|
View as Webpage
Morning Devotion for the Season after Pentecost
June 16, 2023
Feast of Joseph Butler
Invitatory
Lord, open our lips.
And our mouth shall proclaim your praise.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.
Reading: Luke 10:25-28
A lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”
Meditation – Peter Vanderveen
Eternal life is a big ask. It’s so big, in fact, that most people simply take it for granted – at least when someone’s death strikes close to home. Heaven may be hard to imagine in any real detail, but it’s easily assumed that one’s life naturally continues after death ad infinitum. One’s ending may be definite for us, but we rather casually maintain that it is not necessarily one’s ending for him or her. We allow for other possibilities. And apart from this, eternal life seems to warrant hardly a thought. There’s far too much about life to occupy us, like picking up the dry cleaning and getting to the gym.
Jesus’ interlocutor, we are told, asked Jesus about eternal life not so much to gain a better understanding of what it is or how we can be assured that it will be given to us. He asked because it was a perfect topic by which to trip Jesus up. Say too much about eternal life and you’re sure to sound presumptive or ridiculous. Jesus, however, smartly chose to refer directly to the law. And that alone might have been completely adequate. But he then added a comment of his own, not in order to offer greater insight or clarity, but to cleverly shift his answer to the lawyer’s question to something else.
If I had been the lawyer, I would have liked one more word in Jesus’ response. He noted that if one fulfills the law, then he “will live.” But this leaves something important unsaid. For there is an adjective missing – a single modifier that would have given a much clearer confirmation. Jesus didn’t declare that one would “ live forever” or “live eternally” or be granted “everlasting life.” It’s a curious avoidance. He could have so neatly finished off the lawyer’s challenge. Instead, he subtly shifted the focus – from duration to quality. The issue of an eternal extension to life was deftly dropped. And in a barely noticeable way, Jesus turned the question to life as we already know it, as we live it now. It was a brilliant ploy by which he escaped the trap set for him. If you love, your life will be lively.
Out of sheer reverence – or too much piety – we tend to miss the prowess of Jesus’ ability to outwit those who tried to discredit him. He played their games better than they did. It’s fun to watch it happen.
But there’s more to notice in this encounter. For it’s not a story that tells us how we, too, can do what is necessary to inherit eternal life. It tells us, rather, that whatever eternal life may be, this is best left to God. It’s something that only God can give, in dimensions that only God can envision and bring about. In every respect it’s beyond us. But the life we have, even in its finiteness, still has no bottom. Love reveals a richness that has no limits. We chase after endless time; but the endlessness that’s true and immediate to us is the value of relationship, to one another, to the creation, and to God.
Prayer
We will stand before you, O Lord, at the last,
And we will know as we are known,
And we will see what we have failed to see;
Open our eyes to see and know
That we stand in your presence now,
That you are here before us
Seeking our response of love;
Grant that we may respond now in such a way
That we may be prepared to stand before you at the last.
The Rev. Christopher L. Webber
Give Us Grace
| 
