Jesus said to his
disciples, "Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good
pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
There are a number of important
themes that run through our scripture readings for this morning. The vision of
Isaiah speaks to the place of purity and obedience for God’s people, while our
lesson from Hebrews outlines a program of faith, such as exemplified in Abraham
and Sarah and their journey into the unknown under God’s care. For his part,
St. Luke lifts up the message of hope: the kingdom of God, Jesus announces in
today’s reading, is for those who maintain focus on God’s arrival in their
midst, even as God comes in unexpected ways and in God’s good time. A key for God’s presence being the desire that
God’s people live richly through serving each other. What I would like to explore this morning is
how all of our texts gesture towards an understanding of human life as having a
goal, an end if you will, and this goal is a graced humanity through which we
are united one-to-another, and ultimately with God himself.
The first thing to say is that such a
goal of human life operates within a climate where many alternative goals seem
also to exist. Isaiah’s poetry is pretty clear on this point. Isaiah pictures
wasted sacrifices and even oppression as activities associated with the wayward
Israelites. “I cannot endure solemn assemblies of such iniquity”, God declares
to the people. Despite their elaborate cult of worship, oppression and
injustice were the defining marks of the community. In the book of Hebrews, we
find a tamer context, yet there remains the real possibility that Abraham and
the ancestors could have stayed put, instead of venturing in faith to the place
of God’s calling. “But as it is”, the writer declares, “they desire a better
country, that is, a heavenly one”. It would be reasonable to consider the
plight of Isaiah’s listeners, and the objects of the admiration in Hebrews to
be as a result of choices: the oppressing people choosing poorly, while the
faithful ancestors choosing well. And of course, choice does have something to
do with it. Yet there exists in scripture a deeper reason for human activity
than personal choice; one that assumes as a basic premise that to be human in
the simplest sense is already to possess a direction in life that is only
fulfilled completely in the company of God.
This deeper reason, as I call it, this
inclination in us, operates with a different set of assumptions to what is
often accepted today as common wisdom in matters of what counts as a goal and
purpose for human living. This common wisdom goes like this: people first of all
just are, and what categories they
may fit into, what kind of being they are, what relationships they have with
others, is a subsequent and secondary matter determined, in the case of
‘authentic’ people, by their own choices. Human beings may, for their own
purposes, ascribe functions to things. I may make a spoon in order to eat my
breakfast cereal, and it will be a good one if it fulfils the purpose I have
given it, and a bad one if it does not. In a similar way, a group of people may
invent the art and institution of sailing and similarly decide what makes for
good sailing and what for bad; all these purposes are ascribed by the decisions
human beings make. We cannot, says this common wisdom, in the same way speak of
human beings themselves as having been ascribed a purpose or role. Of course,
human beings can be given roles, as when we appoint them as teachers or
carpenters, and then they may be judged on objective grounds as good or bad
teachers or carpenters. But we do not
appoint people to be human beings, and so we cannot on any objective
grounds say that a person is living well or poorly only that they are
performing particular tasks well or not. For this way of thinking, purposes and
roles are always human artifacts. There are no purposes prior to human
decisions; there are no purposes for human beings in themselves. We simply
exist, and through our choices, determine what our purpose is, and what it is
not.
Such wisdom operates in such a way
that to suggest an alternative is to threaten some form of determinism (so popular
with the new atheists), or worse, the failed social experiments of
totalitarianism in all its varieties. Any view that hinders our freedom must be
suspect. Or so the common wisdom purports. The deeper reason that I am
suggesting is evident through our readings this morning begins with the
assumption that to be human is already to have a goal before any choices are
made. And this goal is understood as what human life is when it has reached its
best state, its perfection and completion in and for itself. An example may be
called for here. We may decide to be a doctor or a lobsterman, and this
decision will require a whole host of considerations, plans and choices, as
well as matters such as family expectations, financial resources and the rest –
and depending on how things go, we may succeed or fail to be a doctor or
lobsterman. Having a goal in as much as we are human, however, is not like
having a purpose in life: it is more like having a job – the job of living
humanly well, in succeeding to act, think, and generally exist in the world in
the most humanly way possible.
What it means to live humanly well is
what Isaiah is calling for in a community that seeks justice, rescues the
oppressed, defends the orphan and pleads for the widow. Living humanly well is
what the writer of Hebrews suggests as what having faith means. Faith is not
just a feeling or a mood, but a kind of understanding or knowing that God loves
us, and that such love is proper because we are creatures of God’s creating.
Likewise, to do the job of being human, and do it well, is what Jesus refers to
as the Kingdom that God desires to make real in those whose lives are prepared
to receive it. There are some who limit the goal of human living to various
subsets of moral activity, concluding that following particular rules and
abiding by specific ethical teaching is equivalent to living well. What I am
suggesting is that while moral behavior is part of our goal for living as human
beings, the deeper reasoning evident in our readings is not reducible to only
moral considerations: again, to simply exist as a human is to have a goal, and
this goal includes not just our actions, but also the reasons for our actions,
the shape of the communities to which we belong, and way we are open or not to
showing love to friends, neighbors and even enemies. Such a goal is more than a
series of choices; it means that in the midst of our complex lives and world,
there are myriad purposes for us to explore, and a single goal towards which we
are drawn. The significance being that as we grow deeper into living humanly
well, the better we see ourselves as sharing in the mystery of goodness and joy
that are gifts of God.
To claim that to be human means to
have a goal, and this goal is a life with God shared through a community of
goodness and joy, is to claim the same things as Isaiah does with Israel, and
Jesus does for his disciples when they reminds us of God’s desire to shape us
into God’s people who are invested in the work of salvation, justice and
worship. This work – the job of being human – is discoverable at one level as
we consider the kind of life that we might consider full and rich. Yet, it is
God’s good pleasure to reveal and help us see the broader and deeper
implications of our humanity through the gift of faith. And what faith does is
show us that is that our journey to God as our goal is not completed under our
own power. Through learning to see our way in the world by means of divine
goodness and joy, we begin to recognize that as we journey, we are sometimes
subtly, sometime surprisingly, being drawn to what we were made for: the
eternal love which is the Father. What we discover is that all along, the
closer we come to God, the more we learn what our humanity is all about.
As people, we not only have purpose,
we have an end to which our life is moving. What we do and say, how we live and
who we love is not inconsequential, for all of our decisions shape our lives in
one way or another. What doesn’t change is the path on which the fullness of
humanity is learned and lived. The good news that is presented in scripture, is
that it is God’s desire that we grow into living well, and this is neither a
reward for good behavior nor a carrot placed before us as we travail. God in
Christ has opened the way for us to reach our proper end. For in Christ, we
discover the fullness of human life; a life that is perfected in faith by the
delight of God.
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