Two People Are Drowning in a River

18th Sunday of the Year

Take a moment and imagine whoever you think is the most important person in the world; maybe the president; maybe someone running for president or some other politician; maybe a religious leader; maybe the executive for some massive international business or a scientist doing important research on cancer or the human genome; hopefully, not Taylor Swift.

Now Imagine the person who is the most important to you in the world. Maybe your answer is still a president or religious leader, but much more likely is that the person who matters the most to you is your husband or wife, or a parent, or each of your children the same (because I am told that is how it works)—again, hopefully your answer is not Taylor Swift.

Ok. Finally, imagine that you are walking across a bridge, and you see two people drowning below. You immediately realize that one of these people you think is the most important person in the world, and the other is the most important person in the world to you. You know that you are going to dive into the water to save someone, but who do you choose? Who do you grab first? How do you make the right choice in an impossible situation?

Some moral philosophers like to use that thought experiment to talk about the limits of ethics and making choices about right and wrong, and I agree with them: if you see that the most important person in the world to you (the person you love the most) drowning alongside whoever you think is the most important person in the world, and you stop for even 1 second to ask yourself who to save first, then you have failed the test of morality. You save your wife or your father or your child first—of course you do. There is a point at which thinking about right and wrong runs headlong into the reality of love, and the only choice is to side with love; you first save the person you love the most.

Alright, one last thought experiment: it is a busy day on the bridge, you’re walking across it for a second time, and somehow the person you love the most in the world is drowning again, but now the person drowning next to them is Christ. Who are you saving first? Sure, Christ would never let you save him before saving someone else first, and maybe that thought comes to your mind, but who cares. What I want to know about is your instinct, your gut reaction, the panic that overwhelms you and demands that you make a choice in an instant—and almost immediately, intuitively, you know who you are going to save first.

Who are you choosing? Christ, or your husband or your wife or your mom or dad or your child?

These 5 weeks we spend with the Bread of Life Discourse give us an opportunity to talk about the motivations that drive us to follow Christ. Why do we follow Christ? There are lots of reasons to follow him, some better than others, as well as plenty of reasons not to follow Christ—again, some better than others. Why do we follow Christ?

Two motivations for following Christ are given to us in the Gospel today. Christ tells the crowds that (1) they are only following him because he fed them when they were hungry and (2) that is not even as good of a reason as those who follow him because they see him performing miracles, signs that he prove is a special guy. In other words, one of the simplest reasons for following Christ is because he takes care of some basic human need for you, and just a little more complex is because you know Christ performs miracles and you think this guy is onto something.

I think these two sources of motivation are still real for us today. Christ does not feed us physically like the crowds, but he can take care of other basic human needs. Maybe Christ gives you a source of community, and so you follow him. Or maybe you care a lot about politics and morality and a long list of social justice issues, and Christ helps you justify your worldview to yourself. Or maybe you find the world a cold, hard place, and the anxiety is real, hope is hard to come by, and following Christ gives you enough of a reason to hang in there and get up in the morning. These are just a few of our basic human needs, and Christ, in his own way, can take care of each of them for us. These are reasons why some people follow Christ.

Other people today are no different from those following Christ in the Gospels because he performs miracles, signs that prove he is a special guy. Who doesn’t need a miracle? Wanting to be healed, wanting someone you love to be healed, wanting a new kind of life for yourself, wanting whatever you think it is that Christ might make possible for you—lots of people today follow Christ for reasons like these.

The Bread of Life Discourse gives us a list of motivations for following Christ, week to week, some better than others. Maybe we follow Christ because he takes care of some basic human need for us. Or maybe because we want a miracle (or need a miracle) and we think Christ is the kind of guy who performs miracles. Next week we will really start to talk about eternal life. Maybe we follow Christ because we want salvation, redemption, the promise of eternal life—there is a pretty good reason for following.

I think the best reason for following Christ—and by ‘best’ I mean the most mature, most beautifully human motivation—is given to us by Peter at the end of the story. Christ gives some hard truths about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, and most followers walk away. But Peter and the other apostles stay. Christ asks if they want to leave as well, and Peter tells Christ that there is nowhere else for them to go; only Christ has the words of eternal life; the apostles know and believe that Christ is the holy one of God, the one who is coming into the world.

Why does Peter make the choice to continue following Christ? I think because Peter knows Christ and loves Christ, and love gives reasons of its own. Peter knows who Christ is, and Peter loves Christ more than anyone else in the world. If Peter were walking across that bridge and saw two people drowning, and one of them was Christ, I think Peter’s gut reaction, most basic instinct, the choice he makes without a moment’s thought, is to first save Christ—no matter who is drowning next to him.

I know I am talking about the end of the story, and we are only in our second week of moving through the Bread of Life discourse. But I think a good way to use these five weeks is to get real and honest with ourselves about why we are following Christ. Are we following Christ because Christ is the person we know the best and love the most in the world? Because there is the most mature, most deeply human reason for discipleship. You can actually get to a place in life where the person you know the best and love most is God—that is the kind of life that Christ makes possible for us. You are walking across a bridge, see two people drowning, one of them is Christ, and no matter who is in the water next to him, you know immediately, intuitively, who you are pulling out of the water first.

These are pretty hard truths, the kinds of truths that get into the deep cuts of the Gospel. What we want to believe is that there is no tension that comes with following Christ, and that what Christ wants is for us to love other people more than him—husbands and wives and parents and children. We tell ourselves that we love Christ best by loving other people more than him—family first, friendship first, community first, whatever relationships matter most to us, these come first because that is the kind of life that Christ wants for us.

But then there are all the Gospels teachings about letting the dead bury the dead, family division as a cost of discipleship, loving Christ more than mother or father or sister or brother.

Here is what I am trying to say with my homily today: when you see two people drowning in a river, your instinct is going to be to save the person you love the most, and the promise of discipleship is that we can love Christ most in life—more than any other person. Because we eat the flesh of Christ and drink the blood of Christ, hear the words of Christ, live as members of the body of Christ, make the choice to follow Christ and live like Christ, talk to Christ, pray to Christ, beg Christ, worship Christ, invest in a relationship with Christ, we can know and love Christ as genuinely and intimately as we know and love a husband or a wife or a parent or a child.

Christ is not asking us for something inhuman when he tells us to love him more than anyone else. He wants us to love him best because he wants us to know him best; the love follows from the knowledge, making wholehearted love of God into the most mature, most deeply human of loves.

My guess is that many of us do not love Christ most, at least not yet. Other people matter to us more, other people are getting pulled out of the water first, if we are honest with ourselves. And I do not think there is anything wrong with loving other people more than Christ for a good amount of time in life; the road of discipleship is long; it can take a long time for love to take root in us.

But these five weeks of moving through the Bread of Life Discourse give us the opportunity to interrogate our hearts and ask ourselves a hard question about motivation, about why we follow Christ: maybe I do not love Christ more than any other person, not yet, but is what I want the most to love Christ most, more than any other person? Maybe I am not pulling Christ out of the water first, not yet, but is that kind of love of Christ my goal, something that I want the most for myself?

Homily preached on Sunday, August 5th at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary