The Bitterness of Mortality and Divine Madness

The Bitterness of Immortality and the Divine Madness
Text: Acts 2:14-47

What must we do to be saved? This is the question the multitude posed to St. Peter, after his sermon on Joel’s Prophecy and the Exaltation of Jesus Christ. It is a question asked by a myriad of voices ringing throughout the ages; and the one each of us, who would be true to the divine call, cannot fail to ask.
The question is one born of both pain and desire- a desire for more than our current estate. It is not a materialistic desire but a spiritual one. The multitude “was cut to the heart” when they asked St. Peter this question; and St. Paul adds clarity to such interior pain,
“We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now: and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8.22-23).
There is then this inner spiritual agony, ache, travail and restlessness within us that groans in psychic pain for transformation and transcendence. Robert Browning eloquently captures the bitterness of this desire for something that our bodies cannot attain for us:

“We struggle, fain to enlarge
our bounded physical recipiency,
Increase our power, supply fresh oil to life,
Repair the waste of age and sickness: no,
It skills not! Life’s inadequate to joy,
As the soul sees joy, tempting life to take.”

And again,

“It is so horrible
I dare at times imagine to my need
Some future state revealed to us by Zeus (God)
Unlimited in its capability
For joy, as this is in the desire for joy…
Freed by the throbbing impulse we call death,
We burst there as the worm into the fly
Who, while a worm still, wants his wings…”

Is not this same torment rendered poetically by Browning the same bitterness and desire of our own current estate” –Who, though we are each but “a worm still, wants his wings?” There is in each one of us a Divine Ache- the desire for transformation, to transform from a worm into a beautiful butterfly. Can anyone deny our own desire to have our own wings? Yet, the bitterness of desire remains!

But what of the answer? The cure, the remedy the Great Apostle enjoins, is no less fearful or dangerous than the question or the desire which we ask in our own psychic groaning,
“Repent and be baptized everyone of you in the Name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2.38).

Repentance. The first ingredient of our divine antidote is Repentance- from the greek word, metanoia, meaning to turn around, to change direction. It is a word, which for us who would be Christians, is often so common as to be stripped of its meaning. It is a word that should sound like a Trumpet of War, a buglers call to arms, to action! It is a call for us to completely turn away from our old life, our own ways of thinking, our own agendas; and to turn around and embrace a new and different life. It is not merely a turning from left to right, but a complete “about-face,” to walk, No, to march in a completely different direction!
It is a call to Radical Discipleship, of a complete and total commitment to our Lord Jesus Christ. It demands a complete surrender of our own

-UNFINISHED_