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8

COME WITHOUT MONEY

  We live in anno domini, the time of Christ our Lord. This year is his year. Our destiny, earthly and eternal, is bound up with him. We are chosen in him before time began. He is among us, offering us a teaching which gives meaning to our lives, but he offers much more. He offers his life. He invites us into a personal love relationship with him. This love is the source of the new life and power which can be ours. One of the great stumbling-blocks to our experiencing this loving, empowering presence, to our growing in a deepening love relationship with Jesus, is our sense of unworthiness. We feel we are not worthy of this love. How could people so small and insignificant as us be noticed and desired by the Lord? How could people so sinful and unfaithful as us be offered this relationship of love and power?

  First of all, let us be aware that all we have been speaking about is known to us only by revelation. It is not a human programme, it is not a religious ideology proposed by Church leaders. It is not the end-product of the reasoning of some noble human philosopher. We are speaking of good news revealed to us by the transcendent God. We speak of a message, an invitation from God’s own heart, a message spoken many times through holy messengers and prophets and now, in our day, through his beloved Son (Hebrews1:1-2).

  Ask yourself whom Jesus was addressing when he spoke the good news and revealed the secrets of his Father’s heart. He was talking to the most ordinary simple people, country folk, village and town dwellers. Most were illiterate and without formal education. Many were poor, oppressed and marginalised. They were acquainted with human weakness and failure. They were familiar with fear, anger, hatred, poverty, prostitution, guilt and corruption.

  This is the human condition, then, now, always. And Jesus knew all this. We can see from the great variety of characters in his many stories how well he understood the complexity of the human heart. It is to these very people that he comes with his message of new life and his offer of love.  

  And he rejoices to have this mission. ‘It was then that, filled with joy by the Holy Spirit, he said, "I will bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children."’ (Luke 10:21) To such people he offers a new intimacy with God. If anyone accepts him and tries to follow the way he shows them, ‘my Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make our home with him’ (John 14:23). What news for people who made annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem and considered it a privilege and a glory to be able to enter the great temple, the very house of Yahweh!

'How I rejoiced when they said to me,
‘Let us go to the house of Yahweh!’
And now our feet are standing
in your gateways, Jerusalem.'

Psalm 122:1-2

  And now they are told that they themselves can be the very house of God and that God rejoices to enter that temple which is their heart, as much as they rejoice to stand in the temple of Jerusalem.

  At the Last Supper, Jesus again speaks about this joyful mission given to him to reveal his Father’s love to simple people. He looks around at his twelve friends. Do not glamorise these men. They were not wearing haloes at that meal. They are as human, weak and broken as we are, as all people are. Jesus looks around at them and prays for them. What does he say in his prayer? ‘Father, I have made your name known to them and will continue to make it known, so that the love with which you loved me may be in them, and so that I may be in them’ (John 17:26). And we too are included in this prayer: ‘Father, I pray not only for these, but for those also who through their words will believe in me’ (John 17:20). Surely, what Jesus said elsewhere – that kings and prophets desired to hear these things but did not hear – is true.

  I was going to say let us put away this very misleading idea of our unworthiness. But I suggest we do something else. Let us explore it more deeply and when we do dig down deep here we can strike a rich vein of gold hiding in this dark idea of unworthiness. I do not deny my unworthiness. I cannot. I accept that I am unworthy. I am totally unworthy but I am still loved in this incredible way by God. It is when I realise that his love has nothing to do with my worthiness, but everything to do with his goodness that I am on the way to being transformed. He loves me not for what I have or do, but for what I am. And what am I? I am his. He loves me because I am his, as a young mother loves her newborn baby, not for what it can do for her, but simply because the baby is hers, is part of her.

'Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by your name, you are mine.

  We could put it this way. The notion of being unworthy can come either from Satan or from the Holy Spirit. When Satan reminds us of our unworthiness, he gives it an ugly twist. His suggestion goes like this: ‘You are unworthy (which is true!) but it’s your own fault. You could be worthy (which is false!). If you were a better person and more faithful to God you could be worthy of the love he offers (i.e. you could be worthy by your own efforts – which is totally false!). When the thought of unworthiness comes from the Holy Spirit it floods us with immense joy and gratitude and can even lead to tears. The spirit says ‘You are unworthy and nothing you can ever do can make you worthy of receiving God’s love, but God is in love with you the way you are and offers you, as you are now, the embrace of his unconditional love.’

   And so the very concept of my unworthiness, which seemed to be the great stumbling-block to enjoying God’s love and power, can become the springboard into new life, new wonder and deep joy which no person or thing can take from me, because it doesn’t depend on any person or thing, but only on the faithful love of God who says, ‘For the mountains may depart, the hills be shaken but my love for you will never leave you’ (Isaiah 54:10). The place of my unworthiness where I can feel so hopeless and helpless, that dark place can lead me on like a tunnel out into the light, into open space, into joy and celebration.

