We have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God.
I never cease to be astonished at how many ways we choose to turn away from God. That’s not why we exist. We exist to glorify God. As Thomas Merton once put it, a tree glorifies God simply by being a tree – implying that when we are truly the people God knows us to be, we too will glorify God. A more radical, incarnational view came from the fourth-century bishop Athanasius, defender of the Trinitarian faith: God became man that man might become God. There’s a lot of room to go astray in that statement, which may be why Protestants of Calvinist extraction stress the unbreachable gap between sinful humans and sovereign God. We can strive only to take on God’s qualities, not God’s essence. But an incarnational faith affirms that in becoming ever more Christ-like through grace, we become more God-like as well.
So I am always amazed that we choose to turn away from God. Sometimes the reasons are clearly evil. Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, owed his position to being cozy with King Jeroboam, who had led the people of Israel away from true faith to worshipping idols. When Amaziah threatened Amos for speaking the truth about Jeroboam’s incipient downfall, Amos let him have it. Are you trying to silence God’s word? he asked. You’re going to witness all the carnage, and then you’ll be hauled off into exile. (As an aside, I just love Amos’ self-description as a “herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees.” Lots of room for the botanical imagination there.)
Sometimes we do evil for apparently good reasons. The priest who passed by a beaten, half-dead man in Luke’s “Good Samaritan” story probably didn’t want to become ritually unclean, which would keep him away from his duties for a week if the man turned out to be fully dead. Likewise with the Levite, although the Greek implies that he at least took a closer look. And the lawyer who asked Jesus the question that got this whole story launched wanted to “justify himself.” Apparently it wasn’t enough to know that he should love his neighbor; he wanted limits on who might be included in that designation.
That’s why we need prayers, unceasing prayers, that we may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding and not wander down the wrong side of the road. I have a pack of index cards with the names of all the people in my parish that I keep with my prayer book at home. That helps me do what the Apostle Paul did for his churches. Our diocese has a prayer cycle that includes every parish and its clergy once a month. And, of course, there are the Prayers of the People, which hold those whom we love and remember in prayer. May we continue to pray for one another, day by day and year by year, so that we may lead lives worthy of the Lord and bear fruit in every good work – and glorify God as well as a tree.
Pentecost 7: Amos 7:7-17; Psalm 82; Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
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3 comments:
I disagree. It is not surprising that we turn away from God. Jesus said, "if you love me then you will keep my commandments." Well, his commandments are very difficult -- love and care for the undesirable -- who wants to do that! So when we fail Jesus' commandments and do the easy thing, we turn away from God. It is not a surprise at all.
I think Paul got it just right in his letter to the Romans (7:15ff): “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand.” It is only through the grace of God that we are able to do what God wants for us. When we think we can do it on our own, we get into trouble. Given how humans usually operate, I suppose I shouldn’t be so surprised when we turn away from God's grace.
I never found it surprising at how frequently and how terribly we turn away from God--nor how thoroughly we can rationalize it. I think the call to pray unceasingly is probably a useful antidote. I like the old prayer of the Russian monks. the prayer to be said literally unceasingly: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner." And I like the modern take on it that Ron del Bene writes about in his book on breath prayers.
Still, it is so, so human to think of praying unceasingly as a sort of insurance. On the other hand, if you manage it--a breath prayer, the Jesus prayer--then perhaps your mind really is set more firmly on God and you don't do "the very thing you hate" with such human regularity.
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