Month: July 2015

“Ye shall know them by their fruits”

Actions, it seems, speak louder than words; at times, actions even seem to invalidate our thoughts and words. Such is hypocrisy – the gap between our expressed intentions and our actions, our saying one thing and doing another. This morning’s Gospel seems to affirm the priority of action. Not only shall we be known by our fruits but it might even seem that our words are empty and meaningless. “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.”

But that would be an incomplete view of what is set before us in these readings. The Gospel is really calling us to act according to who we are in Christ. Who we are in Christ is signaled profoundly in the Epistle reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans. “You have received a spirit of sonship … we are the children of God,” he claims, “and if children, then heirs; heirs of God and fellow-heirs with Christ: if so be that we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified with him.” This is powerful. Our actions should reveal our identity in Christ. We should be known by our fruits, our actions in accord with our vocation and identity as Christians.

This is the constant theme of the Trinity season illustrated constantly in the relationship between the Collects, Epistles and Gospels. It is all about acting upon what we have been given to see about our humanity as redeemed in Christ. It is all about actions in accord with words and not the divisions between them. For if we are simply what we do – if who we are resides simply in our actions – then we are doomed to despair.

Actions have consequences. This is a truism. Of course, actions have consequences and, of course, actions can be seen to reveal intentions and thoughts. But think about it for a moment. If you are defined simply by your actions then who are you? Shall we tally up the score? How many good things versus how many not so good things? Meanness versus kindness? Harm versus helpfulness? “The good that I would do, I do not do,” Paul famously reminds us, “the evil that I would not do is what I do.” On this score, our actions condemn us. They are not always in accord with what we know and want to do that is right and good and true. Such are “the devices and the desires of our own hearts”.

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“I have compassion on the multitude”

It must seem strange in the sultry heat of the quiet summer and in the lush richness of nature’s bounty in the beauty and peace of the valley, to hear about sin and death and about being in the wilderness with nothing to eat. Perhaps, such things merely confirm our current prejudices and biases about religion as something negative and threatening, judgmental and hateful.

To the contrary, it seems to me, these rich and wonderful lessons open out to us things that we need to hear and to hear in the context of the Eucharist, things which have to do with a larger, more complete and more honest view about human life. Ultimately, it is about life with God in Jesus Christ, something of lasting worth and meaning in which we participate here and now. To put it more simply, there is a spiritual and scriptural wisdom here which challenges the all-too-easy complacencies and certainties of our ordinary lives. The culture of full bellies and empty souls faces the deep and great question about what it means to be human. The spiritual and biblical view is that it has altogether to do with the dynamic of our life with God. This is wonderfully illustrated in the Collect, Epistle and Gospel for today.

“The free gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ,” St. Paul tells us. “I have compassion on the multitude,” Jesus says. These are the strong positives of our spiritual life that speak directly and profoundly to the human condition and to the primacy of thanksgiving “at all times and in all places,” as our liturgy puts it, emphasizing in a phrase the freest and truest aspect of redeemed humanity. They are profoundly suggestive of the dynamic of our spiritual life expressed sacramentally in terms of Baptism, on the one hand, and Communion, on the other hand, that capture the distinctive interplay between the theological themes of justification and sanctification; or more simply put, Christ for us and Christ in us. As Richard Hooker notes: “we receive Christ Jesus in baptism once as the first beginner, in the eucharist often as being by continual degrees the finisher of our life” (Lawes, Bk.V, ch. LVII), suggesting exactly how Christ is “Alpha and Omega,” something which even the architecture of our churches often reveals. You need only look up and marvel at the Alpha and Omega beams of Christ Church and of many other Maritime Churches in the Carpenter Gothic style. The idea belongs to a basic and universal or catholic Christian understanding. Again, as Hooker notes: “nevertheless touching Baptism and the Supper of the Lord, we may with consent of the whole Christian world conclude they are necessary, the one to initiate or begin, the other to consummate or make perfect our life in Christ” (Lawes, Bk.V, ch. LXVII).

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