When Mortals Prevail

Matthew 7:1-12

"Rise up, O Lord!  Do not let mortals prevail!" Psalm 9:19a

When mortals did prevail, Jesus was beaten to within an inch of His life in a vain attempt to satisfy humanity's bloodlust.  When mortals did prevail, He was forced to carry His own cross to Golgotha where He was nailed to that cross and left to hang until dead.  At the point of Jesus' death it would have appeared to His disciples that in the end, the will of mortals will always prevail in spite of our best hopes.

When mortals do prevail, morals take a nose dive and what is good is relative only to the contemporary culture; when what is "holy is given to the dogs", when "pearls are cast before swine".  When mortals do prevail, hungry children stay hungry and the "consumerist mentality" packs fat upon fat.  When mortals do prevail, war is imminent.  When mortals do prevail, churches falter.  When mortals do prevail, missions and ministries collapse.  When mortals do prevail, the Bible is dismissed as fiction or as outdated or as completely irrelevant.

By the same token, when mortals prevail within the Church, biblical precepts are taken out of their appropriate context and used as weapons against those with whom we disagree.  When mortals prevail within the Church, Jesus is an Angry Judge who is just waiting for the "go" from the Holy Father to come and strike humanity down - except us!  When mortals prevail within the Church, Jesus and the Grace of the Living God are reduced to little more than excuses by which we dismiss the fellowship and discipline of the Church as unnecessary, overbearing, or judgmental.  When mortals prevail within the Church, "Love" is reduced to "lust" and becomes self-serving and self-indulgent.  When mortals prevail within the Church, the Church becomes little more than a dispensary of all we desire and is thus completely void of what we truly need.  When mortals prevail within the Church, the "end" will truly be "The End".

"And when Jesus' disciples heard all this, they were greatly astonished and said, 'Who, then, can be saved?'  Jesus looked at them and said, '[When mortals prevail] this is impossible; but [when God prevails], all things are possible" (Matthew 19:25-26).

The Love Dare© makes an interesting analogy in Dare #7: "Love believes the best".  In spite of perceived evidence to the contrary, Love chooses to believe the best!  In the deep recesses of our being are two rooms in which memories are stored.  One room is the Appreciation Room.  This is where the good stuff is.  This is the room in which is found the best of everything we know about our relationships - with our God, with our spouses, with our friends, and with our fellow disciples.  This is the room in which are found the most positive attributes of those whom we know; those attributes that likely attracted us to them in the first place.

Then there is another darker and more sinister room called the Depreciation Room.  This is the room in which are stored the attributes of our God, our spouses, our friends, and fellow disciples; those less-than-favorable attributes that become more apparent as we become more familiar with these relationships.  Into this room we cast our annoyances, our resentments, our hurt feelings, our frustrations, our anger, and every other thing we believe has been "caused" by our God, our spouses, our friends, and our fellow disciples.  And I don't EVEN want to speculate about what is stored in this room about preachers and pastors!!

According to Kabbalah [Jewish mysticism], the reason human beings are constantly in search of the next high, the newest technology, and the latest fashion is because it is our soul-essence to climb, advance, and move forward—to "become." However, how we will apply that inner yearning is up to our Free Will choice. One can apply the soul's energy toward building one's relationship with [YHWH] and personal development as it is [divinely] intended, or one can apply the soul's energy toward building something trivial or destructive.  True joy and fulfillment come about by moving forward and advancing toward the reality of [who we are divinely appointed to be]. One's entire life boils down to the story of his or her journey to their personal "becoming".  Rabbi Eliyahu Yaakov, "Kabbalah Korner"

"Becoming" what, of course, is dependent upon what we truly believe - or what we choose to believe.  And according to St. Paul's words to the Corinthians, what we believe is entirely dependent upon what we believe about "agape" - that is, "true" love, enduring love, sacrificial love, unconditional love, the genuine love that does not respond merely to emotional outbursts and feelings of personal desire, the love expressed toward humanity by Christ Himself at the Cross.

"Believing" what, then, depends upon what we genuinely hope for; so what we truly hope for seems to be determined not only by our Free Will choices but by where these choices will take us and where we will choose to spend most of our time within our inmost being: the Appreciation Room or the Depreciation Room.  The rabbi seems to suggest we are by our spiritual nature "nomads" who have no real dwelling place but are constantly moving - ideally "forward".  If this is true, then, we must determine whether we are moving forward with hope - or constantly moving backward toward disdain and anger and resentment toward those whom we believe have intentionally sought to do us harm - whether we have real evidence or not.  We thus choose to believe the worst and be miserable - OR - choose to believe the best and be contented, satisfied, and happy. 

I would suggest that we are "dwellers" by our human nature, seeking roots, establishing a foundation upon which to build a life.  While this may seem conflicted by the opposing natures within each of us, there is also a continuity that establishes a good dwelling place by believing in the very best of what is to come - NOT by dwelling on what has already taken place and trying to carry those hurt feelings forward.

Jesus' words to His disciples about "judging" others is among the most misunderstood and misappropriated passages in the Gospels because we get tripped up on the difference between "judging" and "discerning".  One "condemns" not only those whom we "judge" but also ourselves as we are "judged" by the same measure, the same standard.  The other measures the difference between that which is "holy" (good, perfect, complete) and that which is "common" - or less-than-holy.  It is how we tell the difference between that which is divinely ordained and that which is the dominant "will of mortals". 

But I think Jesus is also advising us, especially when He makes us aware of the "log in [our] own eye", that we must always be aware that even in the midst of anger, misunderstandings, and hurt feelings over conflicts we have had with our God, our spouses, our friends, and our fellow disciples is that we must acknowledge our own part in the anger, the misunderstandings, and the hurt feelings.  We can learn from these things only if we engage in that certain reality that we are no more or less perfect than those who stand accused by us.

We all make mistakes.  And just as surely as those mistakes made by others against us have been stored in our own "Depreciation Room", Jesus is simply saying that others have their very own "Depreciation Room" in which our names are written prominently on the walls - in BIG, RED LETTERS!  Just as surely as we can - AND WILL - defend and justify our anger and hurt feelings, so can others by the same measure and the same means.  And when we choose to stay there, the journey forward, the journey toward "becoming" the best we can be, STOPS ... and relationships are destroyed.

I saw a little piece in this morning's paper I would like to share.  An old Native American tells his grandson that living within every person are two wolves.  One is good.  The other is evil, and they are constantly at war with one another within each of us fighting for domination.  The child asks, "Which one wins?"  The grandfather replied, "The one you feed."

Which will we choose to feed?  Let us choose to "hope" rather than to condemn.  Let us choose to believe the best of intentions even in the midst of such profound misunderstandings.  Let us remember that even when the "log" was implanted firmly in our own eyes, Jesus still chose to go forward to Golgotha.  Let us remember that "mortals prevailed" in this blood-thirsty demand that Jesus die - but that YHWH prevailed when Jesus was raised!  Jesus believed the very best - even when mortals spit in His eye! 

This is why we are spiritually compelled to believe the best - because in the hands and by the will of our Holy Father, the very best is yet to be for His faithful!  Believing this, we strive, we reach, we move.  And in the end, when Divine Will prevails ... WE LIVE!