Stuff and Nonsense

Propers: The Fifth Sunday of Easter, A.D. 2020 A

Homily:

Alleluia! Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed! Alleluia!

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

Most people most of the time are simply not interested in spiritual matters. Philosophy and religion, if taken seriously, require thought and action, faith and doubt, death and resurrection. It isn’t easy asking the big questions. Most of us would prefer the broad and easy way, the path of least resistance. In ages past, illness and death, boredom and struggle, forced us to confront mortality and seek out divinity—longing for transcendence, for worlds beyond this one broken life.

These days things have changed, it seems; at least for the privileged few. If you’re white and Western, it looks as though religion were on the wane. Fewer Americans identify as Christian. Few Europeans ever darken the door of a church. But this isn’t due to some triumph of reason. We certainly aren’t getting any wiser. Indeed, where faith falls off, superstition eagerly arises to take its place. Rather, we are simply more comfortable. Or perhaps I should say benumbed.

Christianity has been replaced with consumerism: not that we’ve defeated death, disease, or despair; nor that we’ve found satisfactory answers for the great questions of life. But we’ve gotten very good at denying that such things even exist. Our culture, our economy, is dedicated to manufacturing an inexhaustible array of distractions, which we select from a menu of infinite choice. And this we call freedom. There’s the real opiate of the masses.

Well-fed people don’t rebel, a friend of mine is fond of saying. And people with a lot of stuff don’t appear to worry much about God, or death, or even life for that matter. Indeed there appear to be four basic forces—or perhaps I should say preconditions—which either drive us or draw us toward God. To be pithy, these are: desperation, desire, dispassion, and devotion.

The first is easy enough: desperation, that old adage that there are no atheists in foxholes. When all else fails, when our back’s against the wall, when we’ve nothing left to lose, we cry out—hoping, trusting, praying that some One will answer. No matter how skeptical or cynical we claim that we are, nevertheless we have a knee-jerk instinct that some One hears and may well respond. We are born with the conviction that beyond and below the universe that we know, there is a Power that sees us, loves us, and answers. And despite what life may do to us, this reflex of the soul remains our hope of last resort.

The next force driving us to God is desire: we want something, and so we pray for it. We beg, bargain, wheedle and cajole. Oh please, oh please, give me that parking space. Give me that promotion. Give me that girl. Please, I want, I want, I want. And again there is this instinct, deep within, of a great Giver who can choose to give it. Of course, when we aren’t desperate, and when we can buy things that we want, these forces driving us to God largely fall by the wayside, perhaps for the best.

But beyond these we find dispassion. And perhaps that’s not the best word for it; I was going for alliteration. But there is this longing beyond mere feeling that motivates within us the highest faculties of the human mind and spirit. It is a love not of things but of ideals: a longing, questing for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. This is the hunger, the God-sized hole in the heart, which inspires the artist, the scientist, the poet, the playwright, the philosopher, the theologian, the seeker after Truth. And while some are born with this—creative types, we call them—others find it at the far end of maturity, a disillusionment with the distractions of this world.

We look at all our stuff, all our possessions, all our entertainments and diversions, and sooner or later we think, “Is this it? Is this all? Why do I still want more?” Human psychology is such that no sooner do we achieve our goal than a new goal presents itself. We are questing creatures, ever striving, ever yearning. And ultimately an infinite appetite can only be satisfied by the Infinite itself.

And finally there is devotion, which the Scriptures call agape, true spiritual love. This is love that has transcended worldly objects, and so is free to love all peoples and all things. It is the selfless love taught only by the great religious traditions, a love that fills up the lover to bursting and overflows upon all the world around her. This is the love of God that brings peace, joy, healing, relief, and new life from the dead.

It is the love that a child feels for a beloved stuffed toy: unconditional, unceasing. The toy does nothing but is always present, always there to love and to be loved. Here some might say, “There you go! Your God is but your latest imaginary friend!” But there is nothing imaginary about the love of a child. I would argue that such natural, overflowing love—which so often we tragically lose as we grow up—is the deeper reality. The doll is but a manifestation, a puppet. God is behind and within and around it. God is the source of that naïve, unflappable, true and beautiful love.

Thus says the Lord: we must become as little children to enter the Kingdom of God; not in that we ought to remain childish, but in that we ought to become childlike. And there is a world of difference between the two. God will answer any prayer—on His own terms, in His own way—but surely it is the prayer of devotion, the prayer of His beloved child, which pleases Him most of all.

When Jesus says, “If in My Name you ask Me for anything, I will do it,” He’s not promising to be a genie granting wishes. God is not our personal Alexa, delivering items from the cloud in response to our every hasty request. Rather, anything that we do in Jesus’ Name—according to His will, according to His heart—will surely be accomplished, in this life or the next. For God is always with us, always listening, always loving. And such love cannot ever truly fail.

Throughout the world, religion is resurgent. Throughout the world, the Church has never been larger; there are more Christians today than at any point in human history. Even here in America, the atrophying of faith is largely a white concern. We have replaced Christ with a new god, a new faith: the worship of WalMart, of CostCo, of the Holy River Amazon—hallowed be thy flow, with free shipping over $25.

Yet when we are desperate, God is there. When we ache with desire, God is there. When we long for truth and for beauty, God is there. And when love at last overcomes our bitter hearts, when it fills us, flowing in and with and through us, when we love everyone the way a child loves her teddy bear—God is there. Nothing has changed, least of all the love of God. So do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in Christ. In the Father’s house there are many dwellings, and a place is already prepared for you there, to dwell in God forever.

Love without ceasing. Love without limit. Love God with all that you are and with all that you have, and love your neighbor as yourself. Do the work of Jesus and have no fear. For if you ask anything in His Name, He Himself will do it.

Alleluia! Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed! Alleluia!

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