Killing the System

"In the course of time, Cain brought the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground".
Genesis 4:3.

It's probably the hardest thing we have to learn to live with.
I still recall the day it hit home for me.
I'd tried so hard to be filling the role of being there, at least when it came to "ministry", for others, that I'd entirely missed the ground vanishing beneath my feet, leaving my entire future in jeopardy.

Vanity makes us so narrow of vision that we in effect become blind to what really matters.

The root problem, as some good theologians have noted, is that we so often replace God's totally unmerited mercy for a bag of devices we employ as means to twist God's arm, or, at least to convince us that is what we're doing. We are, in effect, like Adam, shouting at God from the bushes, when He wants us to face the truth and understand that aside from His intervening love, we are without any help at all.

Religion is all about when we don't accept that answer. The temptation we succumb to by such means is to believe that we have the resources to play God ourselves - to become more than we are, sinners saved by grace. We don't merely do this in rash moments, but devise whole systems of mimicking godliness so we can appear garbed in piety.

That was my problem back in those days of 'full time ministry'. I not only lost sight of Christ's unique work for us, I also lost sight of myself - of my dreadful plight without the single overshadowing of His death and resurrection.

True freedom in Christ is a very dangerous thing. Paul says that he had liberty in all things (and notes so do we); that to those who are pure (because of Christ) all things are pure - that sets parameters that are way above and beyond what religious structures and disciplines can provide, because redemption is about all creation regaining the radiance it was purposed to express.
Thankfully, redemption is all about God in Christ invading our space with the opulence of His exquisite and abundant mercy, and using such as the way to engender in us a relish for Him above all else. Grace gives the means (word and sacrament) to establish what was very good in God's full intention for the world.

We, at our very best, do what we do in weakness, but that's OK. God took the mess that I had driven myself into in my youthful zeal and showed me there was so very much more to see in the death and resurrection of His beloved, that some 40 years on, I'm beginning to see a little of the true boundaries of such extraordinary grace.

The important things is, just like those disciples Jesus met on the Emmaus road, that Christ is seen and His living word burns in our hearts.

Don't become trapped by going inward. Look to that altar, outside of the scheduled rituals and rules where the Lamb of God opened the fountain that never runs dry, paid for by the sacrifice that sustains all things forever.

Christ alone must be what we are about, because if we in any fashion see ourselves taking the reins, we are in very deep trouble.

If we truly want to see the life of God evidenced amongst us, then Paul urges indeed cajoles us to pursue one excellence alone - preach the irreplaceable person and work of Jesus, and you will rest on a surety everlasting.