AS FAR AS I CAN SEE

In Christian ministry, death is often imaged as a passageway leading from this world to the next, or a bridge uniting modes of existence, or a gateway through which we step from the mortal to the eternal.  These are all perfectly appropriate images, but it’s important to emphasize the continuity they represent, rather than the transformation.

What passes over the bridge is what is essential to who we are.  What emerges on the far side of the door is recognizably the same personality as the one who entered from the near side.  Far from changing us into saints or angels, death doesn’t even improve us.  Death is relocation, not reformation. Who we are here and now is what we will be there and then; what is different is the nature of the world in which we find ourselves.

But what a change that will be!

When God first refused Israel entry into the Promised Land and sent the nation back into the wilderness, it wasn’t to gain time in order to accommodate the Promised Land to them; it was to cultivate a new Israel, an Israel that could flourish in what the Promised Land had to offer.

As we approach Heaven, most of us still have much more in common with the first Israel than with the second.

When someone sins against us, we are morally instructed in Christ to forgive that person.  This instruction isn’t directed towards our emotions.  How could it be?  Emotions are not voluntary, and moral instruction only belongs within a context of willful compliance or rejection.  There can be no meaningful instruction to ‘Be less chagrined,’ any more than there can be a meaningful instruction to ‘Feel less pain in your toe.’  Those words can certainly be offered – any words can be offered – but they are meaningless as instruction, and Christ’s words are never meaningless.

So what are we being instructed to do, when we are instructed to forgive?  We are being instructed to act towards the other as if the harm had never occurred.  For most of us on the Christian walk, this is the most difficult instruction we will ever receive; and that, of course, is why it lies at the very foundation of Christ’s curriculum.  It is so fundamental, in fact, that it underpins everything else, almost the way arithmetic underpins the rest of mathematics.  But there is this difference.  Arithmetic is simpler than everything built upon it, whereas forgiveness is more difficult than the rest.

And this is reflective of the Christian way.  Christianity does not begin with the simple; it begins with the impossible, and goes from there.

Jesus did not come to teach about the world and how to succeed here; he came to teach about the ways and means of heaven.  Efforts at exegesis that fail to realize that, however well-intentioned and ingenious, are fundamentally misoriented.

Still, there are occasions where what Jesus teaches about heaven finds echoes in what others teach about the world. 

One of these is His instruction concerning trust and confidence in the future.  Regard the lilies of the field!

Worldly writers do also sometimes encourage an optimistic attitude – The power of positive thinking! – and their evidence is how frequently it leads to worldly success, sometimes far exceeding reasonable expectations.

‘Deeper’ thinkers, though, are often condescending towards such writers; they knowingly point out, with unassailable evidence, how often the world clearly and even tragically disappoints optimism.  Expect the worst, and you’ll never be disappointed is their proud slogan.  They argue persuasively that optimists are, at best, successful entrepreneurs, advocating a positive attitude as a useful tool in one’s worldly dealings, along with discipline, self-control, energy, and so on.  It increases the odds of success.

But to repeat, Jesus is not talking about the world at all, except in the sense that there are elements in the world that mirror – or perhaps retain – elements of heaven.

We are encouraged by our Lord to cultivate in ourselves a positive attitude towards the future, not because it will help us get ahead in life or get the most out of life – although it very well may do both those things, and other good things besides – but because it will make the transition from here to heaven less dramatic.  It will not require losing the demonic pleasures of pessimism.

When something comes to us from God, it cannot be shaken. 

If we consider ourselves or ‘the world’ to be the source of our blessings, we will never be free of anxiety.

The contentment of the child is founded on the child’s trust in the eternal omnipotence of its parents.

In the process of sanctification – which is ‘working out your salvation’ – there are two applications of the one tool.  The two applications are petition and promise.  The one tool is prayer.

Both applications reflect the same apprehension of the relationship between the one praying and the One to whom the prayer is offered.  That relationship is one of dependence and trust, of trustful dependence.  In petition, the apprehension of that relationship is apparent; but it’s no less so in promise: the two are in fact symmetric.

When we petition for something, we are sealing our acknowledgement that the provision is from God and not from anywhere else, and especially not from us or our merit.  We are apprehending grace.

When we promise, we are equally apprehending grace, although here it’s in the context of surrendering something of ourselves, trusting to receive something better.  What we are surrendering is something that we, as we are, experience as of value.  We trust that what we will receive is of greater value, and at the same time we acknowledge that the provision is still entirely from God. 

Surrendering something of one’s self is not purchasing; it’s making room.  The formula for a vow is not, Lord, I trade you this for that; nor worse, give me that and I will give you this.  The formula is, Lord, I create an emptiness. Fill it as You will.

When the Jews sacrificed to God, their sacrifice was costly; it consisted in something they owned, which they gave up in exchange for a valuable benefit.

For the otherwise unobtainable benefit of the forgiveness of Sin, The Son of God sacrificed His own divinity: His privileges and powers during His earthly life, His immortal life on the Cross. 

