Obedience

If there is one word in the English language that is bound to infuriate me, it is the word “obedience”. I have a visceral reaction to it. A naturally compliant person, I can only imagine how other, more rebellious types react.

Obedience was a stated requirement at home, at school and, of course, at church. We were to obey God, the priest, parents, teachers, civil authorities and anyone who was placed in authority over us. “All authority comes from God”. I've read that in the Bible myself.

Such a lot of obeying. How did any of us survive?

As a parent, myself, I never used this word with my children. I did ask them to do some things and refrain from doing others. Sometimes it worked out. Other times it did not. But I could not “pull rank” on them. The word “obedience” was not employed.

So decades later, when I think I am finally freed of this oppressive concept, I am reading Macrina Wiederkehr’s wonderful book Abide on lectio divina and she tells her readers to “take the scriptural passages in obedience”. We must obey the passage. She says, “When you have finished reading the assigned Scripture text, it is time to LISTEN OBEDIENTLY” (emphasis hers) “Many of us are not eager for obedience,” she understates. I feel the old resistance stiffening my spine, but I proceed on trust.

Continuing, Macrina writes, “The obedience referred to here, though, is a listening so deep we are drawn into the Spirit of Jesus and given a wisdom that enables us to know how to respond to the Word…. You are being invited to be formed by the Word of God”.

formed by the word of God...

The assigned texts are not always passages of moral teachings. In one instance, Jesus prays to be glorified in his Apostles. How can I obey that? The next one was the “vine and the branches” speech. There is something to obey there; be fruitful or you’ll get pruned. I don’t like ultimatums, but I decided I would take the passages into myself. I tried to accept them as if they were quite natural to me, almost as if I might have written them myself. Was this obedience?

Obedience plays a big part in Scripture. Abraham’s obedience. Adam’s disobedience. Israel’s disobedience. Jesus’ obedience. I begin to wonder if there isn't more to obedience than I’d been given to understand in grade school.

I look closely at Abraham’s obedience. It is stunning. He looks up to God and God tells him to move here, to move there, to separate from his kinsman, Lot. Then drastically he is asked to offer his own son, Isaac, as a sacrifice, and, even then, he is prepared to obey. Without question. It is as if he had been formed by the Word of God.

How to understand such obedience? Is it ignorance? Is it blindness? Does he not care about these people or this place? Is he a puppet?

Paul again and again cites the faithfulness of Abraham. It is what sets Abraham apart; it is what made God choose him to be the patriarch of his people. This gift that Abraham has is more than what I have understood as obedience; it’s a oneness of will. Abraham’s will is one with God’s will. His faith which “was reckoned righteousness” is such that he can receive the will of God as if it is his own. In fact, it is his own. He is that faithful.

For the sake of contrast, let’s look at an instance of disobedience, the most famous one, the sin of Adam and Eve. Here are two humans who have definitely been formed by the Word of God. Their union with God was perfect. And yet, they flouted the one rule they were given. There were not asked to give up anything precious or to inconvenience themselves at all.

In many ways their disobedience is as hard to fathom as is Abraham’s obedience.  But their disobedience, their disunion with God, their failure to be formed by God’s Word is the emblematic act of our fall, our imperfection.

Paul likes to consider Jesus as the corrective of Adam (and Eve) and, by extension, all of humanity. Jesus is the supreme example of obedience, receiving the Father’s will as his own. His birth, his life, his ministry and his passion and death, were all taken in obedience out of a shared will, a common purpose, manifesting the perfection of faith. Thus our redemption.

If we seek unity with God, this obedience is part it. This is not like eating your vegetables or being quiet during class or cleaning your room. 

This is the big time. This is about being formed by the Word of God.  

God is seeking to perfect his creation and each one of us in Christ is asked to make that task ours as well. It’s an invitation, not a commandment. Our paths are constantly being revealed to us. God is gently shining a light on them.

Will we obey? Will I?