4 April 2014 - challenge accepted

4 April 2014 - challenge accepted

To the degree that we aren't living kingdom lives the presence of Jesus can be a challenge to us.  If we are attached to sin, and we are all attached to sin, the attitude described below is to some extent our reality:

“Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us;
he sets himself against our doings,
Reproaches us for transgressions of the law
and charges us with violations of our training.

And it's true.  We have been trained better than this. Our thoughts betray selfish and prideful motives and so "To us he is the censure of our thoughts".  If we don't let these go then "merely to see him is a hardship for us".  Just by the virtue of their purity the just make us uneasy.  When someone chooses not to engage in a sin which we practice it is hard for us to watch because we take it as an implicit judgment on ourselves even when that isn't the intention which the just one has in mind.

 It shouldn't come to the point where, to justify our pet sins, we need to "put him to the test that we may have proof his gentleness and try his patience."  In a way, this describes mortal sin.  We imagine most of our sin to be isolated, affecting only ourselves.  But we don't exist in vacuum.  Sin always breaks relationships.  Part of all sin is defiance toward God. Mortal sin is the point where we so choose our own way instead of God's way that we implicitly "condemn him to a shameful death."  We say, 'I am the arbiter of good and evil for myself.  Anyone who says otherwise may as well be dead.  I'm going to do this anyway so let God prove his claim on me if he has one.'  This violent defiance is implicit in all mortal sin, and to a lesser extent, all sin generally.

During Lent it is important to understand how serious sin is.  It is important to understand what we say to God, even in our venial sins.  It is important because on a deeper level we know that we don't want to say this to God.  We want to love him and make him loved.  And Lent is a time to stop living divided lives and to love God with our whole heart, mind, and strength.

Even in the parts of our lives where we are unwilling to welcome him, Jesus does not abandon us.  He is rich is mercy.  He loves us more than we can imagine even while we are yet sinners.  He comes to us "as it were in secret."  He does what he can to sneak by our defenses so that he can reveal himself to us.  He sneaks past our assumptions.  We think that "we know where he is from."  Such assumptions mitigate his claim on our hearts. Yet then, here he is before us.  These thoughts we were thinking about who he is and how he doesn't have a claim on us don't even come to mind.  We just see him standing before us.  We can't recall our assumptions.  He sneaks past them and now we hear:

 Yet I did not come on my own,
but the one who sent me, whom you do not know, is true.
I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.”

He reveals himself to us and gives us a new and deeper freedom to choose him.  Let us not try "to arrest him" and thereby negate and neutralize his activity in our lives.  Let us welcome him, not partially, but with all that we are.