Salvation. Eternal life. What are the absolute necessities to realize the beatific vision? Last Sunday, Trinity Sunday, we heard read the episode of Jesus and Nicodemus in the garden, in which Jesus tells Nicodemus that it is necessary for everyone who would enter the kingdom of heaven that they be born from above, of both water and the Holy Spirit. Along with many other texts in the Gospels and pastoral Epistles, the Church has always understood therefore the necessity of water Baptism, during which service the very words from John’s Gospel are quoted, “our Saviour Christ saith, ‘None can enter into the kingdom of God, except he be born anew of Water and of the Holy Spirit.”
Thursday past was the feast of Corpus Christi (the Body of Christ), on which day we may contemplate the threefold aspect of that title: the actual physical body of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the humanity which He took from His Mother the Blessed Virgin Mary, which body He never was to put off, but rather ascended bodily into heaven with His full humanity; the sadly wounded and fractured Body of Christ which is His Church militant here in earth; but mostly, based on the readings chosen for that feast, we are encouraged to contemplate the sacramental presence of His Body in the Holy Eucharist. The readings in the New Testament chosen for that feast speak of the bread and wine offered as an ongoing participation in that perpetual Eucharistic sacrifice, and His real presence in them; but equally the Church might have chosen our Lord’s own words about the necessity for all believers of ongoing participation in thus partaking of His Body and Blood, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you … your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread” (referring to Himself) “shall live for ever” (John 6. 53b, 58b).
Baptism and ongoing participation in the Holy Eucharist: very clear statements by our Lord Himself on the necessity for such if we anticipate salvation. But what else? C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, and many others in writing on the core beliefs of Christianity and the clearly articulated requirements in a full reading of the entire New Testament, summarize the mandatories as: Baptism, the Eucharist and belief.
Belief or faith; a neatly packaged requirement, one might even say pure and simple; but complete belief, fully practised is anything but pure and simple. From time to time Macleans magazine publishes statistics that indicate that some 78% of all Canadians claim to believe in the Judaeo-Christian God. And here I am not being particularly judgemental, but rather simply offering an objective observation: some 80% or more of those who profess that belief don’t give even the tiniest shred of evidence that there is any truth whatever in their claim.
What about us, regular churchgoers? On the one hand we often hear that belief or faith alone is all that is required; however, based on our Lord’s direct commands, if someone claims to be a believer, but is neither baptized nor participates in the Eucharist, then is not their belief is to a large extent a hollow claim? Which is to say, if one professes to believe wholeheartedly in the words, teachings and commandments of a great leader, then surely it is incumbent to accept and follow the direct commandments of that leader, especially if he states that those are necessary. Quite bluntly then, if someone claims to be a Christian believer, but rejects our Lord’s direct commands regarding the need for Baptism and the partaking of His Body and Blood, how can he or she claim to be a full believer in Christ?
Fair enough; all of us here are baptized and have come to participate in the Eucharist, to receive, as He commanded, His precious Body and Blood. Does that satisfy completely all of the mandatories? Well, surely we must observe that many practising Christians, perhaps even us, are to some extent like those who respond to the Macleans survey when it comes to realizing the fullness of fulfilling the requirement to believe. We might be just as deficient as those who reject the need for Baptism and the Eucharist, as we might tend to fall into the self-satisfied trap of looking at belief as just some sort of mental assent to the teachings of our Lord, without any particular commitment to practising such in our daily lives.
Perhaps among the most emphasized in the pages of the New Testament, in terms of putting belief into practice, is that which is presented in today’s readings. Love. Not the physical attraction between a man and a woman, not the brotherly love that we might feel towards our very best friends, not the affection that members of a family exhibit, but rather the type of love that, without thinking reaches out to help others, the type of love that does good without any premeditated thought of reward or praise. The particular Greek word agape is sometimes translated as charity - we might think of St. Paul in 1 Cor. 13, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity … I am nothing.”
John, sometimes called the Apostle of love, in today’s Epistle reading waxes, both eloquently, “Perfect love casts out fear,” and bluntly, “If a man say ‘I love God,’ and hateth his brother, he is a liar.” Throughout that particular letter, he uses agape, the almost peculiar to Christianity “love that gives.”
