This is a translation of the homily for the fifth sunday of Trinity, in Uskedal Chuch and Ænes Church in Kvinnherad, Norway, Sunday 23rd June, 2024. The texts are as follows: Proverbs 7:1-3; 1 Corinthians 3:10-18; and Matthew 7,21-29. When quoting Scripture, I will use the Revised Standard Version of Scripture (RSV), unless otherwise noted.
Collect of the day (translated by yours truly):
Let us Pray: God, you sent the prophets to testify and proclaim your will. We ask you: Let the Church be the voice of truth in the world. Protect us from false voices and seductive words, so that we can stand firm in the faith in your grace, through your Son Jesus Christ, our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one true God, world without end. Amen.
As we can read from today’s collect, the theme of the day is that the Church should bear witness to the truth. God sent the prophets to testify and proclaim His will and with His help, the Church can be “the voice of truth in the world.” The theme is God’s truth, which He has revealed to us through His word.
In the Gospel reading, we see the seriousness of our faith, that it is actually possible to fail, not because we did not do enough ourselves or strive enough, but if we allow ourselves to be seduced away from the true and healthy teaching that makes itself known by the good fruits that God gives. As Jesus says, in Matthew 7:21: “Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” In the preceding verses, vv.15-20, Christ talks of the false prophets, and He says, in vv.17-20: “So, every sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit. A sound tree cannot bear evil fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits.”
There are false prophets out there and often they want to shift the focus away from Christ and onto that which is just empty and devoid of meaning. We see many so-called Christian prophets who preach the opposite. They often preach honour, fame, and wealth. But Jesus, on the other hand, was spat on and hung on a cross. These prophets often take the Bible as their starting point, but they do not preach the Gospel. In Romans 8:28 St. Paul says: “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.” This is a verse that is often used by such preachers, especially those who preach the ‘prosperity gospel.’ You are taught that if you just believe enough, and pay money to them, everything will be just fine. Then you get money, fame, wealth, and prosperity. The most famous of these is probably Joel Osteen, but the one with the most appropriate name has to be the Texan pastor Creflo Dollar. But this is not what St. Paul meant, and you can see that just by reading about him in the Acts of the Apostles. That the apostle who was in jail and who ended up beheaded for his faith should be ‘prosperity preacher’ is just plain ridiculous. It’s even impressive that you can gaslight people into believing it. No, when St. Paul says “that in everything God works for good with those who love him,” he means just that, everything. Yes, it can include prosperity but also pain and loss.
Actually, what we see in these ‘prosperity prophets’ is that they do not quite believe that God became man. They believe that Jesus was a kind of Übermensch who preaches that if you believe enough, you will become as rich and famous as him. But only if you send them money first. Then I think we should quote St. Paul, who can bring them and all of us down a bit. He writes, i 1 Corinthians 4:7: “For who sees anything different in you? What have you that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?”
God give, we receive, and sometimes we also lose. But we also win, if we are in Christ. And that is the theme in today’s texts. As St. Paul tells us in the second text, we have one foundation, Jesus Christ. Him, and none other, can create the Christian life and give it to us, by grace. And we can build on that foundation with everything we do in life and when our time comes, the edifice we build will be tested. He writes, in 1 Corinthians 3:12-13: “Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble—each man’s work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.”
I think here that gold, silver, and precious stones are images of all the good things we use to build this edifice. They are the good works that God has prepared for us, they are the prayers we have prayed, which are actually the work of the Holy Spirit in us, as St. Paul emphasises in Galatians 4:6. It is everything which tolerates the fire of God, such as the precious metals that do not melt in the fire, but are refined.
But all the evil we do, all that is unworthy, all that is made up of wood, hay, or stubble, will be burnt or purified away. The edifice shall be tested in fire, says St. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 3:14-15: “If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.” And the reason why we are saved even if what we have built up should be destroyed is precisely the foundation, Jesus Christ. We have not made that ourselves, it has been given to us. So we must hold on to the foundation. We must hold on to Jesus. And we meet him in the means of grace He has given us, particularly in Scripture.
