Consumed

Propers: The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 28), A.D. 2017 A

Homily:

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

And He will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; He will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of His people He will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.

It’s passages like these that keep me going.

I don’t know that the Gospel message has been more relevant to a society than it is to ours today. We really have gone mad, you and I. Our appetites have been unfettered. We spend our lives working jobs we don’t like for stuff we don’t need, accruing debt to fill up our houses in a vain attempt to fill the hole in our hearts. I’m as guilty of this as anyone.

We’ve become so interconnected that we’ve been disconnected, filtering reality through screens, through televisions and laptops and smartphones. We value people not for who they are but for what they can do for us—whether they affirm our prejudices or entertain our boredoms or gratify our desires. We love things as if they were people and use people as if they were things. Lord, have mercy; Christ, have mercy; Lord, have mercy.

The ancient Greeks, clever folk that they were, distinguished between two types of knowledge. There was episteme, which is knowing what a thing is, and techne, which is knowing how to use it. We’ve lost this distinction. We no longer ponder things in and of themselves; their purpose, their meaning, their reason; what it is that they truly are. We only wonder what they can do for us, how they can be utilized, customized, and consumed. Even our bodies. Everything, and now everyone, has become technology—something we can use, and ultimately discard.

I see so many people in our society wandering about, unable to make human connections, unable to find meaning or purpose in their livelihoods, because we’ve all been told that there’s no such thing as purpose, or that we make it up for ourselves. And that’s nihilism, folks. Nothing matters except what we will, and even that stops at the almighty dollar. And we wonder why deaths of despair have skyrocketed in recent decades, why people seek solace in opiates, why lone gunmen shoot up crowds!

Because why not? If nothing matters, if nothing’s real, if the world really is all about my desires and my rage when they are frustrated—why not harm ourselves? Why not harm strangers? Why not treat people as if they were trash, disposable, to be used and discarded? After all, it’s not like they’re real.

Violence and despair and mass shootings are not aberrations to our way of life. They are, in fact, the logical outcome of the values professed by a consumerist society. And don’t get me started on sex. We applaud those who objectify human beings for our titillation, and then feign surprise when our children treat one another as objects. They’re just doing what they’ve been taught.

When everything in life is for our consumption, we consume each other.

Amidst such madness, the clarion call of the Gospel rings out as our beacon of hope, the cry of our liberation. People are more than just things, the prophet declares. And life is more than the belly!—which doesn’t just mean the stomach, mind you, but the lower regions in general. This world was created good. It was created out of love and mercy and superabundant grace, and so were we. So was each and every one of us, every human being whom you have ever met, created in the Image of God; imbued, by our Creator, with dignity and purpose and freedom which cannot be done away with, cannot be simply used and consumed, by the engines of government or the appetites of the mob. We are all of us children of God.

All the things we’re told are so important—fleeting pleasures and social pressures and garages full of junk we’ll never use—all of that is drek. All of it is passing away. But goodness and truth and beauty—the wonders of Creation freely given and freely shared, the highest and most noble accomplishments of inspired human souls—these are eternal. These will continue on forever, glorious and joyful and free.

See, we ignore death in our society because we’re scared of it. We sweep our elderly into hospitals and homes, we send a volunteer military half a world away to die, we pay undertakers to make it look like grandma is “only sleeping”—all because death puts the lie to all of our nonsense. Death cancels out our checkbooks and vacation photos and fashionable clothes, our bucket lists and university degrees. Death tells us that we can consume all we want for a season but at the end of the ride the grave is waiting to consume us.

And so our only hope, dear people, lies in those things which will outlive death. Our only hope is in the one who has conquered death. He will make a feast for all peoples, a feast of rich foods filled with marrow, and of well-aged wines strained clear. It will be a feast given freely, given to all the undeserving, without merit or distinction or price. And it will not be the feast that this world offers—a perishing feast, quickly enjoyed and more quickly spoiled—but it will be the eternal wedding feast of Jesus Christ, the Lamb who was slain, and who has claimed us as His Bride.

And He will destroy on this mountain—the mountain of Golgotha, the mountain of the Cross—the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; He will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of His people He will take away from all the earth. It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for Him, so that He might save us.

My brothers and my sisters—you are not your clothes. You are not your job. You are not your checkbook or your shopping list or your khakis. You are not things to be used up and thrown away. You are the children of God. Every single one of us, every moment of our lives, is formed in His own Image, reflecting the Goodness and Truth and Beauty of God each in our own unique way. Your life has meaning, and an eternal destiny far greater than the grave.

And far beyond this world, when the cares of this life have passed away, there is a place reserved for you at the wedding feast of the Lamb, a place no other could fill. At that glorious Resurrection, when God calls all His people home, He will dry our every tear and do away with our every disgrace. Every victim of violence, neglect, and despair will be raised up from the grave, every wrong set right, every wound made whole. And He will swallow up death forever.

That is the reality of things. That’s what’s really real. All the rest will pass away.

Come now, and receive a foretaste of the feast to come.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.