Friday, February 18, 2022
Climbing my own Mount Moriah
Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food, and you say to them, “Go in peace, be warm and well fed,” but then you do nothing about their needs, what good is that?
Martin Luther took back some of his earlier scathing condemnations of the book of James. By then perhaps, his proclamation of salvation through grace alone was more well-established. But our own confusion continues. Paul said to his Philippian friends, “Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act.” Who is doing what here? Am I, as was Peter, “thinking not as God does, but as human beings do?” What does God think about this? Does God even think? Doesn’t he just act?
Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar?
In his book Fear and Trembling, Soren Kierkegaard explored Abraham’s experience with Isaac up on Mt Moriah. “Infinite resignation is the last stage before faith, so anyone who has not made this movement does not have faith.” In this “infinite resignation” I discover my “eternal validity,” which allows me to give up everything on earth, including whatever it is I love more than God.
Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness, and he was called the friend of God. Don’t you see? A person is justified by works and not by faith alone. Faith without works is dead.
A Lutheran pastor in Green Bay, Wisconsin said it this helpful way: “saving faith is never alone. Saving faith is active, it is alive, and it shows itself by works. The works do not add anything to the faith.”
Keep in mind that the “works” are acts of kindness and generosity, and not just to orphans and widows, but to everyone. We all fall short of the glory of God. We are all selfish and grasping, and we think too highly of ourselves. When I stop all that even for a moment, the result is a pouring of some kind of God’s love into one of those other selfish lives. And they, thank God, will do that also for me, if only for a moment.
Margaret and I talked about this, and we realized that we can do this giving to each other every day. If we did not have each other, I would be more selfish.
Jesus summoned the crowd and told them all, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the Gospel will save it. What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
I realize that my ideas about faith and works might set me on the right path, but they don’t get me very far down it. My body, emotions, spirit, and will – that is what moves me toward taking up my cross and following Jesus. True and “infinite” resignation allows me to give up everything on earth, especially whatever it is I love more than God. Living out this Christian existentialism minimizes my ego and restores what Merton calls my “true self” to its proper place.
Then I no longer try to “save my life.” It’s been saved by its Creator since the day I was born, if not before. Certainly forever.
DOCTOR’S ORDERS by Clarence Heller
Exercise regularly, your sense of humor …
To enlighten your heart, ease your burdens, welcome goodness and ward away crabbiness.
Perhaps then you will see that
When you look upon the face of Jesus,
He is already laughing.
 (James 2, Psalm 112, John 15, Mark 8)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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