by Dr. Michael Carreker
Thomas Cranmer placed this remarkable phrase at the center of his prayer of thanksgiving. Comprehensive in its meaning and very satisfying, the idea plumbs the depths of the spirit, without leaving our frailty behind.
What a due sense
might mean to an age and culture wholly submerged in a torrent of images is onerous to consider and of little profit. We might remark on the various ways the images present themselves, convene conferences to deconstruct them, and award ourselves on the best analysis. Then, at best, we would resemble the strange citizens of Plato’s cave. We would have made no real progress in what it means to be human, much less become the children of God.
The proper beginning is with more concrete forms. “Consider the lilies,” preaches the Master of images. Cast your sight on their glorious array. Set yourself to subtle scents. And consider. There is a world here, “heaven in a wild flower,” unlike those flickering shadows of technological craft. The lilies defy our presumed independence. But they are not proud. They proclaim a creative power of incomparable beauty. They reach out to summon our gaze, to elicit our consideration, in order that we may learn. They are jealous for us. Their color and fragrance demand that our sight be not all knowledge, but pleasure as well.
Heartfelt thanksgiving becomes these heavenly wild flowers. Without them our earthiness, “frail and susceptible to nervous shock,” would be craven to the techno-image. After all, we are flesh and blood, beings for whom imagination is more than mere images. We partake of memory and hearing; we may consider. Without the lilies of the field we scrape and groan in the cave; but with them we think on things divine and glorious. The lilies are jealous to possess our gaze, and in doing so we take them with us up toward God and adore the Beauty that is very far off.
Such consideration is our due sense: our souls ordered to what is below and to what is above. Each has its place, moving in the integrity of related forms, in rhythm and harmony, giving and receiving beauty, taking and bestowing thought, onward and upward to the ever living splendor of God. And yet, this is not all that is due.
The fact of our tendency to remain content with impoverished similitudes demonstrates our condition. “There is no health in us.” Lack of health is not a momentary slip: it is a fallen being. Apart from the grace of God in Jesus Christ, the contemplation of lilies is a momentary dream. It is hard for us to seek the kingdom first, when the flowers of the field, our daily bread, and this whole wide world are burdened with cruel extensions of the self. As such, we do not consider, we consume.
But the grace of God in Christ is real, and so may be our thanksgiving. The due sense of our souls extends to what God has done in the Man who took our sensation as his own. His inestimable love remakes the unmade in us. His grace falls on us “as the gentle rain from heaven.” And we are clothed, even as the lilies, with every human art and skill. We are remade in the act of thanksgiving. Our every fiber and inkling call to order all that is in us and around us. We look from the majesty on high, if only for a moment, and we gain a glimpse of heavenly light, and a taste of new wine, and a sense of the glory that shall be.
And when we do, we are changed, not wholly, for that is reserved for vision - face to face - but we are changed nonetheless. That due sense is made incarnate in a further sense - of duty. What we have known in the free gift and the awakening of conscience has ennobled our soul to act. And we too become agents of grace, informing our world, just as the lilies of the field have informed us. That due sense is at last the only sense which can be and is eternal: the Body of Christ.
