Relevance.
I swear if I hear one more Church figure use that word, I’m gonna scream. It’s become a buzz word over the past several years in Church circles and it’s making me crazy. “Come and worship with us and hear messages that are relevant for today.” “You need to be relevant in your preaching.” Or other such nonsense as that. It’s as though Christ isn’t relevant enough. I mean, that’s basically what is being said. The Gospel isn’t enough. No, we need relevance, whatever that means. Therein lies the problem. Relevance means whatever you want it to mean. The whole premise behind the shift in the Church over the last 50-60 years just makes my head hurt. The thought that we need to adapt our worship or presentation of the gospel to “modern man” is just asinine. Modern man, in his lost state, wants nothing whatsoever to do with the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here’s the thing. The only thing that is relevant to our lives today is the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the only relevant thing in life. Everything else is either a means to get us closer to Him or farther away. There’s a couple of things we need to consider: The preaching of Jesus Himself The reality of eternity Let’s start with the preaching of our Lord Jesus. If you’ve read the Gospels at all, you will know that Jesus’ preaching and teaching was not exactly popular with the establishment of the day. Actually, it wasn’t exactly popular with most people of the day, period. He told people to repent. He told people to stop sinning. He told people that they were going to have to choose between loved ones and Him. He told people that they would have to carry their cross and be persecuted. He told people that allegiance to Him meant dying to the world. He told people that the Kingdom had come and it looked radically different than their idea of power. He told people to pray for their enemies and give away all their goods. He preached a gospel of radical self-denial and absolute surrender to God’s will. He told people that disobedience to what God (and He) said meant eternal damnation. Now, let’s consider the “relevant gospel” that we so often hear today, from all denominational entities. Be nice to each other. Be racially and socially woke. You don’t actually have to die for Jesus because He came to make you happy and healthy and have a great life. Don’t worry about sin and hell and damnation, ‘cause Jesus is nice now and He won’t condemn you. Enjoy all the comforts of life, ‘cause Jesus doesn’t want you to be uncomfortable. Just come as you are (that’s code for don’t worry about repentance). Be a good person. You get to keep your life just as it is. We don’t have to hear truth; I’ll just tell jokes. Heck, sometimes people even dress up as movie characters. We can re-think the way the Church has always done things. Our music is modern and we have relevant teaching for your children (that’s code for your kids get the warm fuzzies and get to play with toys). We’re gonna sing love songs to Jesus. Do you see the difference? If Jesus were preaching today, very few would listen to Him…kinda like what happened in His day. If Jesus were preaching today, people would condemn Him as harsh and unloving because He told them to repent. He certainly wouldn’t be preaching a gospel of environmentalism (I’m looking at you, Pope Francis). If Jesus were preaching today, He would be utterly rejected by modern man and many who claim to be Christian. Now, let us consider the reality of eternity. Aside from our society just straight up being a bunch of whiny babies, we really don’t seem to want to think too much about eternity. Here’s what I mean. If this life is all there is, then the “relevant” gospel makes perfect sense. If this life is all there is, then you better be nice and have fun activities and dress up like movie characters and tell jokes in your sermons and be woke. If this life is all there is, eat drink and be merry and don’t worry about those depressing things like repentance and the Cross. But, if there is an eternity, if there is a Heaven and Hell (and Jesus said there was), then His gospel becomes supremely relevant. If our eternal destiny is either being in His presence and the fulness of joy versus an eternity of flames and anguish that never dies, relevance takes on a whole new meaning. If your gospel revolves around making yourself appealing to the culture, you are damning people to Hell. Jesus didn’t seem too concerned with how people felt about what He said. He seemed far more concerned with how they lived their lives, whether they were obedient to what He said, lived righteously and how they loved others. The Apostles and Fathers and holy martyrs of the Church didn’t seem too concerned with being popular or relevant. They seemed concerned about fidelity to the person and message of Jesus Christ, no matter the cost. There is only one thing that is relevant. Repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything else is irrelevant and ultimately leads to the road to Hell. Our preaching, our worship, our cool and hip songs, and joke telling is utterly worthless if we don’t say first and foremost: Repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
0 Comments
Our world is consumed with pride.
