I wonder
what you think of when you hear the word ‘reverent.’ I looked at the sample
sentences in the Collins online dictionary this week, and they paint a pretty
consistent picture. One text talked about someone speaking in a “reverent
tone,” which, in the context, meant quietly. Another talked about “waiting with
reverent patience,” which meant prolonged inaction. A third described a
character as taking a book off a shelf reverently, which seemed to mean slowly,
almost gingerly. We got a pretty different vision of reverence in our second
reading today, from the letter to the Hebrews. We heard of Christ calling out
in prayer with loud cries and tears, and that he was heard, because of this reverence.
There’s
no hint of the gingerly, the inactive and certainly not the quiet in loud cries
and tears. Yet that’s the inspired, scriptural, Christly image of reverence God
gives us. In fact, not just of reverence, but of priesthood. We heard a short
three verse section of Hebrews, and if we read just a little from either side,
we’d see that this chapter of the letter is giving an account of what it means
to say the Jesus is our great High Priest. In my community, the night before
we’re ordained priests, we celebrate a candlelight prayer service, and my
classmate and I requested as our reading this chapter of Hebrews because we
wanted that reminder of how Christ lived out his priesthood which he was about
to share with us in a new way. I say ‘in a new way,’ because baptism also
represents a real sharing with each of us in the priesthood of Christ. The
ordained priesthood exists to serve (in beautiful and wonderful ways) that
baptismal priesthood which we exercise together, which occurs as a kind of
overflow of the dynamic way in which Christ’s priesthood ministers to us.
So,
those prayers expressed in loud cries and tears. First of all, we need to be
grounded in how Christ continues to pray for us, now at the right hand of the Father.
And Christ doesn’t pray for us as if it’s some checkbox responsibility,
something formal, certainly not something quiet or inactive. No, Christ prays
for us loudly. Loudly and tearfully. Just as when a toe is trampled, the tongue
cries out, so Christ, the head of the body we are, cries out whenever we are
trampled. And it’s heartfelt, because Christ is that intimately connected with
us, like a head to a toe. And Christ invites us to be so intimately connected
as a church, and so deeply zealous for the world, that we too cry out. That’s
the kind of prayer that Jesus invites us to: to share with God our most painful
needs, in a somewhat brash, childish way. When Jesus said we would have to
become like children to inherit the kingdom, he didn’t mean become shorter or cuter,
but to dare to cry out to God our Father like children who know we’re in need.
Because we are. And sometimes what we’re in need of is enough humility to know
we’re in need, or enough trust and vulnerability to dare to share that even
with God.
Hebrews
tells us Christ prays to the one who had the power to save him from death. But,
we all know that God didn’t some Jesus from death. No, he saves Christ
and all the rest of us not from death, but through Jesus’ real
death on the cross. So, that can’t have been what Jesus ultimately prayed for.
John’s gospel shows Jesus contemplate this prayer and then reject it, just as
the other gospels have Jesus ask for “this cup to be taken” from me, but then
have Jesus return to “not my will, but yours.”
There’s
an old gospel song, “He could have called ten thousand angels.” But, he chooses
not to. He chooses to be fully obedient – something Hebrews tells us Jesus
learnt through his sufferings, as someone who had become fully human, obedience
was something he had to learn – fully obedient to his Father’s will, which
meant being fully obedient to being human. And humans just don’t get to command
hordes of angels to get us out of trouble. In God’s original plan for creation,
we’d never need to, but in God’s original plan, we were still finite, still
limited. Being finite isn’t sinful. It’s not something we need to be saved
from. We’re not saved from being human, from being embodied, from being
limited, from not being able to do all the things. Not, we’re saved precisely
as limited embodied humans; from sin, for love, but not for limitlessness, not
for all-powerfulness. No, we’re saved from thinking we need that to be happy.
And
we’re not all that good at being fully obedient to being human, to being OK
with being limited. At least, I’m not. When was the last time you gave thanks
to God for tiredness? For me, it was just this past week, but that was the
first time ever, as I was praying anew with this reading. Tiredness isn’t a
sin, it isn’t a natural evil (like disease), it isn’t a disorder. Adam slept in
Eden! Part of the obedience we’re called to is finding our vocation, what God
has called us to, crying out with loud cries and tears to live that more
vibrantly, living and loving that life with all the strength we have… but not
with more than that, because God didn’t make us all-powerful.
We’re
not very good at not doing all the things. At work, Americans left over 600
million vacation days on the table last year. I work with college kids who are
so over-scheduled they don’t have time even think about whether or not they
want to say yes to the next resume-building good thing they could be doing, and
high schools aren’t that different.
In our
opening prayer, we asked God to help us walk in Christ’s loving footsteps
(which is actually a somewhat terrifying thing to say Amen to). And we do want
to do that, because that’s the way of love and in the end that’s all that
matters. But we want to do that as humans, humans with particular vocations,
not to do all the things, but to delight in rest, delight in need to constantly
cry out loudly to our God.
No comments:
Post a Comment