Friday of the 33rd Week in Course 2024
The Book we call “Revelations” is surely one of the most complex literature items ever written or read. Yet these words have within them a sure picture of the reality of God’s plan. To state that plan simply: God created humans in His own image and gave simple rules for making that image day by day an experienced Truth. God wanted us to be His adopted children. Tempted by the Serpent, whom we call Satan, the Adversary, humans decided to make their own way, to take a cheaper path. It did not work. We who were never supposed to die by plan “A” would have to die by plan “B.” So the Father sent His Son as His perfect image and as the perfect human to take our death upon Himself so that He might earn for us His own eternal life.
But Revelations says this in different, mysterious, poetic language. In chapter 5, read yesterday, we saw God seated on His throne, the place of mercy and judgement, holding a scroll, sealed up. Our judgement is locked up within it. There was lament because no mere human or angel was worthy to open and read the scroll. But then the Lamb was revealed, standing as if slain. In other words, Jesus displayed His mortal wounds to the heavens, and He was worthy to make what is written real. He is the Eternal Word.
The sequalae revealed is five chapters long, full of storm and fire and earthquake, God’s judgement against the evil done by humanity. This led to today’s chapter 10, in which an angel gives a little scroll, already open, to the narrator, John, to eat. Sweet in the mouth and sour in the tummy, it was, prophecies to the world from God Almighty, “about many peoples and nations and tongues and kings.” These will lead us to the vision of the final victory over sin and hell and death by the Lamb and those He redeems.
St. Luke does not spend a lot of words on the merchants who have taken over the Court of the Gentiles in His day, trading in doves and goats for sacrifice. But He quotes from the prophet, saying as justification for the overthrow of trade: “My house shall be a house of prayer'; but you have made it a den of robbers."
Now a comment on our psalm today: this is from psalm 119, which is a very long hymn to God’s law. If we study St. Paul’s writings, we might get the idea that he is not very sweet on Torah. But that would be entirely wrong. He knew this psalm and probably prayed it: “How sweet are thy words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! Thy testimonies are my heritage forever; yea, they are the joy of my heart.” What Paul denied is the power of the Law to save humans from eternal death and sin. He should have known. Nobody was more zealous of keeping all the six hundred plus commands of Torah than Paul. But He realized from His reading and experience that this kind of work does not make us like Christ, capable of entering God’s presence. Only living through faith in love of God and love of neighbor can do that, and only through God’s freely-given, freely-accepted grace is that possible. If we realize that and live that way, then keeping the Ten Commandments and acting out the corporal and spiritual works of mercy will be sweeter than honey to the tongue. Let’s do that today.
