How often do we think our ideas are best?
In the Book of Genesis, Adam and Eve have eaten from the
tree of which God had forbidden them
to eat, yet they seem to have a hard
time owning their sin. Adam blames the woman whom you put here with me,
while Eve says, The snake tricked me…
They have chosen to rely on their own ideas of how things should be, on their
own vision rather than on God’s; they want to control rather than conform to
God’s plan. They will end up, like the
psalmist in Psalm 130, crying to the
Lord in supplication, seeking kindness and redemption.
Jesus’ relatives
in Mark’s Gospel also seem to have a very specific idea of how things should
be, and thus try to seize Jesus when
they judge him to be out of his mind. The scribes, for their part, are fearful of
the power Jesus displays when he drives
out demons, and willfully attribute his work to the devil, the prince of demons. Jesus will correct the scribes by means of a
parable, asserting that he himself does the will of God and redefining the way
they should see the world; Jesus likewise redefines kinship by insisting that whoever does the will of God is his brother and sister and mother. In both
cases, he has demonstrated God’s power over human misconceptions of the same.
St. Paul, writing
to the Corinthians, knows that that true power is nothing other than God’s grace bestowed in abundance, God’s love
which caused God to raise the Lord Jesus,
and will subsequently cause him to raise all who believe. The Corinthian community is meant to know
that it is the eternal that counts,
rather than the transitory – the inner
self that belongs to God, rather than the outer self that exists in the material world, God’s vision, not
humankind’s. In the final analysis, God’s power lies in abundant forgiveness, in kindness and plenteous
redemption. It is from out of the depths that we must confess our faith and open to God’s will,
relinquishing all claim to power of human origin, that we might know and
recognize the power of God’s covenant love as the only power over all.
Image source: www.wordle.net
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