Year B – Proper 20

The Rev. Gerald W. Keucher

In the Collect today we prayed, “Grant us, Lord…while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure.”

“What will it matter in a hundred years?” With this question we try to tell ourselves or one another that something we want or care about at the moment is not of lasting importance. Sometimes we’re right about that, and maybe sometimes we’re wrong. Some things won’t matter at all, and some things will. Which are which?

We are prone to think that things last longer than people. I mean, people die, but their houses and dishes and jewelry live on, as it were. We think that governments and social systems are more durable than people too. But if we think that things or systems last longer, and are therefore more important, than people, we are like the people the first lesson speaks of, because we are reasoning unsoundly.

You see, the reality is that we will live for ever. Our bodies will lie in death, but as for us, our souls shall live, as the Psalmist says. We tend to think that we will become dust and ashes while our estates and our society go on for ever, but it’s really the other way around. All the things we own will be junk and landfill, and nations will rise and fall, while we will be only beginning to comprehend the light of God’s glory.

As a social system I think Communism failed because it put the system before people, and declared that the goal of creating a fair society justified the destruction of a log of people the society was supposed to serve. Any society that puts the system before the people who make up the system will fail. People are ends in themselves. People are never the means to someone else’s ends. Closer to home, a system like ours that tends to make things more important than people is probably in for some kind of adjustment.

Therefore, St. James is right to decry our jealousies, selfish ambitions, and our covetousness for two reasons: first, because of the effect those things have on us , and second, because of the effect they have on others .

You see, because we will live for ever, how we treat one another, how we use the time and money we are given, what attitudes we cultivate, and what kind of people we make ourselves into — not only will these things matter to us in a hundred years — they will matter for ever. In fact, they are the only things that matter. These things will matter to us for ever whether we are all reduced to radioactive ash tonight or whether centuries from now students study American civilization the way we study ancient Greece .

So before we go off chasing money or security or power or revenge, let’s remember what will pass away and what will endure. The things that will endure are the things that come from God. The things that will pass away are the things we create. God is love, and God is the source of all that is wise and good and true and generous and loving, so these are the things that shall endure.

Greed, selfishness, malice, selfish ambition and every other kind of evil do not come from God; rather they are the ways we misuse God’s good creation and cut ourselves off from God. These things don’t come from God, so they can’t endure.

So to the extent that we allow ourselves to become self-centered, unloving, ungenerous people, we are trying to grasp things that will pass away. But to the extent that we practice love, hospitality, generosity, patience and forbearance in our minute-by-minute relationships with others, we are holding fast to the things that can endure because these things come from God. The fruit of the Spirit of God is love, joy, peace patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These are what will endure.

I have suggested numerous times in the months I’ve been here that being kind to one another is very important. Now perhaps you see why I think it is so important. The next time you want to snap back or lash out at somebody, please remember the long-term implications, and try kindness and patience instead.

And what we do and what commitments we make and how we follow them through will matter not only to us in a hundred years; our actions will have effects on those who follow us here. Think about the group that gathered in what was then a rural part of Manhattan to found the Church of the Intercession. If those people, most of whose names are completely forgotten, as well as all the generations that have come between them and us — if they all had not done what they did to build and preserve this congregation, think how much poorer our lives would be.

In the same way, what we do here in our own day will matter to others years from now, even though they won’t remember our names. I’d like all of us to do our best to make this place once again a vibrant and awe-inspiring center of worship and service. Our commitment to God’s work here is important. God has made the world so that we are all related to one another, and what we do has effects — for good or ill — far beyond what we usually imagine.

Every day the Lord asks us as He asked the disciples in the Gospel today, “What were you doing today as you went along the way?” And sometime like the disciples we are silent because we were chasing things that don’t matter now and won’t ever matter, and sometimes we’re silent because we don’t really want to tell Jesus how we’ve been treating the people around us. But sometimes we can tell Him about the people we helped, the people we loved, the people who helped us, and the efforts we made to magnify the Lord and to accomplish God’s purposes for the world.

So I suggest that we keep before us at every moment a sound recognition and a proper attitude of stewardship toward what will endure and what will pass away. We want to hand a livable world on to the next generation — a cleaner world, a less hungry world, a more peaceful world, a world in which the Church, the Body of Christ, proclaims and demonstrates the message of God’s love and acceptance and forgiveness.

We have our part to do in that work right here, and I am grateful and humbled to be a small part of that work. How we treat one another and how faithful we are to God’s purpose for our lives and our world — these things matter. They matter now; they matter to us, and they matter to those around us. And these things will matter to those who follow us.

At the same time we can remember that, when generations are no more, when the sun is a cold cinder, and time is done away, we will still rejoice as living members of Christ’s Body through the indissoluble bond of baptism and the blood of the everlasting covenant. Amen.