July 24, 2011,
PENTECOST 6, ALL SOULS’ CHURCH
Likewise
the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not
what we should pray for as we ought. (Romans 8:23)
The
Gospel lesson appointed for today tells us of our Lord
Jesus teaching about the Kingdom of Heaven. This reading
is a sort of continuation of last Sunday’s reading in
which Jesus gives us a series of images to teach us of
our relation to the Heavenly Kingdom. Because these
images are taken from everyday life we think of them as
parables.
First, Jesus says that the Kingdom of Heaven is like a
tiny mustard seed – the smallest of seeds which grows
into a tree-like shrub so large that birds make their
nests in them. No one could ever imagine, just looking
at that miniscule seed, that it would become what it
becomes. There are no visual clues in the tiny seed’s
appearance to suggest what it shall become, and yet what
it becomes is what it truly and inherently is. Likewise,
we do not look at this earthly life and imagine that
heaven is like this, only nicer. We cannot envision
heaven on the basis of what our senses tell us. We
cannot bring about the Kingdom of Heaven. We cannot
build it. We are not ‘kingdom builders.’ If the 20th
Century taught us anything surely it was that when human
beings try to build empires which last forever the
results are disastrous. Besides, as Jesus plainly told
us, the Kingdom is not of this world. Heaven is a
kingdom of eternal spirit, and you cannot build eternal
spirit. By definition, spirit has no body, parts, or
passions. You can build enthusiasm. You can build a
sense of community and commitment; of belonging, and of
fellowship and purpose. They are all vessels and
vehicles through which spirit may be expressed and
celebrated, but you cannot build spirit. If the 20th
Century taught us anything surely it was that when human
beings try to build spirit the results are disastrous.
(It always involved lots of marching and dreadful people
waving from balconies.) You cannot build spirit.
Our
Lord Jesus uses more images to tell us of our relation
to the Kingdom, and he concludes with the theme of
judgment in a scene in which fishermen are harvesting
their nets, casting out the bad and gathering is the
good. The Kingdom of eternal spirit renders judgment. We
are judged by eternal spirit. Both the Psalms (111: 10)
and the Proverbs (9: 10) tell us that the “fear of the
Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” I’ll speak more about
that in a moment.
Jesus
likens the Kingdom of heaven to a man who finds treasure
buried in a field. He re-hides the treasure, liquidates
his assets, and buys the field. Apparently, if the field
is his then so is the buried treasure. A long time ago
at college I took a course in Roman law but I have no
idea whether the concept of ‘mineral rights’ might come
into play here. If so, I’m in the right part of the
world to have that discussion, but it would be a
digression, and we must move on. This parable gives us
essentially the same message as the one about the
merchant who was looking for pearls and who found one of
so much value that he sold all he had to own it. In each
of these parables the characters, having found the one
thing of greatest value, get rid of everything – let
everything go, all for that one special thing.
In
these parables once the people find the great treasure
of their lives, they organize everything around it, and
they get busy. And certainly we are called to an active
life of holiness. We are called to celebrate the
Kingdom. We called to preach, to witness, and to make
disciples. We are called to rejoice with those who
rejoice and weep with those who weep. We are commanded
to receive Holy Communion in faith, to forgive, to
repent, and to forgive others. We are told to fast, to
pray, and to love our neighbors. These are all vessels
and vehicles through which spirit may be expressed and
celebrated and you are told to do all these things as a
child of the Kingdom, but the one thing you are not told
to do is to bring about your own spiritual growth or
produce your own holiness. You cannot build spirit. We
are called to ‘participate in’ and ‘work out’ our own
salvation in fear and trembling not to ‘make it happen’
or ‘bring it about.’ We are called to live as new
creatures in Christ, and we are told to grow in Christ,
but this growth is not something we make happen. Our
being Christ-like is not something we manufacture any
more than we can cause our own redemption. Instead, our
being Christ-like is the gift of God the Holy Spirit
Himself who dwells within us and restores us to our
rightful likeness while uniting us in eternal, loving
union with God in God. He, the Spirit Himself, is God.
What
we are called to do in this graceful spiritual growth is
to stop resisting and stop struggling against this
transformation. We need to stop trying to mess it up.
When you think about it, every virtue (patience,
fortitude, courage, diligence, temperance,) basically
amounts to a variation on the theme of ‘get over
yourself.’ And, this is exactly why Jesus told us to
take up our cross in order to follow him. The cross, you
see, was not an instrument of personal growth and
self-help; it was made to kill you. The cross was not an
exercise machine of any sort. It wasn’t designed to
extend your life; it was made to end it. No one went to
the cross to have their life enhanced; they went there
to die. There simply were no accidental cross-related
deaths. If you died it worked. The cross tells us we
must get over ourselves. The old you must die and as a
newly born child of God you must grow in newness of
life. St. Paul says you must be “renewed in the spirit
of your mind,” and this means we must have a new
consciousness, a new way of seeing things from a new
perspective. This is what the Biblical word for
‘repentance’ means. It means a complete turning around
with a new mind.
In
each of these parables in today’s Gospel reading, the
people who discover their treasure are utterly
captivated by it; it has their complete attention.
Likewise, the Kingdom of God must find us “instant in
prayer,” attentive, and mindfully practicing the
presence of God. This is why we speak of the “fear of
the Lord.” Fear gets our attention; that is fear’s
useful function. Fear snaps us out of our day dreaming
and tells us that danger is approaching. Fear tells us
to cut short the inner monologue and pay attention. It
gets us focused. We must be focused on God. We must be
centered on God with him commanding our attention. When
you are utterly open to God, completely exposed to the
One with whom there are no secrets, knowing that there
is absolutely nothing under your control, this is holy
fear; an exhilarating, glorious, life-altering,
thrilling, joyful, holy fear, and it is in us the
beginning of wisdom.
Our
Lord Jesus tells us that we are called to know the same
loving union with God he knows. Scripture tells us that
Christ is in the bosom of the Father and we are in
Christ. Prayer recalls us to this loving union with God
in God. The very love of God dwells within us. The very
love of God which “moves the sun and all the stars”
dwells within us and restores us to Love’s own image –
to His own image and likeness. As we live in this love
we joyfully offer our selves, our souls and bodies, as a
holy, living sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, which
is our reasonable service. As we grow in God’s love and
come to see ourselves and understand ourselves in the
light of God’s love, we become less and less afraid of
anything in this world because nothing – absolutely
nothing – can separate us from God’s love. The more we
realize this, and the more inspired we are by the love
of God, the less threatened we are, the less use we have
for negativity and aggression. We can let that go. In
God’s love we are able to offer everything which arises
to Him in love; the pleasant and the unpleasant, the
bitter and the sweet. We offer our joys and our sorrows.
We don’t cling to our joys but instead let them ascend
to the Father. We are not afraid of sorrow or any other
normal human emotion. We offer those as well, not
running away in fear from those painful emotions, or
displacing them in ways that come back to bite us, but
experiencing them with equal clarity and charity and
then letting them go and offering them up as a living
sacrifice in Christ. The fear of the Lord gets our
attention so we can learn how perfect love casts out
fear.
People often tell me how hard it is to be mindful of
God’s presence and how tough it is to be obedient to
him. In fact the opposite is true. It is precisely when
you are not mindful of God that life becomes difficult;
it is exactly when you do not accept God’s will that
life becomes disappointingly sorrowful. I’ll conclude
with words from Charles Wesley:
Then
let us adore, and give him his right, all glory and
power, all wisdom and might, all honor and blessing,
with angels above, and thanks never ceasing and infinite
love.
Fr.
Petley
