+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
You’ll frequently come across arguments, sometimes genuine and sometimes disingenuous, sometimes from secular people and occasionally even from Christians, that if the church really cared for the poor as much as we claimed then we’d just sell all our buildings and give the money away. Such arguments never account for how much good is done for the larger community within church-owned spaces–for example, we have recovery meetings in one space or another here at Trinity every night of the week, who’d be hard-pressed to find any other space that would work for them in terms of both cost and the need for maintaining anonymity. Nor does it account for the fact that frequently churches collaborate to establish institutions which “spin off” to become their own entities to better serve the needs of their communities–I believe this is the case for most if not all of the big, non-profit providers of direct services for the indigent in Findlay. Nor does it account for the data, which tell us that Christians are more than fifty percent more likely to volunteer in the larger community and more than twice as likely to give financially outside their churches for the relief of the poor; this should track (as much as the cultured despisers of religion may dislike it), since our modern concept of charity was invented by the church over and against the classical, pagan concept of philanthropy, which more or less held that doing nice things was good, so long as you got recognition for it.
Most important of all, while this would not move the heart of a secular proponent of ecclesial divestment, it should do for the purportedly Christian ones: while the moral implications of the Gospel should and I think usually do compel us to care first and foremost for the poor and otherwise marginalized in our midst, this is not the primary function of the Church. The primary function of the Church is to worship God and to bring others into deeper relationships with the Lord Jesus Christ, whatever their status, socioeconomically or otherwise. This doesn’t always happen in every congregation of every “flavor” of Christianity all the time. Those who were here for our bible study on Revelation a couple weeks ago will remember that this has been a problem from nearly the beginning; the church in Laodicea was denounced for being what we might today call a “country club parish” who were comfortable and friendly with each other but had lost their evangelistic fervor and their love of Christ. But, swings and roundabouts over the last two millennia aside, I think churches have generally, historically done this well when they put their minds and muscles to it.
All of this is by way of trying to get our heads and hearts around that difficult saying in today’s Gospel: “the poor always ye have with you, but me ye have not always.” Yes, in part Jesus knew that Judas was a robber, that his intentions were not really pure. Judas did not actually want to help the poor. No, Jesus is not saying here that we aren’t obliged to help the poor who are always with us; this particularly profligate use of a luxury good (300 pence, or denarii, being about a year’s worth of wages for a laboror) was, we might say, given “special dispensation,” both because of Jesus’ imminent execution and Mary of Bethany’s genuine devotion in offering of it. So, I’m not saying that a neat equivalent in today’s context would be appropriate for us; we’ll not be burning $50,000 worth of incense at the Easter Vigil.
There is a balance to be struck here, and both common sense and conscience have a role to play. We have the poor with us, and we must give of our time, talent, and treasure to support those in need. We also have Christ still with us. I could be wrong, but “me ye have not always”, I think, refers specifically to the three days between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. The last words Christ says to his disciples and to us before the Ascension implies that we are in the opposite situation: “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” So we are dealing not with an either/or but with a both/and proposition. We are called to do unto the least of our sisters and brothers as we would to Christ himself, AND we are called to support the dignified worship of Christ and all those things which bring us and the world into closer relationships with him.
Next week, it will surprise nobody who knows me, is my favorite week of the year every year. The full battery of Holy Week liturgies accomplishes in a more intense way what every service of worship is aimed at doing–two things simultaneously. First, worship is for our edification. In today’s Epistle, Paul writes to the Philippians about his deepest desire: “That I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; if by any means I might attain to the resurrection of the dead.” His life’s work, his preaching and teaching and service and leadership of the churches he founded or supported were all aimed at this goal, but I also think that for Paul, and certainly for us, the worship of God presents an opportunity for the same in-and-of-itself. All our worship, and particularly our observance of Holy Week, serve to help conform us to Christ, to make us sharers in the fellowship of his suffering and death and help us experience a foretaste of the power and joy of his resurrection.
Secondly, and in my opinion even more importantly, all our worship, from our simple recitation of our daily prayers to the dramatic, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes unimaginably joyous, moments of the most fulsome and complicated solemn liturgies of Holy Week, are undertaken simply because God is worthy of our worship, which is the most important thing we can give him–not because he “needs it” but because we owe it to him. Indeed, we owe God everything. We can’t repay him, but that doesn’t let us off the hook entirely. Our charitable gifts and efforts are due him. So is our obligation to commend the faith that is in us to those who do not know the Lord Jesus. And yes, so too is giving our best, through sharing our talents in art and music to praise God, in attending to the service of the altar as servers and lectors and altar guild members and all the rest, and most importantly in simply being present and attentive and sincerely offering our hearts in worship to the Lord who gave everything for us.
This may all sound like I’m just giving an advertisement-cum-harangue for showing up during Holy Week, and I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a part of it, because I do think it’s important. But that’s not really the point. The point (and this is not universally held, it is Fr. John’s opinion, but I believe it is backed up by scripture and tradition) is that this celebration of the Eucharist–that every public service of the church we do in this space–is not first and foremost about getting one’s spiritual batteries recharged, or getting jazzed up to be more kind and loving and faithful the rest of the week, or learning something helpful or meaningful from the scripture readings or the sermon. Those are all good things, and I hope at least one of them is a “takeaway” for everyone every time we gather; like I said, worship is meant to edify us. But even more importantly in my opinion, is the fact that worship is an end in itself. It is the most important thing we do. I think it’s the thing that the church at its best does best, as important as everything else we do is. We give ourselves and each other and the whole world an opportunity in a life full of obligations and distractions to spend an hour or so at a time to be like Mary of Bethany, with the costly ointment which is our love and care, simply to be with Jesus and to worship him with no motive beyond the fact that he is worth it, he deserves it, and he wants nothing more than to be with us and to share his love and care with us at every moment.
+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.