15th of December, 2015

Psalm 15 and John 15

H,

It is hard, I know, to see ourselves as anything less than the drivers of our own destiny. To be helpless is the human curse. We are afraid of learning to live with handicaps and we think that this means helplessness. There is a whole section of the world that tells us differently but we still hold on to this fantasy of perfection on our own terms. Of course we admit that we are imperfect but we locate this imperfection somewhere outside ourselves. The things we think we are good at or have clarified or “worked on” we protect as signs of progress. We cannot go back there and we will not for fear of regression.

It is this sort of thinking that the light of God seeks to correct. It does not compartmentalize goodness and does not sell the idea of part holiness. In this light holiness is wholeness and being good shows all the way through. It is not a series of random acts or even an organized mob of good against some turns left or right, here or there. It has to be whole or it is not yet holy. Now, this might seem like a reason to give up but it should really be the reason we stand in the light.

It is clear that this whole exercise of discipleship is about our true selves coming out. In one sense it is our true self of sin, where we can see how we do not match up to the great fruits of the spirit or the holy word of our Father. It tells us we are still on the road to recovery from sin as lifestyle or posture of defiance and not one or two thousand or three million acts over a lifetime. In the second sense, it tells us, with the Gospel, that this is not the true story and this is not the end of that tale. We have an opportunity to reconnect with a real version of meaning in the universe.

Our twin chapters above tell that tale well. The first one is a reminder of the standard, high and lofty and, yes, whole. The other is a reminder of the path to that character. It is no use to say that we are perfect but it is also no use to say that we will not be. Both are lies on opposite side of a deceptive sea. They obscure just enough to leave us deluded or helpless but they do not help us understand Grace.

And Grace stands aloft above all our pretensions and falling and foul ups. It is something separate from our immense self-will and this idea that humanity is at its best when it is reaching out to find some sort of conclusion before it reaches in to find home and peace. Grace tells us of a Bethlehem birth and a Golgotha victory and the wisdom in-between and after. It tells us that the path has been set and the world is winding down and all our questions can be answered in living relationship with the Christ.

It is a wacky and wonderful road but it happens to the truth. Not some version of it, not a part of it but the whole of it. And it is only this truth that is whole that can make you whole. And finally free to go back home.