Risk All for Love
"Risk All for Love"
The Pharisee is one who demands a sign (Mark 8:11). The poor person is one who believes “that the promise made her by the Lord will be fulfilled” (Luke 1:45). The Pharisee is the one who takes pride in being virtuous (Luke 18:9); the poor person is the one who cries to God day and night, even when God delays to help (Luke 18:7). The beggar who continues to pester the Lord is more pleasing than the dutiful and self-sufficient servant.
Jesus has reversed our human scale of values. He would rather have us live in the insecurity of traded money (Matthew 25:14-30) while trusting in the Master, than to place our hope in the sure thing that we have hidden out of fear in the field. Risk all for love, Jesus tells us, even your own life. Give that to me and let me save it. People who seek to save their own lives, doing a good job of saving themselves, are saying that God’s salvation is not needed. People who lose their lives for the sake of the Good News will find their lives. The healthy religious person is the one who allows God to save.
If this is the ideal Christian attitude toward God, then Mary is the ideal Christian of the Gospels. She sums up in herself the attitude of the poor one whom God is able to save. She is deeply aware of her own emptiness without God (Luke 1:52). She longs for the fulfillment of God’s promise (1:54); she has left her self open, available for God’s work (1:45, 49). And when the call comes, she makes a full personal surrender: “Let it be!” (1:38).
from The Great Themes of Scripture
The Pharisee is one who demands a sign (Mark 8:11). The poor person is one who believes “that the promise made her by the Lord will be fulfilled” (Luke 1:45). The Pharisee is the one who takes pride in being virtuous (Luke 18:9); the poor person is the one who cries to God day and night, even when God delays to help (Luke 18:7). The beggar who continues to pester the Lord is more pleasing than the dutiful and self-sufficient servant.
Jesus has reversed our human scale of values. He would rather have us live in the insecurity of traded money (Matthew 25:14-30) while trusting in the Master, than to place our hope in the sure thing that we have hidden out of fear in the field. Risk all for love, Jesus tells us, even your own life. Give that to me and let me save it. People who seek to save their own lives, doing a good job of saving themselves, are saying that God’s salvation is not needed. People who lose their lives for the sake of the Good News will find their lives. The healthy religious person is the one who allows God to save.
If this is the ideal Christian attitude toward God, then Mary is the ideal Christian of the Gospels. She sums up in herself the attitude of the poor one whom God is able to save. She is deeply aware of her own emptiness without God (Luke 1:52). She longs for the fulfillment of God’s promise (1:54); she has left her self open, available for God’s work (1:45, 49). And when the call comes, she makes a full personal surrender: “Let it be!” (1:38).
from The Great Themes of Scripture
posted by LuisVelasco @ 7:32 AM
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