Psalm 40 and today’s beautiful reading from Deuteronomy reminds us that our relationship to God is carried out in our everyday lives. So often we praise ourselves for our “faithful” attendance at church services, but many Hebrew prophets challenged that same view, held by God’s people before us. For today the psalmist writes,
In sacrifice and offering you take no pleasure *
(you have given me ears to hear you);
Burnt-offering and sin-offering you have not required, *
and so I said, "Behold, I come.
In the roll of the book it is written concerning me: *
'I love to do your will, O my God;
your law is deep in my heart.'"
It is not outward observance, but a deep change of heart to which God calls us; visible “circumcision” is but the symbol of a deeper self-commitment of the heart.
The opening litany and Psalm 54 reminds us that much of what we are in our everyday behavior lies beyond our “religious” self-awareness. We identify with those who have been wronged, but let’s try this thought experiment. Perhaps the psalmist complains to God about us:
For the arrogant have risen up against me,
and the ruthless have sought my life, *
those who have no regard for God.
Render evil to those who spy on me; *
in your faithfulness, destroy them.
We can only turn to God in genuine repentance when we cease to identify with the faithful and righteous. Isaiah proclaims,
Let the wicked forsake their ways *
and the evil ones their thoughts;
And let them turn to the Lord, and he will have compassion, *
and to our God, for he will richly pardon.
The Hebrews reading turns on the same theme, exhorting us to recognize our weaknesses and to ask for mercy. Often, I suspect, we ask for grace when we experience suffering. Here, in fact, Christians are encouraged to stand boldly in the faith. But the passage also cautions that God sees into the hidden thoughts and intentions of our hearts; God sees the truth about ourselves which we try not to know , and for which we need mercy. And fully understanding what it is to be human, Christ sympathizes with us in our weakness of character and is ready to meet us with mercy and grace.
In the reading from the Fourth Gospel we see that John’s disciples are indignant that Jesus appears to have abandoned John and set up on his own. Jesus must have seemed to him to be at best an upstart; at worst, a betrayer, a repudiator of all that John was. Moreover, what if Jesus was right? Indignation and protection of John proclaimed their faithfulness to their teacher, but it was also a way to shore up their understanding of the truth, the foundations of their world. And for John, surely Jesus’ success provided a great opportunity for brooding and jealousy!
But that is not how John responds. He does not adopt the attitudes we find so easy, so natural. But John recognizes no competition. He knows that he and Jesus are working to the same ends (a purpose greater than themselves); that each of them has been given a purpose. In addition, John knows that he and Jesus are not equals. John’s work is not negated or diminished by Jesus; rather, John’s purpose is affirmed, furthered, and fulfilled in the ministry of Christ.
How do these readings speak to environmental concerns?
Perhaps in all of these readings we are being invited to a perspective that transcends our purely personal concerns. Faithfulness to God involves not merely being “religious,” but taking seriously the world and the needs around us. The fact that God already knows what is in our hearts, knows our secret fears, agendas, and desires—indeed, already knows the true motivations of our actions—can give us the courage to explore the darker parts of our souls, to expose the parts of ourselves we are ashamed of, to circumcise the foreskin of our hearts.
We are also exhorted to look at the ministry of others for what it is, not as a judgment on our own. Possessiveness of “our ministry”—or, to expand it beyond an obviously religious domain—“our expertise” our even “our opinion” regarding what is in best reveals a secondary, self-serving agenda that blinds us to the goodwill of the other, and might just blind us to the good sense in the other’s point of view. Our natural tendency to distrust people who disagree with us sets us at odds at time when open-hearted cooperation may be the only way ahead.
Let us look at the quandary we find ourselves in today. The global implications of fossil fuel involve political and economic stability as well as local and global environmental concerns. Yet to substitute fossil fuels with nuclear power may prove a more immediate danger. Neither can we live with and keep the world we live in more or less as it is. I normally view with suspicion those who minimize environmental dangers in favor of maintaining political and economic stability. However, I am also called to expose the automatic pilot of my judgmentality to the light of God, and to recognize that my fears of environmental catastrophe may be mirrored in their fears of political and economic collapse. The way forward may be through conversation with those who disagree with us; indeed, I suspect that without such conversation, there is no way forward. And conversation is possible only as I surrender my self-righteousness.
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