Co-conspiring With the Divine

Church,

What would it mean for your heart to be co-conspiring with the Divine even at a level beyond your awareness? What would be different if we were as aware of our potential for accidental good as we are aware of our potential for accidental bad?

This is part of the good news we heard proclaimed in the sermon this past Sunday – God’s goodness is at work within you even beyond your own awareness. Beyond what your circumstances might suggest! 

The mystery of our own potential for badness, violence, or harm – let’s call it sin – often seems to be lurking around every corner. Something we fearfully avoid and look out for as we go about our daily lives.

The mystery of our own potential for goodness often is never considered. It’s as if we’ve received a narrative that we will be a part of the plan for everything good that happens through us.

Thought of separately, the logic laid out above may seem perfectly right and good; however, considered together the underlying assumptions begin to crystallize. Viewed this way, a life of righteousness requires nothing less than vigilance from us. The assumption is that if we aren’t careful there are all sorts of ways for us to sin on accident, and it’s up to us to squeeze even an ounce of righteous action from our lives.

Don’t hear what I’m not saying: it is important for us to reckon with our capability to harm others, whether intentionally or not, and it is important for us to put an effort toward doing good. In fact, the more we have learned about systemic sin over the last few years has stressed these points even further.

But what if God were present and at work in our lives even in ways that we don’t see or understand? What would that change about the way you see yourself or your role in being made new?

Submitting to God’s will for your life is consenting to the good work the divine is already up to inside you. It is saying ‘yes’ to the Holy Spirit’s invitation. Instead of trying to harness fear of doing wrong to motivate yourself, you are free to be drawn into the life of God through beauty and wonder.

Brothers and sisters, you are no longer slaves to sin, and you are free to consent to the good work the Spirit is already doing within you. May the Divine draw you further into the righteousness being birthed in you through beauty and wonder.

Fr. Spencer