I today’s first text, Provers 7:1-3, we read about how important it is to hold on to God’s word, because God’s word is what gives us what we need to find salvation. Here, we find the truth that will set us free. “My son, keep my words and treasure up my commandments with you.” Thus starts the text, in v.1. But then it continues more concretely, in vv.2-3: “Keep my commandments and live, keep my teachings as the apple of your eye; bind them on your fingers, write them on the tablet of your heart.” If you are familiar with Jewish prayer practice, you may have seen that they use some leather straps for prayers with leather boxes, the so-called Tefillin. The boxes contain important texts from the Old Testament and are tied to the upper arm and to the head and the straps are wrapper around their arms and the middle finger. In Proverbs this is slightly more abstractly formulated but it is more concrete in Deuteronomy 11:18: “You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul; and you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.” These small rituals helps them to focus on the centre, that they should keep the commandments and keep the word of God. And that is also what Christ calls us to, He who is God. In John 8:31-32, he puts it like this: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” And in v.36, He adds: “So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”
But how, exactly, should we understand this? Truth is usually defined in a conceptual and/or propositional manner. One might say that truth is what corresponds to reality. But even if that is true, it does not fully capture what truth is. I am no postmodernist and you will never hear from me that truth is relative. There are true and false propositions. But the Truth with a capital T is more. The Truth is a person. The Truth is Christ, as Him himself says in John 14:6: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.” The The Truth, then, with a capital T, is Christ Himself. He alone is the foundation upon which we should build. If we build upon anything or anyone else, we are building on sand and everything will fall apart. But if we build on Him, we are building on rock and then we are properly founded. But how can a person be truth? Well, that depends, of course, on what we mean by truth.
To use some philosophical jargon, which some may have picked up in school or university, our understanding of truth concerns epistemology. It concerns how we establish and gain knowledge and insight. But this, of course, is not the same as accounting for truth or grounding it.
Reality is not created by us, but must find its origins beyond itself. The question of what truth is, indeed what existence or being is, cannot therefore be a question of understanding, of epistemology. It must be a metaphysical – yes, even a theological – question. Only something outside our reality can ground it. And then it follows that God Himself is the Truth. For God is not part of our reality. God has created reality, He is beyond reality, beyond being, as the origin of being. And if God Himself is Truth, that which gives meaning to all things, we can only share in truth because we participate in Him. We can be true, and we can express truth, because we participate in God. But it goes further, because God became a human being in Jesus Christ. The Truth became flesh, the Truth became a concrete human being who walked the earth and lived a perfect life. So, to be completely true, we must be in Him. As He puts it Himself, in John 8,32: “And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” Truth, thenm is a person and we can know truth through our participation in Him.
But how do we get to partake of the truth? As humans, we are not spirits, we are physical beings who understand and interpret our lives through the things we do together and through the stories we tell. If we are primarily corporeal beings living in community, it makes sense that the truth comes to us, and is preserved, ritually and through stories. The truth is not only given to us individually, but as a community. We form traditions and these traditions preserve what is true and pass it on. But what, then, when these traditions contradict? Then we must look to what is firm, the word of God, the revelation of God.
As I have been saying, Truth is not something we make. Truth is God Himself and it is given to us as a gift. It must be revealed, it needs a divine institution. But God reveals Himself to us through concrete things and through concrete humans, through the true prophets, those who do not merely point towards themselves but towards Christ. One of these was St. John the Baptism. Today, 23rd June, is Saint John’s Eve, and tomorrow, 24th June, is the feast day of St. John the Baptist. And therefore, it is proper to cite the Gospel of St. John (the Apostle, not the Baptism), chapter 3. We read there about the Baptist who baptised people, before being thrown in jail. And we can read that “discussion arose between St. John’s disciples and a Jew over purifying” (John 3:25). And because of this, they went to St. John and said: “Rabbi, he who was with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you bore witness, here he is, baptizing, and all are going to him” (John 3:26). This man was Jesus. These disciples were clearly upset because Jesus supposedly ‘stole’ people from St. John. But he knew better and answered, in vv.27-30:
No one can receive anything except what is given him from heaven. You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him. He who has the bride is the bridegroom; the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice; therefore this joy of mine is now full. He must increase, but I must decrease.
