Monday, February 11, 2008
From AscensionNYC
Monday in the First Week of Lent
by Michael Jones
Psalm 19:7-14
Leviticus 19:1-2, 11-18
Matthew 25:31-46
How daunting it is to respond to Matthew's account of the Last Judgment! As I sat down to meditate upon this task, all I could see at first were a bunch of sheep and goats, and the unmistakable threat of hellfire and damnation. I remembered that today's readings also included passages from Leviticus and the Psalms, and so, with some trepidation, I began to read.
I must admit to not being as favorably disposed to Leviticus as perhaps I should be, so I was surprised, perhaps unfairly, to discover that today's reading was not especially forbidding. Be impartial in your judgments. Don't, as my grandmother used to say, "tote tales." And most importantly, treat your neighbor as you would yourself. No eye for an eye, or tooth for a tooth, at least in this passage. Who could argue with the simplicity, if not the extraordinary difficulty, of these precepts?
I next turned to the Psalms much more willingly, expecting to find there some of that exalting poetry that has comforted and consoled me, like so many others, in times of trial. I was not disappointed. The psalmist sings of the beauty of God's creation, the inestimable quality of God's laws, and our own powerlessness to know our own faults, much less to avoid them without help. But it is precisely that help of which the psalmist also sings, of faith in a God who will guide and protect us and keep us free from the "great transgression."
When I finally turned back to the passage from Matthew, I began to understand what the "great transgression" is: a blindness to Christ in others, a failure to know and respond to our neighbors, whether down the hall, around the corner, or across the sea. Of course, the sheep and the goats were still there, and a faint smell of sulfur. But there was also hope, and the radical, apparently simple, breathtakingly difficult instruction in how to live out our lives as Christians. It is the example of Christ and the challenge to live and act that example, to clothe the naked, to feed the hungry, to house the homeless -- in short, just as Leviticus teaches, to love our neighbors as ourselves. And the greatest gift of all is that this task, as impossible as it so often seems, is not ours to do alone.
To return to the words of the psalmist, "Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer." Amen.
Psalm 19:7-14
Leviticus 19:1-2, 11-18
Matthew 25:31-46
How daunting it is to respond to Matthew's account of the Last Judgment! As I sat down to meditate upon this task, all I could see at first were a bunch of sheep and goats, and the unmistakable threat of hellfire and damnation. I remembered that today's readings also included passages from Leviticus and the Psalms, and so, with some trepidation, I began to read.
I must admit to not being as favorably disposed to Leviticus as perhaps I should be, so I was surprised, perhaps unfairly, to discover that today's reading was not especially forbidding. Be impartial in your judgments. Don't, as my grandmother used to say, "tote tales." And most importantly, treat your neighbor as you would yourself. No eye for an eye, or tooth for a tooth, at least in this passage. Who could argue with the simplicity, if not the extraordinary difficulty, of these precepts?
I next turned to the Psalms much more willingly, expecting to find there some of that exalting poetry that has comforted and consoled me, like so many others, in times of trial. I was not disappointed. The psalmist sings of the beauty of God's creation, the inestimable quality of God's laws, and our own powerlessness to know our own faults, much less to avoid them without help. But it is precisely that help of which the psalmist also sings, of faith in a God who will guide and protect us and keep us free from the "great transgression."
When I finally turned back to the passage from Matthew, I began to understand what the "great transgression" is: a blindness to Christ in others, a failure to know and respond to our neighbors, whether down the hall, around the corner, or across the sea. Of course, the sheep and the goats were still there, and a faint smell of sulfur. But there was also hope, and the radical, apparently simple, breathtakingly difficult instruction in how to live out our lives as Christians. It is the example of Christ and the challenge to live and act that example, to clothe the naked, to feed the hungry, to house the homeless -- in short, just as Leviticus teaches, to love our neighbors as ourselves. And the greatest gift of all is that this task, as impossible as it so often seems, is not ours to do alone.
To return to the words of the psalmist, "Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer." Amen.
