“Friend, go up higher”
There was a healing done on the Sabbath before hostile eyes. There was a parable spoken in the face of resentful silence; a parable told to counter our presumption and hypocrisy. Jesus speaks and acts. He teaches. At issue is whether we will be teachable. Only so can we ever hope to “walk worthy of the vocation wherewith [we] are called.”
For make no mistake, we are called. There is our common vocation. We are called out of ourselves and called to God. We are called to the service of God in our life together with one another in the body of Christ. It is really the purpose of our being here today, a purpose which extends into every aspect of our lives.
St. Paul reminds us of the qualities of that vocation, about how we should seek to be and about how we should act: “with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love, endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” These qualities arise from the doctrine – the teaching – which has been given to us and without which these qualities cannot live in us. “There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all and in you all.”
It is a high calling, to be sure. And it would be impossible, except for this. The means whereby it is accomplished in us is the same as what has been shown to us. Jesus himself is the teaching. He is what he says. In other words, it is grace – what comes from God to us. Grace goes before us and follows us, as the Collect puts it. “Prevent” in its older and fuller sense does not mean “hinder” but “go before”. Our grace-ordered lives are about the teaching – the doctrine – of Christ living in us. Our being teachable is about whether we will allow the teaching to live in us. You see, it is given so as to be known and lived.
“Friend, go up higher” is not our presumption but our calling. Christ has come to where we are but not to leave us where we are. He wants something better for us. He has come to us and we find our vocation in him, in what he says to us and in what he does for us. Our vocation is about the quality of our being with him.
There is often talk about “incarnational theology,” especially among Anglicans. There is surely an important truth in such talk. Christ has come in to our midst and so the Church – the body of Christ incarnate – must be in the midst of the world and the culture of our day in all of its confusions and complexities. But we deny the meaning of the Incarnation if we suppose that it means that Christ is simply collapsed into the world and taken captive by the culture. The Incarnation does not mean “bless this mess.” It doesn’t mean that God is to be taken captive to the demands of the market, the demands of the culture, the demands of state and society. It means, instead, “friend, go up higher.” The danger for us always is the tendency to want to constrain Christ to our expectations and wills; in other words to keep him subject to us and to take him captive to our understanding. In so doing we constrain the sovereign freedom of God’s grace and deny ourselves the vocation to which his grace calls us.
A proper incarnational theology must seek to be in the midst of the world’s confusions with the clarity of Christ’s teaching and in the quiet confidence of the Gospel. Our constant struggle is to be teachable so as to let that teaching live in us. It isn’t a question of our intellectual capacities. Those vary from one person to another for there are varieties of gifts, including different gifts of understanding. No. What is at issue is our willingness, our willingness to learn each “according to the capacity of the beholder to behold.” What stands in the way of our being teachable is our pride, our hostilities, our envyings and our resentments; in short, our wills. The antidote is humility.
Humility is not about putting ourselves down. It is about our being open to God’s raising us up. It is about our being open to the motions of God’s grace in our lives, to what, in fact, is proclaimed and set before us here in our liturgy and service. The note of that humility is sung by Mary. “Be it unto me according to thy word.” Through the magnanimous grace of her humility, great things are accomplished. Through her “the Word was made flesh” and “God was made man.” He calls out to us, “Friend, go up higher.”
This challenges our complacencies, our easy tendency to reduce God to our own comfort level, to take him captive to our confusions and to make him attractive to us. What is required in us instead is humility. The Incarnation of Jesus Christ is the humility of God. God humbles himself to come to where we are so as to raise us up into his life and love; in short, to where he is.
You see, there is indeed a healing on the Sabbath and a parable on the Sabbath. Our Sabbath is something more. It is always a celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It is not just a resting therefore, but rather a resting in our being raised up into the things of God, “the lifting up of our hearts” and our lives to God. We are called into the presence of Christ. That is always something higher.
No doubt we may stumble and stutter, but what is always wanted is that his grace should triumph in us, that his grace should lift us up out of ourselves and into the vocation to which he has called us, to where he wants us to be. It is wanted that his grace should live and move in us. His grace would lift us up. It is his word. He is what he says. In him we are lifted up, if we will be teachable.
“Friend, go up higher”
Fr. David Curry
Christ Church
Trinity XVII, 8:00am