It may seem sometimes that the biggest shift asked of us in grown-up
faith is to take leave of the god of rewards and punishments. To most of the world it seems simply
axiomatic that we get, or we should get, what we deserve, that we earn divine favour
by doing good, and we pay for our sins.
It is a cornerstone of the concept of justice, that the punishment fits
the crime. An eye for an eye seems to tidy things up nicely. And so it is, when people suffer things they
never deserved in life, this gets pointed out as a mark against God, who is
evidently not paying attention – and then we get people saying they can’t
believe in God because of what he “allows to happen”.
None of this is what Jesus taught.
Jesus, a Jew, had himself been brought up in the religion of an eye for an eye. I may interpose here that the rabbis also
taught that an eye for an eye was
actually meant not so much as a recipe for equal retribution, but as a
safeguard against the law which said that if your adversary steals your goat
you take ten of his -- echoes of that also are to be found in darker corners of
the Hebrew scriptures. The better
teachers of Israel said no, it must be proportionate, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. It was a safeguard against the law of the
jungle.
Jesus however encountered God differently. He knew, loved and served a Father, of love,
of grace, of mercy… a loving continuing Creator… a Father not obsessed with the
sins committed, but with the wounded soul returned, the lost sheep found. Life is not about expiating sin, it is about
turning to the light and being enlightened by love and mercy.
We are all wounded. Some of this is
self-inflicted. The Gospel of Life is
not about deserving, it is about receiving.
It is about the fear of punishment being replaced by the knowledge that
we are known and loved. Repentance does
not mean humiliation and penance – the word in both Hebrew and Greek means turning
around, coming home, to face the truth and the light. In
returning and rest will you be saved, says the prophet Isaiah – and in the
Greek scriptures the unforgettable description of repentance is the Prodigal
Son turning around and going back home to a welcome and restoration he knew he could
never have deserved.[1]
This is the experience of grace.
As Fr Laurence Freeman puts it, we are not animals being housetrained by
being given treats, rewards or punishments.
We are made in the image of God, with the dignity and ability to receive
love and to give love, to be the recipients of grace, and to be gracious. That is the whole of the law, says
Jesus. In Christian Meditation we are setting
aside our various idols including any god of reward and punishment. It is the God Jesus called Father whose
presence we are in, the God who, as Jesus depicted, embraces all, and makes all
things new.
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