91 as our spirituality grows, our identification with Jesus grows, gradually assuming the character of His spirituality. our understanding of God changes considerably. previously our knowledge of God consisted of the remnants of ideas we carried with us from childhood. our image of god to some extent was molded after our image of our earthly father, if we had any kind of healthy relationship with him. if we were close to our father, chances are we were also close to God. if we had an unhappy relationship with our father, it would have been difficult for us to have a good relationship with God especially if our parents were strong on religion and tried to force on us their image of God.
now that we are close to Jesus and we begin to see through His eyes, we also begin to absorb something of His understanding of His Father. we begin to see God as much bigger than someone human or limited by characteristics of a particular sex. Jesus may call God His father, but He describes His Father in ways that transcend anything merely paternal. God is too grand for that. the father in the story of the prodigal son was much more lie a heartsick mother when confronted by the lost son returning home. He could not to enough to show the son he still loved him Human love does not
92 always go to the lengths of that father's love to welcome him back into the family. and it is precisely the impression Jesus wanted to give of His father's love. it is compatible with the remark Jesus made about the Good Shepherd who goes about searching for the lost and the bruised and the hurting sheep. when he finds them He picks them up, places them on His shoulders and carries them back home. 'there is more rejoicing in heaven over one repentant sinner than over the 99 just who have no need of repentance. some may say that that is the Good Shepherd and Jesus is speaking of Himself. think of other words of Jesus to Philip, 'do you not realize, Philip, that when you see me, you see the Father. ' the warmth, the tenderness, the all-encompassing concern of the Father for each of his children, aware even of the number of hairs on their head, shows a solicitude that far transcends anything merely human, paternal or maternal. He (for lack of an inclusive pronoun) transcends anything wee could ever even comprehend. Jesus projects an image of his Father as always with Him, as the source of His strength, as the intimate partner in everything he does. He tells us that what His Father is to Him, he will be all these things to us as well if we open our hearts to him. 'To him or her who accepts me, My Father and i will come and make our abode with that person.'
Jesus also tries to help us realize that His Father's concern is not just for humans, but for the least of His creatures. 'Look at the birds of the air. they do not sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns. your heavenly
93 Father takes care of them. we see God as a person with a love so immense and far-reaching in is comprehension that it extends even to the welfare of tiny creatures.
one of the most reveling traits about God that Jesus tried to portray was the idea of forgiveness. that was a revolutionary concept for people of Jesus' day, as well as fro people of our own day. though many of the prophets tried to project an image of god as extremely tender and doting over his beloved bride, Israel,Old Testament passages overwhelmingly portrayed God as an avenging God who thought nothing of instantly slaying thousands of His own people when they crossed Him. that was not how Jesus saw His Father. He tries relentlessly to show us that His Father is a loving, forgiving God. Jesus says to His followers that they should love their enemies and do good to those who hate them, and pray for those who persecute and calumniate (def - make false or malicious statements about) so that they might be children of their Rather in heaven, who shows kindness to the just and the unjust. he then tells them to be perfect as their heavenly Father is perfect. the perfection He is referring to here is not perfection in the keeping of laws, but to what is mentioned just before, perfection in expressing genuine love even of your enemies.
God's perfection is not about the keeping of commandments,
it is about the expression of his ineffable (def - incapable of being expressed.)love.
Love is the definition of God.
It is His essence.
It is what makes God God.
so, in enjoining us to be perfect like his Father, Jesus is challenging us to love as completely
and as unselfishly as His Father, particularly
94 with the unrelenting forgiveness of His Father's love.
Jesus is careful, however, not to portray His Father as a sentimentalist who condones lax and characterless moral behavior. 'Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but those who do the will of my Father in heaven shall enter the kingdom of heaven. many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name and cast our devils in Your name and work many miracles in Your name? and then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you. depart from Me, you workers of iniquity. it is Jesus who metes out His Father's justice.
the warning to the unforgiving servant likewise conveys a balancing image of the Father. 'and His master, being angry, handed him over to the torturers until he should pay all that was due Him. so also will My Heavenly Father do with you, if you do not forgive your brothers from your hearts.
