Attracted by God

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you;

I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”

The parable in Matthew 22:1-14 (parallel passage Luke 14:15-24) is a story of refusal. The banquet is prepared. Everything is in order. The roast is sliced, the salad bar ready, the vegetables steaming, but the guests don’t come. The guests have other things to do. Those hesitations have a special significance in this case. It is God who did the inviting! Accepting such an invitation is a serious issue. To be invited by God and Jesus Christ? You never know how that will end. Or maybe you do guess, and you don’t want it.

Many of us live on that kind of edge. We are attracted by God, we know we are invited by Jesus’ love, and yet we don’t dare accept. We hesitate. We refuse. And yet we can’t deny that that invitation has come to us. We can almost hear the music in the hall and smell the roast on the fire. The American Quaker Thomas Kelly described this intuition in a striking way: “And we are unhappy, uneasy, strained, oppressed, and fearful we shall be shallow. For over the margins of life comes a whisper, a faint call, a premonition of richer living which we know we are passing by. Strained by the very mad pace of our daily outer burdens, we are further strained by an inward uneasiness, because we have hints that there is a way of life vastly richer and deeper than all this hurried existence, a life of unhurried serenity and peace and power. If only we could slip over into that Center. If only we could find the Silence which is the source of sound.”

We read in the first reading of today, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and to carefully observe my ordinances.” All of us are more religious and more mystical than we appear to be. We have God's spirit within us. We have seen more than we want to admit even to ourselves: bits of light, rays of goodness, fragment of songs, patches of heaven. Most times we act as if we never heard or saw a thing. Sometimes we prefer our stony hearts to the natural hearts given to love. We have His DNA, we are made in His image and likeness. We have His GPS within us. We are deeply connected to God, but feel embarrassed to admit it.

Such a refusal is sin. Sin is a state more than a momentary behaviour. It is the state of being closed down, shut off, blocked, and thus resisting the eternal flow of love (like God Himself) that we're meant to be. It is always a refusal of mutuality and closing down into separateness or isolation. Whenever we refuse mutuality towards God or anything, whenever we won't allow our deep inner-connectedness to guide us, whenever we're not attuned to both receiving and giving love, then we are in a state of sin.

What are the areas in my life that I refuse God, that I resist God's light and grace? Are there times when I block my love for persons? Do I disconnect myself and my presence from people and things that need my attention? Let us be clear that we know and accept ourselves in the very same movement in which we know and accept God; in surrendering to God, we simultaneously accept our best and fullest self. God and I may not be completely one; but at the same time God and I are not two either. I don't lose myself in Him; rather I find my true self only in Him.