The New Old Religion

The Gods of the Nations

Propers: The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 21), A.D. 2018 B

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

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

Christianity is not losing out to Islam, nor to any other major world religion.

Christianity is not losing out to paganism, the modern forms of which are just plain silly.

Christianity is not losing out to science, because frankly churchmen invented the modern scientific method, knowing as they did that faith and reason are complimentary rather than contradictory within the Christian worldview.

No, Christianity in our society is losing out to consumerism, plain and simple.

Consumerism is the belief that we are defined by our opinions, by our choices, by our purchases, preferences, and politics. Consumerism is the notion that you make you, and that your worth, your innate human dignity—the very bones of your soul!—are built not upon the foundations of family, friends, or faith, but by the things that you buy and the things that you say and the things that you do.

You choose who you are—and the final product is then judged according to the fleeting fashions and the fickle fetishes of an online media mob, which loves to talk about justice in the abstract but has no real stomach for the concept of mercy. We’re all customizable in the consumerist worldview, little wills full of appetites that must be sated in new and novel ways. And at the center of the system is nothing other than pride, ego, the notion that we are all sovereign little self-made deities who deserve to get what’s ours, and to get it good and hard.

And the whole engine, of course, revolves around debt, because that’s the only way that we as a society can consume without limit. It’s the only way that people can be enslaved while still remaining convinced that the deeper in hock we get, the freer we somehow are.

There’s a reason, after all, that the Lord’s Prayer, in Greek, clearly asks to forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Sure, it’s talking about sin—but it’s also talking about actual debt. Because in the ancient world, as today, debt makes slaves. And to speak openly of the forgiveness of debts is thus always to bring down the shackle and the whip. O, brave new world, so shamelessly built upon the eldest of our sins.

Allow me to offer you a different vision of human dignity, the true vision: You are not your purchases. You are not how you vote or what you wear. You aren’t your bank account, you aren’t your degrees, and you aren’t your job. You are a child of God. You were born with an innate value that can never be taken from you, and which makes you the equal of any millionaire or movie god or rock star. You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve, and that is both honor enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth.

Your destiny, moreover, is eternal. We were not born simply to stuff our houses and our bellies with as much useless drek as possible until the day we die. By God, no! We were born to live nobly, heroically, giving of ourselves, loving powerfully, delving deep into the wonders of this world, into the Beauty, Truth, and Goodness woven deep within the fabric of every world in all Creation—to live boldly and die fearlessly, knowing we will rise again!

And on that day, when the dead shall rise, every wound will be healed and every tear will be dried and every godawful, unjust tragedy will somehow at last be made right. And there shall be no more mourning, no more death, no more pain, for then the world shall no longer be broken, and God at last will be all in all.

That’s the promise. The promise made by God on the Cross. Nothing, nothing can take that from you. Not shame, not loss, not illness nor alcohol nor sins nor debts. Nothing can snatch you from the loving and crucified hands of the Christ who died for the life of our own dying world, and who poured out His own Breath and His Blood into you.

Rich or poor, strong or weak, wise or foolish. As all fell in Adam, so all rise in Christ.

This is the Good News we are called to proclaim, the New Covenant and New Life poured out for this world. A New Age is coming, an age when all our deepest convictions of right and wrong, of faith and hope, shall at last come into fruition. Do not be bogged down by the distractions and deceptions of this present darkness, for our struggle is not against enemies of flesh and blood—be they Democrats or Republicans, Russians or North Koreans. Our enemies are cosmic powers, spiritual forces of evil in seemingly heavenly places.

It is they who whisper that we have no worth save in what we consume, what we choose. It is they who keep us enslaved to fears and anxieties and prejudices that the Light of Christ boldly puts to flight. Be strong in the Lord and the strength of His power! Take up the whole armor of God: righteousness, truth, salvation and faith, the Gospel of the peace and the sword of the Spirit.

Take them up and wage unceasing peace against all the lies of the Accuser, who is forever insisting that we aren’t good enough, aren’t rich enough, aren’t thin enough—that we will never have enough and that we can never be enough. Be silent! Be still! Get behind me, Satan! Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak.

Brothers and sisters, I know that you are hurting. I know that we all struggle. And we try to fill that empty yearning hole within us with anything, with everything, with new houses and new bodies and new choices and new lives. We think that if we just join the right party or love the right person or read the right book or eat the right food or get the right job, then, maybe, it might be enough. Maybe then we might be worth it, we might be worthy. Such is the way of the world.

But take heart. For Christ has overcome the world.

You are not what you consume. You are not the things you own. You are not your résumé or your paycheck or your profile on Facebook. You are a child of God. You have been bought with a price. And when all the sturm und drang of this fallen, feckless world have passed away, you will rise, whole and immortal, to the home you’ve always longed for, and the world as it was always meant to be.

Your debts are paid in full. Now go, and free others from theirs.

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