Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity
“Friend, go up higher”
What’s this? Upward mobility for Christians? Ambition or presumption? Neither. It’s really about the hope of transformation. It is really about our Christian vocation. We are called to something more that counters all the fearful fatalisms of our world and day as well as the endless narcissisms of our self-obsessions. It signals ever so profoundly the necessary condition of soul for the realization of God’s will and purpose for our lives. The necessary condition is humility. “He that humbleth himself shall be exalted.”
The operative words in the Gospel reading are “friend” and “go up higher”. The Epistle from Ephesians reminds us of our baptismal identity and vocation; “walk[ing] worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called”, for “ye are called in one hope of your calling” for there is “one Lord, one faith, one baptism.” In our baptisms we have been called up higher but only through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ; such is the heart of baptism. We are identified with Jesus in his free-willing identity and sacrifice for us. We live from him and with him in the Holy Eucharist, the spiritual and sacramental means of his continuing presence with us in our lives.
Jesus calls us “friends”. He does so not merely by way of a parable but also more directly. He calls us friends at the height of his passion, on the night of our betrayal. God makes us his friends when we were his enemies! This turns the ancient world on its head. It turns our world on its head. We live in a hopeless and fearful world. Here is the antidote to our hopelessness and fear. It challenges us to redeem us. It calls us up but only by our being lifted up by him and in him.
