Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 23, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
God himself did not despise humanity
The Lord addressed Job out of the storm and said … “Thus far shall you come but no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stilled!”
In his life as a German psychologist-philosopher’s son, Dietrich Bonhoeffer tended to set his bar high in friendships and simple fellowship. After all, even as children the Bonhoeffers were instructed by their father not to speak at dinner unless what they had to say seemed significant, at least to them.
But Dietrich became a pastor, rather than a professor, long before he conspired with his brother Klaus and others to assassinate German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler. As a pastor he admonished his congregations to love one another and refrain from judging each other. This of course was difficult for him, because his instinct from childhood was to judge others immediately upon meeting them. In a letter from prison, not long before he was hung from the neck until dead, just a week or two before the Allied liberation of his prison camp, Dietrich wrote these words:
There is a very real danger of our drifting into an attitude of contempt for humanity. But we know quite well that we have no right to do so, and that it would lead us into the most sterile relations with our fellow-men.
The following thoughts may keep us from such a temptation. It means that we at once fall into the worst blunders of our opponents.
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- The man who despises another will never be able to make anything of him.
- Nothing that we despise in the other man is entirely absent from ourselves.
- We often expect from others more than we are willing to do ourselves.
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Why have we hitherto thought so intemperately about man and his frailty and temptability? We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.
The only profitable relationship to others – and especially to our weaker brothers and sisters – is one of love, and that means the will to hold fellowship with them. God himself did not despise humanity, but became man for men’s sake.
This should not be difficult, but it is until I stop thinking of myself as God.
Whoever is in Christ is a new creation. The old things have passed away, behold, new things have come.
So my relationships are with new creations all around. In fact and more importantly, I am a new creation myself. This new creation no longer sees himself as so high and mighty, humbles himself before the Lord, and is quiet about his humility with the other New Creations all around.
Sounds a fine world in which to live, like the world God gave us in the first place. Who knows, in this world death may have no dominion.
Behold, the old things have passed away, and the new has come.
Just a bit before he died, Jesus was awakened by his disciples in a storm-tossed boat.
Why are you afraid? Do you not yet have faith?
Well, Jesus thought, one of these days you will have faith, and I’ll be here. Jesus never lost patience, because his Father never lost patience. With us. With you. With me.
(Job 38, Psalm 107, 2 Corinthians 5, Luke 7, Mark 4)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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