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I
love watching various education series on cable around the Bible or historic
Biblical figures and the other night there was an interesting show on the
Military cable network around “Mysteries of the Bible.” This episode in particular was about the Book
of Revelation and its author, St. John of Patmos. After sketching the murky history of John’s
travels and eventual exile, the team of theologians, anthropologists,
archaeologists, psychologists and so on basically spent the rest of the episode
deducing and concluding that his “prophecies” were more or less just coded
warnings against Rome and the emperor Caligula and that he merely was providing
psychological comfort to a persecuted sect of Christians.
All
of this is logical, intellectually-derived thought, carefully reasoned and
researched… BUT, what about the spiritual-intellectual thought application
here? Why wouldn’t he be talking beyond
a simple human reasoning of warning early Christians about the evils of
Rome? So there is No future HOPE? So there is NO Divine INSPIRATION? So are we
to take as well that there is no thought process from the heart—the spiritual
at all?
Today’s
Gospel has Jesus teaching a new path of thinking about law and obedience being discerned
and executed through the Spirit. The
Spirit’s intellect operates through the evolution of the heart. This evolution of the heart is the chrysalis
of the New Creation—the New Adam, the New Eve hence the disciplined disciple
dedicated to God’s Will through their own transformative volition. One of the great fingers of Old Testament
Law, Deuteronomy points to where Jesus begins his radical gauntlet of Spiritual
reform: “ 6Moreover,
the Lord your God will circumcise your heart
and the heart of your descendants, so that you will love the Lord your
God with all your heart and with all your soul, in order that you may live.”
The thought of life and death in the Old
Testament was quite literal—obey the law or die, plain and simple. The New Testament difference with Jesus’ view
of the Law is that it starts through a willingly transformed, obedient and
cross-bearing heart. The cost of
discipleship is taking up our Cross and following Jesus in thought, Word and
deed as the New Creation—spiritually evolved over worldly evolution. Are we too proud or too afraid to spiritually
evolve?
R.C. Sproul sketches the concept of human dignity:
“The idea of dignity is rooted in the Old Testament concept of glory. In the created realm, all things reflect some
degree of this glory. The stars have a
certain glory, as do the moon and the sun. Ultimately glory derives from an
attribute of God Himself. It is because God has assigned worth to man and woman
that human dignity is established. Man’s
glory is derived, DEPENDENT upon
God’s glory for his own.” I thought
about this in regards to that fine line we instinctually cross when coming to discern
and operate from life’s rules. How often
do we choose to operate from our own seemingly evolved reasoning over and above
that of God’s? Is it simply an issue of
pride and the ego? Or is it stemming from fear—the fear of letting God be God
and the fear of something we can’t control?
Poor St. Paul in today’s conversation with his
wayward Corinthians had to really hold himself back from being angry and hurt
at how the Corinthians looked to Apollos’ 1st century health-wealth
preaching over and above that of his. He
could have chosen to defend himself, his pride and his great knowledge and
really said a bunch of nasty things back about Apollos but he didn’t… He chose to operate from the heart to be spiritually
keeping God’s mission in perspective: “5What
then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as
the Lord assigned to each. 6I planted, Apollos watered, but
God gave the growth. 7So neither the one who plants nor
the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. 8The
one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will
receive wages according to the labor of each. 9For we are God’s
servants, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building.”
“But God gives the growth,” this is
what we still overlook today for we have only given credence in our lives to
only one kind of evolution—the material, fleshy, worldly reality of the self.
There are no wages of the labor of the fruits of the spirit to discern if we
operate from what we intellectually feel is logical, instinctive and “right.”
The wages of the spirit is the life of the disciple willingly lived in light of
GRACE and for the glory of God. When
Jesus recounts the commandments in today’s Gospel he is trying to shake loose
those merely “going through the motions” of living an obedient life dedicated
to God. He is speaking to our great
disconnect hoping for us to evolve into being spiritually obedient to God’s law
of love—lived fruits of the Spirit.
And if we recall from St. Paul’s
letter to the Galatians, these are the works of the flesh versus the fruits of
the Spirit: “19Now the works of the flesh are obvious:
fornication, impurity, licentiousness,20idolatry,
sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, 21envy,
drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned
you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22By
contrast the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
generosity, faithfulness,23gentleness, and self-control. There is no law
against such things.24And those who belong to Christ Jesus have
crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25If
we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. ”
And in today’s Gospel, Jesus says:
21“You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall
not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ 22But
I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable
to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the
council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.”
We have all had moments of great anger… We almost daily hear on the news
moments of road rage or see in the headlines political lambasting and angry
commentaries trampling judgment upon others…
It’s human nature, but do we use this as our legal loophole? We can probably make excuses for everything
and anything we do, say or commit!
There’s plenty of injustice out there, right?
Exercising our piety, on the outside,
is one thing but living it on the inside, is the greater difference. It is the same thing as saying one thing at
the time that felt great to release but then only later greatly regretting what
you said, for it was focused and operating from the self. There is agency and urgency needed in our
lives as disciples today but it needs to be reconciled to both the worldly AND
the spiritual! For all that we do and
continue to do is only partially evolved especially in regards to God’s Will
and purposes for our lives.
Letting God be God doesn’t mean that
God will be doing everything for you.
This is easy to say since it feeds our base desire to avoid discipline,
to avoid being accountable beyond ourselves… to be “SELFLESS.” How can we go
there? We are as St. Paul says—“fleshy,”
how can we be other worldly—it’s impossible!
NO, all things are possible especially when we become aware, and
spiritually align our hearts willingly to God.
Catholic Monk Thomas Moore
illuminates how we struggle and go through the motions of responding, living
spiritually our call to discipleship: “The point where spirit and soul meet is
a thin one, and it takes little to cross the line into pure spirit, where
suffering may be treated at a distance. People move easily from making sense of
suffering to rationalizing it or, even worse, seeking it as a way toward
virtue.”
Works righteousness is to be avoided
truly but we still do it in some form or another. Legalism, judgmentalism, hierarchy and
dictatorship are to be avoided but we still do it in some form or
another… It is easy to fall back upon
the fact that we are both saint and sinner BUT we can’t use this to avoid the work of
leading cross-bearing lives!
Especially when we claim to be disciples of Christ!
Being and becoming is the HOPE of
our future lives together as disciples of Jesus. It isn’t all magically done by God! We all have been planted with the seed of the
New Creature within us… we may or may not have allowed God or His Word to water
it enough to be reaped. Our own precepts
are the fruits of rebellion plain and simple, especially when we choose to
avoid the Spirit. As I have said and
truly believe as a struggling disciple of Jesus, myself; a graceless wilderness
is the reality of hell—its landscape, the windswept trees and its dried fruit
are the barren works of our rationale.
AMEN
February 16th, 2014; 6th
Sunday after Epiphany; Lectionary 6; Year A; SOLA Lectionary Nicole Collins
Psalm 119:1-8; Deuteronomy
30:15-20; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9 & Matthew 5:21-37
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