|
Today's Scripture
6 I want you to show love,
not offer sacrifices.
I want you to know me
more than I want burnt offerings.
*Hosea 6.6 (NCV)
Wisdom Words
The following is from a homily, "Begin in Your Own Heart, by Trappist monk Fr. Matthew Kelty and is based on Luke 6:37-49:
[I]f the flaw in your brother is a problem with you, does that not indicate a critical view of your own flaws? For you cannot treat others any way except the way you treat yourself. If you can be savage in your comments on another, no one need doubt you are just as savage with your own heart, revealed in your speech. The beam in your own eye has never been removed in mercy nor the speck you see in your brother's eye.
We need to meet mercy if we are to do mercy to others. Anything less is sheer waste. The sinful heart that has accepted Christ's mercy approaches another in quite a different mode than does the one foreign to it.
Hence, the healing of the world does not begin in some far-off land that we must hasten to help, but in the geography of your own heart. There the sinner is washed in mercy and becomes thereby an instrument of mercy, not merely by his prayers, but in everything he does. For he is a vessel of grace. We cannot heal all the world's problems, but we begin with our own heart if our help is to amount to anything.
*www.bardstown.com
Wisdom Story
One cold winter's day a ten-year-old boy was standing barefoot in front of a shoe store, peering through the window and shivering with cold. A lady approached the boy and asked him what he was doing.
"I was asking God to give me a pair of shoes," the boy replied.
The lady took him by the hand and went into the store. She asked the clerk to get a half dozen pairs of socks for the boy. She asked if he could give her a basin of water and a towel. He quickly brought them to her. She took the boy to the back part of the store, knelt down, washed his little feet, and dried them with a towel.
The clerk had returned with the socks. After placing a pair upon the boy's feet, the lady purchased him a pair of shoes, and tying up the remaining pairs of socks, gave them to him. She patted him on the head and said, "No doubt, my little fellow, you feel more comfortable now?"
As she turned to go, the astonished lad caught her by the hand, and looking up, with tears in his eyes, asked: "Are you God's wife?"
*Source unknown; see ozsermonillustrations.com .
Comments
Thomas Merton, in Life and Holiness, writes, "Christ made it clear that there was a direct opposition between faith and human respect: ..." He means what Jesus says in St. John, in a speech at the Temple to his religious opposition. They had opposed him for breaking Sabbath legislation:
"How can you believe, when you accept praise from one another and do not seek the praise that comes from the only God?" (5.44, NAB)
Jesus received much opposition for his uncritical acceptance of those in dire need. To his opposition, religious Law and ritual Temple took precedence over mercy, over grace: for mercy covers the ideas of grace, kindness, empathy, and love.
This refusal to see in Jesus the Divine Benevolence was due to an externalized faith. This faith might provide structure and solace, as well as security, for the external self. But faith like this does not address the only place one can connect with the Divine mercy.
The whole external way of religion is to be a sign of the inner world of the self, where we "see" the True Self, the Atman, the Christ Nature: Essence transcending personal, for the Sacred is not the Self of anyone ~ even though It takes on the person of a self.
Jesus' words and actions embody and signify this True Self. We are not just to follow Christ, in that we observe certain ideas and practices of a faith community. We are to be Christ in our being oneed with Christ, and this is to be unified inwardly with the Christ Nature, where consciousness takes on the contours of the Divine mercy, or God as Mercy.
Faith, then, is faithing, a conscious and assertive acting toward unification of all one's natural powers in the Power of Jesus Christ. Merton affirms:
"By faith Christ becomes the 'power of God' in our lives. Only by faith can we truly accept Christ and his Church.... Without faith, one is a Christian in name only. One belongs to the Church, not as to the body of Christ but as to a social institution, a religious organization, and one conforms to the generally accepted norms of Christian behavior not out of love for God, not with any understanding of their inner meaning, but merely in order to live up to the minimum standard of good conduct which will guarantee acceptance by the group."
Merton continues, with a profound definition of faith: "Faith is not merely the acquiescence of the mind in certain truths, it is the gift of our whole being to Truth itself, to the Word of God [that is, Christ]."
This prayerful moving inward, a faithing first directed toward illumination of the True Self ~ following, for the most part, an inner purgation~ leads into an ever-deepening inner baptism, a death and resurrection Christic in nature and action. Then, through such passive surrender to the inner Passion, the whole self, including the body, is transformed to clothe itself with the Christ.
Therefore, there is no godly, no truly Christian, mercy apart from this view of faith. Sensible compassion can arise from the human nature apart from the spiritualization of being in Christ. And, I assume, much so-called Christian action is exactly this sensible action ~ un-Christic in nature. The truly Christian action on behalf of others, however, is more than natural, sensible empathy, or it is natural in spiritualized through restoration to its first Love. This graciousness means a divinization of the senses, an immersion of the sensible in the Spiritual energies, or Divine Grace.
Indeed, the natural sensibility of empathy can thwart the wisdom of spiritual grace. Sometimes, faith might lead us to act contrary to natural empathy, for Love transcends sensibility in a natural sense. Yes, the greatest test of Love may be its choice to act contrary to such natural, and in-itself wholesome feeling.
There is no genuinely Christic treatment of the other apart from this immersion of natural senses in the Divine Waters and the arising of those very senses to Life. One must be becoming Christ to impart Christ in kindness, graciousness, and empathy. And once we taste more deeply this Christ who loves us with supernatural Grace, we, spontaneously, discover ourselves sharing that with others, not to meet an external standard of correct behavior but because one is naturally acting in and with Christ, even as Christ.
So, in matters of how we treat others, the question of morality is not foremost. The foremost question is making morality to be one of faith, Christian faith ~ which is not a faith in a "Christian" sense culturally, but faith that is contemplative in being the progressive marriage of the soul to God.
Reflection
How do you define Christian morality? Christian mercy?
Do you see yourself growing in Christian behavior in empathic response to others? Explain.
For Brian's on-line audio sermons, go to www.wherethelightshines.org and select Pastor's Corner; on the following page is his weekly sermons given at Christ United Methodist Church, Punta Gorda, FL.
* * *
For replies and biographical information, and submission to "The Light Shines" daily devotionals ~ a ministry of Christ Community United Methodist Church, Punta Gorda, FL, see next page:
Continued... |
