“If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them”
& “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”
A double text to capture two themes. Do we act out of what we have been given to see? Or do we demand that God be accountable to us? To act out of what we have been to see is captured in the first text, “if you know these things, blessed are you if you do them”; the other text expresses the vehemence of our hostility against God, “what have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”
We are confronted with the challenge and the refusal. There is the challenge to act out of what we have been given to see of the majesty of God and our blessedness, the divine charity that shapes our lives into holiness. Such is the vision of the Trinity. “Behold, a door was opened in heaven” and we are invited to enter into that vision through the charity of God alive in us. But then, there is our refusal to will that order and truth, preferring, instead, the vanity of ourselves that blinds us to the real needs and even the presence of others. We ignore Lazarus at our feet. He is the image of our wounded and broken humanity, the humanity which God restores but which man ignores. What has he to do with us? we may ask. But in so neglecting Lazarus we are really saying, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”
The readings at the Eucharist order our understanding of all the other lessons of this day. The point, too, is very simple. The love that is shown is the love that is to be lived. The Epistle for this day teaches us that love is of God because God is love. That love is manifested in Jesus Christ so that we might live in love through him. The only question is whether we will live the vision. The Epistle sounds the theme and the Gospel gives the crucial illustration through a parable about our relationship to the vision of God revealed. The Epistle is John’s treatise about that love. The Gospel is the powerful story of the Rich Man (Dives) and Lazarus.
What does it come down to? Simply this. The love of God compels us to love one another. This is not a may-be, but a must-be for our salvation. We are commanded and compelled to love out of the vision of love which has been shown to us. When we ignore the stranger in our midst or neglect the beggar at our door, we deny the God who “became poor for our sakes” and who “came into our midst.” When we are consumed by envy at the good fortune of others, when we filled with hatred and wrath for hurts and injuries inflicted upon us, whether real or perceived, then we place ourselves very far from God and do great harm to ourselves. To put it in terms of the parable, there is “a great gulf fixed” between us and God when we ignore one another. Then we place ourselves in torment, the torment of our self-willed distance from God. “What have you to do with me, Jesus of Nazareth?” expresses that reality.
These lessons speak to the disorders in our souls and our communities particularly in the way we cling to our hatreds and enmities. Such things may be there – animosities and enmities, hatreds and dislikes are very real; they can possess our souls. But do we, at the very least, want there to be something more? Or do we hold on to our resentments and our hatreds? If we do then we have a problem.
The problem is not that we don’t know better. Even the “man who had an unclean spirit” in this morning’s second lesson recognises that Jesus is “the Holy One of God.” The problem is that we do not act upon what we know. The vision of love is not alive in us because we do not let it live in us. We are dead to the glory which God has revealed: “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.” Yet Christ is risen from the dead and how shall we not be persuaded to love? And how much greater the torment if we will not? What God has given us to see and know, he has shown us so that we might believe and live. The vision of love is our life with God, wherever the places and whatever the circumstances of our lives. “Be strong and of good courage; be not frightened, neither be dismayed.” Why? Because “the Lord your God is with you wherever you go,” God tells Joshua at the beginning of that great book of struggle and conquest, The Book of Joshua which chronicles in a theological way the struggle and the conquest of the Promised Land.
The vision of God revealed gives shape to all that we see and do, to all that we hear and read. The love that is God is far more than sentimental feelings; it is the deep yearning of the soul, at once seeking understanding and striving for articulation, and compelled to the care and service of others.
In the vision of the Trinity, we pray for an understanding mind to rule and govern our souls. In the vision of the Trinity, even our evil, we discover, becomes an occasion of his greater goodness. The demons recognise Jesus as “the Holy One of God” but they do not honour and worship the truth which they perceive. Such is the great mystery of sin. But out of the recognition of Jesus as “the Holy God,” who indeed is with us in the broken and shattered forms of our humanity, there comes teaching and healing. But only out of what we are given to see.
The vision is transforming love and power. It breaks down the barriers of suspicion and creates the fellowship of charity. But when we do not listen to “Moses and the Prophets,” then we exile ourselves from God’s Word and presence. We are like Israel in exile from the promised land, but only so as to learn in a far away place the deep lessons of God’s grace.
With Jesus it is about far more than simply do what I say; it is also do what I do. In an Upper Room, the Lord and Teacher of Love kneels down and washes our feet in an act of loving service. “I have given you an example,” he says, “that you also should do as I have done to you.” His love commands our love by the quality of his example. His love draws us into the vision of eternal love which he opens to view. “If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.” In him, all love has its fulfillment and perfection. He makes his act of loving service even in the face of our treachery, mine and yours, for Judas’ treachery is also the treachery of our hearts, so great is his love for us. He washes his betrayer’s feet. When we let his love overrule our hearts, then we are with him in the fellowship of the Blessed Trinity. Then, and only then are we blessed. Then and only then can we walk in the steps of the blessed one who has very much to do with us and our blessedness.
“If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them”
& “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”
Fr. David Curry,
Trinity 1, 2013 MP