A Subversive Faith--Homily from this Weekend

It was nothing more than a little incense dropped into a bowl.  That was all.  Drop it in and the public sacrifice was over.  It appeared seemingly innocent.  But it was much more than that.  For the early Christians it was a denial of what had become so dear to them.  A denial that there really was only one Lord to whom they devoted their entire lives.  So they refused.  They were subversive to the reigning culture.  Some lost their lives.  But the faith lived on.

In the camp no one spoke up.  Silence pervaded the ash filled air.  Life was work, sleep, and try to stay alive—or perhaps not.  Faith was impossible.  Hope completely lost.  Love unimaginable. Yet when one man was called forward to receive the punishment for three that had escaped, an act of love would come.  A subversive act by a man named Maximilian.  He would lose his life, but the faith would live on.  

There is something about the Christian faith that is always subversive.  For if it is not subversive than the Church either admits that the Kingdom has come, or we are simply apathetic to the Kingdom.  It is never subversion through violence or even coercive power.  It is subversive by simple acts of love, living the very example that Jesus has left us.

In the safety that many of us here experience in the Western world, we will probably not risk losing our lives by being subversive. Yet it will take great sacrifice none-the-less. I believe that today’s Gospel is actually speaking to us as a community to be subversive.  It is not the subversion of violent regimes or political oppression.  It is subversion of elements of the culture in which we find ourselves.  A culture that is not always so conducive to faith:  one that insidiously creeps in on us without our knowing.

The gospel begins by saying that if our brother sins against us, we should go and tell this person. This is the first invitation to live a subversive faith.  It is by being a community of discipline. It means first being willing to let someone know when they are acting in the wrong.  But it is also our own ability to allow others to invite us to deeper conversion. This might seem simple.  But in our culture it is really unheard of. 

For we live in a time and place that holds tolerance to the highest degree.  Seemingly, no one can do anything wrong.  In private anything really goes.  And even if someone should act in an incorrect way publicly, it is really no place for someone else to say something.   We determine what is right and wrong for ourselves, and no one should bother us otherwise.  Talk about what is right and wrong is even taboo.  For your right and my wrong is all that matter.  There is not much that binds us together. 

Stanley Hauerwas states that we live in an age that has thrown discipline out.  Not only in society has this been eclipsed.  But it is also gone from the church.  He says that the church has remained only a place of care.  But it has lost the art of discipline.  And therefore it has lost one of its subversive qualities, and it is weakened at being the Sacrament of Salvation to the world. 

For us then, one of the most powerful acts of subversion that we can image to the world is a mutual openness to discipline.  It says that we ultimately don’t determine what is right and wrong.  That often we are mistaken; that not all things are relative; and that not all things should be tolerated.  We certainly will be misunderstood, mocked and maybe even laughed at.  We will have to unlearn some of what culture has taught us.  It will be painful, but the faith will live on.

The next way the Gospel is inviting us to be subversive is found in one simple verse: “If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church.”  In matters to determine the truth of a situation the good news of Jesus invites us to appeal to authority. 

Now anyone versed in some philosophy knows that the appeal to authority went out long ago.  For as Chesterton writes “Modern man will accept nothing on authority, but will accept anything on no authority.” With the hermeneutic of suspicion of anything but “pure reason” authority was sent back in a time machine to the Middle Ages where some would say that it belongs.  For those of us considered theologians or at least theologians in the making we know about how far appeal to authority gets us in our arguments.  And for parents I am sure when asked over and over from your kids why they need to go to bed, “because I said so” doesn’t always seem to work so well. 

But our willingness to appeal to authority, and to accept that authority, is a subversive act in our current culture.  For it says that we have limits.  That as glamorous as science is: it is still limited.  As brilliant as our God-given minds are: they are not infallible.  And as deep as we are able to plumb the depths of meaning and understanding in this world: the depths are limitless and not fully attainable.  We are limited.  We are weak.  And to admit we need to appeal to an authority—a God given authority based on God’s word—is a subversive act.  It admits our creaturelyness. We shouldn’t feel foolish about hanging on to tradition.  We shouldn’t feel foolish about appealing to authority. We may be misunderstood and deemed irrational and seen as foolish in doing so, but the faith will live on.

I would like to illustrate the final way in which our Gospel today calls us to be subversive by a little story from when I was in the missions. 

Agnes was the grandmother of Samantha.  Every Saturday evening she would drop her granddaughter off at the church.  Her granddaughter, a 14 year old convert to Catholicism, one of the first converts in our missions, would run inside and be greeted by the community.  But Agnes would stay outside in her van.  She would park close enough to be able to see what was going on inside. But she never came in.  Week after week she simply sat out in her van.  I began making it a habit to join her after mass.  Sometimes if we had hospitality I would bring her juice or cookies.  We would talk.  Laugh.  But she never got out of her van.  And she never stepped foot in the church.  Once I asked her why she always sat outside rather than joining us.  She responded:  I’ve looked for God a lot in my life but rarely have I found him.  But now I have.  I know that God is there in your little church.  I can see it by that candle that is always lit.  I can see it as the people gather.  I can see it in how my granddaughter has changed.  God is there.  And this is as close as I need to get for now. 

The Gospel today makes a promise to us that where two or three are gathered in Jesus’ name, he will be there in their midst.  Believing in that reality is perhaps as subversive as we can get.  For the world is longing to know where to find God.  And unfortunately many charged with the responsibility to point people to wear God can be found have let the world down.  Whether through sin or through unbelief or through pride we have become convinced that we are not sure where God can be found.  We walk around in a haze of the “false humility” of fragmentation and uncertainty and we don’t know where to look.

But what we will do here in just a few minutes subverts all of that.  In the baptism of Manuel—whose very name indicates that we know where to find God—we gather as a community and answer the question that is written on the human heart.  We answer the question that the world in its lust for idols, a world with its sky line of towers to babel searching for God, it its technological frenzy to achieve transcendence is dying to have answered. 

Where is God:  God is here.  Where two or three are gathered, he is here.   And thus the negative elements of the reigning culture are subverted.  And we and the world are transformed.