I’m not a big fan of the theological conditional clause “If”
which is why I lean towards the Lutheran understanding of saved by grace and
even more to Karl Barth’s way of hoping that God’s ultimate plan is the
salvation of all people. But then this text is not about eternal consequences
and/or rewards just yet. This conditional clause is about the consequences of
ignoring God’s “if” in the here and now as imagined long ago by the prophet
Isaiah. The consequence of not sharing our bread with the hungry poor is that
the poor go hungry. The consequence of not bringing the homeless into our house
is that they have no shelter. The consequence of not clothing the naked is that
they have no clothes. You get the picture. The consequences of our inaction are
borne by those we refuse to help, house or clothe. But we suffer the
unseen consequence as the life we think the Lord loves, namely ours, is not known
by the Lord which makes all our fasting foolish and our claim to be followers
of Jesus a mockery of the One we say we love and serve. But on the reverse side
of the conditional clause if we heed the call to meet the needs of the lost and the least we will be what we thought we were all along, namely Christ like.
No comments:
Post a Comment