On the Road to Emmaus

This is the beginning of a series in which I hope to distill a synthesis of my learning and experience with respect to the manner in which one cultivates a deep spiritual life.  My intention is to combine both an understanding of how the spiritual life works along with what practically to do to experience growth. I find much spiritual counsel to have either a plethora of helpful principles, yet without clear guidance on how specifically to implement them; or lists of spiritual disciplines without a grounding base explaining their significance in the larger vision of the spiritual life (Dallas Willard’s Spirit of the Disciplines is a stellar exception). Here I will attempt to do both. In such I have isolated eight principles, which, in my gleaning from the Scriptures, from spiritual masters both ancient and modern, as well as from my experience, personally and alongside others, are central to a flourishing spiritual life. Each principle will be expressed both positively and negatively, briefly explained, and then followed by corresponding practices to specifically implement them in daily life. I will grant from the beginning there is much more that possibly could be said beyond what I will say with numerous additional principles, practices, qualifications, modifications and so forth. Granting the limited nature of my experience, understanding and articulation, I hope and pray these writings will bear fruit in your life.

Without further ado, the first principle is thus:

A life poured out in love is the starting point of all true Christianity, the source and summit of all true humanity.

A life lived for one’s self or within which self-giving remains ancillary is the sure path to de-humanizing futility. God does not recognize this as Christianity regardless of a superabundance of Christian jargon, activities, ideas, etc.

In Matthew 22, an expert in the Jewish law asks Jesus which commandment in the law is the greatest. In today’s religious consciousness, the word “law” commonly conjures up various images of abject servitude, detached submission, despondent acquiescence or rigid legalism. When God says to do something you must do it, yet all the while, bitterly wishing there was an escape hatch through which you could return to a life of free self-determination. Yet the biblical concept of “law” is different. The word “torah” (Hebrew for “law”) is the noun form of a word which means “to throw or shoot,” usually with arrows. Some scholars suggest that meaning behind “torah” is in the aiming of an arrow or the pointing of a finger to direct such a shot. Hence “torah” means something like “guidance” or “direction.” This meaning fits well with the actual content of the “torah,” the first five books of the bible, since most of it is not lists of rules, but stories about God and his people.  Remarkably so, the massive amount of material from Genesis 12 through the end of Deuteronomy all have a coherent theme: In a world where humans have unequivocally wrought disaster through their fighting, hatred, abuse and violence (see Gen. 3-11), God graciously initiates a promise of blessing to Abraham and his descendants, which both re-affirms God’s initial intentions for humanity (Gen. 1-2) and seeks to restore them. This promise, partially fulfilled in the stories recounted, remains the outstanding invitation to God’s people to be his answer to creation’s dilemma, and the agents through whom the solution comes (see David Clines fascinating book The Theme of the Pentateuch for a fuller exposition). The “torah,” then is God’s guidance on how, in the midst of a world of corruption and violence, to become a people through whom the earth’s desolate state can be mended and healed rather than further destroyed. By directing us to be participants in this grand story, we can be people who help the problem rather than continue to break lives, relationships and communities.

While I don’t imagine for a moment this was what the law expert was asking about in Matthew 22, I have more than a sneaking suspicion this is what Jesus chose to answer to anyway. In response to what the greatest commandment is, Jesus, in his typical terse yet far-reaching manner answers, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’  This is the greatest and first commandment.  And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” The questioner asked concerning commandments in the law and Jesus responds with an answer which summarizes “all the law and the prophets.” This phrase, “law and prophets,” was a shorthand way of referring to the entire corpus of Jewish Scriptures. It seems as though Jesus is answering a bigger issue than which of the rules is most important, as if you only had one command to keep, which one would it be. Instead, Jesus is speaking to the foundational concept of the totality of Jewish Scripture. He addresses the entire unfolding narration of Israel’s history with God. In this history, God invited Israel to be the people who embody the true humanity before a world which had continually defaced nearly every trace of human semblance through its violence, ambition, hatred and greed. They would be God’s solution to the problem of sin and the agents through whom all nations of the earth would be blessed (Gen. 12:3), a blessing which would prevail over the curse of sin and death (Gen. 3:15-19). Notice that Jesus does not replace the “law and prophets” with an abstract principle of “love,” as if, whenever one has subjective experiences which one might call love, then everything else in the Hebrew Scriptures doesn’t really matter. Rather, the “law and prophets,” this whole story of promise, blessing, invitation, failure and restoration can be summed up as love. The way the people of God are to be the model of true humanity and a restorative presence on earth is through a love with the whole heart, the whole soul, and the whole mind. Namely, God invites his people to be truly human, to be the restored new humanity, and participate in creation’s restoration first and foremost by loving God and neighbor with all of one’s being (heart, soul, and mind) and will the fullest’ of one’s capacity (the whole heart, the whole soul and the whole mind).

“It is the whole of Christianity,” C.S. Lewis remarks in Mere Christianity, “Christianity offers nothing else at all.” Everything we can say about Christianity begins with the notion of the whole and unreserved giving of oneself in love for God and for others. What is commonly represented as a high level of achievement, a point to which one gradually works towards in one’s Christian journey, because so lofty an idea it is relegated to theoretical endeavors for super-saints which are never really attempted. It is in actual fact the only starting point. The self-giving love of this Great Commandment is not what we relegate to the mature while we formulate a more accessible modality for the rest of us novices (after all, who is mature anyway we might retort?) where we can do some spiritual things but mostly live for ourselves. Rather, to miss this one thing is to miss the entire point. If everything else hangs on the call for an entire outpouring of love, then without it, everything falls to the ground in a tangled mess. Of course, I am not meaning that perfect attainment of love in full maturity is where one must start as a Christian. Nevertheless, a radical renunciation of self-absorption, self-promotion and self-protection coupled to the risky self-surrender which endeavors to love with all of one’s self, must be utterly foundational. By this I mean the central organizing principle of how time, money, resources, energy, emotions, relations, etc are used must be whole and unreserved self-giving love, otherwise we are failing to follow the most basic guidance about what it means to be God’s people and what it means to be human. We were made in love, we were made for love and we were made to love. God invites us to be his redeemed and restored people in the world, those in whom the restoration of true humanity is beginning to flower, and through whom the abundance of his love can flow towards the restoration of a fragmented and broken world. A life poured out in love is the starting point of all true Christianity, the source and summit of all true humanity.

Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Collect for the Fifth Sunday in Lent from The Book of Common Prayer)

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