Acts 16: 9–15; Psalm 67; Revelation 21: 10,
22 – 22:5; John 14: 23-29
The following is
a homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at St. John's Church in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania
on Sunday, May 1, 2016.
“GOD’S PART AND OUR PART”
(Homily texts: Acts 16: 23-29
& John 14: 23-29)
God interacts
with human beings. It seems clear from reading Holy Scripture that God and
human beings each have roles to play in relating to one another. But how much
of this interaction is God’s work and how much is our work? Down through time,
Christians have come to different conclusions about the equation, about God’s
work and our work. Sometimes, one or the other gets most of the credit for the
relationship.
I think our first readings, from the Book of
Acts, and our gospel text, from John, chapter sixteen, offer some basis for
understanding this relationship. So let’s look, first of all, at our readings
from Acts and from John. Then, let’s take a brief look at some of the positions
that Christians have taken down through the ages.
From our reading
from Acts this morning, we read about the conversion of Lydia. Luke (the writer
of Acts) says this about her conversion: “The Lord opened her heart to
listen eagerly to what was said by Paul.” Then, Luke tells us, she and her
household were baptized….Lydia’s part in the relationship is her willingness to
be baptized. God’s part is the opening of Lydia’s heart to receive the word
that God had for her.
And then in our
gospel text, Jesus says to His disciples, “Those who love me will keep my
word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make
our home with them.” Notice God’s actions: “My Father will love them,” and
“we will come to them and make our home with them.” The human part is found in
the first phrase, “Those who love me.”
(I’ve italicized
the portions of each reading to highlight God’s actions and the human responses
to God’s actions.)
Now, let’s look
at some thinking that Christians have done down through time on the subject of
God’s work and our human part or response. For the purposes of our discussion,
we can look at differing positions which occurred at about the same time.
We will begin
with two figures from the fifth century, St. Augustine of Hippo and Pelagius:
St. Augustine of Hippo: We may begin with St. Augustine of Hippo, the
very gifted Bishop of the city of Hippo (which was located in North Africa) in
the fifth century. Augustine is one of the foremost theologians that the
western Church has ever produced. Augustine
credits God with doing the work necessary to save us. He has a very suspect
view of human nature, a view that sees that human beings’ ability to know God
and to do God’s will is clouded by the reality of sin. So, Augustine says,
absent God’s action through the power of the Holy Spirit beforehand, everything
we are capable of thinking or doing is limited by the reality of sin. So
Augustine gives God the credit for doing the work that is necessary to relate
to us. In Augustine’s view, the human role is very small compared to God’s
role.
Pelagius: At about the same time that Augustine was living, a
British monk by the name of Pelagius maintained that we human beings did not
need God’s grace in order to be saved. What Pelagius was saying was that we
human beings could “pull ourselves up by our own spiritual bootstraps”. In
time, the Church said that Pelagius’ views were outside the norm of Christian
thinking, and his ideas were declared to be heresy.
Now, let’s move
forward about a little more than a thousand years, in order to take a look at
the practice of selling indulgences and at the French Reformer John Calvin:
The sale of indulgences: One of the causes of the Reformation in the
sixteenth century was the practice of selling indulgences. Indulgences were a
money-raising tool for the Church. They were designed to guarantee family
members of deceased relatives that, in exchange for a fixed amount of money,
the souls of the deceased could shorten their time spent in Purgatory. The
Reformers (Luther, Calvin and others) rightly saw the theological problems that
this practice created. What they saw was Pelagius’ ideas, put to use to fill
the Church’s coffers. In essence, the sale of indulgences maintained that human
beings could better their spiritual condition by their own efforts. The sale of
indulgences (and other practices such as Masses for the dead) put the bulk of
the work on the human side of our relationship with God. In essence, these
practices maintained that we humans could do the work of saving ourselves.
There was no need for God to have a role.
John Calvin: John Calvin was a Frenchman who lived from 1509 – 1564. His teachings
and writings form the basis for the Reformed tradition within Christianity. In
this country, the most prominent part of the Reformed tradition is the
Presbyterian Church. Calvin – perhaps in reaction to the sale of indulgences
and other practices within the Roman Catholic Church – maintained that God was
omnipotent. God’s will and God’s actions, Calvin maintained, were sovereign. We
human beings are merely the object of God’s will and God’s actions. So, for
example, if God chooses to save someone or to do something in that person’s
life, He will do it. Human beings have little or no choice or role in the
action.
Hopefully, this
very brief look at some of the thinking that has taken place with regard to
God’s work and role, and our human work or role, will illustrate the different
positions that have been taken down through the years.
Holy Scripture
seems to make clear that both God and human beings both have roles to play as
they interact with one another.
One example of
this interplay can be seen in St. Paul’s writing in the Letter to the Romans.
Writing in Romans 5:8, he writes, “God proves his love for us in that, while we
were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Paul seems to be saying that God’s
action comes first, and our human reaction follows God’s action.
God’s action is
seen most clearly in the person and work of Jesus Christ. In Christ, we see the
very image of the invisible God, as Paul writes in Colossians 1:15. In Christ,
we see God’s love in action: “God proves his love for us in that, while we were
yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
In sending Jesus
Christ among us, to take on our humanity completely and fully, God has taken
the initiative. Indeed, throughout the pages of the Bible, it is God, again and
again, who takes the initiative to save His people. It is God who tells Noah to
build the ark, in order that Noah and his family might survive the Great Flood.
It is God who tells Moses that he is to lead God’s people out of slavery in
Egypt. It is God who moves King Cyrus’ heart to free the Jews so that they can
return the land promised to them. It is God who sends Jesus Christ to show us
the depth of God’s love.
We might return
to the thinking of St. Augustine as we come to a conclusion about our
relationship with God: God’s leading is trustworthy and true, as the record of
Holy Scripture proves. Whenever human beings try to assume that leading role,
problems are sure to arise. So Augustine’s suspicions about the reality of our
human nature are right on the mark, aren’t they? Left to our own leading, we
will surely wander far from God’s purposes and intent.
May God go
before us, leading us. May we follow faithfully in those footsteps.
AMEN.