Earlier in the same passage we read of the supreme example of that type of love, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins,” referring of course to Jesus’ one full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction of his human life on the Cross.
We shall come back to the Cross in a moment; but first let us touch on today’s Gospel passage as another example of agape, - or lack of it, and the subsequent consequences that might be expected. The story of Lazarus and the rich man (often called Dives, Latin for “rich”). The message is clear enough to us that God expects us, not least as proof of our faith and belief, to care for the downtrodden, the poor, the homeless and so forth. In passing, this, like many of His other parables, must have been at least mildly shocking to Jesus’ Jewish listeners. By the time of our Lord’s Incarnation, the Jews had arrived at the conclusion that being wealthy was proof that a man was righteous and was therefore being rewarded by God, whereas a beggar was being punished for his sins. Sounds awfully like karma, doesn’t it?
We might also think of another of Jesus’ parables - that of the Good Samaritan, which teaches both love of neighbour, regardless of who he or she is, and, not thinking of any consequences or reward. Once again, this parable would have raised some eyebrows, as it was told in response to a pointed question. That question arose after Jesus had told a lawyer that the law is fulfilled in love of God and love of neighbour. The lawyer responded by asking, “And who is my neighbour?” Here again, the Jews of that time had a carefully constructed hierarchy of those who qualified to be considered neighbours, and the list only included other Jews. For Jesus to tell such a compelling and convicting parable that points out that the good neighbour is a non-Jew, well, imagine the stir among the listeners.
In both of these episodes, we have individuals - Dives in the one, a Jewish priest and a Levite in the other - who were much more concerned about themselves than others who were in need. He condemned them all as not having fulfilled the law, not loving God through loving their fellow men, not believing. Against that, we have our Lord, Who, on the Cross was not thinking about Himself - if He had been, He could have stopped the whole thing - rather He was thinking about you and me; about all mankind, regardless of race, creed, sex, good, bad, ugly, poor - the whole world. The supreme example of love against which our belief, our capacity to go and do likewise, is measured.
A third parable of Jesus certainly bears mentioning here, that of the sheep and the goats: “for I was an-hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in,” and so forth. Again, by the response of those who were thus welcomed into the kingdom, they were not thinking of themselves when they performed those acts of charity.
Agape, charity, love is not measured against only these examples of helping those in need. Yes, in the same previously quoted passage from St. Paul, “Though I speak with the tongues of men…” he tells us that “love is the fulfilling of the law,” yet without providing any sort of all-encompassing guideline. We might do well to look at his letter to the Galatians where he provides a list that all who seek special gifts of God would do well to heed. He is speaking of the proof of the active, flowering, indwelling of God the Holy Spirit in an individual, but by the context of the list that he provides, it is also clear that he is referring to the fulfilling of the law, the real depth of our professed belief, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.”
Now some might be thinking that I am stomping all over one of the central tenets of evangelical Christianity, that of sola fide: by faith alone and God’s unmerited grace and favour are we saved, not by works. But it seems to me that this nearly 500 year-old disconnect between faith alone, and faith plus works could be rather easily resolved. That our Lord and St. Paul make very clear statements that we are saved by faith alone is obvious. Equally, our Lord, and both St. John in today’s Epistle and St. James whom we read this past week, make it abundantly clear that some sort of physical response to faith, primarily in that of charity, is a necessary proof of a lively faith. The disconnect originally happened as the concept of works, by the time of the Reformation, had in fact degraded into a position that held that by conscious, some might observe self-serving performance of good works, we could save up “frequent salvation points.” Unfortunately, some Reformers didn’t just correct the excess; they went too far the other way.
Perhaps I might be thinking far too simplistically here; but I should think that by zooming out just a bit from our respective favourite bits of the Bible that we use to justify one position or the other, we might come to the acknowledgement that the grace of God is freely offered to all of mankind, as is His gift of faith; and that salvation is also a gift from him that is attained without any merit on our part. Further, let us suggest that grace and faith are like the seed that is scattered on all types of ground. Some of that grace meets fertile ground when faith from above is answered by faith of the believer, and it brings forth thirty, sixty or an hundredfold. How does it thus produce such fruit? By manifesting itself in obedience to the clear commands of our Lord, and by unconscious, not self-centred or self-serving, acts of charity that expect no reward, neither in this life, nor in the next. “Lord, when saw we thee an-hungered?”