this idea of forgiveness is clearly an essential element of Jesus' spirituality. Spirituality is modeled on God's life, on God's essence. forgiveness of others' injuries stamps our spirituality as genuine and authentic. not to be forgiving reduces our spirituality to a merely human imitation of the real thing and yet forgiveness is not something that has taken hold among christians. perhaps the reason is because we cannot understand the logic behind Jesus' insistence on forgiveness. on the surface Jesus seems to be placing a burden on people, which was not like Him. ordinarily, He tries to lift
95 burdens from people's hearts and to lighten their already heavy burdens. this responsibility of forgiveness seems gigantic and indeed almost psychologically impossible. Peter, after obviously struggling with this issue for some time, approached Jesus one day and, with a certain feeling of pride, said to Him, 'Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and i forgive him? up to 7 times? Jesus' answer was a complete shock. 'I do not say to you 7 times, but 70 x 7 times.
what is Jesus driving at? how can any of us forgive endlessly? this whole thing seems contrary to everything Jesus has come to stand for. He is forever trying to make people's lives simple and more reasonable. then, one day it dawned on me what Jesus was tying to accomplish. He had made the remark on one occasion that the law was made for man and not man for the law, then went on to justify something shocking which David had done because there was a human need. Jesus' concept of the law had to do with what was good for people.
applying that principle to forgiveness, it changes the whole context of Jesus' injunction to forgive. scanning Jesus' own life for examples of forgiveness, i could not help but be amazed at all the insults and daily slights that Jesus encountered. and you never see Him taking offense. 'Father, forgive them, they know not what hey do' seems to be the overriding attitude in Jesus' mind, so He overlooks the hatred and plotting of the Pharisees, the ingratitude of the populace that received the constant benefit of His healing grace and walked away without
96 a word of thanks, the rudeness of the apostles, the ignorance of the religious leaders who should have been His stauchest advocates, but tuned out to be His bitterest enemies. everywhere He manifests kindness and grace to all regardless of how they treat Him, which shows that Jesus practiced in His own life what He enjoined on His followers. it also became very clear than that Jesus did not intend to create an added burden for his followers. in fact, he was really giving them the key to inner peace, the key to his own transcending serenity. 'Do not allow yourself to take offense when someone inflicts injury upon you. understand the anguish and the pressures in their life and the pain that prompted their thoughtless or warped behavior, then you will pity them and keep at bay the pain and grief you would have suffered had you allowed the offense to take hold of you. in this way you will stay free and uncluttered with anger and resentment. I tell you this as the key to true inner peace. the fact that Jesus said, '70 x 7 times now makes sense. IF YOU ARE GOING TO FORGIVE, YOU MUST FORGIVE ALL THE TIME, NOT JUST SOME OF THE TIME, OTHERWISE IT WILL NOT WORK. YOU CAN NEVER LET INJURY ENTER YOUR SOUL IF YOU WANT TO MAINTAIN YOUR TRANQUILITY. granted this may be difficult for the novice, but IN TIME OVERLOOKING HURT CAN BECOME SECOND NATURE. a person's whole life can be transformed by this, the most divine of virtues.
once Jesus establishes His place in our souls, the first gift He shares is peace. that is why forgiveness is important to Him, it preserves our peace. inner peace is
97 the fertile soil in which our spiritual garden can grow. where there is turmoil it is almost impossible to develop and inner life. there is just no room for the thought or reflection which is essential for the development of a spiritual life. Jesus talks to us in the peacefulness of our souls.
once serenity is established then God begins His work in earnest. we saw before HOW DETACHED JESUS WAS FROM MATERIAL THINGS. He enjoyed what He saw in nature, in His Father's creation and we find Him at times just sitting and admiring the beauty of the sea and the changing colors in the sky, the flowers in the field , the animals in nature. it may seem like a small thing, but just for the gospel writers to mention it shows it impressed them and was significant. many people pass through these things each day of their lives on their way to work, or driving in the county and never notice the birds, or the clouds floating across the sky , or the flowers by the roadside. they are too preoccupied with business matters or with personal problems to notice anything outside themselves. they travel through life as if it were a dark tunnel. that is unfortunate. seeing Jesus notice things in the world around Him shows the appreciation He had for what He found in nature and the simple pleasure He derived from it. His delight, however, was always a detached enjoyment, which did not demand possession of what he saw as a necessity for His happiness. one of the problems we have is that we cannot just be content to admire and enjoy, we have to possess and feel we won what we see. that can become
98 for so many of us an addiction which adds a complication to our life and takes away our peace of mind. craving things becomes after a while a serious distraction ad an obsession. Jesus speaks about this when He talks about it being more difficult for a rich man to get to heaven than for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle. not that He was condemning the possession of things, but the distraction and the craving for them which simulates the worship and attention we should reserve only for God. if we are not careful, craving material things can take the place of our worship of god and cause us to do things that are evil and vile in order to maintain and increase our possessions, even destroying other people in the process. so, detachment from material possessions was a high priority in Jesus' approach to spirituality and He exemplified this in His own life. He practiced a remarkable detachment from things. there is no record of His ever owning anything, even a coin or a trinket, though we see Him noticing and enjoying even the simplest thins in creation. it is this detached delight in things that is His trademark and could serve us well as we try to develop a spirituality after His example.
