Sunday Homily - June 14, 2020 - Jesus Changes You

St. Augustine of Hippo Icon

I.

There are some people in the world that are just plain hard to love,

 aren't they?

They are your best friend one day,

 and the next they try to push you away.

  Just when you thought they were on the right path,

   they disappoint you. 

And this certainly isn't unusual,

 at least in my limited experience.

  There are always those people in our lives

   that are really hard to keep loving.

    Some of them are immediately related to you, no doubt. 

There was a man once who was particularly hard to love

 because he was an upper class snobby philosopher and rhetorician.

You can tell how far gone he was by the fact that he had a job as a rhetorician,

 someone who convinces someone by the elegance and tactics of language,

  even when what they are convincing people is WRONG.

   All he cared about was having a good argument. 

Don't you love people who just want to argue with you all the time?

But this man was not just a philosopher and an (ugh) rhetorician.

 He was also the life of the party. 

He went to Carthage for school in rhetoric,

 but just like a kid heading off to some colleges in the U.S.,

  there was a strong culture of hedonism at the school he went to.

   Pleasure through food, drink, sex, substance abuse,

    all of that is what this man sought out. 

     He ended up having a child with a lover who he never married,

      and had planned on leaving her to be married to an heiress who was rich. 

Yeah, great guy, right?

He eventually became so skilled in rhetoric

 that he won a job in Milan as a rhetoric professor,

  and his position was one that influences many of the politicians

   within the powerful city of Milan. 

But it was in that city that this man met someone that would change his life.

 And that man was a skilled preacher of the Church,

  a preacher who taught the great truth of Christ Jesus in such a way

   that the rhetoric professor was captured by the beauty of the language he used

    to describe Christianity.

You see, our philosopher and rhetoric professor used to had a disdain for Christianity. 

 He saw it as inelegant,

  rough,

   un-beautiful,

    following a man named Jesus who ended up being killed. 

But the way that this preacher in Milan described Christianity

 was something that this rhetoric professor had never heard before.

  You could say that the Holy Spirit truly opened this man's eyes by the preaching of the Gospel.

This rhetorician's mind was not changed over night. 

 It took many months,

  visiting with this preacher outside of the Church services of the Holy Mass,

   and slowly, but surely,

    God caught hold of this man's heart.

     And slowly, but surely,

      this man was brought to the realization

       that God had truly reached out to him to save him. 

This man would later write about his incredible conversion by the Holy Spirit

 in a book titled "Confessions"

  in which he painfully, yet somehow hopefully and with thankfulness,

   recounts his past sins,

    but in the light of how God loved him even when he was a slave to those sins.

And this man, if you haven't guessed yet,

 became one of the most important theologians in Christian history.

  And his name is Augustine,

   whom we know as St. Augustine of Hippo.

   [c.f. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Augustine]

II.

"For while we were still weak, 

 at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 

  Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person-- 

   though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. 

    But God proves his love for us 

     in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

      [Romans 5:6-8]

If you want to find one of the most beautiful and wrenching truths

 in all of the New Testament,

  look no further than St. Paul's words in Romans chapter 5. 

The weight of love that God chose to bear

 on our behalf

  is simply beyond our own understanding. 

Because think of St. Paul as he writes these very words

 and where St. Paul had come from in his own life. 

Paul is his Gentile, Greek name.

 His given Hebrew name is Saul. 

  And his Hebrew name is the name

   that the young fledgling Church of Jesus

    was absolutely terrified of. 

Saul was a zealous persecutor of the Church,

 and in fact Saul was present at the martyrdom

  of St. Stephen the Deacon.

   [Acts 7:57-8:1]

Saul was on a mission to stamp out the Church,

 which he understood as a mistaken sect of Judaism

  that believed the blasphemy of a dead man, Jesus,

   as God himself. 

And Saul was not going to stand by and let people continue in error.

But God had bigger plans for Saul.

 Because on the way to Damascus to stamp out the Church,

  Jesus himself meets Saul on the road:

   "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?"

    [Acts 9:4]

If you remember more of the story of Saul,

 remember that he was blinded on the Damascus road,

  but a local follower of Jesus was given a vision about Saul

   to heal him and to open his eyes. 

But the believers who first new Saul 

 after the revelation of Jesus Christ to him on the Damascus road

  were still terrified of him.

In fact, many thought he was an imposter,

 a fake convert,

  and there was a faction of the Church that tried to expel him. 

But not just that, 

 Saul was now a target of his own Jewish people,

  who now were attempting to kill him as a traitor.

   [c.f. Acts 9]

The first few years of St. Saul's Christian life

 was a fearful and terrifying time in his life. 

But think of where St. Paul has come from

 when Paul writes the words of Romans 5. 

"Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person--

 ....though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die."

St. Paul was a righteous person,

 no doubt,

  and in fact he lays out his credentials as a Jew of Jews in one of his letters.

   St. Paul was the real deal as it came to observance of the Law of God.

    And yet, for all of St. Paul's righteousness,

     he knows deeply that rarely would anyone choose to die for someone like him. 

      What a lonely feeling!

 

"But God proves his love for us 

 in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us."

Paul writes these words 

 understanding the weight of them in his own life.

He knows that, despite his best attempts to follow God in all that he did,

 that he still fell utterly short.

  He remains at war within himself because of his sin,

   and he earnestly desires to be set free.

But the love of God for Paul was so real

 because of what Jesus Christ had shown Paul in choosing to die for him

  even as he was still dead in sin. 

Even as Paul was still utterly broken,

 Jesus Christ had come already to heal him.

  And this demonstration of love that Jesus Christ had shown Paul

   was world-changing not just for him,

    but for all who, like him, have been redeemed from sin

     by the love of God in Jesus Christ Our Lord. 

III.

People like St. Paul,

 and people like St. Augustine,

  are people who know the intense weight and the reality of the love of God

   because they know in their own selves how utterly unworthy they are of that love. 

And yet Jesus Christ chose to make them worthy of that love,

 not in their own selves,

  but rather because of the free gift given by God's unconditional and unsurpassed love

   for all made in God's image.

And that means EVERYONE.

No matter what your past,

 nor your present,

  nor even your future may hold,

   Jesus Christ proves his love for you

    in that while we all were still utterly broken in our sin

     Jesus died in our place anyway

      that we might never have to die again. 

And if Jesus Christ did this for us,

 we also are to recognize that this intense love of God

  that changed a rhetorician philosopher playboy into a saint,

   that changed a deadly persecutor of the Church into a missionary planting churches,

    will also enact the same redemption into literally anyone's life

     that God so chooses.

Absolutely no one is outside of the reach of redemption.

 All we have to do on our end is recognize the deep love of Jesus for us,

  to repent where we have been blind and straying from the love of God,

   and to accept that free gift of God for us in Christ,

    the salvation found in believing in Jesus's blessed name.

And as we choose to do so,

 we also are called to no longer follow our own understanding

  nor to strive with our own strength,

   nor to see with our own eyes anymore,

    but rather we are called to follow Jesus into wherever he may lead us. 

We are to understand the world the way Jesus understands it.

 We are to strive in the world with the strength God gives us.

  We are to see the people around us the way that Jesus sees them. 

And if we really commit to doing that,

 to seeing people truly the way that God sees them,

  to understanding the world the way that God does,

   and to strive for the will of God in the world,

    only then is when we will begin to see the healing of our world

     that we so long for and desire in the depths of our souls.

St. Augustine and St. Paul remind us

 that changing the world starts with God changing us.

  And that change is hard and scary in a lot of ways.

Allowing God to change your mind about something 

 is one of the most uncomfortable things

  that most of us can experience. 

Changing your mind and saying, "I am wrong about this"

 will cause you to question far more than just the thing you changed your mind about,

  but it will drive you to a holy examination of yourself

   to see if you are really living a life that Jesus wants you to live.

    And, perhaps, Jesus himself is calling you to change fundamentally

     from how you always thought yourself as being

      into what God desires you to become. 

Your work, friends,

 our work,

  is to let that happen. 

   Our hard work is to LET God change us as God sees fit,

    because God desires our healing and wholeness. 

     And that healing must come by an inward and lasting change,

      that change in which Jesus chose to die and rise again for us

       even while we were still bound in sin. 

But, remember friends,

 Jesus did this to give you a gift that will utterly change your life for eternity. 

Accept that gift, friends.

 And recognize that when you do,

  you will never be the same. 

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.