One Thing

I wonder which scripture came to your mind?

Possibly Psalm 27:4 as we hum,
“One Thing I ask for and that shall I seek                                                                                                                                       To dwell in the house of the Lord.”

But if there is a hierarchy of scripture, I favor Jesus words about Mary over David’s to God.

“Only One Thing is needful…and Mary has chosen the better part.”(Luke 10:42)

I believe worship should be a marriage of stating objective truth and expressing subjective experience. I think Charles Wesley got a good balance.

Nowadays however our hymnody seems to again have been evangelized by “The Century of the Self” and has lost that balance singing more about what we feel or think about God or what we want from God than about God himself and a response to the completed work of Christ!

I can’t remember the tune to:

“One Thing I ask for and that shall I seek                                                                                                                      To obey the voice of the Lord”  : – ))

This year during the lenten season we have been pondering John’s gospel. Time and again Jesus reminds us of how his love is demonstrated in his heartfelt obedience to the Father.

For me this simplifies the life of faith to One Thing, which I summarize this way,

“Love who and what I have set in front of you – right now.”

What that looks like can only be revealed for each one of us as we learn to abide in Him and be instructed each moment by the Spirit within.

For Jesus it was no different,

“The Sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue to know the word that sustains the weary. Morning by morning He waken my ear to hear like one being taught. The Sovereign Lord has opened my ear…and I was not rebellious” (Is. 50:4-9)

…….even on that last morning of Gethsemane, sensing where things were going, he nonetheless double checked with the Father in the garden how that day was meant to end.

The One Thing Jesus is recorded as telling us specifically to learn from Him is meekness and humility of heart….resulting in rest for our souls. He address’s this direction to those who are “weary” (Matt 11:28-30)

Thus He simply divides the world into just two groups…….those who are “weary” and those who are submissively receiving a word from Father to sustain those who are weary.

May we be of those who are daily migrating from the first group to the second!

P.S. My friend Jim Hart also does a good job of balanced worship as President of the Institute of Worship Studies. I received his seasonal meditation this morning.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, Who, though he was in the form of God,      did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,  but emptied himself,      by taking the form of a servant,      being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form,      he humbled himself      by becoming obedient to the point of death,           even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him      and bestowed on him the name that is above every name,  so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,      in heaven and on earth and under the earth,  and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,      to the glory of God the Father. —Philippians 2:5-11, ESV

Dear Paul, A blessed Triduum to you and yours! The hymn text above from Paul’s letter to the Philippians is one of the most beautiful summaries of the story of Jesus the Christ found in scripture. The self-emptying love (or Kenosis) of the Incarnate God is at the very center of the entire biblical narrative. We read that the only Son of God did not consider equality with God as something to be grasped at, but in contrast, took on the scandal of the deepest fear of all mankind: an ignominious, painful, agonizing and humiliating death and descent into the lowest region of God-forsakenness. The focus of this hymn stands in stark contrast to the narrative of another biblical figure, said also to bear the very image of God, who did attempt to cling to equality with God—Adam. The primal sin of Adam was the arrogant grasping after God, and we, fellow sinners, have inherited the same propensity. We want to be God. In his Kenosis, Christ Jesus reverses this sin of Adam, reconciling, restoring and healing all of us, in fact all of creation, to true union with God. Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote, “Basically, in Jesus Christ’s death, Descent into Hell and Resurrection, only one reality is there to be seen: the love of the triune God for the world, a love which can only be perceived through a co-responsive love.” One more important detail: von Balthasar continues, “The founding of the Church is not an end in itself…. It is the whole world which is reconciled with God through the Cross and Resurrection of Christ (Col. 1:19ff). And yet the achieved reconciliation has need of the Church’s ministry in its service – a ministry which constitutes, according to Paul, the meaning of the mission Christ has conferred.” In other words, in this great act of God’s self-giving love in Christ we also see, hear, and are summoned to the call to mission. As we enter into the core of Holy Week, let us remember with “co-responsive love” the costly, immense sacrifice of our Savior, bearing our arrogance, humiliation and sorrow. But let us also enter into the victory of Christ, celebrating the fullness of God’s love, the divine life that reaches out to reconcile all humankind and all of creation to God. Remember. The Lord be with you, James R. Hart, President