The Earth is the Lord's: Part 2
The Importance of Deeds
It seems that Christians are hyper-sensitive about words like deed and duty. The scriptures testify that we will be judged according to our works of good or evil. The epistles attest to love in action and observing the commandments. But we also know that none of our works can save us from sin and death. None of them can redeem us. Only Christ on the cross can finish the work of salvation. So we are truly confused when the scriptures seem to call us to holy living. If Christ finished the work that we could never accomplish, what does it matter what I do?
What of the travels of Saint Paul? Why did he walk the known world and suffer shipwrecks and beatings? What of Peter's journey into Rome where he was crucified upside down? What of pen of Augustine or his fiery sermons? What of the burning life of Saint Francis, penned by others for our memory and celebration? What of Oscar Romero and his voice for the poor that led to sniper bullet in his chest? What of Cranmer calling England to daily prayer? What of Bonhoeffer and King and you? Our actions matter, they always have mattered. We aren't enfleshed on accident. What we do in our body affects those around us and our own souls.
Great and small, our actions are seen by God and they form and shape our souls. Life is not an opportunity for indulgence, but a mission entrusted to each individual. Men and women are constantly engaged in building or destroying. Heschel says our task is to restore what has been impaired in the cosmos, to labor in the service of the cosmos for the sake of God. The disciplines employed by the artists and scientists must also enter into the way we live. He describes how the Eastern European Jew was more concerned with hammering and carving a life. "This sense lent his life the quality of an artistic act, the medium of which is not stone or bronze, but the mystic substance of the universe."
And this is dangerous work. "Man has not advanced very far from the coast of chaos. A frantic call to disorder shrieks in the world. Where is the power that can offset the effect of that alluring call? The world cannot remain a vacuum. We are all either ministers of the sacred or slaves of evil." Calvin said that every mind is an image factory. We either worship the true God-- the shatterer of all images and liberator of humankind--or we enslave ourselves to an image. Heschel says that Jewish law to the European Jew is sacred music. Christ is our music. "The Divine sings in noble deeds. Man's effort is but the counterpoint to the music of His will."
"Even plain men were like artists who knew how to fill weekday hours with mystic beauty. They did not write songs, they themselves were songs ... They often lacked outward brilliance, but they were full of hidden light."
If you want more on this topic, I came across a youtube interview of Heschel
It seems that Christians are hyper-sensitive about words like deed and duty. The scriptures testify that we will be judged according to our works of good or evil. The epistles attest to love in action and observing the commandments. But we also know that none of our works can save us from sin and death. None of them can redeem us. Only Christ on the cross can finish the work of salvation. So we are truly confused when the scriptures seem to call us to holy living. If Christ finished the work that we could never accomplish, what does it matter what I do?
What of the travels of Saint Paul? Why did he walk the known world and suffer shipwrecks and beatings? What of Peter's journey into Rome where he was crucified upside down? What of pen of Augustine or his fiery sermons? What of the burning life of Saint Francis, penned by others for our memory and celebration? What of Oscar Romero and his voice for the poor that led to sniper bullet in his chest? What of Cranmer calling England to daily prayer? What of Bonhoeffer and King and you? Our actions matter, they always have mattered. We aren't enfleshed on accident. What we do in our body affects those around us and our own souls.
Great and small, our actions are seen by God and they form and shape our souls. Life is not an opportunity for indulgence, but a mission entrusted to each individual. Men and women are constantly engaged in building or destroying. Heschel says our task is to restore what has been impaired in the cosmos, to labor in the service of the cosmos for the sake of God. The disciplines employed by the artists and scientists must also enter into the way we live. He describes how the Eastern European Jew was more concerned with hammering and carving a life. "This sense lent his life the quality of an artistic act, the medium of which is not stone or bronze, but the mystic substance of the universe."
And this is dangerous work. "Man has not advanced very far from the coast of chaos. A frantic call to disorder shrieks in the world. Where is the power that can offset the effect of that alluring call? The world cannot remain a vacuum. We are all either ministers of the sacred or slaves of evil." Calvin said that every mind is an image factory. We either worship the true God-- the shatterer of all images and liberator of humankind--or we enslave ourselves to an image. Heschel says that Jewish law to the European Jew is sacred music. Christ is our music. "The Divine sings in noble deeds. Man's effort is but the counterpoint to the music of His will."
"Even plain men were like artists who knew how to fill weekday hours with mystic beauty. They did not write songs, they themselves were songs ... They often lacked outward brilliance, but they were full of hidden light."
If you want more on this topic, I came across a youtube interview of Heschel
Comments
I love that. They were full of hidden light...I really love that.
Thanks, J.