+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Our Gospel lesson this morning skips five verses. Some of you have heard me say before that whenever the lectionary does this, we should pay attention, because there is probably a reason. So, between Jesus’ denunciation of petulant hypocrisy from those who wish to find any reason whatsoever to reject both himself and John the Baptist and his comforting, if counter-intuitive words regarding the simplicity and ease of following the Way of the Cross, we should have heard this:
Then he began to upbraid the cities where most of his mighty works had been done, because they did not repent. “Woe to you, Chora’zin! woe to you, Beth-sa’ida! for if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Caper’na-um, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that it shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.”
In case the geographical names confused you, Jesus is railing against cities populated by faithful Jews, his own countrymen, declaring that his saving message would have been welcomed in communities by populated by Gentiles and notorious sinners. “Woe to you, Findlay, Ohio, because if these works had been done in Tehran or Las Vegas, they would have repented long ago.”
I believe this statement is more than Jesus engaging in rhetorical hyperbole. I think what he was saying was literally true. Why? Because to accept the salvation Christ offers one needs to recognize his or her need for a savior. And for that to happen, it certainly helps if one can see the beam in his own eye rather than the specks in others. One needs to be convicted of his or her own sin, and this is simply easier for those whose sins are great.
I had a friend once who said that if he were a priest who could conjure his own congregation out of thin air and populate it with whomever he wanted, he’d have a church full of alcoholics and drug addicts. Can you see why? These are folks who can recognize that they need God to pull them out of their misery, because they can’t do it on their own. Now, that’s the case for every single human being. We all need saving, and none of us can save himself. But someone whose life is and always has been pretty “normal” (whatever that means) can have a harder time seeing it. The man or woman who has always been a responsible citizen can be spared (ironically) from the hard and necessary realization that we are all like St. Paul, who recognized that he did not do what he wanted to do, but rather the very thing he hated. The less socially acceptable one’s struggle, the easier the way is to being brought to one’s knees. A secret resentment or chauvinism or covetousness can be brushed aside as minor compared to something more apparently flagrant or criminal, even while we’re all in the same boat with regard to original sin and our fallen nature.
In the case of Jesus saying “woe” to Chorazin and Bethsaida and Capernaum, it is ethno-religious chauvinism specifically that frustrates the mission. This can be a hard teaching during this weekend when we celebrate our own country’s semiquincentennial, and I don’t want to focus on that too much, except to say that I don’t see anything in the world wrong with the sort of patriotism that holds us together as a commonwealth as people grateful for our blessings and striving to extend liberties to all, but when that edges across a fine line into thinking our passports make us better than somebody else, or less liable to God’s judgment, then we’ve fallen into sinful pride. That’s a fine line, and I’ll leave it to you to determine how that plays out personally or collectively.
In all events, that chauvinistic ethno-religious impulse is just one of the many factors that can insulate one from a necessary moral and spiritual self-reckoning. It could be wealth or respectability or just good luck. It could be an inclination toward moral relativism—my sins aren’t all that bad—in an age where we may sometimes have gone a little too far in enshrining self-esteem as a good in itself (perhaps an understandable over-correction from previous eras, but an over-correction nevertheless). Maybe it’s just as simple as distraction. There’s no time for contemplating the health of one’s soul when there’s so much on social media to get us artificially outside ourselves.
Whatever it is, we could all benefit from an examination of conscience on a fairly regular basis, because if we do that in an honest and thoroughgoing manner we will all be convinced that we cannot in fact do it on our own. By “it”, I don’t just mean “save our souls” but also “live a truly happy life.”
And that’s where we finally get to the good news. When we’ve done that hard work, we get to rest in the infinite grace and mercy of a loving God who wants only to forgive us and help us on the way. We get to take on that easy yoke, that light burden, where we finally let God do the heavy lifting for us. We’ll fall into sinful self-will again from time to time, we’ll remove the easy yoke and try to pull a plow with our pinky fingers, and then we can do it again, knowing that each time we’ve made a little progress on the pilgrim path through life toward finally, fully appreciating the perfect rest of God.
+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.