We Christians participate in the Son’s sacrifice through communion, just as we participate, through baptism, in Christ’s resurrection.

When we think of love in human terms, we think of it as an attribute or trait, one among others.  She plays the piano; she speaks Spanish; she’s gets along with everybody; she loves to dance.  Even when we’re being romantic, when we elevate it among the attributes and speak of it more reverentially – Her love for him set the tone for her life! – we’re still thinking of it as an element of her personality, only now one that overshadows the others. 

But Love is not an attribute of God.  There is nothing that is God outside of Love.  We speak so glibly of God’s power and God’s omniscience, but God has no power outside of the power of Love, no understanding outside of what Love knows. 

At this very time of year, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a beast of burden.  Luke tells us that before he entered the town, he sat down and wept, because he had an understanding of what was going to happen to his beloved city, and to the people in it.  And he knew there was nothing God could do.

He wept, because he knew that God’s Love would soon be exhausted of power.  He was acknowledging Its coming self-sacrifice, on the Cross.

In dying, the incarnate God paid the sin debt of every human being.  There is no confusion at that level.

The confusion sets in from a misunderstanding of what the debt of sin actually is, and what it meant for Christ to pay it.  The most traditional Christian interpretation has it that the debt is the punishment required by God’s justice as a result of the sin, and that Christ’s payment consists in having vicariously accepted that punishment in the sinner’s stead.  But this is mistaken, and the reality is more complicated.

God is Love. Sin is acting contrary to the will of God, and that means acting contrary to the will of Love.  To sin against someone is to act towards that person in a way other than as Love would act.  The one sinned against is thereby deprived of what Love would have provided him.  And Love itself – that is to say, God – is diminished by the amount of the Love I have denied the other.  That is the twofold result of sin: What you do to others, you do to Me.

In that way, two spiritual debts are created by every sinful act. There is a debt incurred towards the one sinned against, and a debt incurred towards God.

In both cases, the so-called sin debt is best understood as a Love debt.

The death of Christ, that is, the death of the incarnate Son, was perfect Love exhausting Itself to pay your timeless Love debt to God.  If Christ is in you, then you are debt-free to God.  That is the Christian promise.

The love debts others owe me can be paid by my self-sacrificial forgiveness.  If I am in Christ, my payment also repays God, and thereby relieves in some part Christ’s timeless burden. That is the Christian privilege.

When I walk by a bank, I don’t feel the slightest temptation to go in and rob it.  The thought doesn’t even cross my mind.  I don’t resist the temptation, because there’s nothing to resist. As I  continue down the street, I don’t relive the lost opportunity over and over in my thoughts.

Contrast that with the way I so often react when I’m walking away from some perceived grievance.  In those cases, I dwell incessantly on the slight or discourtesy or hostility, contemplating different forms and degrees of redress, or at least savoring what I might have done or said.  Often, for a while, I can scarcely think of anything else.  (It‘s probably like what the seasoned bank robber must go through who walks away from what would have been an effortless heist!)  

Why the difference?  The worldly reward of successfully robbing the bank would be substantial, while the worldly result of a successful personal ‘comeback’ would probably only be further damage to the relationship.  Yet the latter tempts me, and the former doesn’t.

When our Lord advises us to pray that we not be led us into temptation, I read that, in part, as the request that we rather be led from or out of temptation.  In other words, what we are working towards, with God’s assistance and by God’s grace, is the state of being indifferent towards pernicious temptation, as I currently – by God’s grace – am indifferent to the thought of robbing banks.

Which are the pernicious temptations?  As many as there are people, I suppose.  But if we look at the Lord’s own prayer, surely what’s striking is what comes immediately before this particular petition:  “…forgive us as we forgive others…” 

The temptation to refuse forgiveness, in Christ’s instruction, is the most satanic of all.

Rewards are relative, in the sense that what might serve as a reward for one person might not do at all for another.  To an illiterate, a set of encyclopedias would be a burden, not a reward.  What makes something a reward is that it gratifies something in the individual’s horizon of actual desire.  “My kingdom for a horse!” dramatizes this elemental human truth, as does “Hunger makes the best sauce,” and, in a different way, “Necessity is the mother of invention.”  Worldly rewards are, so to say, parasitic on worldly desire.

Heavenly rewards have the same relationship to heavenly desires, but it’s extremely important that we not confuse the vectors, and imagine heavenly rewards being parasitic on worldly desires.  This way of thinking leads to the picture of heaven as a banquet, or a village of narrow streets and peaceful villas, or a harem filled with virgins.

The truth is that before anything available in heaven could be experienced as a reward, our desires must first conform to heavenly desires.

In the Talents parable, Jesus teaches that the heavenly reward for doing well is the opportunity to do more.  In the Sermon on the Mount, he teaches that doing well in secret is something heaven especially values.  Combine those two teachings, and we learn that one heavenly reward is ever deepening anonymity in ever greater sacrifice.

Wouldn’t most of us, as presently constituted, find that about as rewarding as an illiterate receiving a set of encyclopedias?