Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
Luckily, the Word of God is living and effective, and is a treasure that cannot be fully mined or a spring that can fully be drained. If we think we have exhausted the meaning of Sacred Scripture, the deficiency is in us, not the Word of God.
It is so easy to look at the list that St. Paul gives us as something we just have to do, virtues we have to check off a list. We strive to show mercy, humility, modesty, and patience. We aim to bear with one another and forgive each other, and especially to demonstrate charity towards all. Maybe sometimes some of those are more difficult than others. But we get so wrapped up in what we should do, that we end up in a kind of Pelagianism where we earn our salvation. Maybe consciously or subconsciously we think to ourselves: ‘If I am merciful, then God has to let me in to heaven. If I just muster up the right amount of patience, then I don’t have to worry about eternal salvation.’ We end up trying to save ourselves, which is impossible for us, since it was also impossible for Abraham, Moses, and David, whose holiness probably exceeded our own.
How easy it is to put the cart in front of the horse! We want to earn God’s love and God’s favor. We figure that if we just do enough good things, or avoid enough bad things, then God will be happy with us and we can rest easy. But notice that St. Paul encourages us to certain behavior because we are already the elect of God. St. Paul gives us moral laws, behaviors to follow, because we are already the beloved of God. We don’t do certain things so that God will love us. God loves us, so we do certain things and live a certain way.
St. Paul takes for granted, as do the epistles that we hear each week, that we already know that we belong to God the Father as His beloved sons and daughters in the Son of God. That is the great gift of our salvation! We had nothing that could close the gap that original sin had created. We had no goodness in us that even approached deserving to be saved. St. Paul writes in his epistle the Romans, chapter five: “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us….Indeed, if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, how much more, once reconciled, will we be saved by his life.”
So God’s saving love comes first, and then what we do is our response to that love. If we think about it like dating, it also makes sense. If the other person doesn’t love us, no matter how many good things we may do for that person, it doesn’t create that love. However, if that person loves us, then we want to be better, we want to show our appreciation for that love. And we show that appreciation by doing the things that help that love to grow. We can’t earn the other person’s love, but once we have that love, if we truly love the other person, we change ourselves freely and to the best of our ability to show gratitude for that love.
Or, to use a similar example that our Lord uses in the Gospel, God’s love has already been sown into the fields of our heart. Weeds do sometimes pop up, but we pull them up at the proper time in response to the desire that our field be clear so that the fruit of Christ’s love can grow as fully as possible, and not lose out to the weeds. It’s not as if we can clear the weeds from our entire field, and then God will sow His love in us.
I often preach a fairly rigorous message about living upright lives. I myself try to do whatever I can to live as Christ and His Church have taught, and I like the rules and the clear delineations of what the expectations are. But it’s good for me, and for you, to remember that we don’t earn God’s love. Nothing we could ever do could make God love us. God has already loved us, so much that He allowed His Son to die for our salvation. What we do is the response to God’s love, not the catalyst of His love.
You, brothers and sisters, are already chosen by God for salvation. You, brothers and sisters, are beloved by God because, after Holy Baptism, He sees and loves in you what He sees and loves in His Son, Jesus Christ. Do not seek to be worthy of God’s love; it will never be enough. Open yourselves to His love, and return that love by putting on the mind of Christ, and living the life that He lived: mercifully, humbly, modestly, patiently, and charitably. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
