Today, the final Sunday in the Gesima season, we finish
preparing for Lent by hearing Jesus speak:
Jesus considered it all joy to go to the cross and endure
its shame for you, but I’m sure He did not love that we had become so corrupt
in sin and death that He had to achieve things this way.
It has been said, in the interest of self-esteem and
self-motivation, “the only way to do great work is to love what you do”. What
this means is that you must discover yourself and your inner dreams and
desires, and then find work in the world that corresponds to it or create that
work yourself.
It doesn’t matter if that work is non-essential,
non-productive, or shunned in common society. You need to be you or you will
forever regret not having taken that chance. Dream big. Take risks. Make
mistakes. You are important.
Yet, what happens when you love what you do and are doing
great work, but after a few years you don’t love it as much as you thought you
did. Then, as quickly as it began, you don’t love what you are doing and you
begin to do sub-par work.
Do you get rid of that and start over? Easy enough if it’s a
job or an art project, but what if it involves someone else’s life? This is the
excuse for ending marriages: it wasn’t what I thought it would be; I’m just not
that in love with you anymore.
Truly this attempt at being inspiring is not thinking ahead
into the future, but only thinking of the here and now. How can I be happy now?
How can I do great work now? How can I get what’s coming to me, now?
Listen again to the Old Testament reading for today. Jesse
loved his sons, I’m sure, but he left one out at a very important time. God
knows this and tells Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature... For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
David was the eighth, the forgotten son, yet he was the one
to rule Israel .
In him, God shows that He loves the unloveable.
Our Epistle is all about love. Love does this. Love does
that. Very inspiring and a very common reading at weddings. But read it
carefully. Love never “loves what it does”. Love is always just there, doing
what its supposed to do, whatever that may be.
Thus, we need to change our inspirational statement. It
should read: the only way to do great work is to love what you are doing. This
subtle change in the verb “do”, now places the burden of love on the person, instead
of the work. Instead of the person going to find that perfect job or that
perfect someone, now he is content wherever he is and with whatever he is
doing.
It is important to know that following your dreams is a lie.
Do work and be happy with whatever you do, or else you will always be dissatisfied
and unhappy your whole life., coveting what you do not have.
I am sure Jesus did not love what He did. I’m sure He did
not love to watch His own creation destroy itself. He did not love to watch the
sick suffer. He did not love to witness death and war. I’m positive that He
didn’t even love that He had to come down and do something about it, such as
healing this blind man in our Gospel reading.
He didn’t love it, because it should not have been that way.
He didn’t want to heal, He wanted everyone to never need healing. He didn’t
want to undo corruption, He wanted purity in the first place. He didn’t want to
have to raise widows son’s from the dead, He wanted no death, ever.
He didn’t love these works He had to do, but He loved doing
them and loved doing them for you. Jesus would not be a very good savior if He
had to save His people for eternity, over and over again. Jesus would not be a
merciful God if He had to continue to come to earth over and over, to do the
same things as when He was walking around.
He did not love what He had to do, but He loved doing it. He
had better things to do than to come down in man’s skin and save our sorry
selves. He had quasars to implode, sonnets to compose, and life to create. He
had all of creation to keep Him busy and He loved that.
When Jesus weeps, it is because He is looking upon the work
He needs to do in order to undo what our sin has destroyed. He does not love
that. Jesus rejoices in the work He is doing, namely saving sinners from their
sins and forgiving them. His great work of salvation was done in love and joy,
but He would have rather it not ended up this way.
It is important for us, then, especially as we seek to begin
families, support loved ones, or any other work that we do, to love what we are
doing. It may not be our dream to bale hay for a living, but if it supports
loved ones, than it is better to love what you are doing than resent it for
something, in your mind, that is greater.
Love what you are doing now. That is the Christian way. There
may be other, better things that come along in life, but maybe not. Why waste
time breaking relationships all in order to achieve some goal? Indeed, in order
to fulfill Commandments 9 and 10, one must be content wherever and whatever may
be.
Jesus is content. He is content with His creation. He is
content with the way things have gone. He is content with His role in salvation
and He is content with you, because He has suffered, died and risen again and
He continues to love what He is doing, that is forgiving your sins.
Imagine a capricious god who comes and goes at his fancy. He
loves us, he loves us not. Here today, gone tomorrow. In other words, as finicky
and fickle as we are. We would never find him. We would never be comforted by
him and we would never worship him.
The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost have always been content,
are content, and will be content. They were content before the beginning,
having each other in the perfect picture of love. They are content today with
how things have gone, because in Christ all things are being made new. And they
will be content when the total number of all who are to be saved is filled up
and a new heavens and a new earth emerges.
Because this is true, love is content. Content to endure,
content to suffer, content to humility and humiliation, content to struggle,
and content to suffer and die for the sins of the world. Because, true love is
a person. The person of Jesus Christ. It is His faith, His hope, and His love
that He creates and hands out to all who believe.
It is His true love that steadies His hand and comes to us
in the same manner, over and over again, never changing and never ending in
offering us His true Body and True Blood for the forgiveness of sins. It is in
this faith that the Christian loves what he is doing and it is great work,
because what the Christian is doing is receiving from the Lord’s hand double
for all his sins and God’s great work of salvation is accomplished in him.
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