God Plays Offsides (Karl Barth & the Encroachment of God)
The Epiphany of the Lord
With the Ravens being the best team in the country right now, I thought leading off this homily with a football analogy might grab your attention. But I’m also banking on gaining your kindness, that when in two minutes I start talking about modern theology, you’ll remember that I at least made an attempt to be down-to-earth and relevant.
Football, like every sport, has a language of its own, and some of the words we hear and use on Sundays don’t find voice in our lives any other days of the week. One of those football-specific words is “encroachment”. If you look up “encroachment” in the NFL Rule Book, you’ll find the following: “It is encroachment if a defensive player enters the neutral zone and contacts an offensive player or the ball prior to the snap, or if he interferes with the ball during the snap.”1 In laymen’s terms, encroachment is about a player being where he shouldn’t when he shouldn’t; and there are a host of similar penalties for similar infractions.
I don’t think I’ve ever used “encroachment” in a non-football context, so it caught my attention the other evening, when nestled up with a book by the Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth, I discovered the word “encroachment” being used to describe our relationship with God. Karl Barth was a Protestant and is not a household name for us Catholics, but it is hard to overstate his importance and influence upon both Protestant and Catholic theology. Even Pope Pius XII hailed Karl Barth “the greatest theologian since Thomas Aquinas.” I don’t have the time, and you don’t have the charity in your heart, for a lecture from me during Mass on Karl Barth; and I will hardly do this great thinker justice by trying to explain his theology in just a few sentences. But if you’ll stay with me for a moment, I promise to try and apply all this to your daily living.
Barth was critical of any theology, Catholic or Protestant, that presumed that God was to be found at the end of our human reasoning. He used the word “encroachment” to throw a flag and call a foul on theologians who stepped beyond the limits of human nature trying to get at God2 Barth thought the only way to do theology is to recognize that, though we can use our minds to think about God and draw certain conclusions about his nature, his will, his plan, all of this is only possible because God has first “encroached” upon us. God has stepped into our realm of nature, pulled back the veil that separates us from him, and made himself accessible to us through revelation.
To return to the football analogy, it’s as if Barth saw theologians lining up in the neutral zone, pushing into where they shouldn’t be into God’s own inaccessible realm; whereas what is really happening, and what makes theology possible, is that God has stepped out of his inaccessible realm and entered the neutral zone from his side of the ball; and this is what allows us to know, love, praise, and serve him.
You may breathe a sigh of relief that that’s all I will say about Karl Barth, because Barth’s position goes to the extreme and rather quickly runs into conflict with the Catholic Church’s magisterial teaching. But we can say that Barth’s basic intuition is correct: God acts first, not us. And this is exactly what we see on display in the feast of the Lord’s Epiphany.
The prophet Isaiah cries out: “Rise up in splendor, Jerusalem! Your light has come, the glory of the Lord shines upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick clouds covers the peoples; but upon you the LORD shines, and over you appears his glory.” Saint Paul writes to the Ephesians that “the mystery” — the mystery of God’s plan — “was made known to me by revelation.” Both Isaiah and Paul emphasize God’s initiative. God steps out of himself to bring light to the people who walk in darkness. God pulls back the veil that covers his will from our eyes. It was nothing that we had done, nothing that we could have possibly done, that could earn this. Rather, in his mercy, God comes to us.
And finally, we have the Magi. The Magi, these wise men, represent the greatness of the human capacity for wonder and discovery. How many hours had they gazed at the sky, studied its constellations, paid close attention to its movements, looked and searched for meaning amidst the celestial bodies that would make sense of the world and of their lives. Yet none of those stars would ever lead them, as did the star sent from God, to find, to behold, and to adore God-in-the-flesh in the manger of Bethlehem. Only in the Christ-child could their questions be answered and their search come to an end. Without God’s initiative, the world is still in darkness, his mysteries are still mysterious, and the Magi are still looking for him.
The feast of the Epiphany challenges us to see God’s encroachment active in every moment of our daily lives. I myself am sometimes, even often, proud of myself for my good resolutions to pray, to work on a particular virtue, to carry out an act of charity. I congratulate myself for rousing myself to make a move in favor of God, to take one step closer toward him. But the Epiphany tells us this is backwards. It is God who moves first toward us. It is God who places the desire on our heart to move closer toward him. We respond to his invitation. We react to his grace. We are moved by his movement. All this does require our cooperation, and our free will is truly engaged in these moments, since God does not force us to do anything. But without his impulse coming first, there would be no response on our part.
I would wager that you all came to Mass today because you are searching for God. But do you realize that God is first searching for you? Whether you come to Mass every Sunday or have come for the first time in quite a while, you are here today because God wants you here. The star of Bethlehem has drawn you to this place, to know, love, praise, and serve God whom you encounter here. And the same is true in every sacrament, every prayer, every good work, every time we so much as think of God — it’s all because God has first thought of us.
What’s at stake here, in mistaking God’s encroachment for ours, is missing out on gratitude. If we think it’s because of our own efforts that we are here, then we will not thank God for his goodness and mercy that has brought us here and is with us at every moment of our lives. We will live instead convinced of our own power, trusting in our own strength, resting on our own laurels, and making ourselves into gods who make meaning for themselves. And at that point, we will not be the wise men, but Herod: the prideful, selfish king who sees any encroachment on God’s part as offensive to our own freedom and plans.
So, let us today instead gaze in wonder at the star which leads us now and in all times to God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem, who lives and reigns in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.
Homily preached January 6/7, 2024 at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen.
NFL Rule Book (2023), Rule 7, sec. 4, art. 3.
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, II.1, §26.1.