"Inadequate" faith

"Dysmas has faith smaller than a mustard seed, and it blossoms into a tree of eternal life, a tree of paradise. Christ's response to our faith is ever so much greater than our faith. Give him an opening, almost any opening, and he opens life to wonder beyond measure."

"When our faith is weak, when we are assailed by contradictions and doubts, we are tempted to look at our faith, to worry about our faith, to try to work up more faith. at such times, however, we must not look to our faith but look to him. Look to him, listen to him, and faith will take care of itself." - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

I knew I had to have previously blogged on some of this, or on the later, somewhat repetitive one that was underlined by my friend Ellie who gave me this book at a time when I was concerned over the weakness of my faith. I think we put so much stress on ourselves concerning our perceived lack of faith because we are so often tempted to think of our faith as the way we earn or deserve our salvation. It's especially tempting when we've been told that we're saved by faith alone, putting the emphasis slightly in the wrong place compared with the scripture that says we are saved by grace through faith. Luther added "alone," and insisted that the "papists" would never get it out. 

But "faith alone" can still give us the wrong impression that our salvation is up to us. Our faith is itself is a gift God gives us. Yes, we have a responsibility to respond to it, but that response is also God's gift to us. It's all grace. We don't in any way earn our place in Christ, even by our response to him. All we do is cooperate in his plan for us, but that participation is still his gift. This is why the "faith alone" versus "faith plus works" argument is such a futile waste of breath. It's all grace. 

And that's why it's so useless to try to debate who has forfeited their place by the way they have failed to cooperate with grace. We have all failed in some way to do so. Over-focusing on our faith is like over-scrutinizing our sin: both things take our focus off of Jesus and his call and example, though that's an inadequate word, to love. It's inadequate because what we really need is for Jesus to love through us, to work through our will and actions to express his love into the lives of those around us. 

Envying the "Good Thief"

I'm not leading off this post with a quotation right now, and if you just read one it's because I came back in and added it when I get that far in the book. Also, I've written a little about this thought before, from a different angle. But I have been thinking about the implications of yesterday's post and wanted to capture this thought.

I think it says a lot about our miscomprehension of sin that we either begrudge or envy those who experience deathbed conversions. "They're sneaking in at the last minute!" we protest, "It isn't fair!" When he told us that we can only enter the kingdom as little children, this isn't what the Lord meant! In fact, Jesus told an entire long parable about this issue so that we wouldn't miss the point. Still, we don't get it.

Maybe that's partly because, due to the creation narrative concerning our fall from grace, we view work as a necessary evil that we must bear, so neither we nor the workers in the parable consider meaningful labor as God's gift to us. Even when it's the incredible opportunity to share God's love with the beloved, we think of the labor as a chore. And secondly, because we have partaken of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (really? four "of's" in one phrase?) we decide for ourselves that sin is pleasant to engage in, and even good for us. As a result, we are jealous of those who "get" to partake in sin their whole lives and never "have to" do any work to promote the kingdom, yet still manage to squeak into "their heavenly reward" at the very end of their lives. 

I could offer the concept of Purgatory as a solution to this issue, and as a Catholic I believe it's a valid one with a good Scriptural foundation. But I think the point that Fr. Neuhaus is going to make, probably somewhere in this chapter, is a more pertinent one. The truth is that God has not and will not withhold from us anything that is truly good for us. He may be in the business of using even our sin to achieve his purposes, to bring us to our senses so we return home to him. But we are still better off when we choose to walk with him at every opportunity. The real reward of serving God in his kingdom and knowing his love even while we walk on this earth is that we get to know and serve God, which is a greater joy and blessing than any sinful temptation. 

And doing so doesn't make us less of an undeserving recipient of grace that the good thief or deathbed confessor. It just allows us to receive more joy as we journey through this world toward our eternal home.

I'm a thief!

"Recall now the two criminals. Mentioned in all four Gospels, they were called thieves by two of the Gospel writers. Whatever else they had stolen in their lives, the one, commonly called 'the good thief,' stole at the end a reward he did not deserve." - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

I am convinced that the chief obstacle to Christians living our calling is our failure to realize that we are all, at best, the good thief. At whatever point we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we enter into the transformative journey to become Christ present in the world. And yet, rather than embrace the truth that we remain unworthy of the priceless gift that God has given us through Jesus, we often live our lives as though the purpose of our faith is to help us reach the point at which we no longer need a Savior. I'm pretty certain that isn't God's plan for us, but rather that we continually embrace our complete dependence on God's grace and mercy as poured out for us in Christ Jesus. 

We think of heaven as a reward, and indeed it is. But it is Jesus' reward, not ours. At our best moment, we are the good thief, undeserving of grace but receiving it because God is love and we, wretched though we be, are God's beloved sons and daughters. We deserve that no more than we do our own conception. 

The Great Reversal

 "Yet it hardly seems possible that injustice could be set right by a still greater injustice, that wrong could be set right by a still greater wrong. That is what St. Paul seems to suggest, however, in the passage in which he speaks of God in Christ reconciling the world to himself:  "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God." The language is radical. It is not simply that he bore the consequences of sin, but that he was made to be sin. The great reversal reverses all of our preconceptions: God must become what we are in order that we might become what God is. To effectively take our part, he must take our place." - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

Fr. Neuhaus goes on in the next few pages to further probe this idea of how we struggle to accept this truth because it fundamentally offends our sense of justice. Everything in us screams that this cannot be right, despite our having everything to gain from it. 

So why do we resist it? Could it be because we are afraid to embrace its implications? Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation" (Lk 11:4). If God has taken the judgment we deserve upon himself, the first part of this verse calls us to a response that portends potentially great consequences. As for the second part, we have long believed the lie that our desires are a good thing and our sin is no big deal. We're fond of our temptations, and embracing the great reversal means that we must recognize the truth so that we can receive the mercy we have been given.

There is no way to accept God's mercy without becoming vessels of it for others.

Giving myself timelessness

I do not ask you to forget the present and imagine that it is Holy Week. Rather, I invite you to be open to the thought that you are now calling the present is Holy Week, for all time was there, is there, at the cross. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

I have previously blogged on this passage here, and given the subject matter I shouldn't be surprised that it still seems relevant as I start reading this book for the fifth or sixth time. I've reflected on it so often that I will probably often find, as I'm prompted to write again by this excellent read, that there are few passages I haven't already written about. Still, this is part of my enjoyment of this great book, and I am certain it will continue to be relevant to my faith journey. I will therefore share, probably with no audience, my thoughts as I progress through it again in the upcoming Lenten season. After all, I'm in a different place from where I've ever been before, so I can expect to have new insights. 

I have actually tried to pick this book up a couple times in more recent years, since my last total reading. But I've always concluded that I've waited too late into Lent or Holy Week to read the whole thing. I've therefore skipped over this beginning part, and as a result missed coming back to this central point that makes the entire rest of the book work for me, as I discussed in that previous post. Relationships deepen when the present obscures other urgencies. So this year I hope to give myself the gift of fully rediscovering this treasure as I take the time to reflect on Jesus' love as revealed in this defining purpose of His Incarnation. I hope to keep the demands of life from distracting me from reading and meditating until I find something I want to reflect on, perhaps for the second or third occasion. I hope to enter more deeply still the relationship to which my loving God always calls me, being drawn more fully into the unfathomable depths of boundless Love.