The kingdom
of heaven is a great challenge for those with much in this world. Seeking things of value in this world is
clearly a distraction to our Lord and His saving grace. Personally, I find
little difficulty in assigning the value of faith to be greater than the things
of this world when the things of this world are things, but when the things of
this world are family, I am truly challenged.
I don’t find it difficult to place my faith over things like a large house,
a nice car or even basic cable, but I’m not so spiritually free as to put God
before family. I recognize the
commitment of true faith means making the Lord and his service the single
central focus of my being. I confess
that I’m not ready to go that far. My
reflections actually take me in a different direction. I find that I grow in my understanding of my
faith through analogies to familial love.
I find it more central to my being to have the experience of a worldly
loving father and even the challenges presented by child, than to have the
transcendent experience. I have felt the
glow given by a loving God, but I admit my weakness and continue to hold my
ultimate emotional investment in people in this world. I know some who have interpreted this passage
in a sense more along the lines I would like to hear, but really have concluded
that faith asks us to truly make the Lord and His offer of salvation our
ultimate end. I recognize this doesn’t
mean giving up those I love, but only establishing a new set of
priorities. I find myself in the role of
the man who Jesus asked to sell his possessions and follow Him (Luke 18:18-23,
Matthew 19:16-22, Mark 10:17-22). The
man walked away sad because he was wealthy in the things of this world. I don’t find myself walking away, but I find
myself sad in my faith prospects because of the ultimate priority which I
assign to my worldly family.
Love is,
among other things, a union of two individuals in such a manner that the two
actually do become one (or at least move steadily in that direction.) One of the aspects of living such love out is
that each of the lovers must empty himself or herself and surrender completely
to the other, or else the other can never fill them. This cycle of exchange turns "mine"
and “yours” and "me" and "you" into "ours" and
"us."
God began
His love for us with His eager calling us forth from nothingness, by His great
desire to gift us with His very selfhood, and then continued by emptying
Himself of His Son and even the Spirit whom the Son lavishes on us. God has surrendered Himself to us utterly, in
a way and to an extent that it’s hard for even faith to grasp or accept.
As for our
part in this exchange, Jesus calls us in the Gospel (Mark
10:28-31) to abandon our limited and earthly ties in our attempt to turn
absolutely everything over to the Father, even things that are incredibly good,
but because of the nature of God's love for us we receive father, mother, and
all the rest back at least a hundredfold.
Then we no longer merely hold what we possess as individuals, but we
constantly receive them anew in our exchange of love with God and hold all as
brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, in common. This open-ended possession will be fully
evident only in the fullness of the Kingdom, but for now we can at least
glimpse a hint of this love and begin to live it in freedom.
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