Sunday/Works

                          Sunday/Works

Today is the Fourth Sunday of Lent, hard to fathom in this Year of the Plague. The gospel is from part of Christ's conversation with Nicodemus. It is upbeat and hopeful with a dark assessment of man.

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world might be saved through him.
Whoever believes in him will not be condemned,
but whoever does not believe has already been condemned,
because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
And this is the verdict,
that the light came into the world,
but people preferred darkness to light,
because their works were evil.

"Works" here has caused a lot of trouble as in the history of Christianity; there have been groups who felt salvation could come from a good, if unbelieving, heart. Paul writes this:

For by grace you have been saved through faith,
and this is not from you; it is the gift of God;
it is not from works, so no one may boast.

Wars--presumably with good hearts--have been fought over these lines. Christ is clearly stating that He is essential to salvation, that no atheistic good heart will suffice. This is black-and-white. A decision must be made.

Hopkins suffered with moments of imagining a life without God, with only 'works'. This is from one of his Poems of Desolation:

                           'I wake and feel'

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.

With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood grimmed the curse.

Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.