You all know very well
the First Law of Thermodynamics. Now, I’m
not saying that you can necessarily recite it, but you know it. The first law of thermodynamics states that
work is heat and heat is work. Knowing
the first law of thermodynamics really just amounts to knowing that when you
run your car engine, it gets hot. Now,
that’s not really its function (its function is to spin the gears and thus
wheels and move your car forward), but a side-effect (a pleasant one in this
weather) is that doing that work creates heat.
You know the first law of thermodynamics if you know that when you
exercise, you’ll start to warm up. Doing
the work of contracting and extending your muscles to move around creates
heat. A room full of children running
around won’t just be noisy, it’ll warm up.
And when things get hot enough, they start to give off light. Think of sparks on a bandsaw. Or, think of those light bulbs, which are
designed to give off light and, incidentally give off heat. The work there is the electrons in the metal
of the filament moving backwards and forwards, changing direction over fifty
times a second. These tiny particles
buzzing around do enough work to heat those coils and produce enough light to
light up this Church.
God is at
work in each one of us. And work is
heat, and if we let ourselves get hot enough, we’ll light up the world. “You are the light of the world,” Jesus
proclaims. “Let your light shine before
others… so they may give glory to God.”
To understand this, we really need to see it in its context. This is the second in a series of readings
from the Sermon on the Mount, the great teaching Jesus gives after he’s begun
his healing ministry. Confusingly, we
didn’t read the first part last week, because we celebrated the Feast of the
Presentation instead. But, I’m sure you’re
all very familiar with what we would have read.
In fact, we heard it this past All Saints’ Day in November: “Blessed are
the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be
comforted.”
It goes
on, nine beatitudes in total. Nine
times, Jesus declares happy the impoverished, the outsiders, the nobodies. He declares happy those who live lives that
seem foolish if freely chosen, because they will be vindicated,
vindicated by God. We are those who
mourn, who mourn that God’s reign is not yet fully realized on earth, who mourn
that we do those things we don’t want to do, who mourn that sin and death and
illness and strife pull apart our families, threaten to extinguish the light we
walk by and plunge us into darkness. God
will comfort. God will make right. God is at work in each of us. Powerfully at work, working to make us into
the saints He made us to be. And work
makes heat and heat makes light. We are
the light of the world, because God is at work in us.
That’s
the pattern of the spiritual life, that God’s blessing, God’s grace always
precedes any call to respond. The most
basic Christian commandment flows from God’s action in our lives: “be what you
are.” Be saints! Be the locus of God’s activity, be windows
through which light enters the world. Light
doesn’t exist to draw attention to itself, it exists to help us see what’s around
us. “Blessed are those who are
persecuted, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them.” God is at work in them to shine through them
and give light to their persecutors!
Salt, the purifying preservative, purifies not itself, but what it’s immersed
in. Be salt of the earth, you pure of
heart, and purify the world.
Each of
the sacraments contains this dynamic.
God abundantly blesses us through his gracious action, so that we might
set the world ablaze with His light. Be
baptized, receive your candle lit from the Easter candle, and shine that into
every darkness of the world. Receive
Christ’s own body and blood in this Eucharist, become what you receive, and
take that out to be Christ for your neighbor, encountering him again in the
poor served. Receive the great gift of
God’s mercy in reconciliation, be forgiven, and go out to forgive those who
wrong you, that they might see mercy in your light and give glory to God.
This
weekend, we celebrate the World Day of Marriage. I’d like all the married people here to do
something quickly: look at your wedding band.
Remember when your finger first received this. The words would have been something like
this: you were called by name, and then heard “take this ring, as a sign of my
love and fidelity, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the HS.” And you gave the same. God abundantly blessed your union,
strengthened your consent and made you one flesh. Thank you, married couples. Thank you for being a sign of love and
fidelity. Thank you for being a tangible
reminder to us of how Christ loves the Church.
Thank you for being what you are: blessed and beloved of God,
consecrated through the Church to allow God to work in you salvation through
the hard work, beautiful but hard work, of married common life.
Paul
tells us in the second reading that he resolved to know nothing but Christ and
him crucified, because it’s in that willing loving weakness that God’s power is
disclosed. That cross is what God’s love
for us looks like. It’s disclosed anew
in marriage. That’s the sign of love and
fidelity. That’s how far God will go to
bless us, to work salvation and sanctification in us. That’s how brilliantly we can shine.
No comments:
Post a Comment