Contempt for the World

Tuesday of Lent 2
2 March 2010

Old people begin to despise earthly food and possessions. Sometimes they just forget to eat, because their bodies are no longer receiving the signals from their nervous systems that make the rest of us hungry. Food itself has no pleasure for them because their palette is dulled by decrepitude or their digestive system rebels against luxurious foods. Even now I can no longer eat and enjoy the foods that were once a great pleasure to me in my youth. Many of us know elderly people who, as they draw closer to the heavenly kingdom, begin to give away their earthly property. They make sure their last will and testament is up to date or they just begin to give away their Wedgewood tea set, prized tool kit, or art collection to their friends and relatives. Such things are no longer useful or a source of pleasure to them. They are thinking beyond such things. It is a sign of heavenly mindedness. They are exhibiting an ever greater contempt of and scorn for the pleasures and needs of this life.

We ought always to hold the world in that same scorn and contempt, but we struggle to do it in our younger and our spiritually immature days. We love the world too much. When our eyesight is the best, we don't see thorns because we are so taken by the roses. It takes us some piercings to look for the thorns and to stop loving the world so much. As our eyes dim, we see much better. The Lord teaches us that most things for which we reach are not worth holding. The sweetness of life sours with losses and troubles. The world's glory becomes ash in our mouths as we age. As our bodies fail we learn to love them less. In the end we hate them because they are signs of our decay unto death. This is as it should be.

Only then do we begin to savor the promise of the life to come, in which what is only hinted at here is given to us in its fullness. On this side of the grave we experience only signs of what is to come, seeing as we do through a glass darkly (1 Co 13:12). On the other side of the grave those grey and shadowed hints will blossom into vibrant and vivacious color. We have glimpses of this only through the preaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments among us. When we are focused in these then the contempt with which the world needs to be held becomes clearer to us.

Martin Luther

"How difficult a thing faith is; it is not learned and grasped as easily and quickly as those sated and scornful spirits imagine who immediately exhaust everything contained in the Scriptures. The weakness and struggle of the flesh with the spirit in the saints is ample testimony how weak their faith still is. For a perfect faith would soon bring a perfect contempt and scorn for this present life. If we could conceive and state for a certainty that God is our Father and that we are His sons and heirs, the world would immediately seem vile to us, with everything that it regards as precious, such as righteousness, wisdom, kingdoms, power, crowns, riches, pleasures, etc. We would not be so concerned about food, nor would we attach our hearts so firmly to physical things and their presence would not give us confidence and their removal would not produce dejection and even despair. But we would do everything with the greatest love, humility, and patience. (Of course, the heretics boast of these things; but in fact there is no one more unfeeling, proud, and impatient than they are.) But now, as long as our flesh is powerful, our faith weak, and our spirit infirm, we act in the opposite way. Paul says correctly that in this life we have only the first fruits of the Spirit (Rm 8:23) and that therefore we shall have ten times more there in heaven."

Martin Luther, Commentary on Galatians, loc. cit.