Evangelism of the Rose

Propers: The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 16), A.D. 2019 C

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.

Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken from her.

I cannot help but think of this story as a parable of evangelism. We as Christians are called by God to go and share the Good News of reconciliation and resurrection in Jesus Christ our Lord. But we are reluctant to do so in part, I think, because of other Christians.

Let’s be honest. Evangelism does not have a good name. It brings to mind those terrible little Chick Tracts which would anonymously threaten the reader with eternal damnation unless you signed on the dotted line at the end in order to invite Jesus into your heart. Then, whew, you were saved. Everybody else, not so much. This has always struck me as missionizing via terror: threatening people with unfathomable pain and infinite agony unless you become more like us—as though we were the Judge of the living and the dead. Thus does salvation in Jesus perversely transform into salvation from Jesus.

Christ did not preach in this way. He announced forgiveness, healing, repentance, the Kingdom of God drawn near. He warned of the spiritual consequences of sin, of the broad and easy path to destruction, the fires of the Hinnom Valley where the worm never dies. But He never marched into a town and said, “I’ll throw you all into hell forever unless you shape up and get with the program.” That actually might’ve gone over better. All this preaching of forgiveness and mercy is what got Him killed.

Deeper than the evangelism of threats is the evangelism of the rose: the idea that we focus, as Jesus clearly teaches, on our own sin, our own repentance, not seeking to judge the neighbor, to damn or condemn the stranger, but to transform ourselves, our own life of faith. True spirituality dwells deep within. The mystics understood this. Imagine that everyone else is destined for Heaven, they said, but you must first get out of your hell. Acquire peace within yourself, another wrote, and thousands of souls all about you will be saved.

The evangelism of the rose is shorthand for an appealing, compelling mode of life, a life that people find attractive, that fills the air all about it with the sweet fragrance of the divine. That’s how the early Church spread throughout the Roman Empire. They had neither the numbers nor the muscle for threats. “See how they love one another,” marveled the Romans regarding these first Christian communities: “Here indeed is a new kind of Man.”

The evangelism of the rose does not seek converts through coercion or manipulation. It seeks to convert the self—and thereby transform the world. We live in an age of societal upheaval. The Church is doing great across the world, yet withers here in the West. Why is that? It’s all too easy to blame recent generations. They aren’t joiners, we say; they prefer to socialize online; they’ve already spread themselves too thin for family, community, or faith. And there is a certain measure of truth to all that.

But the Western Church has also failed these recent generations, failed to offer a vision of life beyond entertainment and consumption, beyond going along to get along, beyond existing in a stagnant state of self-preservation and long-term decline. Christianity is no longer compelling. People see no appeal in it. It has lost the otherworldly fragrance of the divine rose. And this indeed is heavy condemnation upon us as modern Christians, because no figure in history is more compelling, more appealing, than Jesus Christ. He is the axis upon which our world turns.

And revolutions of liberty and love in His Name are still overturning structures of oppression around the world to this very day. There’s a reason that a million protestors in Hong Kong took to the streets singing Christian hymns. Our sin is that we have let the faith become the default, the lowest common denominator of American society, and as such we are generally more concerned about what we have to lose in our privileged position than about what we have to give.

And so we run around frantically coming up with gimmicks—screens, fog machines, electric guitars, side businesses, novelties, banalities—hoping desperately to lure other people, younger people, back into the pews to prop up our institutions. And as we attempt to distract them from distraction by distraction, we cry aloud, “Lord, do You not care that they’ve left us to do all the work by ourselves? Tell them then to help us!”

And Jesus replies with gentle rebuke: “My children, you are worried and distracted by many things. There is need of only one thing. Choose the better part, which will not be taken away.”

I do not pretend to know what the future holds. Doubtless Christianity will continue to grow in Asia, Africa, and South America. As for Europe and the US, I imagine that we will see a smaller, humbler Church, with fewer buildings and less wealth. We shall be strangers and pilgrims once more—historically the Christian norm. Yet there is great opportunity in this. A smaller Church is a more intentional Church, more deeply dedicated to life together in the Body and Spirit of the Risen Christ. And with less power comes less arrogance, and thus fewer threats.

Rather than being worried all the time about damnation, about weathering the storm while all the world burns, we can focus instead upon the superabundance of divine life poured out for the world, through us, from the Cross of Jesus Christ. We are Resurrection people. We are the hands and the voice of Jesus in this world. We are all made one, Body, Blood, and Spirit, with the God of all peoples and all of Creation, drowned to our sins, raised to new life, called by Him to go and proclaim the Good News of the Risen Lord to all the ends of the earth: “All that dies shall rise again!”

We are to heal the sick, feed the hungry, speak truth to power, and rebuke the sinner in love, all the while forgiving the unforgivable, raising the unraisable, and proclaiming the impossible promise that in Jesus every godawful horrific tragedy in all of human history will somehow at the last and forever be set right. That’s a hell of a way to live. That’s as compelling and appealing and fragrant a rose as any I am able to conceive. And if we show that to the world—if we show them Jesus alive—then everything else will fall into place.

Maybe not in terms of numbers. Maybe not in terms of power. But in terms of life and salvation and everlasting joy. Be Christ for one another, and the world will come begging for just a taste of the Feast we have in Him. We have the One True God who loves every one of us all the way to hell and back. And that’s the God this world still very sorely needs to know, in the person of Jesus Christ, revealed in the lives of His Christians.

It won’t look the same for everyone. We are each of us finite, and can’t do it all. God wants unity, not uniformity, or He’d never have toppled the Tower of Babel. Read the Bible. Love your neighbor. Keep the holidays. Give without thought of reward. Pray in every single thing you do. And do not worry. Do not be distracted by the many, many things. Keep in mind always the One who alone is necessary. And have faith that He will raise all of us up from the dead.

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