Eucharistic meditation, First Sunday After Epiphany

Ecclesiastes 3:14: I know that everything God does will remain forever; there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take from it, for God has so worked that men should fear Him.

We saw in the sermon this morning that God has designed the world so that we can live well only if we live by faith. We cannot know what time it will be tomorrow. It may be a time to die, a time to uproot, a time to build, a time to mourn, a time to tear apart, a time for love. God controls the times, and does everything appropriate in His time. But we can't see that this is the case, and so we must simply trust Him in the vaporous world.

The world is also designed, Solomon tells us, so that we will fear God. Fear of God is not some "soteriological" stance, some supernatural way of life that transcends the natural. It is the stance that is natural in this kind of world, in a world whose times are governed by God. We should stand in awe of Him, and worship Him, for He has "so worked that men should fear Him."

But we can say more than that. The world is not only designed for the life of faith but is designed for a life of self-sacrifice. Solomon says that there is no guarantee of profit, and it is foolish to try to grasp for profit or gain, to hold on to things. We can't know if that's the right thing to do or not. Instead of trying to grasp our times, our resources, or energies for our own advantage, we should just give our lives away. Our lives are going to go away whatever we do; we might as well adjust ourselves to the vapor.

This table commemorates and is the self-gift of Jesus Christ. It commemorates His self-giving death, and every week He gives Himself anew as our food through the Spirit. As a commemoration of the self-giving of Jesus our Head, it is also a call to give ourselves for one another; it is a call to each of us to imitate Jesus and lay down our lives for our friends.

From the perspective of Ecclesiastes, this meal calls us to reorient ourselves to reality. It is a call to renounce the insane pursuit of gain, the mad belief that we can control the times and take dominion over tomorrow. It is a call to follow the wisdom of Jesus, and follow it with joy – the wisdom of Jesus that says, "Whoever seeks to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it."

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, January 08, 2006 at 10:01 AM

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