Far Less

Propers: The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 20), 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.

What does faith give you? Wealth, power, moral superiority? Something much more, I should think. And yet far less.

A recent documentary film highlighted the difference for me between Buddhist and Christian missionary efforts. It follows a community of Vietnamese Buddhist monks who travel from Plum Village, France to New York, New York. There they very purposefully, very calmly, begin their mission by conducting a walking meditation down a busy city street.

The monks then find a spot to sit down and quietly meditate, leaving space open for people to observe them or to join them. They say nothing. They simply are. And as they sit—calm amidst a sea of motion, quiet in the heart of urban cacophony—some sort of  Christian missionary comes by and starts to shout over them: “Why would you follow a dead-end to Buddha, when you can believe in Jesus and have eternal life?”

A woman then chastises the missionary for judging others and for failing to follow Jesus’ commandment that we love one another as He has first loved us. Obviously they are separated by denominational differences. Throughout it all, of course, the monks and nuns appear unflappable, neither defending themselves nor getting riled up or upset. They continue simply to be who they are, practicing their tradition, open to outsiders, and judging none.

That alone, it seems, is sufficient to cause division. That alone is enough to provoke a reaction from this world, to pit three against two and two against three. Faith sets them apart, liberates them from the frenzy and the fever of this life. And the spirit of this world, entwined throughout us all, recoils as though suddenly some sharp stone has stuck firmly in its serpentine gullet.

The true life of faith cannot be one of threats or haranguing or division. That is the way of the world, not of the Christ. The early Christian martyrs didn’t go out looking for trouble. They didn’t stir up mobs in the streets. They simply, silently refused to take part in systems of oppression, corruption, and dehumanization—in short, anything that denies the image of God in humankind.

The Christians of Syria refused to hold slaves. The Christians of Germany rejected human sacrifice. The Christians of Rome declined to worship the state with its religious militarism, imperialism, and blood-sport. And most early Christian monastics were vegetarian or pescatarian because they didn’t even want to harm animals.

Note that no-one forced others to do these things—though in cases of public injustice, Christians never shied from speaking truth to power. Rather, the simple fact of their apartness, their weirdness, their insistence on valuing the valueless, on caring for widows and orphans and virgins, for the blind, the lame, and the leprous, this was threat enough.

It was nothing less than an inversion of the Roman social order, whereby the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. The Beatitudes were a bomb just waiting to go off. And those in power intuited this. The idea of women, children, cripples, slaves, loved and valued by God—well, it simply isn’t done. These Christians were deviants, anarchists, atheists. By Jove, I heard that they were cannibals. And so the early Church was persecuted, was targeted.

But this only amplified their identification with the downtrodden and oppressed. It only increased the popularity of their message of this Christ: the destroyer of the gods. Simply saying no, simply standing up, is enough for the world to notice. To be still and know that He is God while all is rushing around you; to remain in prayer and meditation while people try to shout you down; that’s faith.

And it only takes a little bit to move the mighty mountain. Faith the size of a mustard seed: the faith of a citizen not to offer a pinch of incense to Caesar; the faith of a woman not to move to the back of a segregated bus. Simple refusals shake our world. They are the Kingdom come in us.

Remember what I said last week: that faith is trust in God. This doesn’t mean that bad things won’t happen. In fact, it’s effectively a guarantee that they will. “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?” asks Jesus. “No, I tell you, but rather division.” Now, I must say that I do believe that Jesus has come to bring us peace. But it’s this very peace of Christ against which the world will war.

“I have come to bring a fire to this earth,” Jesus says, “and how I wish it were already kindled.” But this cannot be fire from heaven sent forth to slay the wicked. Jesus has already rejected such proposals from His Apostles James and John. He speaks, in fact, of the fires of Pentecost, the flames of the Holy Spirit, descending to dwell within each of us. The fire of which Jesus speaks is the very breath and life of God. And that’s what He has come to kindle deep within our souls.

But we just aren’t getting it, are we? The Apostles certainly aren’t. They seem to think that following the Messiah means naught but glory, God, and gold. And Jesus is trying to impart to them exactly what this means for us: suffering, loss, and death. “I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!” So when does He say it’s complete? When does He say, “It is finished”? From the Cross, my brothers and sisters. His baptism is His death.

Why did they kill Jesus? Was He just another zealot, another leader of a crazy little warband, bumpkin extremists up against the might of Rome? Of course not. Rome had ground countless such would-be messiahs beneath the hobnailed heels of their boots. Jesus was something far more dangerous, far more powerful.

He was a Man who said “no”: no to violence, no to power, no to glory in the worldly sense. And “yes” instead to the last, the lost, the little, and the least. Yes to a love that cannot die, to a life that outlives death. Yes to a forgiveness so radical, so terrifying, that it encompasses even His murderers, even centurions, even down to the damned in the depths of hell.

How does one stop that, a love like that, a God like that? With nails and spear and thorns and lash? With silver and stone and waxen seals? Don’t make me laugh. We couldn’t stop Him if we tried—and oh, how we have tried. Not even death could hold Him. She could barely slow Him down.

The intensity of Jesus’ words in our Gospel reading for this morning reflect nothing less than the fierceness of His desire to see this world change; His insistence that now is the time, now is the Day of the Lord, now is the Jubilee of liberation for us all. And He doesn’t go about this, He does not effect this Kingdom of God, by steel or sword or supernatural violence. He inaugurates it from the wood of the Cross, by the Blood of His brow, by being a human completely alive within the midst of death.

And that’s what He calls us to be—alive! Alive in the midst of death. True in the midst of lies. Peace in the midst of war. He calls us to stand athwart the currents of history and say, “No, not in me.” I will not be enslaved to hatred and violence and scorn. I will love without limit, pray without ceasing, meditate in the heart of the inferno of this world, all because I have a Source and a Life and a King now within me who has overcome all of this world, who has conquered sin and death and hell forever.

We don’t have to seek a fight. All we have to do is to stop fighting worldly battles, and the war will come to us. So long as we are worshipping silver and gold, fortune and fame, the fallen gods of a fallen world, we will be left in our silent slavery.  But as soon as we turn to the Lord of life, the Lord of love, the Lord of all—as soon as we draw from Him by grace alone the fire that forges the world afresh—then the spirits will take notice. And they’ll try to shout us down.

But others will see. They will see the peace that we live. They will see the love that we give. They will see the image of Jesus Christ embossed upon our souls. And they will be drawn to our resurrection. They will seek this union of God and Man. They will join in Him by joining us. And we shall all be free together.

Why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

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