A to B

Propers: The Third Sunday in Lent, A.D. 2018 B

Homily:

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

What is real to you?

This is an important question, because whatever we believe to be real determines how we live our lives. Conversely, the way we live our lives reveals even to ourselves what it is we believe to be real.

Our readings this morning are concerned with idolatry, with false worship. And that word, worship, is more literally understood as worth-ship. It is an acknowledgement of something’s or of someone’s worth or value. The things that are most real to us are going to be the most valuable, the most worthy, the things for which we live and strive.

We read about this in philosophy when Cicero speaks of the summum bonum, the greatest good. There’s something in everybody’s life that gets us out of bed in the morning, that orients our lives towards an end or a goal. We’re very linear creatures, you and I. Our brains are wired to see life as a journey from A to B, with tools and obstacles scattered along the way. Of course, once we reach B, that then becomes our new A, and we need to find some new B for which to strive. If we reach the end of the journey, we need a new journey.

This is why rich people never have enough. For them, the greatest good is money. Their point A is how much money they have now, and their point B is how much money they want to have. But once they get to B, that becomes the new A, the new starting point. And so they need a new target, a new destination, which of course will be a higher amount of money. If money is your greatest good, you will never be happy, because you will never have enough. You will never reach a B that doesn’t become an A.

The same goes for fame. Or power. Or drugs. Or sex. You get what you want, only to find out that it’s no longer what you want. Now you want more. And you’ll never climb that mountain, you’ll never reach the peak, because the mountain just gets taller as you go. It’s Sisyphus pushing that rock through hell, only to have it roll back down when he’s done.

Luther talks about this too. He says that everybody has a god. Everybody has something in life that they fear, love, and trust above all else, and that thing is their god. The way that they then orient their life towards attaining that thing is their religion. And so it makes no sense, to Luther, to speak of an irreligious human being. Everybody has a religion. Everybody has a god. The question is simply which gods, whether we know it or not, we are already worshipping.

One could take a broad swipe at America and point out obvious idols: food, sex, violence, entertainment. But there’s a deeper god, methinks, a motivation behind the obvious forms, and that god is choice. We have fetishized choice. In our society, the predominant anthropology—that is, the predominant understanding of human nature—is that of a free and unfettered will floating about in an arbitrary and unconnected body, making choices.

These choices take the form of our politics, our preferences, and our purchases. Everything is customizable, everything is for sale, and so we are, at heart, consumers. You can be whatever you want, have whatever you want—for a price. And so we build little altars that look like laptops, and browse omnisciently through a menu of infinite choice—the holy River Amazon—and purchase things, consume things. That’s who we are. That’s what we do. This is our worship. (This is also why people today have such trouble separating a person’s value from their opinions, because we think our choices are who we really are.)

God, I’m as bad at this as anyone. I see a book, I pull out my phone, and with but the flick of a button—a button that’s not even there!—my little electronic prayer is answered and the package is on its way from the Cloud. Never mind that I’m long out of both time and shelves, drowning in piles of the unread.

And should our mouths prove larger than our bellies, not to fear. There’s a god for that too. Twin gods, in fact: credit and debt. We carry little votive statues of them around in our wallets. And even though they only consist of electronic numbers on a screen, to us they are real, perhaps the realest things of all. They get us from A to B. And then to B. And then to B. And then to B. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.

And we may think, wait, that’s not really how we view human nature, is it? Surely, I’m more than just some all-consuming will soaring through the disembodied cyberspace of online shopping, aren’t I? Perhaps. But it’s the way we live our lives that reveals even to ourselves what we really believe, what we really worship—what we really think is real.

They say that to a Calvinist every sin is idolatry and to an Augustinian every sin is pride. They’re both right. God gives to His people Israel 10 Commandments pointing them toward what is real, what is good and true and beautiful. And sometimes we say, even in Confirmation, that the first three of those 10 govern our relationship to God, while the latter seven govern our relationships with our neighbors. But this is a distinction without a difference. All the 10 Commandments are for the neighbor. All the 10 Commandments are so that we can live good and true and beautiful lives, for others, for all of humanity.

Because they really all boil down to that First Commandment: “I am the Lord your God. You shall have no gods before me. You shall not make for yourselves any false idols.” God, with a capital g, is the only god worth having, worth worshipping. Because God, with a capital g, is not simply one option among many, a preference to pick, a purchase to click. God, with a capital g, is the Creator of all worlds, the Source and Ground of all reality, the One who creates and sustains and redeems everyone and everything that ever was or will or even could be.

God is the ultimate transcendent, and from Him come all transcendent values: goodness, beauty, truth, love, service, self-sacrifice, gratitude, piety, good and right worship—all the first things in life, as opposed to the secondary things, which are really just tools and obstacles along the way.

When we orient our lives towards transcendent values—and thus ultimately toward God—then our journey from A to B will never be complete, never be obtained in this world. And that’s good! Because reality doesn’t consist in attaining the goal. Reality consists in the journey, the growth, the spiritual pilgrimage, which never disappoints because there’s always more to find.

Look, life is a struggle, a struggle from A to B, from who we are to who we want to become. This is how we live every day and every year of our lives. And sometimes something even worse comes along—some great wave from below or a bolt from above—that shatters the entire journey, a shock of chaos upending our orderly lives, so that we don’t even know what A and B are, let alone where we stand between them.

If we don’t understand that life subsists not in the gaining of goals and things, which inevitably disappoint, but in the growth itself—in facing challenges and overcoming them in faith, of dying to ourselves and rising anew every day—then we will fall into the abyss of despair. We won’t get what we want, because we don’t even know what it is that we should want. We may well turn to addictions or to violence. Some will lash out at the world in revenge, as well we know, don’t we?

Rather, let us teach our children that life is the journey, the adventure, the hero’s quest toward transcendent goodness and Heaven our home! Let us fall neither into the Scylla of idolatrous false worship nor the Charybdis of prideful self-worship. Let us recognize instead the secondary things of life as secondary, as tools and obstacles that may be good in and of themselves but which make fickle and terrible gods.

The things worth striving for—the things worth living for—are not of this world. Goodness, truth, beauty, and love may be found in the world, but they transcend the world. We can never have our fill of them, thanks be to God! The way to be human, the way to be whole, is to put God first in life. And the way to do that is to love, to really love, everything and everyone whom God has made.

It ain’t gonna be easy. But it sure as heck is worth it.

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

Credit to whom credit is due: Much of the inspiration for this homily draws from Prof Jordan Peterson’s lecture, Dragons, Divine Parents, Heroes & Adversaries.