"Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back--in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you."
Frederick Buechner - Wishful Thinking
Texts
There is so much that could capture one's interest in the texts for today. We do Daniel a disservice if we simply see the "end times prophecy," and stop reading, allowing the Word to belong in the hands of a few who would determine that, though Daniel 12 mentions "the words are to remain secret and sealed until the time of the end," twice. The mysterion is something to be beheld, not something to be grasped, not something to be manipulated. It is when we allow this Word to come to us, to gasp with awe as we realize we are part of something far bigger than ourselves.
It is this word that "draws us into itself," as Christ "draws us into himself," washing over us and changing us even as we seem to remain the same. The Word doesn't just say something, it does something: the first Word created all that is, and the last Word draws all things to itself. God's Word in Christ reconciled us to each other and to God, drawing us into a new reality that, though the Old Adam and the Old Eve (we would be lying if we said we didn't enjoy their company) remain. Why say we enjoy the company of the Old Adam and the Old Eve? When we enjoy our anger more than we enjoy reconciliation, when we value things over relationship, when we determine we would rather have a feast all to ourselves than share with the least of these, when we refuse another our love out of fear of vulnerability, when we determine we are righteous enough because we think ourselves less sinful than our neighbors (or our enemies... perhaps especially our enemies)... you understand the thought. Climbing down from our notions of piety, we realize, "the forgiveness of our trespasses [is given] according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us," trading our false notions of righteousness for a LAVISH gift. It is not out of obligation that we receive simply the least amount necessary for our salvation, we receive lavish grace. We bring to God our pittance, and we receive a flood of grace. The grace washes over us and refuses to be grasped or claimed, but can only be shared. This is the revealed secret, God as human in order to draw humanity to himself, flooding us with the intangible that we might point to the ineffable.
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