God's Relentless Pursuit of Us
Reflections on the Readings for the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time.
Image Credit: Wikipedia
One priest at my local parish described the movement of the Trinity working in salvation history in the following way: God the Father is emphasized in the Old Testament, God the Son is emphasized in the Gospels, and God the Holy Spirit is emphasized in the life of the Church, which started at Pentecost in Acts and will continue through the end of time.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus describes himself as the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. He has come not to abolish, but to fulfill. Speaking authoritatively, Jesus then uses the classic formula of “You have heard that it was said…, but I say to you…” The former points to commandments that God gave to the ancient Israelites in the Old Testament, while the latter points towards Jesus’ fulfillment of those same commandments.
To those obsessed with efficiency, it seems that God is working quite inefficiently in salvation history. After all, if it is the same God working throughout the Old Testament (the law and the prophets) and the New Testament (the fulfillment of the law and the prophets), why bother with the law and the prophets at all? Why did God not instead immediately give us Jesus Christ?
The basic answer, as with many objections to or questions about our faith, is that God loves us.
After the Fall, original sin ruptures and wounds our human nature. God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, created us out of love and gave us Paradise, but we threw it away. God gave us pure goodness, but we rejected that fullness of life. However, the rejection of our Creator does not change the fact that God’s essential nature is love, that he desires for us to come back to himself.
God has this destination for us in mind: to come home and be united with him in love. But due to original sin and our loss of grace, one might say that we are as far away from that love as is possible. So how does God respond?
With baby steps. God calls us back to himself slowly. He does not just call us higher —he meets us where we are at and calls us higher.
This step by step process is the beautiful story of God reaching out to his chosen people, the Israelites, in the Old Testament. Due to original sin and the loss of grace, murder and adultery run amuck. God understands this brutal reality and he gives us those baby steps, which are the Ten Commandments. Consider two of them.
Do not murder.
Do not commit adultery.
This is that initial calling back to himself. Murder is a sin against God and man because it ends one person’s gift of life, which is an offense against the source of life himself. So too with adultery—it is reneging on a covenant of persons, a covenant instituted by God who established marriage as the means by which humanity becomes co-creators with the Creator.
But although God desires to meet us where we’re at with these initial steps, he is not satisfied with them. They are but the road to something greater.
In the fullness of time, God gave us his only son, Jesus Christ, as the New Covenant. Jesus is the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. He is love itself. The law leads towards Jesus Christ just as the tributary leads to the source of water. Jesus, as the fulfillment of all that has come before him, shows us how to love in its most pure form.
Jesus says: “You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment. But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.” Notice that Christ does not negate what came before him—we still must not murder—but he expands the commandment to enrich our freedom to love.
And he does the same with adultery: "You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery. But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Again, Christ keeps what came before him but calls us higher to be more like himself.
But it is not as if salvation history suddenly stops with Jesus Christ. Although we have been given the fullness of truth, it is up to us to give ourselves to that truth, to truth himself. Yet, sometimes, it can seem easier to stay stuck in our sinful ways and reject God.
We must resist this temptation with all of our heart.
When humanity fell, God met his chosen people where they were at and eventually gave them the fullness of truth. We must allow God to do the same thing with our hearts. God will meet us where we’re at and ask us to take one step closer to him.
That’s it—just one little baby step.
And we should give our yes. Just as a child has complete trust in his father, so too must we have that same unshakeable trust in our heavenly father. This Sunday, we give thanks to God for calling us back to himself and we ask him to guide us to take that next step back to him, to a deeper union with the one who has always loved us. Amen.
Beautiful Jack. Very thoughtful.