Monday, November 4, 2019
677 - Let's Do This
Spirituality Column #677
November 5, 2019
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Let’s Do This
By Bob Walters
"Jesus never asked anyone to form a church, ordain priests, develop elaborate rituals and institutional cultures, and splinter into denominations. His two great requests were that we 'love one another as I have loved you' and that we share bread and wine together as an open channel of that interabiding love." - Cynthia Bourgeault.
That
quote/meme showed up on my Facebook feed recently and I thought, “Hey, true
enough.” We do tend to complicate and
encumber our simple faith in Jesus with a great many earthly and “un-requested”
human structures and rules.
And Lord, we do love structures and
rules. Then I looked at it again thought,
“Uh-oh.” Am I alone or do you see the
problem, too? What’s up with “requests”?
I couldn’t resist and immediately
posted this Fb reply: “So true … so
simple … but those are commands, not requests.
John 13:34, 1 Cor. 11:25, RSV. We
call it ‘Maundy’ Thursday because it means ‘mandate.’ As in … ‘do this …’ It’s
not a negotiable. Oops … sorry. Got
carried away there. But Jesus didn’t say
‘please.’”
There it is. We are pretty crummy slaves of Christ if we
think He is asking us for assent to His will and purpose. Jesus wasn’t one for small talk or begging
for approval. Everywhere in the Bible He
speaks, he speaks with authority. And it
is not just the authority of knowing His material, but the tacit Godly
authority of, “This Is How It Is.”
Now, the miracle and mystery of Christian
faith is that we have total freedom to accept or reject Christ. We are not slaves by coercion; we make
ourselves slaves because we see in Jesus not only God’s grace and glory, but we
understand that His message is, if I may offer an apt, homemade summary of all
Jesus’s teaching:
“Here
is how divine things will go best for you. I speak the truth. I Am the Truth.”
We have no idea what the informal,
cajoling, conversational Jesus might have sounded like, because we never see it
in the Bible. At the wedding at Cana, He speaks in direct tones. With Nicodemus in the night, He speaks of
rebirth. With the woman at the well, He
speaks of living water and her own life.
With the Pharisees, he speaks in vexing parables revealing their
failures before God. With Pilate, He is mostly silent.
What we never see is a
request. What we never read is, “Hey, do you agree with this?” or “Yeah, I see your point.” Jesus is quite comfortable with His own
counsel.
I’m aware modern culture hates the
“S” word – slave. But it’s appropriate
here because in Christ or really even in the world, our greatest freedom is our
freedom to choose that to which we will bind our love, our loyalty, our
industry, and our faith. If it is within
my God-given freedom that I can choose to honor my fiercest obligations, then
I’m happy to pledge my life to Christ regardless what you call it. This is my identity.
So no, Jesus isn’t requesting that
we “follow Him.” Our life is on the line,
period.
I Googled the quote’s author,
Cynthia Bourgeault. She is an Episcopal
priest and expert on contemplative prayer.
That’s the “going deep” kind of prayer that plumbs our deepest
consciousness rather than our superficial, on-the-fly reactions to the
world. I watched her “one-minute
explanation” and was struck that she mentioned the Dualist “yin and yang” but
not God, Jesus Christ, or the Holy Spirit.
To me, that’s a problem.
Her sentiment about institutional
religion bears merit but I can’t help noting the attendant irony of her station
within the Episcopal Church and the absence of Christ.
Let’s just say that when it comes
to Jesus, I’d rather do this, not that.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) loves history and tradition … but Jesus most of all.
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