Endless Hunger

Propers: Whitsun (Pentecost), AD 2021 B

Homily:

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

Hallelujah! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Hallelujah!

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

Pentecost celebrates the outpouring of the Holy Spirit as wind and tongues of flame. For the Holy Spirit is none other than the presence and the power of the Creator moving, manifesting, throughout the length and breadth His Creation; bringing life, bringing breath, bringing transformation to all. The Spirit is God at work in this world. And that Spirit now dwells, and now burns, within you.

See, it’s all part of the same miracle, the same story: the full 50 days of Easter, from Jesus’ Crucifixion and death, through His descent into hell and ascent into heaven, all the way to today, to the sending of the Spirit. Now it is true that God has been present in Word and in Spirit, in Logic and in Life, from before the Beginning. From all eternity He is Father, +Son, and Holy Spirit, one God, one Essence, in three underlying Realities, the threefold union of the Trinity.

But in Jesus God has done something new. The Word of God, present everywhere in forms, in Bethlehem became flesh to dwell among us. In Jesus’ Incarnation, God is not simply with us but is truly one of us: the Creator made part of Creation. He came down to us when we could not climb up to Him. And He took upon Himself all of our sins, all of our violence, all of our wickedness and cruelty, and drowned them all in the ocean of His love—so that in Jesus, humanity has overcome the grave, has defeated sin and death and hell, once and for all.

In Jesus, we have risen up into heaven. In Jesus, we are seated at the right hand of the Father. In Jesus, God and Man are eternally one, now and forever. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the firstfruits of the universal Restoration which will one day encompass all worlds—when God at the last shall be all in all. From the perspective of heaven, the perspective of eternity, outside of time and space, this has all already been accomplished. Our salvation has already happened. And you and I live in this paradox, this in-between time, with one foot in this world and the other in the age to come.

But the story doesn’t end with Jesus rising up to heaven. Oh, no. This is just where it begins. For as humanity ascends in Him to heaven, so divinity descends to earth as well. The Holy Spirit, Jesus’ Spirit, who is the life and breath and love of God, comes now to dwell in you, to make of our bodies His temple. For in Communion, Christ has given us His own Body and Blood. In Baptism, He has given us His Spirit and His life. So if we have the Body of Jesus, the Blood of Jesus, the Spirit of Jesus—who then does that make us? It makes us Jesus! All of us, together, we sainted sinners, we the Church, we are to be Jesus for this world.

He has no hands but ours to work. He has no voice but ours to speak.

And so we—who have been saved, are being saved, and hope to be saved—are now sent out to be that salvation for all! To be that salvation for the world! And we do this by feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, clothing the naked, teaching the ignorant, rebuking the sinner, speaking truth to power, healing the sick, comforting the suffering, forgiving the unforgivable, and raising up the dead! This is the Good News of Jesus Christ our Lord!

And if that seems like too much work for any mere mortal to accomplish, take heart. For it isn’t really us doing it at all. It is the Spirit and the power of the Lord who lives within us. And He cannot be defeated, ever, by anything in this world, or above it, or below. The Spirit is the love of Jesus Christ alive within us. And the love of Jesus Christ will conquer all.

Which brings us to Confirmation, and to our confirmands this morning. Confirmation is a Western rite, a double anointing, when we take those who have been baptized, who have been crucified and resurrected in Christ by the waters of that Font, and we seal them with oil, a sign of abundance and the Spirit of God. And we pray for, we ask that, we impart in you, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the gifts promised in your Baptism, to strengthen and to guide and to vivify you for a lifetime of witnessing to Christ. Confirmation doesn’t end anything. You aren’t graduating. This is the beginning for you, the starting point to a lifetime of faith.

You have what you need: you have Jesus’ Body around you and Jesus’ Spirit within you. Abide in them, in the Church, in the Lord, and you cannot fail, for the victory is already ours in Jesus. And we must keep this in mind for hard times ahead.

They say that religion is dying in the West. But that’s not true. Religion never dies. It never goes away. There is no irreligious species of humanity. One religion is replaced by another. And so the question isn’t so much whether someone believes in God, but rather what sorts of gods we’re already worshipping.

Everyone has a god. Everyone has something in their life that is the most important thing in it. We call that the summum bonum, the greatest good. It’s the thing that gets you out of bed in the morning. It’s the thing to which you bend the knee. And everybody has one, whether it’s money or power or sex or fame or patriotism or ego or God knows what all. Pick your poison. And the way we honor that idol, the things we sacrifice for it, that is our religion. That is our worship.

I mean, people scoff at how we used to fight wars of religion back in the day. But no-one bats an eye at the fact that for 50 years we were 100% willing to nuke the entire planet over who had the better economic system. Over how we could spend our money. And that shows you who our real gods are, doesn’t it? That shows you our real religion.

My dear confirmands, today we send you out as sheep amidst the wolves. You’ve been nurtured in this faith, raised in this community. And now you step up to full responsibility, full adulthood in the Church. In this you are surrounded by a vast multitude of witnesses: by two and a half billion Christians spanning every continent and culture on this globe, sharing 2000 of years of history, tradition, accomplishments, and sin.

The challenges you face are unique. Faith today isn’t under assault by Communism or paganism or secularism, not really. No, today’s great challenge for Christians young and old is the new religion, the faith sweeping the West: Consumerism. Consumerism is the result of generations of Americans trying to cope with ridiculous material prosperity at the cost of environmental degradation and spiritual poverty. We are actively sacrificing, upon the altar of stuff, both our world and our souls.

By Consumerism I mean that all of us are raised on advertising to believe that we are each a disembodied sovereign little will whose purpose in life is to select from a menu of infinite choice. You are not your family; you are not your community; you are not your faith. You are only what you buy. The purchases you make, the choices you take, the politics you embrace are who you are. You build yourself, and you do it on fashion and debt.

Now, the appeal of this should be obvious. As a consumer, I can be whoever I want to be, whatever I want to be. I can do anything, be anything—so long as I can afford it. But if my choices really are who I am—if my soul can be printed on receipts—then it’s all on me. I am my own worthiness; I am my own god.

And that leaves no room for forgiveness. And that leaves no room for grace. And that leaves no room for diversity of belief: because if I am my choices, if I am my politics, if I am my opinions, then anyone with different choices, different politics, different opinions, threatens who I am, threatens my own soul. If they are right then I am wrong, and Consumerism cannot handle that, has no room for that. So now every disagreement becomes personal, becomes religious in nature, which is why our modern politics have become a religious war.

And our only balm in this system, our only escape, is to be found in entertainment. Entertainment grants us brief release, and so also becomes a religion, fandoms replacing true faith. Yet the novelty of entertainment wears off quickly, doesn’t it? In the end, it’s all just one more thing to consume. There is no way out.

Endless consumption. Endless hunger.

You, my confirmands, are the light amidst this darkness. You are called and empowered to stand as witness for the world to a value beyond what we buy, to a worth beyond what we’ve done. You are to be Jesus for a world in need of Him; in need of resurrection, in need of forgiveness, in need of faith. There can be no higher calling; there can be no greater challenge. Yet if you abide in Christ, and cherish His Spirit within, then the victory is already won, and the laurel is already yours.

Go therefore and give witness to the world that death has no dominion here.

Hallelujah! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Hallelujah!

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