“If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart”
The Collect, Epistle and Gospel for each Sunday complement each other and contribute to a way of thinking and doing, especially so for the Sundays in the Trinity season. Today’s Gospel is Christ’s parable about the kingdom of heaven being likened to a great supper to which those who were invited all made excuse. The consequence of our refusals would seem to mean “no feast” and all because of our refusals of God’s inviting grace, as if our convenience were to take priority over God’s will. But such arrogant indifference is simply our atheism, our denial of the will of God for us. No feast because there is no God.
But can it be that our excuses frustrate God’s will? Surely not. We can only frustrate ourselves. God will have his house filled with those whom he makes ready – bringing them in who could not come on their own, compelling them to come in who would not come any other way. The parable signals the strong love of God for our humanity, for what he seeks for us even in spite of ourselves.
But those whom God invites are those whom he would have come willingly and freely – out of love – those of whom it may truly be said, “Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God.” To refuse the invitation is to deny that love. To be sure, our refusals of God’s grace belong also to the freedom of our will. But to be freed to our own pre-occupations is to be enslaved to ourselves – to the misery of our self-will, to the condemnation of our hearts. It is not what God wants for us nor what he wants us to want either.
The purpose of the parable is to convict our hearts of our folly and foolishness but only so that we will be thrown back more fully and more freely upon the goodness of God. In this way, the Gospel for today follows the same logic and purpose as last Sunday’s Gospel. These are Gospel parables of strong encouragement to take seriously our life with God. It is all about our faithful abiding in the love of God. The epistle, too, signals the further extension of the theme of forgiveness that the goodness of God presents: “if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart”. God is neither indifferent to our predicaments nor is he captive to our concerns. At issue is how we are awakened to his presence and will for us in our lives.
As Thomas Cranmer so wonderfully puts it: “He that keepeth the words of Christ is promised the love and favour of God and that he shall be the dwelling place or temple of the Blessed Trinity.” Such too is the meaning of the Church as the dwelling place or temple of the Blessed Trinity. For where shall we hear the words of Christ – the word of God written – that we may keep them except in those holy places where the word is truly proclaimed and the sacraments duly celebrated? For “there”, as Luther says, “is the Church”. It is not confined to a special geographical local. We are not to make idols of our churches as we so easily do. They are not ends in themselves. They exist for a purpose that is always pointing beyond themselves and always providing for our participation in the mystery of God revealed. Without that they are nothing. Our churches are the holy temples where the heavenly Jerusalem, the kingdom of God, holy mother Church, the Church Catholic is opened to view and we enter in. Here our blessedness is indeed to be found in the eating of the bread and in the hearing of the word.
In the body broken and the blood outpoured, in the word proclaimed and the sacraments celebrated, we are reminded ever so strongly and wonderfully of the steadfast love of the God who is greater than our hearts. And that is the mercy, the only mercy.
“If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart”
Fr. David Curry
Trinity 2, 2016