So are we, if we’re honest. Or maybe it’s just me. We see this pride in everything. The media proudly struts about, pounding their nonsense into the brains of those foolish enough to listen to them, lecturing us about how we should be living a more woke life. The education system proudly flaunts the fact that they have largely abandoned traditional teaching methods and classic education and, rather than teaching our children how to think and read and interact with their fellow humans, they clamor about how modern their methods are, while teachers unions whine about doing their job because they might get sick. The government so proudly lectures us, in the persons of the radical left, about how we are all racists and sexual bigots because we (Catholics) cling to the Faith. Our own Church hierarchy, in their arrogance, feel that they can adjust the Tradition of the Church to fit into their liberal ideology and expect the faithful to just go along with the nonsense. Pride. It’s everywhere and consumes all in its path. This was, perhaps, the great sin of Lucifer. In his pride, he wanted to be the star of the show, not some lowly virgin who would give miraculous birth and certainly not to God the Son who would dare to lower Himself to become human. How dare God not recognize the beauty and knowledge and wonder of him, Lucifer thought! He was and is consumed by pride. Pride. But our readings today point us in a very different direction. Our Epistle is St. Paul’s famous text on humility: Philippians 2:5-11. Our gospel reading is St. Matthew’s narrative of the Passion of our Lord Jesus: Matthew 26:36-75, 27:1-60. Let us consider together the humility of our Lord Jesus. St. Paul reminds us that we are to have the mind of Christ. And, in our text today, what is the mind of Christ? He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men. God the Son, who has existed for all eternity, through Whom the world was made, for Whom the world was made, took upon Himself human flesh. He took on all our weakness and frailty. Imagine, brothers and sisters. God has become human. He emptied Himself of the glory in which He lived and the constant praise of the angelic hosts to hear the hateful words of sinful man who spat on Him and mocked Him. We could spend the rest of our lives meditating on this fact and not exhaust its depths: He emptied Himself. He humbled Himself, being obedient to death, even to death on a cross. Fathom, if you can, the humility of the God-man, God the Son, who was and is and is to come. He obeyed the will of the Father, knowing it would cost Him agony that we cannot possibly comprehend and suffering a death that was excruciating beyond what we can imagine. Look at our gospel reading and see His agony. He was beaten, spat upon, stripped naked, nailed to a cross. Behold His suffering and fall on your knees, brothers and sisters. And we, brothers and sisters, we not only observe but are invited to participate in His very Passion. What grace He has given us, that we should be joined to His suffering and death by faith! We cannot, we must not turn away from our own suffering for, in it, we embrace the suffering of our Messiah. Embrace the humility of our Lord Jesus in your own life. In the garden, He said, “My soul is sorrowful even unto death: stay you here, and watch with me.” What an invitation He has given us! We are invited to stay with Him and watch with Him in prayer! Do our souls sorrow for our sins? Do we watch with Christ in prayer? Our Lord said to the Father, “Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.” Are we willing to submit to the will of the Father, no matter the cost? Are we willing to submit our own will? Do we submit to His Church, and thus to Him, or do we demand our own way? Let us take to heart the words of our Savior, even in His suffering and Passion, “Watch ye, and pray that ye enter not into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh weak.” Let us embrace what our Lord has gone before us to show. Let us take to heart His words and amend our lives, rend our hearts and submit. Let us watch and pray that we may not enter into temptation. Our flesh is indeed weak and selfish and prideful. Pray, brothers and sisters, that your spirit would be made willing. Fast, pray, embrace the life our Lord has called us to, a life of submission to the will of the Father and service to our Lord Jesus. And what shall come of us after we have submitted, after we have fasted and prayed, after we have submitted to the will of the Father? Like the veil of the temple, our hearts will be torn in two. Not in pain but in freedom. For the veil of our flesh and sin that has separated us from God our Father will have been torn finally in two. Our hearts of stone will become hearts of true flesh. We shall have then the mind of Christ. And we shall see our Lord face to face, as He is. Oh, this is the end, dear brothers and sisters, of embracing the Passion of our Lord. We shall be made in His image and we shall see Him face to face! Watch ye, therefore, and pray! Deo gratias! |
Archives
March 2021
Categories
All
|