unforeseen kiss

Y’all remember when “sloppy wet kiss” was sung in churches a good many years ago? Thank the kind Lord for Crowder’s good save with “unforeseen kiss.” It’s way more proper for the Sunday morning crowd.

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In the opening act of Ephesians, Paul starts off with a love sonnet from heaven. It’s like a kiss we weren’t expecting. There’s nothing sloppy about it; it’s pure poetry.

Twelve verses. Two hundred and one words. And get this: one single sentence in the Greek New Testament! Paul lays it on pretty thick and in a way the church won’t ever forget. Dear Ephesus saints, How does he love thee? Let me tell you the ways… He obviously got carried away with his subject.

Paul takes us scuba diving into the great ocean of God’s love without equipment. Take a deep breath, he instructs. When we come up we’re gasping for air.

Paul doesn’t want us to interrupt his flow so he opens up the fire hydrant. We stand there with our tiny spoons trying to catch a sip. It’s okay, he says, you won’t get it all at first, but I just gotta get it out!

We’re meant to be astounded. God’s love is supposed to drown us. He means for us to have a hard time catching our breath. He wants us weak at the knees when he sets his affection on us. Even while we were yet sinners, he loved us.

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When we were more loathsome than the beggar on the dunghill, and of so degenerate a spirit as to embrace our shame, and glory in our infamy – then was the time of love – then our Redeemer said, “I have betrothed thee to myself in righteousness, and in judgment, and in faithfulness; I have betrothed thee to myself forever.”

—Letters of Henry Venn, 1776

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I’ve done my share of weddings in forty years of ministry. When “the moment” comes, the long-awaited finale, there’s usually a fun pause before I ask the couple to seal their pronounced love with a kiss. I admit to thinking on the rare occasion, They don’t look like they go together. Yet there they stand, unblushingly, in an unbreakable union.

Wait. God kissed…me?!?

In a manner of speaking he certainly did. Jesus gives credence to the idea when he spoke of an over-the-moon father who fell on his lost son’s neck and furiously kissed him (wait…is that where ‘sloppy wet kiss’ comes from???). What a gospel! He doesn’t just save me, he wants me!

Near the end of Paul’s great run-on sentence he said, “When you heard the gospel (his love song), you believed (said ‘yes’), and you were ‘sealed’ to him forever.”

The following excerpt needs little in the way of a set-up. You’ll likely see the gospel lovingly hidden inside the story before you get to the last sentence. But that last sentence is a treasure of words that could artfully say everything about How He Loves we need to know.

I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth has been severed. She will be thus from now on. The surgeon had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh; I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had to cut the little nerve.

Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private.

Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wry mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, greedily?

The young woman speaks, “Will my mouth always be like this?” she asks. “Yes,” I say, “it will. It is because the nerve was cut.” She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles. “I like it,” he says, “It’s kind of cute.”

All at once I know who he is. I understand and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a god. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works.

Richard Selzer, Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery

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When I got to college I wanted to try out for a choir. I didn’t want the men’s choir because I liked chicks too much. The Concert Choir sang cooler songs than the rest, but my roommate was in the ‘Weigle’ choir and got me an audition with the director. In a tiny room with just him and a piano, I sweated bullets, but made it.

The choir was named for Charles Weigle whose greatest contribution to the world of church music was the song, “No One Ever Cared For Me Like Jesus.”

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All my life was full of sin when Jesus found me;

All my heart was full of misery and woe,

Jesus placed His strong and loving arms about me

And He led me in the way I ought to go.

No one ever cared for me like Jesus,

There’s no other friend so kind as He;

No one else could take the sin and darkness from me,

O how much He cared for me.

—Charles F. Weigle

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File this in “Unforeseen” (as in, Didn’t see it coming).

Totally unexpected.

The Jesus of Glory and sinners like us. We’re a match made in heaven. We sure don’t look like we go together, but every morning we wake up and as angels bow to watch our full redemption played out, we can remember a very long, breathless sentence in the Bible that assures us the kiss still works.

Selah, beloved. Happy Friday.