Sermon on Luke 5:1-11

The people pressed upon Jesus to hear the word of God. So much so, that he felt the need to get into a boat – Simon Peter’s boat, as it so happens – and to put out a little from the land so that he could sit and teach the people from the boat. In their urgent desire to hear the word of God, which comes uniquely from Jesus Christ, who is himself the word of God, they were even making things a bit uncomfortable for him, such that he had to improvise from a boat a sort of makeshift ambo from which to preach. We can understand, maybe, their great insistence on hearing the word from him who is the word.

But are we so eager to hear the word of God? If Jesus were in town, would we press upon him to hear the word of God? As it so happens, Jesus is in town. He is here in this church every day. He is proclaimed in the gospel and he is present here in the holy mysteries – confession, anointing, & eucharist. He is in our hearts and minds and bodies. He is alive in us and in this world.

But how aware are we of his living presence among us? Or, do we live as if he is away in some far-off place? Are we pressing upon him? When the gospel is proclaimed here in this church, do we always give it all of our attention? Or, do we let our minds wander off?

In Catholic churches, it is common to observe an overwhelming preference for the pews in the back. Often, we are far from pressing upon him to hear his word! Zeal and eagerness to participate more fully are often in short supply. An attitude of minimum obligations prevails. That is, we ask not how much we can do to grow closer to God in his holy Church but rather what’s the least we must to do in order to still call ourselves practicing Catholics.

They’ve even drawn up lists of these minimal obligations. For example, in order to be a practicing Catholic, they say we must at least keep these precepts of the Church: 1. We must attend Divine Liturgy (or at least some Divine service) every Sunday. 2. We must confess our sins at least once a year. 3. We must receive Holy Communion at least once a year during the Paschal season. 4. We must also keep holy the so-called “holy days of obligation.” 5. We must observe the Fasts of our Church. And 6. we must provide for the material needs of the Church according to our ability.

Alright, fair enough, these are good things for us to do. I suppose you’ll get no argument from me about that. And I suppose I’ll even go along with the observation that if a person isn’t even interested in trying to do these things, it would really be a stretch to call them a practicing Catholic. However, the attitude that seeks the minimum so ardently that it needs to have all this spelled out has probably already missed the point.

Where is our fire and our love for the Lord and his word?

The Byzantine tradition offers a maximalist approach to the spiritual life rather than this minimalist approach. Our full tradition of liturgical prayer, fasting, spiritual discipline, and charitable work, which is constantly proposed to each of us by our tradition, is likely more than any one of us is even capable of, at least on our own. Of course, one of the reasons we are a Church and not a confederacy of individuals with private pipelines to Jesus is that each member of the body of Christ has his or her own gifts and his or her own vocation within the body. And, together, we can do the work of Christ and live the Life of Christ more fully than we can alone.

And what is that work? Among other things, it is to preach to word of God both in words and, above all, by our love for our neighbors. Love of neighbor is our best and most effective tool of evangelism. It will bring people to the Lord and to the Church more effectively than persuasive arguments – not that there isn’t a time and a place for that as well. But only if we speak the truth in love. If we speak some truth, but not in love, it’s not really the word of God we’re proclaiming, because God is love.

This word of God we are to preach is like the nets, says St. Augustine, that Peter lowers into the deep for a catch. It brings in so many fish that two boats are filled to the point of sinking.  May our evangelism be so effective, by the grace of God.

I want to see that here at St. Stephen. Go and cast your nets, which are the word of God, into the waters of this Downriver area and beyond, throughout Southeastern Michigan.

What’s that you say? You tried that already and it didn’t work? You toiled all night and took nothing? Nevertheless, go out into the deep and cast again. It is the word of God you are casting and it can haul them in so that our little church is filled to bursting.

First, of course, before we can become more effective evangelists, we must deepen our own love and obedience to the word by whatever means necessary. We won’t convince others if we’re not convinced ourselves – if we don’t take this seriously ourselves and strive with whatever strength we have toward God. It’s true that union with God can only be achieved by God’s own grace and not by our effort, but this is not meant to encourage laziness on our part.

When it comes to the spiritual life and growing closer to Jesus Christ, instead of asking, “What’s the least I need to do?” or, “What fulfills my minimum obligation?” let’s learn to start asking, “What more can I do? Am I doing everything I can to press upon Jesus to hear the word of God so that I can live it and preach it to all creation?”

 

 

[1] CCC 2042

[2] CCEO, canon 881 §1

[3] Augustine, Sermon 248.2.

Sermon on Mark 8:34-9:1

“What will the profit be, if someone gains the whole world and loses his life? Or what would someone give in exchange for his life?” (Mark 8:36-37).

Jesus is asking us a rhetorical question. It’s meant to be obvious to us that our life is worth more than the whole world. And that there is nothing not worth giving for our life.

Life is “God’s greatest gift,” just as Joseph says to Clarence in that movie, It’s a Wonderful Life. If you’re like me, you watch that movie every Christmas season. Now, it does make some glaring theological errors. For example, we do not become angels like Clarence after we die, but that is a whole other conversation and some things the movie does get right, including this: that life is God’s greatest gift to us.

And this life we have been given, just as the title says, is wonderful. It is filled with wonder. So, let us wonder at it for a while.

And let’s examine what does and does not make life wonderful. In the movie, George Bailey learns eventually that it is not money that makes life wonderful even if, as he says to Clarence, it “comes in pretty handy down here, bub.” He learns that the far more wonderful thing about life is love. The love of friendship, of marriage and family. It seems me that he even learns to love his enemy Mr. Potter by the end.

When George turns to God in his darkest hour, God intervenes to save his life. There are, as I said, some good and true things about this story, despite its few glaring errors. This is what God really does: he saves our lives. We know he is our Savior, but sometimes we forget what he’s saving us from. He’s saving us, ultimately, from death. He comes that we may have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10).

Let’s turn to the scripture, which, as it turns out, is an even better source of true teaching than a Frank Capra movie.

In another place Jesus teaches us, “he who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (John 12:25). This show us that Jesus is saving us not for the life in this world, but for a different and eternal life. There’s a distinction here between two kinds of life. For that reason, someone might misunderstand and object to Jesus’ earlier rhetorical question with the proclamation that there are some things worth dying for. And of course there are! No one is a clearer example of this than Jesus himself. But when we die for the things worth dying for, even though we die, we live. If we die for the things of this world, on the other hand, we’re dying for nothing and we’re risking a different kind of death

The life in this world is the life of enslavement to the things of this world. Yes, money, the love of which is the root of all evil (1 Tim 6:10), but also all the passions: not only greed, but also lust and hatred and envy and pride and vainglory, and gluttony and sloth and so on. This is part of what Jesus means by “the life in this world” that we are to hate. As I mentioned last week, St. Isaac the Syrian teaches us that “The ‘world’ is the general name for all the passions. When we wish to call the passions by a common name, we call them ‘the world.’” So the life in the world is the impassioned life. And it is not life in this sense, not life in this world or according to the values of the world, that Jesus comes to save, but rather eternal and everlasting life, the life which is part of our true nature, which we were truly created for. Life itself which is union with life himself, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is the life.

The way to this life is through the cross, which we continue to exalt today.

In today’s epistle, Paul writes, “I’ve been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:19-20).

To live as Christ, first we die as Christ. We take up our cross and follow him. We die to our passions and to the things of this world & then in him we know true and everlasting freedom, love, and life.