Who are we
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Fourth Week of Lent
http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/031213.cfm
John 5:15-16
The man told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jews began to persecute him.
Jesus was disgusted with this short-sightedness. Elsewhere, with crushing logic he says, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath!”
It was true that when Jesus healed the broken man, he also broke the law. In his defense Jesus said that his “Father is always at his work to this very day … I can do only what I see my Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” Jesus lays claim to correctly discerning the work of God rather than defending his own intelligence.
This inversion is rare in human beings.
In 2012 Wendell Berry won the National Endowment for the Humanities Jefferson Award. When he accepted the award, he presented a lecture at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., a far piece from his home in Port Royal, Kentucky. (See below for links to text and video)
In the lecture, Berry reminds us that we are not as smart as we think we are, and we forget this at our peril:
The problem that ought to concern us is the fairly recent dismantling of our old understanding and acceptance of human limits. For a long time we knew that we were not, and could never be, “as gods.” We knew, or retained the capacity to learn, that our intelligence could get us into trouble that it could not get us out of. We were intelligent enough to know that our intelligence, like our world, is limited.
We seem to have known and feared the possibility of irreparable damage. But beginning in science and engineering, and continuing, by imitation, into other disciplines, we have progressed to the belief that humans are intelligent enough, or soon will be, to transcend all limits and to forestall or correct all bad results of the misuse of intelligence.
Martin Luther and Bill Hybels have both told us they are “too busy not to pray.” So are we all. The Sabbath was indeed made for us, and when we ignore it we falter and fail. This exception Jesus made might prove that rule, but the exception also proves that God’s love trumps our often misled and misleading human wisdom.
My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. You are mindful of my lowly state. You have done great things and shown mercy after mercy for generation upon generation. In You I rest.
Wendell Berry’ speech video: http://events.tvworldwide.com/Events/NEH2012JeffersonLecture.aspx?VID=events/neh/120423_NEH_Jefferson_Lecture_KennedyCtr.flv&Cap=events/neh/120423_NEH_Jefferson_Lecture_KennedyCtr.xml
Wendell Berry’s speech text: http://www.neh.gov/about/awards/jefferson-lecture/wendell-e-berry-lecture
