Friday • 7/19/2024 •
Friday of Proper 10
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 31; Joshua 4:19-5:1; 5:10-15; Romans 12:9-21; Matthew 26:17-25
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 10 (“The Second Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 55:6-11; BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9-10, 13, BCP, p. 93)
Being of a certain age and therefore growing up in a certain musical generation, when I read today’s verses from Paul’s letter to the Romans, I cannot but hear in my head Les Crane’s hauntingly beautiful 1971 recording of Max Ehrmann’s poem “Desiderata”. These verses in Romans are, it seems to me, Paul’s version of the “Desiderata,” i.e., “things desired.”
Now, unlike Max Ehrmann, who penned the “Desiderata” in the 1920s, Paul didn’t think of God as “whatever you conceive Him to be.” Nor does Ehrmann’s “you are a child of the universe” resonate much with Paul’s sense that we are children, instead, of a quite specific God—and that we are children not with an inherent “right to be here,” but by a costly adoption. And for Paul, the only reason that “the universe is unfolding as it should” is because the Lord of creation has decisively intervened to arrest the dissolution that was set in motion at the Fall. With a romantic vision of a “universe unfolding as it should,” Ehrmann’s “Desiderata” leaves one with little reason to question whether whatever is, is OK. The reality is that much of what happens in this world is not OK! In Paul’s “Desiderata,” there is real evil—but it is evil that is overcome (and not simply stoically endured) by good.
Image: Official Navy Page from United States of AmericaMass Communication Specialist Seaman Zachary S. Welch/U.S. Navy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
There is, therefore, something more bracing and realistic in Paul’s Desiderata. Ehrmann’s “Desiderata” might illustrate a Thomas Kinkade painting. Paul’s belongs on a Rembrandt. Paul’s “let love be genuine” (the Greek is “unhypocritical”) is offered squarely in the face of the fact that our love may be rebuffed: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and not curse them.”
There’s not a phrase in Paul’s Desiderata that’s not worth lingering over. Especially motivating to me, however, are these lines:
Hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good. Paul here is expanding on what he means when he says “Let love be genuine (again, not hypocritical).” It’s simply wrong to parrot the bumper sticker “Love is love,” as though every possible expression of love is good and right. White southerners loved white southerners, at their black slaves’ expense. Aryans loved their vision of a race of Übermenschen—too bad for Untermenschen. Abusive men may “love” the wives they batter. For Paul, love that is “unhypocritical” honors what God says is good, and resists what God says is evil.
Outdo one another in showing honor. These words may be the most revolutionary that Paul ever wrote. Yale’s classical historian Ramsay MacMullen has argued that the quest to gain for oneself “honor”—recognition, fame, glory—was the single most important value in the social world of the Romans. Paul turns that value system upside down, by telling us, literally, “go first and lead the way in showing one another honor.” Actually, it is Paul’s Master who turns the Romans’ social world upside down. It is Paul, and only Paul, who records Jesus’s teaching: “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). As a citizen of Rome, Paul is more deeply attentive to the alien Roman/pagan value system than perhaps other apostles. He perceives how radically Jesus cuts into the Roman sense of social capital. And—the words have as much punch in our power-mad, status-worshiping world as they did in Paul’s.
Extend hospitality (the Greek says, “pursue love for the stranger”). Paul urges an active and outward-bound seeking of the outsider. The God who gave his Son while we were his enemies looks to us to bring new people inside our existing circle of warmth and conviviality. That’s a healthy challenge for all of us who get comfortable with our social status quo.
If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Peaceability is a hallmark of a disciple of Christ. To be sure, Paul wound up in theological tussles, but it wasn’t because he went around looking for fights. Francis Schaeffer once wrote that God wants warriors with tears in their eyes. And Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons (and daughters) of God” (Matthew 5:9).
…for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Paul can dare to imagine that such surprising love just might bring an enemy to their senses, because that’s exactly what God in Christ has done for us. God took the evil of the cruel execution of his Son at the hands of sinners and turned it to the good of the salvation of the world. That’s something Ehrmann’s “Desiderata” cannot take into account. But it’s everything to Paul’s “Desiderata.” That’s why I take it as a happy providence that today’s epistle reading is sandwiched between the account of the first Passover meal that the children of Moses enjoy in the Promised Land, and the account of Jesus’s Passover meal with his disciples on the night of his arrest. Joshua, the “commander of the army of the Lord” will lead the newly nourished Israelites into conquest. And the ultimate Joshua (remember that the Greek name for Joshua is “Jesus”) will take up his authority as “Son of Man” (remember a few days ago, and our reflections on Daniel 7) through, and in spite of, the treachery of his betrayal at the hands of “the one who has dipped his hand in the bowl with me.”
May you and I live God’s “Desiderata,” and be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+