We must allow the groans of creation to penetrate us, joining with our own deepest groans, and offer each to the God whom we as his children call “Abba!” in the Spirit.
I wonder if a third reversal might occur in this parable when we consider that it is in fact our Lord who is also one who has been bound and thrown into outer darkness. And more than this, he has bound himself, thrown himself into the place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, and it is precisely there where he has demonstrated his omnipotence.
Perhaps when we are most sure that our desire is for doing good, and even when we are most sure that the things we have done are good, this is when we should be most on guard and even most expect that the sin will make itself known, for it seems to be a law to our brother Paul that evil is lying close at hand, even and especially in such closeness to the good.
Balaam’s story provides us a scriptural grammar to think about our own individual and collective experiences of our usurpation of God’s sovereignty in refusing to acknowledge the signs that alert us to our misguided way and the violence with which we lash out at such confrontations.
The sins of the past are not recounted to shore up faith in a naive belief in the inherent progress of history or to distance themselves from their ancestors and their sins.
This is the great mystery Paul proclaimed to the Athenian grumblers and to us: this God is both foreign and native; always beyond our grasp yet truly known in our own language and culture.
Every year The Living Church’s student essay contest draws several excellent submissions. The first-place essay will be published in the October issue of The...
Sacramental Ecclesiology in Book I of Saint Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana
Every year The Living Church's student essay contest draws several excellent submissions. The first-place essay...
