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Let
Us Strive
To Know the Lord
By Philip D. Ropp
June
8, 2008
Tenth Sunday of Ordinary Time
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Many years ago, I was teaching a Sunday
School
class. It was the primary grade, and I
guess the
children present must have been in third or fourth grade.
I challenged them with a basic yet very
difficult question: “What is
faith?” One of the boys present, a
usually quiet lad by the name of Billy Freeman, spoke up and said,
“Faith is
believing something that you know can’t be true.” I
can’t remember now what the clever answer
was that I had prepared, but I still remember young Billy’s.
Sometimes the most
profound
words spoken are also the most simple. Comfortable
people like to believe that we live in a world
that is ruled
by logic, and that truth is always logical and the logical is always
true. Believing that which we know can’t
be true
defies logic. It defies everything that
the world teaches us about reality and the nature of life on earth, yet
from
the beginning of time until the end, God continually asks us to reach
beyond
what we know to be true and grasp and hold that which we know cannot be. This is indeed the nature of faith, and as
simple a statement as this is about it, the illogical nature of it
serves to
make us uncomfortable. It is because of
those that are so comfortable in their logical view of existence that
they have
no room in their lives for an illogical God that Jesus must proclaim
that he
has come not to save the righteous, but the sinners.
He has not come for the comfortable, but for
the uncomfortable.
The illogical nature of sin
makes us uncomfortable, as well it should. And,
it must be noted; the author of sin is also illogical.
If the very idea of faith in God is
illogical, then how much more so is the idea of trust in the devil, a
tempter
who leads us evermore into this illogical behavior of sin and ever
farther into
the logical belief that, because we seem to get away with it, there is
no
God? If we do not perceive and believe
that sin is sin then there is no sin, and this, too is only logical, is
it
not? And so the more we sin the more the
devil tempts us with his own unique brand of illogical logic in which
he
effectively whispers in our ear, “I am not here!” And
this makes us uncomfortable – or it
certainly should. God said to Moses from
the burning bush, “Here I am!” And Satan
calls out to us from a dying world and says, “Here I’m not!” What God tells us is true, yet it is not
logical for the God of the universe to address Moses from a bush that
burns yet
is not consumed. The devil, who is
rightfully called the father of lies, proclaims to us the logical idea
that the
evil that we witness is not evil at all unless we proclaim it to be so,
and too
many are comfortable with this because it is so easy.
And lies work best when they are easy. God himself teaches us that the truth is not
always logical, and the devil, in turn teaches us that the logical is
not
always true.
Like Matthew, we sit here
in our earthly circumstances and are uncomfortable with who we are and
what the
nature of the way we lead our lives means. We
realize that our own attempts at living according to
the logical ways
of the world have brought us down a dead end street.
And it is at the moment when we realize that
there is no logical way out of this earthly life; it is at the moment
when
realize that, as Paul tells us, we have come to consider our bodies as
already
dead, that we make the illogical move of reaching out for the spiritual. And it is when we are able to do this that we
notice, as did Matthew, that it is Jesus passing by and the Lord,
seeing our
discomfort and distress, touches our lives with the same simple words
he said
to Matthew, “Follow me.”
When we answer this call we
also become involved in the same miraculous and glorious personal
friendship
with Jesus Christ that Matthew and the other disciples of Jesus enjoyed. As illogical as it may seem; as illogical as
it may be, this same Jesus, who has not walked by the shores of Galilee in nearly 2000 years, walks with us in
this life
and we rejoice in the intimate personal knowledge of our Savior. Like the old hymn says, “He walks with me and
he talks with me and he tells me I am his own.” And
so, our faith is in him and our joy is complete. And
this faith tells us that which we know
can’t possibly be true; that God himself, made manifest in the form of
one of
us, lives with us and in us and because of this, we have been called to
live
forever with him in those heavenly mansions that he has prepared for us.
Today we hear the call that
Hosea has made to us to, “…strive to know the Lord.” Today we
know that, “as certain as the dawn is his
coming…” for he is here with us already. We
know that he comes to us like the rain, pouring his
love down from
heaven upon us, and like spring rain that waters the earth, he brings
life to
the barren desert that sin has made of our lives. And
we know that this can’t possibly be true,
for we are sinners and born out of wickedness unto death, a fate that
we
readily deserve, and yet when we reach out in faith and grasp the nail
pierced
hand of the one who died for us that we might live, we believe and so
we are
saved. We believe and so are ransomed
out this earthly sentence of death. And
because of this, we are transformed into beings higher than we could
have ever
imagined, to a purpose and a life that has no logical explanation other
than a
God who loves us so much that he refuses to give up on us -- even when
we give
up on ourselves.
The invitation has been made.
And like Matthew, if we have any sense we
will cast aside all of the doubts that arise in a logical and
comfortable mind,
and we will rise up from the post of our earthly sin and error, and we
will
follow this gracious and saving God who has appeared to us in the form
of his
own loving son. And as illogical as it
may seem, he will lead us out of the bondage of sin and death if we
will but
give ourselves into his judgment, which shines forth like the light of
the day.
And so, like little Billy Freeman, our own
eternal
salvation hinges on knowing and believing something so wonderful that
the truth
of it is beyond the grasp of our mortal minds.
And that’s why when Billy passed away some years later, he went to
fulfill his own personal relationship with Jesus in heaven
forever. Because with all of his heart, he believed in
something we know can’t be true.
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June 8, 2008
Hos
6:3-6
In their affliction, people will say:
“Let us know, let us strive to know the LORD;
as certain as the dawn is his coming,
and his judgment shines forth like the light of day!
He will come to us like the rain,
like spring rain that waters the earth.”
What can I do with you, Ephraim?
What can I do with you, Judah?
Your piety is like a morning cloud,
like the dew that early passes away.
For this reason I smote them through the prophets,
I slew them by the words of my mouth;
for it is love that I desire, not sacrifice,
and knowledge of God rather than holocausts.
Ps
50:1, 8, 12-13, 14-15
R. (23b) To the upright I will show the saving power of God.
God the LORD has spoken and summoned the earth,
from the rising of the sun to its setting.
“Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you,
for your holocausts are before me always.”
R. To the upright I will show the saving power of God.
“If I were hungry, I would not tell you,
for mine are the world and its fullness.
Do I eat the flesh of strong bulls,
or is the blood of goats my drink?”
R. To the upright I will show the saving power of God.
“Offer to God praise as your sacrifice
and fulfill your vows to the Most High;
Then call upon me in time of distress;
I will rescue you, and you shall glorify me.”
R. To the upright I will show the saving power of God.
Rom
4:18-25
Brothers and sisters:
Abraham believed, hoping against hope,
that he would become “the father of many nations, ”
according to what was said, “Thus shall your descendants be.”
He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body
as already dead - for he was almost a hundred years old -
and the dead womb of Sarah.
He did not doubt God’s promise in unbelief;
rather, he was strengthened by faith and gave glory to God
and was fully convinced that what he had promised he was also able to
do.
That is why it was credited to him as righteousness.
But it was not for him alone that it was written that it was
credited to him;
it was also for us, to whom it will be credited,
who believe in the one who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead,
who was handed over for our transgressions
and was raised for our justification.
Mt
9:9-13
As Jesus passed on from there,
he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post.
He said to him, “Follow me.”
And he got up and followed him.
While he was at table in his house,
many tax collectors and sinners came
and sat with Jesus and his disciples.
The Pharisees saw this and said to his disciples,
“Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
He heard this and said,
“Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do.
Go and learn the meaning of the words,
‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’
I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”
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