Love present in face of evil and embrace of good

http://usccb.org/bible/readings/082619.cfm
1 Thessalonians 1:1-5, 8-10
Matthew 23:13-22

Our faith centers too often on sacrifice and the inevitability of death before our life with God. This seems like such a downer in the study of scripture. It’s certainly not the crowd-pleasing sense that gets everyone to listen. We don’t want to hear about this negativity anymore.

Well, that’s just too bad. The dreadful and dreary reality of this life sets the stage for the gospel message and the awesome present and coming Kingdom. We either grasp how we live in such a broken existence (one where people die, where life isn’t fair, and where evil rears its ugly head way too often) or we just catalog the bad as poor choices for folks who weren’t paying attention. 

Even those of us who live Kingdom lives now complain about the existence of sacrifice and death. Yet, if we don’t want any part of grasping the dreaded and dreary we’re putting ourselves in a dunce chair, facing into a corner. We must snap out of it.

Though sacrifice and death are hard to review in their reality, the existence of willful choice allows for evil and decay. God is love. We would rather have hugs and kisses. The picture of life, however, cannot be cropped. We have a boo-boo, we get a kiss. We experience trauma, we get a hug. Love takes place within the inevitability of both death and sacrifice, and it has a fruitful present and future. There is goodness in both things, and in both times. The grace of God comes in both bad times and good, reminders of God’s ever present participation. Love is present in the face of evil, and in the embrace of good.

We could say there are two ways at looking at the world. One that concentrates on this world and our need to get as much that life can offer as quickly as we can. It is a life of desire fulfilled. A next life is not guaranteed. The other way says this life and the next are already one. We’ve already entered life in the Kingdom when we bow our hearts to the Father, embrace the Son as our brother and King, and allow the Holy Spirit to live within us. We link ourselves to the metaphysical, the source of our physical and spiritual life. Our desires are tied to God’s.

According to some we don’t really have a spiritual life. We’re just cogs in a pre-scripted, digital world. To live well and not go insane we must imagine the world we want and then adjust every opportunity to fit our own script. If things get boring, adjust the script. And then, we die, maybe late in life, but probably always too early. 

According to the Christ-follower world view we die to this world when we commit our lives to God. Thus, our path shifts from mortal death to an immortal relationship to God. Our physical death is a transition. We’re not in this alone, but together, embarking on a journey to and with the divine. Our spiritual being is joined by the divine Spirit here. We don’t have to wait for that. 

The difference is pretty much the idea of control. Christians relinquish control to the Father, just as the Son did. Rather than take control of our script we jump into the divine script, one where we’ve been already written in. In a sense, the pre-scripted, digital world of the non-spiritual believers is correct. It’s just that the one behind the screen isn’t the Wizard, a non-relational, bossy kind of kooky being — or a random multi-verse cataclysmic concoction of non-directed motives — but a participatory creator who’s asked us to climb on board. This journey is one of love.

Unfortunately, such a participatory world requires free will in the creation for a love relationship to exist. We must be able to reject love in order for love to be real. Even if it’s love from the creator. We willfully turn to love, or away.

In the large scheme of things, Christ-followers with the gospel and the Trinity aren’t the only ones who think in the second way. Most religions consider God as the source of creation, and its end. This consideration, and ultimately this belief, identifies God as necessary for salvation. Thomas Aquinas explains that even the hope of Christ, when before Jesus’ birth all of humanity would exist, such hope was enough for salvation. That hope exhibited a desire to believe. So, certainly Jews, and many others, had such a world view and even ardent belief. 

How many other nations and religions of men and women prayed to a god? How many even exercised a desire that their understanding of god would offer both anointing and grace? And they held these beliefs without knowledge of the true God. Thus, says Aquinas, these people were desirous of God, and therefore of salvation.

To exercise free will in the hope of God, in the grace of God, and with the desire that he would make himself known, is to align oneself to the God that is true. Whether idols or holy words or holy places or holy people, people choose what they hoped is true. They desire the true God.

When God does show himself, this is where the willful hope actually turns to love or away. In this arena we do not judge. So, to those who judge that there is no spiritual life? They end up judging all of life as nothing. Which, of course, includes themselves. This is why we are told not to judge.

For the salvation of these people, these who do not see anything spiritual behind the sacrifice and suffering and death, we are told do not judge them. For those who do get to see the love of God, the mystical body of believers, and to who the Holy Spirit reveals his presence we pray for their willingness. 

In every place your faith in God has gone forth,
so that we have no need to say anything.
For they themselves openly declare about us
what sort of reception we had among you,
and how you turned to God from idols
to serve the living and true God and to await his Son from heaven,
whom he raised from the dead, Jesus,
who delivers us from the coming wrath.

Even in this declaration to the holy ones who turn to God from idols, there is the recognition of the coming wrath — the expectation of sacrifice and death. We know, and no longer just hope, that God has joined us and announced the Kingdom into creation.

We do, though, hope in his coming back. This will be the fulfillment which brings to an end the sacrifice and death that is so much a part of our free will. We must be tender believers to witness. We must be real in our sacrifice and death. We must hope with all who hope, and that’s when we are gathered together.

So, we must learn the context of love in the face of sorrow and suffering. When grace answers suffering, we're Kingdom dwellers.