Saturday: Repent, for the Ecumenical Church Is at Hand?
WEEK 29
SATURDAY
REPENT, FOR THE ECUMENICAL CHURCH IS AT HAND?
Ephesians 2:12-18
We come now to our final day on the consideration of the mastery of pessimism about our planet and its future. The future belongs to the kingdom and to those who are trained for the kingdom.
We haven’t been trained for the kingdom. We train our ministers for the Methodist ministry, the Episcopalian, the Baptist, the Presbyterian, and so on. But we don’t train them for the kingdom. We don’t train them to see everything from the kingdom viewpoint and outlook. We are trying to train them to the Ecumenical Church outlook, which is good but not good enough. For suppose you go out and say, “Repent, for the Ecumenical Church is at hand”; what will happen? The people will shrug their shoulders and say, “What’s that?” You are confronting people with the relativism of the church instead of confronting them with the absolute kingdom. Note the difference: If I go out and say, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand,” you don’t shrug your shoulders; you bend the knee! For this is the Absolute, confronting all relativisms with an imperious demand, “Repent, submit, and be redeemed.” That viewpoint takes away the tentative, the halfway, and gives us the conqueror’s tread.
It makes us vital and fresh. Jesus said, “‘Therefore, every legal expert [scribe] who has been trained as a disciple for the kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who brings old and new things out of their treasure chest’” (Matt 13:52). Now a scribe is the last person you would have expected to bring forth the new. He was a copyist. He created nothing; he copied the past. But even the dry-as-dust copyist becomes creative if he gets hold of the kingdom and is trained in it. Everything is lighted up, takes on freshness and vitality, when you get hold of the Absolute and the Absolute gets hold of you. Then you become trained in receptivity: “let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom” (Heb 12:28 RSV)—receiving! The kingdom does not come by trying or struggling but by surrender and receiving. That opens its powers to all. You don’t have to be worthy; you have to be willing. You don’t build the kingdom; you receive it—God’s highest gift!
O Lord, I thank you that I do not have to build the kingdom; that would mean strain. But I can receive the kingdom, all its powers at my disposal. I thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I shall train myself in receptivity totally. I shall learn to take, to assimilate, to receive.