Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Ephrem Arcement
Pentecost, Proper 9 C - July 3, 2022
“Even though it may seem counterintuitive, a comfort zone is a dangerous place to be.” So says Mary Lou Retton.
With this in mind, I would like to offer a counter-intuitive interpretation of the gospel passage we just heard…suggesting that the most important truth it has to offer is not that of a practical guide for a mission trip–what to do and what to say. Who of us here will literally go from house to house shaking off the dust from our Birkenstocks when people understandably slam the door in our face? First century Palestine is not twenty-first century New York!
Further, what does the commissioning of the seventy on their first preaching mission have to do with a community of monks who take a vow of stability?
Actually, much in every way, I dare say! And this is what reveals what is so counter-intuitive to the way we often literalize this passage and prevent it from speaking to us in the here and now of our lives today.
While on the surface we most often read Jesus’ commissioning of the seventy as being about evangelism, I would like to suggest that it is just as much, perhaps even more, about sacramentalism.
History has, unfortunately, pitted these two dimensions of the church against one another. Today, a whole group of Christians identify themselves as Evangelicals. Others would say, “No, I’m definitely not Evangelical, I’m sacramental and liturgical.” The historical circumstances that have led to such bifurcation are varied and complex and ultimately have to do with the over-emphasis of one dimension over the other (say, the sacramentalism of the Medieval church) and the tendency to over-correct in the opposite direction (say, the evangelicalism of the Protestant Reformation).
Thankfully, in the age of ecumenism, these dimensions are beginning to come together once again and the universal Church now has the opportunity to recover some of its catholicity or its wholeness.
Both dimensions are at work in Jesus’ life and ministry and are on striking display in this passage from Luke, chapter 10. Jesus has just embarked on his journey toward Jerusalem where, he knows, he will be crucified. On the way, he desires to teach his disciples to follow his example in his preaching and healing ministry. This is the essence of the evangelical dimension.
But if we read a little more closely, we recognize more that is going on in this passage–something quite revolutionary and radically new. Unlike other peripatetics of the ancient world, Jesus is not simply concerned about spreading his message about ethical living. He is about something far more life-altering. In the words of St. Paul, he is about effecting a whole “new creation.” Jesus’ message is not transactional, it’s transformational. And this is what makes it sacramental.
Karl Rahner, the great Roman Catholic theologian of the twentieth century, said that nothing is finished or fully created until it becomes a sacrament–until the natural becomes supernatural. It’s the sacramental imagination that sees the Temple in Jerusalem, a building constructed with human hands in a particular city in ancient Palestine becoming, through the presence of God, the place where heaven and earth become one, where the human can touch the divine.
This was the good news of the Old Testament: humankind is not alone–God is not far away but in our midst…or in the exultant words of the prophet Isaiah, “Rejoice with Jerusalem–that you may nurse and be satisfied from her consoling breast; that you may drink deeply from her glorious bosom.” The Creator of the whole universe is now being manifested and encountered in a fallen, broken world to liberate it from oppression and help it realize its destiny.
This truth, this good news, is modulated into a whole new key in the ministry of Jesus when we hear him say, “Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.”
Jesus is preparing his disciples not to just continue saying and doing the things he said and did once he is gone, he is preparing his disciples to be his presence once he is gone. In fact, he’s teaching his disciples that he will never really be gone at all but will remain with them…not just alongside them but in their very flesh and bone.
Could it be that we have sold God short and have made the good news less good than it really is? We see Jesus going about destroying the works of the devil and liberating people from their infirmities. This is good news…but this isn’t the gospel. Freedom is never meant to be an end in itself. The end goal of the liberating power of God is the sending of the Spirit into our cleansed and liberated hearts so that we–you and me–can now become God-bearers to those in need–that’s the gospel!
Do you believe yourself to be a God-bearer? Do you think in these daring, sacramental terms? Do you realize that upon your countenance can be seen the face of God? Without the humility of the cross, this is blasphemy and the height of human pride. With the cross, this is life fully alive–creation fulfilled. One who has undergone the transformative dying and rising with Christ is a new creation whose whole reason for being becomes to allow God to be seen, felt, heard, and known in the here and now of our physical existence, especially by those who need to see, feel, hear, and know God most.
The good news is not that we now get to go to heaven when we die. It is that heaven gets to come to us while we live! The goal of the Christian life is not salvation. It’s mysticism! God isn’t just concerned with saving us from our sins. God is mostly concerned with transforming our lives, getting us ready for a wedding where human and divine become one!
It is no wonder that the message which Jesus instructs his disciples to preach is one of peace. No longer are God and the human heart necessarily antagonistic toward one another. Through the cross of Christ, God can conquer the human heart and liberate it by taking up abode in it.
When we now speak, God speaks. When we now bless, God blesses. When we now weep, God weeps. Maybe not in every instance or in every circumstance (for God can never be controlled), but this awesome possibility is now open to each of us, and when our hearts are aligned with God’s, God shines forth and coruscates in revelatory moments of grace…and the kingdom of God is very close indeed!
No comments:
Post a Comment