Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent

Lectionary: 248

"Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us;
he sets himself against our doings,
Reproaches us for transgressions of the law
and charges us with violations of our training.
He professes to have knowledge of God
and styles himself a child of the LORD.
To us he is the censure of our thoughts;
merely to see him is a hardship for us....

Wisdom in today's first reading describes the world's reaction against the people of God. Because they represent the Presence of God in the world, they are obnoxious. Which is to say, the world despises God, and those who love the Lord have a peculiar relationship with the world around them. We live in this place but are not of this place. We love our home although our home hates us. 

We consider that dilemma especially within the season of Lent. Our musing begins with world, a word often used in the Gospel of John:
Most often, the world is that place which the Lord loves and has come to save. 

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. John 3:16-17

But the world is also ignorant of God and responds with hostility. 

‘If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world—therefore the world hates you. (John 15:18-19)

And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgement... John 16:8

...about judgement, because the ruler of this world has been condemned. John 16:11

Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy. John 16:20

In his most famous work, Models of the Church, Father Avery Dulles described four different ways that Christian churches typically respond to the world. He offered the study as an ecumenical way for the various denominations to understand and find agreement with each other. 

The first and fourth are extremes; the first is entirely comfortable in the world and readily recognizes and endorses its best values; the fourth is as hostile to the world as the world seems to be hostile to it. There are two types of church between them, which Father Dulles also described. The second strives to find its comfortable place in the world despite knowing there are intractable problems with that posture. The third is more suspicious of the world, knowing that the world cannot survive the judgment and wrath of God. 

As I recall from reading the book over fifty years ago, Dulles appointed the Anglican churches as those most comfortable in the world. He cited the statues of Washington and Lincoln in the Washington Cathedral. Washington attended the church though his beliefs were essentially deist; Lincoln had read and could quote the Bible, but did not often attend Christian services. 

Their opposites, some fundamentalist churches loudly denounce the values of the world, and insist that their faithful never participate in worldly pleasures like athletics, the arts, dances, and card games. They should never smoke, drink, curse, or cuss; although they might quarrel and feud with abandon, especially when they suspect infidelity in their congregations.

Amish and Mennonites might be those churches which maintain a bemused distance from the world without loudly condemning it. Some encourage their youth to cautiously explore the world and thereby discover the wisdom of their pious elders who have tasted its delights and found them insipid. Hopefully, the youth return to the fold and raise their children within their traditional religious communities.

And finally, Catholics and mainline denominations -- which comprised the vast majority when Father Dulles produced his book -- live in the world but remind their faithful to practice a healthy skepticism toward its values. (As I recall, today's Evangelicals were hardly a blip on the religious radar screen in 1974, when the book was published.)

Lent, I believe, is especially that time when our penitential practices must separate -- if not isolate -- us from the world around us. We might not go out to as many restaurants; we might select religious reading over entertainment; we might serve the church more actively by working the fish fries; and so forth. 

The Liturgy of the Hours offers a mature, traditional, and familiar practice of faith. It is recommended by its spiritual solidarity with hundreds of thousands who read the same prayers in many of the world's languages. 

In the end, in the apocalyptic moment when the Lord judges all the nations, we cannot expect much sympathy for our trials from the world and its peoples. They will maintain their culture of death with abhorrent practices like abortion, euthanasia, and capital punishment to the end. They will continue to oppress minorities and exploit children while neglecting the elderly. 

They understand only power, and must despise both the weak and those who renounce the pursuit of power. They cannot stand a crucified god; the very notion is absurd to them. 

Lent calls us to restore and revive our faith in the Crucified who was raised up for our salvation. Lent reminds us that we expect this world to end in a cataclysm of failure and disappointment, as we are delivered into eternal bliss.