The First Sunday after Trinity (June 6, 2021)

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

We love because he first loved us.

Today, we begin Ordinary Time with the First Sunday after Trinity. While I understand why we call it “ordinary,” I really don’t like the name because that makes it sound less important. But it’s not. While today is white because of the Trinity octave, the color for Ordinary Time is green because it’s a color that symbolizes growth. And that’s what we focus on during this season: how we grow as Christians. To that end, the first Sunday of Ordinary Time has two emphasizes: God’s love for humanity and our responsibility, in light of that great gift of his love, that we should respond with love for God and others.

There’s been a lot of scholarship written about the idea of gifts lately. In our context, we think of gifts as one-sided. If I give you a gift, I do it without expecting anything in response. And there’s something about that that rings true. A gift does not entail a tit-for-tat system of repayment. That said, what is the significance of a gift? When a boy gives a girl he likes a flower, he may not expect a flower in return but what does he want? A relationship with her. And that relationship should be one of giving the self to the other. It wouldn’t be a healthy relationship if one party only ever gives and the other party only ever receives. The rose might be the initiative that begins begins their relationship but it is expected, if she likes the gift, that they will each give to the other.

This is similar to our relationship with God. To help understand, we might ask the question, “Why did God create the world?” He didn’t need the world. He doesn’t increase or decrease because of the world. The world is totally dependent on him and he isn’t at all dependent on creation. So why create? We might not be able to understand the whole purpose but we do know that it was out of God’s gratuitous love that he gave us the gift of existence. And that same love that was operative in creation is the same love the affects our redemption. As St. John says in our Epistle: “Love is of God” and we know that because “God is love.” he goes on to say that “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation of our sins” (1 John 4:9-10).

In light of this framing, our Gospel lesson is from St. Luke 16:19-31, the parable of Lazarus. A rich man had a poor man named Lazarus who was afflicted by sores and lay at his gate in need of feed. We aren’t told why the rich man wouldn’t help — it may have been he saw Lazarus as an inconvenience. Maybe he thought Lazarus didn’t deserve it because he was poor. Maybe he was worried Lazarus would abuse the aid. Whatever his justification, the rich man did not help Lazarus and Lazarus dies. In the afterlife, he ends up in a place called Abraham’s bosom, by which Jesus seems to mean a place for the Spirits of the righteous dead. Meanwhile, when the rich man dies, he goes to Hades where is tormented. From his position, he sees Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom . Even in this moment in the afterlife, the rich man sees Lazarus as an object to exploit, requesting that he be sent “to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue.” But Abraham rebukes the man: “Son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish.” So the man requests Lazarus be sent to his family to warn them about this place of torment. But Abraham again refuses because they have Moses and the prophets which should be warning enough: “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.”

Some might read this story and think it’s primarily about what happens to us after we die—and it’s not not about that but it’s about more. A major theme of the parable is that we are interconnected: the rich man’s fate is tied to how he treated Lazarus and vice-versa. Theologian Hans Urs Van Balthasar highlights the significance of our connections with others by saying that “the ‘person’ finds itself involved in the going beyond—or, in other words, in loving the neighbor in the way that God, who ‘makes his sun to rise…on the just and on the unjust,’ loves him” (Dare We Hope 64). Here, we find a resonance in the Epistle reading where St. John connects our love for God and our our love for others: “if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” The two cannot be separated: “If any one says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.” Our love towards others is a response to his love: “We love because he first loved us.” So the parable is apocalyptic. And I don’t mean apocalyptic in the sense that it’s focused on the end of ht world but rather that, through the vivid imagery of the eternal destinations of Lazarus and the rich man, the parable unveils the present for us. The question the story confronts us with is whether we love others? Because the story details two very drastic trajectories based on how we answer that question. If we can look at our lives and honestly say we love others the way we ought to love them, then we can affirm that “God abides in us” as “his love is perfected in us.” But if not, we have to acknowledge that we are on the trajectory of the rich man.

And what is the metric by which we measure our love? The answer is the crucified Christ. Do we love others that much? Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI, calls Christ, in this context, as the “final criterion” by which we should engage in self-judgment so that the “individual suddenly recognizes what he really is.” Every gap between what we are and what we should be becomes infinitely heavy for us—a realization that, on our own, we can never measure up. But God is love and, as Von Balthasar says, “God’s infinite love, mean to educate the sinner must be accepted by that sinner, and acceptance means not only regarding it as true but behaving in a corresponding manner.”

Our culture often looks outward for its problem. “The problem is x” and x equals whoever we dislike. This tendency was identified by scholar Rene Girard as the “scapegoating mechanism.” In looking to solve a problem, we often create victims by violence, whether physical or through other forces of social marginalization (historically, we might think how various immigrant groups like the Italians or Chinese have been treated). This bloodletting is, according to Girard, how society maintains unity: it has to create a common enemy and purge those enemies through sacrificial rites. And this is what makes Christianity so amazingly counter-cultural: it shows us a better way. Rather than reifying those cycles of violence, Christ allows himself to be that scapegoat by giving himself up. This is love. And that love is participatory: once we recognize it and receive it, we are called to replicate it in our relations to others because when we were unloveable God loved us into existence. In this context, then, it’s important that we turn the spotlight from “out there” to “in here.” We understand the risk that we are the rich man. I’m reminded of Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard who said, “As far as I am concerned all others will, of course, go to heaven; the only doubt is whether I shall go there.”

When we have this realization, our Collect of the Day is pertinent: “through the weakness of our mortal nature, we can do no good thing without thee.” So we ask “that in keeping thy commandments, we may please thee, both in will and deed.” We do this by joining in with divine love. St. Paul reminds us to “love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.” The whole law is “summed up in this sentence, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”

So we have the two paths laid out in front of us. We have that of the rich man where the self is isolated from others. And we have the way of the Cross in which the self gives of itself for others. And we know that, whatever we do, the words of Jeremiah ring true: “Am I a God at hand, says the Lord, and not a God afar off? Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? says the Lord. Do I not fill the earth? says the Lord.” Knowing that, how should we then live?

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.