Hasting to Heaven

Whether we liken it to transitioning from milk to solid food or moving from childhood to adulthood, making spiritual progress is a process that takes time and doesn’t come without struggle.

In New Starts in Life and Other Sermons (1896), the Right Reverend Phillips Brooks includes some weighty thoughts in “The Tares and the Wheat.” There’s no quick fix in this parable; the wheat has to continue growing alongside the tares until harvesttime. Here are some excerpts from his sermon:

No parable of Jesus more than the Parable of the Tares gives us His general view of human life. In it the everlasting problems lie in the sunshine of His celestial wisdom. […] Now, the parable of the tares goes farther than the statement of this fact — the fact that prolonged struggle is necessary for spiritual triumph, that the victory over sin cannot be an instantaneous thing. […] Here is your child. […] how shall you set him right? Is not the whole problem of your education this — to educate the will and not to break it. […] “Let both grow together until the harvest.” […] The time will come when the good may shake itself free from the evil and go its way, unhindered, unendangered, with no prospect save of ever-ripening and increasing goodness forever. What would life be without such a promise? […] Your will is to be trained and strengthened by choosing to be good where it is perfectly possible for you to be bad. This is to go on year after year, year after year, till it has done in you a work which this, and nothing except this, can do, and then, not until then, shall come another condition, which then, and not until then, shall be possible, in which struggle shall be over, and without a danger of wickedness you shall be over, and without a danger of wickedness you shall go on ripening in holiness in the unhindered sunshine of God forever. That is the harvest. […] Struggle until, through struggle, struggle is outgrown. Is there any nobler picture of life which a brave, strong, patient man could ask than that. That is what Christ offers in His parable. May He help us all to feel the beauty and inspiration of that life, and to attempt it and live it by His grace (20-35).

“Struggle until, through struggle, struggle is outgrown.” See it through to the end. St. Paul writes to the Philippians: “Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12).

Similarly, Martin Thornton concludes Christian Proficiency with these reprising thoughts:

If one reader is encouraged to experiment with Rule and direction, and to re-think his religious life in terms of workmanlike proficiency, then I do not think I shall have wasted my time. […] serious training and slow struggle, not brilliance but stamina, is God’s chosen way (175-176).

Hebrews 12 encourages us in this slow struggle as it admonishes us to run the race with patience.

Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God (Hebrews 12: 1-2).

For the joy set before us, we keep on keeping on. Our struggle here is far from dismal drudgery, though. Brooks reminds us that God inspires us and helps us to “feel the beauty” in the midst of our struggling. This ultimate joy awaits us, but, by God’s grace, the journey is also marked by unspeakable joys along the way.