10 February 2015 - concrete

This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines human precepts.

God is the one who creates all things. He is the one who says "Let the water teem" and "Let the earth bring forth". He is the one who divides day from night and earth from sky. He is the source of the substantial and the true. No wonder then, that he doesn't tolerate superficiality and hypocrisy. He delights in the real, in fertility, in life and abundance. And we are made to be like him.

God created man in his image;
in the divine image he created him;
male and female he created them.

The Pharisees get distracted by the trivial at the expense of things which, while simple, are more real and true. They are hung up on purifications and washings. They are fixated on purifying cups and jugs and kettles and bells. But they neglect family! 

you allow him to do nothing more for his father or mother.

You nullify the word of God

We need to have priorities which are properly ordered. Creation is good! It is art! It is beauty! Our practice of religion should not withdraw from this fact. Our love is called to be concrete. It is cannot be a distraction from the brokenness of the world. It must loving engage the world. Religion is not a running or withdrawing. It does not impose a artificial level of "purification" over something which remains broken within. Sometimes these externals point us to our need for internal change. But ultimately internal change is what matters. "Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation" (cf. Gal. 6:15).

This is just what Jesus does! He does not merely cleanse us in a legal and fictions way. He changes us from the inside out. "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here" (cf. 2 Cor. 5:17). This shouldn't surprise us when we see the delight he takes in his work. We are made in his image. In precisely this way we are little less than angels and crowned with glory and honor.

You have made him little less than the angels,
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him rule over the works of your hands,
putting all things under his feet.

And when we mess this up is he content to fix the surface and leave the depths unchanged? No!

"We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life" (cf. Rom. 6:4).

Precisely because we are made in the image of the one who loves like this we must love like this, too. We must love with concrete love! "Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth" (cf. 1 Joh. 3:18).

This is how the story of the new creation is written. We are made co-creators in the old order because we are empowered to be mothers and fathers and to have power of the creation. In the new order we are made co-creators by spreading the message of salvation to the ends of the earth.

O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth!