Stop eating your brother!

Homily: 13^th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle C

“Hey! Stop eating your brother!”  If you’re a parent of young children (or ever have been a parent of young children), perhaps you’ve said this phrase before.  If not, it probably isn’t much of a stretch for you to think it possible to have need of this phrase at some point.  Children, especially young children, are inherently selfish.  When spending time with their brothers and sisters, as long as everyone seems to be mutually satisfied with who’s playing with what or with how the game is going, everything is just fine.  As soon as one of them becomes dissatisfied or whose desires turn to a toy with which another is playing, there’s no telling what kind of havoc, pain, and suffering might ensue.  Boys, who by nature are more apt to turn to destructive behavior when they become bored or dissatisfied, are especially prone to this.  Thus, the scene almost writes itself: “Mom, Tommy keeps trying to eat me!”  “Tommy, this is the last time I’m going to tell you: Stop eating your brother!”

Saint Paul, whose martyrdom (along with Saint Peter’s) the Church celebrated yesterday, often spoke of himself as a “parent who had given birth” and of the Christians in the Churches he established through his missionary activity as “his children”.  Thus, it should be no surprise that, as we read his letters to these Churches that he established, we find him speaking as a parent to his toddler children.  In his Letter to the Church in Galatia (that is, to the Galatians), Paul is reminding them that Jesus didn’t save us so that we could then do anything and have it be okay.  Rather, he says, Jesus saved us so that we could become who we were meant to be.  Christian philosophers would later define this as the difference between two freedoms: the “freedom of indifference”, in which one is without any external or internal influence and so is free to choose whatever and for whatever reason, and the “freedom for excellence”, in which one is free from outside influence so as to become or achieve whatever it is that he/she was meant to be/achieve.

Paul is reminding his children in Galatia that the freedom for which Christ died and rose is the freedom for excellence and so he says, “For you were called for freedom, brothers and sisters. But do not use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh; rather, serve one another through love.”  Christ made us free, in other words, not so that we could indulge our carnal desires, but so that we could make of ourselves a gift for others!  Paul knows that the Galatian Christians have been fighting with each other—particularly between those who have been giving-in to particular sins and have been claiming a “freedom in Christ” to do so and those who are trying to correct them—and so he sends this letter of fatherly correction and guidance: first correcting those who are in sin, but then urging them to put away this bickering and infighting, because he knows that it will destroy them.  “If you go on biting and devouring one another,” he wrote, “beware that you are not consumed by one another.”  “Stop eating your brother!”, then, is the message of this reading.

My friends, this week we celebrate the anniversary of when our nation declared its independence from England.  We declared our independence, because we believed that we, being a virtuous people, could govern ourselves.  We desired freedom from the monarchy so that we could determine our own fate.  Our founding fathers knew, however, that this freedom could never be a freedom of indifference, in which every person could do whatever he/she wanted; but rather, that this freedom must be a freedom for excellence, in which we, as a people, would acknowledge each other’s dignity and inherent freedom as human persons, and, thus, work to build a system in which each person has the opportunity to seek a good life for him/herself and his/her family.  This “American Experiment” (as many modern intellectuals have called it), has worked rather well over the past 240-plus years.  It has flourished because, for most of those years, it operated under a broad and generic concept of what virtuous human flourishing looked like: that is, the “excellence” for which we were granted our freedom.

Unfortunately, today, the culture of “hyper-political-correctness" has tried to narrow that concept significantly: both by embracing ideas that were otherwise excluded previously, as well as trying to push out long-accepted and sought-after ideals.  This has caused disillusionment and angst for almost everyone; and so, today we find ourselves “biting and devouring one another” as if there is no longer space amidst our vast tracks of land for those who disagree with us.  “Beware that you are not consumed by one another”, Saint Paul warns.

My guess is that most all of us here would agree that, although we might get upset whenever we hear news of one side pushing unfairly against the other, we would rather see our nation turn back to civil discourse about these issues and strive to work together to find solutions that respect the freedom of everyone involved.  If so, then our Lord Jesus shows us a solution in our Gospel reading today.  There, in the turning point of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus realizes that it’s time for him to “fulfill his destiny” to become a sacrifice for all mankind in Jerusalem and so “resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem.”  Along the way, he found a town that refused to receive him: fist century “identity politics” closed the door to that Samaritan village.  Instead of giving in to the anger and frustration that his disciples wanted from him, Jesus never lost focus on the goal: to get to Jerusalem and fulfill God’s plan for his life.  In other words, he kept his mind and his heart set on establishing his kingdom—which would be lasting and world-changing—rather than seeking revenge against those who wronged him—which would be temporary and wouldn’t change a thing.

So it should be for us.  While it is quite necessary for us to work in the political sphere and be part of the public discourse that can lead to meaningful change for our nation, we must do so in a way that seeks to use our freedom for service and not for personal gain, revenge, or exclusion.  In other words, if we want to see our nation truly become great again, then we, as Christians, need to heed the message of our scriptures today: “Stop eating your brother!”  To do so, we must “live by the Spirit”, as Saint Paul instructed the Galatian Christians, and we must be “resolutely determined” to build up God’s kingdom here on earth: a kingdom in which every person seeks not to “gratify the desire of the flesh”, but rather to “serve one another through love”.  Doing so will not look like popular political victories or exacting revenge on the “Samaritans” of our day, but rather as fundamental changes in how we live as families and communities.  For when we focus on bringing forth this kingdom in our families and in our communities, God’s kingdom will appear; and God’s kingdom, when it appears, cannot be resisted.

My brothers and sisters, God has called us to be about his business of bringing forth his kingdom and Jesus has shown us that we must resolutely dedicate ourselves to this work; for it is our only path to true freedom.  Let us, then, stop “eating” our brothers and sisters and stand strong in the strength that we receive from this Eucharist, so that we may be true followers of Christ—men and women who are truly free—and, thus, make ourselves ready to inherit the kingdom that God has promised us.

Given at St. Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – June 30th, 2019