  When this truth sinks in, then I am hearing the good news with my heart. I am not just hearing sounds with my ears but I hear the meaning with my heart. Surely this was why the people who listened to Jesus hung on his words, even forgot about food and said to one another, ‘No one ever spoke like this man’. Those people, just like you and me, knew they were hearing Truth itself speak. Their own inner spirit, which was good and true because made in God’s image, echoed Jesus’s words. ‘God dresses the flowers and feeds the birds. Are you not more precious?’ When he said it they knew that they were. Jesus loves these people. He comes to them because he loves them. He comes to tell them they are loved by the Father because they belong to the Father, not because of any unworthiness. He knows are human hearts have difficulty in understanding unconditional love. Can we not see that it is precisely because we are helpless, broken sinners, and because we feel unworthy that he comes with this good news? He comes himself with the news because we could not have believed it if anyone less than God told us. Coming from any other than God the news would have been too good to be true.

  Isaiah, in a beautiful passage, describes God inviting us to come and be nourished and refreshed by his word of love:

'O come to the water all you who are thirsty;
though you have no money, come!
Buy corn without money, and eat,
and, at no cost, wine and milk.'

  Why are we invited? Because we are thirsty and hungry, because we need love and healing. It is not because we have money and can pay. It is our very thirst and hunger that guarantee that we shall be nourished and refreshed. Our wounds are our chief claim to healing. All we have to do is ‘come’, ‘drink’, ‘eat’. And the prophet knows that God’s living word will not fail in its task. ‘Yes, as the rain and snow come down from the heavens and do not return without watering the earth, making it yield and giving growth to provide seed for the sower and bread for the eating, so the word that goes from my mouth does not return to me empty, without carrying out my will and succeeding in what it was sent to do’ (Isaiah 55:10).

  Look at the love between the rain and earth. It is only when they are united in love that the earth can bear fruit. The earth alone, without the rain, will remain barren. The rain looking down on the earth does not say, ‘When you, dry earth, become fresh and green and fruitful, I shall fall upon you as a reward.’ The good rain knows the earth cannot become fruitful unless it falls upon it in love. Our good God knows we cannot be fruitful without him. He does not say, ‘When you begin to be fruitful in loving one another I will come to reward you.'’ We cannot love one another without him. It is our very dryness and hardness that draw him to us.

  God’s unconditional love softens our hearts and enables us to grow. True love is that which is given, not because we are worthy or have earned it, but because we need it. It is given, not in the hope of receiving anything in return, but simply because it is the very nature of love to give itself. And while we often fail to love like that, still our deep-down good self tells us that this is true and that such love is possible for us. Our deepest self is made in the image of the God who loves unconditionally. That is why we can believe in it and also believe, despite our failures, that it is possible for us. When we meet this kind of love in others, out hearts can be transformed. Here is a story:

In the desert there lived a saintly hermit called Anthony. All who came to ask his prayers and guidance were struck by the deep peace of the cave where he lived. One evening, a wandering preacher came by and asked for hospitality for the night. Anthony received him graciously and, after sharing his food with him, invited the visitor to join him in evening prayer. Anthony opened a box and took out his most precious possession, a book of the Holy Scripture. It was beautifully bound and decorated. This was Anthony’s one and only treasure. As they prayed, the preacher looked at the book and could see it was something special and clearly very valuable. He was tempted. Greed entered his heart and, that night, as Anthony slept, the preacher stole the book and left. He went to a nearby town, found a merchant and offered him the book for twenty gold coins. The merchant asked for time so he could consult an expert about its value. The preacher reluctantly agreed to return the next day. The merchant then went to the desert to consult Anthony who, he felt sure, would know the value of the holy book. He reached the cave and showed Anthony the book and explained that a man wanted to sell it for twenty gold coins, but he was not sure if it was worth that much.

Anthony looked at his own precious book and said it was indeed that much. The merchant thanked him and left. When the preacher returned the next day, the merchant said he would buy the book. The preacher, out of curiosity, asked how he knew its value. The merchant said he had consulted a holy hermit called Anthony who knew the value of such objects. The preacher was stunned. ‘You consulted Anthony!’ he exclaimed. ‘Yes’, said the merchant. ‘And what did he say?’ asked the preacher. ‘I told you’, said the merchant, ‘He said it was worth twenty gold coins.’ ‘Yes, I heard you, but what else did he say when he saw the book?’ shouted the preacher. ‘He said nothing’, replied the merchant, ‘He handled it rather fondly and simply and said it was worth the money, so now we can close the deal.’ By now, the preacher, visibly upset and disturbed, cried out, ‘No! Give me back the book. I’ve changed my mind.’ He took the book and, in confusion and repentance of heart, hurried back to Anthony’s cave. He entered with great new reverence and respect, threw himself at Anthony’s feet, begged forgiveness and asked to be accepted as his disciple.

 

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