Wednesday of the Seventh Week of Easter, June 4, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Superlatives
Dallas Willard once said that Jesus is the smartest man who ever lived. That helped me revise my Jesus paradigm upward, focusing on his humanity. Ron Rolheiser goes beyond this and applies the superlatives to God:
God is better looking than any movie star. God is more intelligent than the brightest scientist or philosopher. God is wittier and funnier than the best of our comedians. God is more creative than any artist, writer, or innovator in history. God is more sophisticated than the most-learned person on earth. God is more exuberant than any young person. God is more popular than any rock star. And, not least, God is more erotic and sexually attractive than any woman, man, or sexual image on earth.
So why do I struggle to turn my attention to God, away from the greatest human beings on earth? Rolheiser describes our experience, captured by time and space attempting to get free.
The brute reality of our physicality and the pressures of the present moment naturally impose themselves on us in a way that can make the things of God and spirit seem abstract, even unreal. That is simply the human condition and God, no doubt, understands.
All things good, true and beautiful are made by God, and thus are “inside God.” This does not mean these things should be shunned. Their reality rushes in upon us:
Countless things can overwhelm us with their stunning reality: a beautiful person, a sunset, a piece of music, a work of art, youthful exuberance, a baby’s innocence, someone’s wit, feelings of intimacy, feelings of nostalgia, a glass of wine on the right evening, a stirring in our sexuality, or, most deeply of all, an inchoate sense of the uniqueness and preciousness of our own lives. The beauty and pleasures of this life are a gift from God, meant to be enjoyed.
When in my deepest heart I know these gifts come from God, then I can accept “the very real limits that life puts on my desires. Virtue, religion and commitment ask me to sacrifice at times for something higher.” Paul spoke of this to his friends on the shore at Ephesus:
Keep watch over yourselves and over the whole flock, of which the Holy Spirit has appointed you overseers. Tend the Church of God that Jesus acquired with his own Blood. Keep in mind the words of the Lord Jesus who said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” His friends wept loudly as they threw their arms around Paul and kissed him.
Over and over I surrender myself to God the Creator, surrendering as one who though made in his image, continually overstep my bounds. We have read Psalm 68 over and over in this lectionary season. I think it is getting through to me.
Behold, his voice resounds, the voice of power: “Confess the power of God!” Awesome in his sanctuary is God, the God of Israel; he gives power and strength to his people. Sing to God, O kingdoms of the earth.
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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