Divine Justice


Our world is filled with people who commit egregious acts of self-enrichment. They abuse, oppress, deceive, and take advantage of others for purposes of personal gain. Some are caught and make spectacular headlines, but many seem to get away with it. We console ourselves with the thought that "in the end, they'll get what they deserve."   

This is the Old Testament-way of thinking: "The Lord detests all the proud of heart. Be sure of this: They will not go unpunished." (Proverbs 16:5) 

For those of us who have not sacrificed our lives on the altar of power and greed, the New Testament invites us into a radically different, bracingly life-giving way of being: Justice has already been served! We are already winners! I had this experience this past weekend when I participated as a finalist in a composition competition that, once there, I realized I could never win since the mechanics clearly favored the insiders and I was an outsider. When the awards were announced and my piece was not chosen, I truly felt like a winner. It was a surprising and deeply reassuring experience.

Well, then, what do our "winnings" look like? Empty hands, extended before God in supplication; a contrite heart, emptied of attachments and addictions and open to the outpouring of God's love; the bold conviction that Christ, God in human form who suffered just as we do and gave his life that death would be forever overcome, walks with us at every step and embraces us with a surpassing love.

My "prize" on the aforementioned occasion was an eight-hour drive home with no certificate nor any assurance of imminent publication. Instead, I came away with memories of the way in which music which God had poured through me had been lovingly received by open and willing hearts.

"For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it. What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves?" (Luke 9:24-25) 

(Above: Luke the Evangelist)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Feed My Sheep

Image
Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Bexley, Ohio, which last year merged with Capital University across the street, has a new dean who is widely admired. In a recent edition of her weekly newsletter, Dean Kathryn Kleinhans talked about the state of seminary education across the ELCA: “The numbers are out. This year the seminaries of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America – together – are graduating a total of 114 students available for call. That’s not even two for each of the ELCA’s 65 synods. Geographical restrictions limit even further the number of candidates available for a call anywhere in the church. Any of our bishops will tell you that the need is much greater than that!" Why are there so few seminary graduates? It's complicated, but the bottom line is that the ELCA itself is struggling. Congregations are closing or merging (and members are always lost in mergers), few are flourishing, and those who are somewhere in between are cut...
Read more

LET CREATION SING

Image
(From Sunday, March 11, 2018) Sometimes I go outside and try to feel how the breezes are blowing not around but through my body. I am a porous thing of the wind, miraculously held in place by skin -- or, as quantum physics might tell us, -- a holistic entanglement of immaterial energy waves, as are all material things. This dissolves the superior view of human-hood over against creation, of which I find myself frequently guilty, and place me in solidarity with all that is around me, animate and inanimate. The experience of being in solidarity with God's creation is a form of prayer. Listen, and you can hear all creation singing. Everywhere there is life, there is song. The Bible tell us that the entire breadth of creation shares equally with human being in actively praising God. "Let the sea roar, and all that fills it” we sing in Psalm 96, "let the field exult, and everything in it" (vv. Ilb-12a; RSV). In Psalm 98, “Let the floods clap th...
Read more

Cradle to Cross

Image
 Luke 1:46b-55 It is finished. Dare we hear, in Mary’s Magnificat, echoes of Jesus’ last words in John? If we consider Holy Scripture as God’s creative word which acts on us at every encounter, our attention to reverberations across the Gospel can bring us closer in tune with the breadth of God’s plan. In Mary’s song of praise in Luke 1 she sings not of the great things that will come to pass because of the birth of the Savior but of that which is already accomplished: God has shown strength with God’s arm; God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; God has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty. Her words signal the fulfillment of God’s salvific work, affirm her obedience to God’s plan, and testify that God is in solidarity with all who suffer, just as do Jesus’ words from the cross.   We read this, we hear it, we may even know it to be true, but ...
Read more