This Is the Way

Midweek Vespers (Lectionary 29), AD 2020 A

A Reading from Luke’s Gospel:

After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up, left everything, and followed him. Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house; and there was a large crowd of tax collectors and others sitting at the table with them. The Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus answered, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.”

Then they said to him, “John’s disciples, like the disciples of the Pharisees, frequently fast and pray, but your disciples eat and drink.” Jesus said to them, “You cannot make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you? The days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.”

He also told them a parable: “No one tears a piece from a new garment and sews it on an old garment; otherwise the new will be torn, and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new wine, but says, ‘The old is good.’

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

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.

In every age, Christianity has been declared dead or dying. And in every age, this dead or dying Church has risen like a phoenix from her tomb. And this is not because of social programs or great buildings or strong community ties—though of course all of those things do help. Rather, the Church continues ever to rise again from the dead because our God knows the way up and out of the grave.

Times such as these—of hardship and trouble and trial—should not be met with pessimism or despair. Rather, we should meet them with hope, because this is what God does: He raises dead things. He heals wounds. He calls forth something out from nothing. And He does this all solely out of love. That’s the great power of God: not to destroy, but to create. Not to be strong, but to have His strength perfected in weakness. When we’re broken, when we’re fallen, when we’re weak, then we are open to the power and the mercies of our God. He can work with that.

What He can’t work with is pride—or for that matter, complacency.

All this is not to say that God wants or plans for bad things to happen. “Buck up; it’ll build character.” No. His will for us is very clear: that we have life and have it in abundance; that we gather in joy to feast forever in our Father’s heavenly home. But when our society, our very civilization, is rocked by ignorance, division, lies, greed, violence, poverty, and fear—this then is our call to action. This is what God has put us here to do: to be Christ for a world still very much in need of Him.

Jesus makes us all the Church. We are inheritors of His Spirit, members of His Body. And if we want to be Jesus for the world—to be Christians, literally “little Christs”—then the prescription is very simple. John the Baptist put it best: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” We must stop living for ourselves, our egos, our pride. We must start living for love of God and neighbor. Then are we most filled with the Holy Spirit of Jesus. Then are we truly His hands, His feet, His flesh.

Jesus, for us, is where God meets man, heaven meets earth, and eternity enters into time. He is the divine reality come down to dwell with us, as one of us. And so the more we reflect Jesus, the more divine and human we become. The more we humble ourselves to get of His way, the more truly we become who we were always meant to be. Only in our unity are we truly individual.

And to walk the Way of Jesus Christ is, as I said, rather simple. It’s not easy, but it’s simple. We read the words of Jesus, as found in the Holy Scriptures. We confess our sins and entrust them to His forgiveness, here in the font of our Baptism.

We gather in community, at the Altar which is also our Table, that we may be made one in Christ, one in His Body and Blood, in the Holy Eucharist. In Word and Sacrament we are given the life of God in Jesus Christ purely by grace, purely as gift—so that we may then go and share this life, share this grace, with our neighbors, with our enemies, with all this broken world. We are given that we may give. We are forgiven that we may forgive.

And then of course we must take the time to pray, to lay out before God all that we are, to make room for all that He would be within us. We can do this silently or aloud. We can use old familiar words or new impromptu ones. We can recite a simple chant, over and over again, to fill ourselves with the grace and peace of Christ; or we can simply sit in silence, to be still and know that “I am God.”

At the center of Christian life is love: love poured down from heaven to earth, poured out from Jesus’ riven side upon the Cross, to fill up hell to bursting and our souls to overflowing, that the love of God in Jesus Christ spill out on all around us. Live without anxiety. Give without thought of reward. Forgive others by letting go of all our claims to vengeance. Do what is right without ever fearing darkness or death or despair. And proclaim with defiance the love of God that outlives all our hells.

Humility, community, forgiveness, silence, generosity, and self-giving love: this is the Way of Jesus Christ. This is the love of God on earth. This is the Good News that liberates the captive, absolves the sinner, and raises all the dead to life. And if it seems like a tall order—like something we could never do—then take heart! For we don’t actually do any of it. Honestly, we couldn’t even if we tried. Rather, we must simply get out of His way, to let Christ within us save all of God’s Creation.

It’s not the building. It’s not the budget. It’s not the numbers. It’s not the views. Jesus makes us all the Church, and Jesus does not fail. The truth is we should leap for joy—for when the world was a mess, when our neighbors despaired, when the very fabric of our social contract was shaken, frayed, and torn, Jesus looked at you and said:

“I choose you to be My Body. I choose you to be My Church. I choose you to be for this world a true reflection of everything I am. I choose you with all your flaws and all your doubts and all your sins. I choose to love you all the way to hell and back. And through you, my beloved child, I choose to save everything and everyone that I have ever made.”

So don’t tell me about a dead or dying Church. The only thing that’s dying here is death. And someday, ages hence, when all the world is remade new, some fallen, broken, rescued soul will tell this Christian Church:

“In spite of everything, even in spite of yourselves, I saw Christ in you. And seeing Jesus in my world saved my world forever.”

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