There is deep wisdom here from our ancestors in the faith. When our way of being in relationship with God isn’t working, as evidenced by all the pain and suffering in our world, and everything comes tumbling down, God’s approach will become stronger, and God will break into our lives in a new and more intimate way. We don’t even have to do anything to make that happen. In fact, resistance is futile, both resistance to the destruction of old ways of life and resistance to God’s advances.
Friends, he is not kidding. He’s not exaggerating. He’s not even using a parable. He is giving us a concrete example of how to live, and I don’t like it. I don’t like it because I worry it might be too hard for me. I hear that same worry creeping in when the disciples respond, “Lord, increase our faith!” Underneath those words, what they’re really asking is, “Lord, make us miraculously better at forgiveness,” or even “Lord, make things easier for us.”