SUNDAY SERMON: Fear not punishment, but love righteousness

Seek to find your delight in God, and then you will be free. PHOTO | FILE

What you need to know:

  • Some disciples have faith — but it is a faith motivated mainly by fear.
  • But as St Augustine put it: As long as you act out of fear, God is no delight to you. Seek, instead, to find your delight in Him, and then you will be free.
  • Fear not punishment, but love righteousness. Are you unable to delight in living a holy life?
  • Continue to fear punishment until you have the grace to find your joy in righteousness.

Holy men and women are all different from each other. This is true, even if we look only at those in the Bible, beginning with those of the Old Testament.

How different the Prophet Elijah from King David or Sarah the wife of Abraham from Deborah the Judge. How different the Virgin Mary, who was “full of grace” before she became the “Mother of the Lord”, from that other Mary who was “possessed by seven demons” before she met Jesus.

John the Evangelist was able to describe himself as the “disciple that Jesus loved”. Simon the Fisherman was obviously a different kind of man. He was given a unique role in the early Church when Jesus changed his name.

Simon was a word in Christ’s mother tongue meaning someone who listens. Kephas was the word for rock — not just a loose rock, lying around in plain sight, but more like the rock that today we call bedrock.

Again, if we try to compare Salome, the mother of James and John, with Martha, the woman in Bethany who welcomed Jesus into her home, we see a striking difference.

Salome pushes her two sons forward eager to see them promoted to the highest positions in God’s kingdom. Martha seems more worried about the affairs of the house and wonders why Jesus allows Mary to sit at his feet, apparently idle, while she has to do all the work alone in the kitchen.

When looking for a common element in all these different personalities, it’s hard to zero in on just one quality. Of course, the Bible helps us by teaching us to focus on the faith of all these men and women. But I think it also helps to focus on something else the Bible insists on, albeit less forcefully.

The great bishop Augustine once gave a wonderful sermon on this topic noting how the true disciple of our Lord will be noted not just by his or her faith but also by something called “delight”.

Some disciples have faith — but it is a faith motivated mainly by fear. Not that there is anything wrong with fear. Even the great apostle Paul speaks of living out our faith “in fear and trembling”, i.e., avoiding the pride of the Pharisee who thinks he can stand before God and demand a reward for good behaviour.

As St Augustine put it: “As long as you act out of fear, God is no delight to you. Seek, instead, to find your delight in Him, and then you will be free.

Fear not punishment, but love righteousness. Are you unable to delight in living a holy life? Continue to fear punishment until you have the grace to find your joy in righteousness.”