Morning Devotion for the Season after Pentecost
June 29, 2022
Invitatory
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.
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.
Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness: Come let us adore him.
Reading: Romans 7:21-25
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
Meditation – Peter Vanderveen
There’s nothing quite like the weakness of the will. We all know this feeling. It has so many gradients: a slight temptation, an increasing urge to lean in, that last minute recognition that resistance is going to be futile, throwing all caution to the wind and plunging in to what – at some level – you had wanted to avoid.
This is simply part of the personal challenge of life, whether about frivolous things or the most serious matters. And Paul seems to be a good companion in describing this struggle, acknowledging how broadly and how very deeply this affects us. We can easily excuse ourselves about superficial failures with the quip that “the devil made me do it.” Or, if our circumstances turn to the magnitude of the tragic, we can borrow Paul’s phrase, suggesting, more woefully, that “evil lies close at hand.” Regardless of the degree, however, the implication seems to be, as Paul stated, that we are at war within ourselves. We know what’s right but often seem unable to do it. Temptations draw us in a different direction.
Paul described this as a tension between our minds and what he called our “members” or our “flesh.” There are a lot of other options that have been included under these latter terms: instinct, drives, passions, impulses, urges – even addictions. Nonetheless, it seems as if Paul envisioned a strictly binary contest between what we ideally want and that to which we’re seduced, between what is assuredly worthy and good and what, by a strange whispering in our ear, seems suddenly and irresistibly more desirable.
I wish it were this easy.
I’m rarely one to second-guess Paul or, more to the point, the very long tradition that has developed from the interpretation of his writings. But even within the corpus of his existing letters he makes clear that the wretchedness he decries within himself is more than his inability to do what he knows he ought to do. Sin works at levels far deeper and murkier than temptation. Wretchedness doesn’t refer merely to a lack of strength of character. It marks our incapacity even to know adequately what the right is. The law doesn’t provide a comprehensive picture or means by which to achieve what should be; on this point both it and we fail. The law functions, then, primarily, to reveal the inescapable reality of sin; there is a point for all of us where it is ungraspable, mysterious, and horrifically real – where we have no power at all to overcome it. This defines our wretchedness. And this wretchedness can only be relieved from outside of ourselves, by someone who delivers us.
We’ve long lost this sense of wretchedness in Christian expression. We prefer focusing on the “dignity of every human being.” It seems an admirable idea, but it quickly collapses under the evident weaknesses of the flesh. (Don’t we see this all around us). And, all the more, it makes Jesus irrelevant: a good example for us, maybe, but not a Savior. Dignity, however, is not something we have of ourselves. It’s something conferred on us; it’s the judgment of God revealed in Jesus. Which, ultimately, makes God even more close at hand than evil. And the fundamental battle then, isn’t that of the will; it’s whether we have faith enough to rejoice, praising God for what has been done for us.
The Lord's Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy Name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.
