Grace is sufficient

Sirach 44:19-45:5

4 For his faithfulness and meekness he consecrated him, choosing him out of all humankind.

Didn’t get much out of the OT verse today, but with a little Zen seasoning I got the glimmer of something or other. It’s in the grammar.

‘For (on account of) his faithfulness and meekness…..” So Moses’s true nature was ‘trustworthy and gentle.’ Out of fidelity and amiability, grace arises. Out of grace, consent and the duty to serve all sentient beings arises.’

Like I said, it’s just a glimmer, and I’m not at all satisfied with the results of my hunt through the thesaurus.

2 Corinthians 12:1-10

Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given to me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. 8Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, 9but he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.

This is Paul griping about boasting again. It’s pretty convoluted, but his understanding of Grace being sufficient shines through all the strange talk about some guy being “caught up to the third heaven” and learning stuff he’s not allowed to talk about. I think what he means to say is that being too elated and euphoric isn’t a good thing. Instead, he describes how his ‘thorn in the flesh’ gave him access to God’s grace, and prevented him from being so exuberant and enthusiastic that he gets all out of balance.

Luke 19:28-40

39Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, Teacher, order your disciples to stop. 40He answered, I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.

I was struck by the Pharisees telling Jesus to order his disciples to stop. It’s obvious why they thought that Jesus had the authority to order his disciples to do something, but why did they think (as they apparently did?) that Jesus would obey them? I mean, it’s obvious that they knew perfectly well that the disciples would disobey them, but why did they imagine that Jesus would do what they said? I don’t think they actually thought that, I think that they were just so upset at the insufferable things that people were shouting that they were beside themselves. Their boat was being rocked; chaos was invading their understanding of the world as it should be.

I think Jesus was telling them that it was too late, that their paradigm already had holes in it big enough to crawl through, and even if the crowd shut up, it would not be possible for them (the Pharisees) to go back to their comfortable world-view. He was saying reality is what it is, and wanting things to be different doesn’t make them so. Thus, “the stones would shout out.”