Faith; Belief. The only requirement for salvation? Yes, provided that that belief is not just some vague mental assent; rather it is manifested in a clear response by obedience at the very least to the most pointed commands of our Lord: we must be baptized, we must partake of His Body and Blood; and, we must love one another, selflessly, without thought of gain or reward, as He loves us. I’m certain that many evangelicals understand that sola fide, properly understood, acknowledges that true faith will indeed manifest itself in obedience to our Lord and acts of charity out of love for Him; and, I couldn’t agree more that their observation from 500 years ago was spot on - it is not possible to buy our way into heaven with indulgences and purposeful works that come from our own motivation, rather than springing from love of God. But if I may be permitted: per obsequium et fide vivax, non fide vacuus - by obedience and lively faith, not empty faith.
Our Collect today (written some 1,000 years before the Reformation) neatly summarizes this via media understanding, “O God, the strength of all them that put their trust in thee: Mercifully accept our prayers: and because through the weakness of our mortal nature we can do no good thing without thee” (the acknowledgement that it is only by his grace, by the merits of Jesus’ sacrifice that we are saved) “grant us the help of thy grace, that in keeping of thy commandments we may please thee both in will and deed” (the recognition that our faith, if alive, will respond).
In 1996 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was interviewed by Peter Seewald, which interview was subsequently published as a book, Salt of the Earth - The Church at the end of the Millenium. I should like to conclude by quoting that last two questions and replies that speak to the issue of agape. One might even suggest that the very passages that we read today from John and about Lazarus and Dives were germane to the Cardinal’s thoughts:
“To add here a final question: What, Your Eminence, is the true
history of the world? And what does God
really want from us? You once wrote that
‘history is marked by the conflict between love and the inability to love, that
desolation of souls that occurs when man is capable of recognizing only the
quantifiable values as valuable and real … This destruction of the capacity to
love gives birth to deadly boredom. It
is the poisoning of man. If it carried
the day, man, and with him also the world, would be destroyed’.”
The Cardinal responds, “There I was drawing on Augustine, who himself resorts to the preceding Christian, catechetical tradition, which represented history as the conflict between two states, two communities of citizens. Goethe took that up and said that history as a whole is the struggle between belief and unbelief. Augustine saw that a little differently and said that it is a struggle between two kinds of love, between the love of God unto sacrifice of self, and self-love unto the denial of God. Thus he depicted history as the drama of a struggle between two kinds of love. I have tried to give this idea further precision by saying that the countermovement is not really another love; it doesn’t deserve the name of love at all, but it is the refusal of love. History as a whole is the struggle between love and the inability to love, between love and the refusal to love. This is also, in fact, something we are experiencing again today, when man’s independence is pushed to the point where he says: I don’t want to love at all, because then I make myself dependent, and that contradicts my freedom.
“Indeed, love means being dependent on something that perhaps can be taken away from me, and it therefore introduces a huge risk of suffering into my life. Hence the express or tacit refusal: Before having constantly to bear this risk, before seeing my self-determination limited, before coming to depend on something I can’t control so that I can suddenly plunge into nothingness, I would rather not have love. Whereas the decision that comes from Christ is another: Yes to love, for it alone, precisely with the risk of suffering and the risk of losing oneself, brings man to himself and makes him what he should be.
“I think that this is really the true drama of history. In the many opposing fronts it can ultimately be reduced to this formula: Yes or no to love.”
“And what does God really want from us?”
“That we become loving persons, for then we are His images. For He is, as St. John tells us, love itself, and He wants there to be creatures who are similar to Him and who thus, out of the freedom of their own loving, become like Him and belong in His company and thus, as it were, spread the radiance that is His.”
THE ANNUNCIATION OTTAWA 2007 +CR