Flirting with Death

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

A trail at Zion National Park

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  In my visits to National Parks, which are a great treasure of our country, there have been some, like Zion National Park, where you can hike up high mountains and use trails that seemingly climb to the heavens.  Now, when I say trails, I don’t mean nice, paved, even trails.  These are usually parts of a mountain, sometimes with rudimentary railings, but often not, with sharp drop-offs if one were to lose his or her balance.  Some more adventurous folk like to get right to the edge.  As for me, I try to stay as far away from the edge as possible, because I definitely have a fear of losing my balance and falling to my death.
    While I, and many others who have a fear of heights, may not enjoy the idea of flirting with death by falling off a path, how many others enjoy flirting with the death that comes from sin.  St. Paul says it clearly enough: “The wages of sin is death.”  And even if the English grammar doesn’t hit our ears quite right (wages, though it sounds plural, is a singular idea, and so yields a verb in the singular), the message is clear enough: do you want to die?  Then sin!  Sin is like floating one foot over the edge of the gorge with nothing to hang on to in case you fall.  

    It can be hard to take sin so seriously, especially with such ready access to the Sacrament of Penance at this parish.  If I sin, then I go to confession.  And that is a good rule to follow.  We rightly focus on the mercy of God, because God, through Christ, has revealed the Father’s great love for us, a love which never wants us to be separated from Him, and a love which will be wasteful in mercy and look foolish just to reconcile us to Him.  
    But while not giving sin more power than God’s mercy and grace, we do also need to recognize the horror of sin.  And, our appreciation for the mercy of God increases with our appreciation of just what we deserve when we sin.  If I don’t think that sin makes all that big of a difference, then God’s mercy also doesn’t mean as much.  But if I know that the wages of sin is death, that I deserve death every time I sin, then when I do confess my sins and when God reconciles me to Himself through Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, I recognize just what an amazing thing God has done.
    If we forget just how awfully sin takes a toll, then we need only look at a crucifix.  And, if we really want to understand crucifixion, then a Spanish crucifix is probably the best, as they are the most gruesome depictions of the death of Christ, rather than the very placid depictions we are used to seeing in bronze, silver, or gold.  Think of the excruciating (literally, from the Latin, from the cross) pain of having nails hammered into your hands and feet.  No matter where exactly the nails would have entered, they would have hurt.  Think of the struggle just to breathe, which is the way most died from crucifixion, as your lungs slowly filled with fluid and you struggled just to take a quick breath, all the while your body seeking any way to stay alive, but without any way to do so.  Add to that the shame of being totally naked before all, and we begin to get the idea of how terrible undergoing crucifixion was.  
    That, the crucifixion, was the wages the of sin.  No just sin up to the time of Christ.  Not just sin at the time of Christ.  But all sin, from all time, nailed to the cross and carried upon the shoulders of the spotless Lamb of God.  That was the price for our salvation.
    But the Apostle doesn’t end with “the wages of sin is death.”  He continues: “but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  Death does not get the last say, though we deserve it.  We don’t have to fear falling off the side of a steep cliff.  God remains vigilant, ready to grab us and pull us back to safety if we but call upon His Name.  Earlier in this epistle, St. Paul reminds us that where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.  God’s mercy and grace are infinitely more powerful than our sins.  It’s as much a competition as my legos trying to fight me.  
    But it’s still good to keep in our mind that sin yields death.  Because the Church teaches us that if a person were to die in a state of mortal sin, we do not know how that person could go to heaven.  When we choose separation from God who is the source of life, we choose separation from eternal life.  It’s not that God sends us anywhere, as much as we choose by our actions if we want death or if we want life.  God will lovingly take us back if we desire, but if we don’t, God loves us enough to respect our misuse of free will, because true love never forces itself on another.  
    Yes, God is merciful.  If we ask for God’s mercy then He will grant it to us.  But if we choose sin, then we choose death.  And if we choose death, no matter how attractive it looks at the time, we will get death, eternal death.  Do not presume that just because we can say, “Lord, Lord,” we will go to heaven.  But do not despair of God’s mercy, as long as you seek to do the will of God the Father, who with the Son and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.   

Illuminating the Night

 Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord–Mass during the Night
    Talk about irony!  The first reading of the Mass that the Church calls “Mass during the Night” begins: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom, a light has shone.”  There is something beautifully still at Midnight Mass, a peace that exists as most people are asleep, but it’s also certainly dark.
    But Christ came precisely so that we can have light, as this church is illumined.  And the light that He came to bring is the light of holiness that casts away, not the darkness that comes from the earth spinning on its axis and certain parts of the globe facing away from the sun during times of the day, but the darkness of sin and death, which is really slavery.
    Isaiah continues with that theme of slavery when he talks about the “pole on their shoulder, and the rod of their taskmaster.”  Sin binds us up and takes us captive.  As Jesus is born, the one who ransomed us from slavery, who bought us at the price of His own Precious Blood, is made known to us, and for that reason we rejoice.  We rejoice even in the middle of the night because today is the today it happened; today the path to our freedom in Christ was begun in a backwards part of a nowhere failed kingdom, ignored by the powers of the world, but for the riots that would happen from time to time among the people.
    The shepherds were awake at night, looking out for wolves so that their sheep did not get eaten.  I remember my trip to Zion National Park.  I had a very early flight out of Vegas, so I had to leave at zero dark thirty.  Driving through Utah, where there were no towns, was something else.  The moon was out, so it wasn’t that dark, but without the moon, or on a cloudy night, it would have been pitch black.  On nights without clouds, the stars help to illumine the sky.  
 

   The shepherds saw the stars, and then saw other lights–angels–which not only shone but sang.  They tell the shepherds the good news, that the Messiah has been born, and not only the Messiah, but God Himself (Christ and Lord).  Then they sing the hymn that we sung earlier tonight: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”  Both their presence and their hymn bring light to the world, not their own light, but reflections of the light of Christ.  Many of the Church Fathers, when considering when the angels were created (since there’s no mention of it in the Scriptures), attribute it to when God created the stars.  And so it was fitting that the angels should all appear at night, in the night sky, to proclaim the newborn Jesus to the shepherds.
    We know about darkness all too well in our lives.  Since March of 2020 we have lived in the darkness of a COVID world, and no matter how you look at the virus, it has made the world dark.  Our country and our world are torn by the darkness of division.  Horrible crimes perpetrated by powerful men and women have come to light, only to accentuate how dark things really are.  In our own City of Flint, homicides are up this year from last year, which was an increase from the year before.  And lest we simply try to focus on the spinner in our neighbor’s eye, without recognizing the beam in our own, I think we all recognize the sins that plague our life, small or great, which contribute to the darkness that surrounds our world.
    But in the midst of the darkness we dare to hold our baptismal candles, sometimes shining with more of the light of Christ than other times.  We do not simply curse the darkness, but we call on Christ to shine upon us and upon our world.  St. Paul talks about how the grace of God, which is the very life of God who is Light, “has appeared, saving all and training us to reject godless ways and world desires and to live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age, as we await the blessed hope, the appearance of the glory of our great God and savior Jesus Christ.”  The Light of Christ is ready to shine upon us and upon our world, taking our baptismal candles which were lit from Him, which, by themselves do not illumine much, but united cast away all darkness.
    Just as the light of this church shines, even while surrounded by the darkness of the outside, so we, the living stones of the temple of God, are to shine, even when we are surrounded.  We do not have to be slaves to sin; we do not have to stumble our way through the darkness.  We have light, the very light of God that gives us true freedom and shows us the way to the day that never ends in heaven.  That is why we sing “Glory!”  That is why we venture out in the middle of the night in the bleak midwinter.  Not because we are perfect; not because we are the light and can solve every problem.  But because Christ is the Light, and is the answer to the question of every human heart, and the healing for every brokenness that exists in the world.  And today He is born for us.  
    Don’t blow out your candle because of how much darkness surrounds you.  Don’t even curse the darkness.  But, to quote the country singer Thomas Rhett, “Don’t hide in the dark, you were born to shine. In a world full of hate, be a light”  Or, even better, from the Prophet Isaiah: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shone.”  That light is Christ, born for us today.  “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to people of goodwill.”