Maggie's Farm

Interesting link. Thanks. Before I forget, totally unrelated, an interesting link that might make the Colonel Blimps' blood pressure rise, but entertaining reading. While we're on the theme of people's longing to build a better world: http://www.betterworldshopper.org/ (not an endorsement)

To return to this theme of what CHristians are supposed to do in the meantime....I worry when people focus too much on Christ's promised return instead of reaching out in His love in the here and now. Jesus didn't view religion as an opiate of the masses, as pie in the sky for the bye and bye. He exhorted his followers to reach out now in His Name, to serve Him in each and every human being they encountered. He didn't found a church he told people to live in the world, in it but not of it, wily as serpents and gentle as doves. and there would be penalties for disobedience... What you did to help or hurt another humanoid, you did for him "Inasmuch as ye did it to the least of these ye did it for me."

Most of us blow it. Even when we are moderately kind and helpful to others, none of it earns one salvation or is even an outward sign of grace, it's just what every Christian, religious, sceptical, churcgoing or disgusted hell-raiser is called to do. Just as they were called the Ten Commandmenets, not suggestions, Jesus gave orders not options.

One of my favorite hymns in school was this one (mostly because we could shout "and one was slain by a fierce wild beast!" I can already hear the howls of derision from the hellraisers and agnostic sophisticates, but I love this:

Saints of God

I sing a song of the saints of God
Patient and brave and true,
Who toiled and fought and lived and died
For the Lord they loved and knew.
And one was a doctor, and one was a queen,
And one was a shepherdess on the green:
They were all of them saints of God -- and I mean,
God helping, to be one too.

They loved their Lord so dear, so dear,
And his love made them strong;
And they followed the right, for Jesus's sake,
The whole of their good lives long.
And one was a soldier, and one was a priest,
And one was slain by a fierce wild beast:
And there's not any reason -- no, not the least--
Why I shouldn't be one too.

They lived not only in ages past,
There are hundreds of thousands still
The world is bright with the joyous saints
Who love to do Jesus' will
You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea,
In church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea,
For the saints of God are folk just like me,
And I mean to be one too.

SS



He told his followers that if they loved Him, they must feed his sheep (ie: suffering humanity). See the end of John's GOspel. He told us that the Day of Judgment will come unexpectedy, like a thief in the night. The early church rapidly discovered that since one could not know when or how the Second Coming would be inaugurated, they might as well feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit prisoners, care for widows and orphans, heal the sick, etc. People were drawn to the Early Church because of the love they saw there. These days, people are often bored by dreary churchiness, but most of us in a sometimes boring church today are there because an individual Christian loved and believed in us, lived out Jesus' radical acceptance and high hopes for us, gave us direction and purpose in our life. The church is like marriage or any other fallible human institution: not perfect, but consider the worse alternatives!

One postscript, although I count myself an evangelical Protestant, my personal real life saints are still the Catholic sisters, priests and brothers I worked with in youth. Some of you might have had grave doubts about their "liberal" politics, but you would have been won over by the love with which they reached out to the sick, suffering and outcasts. One of the most moving experiences of my life was a discussion with a bunch of Jesuit novices I was supervising in their field work placement at our agency after we had all watched "The Mission" (w. DeNiro in one of his better roles as a reformed sinner turned Jesuit) . On the theme of "When Christ calls a man, He calls him to die". With references to Bonhoeffer, but mostly on how the call of God leads ordinary people to places and situations they could never have imagined facing in their own strength alone.

In this vein, was reminded this morning what's truly important when stuck in traffic behind a bus with a picture of some golden host holder and the words "Follow Me" --God. A recruiting poster for the priesthood, but all any of us need.