here’s to Madeleine!

Madeleine L’Engle is by far my favorite author and has been as long as I can remember.  She has probably shaped my faith as much as anyone other than my parents (and maybe just as much).  She died almost a year ago (Sept 6) at the age of 88.  I’m almost finished reading a book by her that I actually hadn’t read before.  It was published in 1997 and is a bit of a small summary of her faith.  It reminds us that God is bigger than the churches we attend, the people we know, and the religion we grew up with.  She lived through a rough patch when her dad died, the consequences of terrible wars, and many other things that give her faith credibility and honesty.  Thanks Madeleine for putting it all out on paper for me to learn from!

Here’s an excerpt for you to sample:

(from Bright Evening Star Mystery of the Incarnation)

(pages 95-96)

When we creatures were made  with free will, the ability to make choices and decisions, God gave up control in a way so radical we have never quite understood it as we continue to strive for power.  When God saw what a miserable mess we were making by clinging to power, Christ threw power away once again and came to us to show us that power was literally killing us.

So Christ left power and came to us as Jesus, to be our Redeemer.  Christ our Redeemer: we say the words to glibly.  What do they mean? How is Christ our Redeemer?

If I sell a family watch to a pawnbroker, it has to be “redeemed.”  I have to return the price I received for it, and more.  In the days when grocery shoppers were given green stamps they could be redeemed for some kitchen appliance, a blender, a set of mixing bowls.  Redemption is a reminder that you don’t get something for nothing.  Jesus came to redeem us by offering his human life as the price, the whole life, from conception to resurrection.  In the Beatitudes he tries to show us how we are to understand what he is doing.

Redemption has to do with Jesus’ presence in our lives.  It means that Jesus sees us as we really are, and loves us anyhow.  Not only that, Jesus sees whatever is best in us, and by seeing it, brings it forth and continues to redeem us with his life, his pain, and his joy, so that we have the possibility of becoming who we are really meant to be.

(pages 154-155)

The divine aspect of Jesus must have understood that there is no such thing as failure in God’s plan.  The human aspect must have been exhausted and saddened as his disciples understood less and less, his friends dwindled away, and people demanded constant signs and miracles.  Even his disciples put pride of place before God’s love.  If htey had heard his stories about taking the lowest seat at the banquet, or the last being first and the first being last, they appeared to have forgotten them.

How much worse was Judas’s betrayal than the disciples’ prideful pushing for power?

Judas.  How are we to understand Judas?  A friend of mine in Juneau,  Alaska, told me she had recently preached about Judas.

I asked her, “What did you say?”

She told me that when Judas scolded Jesus for allowing the woman to anoint his feet with expensive oil, spending money on the oil which could have been used for the poor, that was not the worst fault because we, like Judas, often fail to understand.  Even when Judas contracted with the Pharisees to take money for delivering Jesus to them, that was not the worst fault, because we all do terrible things for money.  Even when he betrayed Jesus by kissing him, that was still not the worst fault because one way or another we all betray our friends.  But when Judas hanged himself, that was the ultimate fault, because it put a limit to the mercy of God, and we cannot do that.

But we do.  We project our own limitations of mercy onto God and so, unwittingly, we join Judas in betrayal.

_____________________________

I cannot even begin to list the ways that I limit God on a daily basis.  How often do my fears and worries say to Him that I don’t think he can get me through life?  That I don’t trust Him?  I have known God my whole life and yet I ignore his nature, the one that provides, redeems, and doles out grace by the basketful – for my own sin and when I must pour grace out over others.

~ by bjtelle on August 21, 2008.