On Gathering and Scattering

 He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters (Matt. 12:30).

There it is, laid out in the simplest terms imaginable --- either we are for Him or against Him; either we gather with Him or we scatter.

One of the ancient terms for the devil is lo diabolo, meaning "to scatter" or separate.  And from the first pages of Genesis, we see the effects of the evil one -- to separate man from God, to separate man from wife, to separate brother from brother.  The cry of Cain is pitiful:  My punishment is more than I can bear. Today, you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever sees me will kill me (Gen. 4).  Adam and Eve passed on to the next generation their own separation from God, from one another, and from the fruitfulness of the land.  But, as every parent knows, the characteristics we pass on to our children are intensified in the next generation.  

The first eleven chapters of Genesis set the stage, form a backdrop, for the drama of redemption that begins in Chapter 12.  The final chapter of the prologue, Chapter 11, is the Tower of Babel, the ultimate separation, where men could not even understand the language spoken by one another, and "from there the Lord scattered them over the face of the earth," presumably so they would not all kill one another.

The remedy for man's tendency to separate and scatter is Abraham:  In you, all nations will be blessed. First, a family; then a tribe, then a nation/kingdom, and finally, Jesus, the King, who will gather the lost tribes of Israel and then the entire earth under one head, the kingdom of God.

When Jesus announced, "the kingdom of God is among you," the Jews of his time would have known what that meant -- the Messiah was to regather the lost and separated tribes of Israel and re-establish the kingdom of David.  So first the 12 apostles, representing the original 12 tribes of Israel, all descended from the 12 sons of Jacob/Israel.  But His kingdom was to extend even further -- to the Gentiles as well, according to His promise to Abraham:  all nations will bless themselves through you!

I have been reading recently The Way of a Pilgrim, a 19th-century Russian work recounting the adventures of a mendicant pilgrim.  Along the way, he meets various teachers, monks, fellow travelers, etc --- all of whom teach him something about the spiritual life.  Two of the "lessons" he learns impressed me so that I copied them myself:

The soul which is inwardly united to God becomes, in the greatness of its joy, like a good-natured, simple-hearted child, and now condemns no one, Greek, heathen, Jew, nor sinner, but looks at them all alike with sight that has been cleansed, finds joy in the whole world, and wants everybody ----Greeks and Jews and heathen --- to praise God.

The inward contemplative burns with so great a love that if it were possible he would have everyone dwell within him, making no difference between bad and good...So I advise you to lay aside your fierceness, and look upon everything as under the all-knowing providence of God, and when you meet with vexations, accuse yourself especially of lack of patience and humility (p.140). 

 This, it seems to me, is the ultimate 'gathering,' the refusal to alienate anyone.  The book of Romans tells us that the love of God is spread abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.  That is, what we are unable to achieve in our natural state -- to love God by our own effort, and to love others by overcoming our natural antipathy---God Himself achieves in us through the gift of the Holy Spirit -- His own Love.

When I look at our beloved country today, all I can see is separation.  The land itself mourns and grieves at man's alienation from it, at his complicity to destroy its beauty and fruitfulness.  And the peoples mourn and grieve at violence in the cities, in the country -- brother against brother, husband against wife, children against parents.  People cannot speak to their leaders with civility; people cannot speak to one another without guns and weapons.  We are destroying the land, our country, our families -- and there is no solution.

"The kingdom of God," the restoration of unity, our return to a Garden, is given to us in Jesus Christ.  He who is not with me is against me; he who does not gather with me scatters!  It's just that simple!