30 June 2014 - follow-through

30 June 2014 - follow-through

We say to Jesus, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go" and believe ourselves to be disciples.  But the trouble is that if we really want to do that which we propose, if we want to live as disciples, there are consequences.  We first propose the idea of ourselves as disciples partly out of self-image.  We want to be bold and daring, to following Jesus anywhere.  But as the consequences become apart, as the rubber hits the road, we think twice.  At best we embrace discipleship in a more complete way.  We might leave his company like the rich man who went away sad because he had many possessions (cf. Mat. 19:22).  A worst case is that we keep this idea of ourselves as followers and hold on to this as our imagined identity but never allow the ramifications to really enter our minds. 

This is one reason not everyone who says to Jesus, "Lord, Lord!" will be saved.  We have a capacity to delude ourselves.  This is why it is such a problem to be lukewarm, why Jesus spits the lukewarm from his mouth (cf. Rev. 3:16).  It is a state of profound insulation from our need to change, our need for repentance.

I will correct you by drawing them up before your eyes.”

If Jesus sees us running in the company of thieves and adulterers, if our actions and our words belie our supposed commitments to Jesus he reveals these things to us.  His goal is not to make us hate ourselves.  It isn't even to reveal our own imperfection and weakness.  But he does want to cast light on the false self-image that we have.  He wants us to build a self-image which is sustainable.  It needs to be built on him so that it can face challenges which are for man impossible and yet survive, not by insisting on itself in spite of moral failures, but by achieving moral victories through God's grace.

All the victories of our past are from God.  It is he who delivered us from the desert of our sinful pasts.  It was God who destroyed the Amorites before us, destroyed the power of vice in our hearts to allow us freedom in the land those vices once ruled.

We must remember in whom we find our strength.  If we do not remember we risk becoming like Israel in the first reading.  We risk the dissipation that inevitably followings putting ourselves first.  We misuse the resources of others for our own ends, their "garments taken in pledge" and "the wine of those who have been fined" we consume.  Eventually we find that we will "sell the just man for silver, and the poor man for a pair of sandals."  If this reminds us of Judas and makes us nervous it should.  If we do not remember we begin treating the things of God casually, without due reverence.  We become like the Israelities who recline by any altar, drinking in the house of their god, but celebrating themselves, ignoring the God of Israel.

He wants to teach us to put him first so that he can show us the way of salvation. To see it we must learn to have his praise as our highest priority.

“Consider this, you who forget God,
lest I rend you and there be no one to rescue you.
He that offers praise as a sacrifice glorifies me;
and to him that goes the right way I will show the salvation of God.”

If we look when the LORD draws our attention to our falsely spiritual self-image and let him bring it into the light we can learn how to offer this false self-image to him in sacrifice.  At one and the same time we give him praise, acknowledging our complete dependence on him.  It is therefore the completely different from self-hatred.  When we do this our false self-image will give way and we will become people who truly respond when Jesus says, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead.”