How baffling you are, oh Church,
and yet how I love you!
How you have made me suffer,
and yet how much I owe you!
I should like to see you destroyed,
and yet I need your presence.
You have given me so much scandal
and yet you have made me understand sanctity.
I have seen nothing in the world more
devoted to obscurity, more compromised,
more false, and I have touched nothing more pure,
more generous, more beautiful.
How often I have wanted to shut the doors
of my soul in your face, and how often
I have prayed to die in the safety of your arms.
No, I cannot free myself from you, because
I am you, although not completely.
And where should I go?
Carlos Carretto
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat - and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet -
“All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.”
Francis Thompson
There are three great questions in life: What can I know? What should I do? What can I hope? - Immanuel Kant
Soren Kierkegaard, the Christian philosopher, described the healthy human life as a synthesis of necessity and possibility. The necessary requirements of living, our employments and obligations, place us in the context of who we are in relationship to others. The possible or potential realities of life in Christ call us to become the persons we were always meant to be in light of God’s glory and grace.
When one denies necessity, one abandons one’s place in the Christ of human community. Paul recognizes this in 2 Thessalonians, when he commands that the man who will not work will not eat. If table fellowship is the very heart of community in the early church, Paul’s commandment images a hard reality. If we are to love one another, to live with one another, we must not forget what is necessary. We must not, as Paul writes, grow weary in doing well. We must do what must be done. To live is Christ.
When one denies possibility, one abandons one’s hope in the Christ of revelation. 1 Corinthians 13 tells us that love hopes all things. It is in love that the Psalmist believes that he will truly see the goodness of the Lord at work in the land of the living.
If we should lose our hope, if we should stumble in our pursuit or impersonation of God’s goodness, looking only to what is necessary and forsaking that which is possible, then we have, like women approaching an empty tomb, sought the living among the dead. We will fall, save for the revelation of grace, into despair.
When we become depressed, when all seems necessary and all that is necessary seems either overwhelming or trivial, we must begin by renewing our pursuit of what is possible and what is necessary. We must remember our Christ, in whom all things are possible and in whom the possible is joined with the necessary in order to create what is finally, ultimately satisfactory for life in the now and forever, for perfect necessity and endless possibility. To die is gain.
What must you know?
What must you do?
What must you hope for?
We’re in the process of relocating into a new building. That, and various technical issues, have put a temporary stop to the podcasting. We will (honest) resume as soon as I can convince someone to buy a new desktop solution for the sanctuary. In the meantime, enjoy the archived broadcasts and such.