Life Finds a Way
Homily for Sunday, September 15, 2024: 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time
We sometimes hear it said that ours is a Christian Nation, built upon Christian values.
Growing up, I don’t think I ever heard the idea expressed overtly in those words, certainly not the way we hear it today from some politicians and pundits. But I do remember growing up with a general sense that Christianity was just woven into the fabric of our society.
I guess I did understand that not everyone around us was Christian or Catholic. But I still went on the general assumption that we had a kind of consensus of living by basic Christian values.
But I also grew up steeped in a heavily Franciscan-influenced view of those values. So in my mind, a nation built upon Christian ideals would be based in poverty, humility, and obedience; detachment from material goods; living simply and sharing the bounty of God’s Creation with all those around us.
So adulthood took a bit of getting used to.
In time I would realize that we are not a Christian culture. We prefer conspicuous consumption over voluntary poverty; shameless self-promotion over humility; rugged individualism over obedience.
I came to realize too that this is why someone like Francis of Assisi is such an extraordinary figure – that even in the midst of a culture that was built upon Christian values, when the power and influence of the Church was at its height, the world still needed someone to remind them of what a Gospel-centered life actually looks like.
It's a lesson that took me a while to learn. But at least I can perhaps take some comfort that I’m in good company. Even Saint Peter had to learn this the hard way.
In today’s Gospel we see St. Peter rebuke Jesus for going against accepted cultural values and ideals.
Peter has just identified Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah of God who will show his power and glory and liberate them all from Roman rule – and here Jesus is, talking about suffering and rejection, execution and death. That’s not what anyone wants to hear.
But Peter – Jesus makes clear - is thinking in worldly terms, not in Godly terms. Victory through strength and power is Satan’s way, not God’s.
God’s way is like the dandelion that grows out of a crack in the sidewalk. As the Way of the World tries to smother Creation under asphalt, making our landscape more suitable for our machines than for ourselves, we see that Life will not be denied. Life will always find a way of breaking through, of rising again.
We keep trying to remake this world to our own design but God’s design keeps re-asserting itself.
And that is our ultimate hope – that we look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. When all Creation is restored and we are remade in the image and likeness of God.
For as long as the Church has woven itself into the fabric of society, we’ve seen reformers come forward – Anthony of Egypt and Benedict; Francis and Dominic; Theresa of Avila and John of the Cross; Theresa of Calcutta and Dorothy Day; people who stand as a reminder to us that being Christian will always mean standing apart from and often in opposition to the values of the rest of the world.
As human society tries to impose itself on the Church, these men and women will always crop up, like dandelions through the concrete, to re-assert Christ’s Way. To confront us with the question: What would our world look like if we truly did build our society upon Gospel values?
St. James in our second reading reminds us that a faith we fail to act upon is empty and lifeless. So what would that sort of Christian Society look like? If we all gave some of our food to the hungry, some of our drink to the thirsty, if we all shared our time, talent, and treasure with the neediest and most vulnerable in our community? What if everyone accepted hardships and insults with grace and humility? If each person were to deny himself, take up his cross, and follow the Lord?
Dorothy Day used to say that her vision, her mission in life, was to create a world in which it is easier for people to be good. It was not an easy life, giving of herself, her food, her time, and her home so unreservedly to the poorest and most desperate of New York in the Depression.
Some will say it’s impractical. To them, Christ might say, get behind me Satan, for thinking as human beings do, not as God does.