 O God who hast prepared for them that love Thee such good things as pass man’s understanding… (Collect: Trinity VI) Trinity tide is all about growing in the knowledge and love of God; it is the green season, and in it, we focus on God’s spiritual harvesting of fertile virtue in our souls. The green vestments and Altar hangings of the season encourage us to pursue the fecundity of spiritual love with hope. We are being readied for things whose goodness, truth, and beauty exceed our wildest imagination. Yet the promised vision hinges upon our loving God above all things. The Divine Lover will reward our love for Him if we intend above all to be taken into His embrace. Our spiritual passion must be focused upon obtaining the Divine promises. Pour into our hearts such love toward Thee, that we, loving Thee above all things, may obtain Thy promises, which exceed all that we can desire. We love God above all things because we long to be rewarded with what His love has intended for us all along. But the virtue of loving God is not easily attained. Last week, as St. Peter and his fellow Apostles obeyed Jesus by letting down their nets for a draught of fishes and found themselves the beneficiaries of supernatural power, they surrendered themselves to the radical otherness of God in Jesus. So, with a deeper fear of the Lord, their faith in Jesus was stirred to forsake all and follow Him. (St. Luke v. 11) For, they were being caught up in Christ’s net. Slowly but surely they began to die to themselves as they began to love Him who loved them with the Love He receives from the Father. To be loved inspires a potential response. As the Apostles were touched by the love of God in the heart of Jesus, they would then begin to return the same love. But if we are going to learn how to love God above all things, we had better begin with obedience, the fear of the Lord, and faith in God’s promises. Christ says to us today that except [our] righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, [we] shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. (St. Matthew v. 20) The righteousness or justice of the ancient Jews –of the Scribes and Pharisees – is the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Jesus makes it clear that the observance of this law reveals a primitive spiritual posture that is bent on resentment and revenge. The man who practices this law thinks much too highly of himself and all others as the servants of his self-importance. It judges men and then rewards or punishes according to the measure of self-interest. It elevates human justice as ultimate and final. And, as Romano Guardini reminds us, so long as we cling to this human justice, we will never be guiltless of injustice. As long as we are entangled in wrong and revenge, blow and counterblow, aggression and defense, we will be constantly drawn into fresh wrong. (The Lord, p. 81) Think about it. We expect to receive what we mete out. We reward good and punish evil, and we feel that we have in some way advanced the cause of justice in the world. That we have never given much thought to how God sees the situation is evidenced in our over-inflated egos, exaggerated and embellished hurts and wounds, and destructive identification of injustice done to us with some kind of cosmic event. We think that we have won a victory for justice when in truth we have become the unwitting victims of an unending cycle of sin. Vengeance is mine. I will repay, saith the Lord. (Romans xii. 19) Jesus goes on to locate the origin and cause of our inadequate love and exaggerated hate in the soul. Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: but I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.(Ibid, 21, 22) By reason of our fallen spiritual condition we naturally love those who love us and hate those who hate us. We love those less who do not love us enough and hate those more who hate us passionately. We judge their inadequate love to be hate and we respond in kind or worse. And while there may be just cause for righteous anger in certain situations, Christ seems to imply that this is all the more reason to love with greater passion in the interests of helping an offending brother out of his sin and into righteousness. This is what God wants. Yet because of our own insecurities, we respond with, Raca or Thou Fool! The Biblical Scholars tells us that Raca means worthless or empty one. So, Jesus says that the man who is angry with his brother and not the cause (Idem), is in spiritual trouble. Jesus says that what happens is that the sinner and not his sin has become an object of retaliation and retribution. What has happened is that the offending party has been elevated to the status of a worthless and empty false god. If we hadn’t made him into a false god, we would treat him with that love and hope that Jesus has for all men. Jesus teaches us that the real threat to loving [God] above all things is inward spiritual insecurity and fear. Anger or wrath shields them by deflecting any challenge or contest. What is feared most is the illumination of God’s truth through the power of His love. When one hates another man, he ceases to hope for that man’s conversion and salvation. He judges his enemy –if he even is an enemy, because he has never felt the healing power of God’s mercy in his own soul. He is afraid to be touched by God’s love. He forgets that his soul is always desired by God for healing and transformation. Because he is afraid, he finds God’s love too daunting to accept because its conditions are too burdensome. However, if God’s merciful curative love begins to touch and change human life, as it did with the Apostles, there is hope that it will grow into the discovery of God’s promises. It must be embraced passionately and with all due diligence. All potential threats to its growth in the soul must be abandoned with all haste. Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother …Agree with thine adversary quickly…lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. (Ibid, 24,25) What imperils the growth of God’s love in our hearts is our condemnation of other men. The angry pursuit of earthly justice elevates human injury to the level of Divine importance. Human justice may yield limited vengeance against an earthly enemy, but what does it harvest? A crop of self-satisfaction that quenches the spiritual discovery of those good things as pass man’s understanding…and the promises that exceed all that we can desire. What is lost is the needful and merciful love of God which longs to lift the accuser and accused above their division and difference and into His loving intention for all. Anger makes [a man] smaller, while forgiveness enables him to grow beyond what he was. (Cherie Carter-Scott) Jesus teaches us that if we long for such good things as pass man’s understanding, we need God’s compassionate love as the only curative and corrective that can heal and save us. We must bring to death anything and everything that impedes the progress of our loving God above all things. We must admit, with Dr. Jenks, that we have foolishly and wickedly forsaken the fountain of living waters, to hew to ourselves broken cisterns, that can hold no water; shutting our hearts against the love of our chiefest good…preferring trifles and vanities of this present time; and the satisfaction of our own foolish and hurtful lusts, above God and His love, which is better than life itself. (Jenks, Prayers…168) So if we would embrace God’s love, we must agree with our adversary quickly. (Idem) This is the testing ground for our love. On it God sees whether we truly are aiming to love Him above all things. Agreeing with our adversary quickly means that we ought to listen quietly and calmly to those who have something against us. It encourages us to lift our enemy up into the heart of God and to pray for rather than judge him with a harsh word or violent affection. Geoffrey Chaucer tells us that the remedy for anger is gentleness and patience. Gentleness is a posture of goodwill that quashes impulsive rash rage in order to discern our enemy’s sickness and pray for his cure. Patienceendures our enemy’s spiritual illness out of love for his salvation. Both gentleness and patience are virtues that come out of the heart of Christ who loves God above all things. Christ enlarges His heart to welcome us into His loving. His gentleness and patience enabled His love to go to the Cross for us. But His love does not cease to flow back to God and out to all men in His death. His love is that Divine gentleness and patience that rises up into Resurrection and Ascension and then descends once again into Pentecostal fire. It loves God above all things and loves God in and for all things. It seeks what is above in order to penetrate and convert what is below. Because it is always returning to its source, it can bring good out of evil, right out of wrong, and love out of hate. This is the love that exceeds our intellect’s imagination. It is the love that we find at the Cross. St. Paul reminds us that if we embrace this love, we shall be dead unto sin and alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans vi. 11) This is the love of the Crucified One, who died unto sin once, so that we might live unto God through Him. Of course, Christ doesn’t force His love upon us, and we mustn’t force it upon others. It is enforced only through law and order when the most wicked of men must acquiesce through tough love. But we must pray for them, regardless. Divine love must be desired so that its nature can be cherished. And so long as we do not agree with our adversary quickly, we merely postpone its discovery and thus forsake its effects. Amen. ©wjsmartin Comments are closed.
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