Not How, Maybe, but Where We Live As Christians
Sixteenth Sunday of the Year
For a few weeks in the winter of 2009, I did not know if it was possible for someone who wanted to live a good Christian life to live in the world. I was in college at the time, starting to ask some deep questions about life and faith, and the world seemed to me filled with vice and sin and evil. I remember thinking that too many Christians were obsessed with politics, living as fools, convincing themselves that they could somehow make this world into a better place. For those few weeks, I did not believe it possible to make this world into a better place. I became certain that if I wanted to live a good Christian life, pursue holiness, strive for sanctity, I would need to turn my back on the world and find some way to live away from the vice and sin and evil.
Those were hard weeks for me. I think I experienced during those weeks the kind of anxiety that Christ mentions at the conclusion of the Parable of the Sower that we heard last week: The seed sown among thorns is the one who hears the word, but then worldly anxiety and the lure of riches choke the word, and it bears no fruit. For most of us, we hear the word ‘anxiety’ and draw the conclusion that Christ is talking about some kind of fear. But the experience of anxiety is different from the experience of fear. The word that Christ uses, in the original Greek, means to experience division or separation. In its most literal sense, the kind of anxiety of which Christ speaks is the experience of being pulled apart, torn apart, from within.
What does Christ mean? He means that it is hard for us to live in the world. We love the world, and we love God, and sometimes our love for the world leads us to turn our back on God, and sometimes our love for God leads us to turn our back on the world. There is a tension in our lives, a way that we become pulled apart, torn apart, from within. To love God seems to require abandoning the world to its vice and sin and evil so that we can focus on holiness and sanctity in life. To love the world seems to require us to forget the life of holiness and sanctity to become lost in the pursuit of lesser goods: maybe a career, maybe relationships with other people, maybe the pursuit of wealth or fame, maybe even a project like fighting for justice in a secular world. Lesser goods. There is a tension in our lives between God and the world, a way that we become pulled apart, torn apart, from within, and Christ says that the tension is the experience of anxiety.
How can we resolve the tension, free ourselves from the experience of anxiety? The parables given to us in the Gospel today give us a way forward, I think. Christ reminds us that our job in this life is not to abandon the world for the sake of holiness, but rather to find God alive and at work here in this world. These parables give us a middle way: we do not need to reject the world to find God, and we do not need to forget God to live well in the world. The world and God are not like the forces of good and evil caught up in some never ending, undecided, eternal struggle in which the future of the world hangs in the balance, with us caught in the middle. That’s the plot from Star Wars—not the story of our Christian life. Christ with these parables reminds us that God is in control: the world is redeemed, the world is sacred, and it is precisely in this world that we find the kingdom of heaven. And our responsibility as Christians is to build this kingdom up.
I think that the word ‘heaven’ can cause some problems for us when we hear it used in scripture. We hear Christ talk about the kingdom of heaven and we imagine a kind of kingdom that awaits us after we die, when our souls leave our bodies, and we find ourselves united to God in some new and intimate way. But when Christ uses the expression ‘the kingdom of heaven,’ he is not talking about that kind of heaven. This understanding of heaven as a reality that obtains after death, heaven as a kind of afterlife, developed slowly over the course of centuries, and it was not until the Middle Ages, some 1,000 years after the time of Christ, that the word ‘heaven’ possessed the meaning that it has for us today. At the time when the Gospels were being written down, or when St. Paul was writing his letters to early Christian communities throughout the world, the word ‘heaven’ meant something very different: for Christ and for St. Paul and for the first Christians, the word ‘heaven’ meant a world in which God is in control, a world in which God is alive and at work.
So, when Christ talks to us today about the kingdom of heaven, he is not telling us about some future life. He is talking about this life, here and now: we are living right now in the kingdom of heaven. And like the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds tells us today, yes, there is evil in this world. There is violence and war; poverty; the worst kinds of human vices; there is suffering in the world around us; people often do the wrong thing and commit acts of evil. But God is in control of this world because he is the ruler of the kingdom of heaven.
The way forward for us is not to abandon the world but to pursue the life of holiness and sanctity in the world. The field is the world, Christ teaches, and in the field of the world wheat and weeds grow together. But that same field is also the kingdom of heaven. There is divine goodness in this world: holiness and sanctity and the presence of Christ who labors in the field harder than any other worker so that the wheat might flourish. And we are called to work alongside of him, in this world, for the good of the kingdom of heaven. That is our way forward. Each of us has a part to play in the building up of God’s kingdom. And when we commit ourselves to that kind of life, when we dedicate ourselves to helping Christ build up the kingdom of heaven, we will move beyond the kind of anxiety, the kind of division, that always threatens to pull us apart, tear us apart, from within.
We are called to live as the yeast that Christ describes in the Parable of the Leaven. Maybe you have had this thought before, but is it not fascinating that Christ describes the Christian community as yeast that raises up three measures of wheat flour to a Jewish audience that celebrates the Feast of Unleavened Bread each year? Christ uses the Parable to make clear that in the Christian life a new reality is taking hold of the world. No longer will those who desire holiness in life isolate themselves from the world, abandon the world to its vice and sin and evil, for the sake of personal sanctity. The world is the kingdom of heaven and holiness in life is found by laboring in the field alongside Christ. The harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few, Christ will say at another time and in another place. We are called to labor in the world, to build up the kingdom of heaven.
My experience of anxiety in 2009 finally went away toward the end of January. I was reading a book on politics and the Christian life, searching for an answer to the question of whether it is possible for us to live good lives in a world filled with vice and sin and evil. I really did not think it possible at the time. Making the world into a better place, building up the kingdom of heaven you might say, seemed too hard, too dangerous for someone who desires holiness, who would strive for sanctity. But then I turned the page of that book and read the following words:
There is for the Christian community, at a time like ours, two opposite dangers: the danger of seeking sanctity only in the desert, and the danger of forgetting the necessity of the desert for sanctity. Christian heroism has not the same sources as other heroisms; it proceeds from the heart of a God scourged and ridiculed, crucified outside the gates of the city.1
I read those words and I no longer experienced division; no longer did I feel myself pulled apart, torn apart, from within. Those words told me not how, maybe, but where, we are called to live as Christians.
Sometimes we might need to withdraw from the world for at time to seek sanctity in the desert. But the desert is not where the Christian community belongs. We belong in the field, alongside the weeds, striving for sanctity while surrounded by vice and sin and evil because that is where we find Christ at work, scourged and ridiculed, crucified outside the gates of the city, laboring to build up the kingdom of heaven.
Homily preached on July 23rd, 2023, at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Jacques Maritain, Integral Humanism, Freedom in the Modern World, and A Letter on Independence.