No man is an island

Saturday, October 5, 2024

(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)

While I’m traveling from Austin to Urbana, here are three days of devotions from these same dates in 2022 …

October 5, 2022

(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)

Be mindful of the poor.

Jesus asked the rather wealthy man who his neighbor was, and then described the robbery of his kinsman and subsequent rescue by an outcast, a “good” Samaritan. Jesus told the rather wealthy man to “go and do likewise.” Be mindful of the poor for, as Jesus said another time, “the poor you will always have with you.”

Almsgiving, fasting and prayer are the three pillars of Jesus’ description of the godly life. I keep seeing them in a triple Venn diagram and wonder about their junction. What’s in the middle, what can I expect when these three practices dominate my life? I wish I knew from experience, but I don’t think they have ever dominated my life.

Bishop Robert Barron quotes former Pope Benedict, who says “there are three things the Church does. It worships God, evangelizes, and serves the poor.”

Go out to all the world, and tell the Good News. Praise the Lord, all you nations, glorify him!

And some of us even call ourselves evangelicals. We want to share our spiritual bounty and speak up to others about it. Words matter.

I realize more and more, however, that my words must be birthed out of what Thomas Merton called the “virgin point,” the place inside me reserved by God for his own use (so to speak), and out of which he will speak through me. Vineyard church founder John Wimber said the same thing about healing. In both cases, the words I use either come through me from God and are effective, or they come out of habit and prayerlessness and fall flat on their face.

What was The One Thing Jesus appreciated in Mary and admonished her sister Martha to adopt? What was he talking about? Perhaps adoration, which he saw did not undergird Martha’s service as it should. But what about Mary? In her adoration, how was she serving those around her, the “poor,” so to speak?

Clearly, this balance is elusive. Worship can close my eyes to needs around me. Evangelizing can give me the sense that my words are enough. And serving the poor can fill me with self-righteousness.

So I see that Romans 7 is not only about sin …

Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.

Simon and Garfunkel, on the Greyhound bus singing “I’m empty and aching, and I don’t know why! Just counting the cars on the New Jersey turnpike …” The sun also rises, and the sun sets, and the sun rises again, and I am just as lost as I ever was. The windshield just won’t come clean. Worship God, evangelize, serving the poor … and I’m supposed to be filled with joy and peace and love. Aren’t I?

What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

Jesus knows our plight. We are not alone. None of us, separate though we may feel, is not a piece of the continent, as John Donne once said (without the double negative, I might add). Jesus said, we should pray, and pray AS IF we were part of all:

OUR father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name … give US this day our daily bread, and forgive US our trespasses, as WE forgive those who trespass against US. And lead US not into temptation …

This is the prayer God gives us, to empower our worship, and our evangelizing, and our service and healing. It stands strong in the center of my imagined spiritual Venn diagram. There is nothing better for us to pray and pray and pray than this “Lord’s prayer.”

Paul knows. He does not leave Romans 7 in despair, and indeed, his next chapter is a magnificent hymn of praise.

Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! For I know that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ …

(Galatians 2, Psalm 117, Romans 8, Luke 11)

(Job 42, Psalm 119, Matthew 11, Luke 10)

(posted at www.davesandel.net)