Knowing We're Safe

DN 3:14-20, 91-92, 95

DN 3:52, 53, 54, 55, 56

JN 8:31-42

The desire to be Abraham's children -- to be known as Abraham's children -- has morphed over the years, but I think we are looking just as hard for something like it.

Something that proves that we are chosen, we are save from judgment.  That we are good people.  As if that isn't a continual struggle and journey.  As if that were something you could achieve and then relax, done with it, assured that the decisions you will make from here on out will be good ones.

A list of rules we can follow that, however convoluted, will give us a reliable checklist for entrance to Paradise rather than the fires of Hell.  Something we can argue with St. Peter about if we receive a surprise at the Pearly Gates.

Saying that we are Abraham's children, or that we go to Church every Sunday, or that we are on the board of 5 charities, or that we work with underprivileged youth -- so how can anything else mean, on balance, that we are bad people after all?

The idea of achieving heaven -- have we forgotten how unworthy we are?  How impossible it would be for us to actually become worthy of heaven?  That the saints we venerate were in terror on their deathbeds, certain they were worthy of the flames of damnation?

We don't like the idea of depending entirely on God's mercy and on Jesus's sacrifice.  Even though it should be the objectively easier and more comforting option.  We want to feel that we have done enough.  That we are good enough.

That we don't have to change.

Because change is painful, and true faithful living requires constant change.  Constant self-monitoring and constant self-improvement.  Constant toil in the world.  Constant refocusing on others.  More and more people to help and serve every day.  Cutting away what causes us to sin.  Opening our hearts still wider to let in all of those God loves who come our way.  Rewriting the neural pathways we've developed when we find our old ways of doing things hurt people we didn't see getting crushed beneath the wheel.

Constant work.  That is what it is to be a Christian.  It's a light yoke because God is there, and the love and joy that comes with God's work makes any task seem not only possible but easy.  Because doing God's work naturally builds a community around you to share the load.  Because we are given energy and love and joy by doing it.  Because by giving those things, we receive more of them.

But it is not a thing we can cross off the to-do list.  There's not a list of things we can do or not do or both and then we are safe.  We are good enough in ourselves.  We will be forever dependent on God's mercy and forever needful of Jesus's sacrifice.

That makes the work not one whit less worth the doing, but let's not fool ourselves.  If we were good enough, we wouldn't need Jesus so desperately.