I Will

Matthew 8:2-3

And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.

And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.

 

The tenderness of God cannot be exaggerated.  Infinite and eternal, beyond death, beyond fragility, the Lord of the Universe is all-powerful.  Whatever God wants, God gets.  The forces of nature obey His Will and there is no question, no doubt whatsoever, as to who is in charge.  God’s control is absolute.  And yet… Where is love in this?  Because of love, God willingly chooses to create a species in which He will claim none of His omnipotent control.  He grants freedom to these creatures and truly loves these creatures because they are not switches and gears, preprogrammed entities of unquestioning obedience.  They are fully alive as God is fully alive; and God shares with them the ability to love, to willingly choose to give of oneself completely to the other, not as a will-less response to inevitable forces, but as a free choice to truly love.  And, so, human beings.

 

Though all that is good, all that is healthy, all that is right, all that is true resides in God’s Ordained Will, we, humans, because we are free and not forced into acceptance of Truth, have the capacity to reject Truth and turn away from all that is good, to turn away from God.  We do this in embracing self-consciousness, in seeking to please ourselves, we do this in refusing love.  For love is God-consciousness and, when the first human beings chose to absent themselves from this, the effect on human nature was ingrained.  Our God-given intellects became darkened and our God-given free will became weakened, and we make our choices in the half light of a fallen world, self-centered and afraid.  Prone to the suffering of mental confusion and physical illness, prone to the pain of the selfish greed and using cruelty of other humans, we have the capacity to merely survive until death ends the thrust of our existences.  And… As we are still created in the image and likeness of God… We also have the capacity to have our minds cleansed of selfish toxins and give over our very hearts to God-consciousness, to truth, to love.  But, who will help us?

 

The tenderness of God cannot be exaggerated.  Though infinite and eternal, He took on the fragility of a finite human form; though divinely omnipotent and divinely omniscient, He assumed human nature and became one of us.  In the ultimate humility and generosity of love, His self-sacrifice is a total commitment, a sacrifice of self through love for the other.  In the Mystery of Incarnation, that, with Creation, is like the second wave of the heartbeat of God’s Word, of the Creative Force that is the ultimate act of divine love, God becomes Man.  He gives of Himself completely – fatigued, frustrated, grieving, betrayed, abandoned, ridiculed, tortured, trapped, thirsty – the full reality of a human life, loving completely, even to the point of death, death on a cross: Christ Jesus.  And while Jesus lived and breathed among us, walking in our midst, unknown to us, he sanctified human nature, he redeemed humankind, he put forth his human hand, calloused with work, dusty with travel, and touched the wounded among us, cleansing and healing bodies, hearts and minds, restoring those downtrodden by the world to the fullness of life, to supreme wholeness, to God-consciousness, to truth and love.

 

And now, weary and lost in this world, we approach Christ and know that we will be cleansed, healed, restored, if He but wills it.  Moved with sympathetic tenderness, gazing lovingly through human eyes, He puts forth His hand and Wills to touch us, wounded as we are, and to transform our lives infinitely.  Christ who once walked among us on travel-worn feet, now approaches us through one another and receives our pilgrims steps in the embrace of His Church.  Therefore, let us not understate by self-centered actions the tender mercy and love of God.