s math, adapted from a post a friend of mine shared on Facebook:

Jesus equals = One whole human nature + one whole divine nature

1 + 1 + 1 = 1 (that’s the Trinity, by the way – Father, Son, Holy Spirit, three in one and one in three at the same time)

This one is from two weeks ago:  where 2 or more are gathered (or “n”) always equals another guy (Jesus) is there or “n” + 1.

One sheep (greater than sign, or more important than) ninety-nine sheep. Also, one coin is greater than 9 coins.

God's love (minus) love that you give away = MORE of God’s love than what we had to start with…. Like with the Purple Blob of God’s Love.

And then from this week we get a couple of whopping examples of “Purple Blob Math.” Twelve hours of work equals one day's wages… but then one hour of work ALSO equals one day's wages! One twelfth equals to twelve-twelfths!  The last will be first, and the first will be last! This is certainly some “purple blob math”!

Perhaps then it is not so surprising that Jesus used stories and not math as a teaching tool over the course of his ministry. I’ve shared before how these stories are called “parables,” which comes from a word that means “to cast alongside,” “Consider A by considering B.” These parables of Jesus are often hard to swallow, because they resist easy comparisons. They are not really analogies or allegories, where one thing clearly stands in – or equals, if you will – another thing. They are vignettes and snippets, combining elements of real life, both a shorthand of things we find familiar. Until everything familiar gets upended…which also happens to be one of Jesus’s favorite things to do.

Like the original owner of the purple blob believed at the start of the skit, we live in a culture that convinces us that scarcity is the name of the game. If you have more, that means that I have less. We are constantly looking at what our neighbor has and compared to what we lack. If we see our neighbor being blessed in some way, we are tempted to feel resentful and left out.  If another group gets something that we thought only belonged to us, we feel less valued. So they hang on to what little they do have with a vengeance…. But they may find, like the kid in the skit, the purple blob gets smaller and smaller when we live that way.

There is even an acronym for this that is floating around social media: FOMO. Fear Of Missing Out – the anxiety that comes with missed opportunities that often happens when we are preoccupied with what other people are doing. Much like the workers who labored all day, as they complained against the others who worked fewer hours but got the same about of pay. Instead of being satisfied that the vineyard owner gave ALL of them a fair daily wage, some peeked over the shoulder of the other workers, and felt cheated. They feared that they missed out on something that they imagine COULD have been MORE, and belittling the generosity of the employer, instead of realizing that what THEY have is enough.

Right now many people are treating some lives as less important, invisible in our society, but they matter to God, and they should matter to us. With our actions, the church can say, “these people matter too, and they are enough.” Because we know that it won’t make us matter LESS in God’s eyes. Until we all ACT like ALL lives really are precious, loved, and worthy, we HAVE to lift up Black lives, Trans lives, Homeless lives, and the lives of the most vulnerable among us.

Some things should not be considered a zero-sum game. Love… equality… freedom … “mattering”…. Saying one person matters does not mean that other people matter less. It just means that some people are being treated as mattering less and we are bringing it to everyone’s attention, so that we can take corrective action together and right the injustices in our world. Until we live in a world where all lives are treated the same, we who have privilege and voice must speak up.

At the end of the day, we all need to eat, whether we worked one hour or twelve…. Or none at all. And we all get the same amount of God’s love – all of it – not that we have done anything to deserve it. We each get an infinite amount of God’s love, and there is still an infinite amount left over. If you haven’t noticed, big purple blog math is Grace… another deeply cherished Lutheran idea. Grace is God’s purple blob math in a nutshell.

The world doesn’t want us to live by God’s math, aka grace. And the sinner-ness in all of us doesn’t want to live by this math either. But that is what our baptisms are for – a place where we begin to live by the purple blob math of God’s grace.

We were baptized once, though we also need to repent and remember our baptisms daily. We were baptized with water that wasn’t just plain water, but is also infused with the Holy Spirit and a promise. At every moment, we are both our old sinful selves and our new baptized selves. Baptism is a kind of death – to sin – so that we may have life – raised as Jesus was raised from the dead. We were born once, but in baptism, we are reborn as children of God, marked by the cross of Christ on our foreheads… invisible…. Part of a larger whole and not to be kept to yourself…. Like the big purple blob that is the body of Christ, meant to be shared with the world.

It’s everywhere, and we cannot escape this grace. Thanks be to God, and big purple blog math. Amen.