1 Corinthians. 15:1-11; Matthew 19:16-26
We all need a good wake-up call from time to
time. It is easy to shut our eyes to the
truth and to become blind to what is actually going on in our lives. On the question of where we stand in relation
to God, it sometimes takes a real shock to wake us up. And once our eyes are opened a bit to truths
we do not particularly like, we have to be careful not to run away in shame and
despair.
The rich young ruler in
today’s gospel text had apparently fallen into the illusion that he had perfectly
obeyed God’s requirements. He must have
had a very superficial understanding of them, of course, to say that he had
already mastered them. We know from Christ’s
interpretation of the commandments in the Sermon on the Mount that they call us
to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect. And who can claim to have achieved that? The Lord shocked this fellow out of his
illusions of holiness by giving him a commandment that he would find impossibly
hard to obey. “Sell what you possess and
give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” The Savior gave him this test because the man
loved his wealth so much. He went away
in sorrow because his eyes had been opened to how he was devoted more to himself
and his money than to God and his neighbors.
The Lord did not condemn him, but told the surprised disciples that “with
God all things are possible,” even the salvation of someone so strongly tempted
to the idolatry of wealth.
St. Paul had something
in common with the superficial righteousness of the rich young ruler, for he
had been a Pharisee who had persecuted the Church. He had been an expert in the kind of self-righteous,
hypocritical legalism that Christ so clearly rejected. The Lord opened his eyes to the truth by
blinding him on the road to Damascus, and He then empowered Paul for a ministry
no one could have anticipated for a former Pharisee as the apostle to the
Gentiles. The Lord had made Paul an apostle by miraculously appearing to him,
even though Paul knew that he in no way deserved such a high honor. Indeed, he referred to himself as the chief
of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15). But instead of being paralyzed by shame, Paul
accepted that “by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was
not in vain.” He knew that whatever he
accomplished was not somehow his own achievement, but the grace of God working
through him.
St. Paul recognized that
the grace he had received was not something he had earned or deserved in any
way. Grace is a divine energy of our
Lord; it is His healing mercy that we receive through faith, repentance, and
love. To receive grace is to share in
His life as much as is possible for human beings. When we think of our salvation in those terms,
the focus moves from what we can accomplish by our own power and toward what
our Lord is doing through us. Of course,
we must cooperate with His gracious presence in our lives, but we must never fall
into the fantasy of thinking that the healing of our souls is simply or even
primarily about what we can accomplish by trying really hard according to our
own designs.
St. Paul learned that
decisively when the Lord appeared to him in blinding light on the road to
Damascus. How could he have taken credit
for such a miracle? And Paul must have
wondered often how he had been blessed to move from being a persecutor of the
Church to one of its greatest leaders. In
today’s epistle lesson, he reminds us to have the humility to accept the
reality of our lives as he did. “But by
the grace of God I am what I am” writes Paul.
He knew that his life in Christ was not a reward for perfect behavior,
but a sign of the Lord’s great mercy even for the chief of sinners. Perhaps that is why, unlike the rich young
ruler, Paul did not go away in sorrow when he recognized the weakness and
brokenness of his soul. Instead, he used
this awareness to open himself in humility to the Lord Who died and rose again in
order to save people who could not save themselves.
If we pay attention at
all to the prayers, services, teachings, and readings of the Orthodox Church,
we will know that we are nowhere near mastering what God requires of us. Our vocation to holiness is infinite, for we
are called to become radiant with the transforming energies of our Lord,
shining like an iron left in the fire of the divine glory. And since the fullness of that transformation
means being perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect, this is obviously not a
goal that we can ever say that we have met. Whenever we need a guard against
self-righteousness, we do not have to look very hard in order to find it.
Many of us, however, do
not struggle so much with self-righteousness as with despair. When we hear such high descriptions of a holy
life or learn about the good example of the Saints, we may be overcome with
shame at the brokenness of our lives and with a sense of hopelessness that we
could ever become pleasing to God. We
may become just like the rich young ruler who could not accept the severe
tension between Christ’s command and his own desires and habits.
To do so reflects a subtle form of pride, for
shame is essentially the hurt pride of not being able to get over
ourselves. It is a form of distorted
self-love that cannot humbly accept that we all stand in constant need of the
Lord’s mercy as the chief of sinners. It
is a refusal to forgive ourselves for not being perfect on our own terms. It is the obsession of judging ourselves by
our own standards. And since the focus
remains squarely upon us and not on Christ, it is not surprising that this kind
of shame leads to despair. As long as we
are paralyzed by self-love, we will never open ourselves to the healing mercies
of our Lord. And there is no way that we
can conquer the power of sin and death in our lives by our own ability.
St. Paul shows us a far
better way to respond to our deep regret about our sins and personal brokenness. If anyone had reason to despair of finding
healing in Christ, it would have been this former Pharisee and persecutor of
the Church. But instead of judging
himself by his own standards, Paul used the awareness of his grave sins to open
himself to receive the unfathomable mercy of the Lord, which extended even to
the likes of him. He gave up self-righteous
illusions about making himself worthy and instead relied on the mercy of the One
at work through him.
“With God, all things are possible,” even for
someone like St. Paul to become radiant with holiness by grace. The same is
true for the rich young rulers of the world, for those who have had their
illusions of perfection shattered, and for those who cannot imagine how God’s
mercy could ever extend to them. To
become like Paul, we must crucify our shame and despair, confessing with that “it
is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). That is
really the only way to get over ourselves and in humility to become
participants in His great victory over sin and death. If we choose obsession with our own failures
instead of humble faith in the Lord’s mercy, we turn away from the healing of our
souls that the Savior extends to those who come to Him with faith, repentance,
and love. How tragic it would be for us to reject Him out of the wounded pride
that is our shame. How truly blessed it
is to say with Paul that “by the grace of God I am what I am,” even as we trust
in the divine mercy that we definitely do not deserve. That is the only way not to walk away in
sorrow when we see the truth of where we stand before the Lord.