Refractions

There’s a radical edge to Jesus that familiarity can obscure. We love to hear him say, “Consider the lilies”.  It’s good advice against fretting and worrying – a comforting insight.  We might easily miss what comes before and after it. What comes before is the kind of stern clarity that Jesus expresses from time to time. You can’t he says, have it both ways. What follows is his insistence the his followers distinguish ourselves from the worried Gentile preoccupation with food and clothing and entrust ourselves to the care of God.  So we can’t just treat this “lilies” passage simply as advice for coping in lives that are otherwise committed to business as usual. What is at stake, Jesus insists, is the fundamental orientation of our lives. Will we live our lives and direct our energy towards God, or towards wealth? That is, will we seek first the kingdom of God, or will we serve the other kingdom – the kingdom governed by greed, governed by fear? It’s not a choice that chu...

Many of us, I think, have an idea about holiness that associates it with a disembodied spirituality that denies the gift of the body and the holiness of the physical world. When we think “holy” we think “heaven”, not “earth”. The heavy influence of Greek thought on Christian understanding has often invited us to think of history as a shadowy stand-in for more “spiritual” realities. But in today’s Hebrew Scripture, holiness is clearly associated with the actions of bodies in history.  God speaks: “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” What follows is not a strategy to skirt history, to escape the world, or how to transcend our bodies. Instead, we learn a way of engaging the world – of acting in our bodies, of participating in history – that is holy.  Don’t reap to the edges of your field or go through the field again to pick up what you missed the first time. Don’t strip all the grapes from the vines or pick up the ones that have fallen. Leave some for the poor...