This is perhaps one of the most central things that has been said in the Bible about our relationship with Jesus. Because Jesus is the truth and when we share in him, we also become true human beings, as children of God. Tomorrow, there is approximately six months until Christmas, and that is important. It’s not important whether or not St. John the Baptist was born in June, but it’s not unlikely. We do not know exactlt when Jesus was born, but it’s not unlikely that it was in December. But that is not important here. What is important is what these two times of the year can tell us.
Tonight, the sun will set after 11 AM (even if some in the parish will lose it earlier). The light and the sun are usually images of Christ, but they can also be images of us, and St. John, when we share in Christ. As Jesus says, we are also light to the world, because Christ shines through us, because the truth flows out of us. But the point is not that we should point to ourselves, but to Jesus. But if the sun is an image of St. John the Baptist, then we see something interesting. Because now the sun is at its strongest, as we celebrate St. John. He is a witness, he reveals Christ to us, he shows us the way, and the truth, and the life. But he also reveals that we, and him, must give room for Christ. As we move towards Christmas, the sun will decrease until it is at its darkest. Then, Jesus is born, and the sun turns. For He must increase, we must decrease.
This way, creation can tell us that Jesus is the centre and that we as Christians should become more and more like him. We can call this sanctification, even deification, as St. Paul says in Ephesians 4:23-24: “And be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” Or, as we see in 2 Peter 1:4, we will “become partakers of the divine nature.” The point is not just to have our sins forgiven, but to get something more, that God will restore His image in us, that God will also transform us into truth, as we are “conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29). He must increase, we must decrease.
But this is not about having a low view of yourself. As C. S. Lewis supposedly put it, humility is not “thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.”1 We must have a good or a high view of ourselves. We must know that we are created in the image of God, that we are seen and loved by Him. Yes, God loves us, eve the whole world, so much that he did everything for us. But at the same time, nobody likes those who are conceited or self-absorbed. In many ways, this is actually quite inhumane. But unfortunately we often are, because this is original sin. Both Augustine and Martin Luther has said that we as humans are turned or curved inward on ourselves,2 that we often focus inwards, even if we know perfectly well how wrong that is. For, as Jesus says, we have a higher calling. We must love God and love our neighbour. That is living life in truth. And the truth is not something we create ourselves, it is given to us. It is revealed to us from that which stands above all created things, but it is revealed to us through created things, through concrete rituals instituted by God, and through concrete people. And the centre here are the means of grace that Christ has given us, particularly the word, Baptism, and the Eucharist, through which we receive Him. We do not meet God primarily in the abstract or the imagined, but in rituals that God has instituted. Read Scripture, pray to God, and receive the Eucharist when we celebrate it. For there, Christ is really present with all His promises of salvation, blessedness, and peace. You don’t need to be particularly pious to receive. No, the Eucharist is not a meal for the pious it is a meal for sinners in need of God’s grace. For there Christ meets us with the Truth, with the divine fulness which will set us free.
But this began in our baptism, which is participation in the baptism of Christ. By allowing Himself to be baptised for us, by John the Baptist, Jesus took our sins upon Himself so that we, by being baptised into Him, would receive all that is divine as a gift. And then we see, paradoxically enough, that we will not only decrease, but increase. Because as we decrease, we increase. We do not become less ourselves, but we become more and more what we are created to, as we become one with God. The more we become like Christ, the more we become what we are created for. And then we increase, but we grow outwards, towards others and towards God, not inwards in our own self-righteousness. We grow in likeness to Jesus and we become more ourselves, more of what we are created for, and more concerned with others. And we receive all this because God became man in Christ and gave us a share in what is His and was baptised into our death.
We are saved because Jesus took on our sin and judgment, because He died for us, and because He was raised again to new life, as we also receive in Baptism. The wealth we share in through the Word, Baptism, and the Eucharist is precisely Christ Himself. In Him, everything is transformed. For He must increase, we must decrease – and then paradoxically increase. Jesus Christ is the true foundation, but we can build upon Him. So do so, build upon the Truth, build upon rock, not upon sand.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, who was, is, and will remain, one true God, world without end. Amen.
This quote is not by Lewis but is a paraphrase, often found online and in books, of a longer train of thought in Mere Christianity (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2001), 128:
Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call ‘humble’ nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.
If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realise that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.
The phrase in Latin is incurvatus in se.