The Hard Way

Propers: The Sixth Sunday after Epiphany, AD 2022 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.

“Why be Christian?” is a question that our society seems to be asking itself rather regularly these days. And by the look of things they aren’t coming up with many good answers. People don’t hate the Church so much as they fail to see the point.

Why be a Christian? For community, tradition, moral instruction? Ah, those are secondary reasons at best. One ought to be a Christian because of Christ. One ought to be a Christian because Christianity is true. But here’s another one I’ve been thinking a lot about lately: one ought to be a Christian because it works—Christianity works—if you put work into it.

Now what do I mean by that? Surely I’m not retreating into utilitarianism. Human beings the world over have desires and longings and needs which cannot be satisfied by what we find in this world; desires that go beyond mere survival or even pleasure. We have an inborn drive, a hunger, to quest after what is beautiful, good, and true. We derive no benefit from this, no fitness, in a strictly Darwinian sense. But we always need more: more goodness, more beauty, more truth. We are insatiable.

No great scientist ever said, “Okay, I think we’ve learned enough truth. Let’s call it a day.” No great artist ever decided that the world probably has a little too much beauty already; if anything, we should tone it down. No great explorer or philosopher or mathematician or musician ever said, “That’s good enough. We have all the goodness we can take. We’re full now, thank you.”

When it comes to these things, our hunger is infinite and can only be satiated by an infinite Source. We’re the only animal that does this, keep in mind. Even highly intelligent beasts, like whales, gorillas, or crows, if you give them what they need—food, shelter, safety, family—they’re content. They’re happy being exactly what they are. Not us. Not humans. We’re always searching for the next frontier.

And the good news is that there is satisfaction to be had. People have found it in spirituality, in mysticism, in the great religious traditions of humankind. Every generation has connected in some wordless way to Goodness and Beauty and Truth at the Source, beyond, beneath, and permeated throughout this world. “And this all men call God.” Well, not really. But that’s how Aquinas put it.

Another good one on religion and philosophy is Augustine, who famously wrote that “Our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they rest in You.” Only God will suffice to fulfill the human heart. Nothing else will do, not in the long term. No matter how much money or power or sex or stuff you manage to cram into your life, eventually it all turns bland. Eventually you get bored. You look at all the junk you’ve accrued, and you think, “Is this it? Is this all?”

That’s the Achilles’ heel of consumerism. Our economy, our society, is predicated upon the idea of infinite growth, infinite profit. But that’s impossible in a finite world, with finite resources. And we all know, don’t we, that the bill is coming due? Every great religious tradition has told us, warned us, not to put our trust in things. They will fail us. Anything finite ultimately passes. Don’t get attached. Things are but idols, means to an end, not gods in themselves. Only God will do. Only the One.

And this is what I mean when I say that Christianity works. It is a spiritual path, a religious tradition, the Way of Jesus Christ. And that Way will get you there. It will get you to God. For the Way itself is Jesus, and Jesus Himself is God. See, for all our talk of salvation by grace—which is most certainly true—we downplay the centrality of discipleship, because we think it stinks of works-righteousness, of earning our way into heaven. But what is a Christian if not a disciple of Christ?

The early Church was no fly-by-night tent revival, baptizing with fanfare and then moving on to better things. Christianity demanded everything of you, and in return it gave you everything of Christ. The Way of Jesus is rigorous. It involves lifelong discipline: daily cycles of Scripture and prayer; weekly cycles of communal worship; yearly cycles of feast and fast. It is deeply mystical, offering union with God in Word and Sacrament, water and Spirit, Body and Blood.

The purpose of the Church is to make us into Christ. We are given His Name and His Breath in our Baptism. We are given His Body and Blood in Communion. We are given His words and His teachings in Scripture. And when we have all that—Jesus’ Body, Jesus’ Blood, Jesus’ Name, Jesus’ words, Jesus’ Spirit—what does that make us? It makes us Jesus! And so the Church is rightly called His Body and His Bride. We abide in Him and He in us.

And so the union of God and Man achieved in Jesus Christ is continued through the Church, through the lives of sainted sinners sent out to be Christ for this world: sent out to heal and teach and forgive and uplift and rebuke and feed and free. So that someday, at the End of the Age, the Son shall hand the Kingdom over to the Father, and God at the last shall be All in All. That is our fate, our faith, and our hope: to be nothing less than Jesus Christ as true God and true Man.

And it takes work, believe you me. It takes a lifetime of confession and forgiveness and prayer and growth. And let me tell you, salvation is assured from the beginning, from the moment of our Baptism, right up to the Apocalypse, the Apokatastasis. As soon as we set foot upon the Way of Jesus Christ, He is with us, in us, above and below and around us; He will get us home. But being saved from our sin is not the same as mere salvation from sin’s consequence. Oh, no.

It’s not a get-out-of-jail-free card. Salvation is a complete transformation, a rebirth, our crucifixion and resurrection. Out Satan must go, every hair and feather! And God is not done with us, not done saving us, until death, and perhaps not even then. We must walk the Way, must enter by the narrow gate, yet will never be alone. Thus comes the yoke to be easy, and the burden light.

As the Prophet and the Psalmist both sing for us this morning, together we shall be as a tree that is planted by the water, unfazed by wind or by drought, with our roots deep in the Source and our branches bearing fruit in due season. Disaster comes, seasons pass, and yet the tree is strong. And not just strong, but fruitful: offering both sustenance and sweetness for all those beneath its shade. The tree provides not simply for itself but shares the river’s blessings with the world.

Now, I know that in every generation the Church has been beset by hypocrisy within and hostility without. Wheat and tares together grow in every human heart. And I know that many Christians through much of history were indeed Christians in name only, surrounded everywhere by Christ yet never letting Him in. But there have also been those, always been those, who found the Source, who walked the Way; who in their humility and their selflessness have not only shown us the living Christ but have passed Him on to us, on to the next generation. The seed that falls upon good soil produces 60-fold.

Christianity will endure—even if only a branch, even if only a seed—because of Christ, and because it works. Jesus brings us God. Jesus fills our hearts. Jesus makes us His, and thereby makes us Him. But you’ve got to know what you’re getting into. Jesus will never stand for half-measures. If you want all of Him, give Him all of you.

“Blessed are the poor,” He cries, “for yours is the Kingdom of God. Blessed are the hungry, for you will soon be filled. Blessed are the weeping, for laughter surely comes. And blessed are the hated, for they hate Me in you.” Now, blessed here doesn’t mean that God simply approves, or that He sprinkles some magic fairy dust to make their hard life cute. No, blessed here means admirable, honorable, respectable. They’re blessed because they know their consolation can’t be found within this world.

“But woe to the rich, woe to the full, woe to the merry, woe to the famous and the popular.” Not because God curses them: woe here means beware. These people actually think that money, food, and entertainment stand the test of time. They do not. They will fail us, as all false gods must fail. Beware of becoming such people. Unjust allocation of riches, mountains of false fatty foods, and all the media on earth stuffed into your pocket will not save you, will not satisfy.

Only God can bring us peace. Only God can bring us home. And only God is what we’re given on the Way of Jesus Christ.

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