“Whatsoever ye do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus”
Epiphany runs out in the themes of mercy and judgment. Today’s epistle complements and illustrates the gospel. Wheat and tares grow together in the field of the world. Wheat and weeds are there together, both the good and the bad. But who can be sure which is which? What is weed and what is wheat? This is to recognize the limitations of our judgments. “Let them both grow together until harvest”, says the sower. God is the gardener and God is the judge. Not you and not me. That is itself a great mercy.
This doesn’t simply mean the suspension of our judgment in the abdication of responsibilities. We have the obligation and the ability to discern right from wrong and, and by God’s grace, to act accordingly. We are bidden to be God’s good wheat in the world of wheat and tares. But it does mean a check upon our judgmentalism. Forbearing one another and forgiving one another is the counter to our judgmentalism. Our judgmentalism is our presumption to know what we cannot and do not know about others and even about ourselves. We would put ourselves in the place of God as judge. We would presume to have a total and absolute view when, in fact, our viewpoint is altogether restricted and limited. We see, at best, “through a glass darkly”. To know this is to be aware of the limits of our knowing. It is the beginning of wisdom. It frees us from the tyranny of ourselves.
“Did you not sow good seed in the field? From whence then hath it tares?” the servants ask the householder who replies, “an enemy has done this”. There is always the possibility of discovering that we are the enemy. That we are the tares even when we think we are the wheat. Our judgments have a way of turning back upon ourselves. It is called hypocrisy. It is a very wide net that catches us all.
The epiphany here is the light of Christ made manifest in us. It is about our self-awareness of the limits of human judgment both with respect to ourselves and to one another. But is all this simply a cautionary tale? Are we exhorted here merely to a posture of skepticism? to a suspension of belief about the possibilities of knowing anything and therefore about doing anything? No. Quite the opposite. What we are presented with counters the cynical and false skepticism of our age which would deny any objective view about what is good and true while asserting as absolute its own relativism. And what we are presented with equally counters the religion of sentimentalism and self-righteousness which makes the church such a parody of itself.
At the heart of Paul’s exhortation are these strong, strong words about forbearing and forgiving. They impart an active quality to the virtues of “mercy and compassion, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering” – virtues which belong to our identity in Christ as “elect”, “holy and beloved”. We are reminded of who we are in the sight of God. That is no occasion for self-righteousness but for the deepening of our lives in faith, “put[ting] on charity, let[ting] the peace of God rule in [y]our hearts, let[ting] the word of Christ dwell in [us] more richly”. In every way we are drawn more fully into the light of Christ, the one who has come into the midst of the world of wheat and tares, the one who illumines the darkness of our hearts. We are at once convicted and comforted by the light of Christ.
There is a vision here. There is an epiphany of our lives in the light of Christ. We are given to see and to act out of what we are given to see. We are given to see something of the forbearance and the forgiveness of God towards us which compels us to forbear and forgive one another. “Even as the Lord forgave you, so also do ye”. It is always what we pray. Our lives are lived in the sight of God “from whom no secrets are hid”. What we are given to see is the picture of his love for us. It counters all our pretensions and all the presumptions of our judgmentalism. Equally, it challenges our all-too-willing subservience to tyranny and bullying by the institutional authorities of our world who betray the principles that govern their authority. Why?
Because we are constantly being turned to Christ. The strong idea here is about the Lord Jesus. “Whatsoever you do in word and deed it all in the name of the Lord Jesus”, Paul says. That should be the check on our judgments of ourselves and one another. How? By reminding us of the lessons of the Epiphany, lessons which open us out to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ and to God’s will and purpose for our humanity. Healing and wholeness, joy and delight in God and one another, service and sacrifice: these are the lessons which we have heard and seen. It means letting those lessons enter into our minds and hearts; they are the lessons of love, the deep love of God which demands that we forbear one and forgive one another. In the Christian understanding we live for Christ rejoicing in his word and truth without using that word and truth as a cudgel to beat up on ourselves or one another.
There will be, as the prophet Amos suggests, “a famine in the land”, not of food, he says, “but of hearing the words of the Lord”. He criticizes the institutional authorities of his day who have betrayed the Word and Law of God. He remains committed to the truth of God’s word. His prophetic words endeavor to recall Israel to the Lord. And yet for all his words of judgment, the judgment is always God’s. That is the check on all of us always.
It means, of course, “put[ting] on charity”, “let[ting] the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom.” It is, we might say, “all for Jesus.”
“Whatsoever ye do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus”
Fr. David Curry
Epiphany 5, 2014, 8:00am