ORDINARY 30 (A)
You shall love the Lord your God… You shall love your
neighbor as yourself. – Mt. 22: 37, 39
Jesus considered the love of a God who loves us
unconditionally to be “the pearl of great price.” In our
own time, it has been said that the consolations of
religion are being sought at “cut-rate” prices; that too
many Christians are looking for cheap grace. Cheap grace
means that the love of God is taken to be an idea rather
than an experience. It means that the forgiveness of God
is accepted without genuine repentance. Cheap grace is
grace without obedience.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran minister
executed by the Nazis, put it this way: “Cheap grace is
grace without discipleship, grace without the cross,
grace without the living Christ. Cheap grace is the
deadly enemy of the Church.” Knowing that God loves us
unconditionally & that He wants us to have eternal life
isn’t enough. His grace must be received with obedience
& discipleship.
God does not offer us His grace because we have earned
it, but as a sheer gift.
Still, it does not become real to us until we accept it
through obedience & discipleship. The commandments are
the directions for life God gives to those who are
willing to accept the gift. Jesus came to show us
how to interpret God’s commandments in a positive rather
than a negative way.
The negative approach to our relationship with God is
based on the mistaken notion that we somehow must earn
God’s love. It is the burden we impose on ourselves when
we grimly try to live up to His commandments & the
sermon on the mount out of a sense of obligation. Jesus
wants us to understand that the offer of the life we
long for is never withdrawn. It is ours for the taking
if we do so in an attitude of openness to the directions
that come with it.
There was nothing new about the two commandments our
Lord quoted in response to the Pharisee’s question. What
was different was His effectively combining them into
one commandment. In so doing, He is saying that love of
God and neighbor is inseparable, & there was no
precedent for this interpretation of the Law in
rabbinical teachings.
In his work, Reaching
Out, Henri Nouwen related this incident:
Then he said, “It is good to be here,” & I said, “Yes,
it is good to be together again,” & after that we were
silent again for a long period. As a deep peace filled
the empty space between us he said hesitantly, “When I
look at you it is as if I am in the presence of Christ.”
I did not feel startled, surprised or in need of
protesting, but I could only say, “It is the Christ in
you who recognizes the Christ in me.”
“Yes,” he said, “He is indeed in our midst,” & then he
spoke the words which entered into my soul as the most
healing words I had heard in many years. “From now on,
wherever you go, or wherever I go, all the ground
between us will be holy ground.”
Through our obedience & our discipleship, God’s sheer
gift of grace will become real to us, & from then on,
wherever we go, we will be on the holy ground of oneness
with our fellow humans & oneness with our God!
AMEN!
|