You’ve heard me say this before: If you’ve been reading the devotional for a while, being shrewd isn’t necessarily the same thing as being wise. The reason is an evil man can be shrewd and calculating, but only a good man can be truly wise. That doesn’t mean that shrewdness is always evil. Far from it: our Lord told his disciples in Matthew 10:6, “Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” And he meant: Be aware of your surroundings. Be awake to consequences. And be on the lookout for both danger and opportunity. That means that being a shrewd businessman or a shrewd politician or even a shrewd leader may mean being a good steward of your gifts and your goals.

But this shrewdness must always be governed by love. The second it becomes self-serving it will always become evil. Always. The truth is you and I have known the challenges of those whom we’ve experienced as calculating people in our lives. You’ve met them; I’ve met them. I bet you can think of several instances in your life when someone was manipulative and self-serving in their actions toward you. You may even be honest enough to remember when you were like that toward somebody else. The truth is, when smart moves become unloving and self-serving, they always degenerate into broken trust and broken relationships.

But isn’t that the way our human relationship always are? Our relationships aren’t always neat and clean, as most of us like to pretend. And yet, because of our Orthodox Christian faith, we know that it’s precisely relationships where our faith is supposed to transform us into Christlike persons. It’s in the crucible of relationships where the hardest work of being Orthodox on purpose takes place. And there are going to be some messy times in that journey of lifelong relationships.

In our gospel lesson today, we see the Lord Jesus deal with some fairly messy relationships himself. You’ve read here how volatile the Lord’s relationships were with the religious leaders of his day. They for the most part simply didn’t understand or they didn’t agree with his ministry or his message. They felt he was a threat to their status quo. Well, of course they were right about the last one; he was, and frankly still is, a threat to all ossified leadership that has forgotten the dynamics of love and have reduced leadership in the faith to mere shrewdness, or reduced even our beautiful Orthodox faith to merely a religion.

Look at our gospel lesson in Luke 20:1-8:

At that time, as Jesus was teaching the people in the temple and preaching the Gospel, the chief priests and the scribes with the elders came up and said to him, “Tell us by what authority you are doing these things and who is it that gave you this authority.” He answered them, “I also will ask you a question. Now, tell me, was the baptism of John from heaven or from men?” And they discussed it with one another, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say, ‘Why did you not believe him?’ but if we say, ‘From men,’ all the people will stone us, for they are convinced that John was a prophet.” So they answered that they did not know whence it was, and Jesus said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”

Well, as usual, the Lord is speaking out on the truth and, because he speaks with such authority, the people listen to him and follow his words. The religious leaders asked the Lord, “By what authority are you doing this?” Jesus, knowing their hearts, turns this around on them and questions their own insight into the very nature of authority. And the religious leaders, fearing the crowds, refused to answer the Lord’s question, and so he responds, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”

Notice, the Lord was so completely at peace with himself he felt no need to satisfy the self-serving challenges of the religious leaders of his day. He responds to their shrewdness with peace and with a clear revelation of who they really were and who he really is.

Today, your inner spiritual discipline will create a clear sense of purpose and humility in your own heart. The internal work, diligently pursued, will serve you when you face the messy times in any relationship. This consistent spiritual development in your own heart, this seeing your own sins and putting your best energies toward your devotion to Jesus Christ will both equip you to be aware of those around you and to love them enough to refuse to be captured by their fears and their selfish needs and motivations. It will also set you free to actually be in healthy relationships that both reveal your own spiritual needs and the needs of the other without shame or condemnation. Sounds like heaven, doesn’t it? Well, that’s because it is.

Today, is your inner sense of self so mature and well-formed as to allow you the freedom to be at peace in your interactions with others, or do you find yourself calculating how to manipulate the situation to be in your favor? Do your words and actions carry authority of servanthood and love, or do you find yourself adjusting your words to fit the people you’re speaking to? Hard questions, to be sure, but this is the only path to a lifestyle of true repentance and true freedom in the authority of love. This is the only path to being Orthodox on purpose.