Walk the Christian talk

By REV. ROGER KARBAN- | Comments: 0 | Leave a comment

FROM A READING FOR MARCH 6, NINTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR
'A person is put right with God only through faith, and not by doing what the law commands.' Romans 3:28

I have no idea who created the proverb, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions," but he or she could have been one of Sunday's sacred authors.

Both Deuteronomy's Moses and Matthew's Jesus deal with the phenomenon of people who know what God wants them to do, but who never get around to doing it.

We only have the book of Deuteronomy because its readers' ancestors had experienced the Babylonian Exile - ancient Judaism's equivalent of Pearl Harbor and 9/11 combined.

Most Jews thought it could never happen. Even when the Northern kingdom of Israel was overrun by the Assyrians in 722 BCE and a large percentage of its inhabitants were carted off to Nineveh, Judah and Jerusalem were spared.

So, when the Babylonians invaded more than a century later, people thought they again would avoid destruction. Just as Yahweh had stopped Tiglath-pileser at Jerusalem's gates in the eighth century, its inhabitants believed Yahweh would also defeat Nebuchadnezzar in the sixth century.

Torn down
They were unprepared for the shock of 596, when the Babylonians actually captured Jerusalem - and even more unprepared 10 years later when, after a failed revolt, Nebuchad-nezzar's army returned to finish the job.

Jerusalem was destroyed, its temple turned into rubble, and the influential and powerful Jewish leaders and craftsmen deported to Babylon to begin a more-than-50-year exile. Things were never the same for Yah-weh's biblical people.

How could such a catastrophe have happened? Had Yahweh deserted Yahweh's people? The author of Deuteronomy came up with an answer (Deut 11:18,26-28,32): Yahweh's people had deserted Yahweh.

Moses dramatically outlines the distinction between obeying and not obeying Yahweh's commandments. Pre-exilic Jews were offered a blessing or a curse. Because they had refused to carry out God's "statutes and decrees," they were now suffering deportation.

Matthew's Jesus ends His Sermon on the Mount with a parallel warning (Mt 7:21-27). He doesn't threaten people with exile; He's more concerned with their missing the opportunity of "entering the kingdom of heaven:" experiencing God working in their daily lives.

Carrying on
Jesus says something that Luke would later make the mantra of his two-volume work: The perfect disciple not only listens to God's word; he or she also carries it out.

"Not everyone," Jesus ob-serves, "who says to me 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father in heaven."

As important as our actions are, they must be driven by the proper intentions. We must always know what God expects. That's why Moses tells his people, "Bind [the laws] at your wrist as a sign, and let them be a pendant on your forehead."

Though usually given as the biblical basis for "phylacteries," this verse actually goes deeper than the practice of tying small boxes containing Torah regulations on one's forearm and forehead. Yahweh's will should be at the center of our lives, not just something external to those lives.

Paul agrees (Romans 3:21-25,28). He doesn't know how we can be other Christs without imitating the actions of Christ. But he also knows the importance of first imitating the mentality of Christ.

It's that unique commitment which "justifies" us, even if we can't carry out everything God commands. Only when our minds mesh with Jesus' mind can we be certain we're doing what God wants us to do. [[In-content Ad]]