It's Really Not As Complicated As You're Making It Out To Be

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It didn't click before like it did when I read it again. Near the end of Matthew's gospel when Christ is being arrested, he says that it must be this way that the Scriptures might be fulfilled (26:54). And I realized the Christ was a man of the scriptures. And I remember the story of him as a child in the temple leaving religious leaders in awe by his questions (Luke 2:46-49). So from his youth, he was consumed by them as he is their fulfillment (Matt. 5:17).

How other-wordly such a person must be. For Christ in his humanity does not simply know, but obeys all perfectly and calls us to do the same thing regardless of the sacrifice (Matthew 5:48; Luke 14:33). We should look at it as something attainable. One the prayers of the Orthodox Church says, "We who are without excuse come before you our Master and offer to you this supplication: have mercy on us." Archmandrite Sophrony even goes so far as to say in "The Monk of Mt. Athos that if we don't obey we remain blind: "Without this truly Christian culture of obedience man inevitably remains imprisoned in a closed circle, ever blind to the divine purpose.

This will for each of us, if we choose to follow through in it, be seen as obedience (servanthood) before our brother as Sophrony conveys in the teachings of St. Silouan: "Whoever would progress in the practice of obedience must turn his attention and will towards apprehending his brother's will, and then in an act of spiritual love implementing it...The spiritual feat of obedience is vital, therefore, not only in relation to God but to our brother..."

If we do not show the same amount of love that we show God in worship to our brother who in whom we must see Christ (Mt. 25:31-46), then we become no better then the Israel of Isaiah (1:10-20), who for all of their religious ritual, which is good and acceptable and even required, did not ultimately love one another. And let us not all be fooled. All men are our neighbors. Spouses, sons, daughters, friends, enemies, mother, fathers, cousins, siblings, irritating coworkers.

In Protestant circles, people tend to think that Soddom and Gommorrah were destroyed because of their sexual immorality, specifically homosexuality. Not so. They were fat and lazy and hoarded their wealth (Ezekiel 16:49).

Indeed, we should fearfully say as those did when Christ spoke of consuming his flesh: "This is a hard saying. Who can hear it?"

But it seems to be something we are to carry out with all the capacity given to us by grace nonetheless. I believe that Christ in his mercy allows for small steps. But small steps must grow without measure. Christ must also become greater in our own lives, and we must become less (John 3:30). As the MewithoutYou song goes, we should sing, "I can no longer tell where You end and I begin."