following Jesus' footsteps through the Gospels you notice His relationships with people. they are relaxed, casual. He is at home with high public officials, with lepers roaming the countryside and with little children jumping all over Him. and the charm of it was that it was natural and not contrived. He did not go out of His way to make a thing out of being nice to a leper because
99 this person was a leper. He embraced a leper just a naturally as He embraced an official from Herod's palace. that ability flows from His profound realization that each of us is a child in His father's family and each has equal dignity. w preach it, but Jesus believed it and we see in Him the form such belief takes in real life. it is stunning. it is magic in its effect on people.
practicing this as an expression of our own spirituality is not easy and cannot be forced. as our faith deepens and as the Spirit quickens our awareness of the dignity of each child of God, grace must prompt our charity to reach out to everyone, so that no one will ever be to us a stranger. we cannot practice that high degree of charity we would like to have. charity (def -'dear'); cannot be forced. it must flow freely from the wellsprings of our own love. practicing love of neighbor to this heroic degree is not easy and has its dangers and we have to be prudent. (def - wise and judicious in practical affairs) in this particularly, we must have the simplicity of the dove but also the wariness of the fox as Jesus warned.Jesus could see through people and understand them at a glance. we do not have that ability, so we cannot operate as freely as Jesus. eve He was discreet, like the time He was headed for Jerusalem and decided not to go openly, because He did not wish to trust Himself to the crowd because he knew what was in their hearts.
there is another aspect of Jesus' life which is an
100 essential facet of His spirituality. that is the realization that He is here to do His Father's will. that should not be unique to Him. it should be the hallmark of each of us. we should all be here to do our Father's will. Jesus lived it. in following His way, this commitment flows from the realization that we were made by God for Himself, to fulfill a task He appointed for us. we belong to god and when we rest our heads on our pillows at night, it should be with the comforting thought,
'God, I finished my job for You today.
I may not have done a perfect job, Lord, But I tried.
my life is to do your work, Lord.
I am yours.
keep me in Your love.
keep; my soul at peace.
keeping ourselves aware that we are partners with God and with Jesus, has an important effect on us. we know we belong to God and He has to take care of us because we are doing His work. that gives us a feeling of security and a trust that no matter what may come up during the day, God will resolve the problems and bring about a happy conclusion.
a graphic story comes to mind from my childhood. during the II WW, my father was drafted into the army. there were 9 children at home at the time. reporters came to the house for interviews. they asked my father is he was angry for being drafted, since he had an army of his own to care for. 'No, he said. there are times when we must fulfill our duty to our country. but who will take care of your wife and all your children? one of the reporters asked. to which
101 my father replied, 'If God can use me to take care of them, He can do just as good a job without me.
we have to have the tough realization that God is very much an active partner in our lives and He is determined to see our work through to completion. Jesus never had any doubt that His Father's work would be accomplished in His life. we must have that same assurance that God's work will be carried out in our lives as well. that is His will and He will not be frustrated. So, we have the assurance he will always be by our side with His guidance and His help, inevitably bringing to completion the masterpiece He has planned from all eternity for our lives.
things may go wrong occasionally, maybe even frequently.
problems may crop up. maybe even frequently.
health may crumble. troubles may beset us on every side.
friends may leave us.
doubts may disturb us..
darkness may overwhelm us.
evil may haunt us.
but that is all right.
God will still be there by our side, making sure of our ultimate success.
I have seen how tangible is the devil's anger when we do god's work. after traveling 250 miles to give a talk one day, then to be stuck in a traffic jam on the mountain highway within sight of the building where i had to speak and then to get there just in time, though I missed a wonderful dinner, was too graphic t be a coincidence. on another occasion, to have an airline declare bankruptcy a half hour before my planed from Louisiana was to leave on a flight to a Southern Baptist University was too carefully calculated to have been an accident. plus a host of similar occurrences that ultimately
102 turned out all right. what a consoling thought this can be for us, knowing that God is with us to assure the completion of our work! I have seen it so often in my own life and ti never ceases to amaze me how persistent God is in bringing our appointed tasks to their fulfillment. it can give us tremendous stability and a remarkable feeling of confidence knowing that we are doing God's work and that he is also our partner and no matter how complicated or devious the route, we will ultimately be successful.
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