Amos 7:12-15
Psalm 85:9-14
Ephesians 1:3-14
Mark 6:7-13

Heaven Now

"Whatever place does not welcome you or listen to you, leave there
and shake the dust off your feet in testimony against them."

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

Two men come to your door. They are different from other men .... not quite angels but the difference is in that direction. There is a certain lightness of being, a certain inner wattage, a distinct radiance. Their message could not be more simple. "The Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near. We offer you Heaven .... now." Their offer does not seem dire nor does it feel threatening. But, upon further thought, is it possible to refuse a gift from God, even the ultimate and highest gift? Is it possible to shut the door on their faces and continue watching television or aimlessly clicking through the Worldwide Web? Is it ever really an option to reject God?

St. Matthew also reports on this scene:

"And whatever town or village you enter, find out who is worthy in it, and stay with
him until you depart. As you enter the house, salute it. And if the house is worthy,
let your peace come upon it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you.
And if any one will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from
your feet as you leave that house or town. Truly, I say to you, it shall be more
tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town."

... more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah than for that entire town?! Astonishing! We will return to this remarkable statement in a moment. But for now let us reconsider: "Heaven now! Are you ready for Heaven now?"

Our Gospel lesson this morning depicts the "sending of the Twelve." It is not really a great commission, for they do not understand who they are really, and they certainly do not understand who their Master is. It is a kind of proto-Apostolate. You may say with confidence that Jesus understands. He knows that He has sent out royal heralds, messengers sent before a great King, to tell those in the town ahead that an imperial Sovereign approaches, He is the Lord of Life. Make ready to receive Him! And He instructs the Disciples to offer the people a choice, to bring them to a great crossroads: receive new life and repent, therefore, of your former lives, or receive dust. The dust from their sandals, Jesus says, will be "a testimony" against them and therefore part of a tribunal and judgment. For dust, as we all know, is a death sentence.

Dust is the "bodily remains" of the Creation — the particulate proof of death, the irreducible bones of everything that once lived. Hamlet muses

thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried,
Alexander returneth into dust;
* * *
Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.

The dust we breathe into our noses and mouths every day compels us to taste the death of the world. And this same dust we wear upon our foreheads every year on Ash Wednesday giving testimony against the way of the unredeemed world: "Dust thou art, O man, and to dust thou shalt return" (Gen. 3:19). Dust is the hallmark of the expulsion from Eden. For at that moment, the world began to die and decay, and dust began its never-ending snow of death falling upon all alike, the living and the dead. Where there is only life, there can never be any dust. The task of the Twelve Disciples is to bring the remaining Twelve Tribes of Jacob to a crossroads: on one side, they are shown the way of life; on the other, never-ending separation from God, Who alone is life.

The Twelve are sent on a proto-Apostolate. Later, eleven Apostles are sent by the Risen Christ, Who breathes the Holy Spirit upon them and invests within them the Holy Sacraments (Jn 20:21-23). Then later when the Apostles' teachings are reduced to writing, we find find this same message again, which Jesus had instructed them to offer from the start: "Two ways there are: life and death. And there is a very great difference between the two Ways." (The Didache, Teachings of the Apostles).

Who would not choose life: friendship with God versus rejection of God, supernal light and joyfulness versus endless darkness and abandonment of hope. Moreover, the choice for "dust life" includes a divine judgment, which, we are told, will be more severe than the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah. But wait .....! Where is the meek and lowly Jesus I learned about singing in church on Sundays? Where is the radical forgiveness I heard about in church Sunday after Sunday since the 1970s? More to the point, what happened to "love your enemy" or "turn the other cheek"? Without question, these are central issues. Confusion surrounding them has been cause for much hurt, disappointment, discouragement, even injury along the road of Christian conversion. Consider the woman who has been brutally raped, whose priest tells her that she must love her attacker. Is this really Heaven's view? Or consider the parents of a molested child who are told in the bishop's office that they must forgive the offending priest. Does that bishop really speak for God? Is this the perfect and unerring judgment we read about in our Psalm this morning? Is this the heart of Heaven and the angels — that enormities should continue in the name of radical forgiveness .... because "that's what Jesus would do"?

Is this really what Jesus would have us do? The greatest of all prophets, St. John the Baptist, said,

"He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork
is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor, and to gather the wheat into his
granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." (Luke 3:16-17)

Isn't this the very same message we just heard in the passages found in St. Mark and St. Matthew? Choose life or choose ashes?

What are we to make, then, of the rest of opening paragraph from the Didache?

The way of life is this: "First, you shalt love the God who made thee, secondly, thy neighbor
as thyself; and whatsoever thou wouldst not have done to thyself, do not thou to another."
Now, the teaching of these words is this: "Bless those that curse you, and pray for your enemies,
and fast for those that persecute you. For what credit is it to you if you love those that love you?
Do not even the heathen do the same?" But, for your part, "love those that hate you," ....

Here is the kernel of Christian life, the "Way of love," taught by the Apostles from the beginning and by their successors ever after. What are we to make then of Jesus' many stern and flinty words spoken in a prophetic posture against the majority of people He encounters and nearly all of the religious authorities and social leaders? And now we have been brought to our own crossroads, for we are confronted with the most basic questions: Are the Sacred Scriptures contradictory? Is Christianity the "religion of love" or not? Are there multiple Christs? Is the Holy Bible dependable?

May I share a personal story? While I was in seminary, I met a very holy and wise priest. Everyone wanted to be near him. When I was granted my few conversations with him, I understood why Fr. Henri Nouwen sought him out for spiritual counsel or why he was spiritual director to a well-published Benedictine monk, whom many people (in turn) went to for guidance and consolation and who read his spiritual writings. And, yes, in his humility he even allotted me some of his time. He told me that his own Christian journey had begun as a young man during a luminous moment when he had heard the Beatitudes being read. That was the life he wanted. And he knew that God was calling him to this life. So he committed himself to the task of living the Beatitudes each and every minute of every day. The Beatitudes would be his rule of life from now on.

Looking into this man's sincere face (he was in his seventies) and knowing his deeply rooted gravitas, I could well imagine that very few men or women ever set themselves to this solemn task with greater earnestness, perseverance, and exactitude than he had. And he confessed to me that before long, he saw that it was an impossibility, that this rule of life was not livable.

Later that day I went back to read the Beatitudes:

and if any one would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well;
and if any one forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.
Give to him who begs from you, and
do not refuse him who would borrow from you. (Mt 5:40-42)

I tried to imagine an idealistic man living in a great city today who gave to everyone who begged. I could plainly see how quickly his bank accounts would be exhausted .... especially as every unscrupulous person on the streets learned that he was an easy mark. Why, in New York I could not buy a cup of coffee without saying, "This is a twenty" .... unless I wanted to be short-changed. I could see that soon an earnest, young man would be arrested for walking about town in his underwear. For had not he been commanded to give his clothes to anyone who has asked for his coat? Soon, his entire estate would be depleted with his family being evicted from their home. Had not the Master commanded Him to grant a loan to anyone who applied? And what now that his wife's security was, well, out on the streets, would he now refuse to protect and defend her against bad men when they flexed their muscles? Or would she too be offered up to this .... rule of life? Yes, I too could see .... the Beatitudes were a rule of life that no one can live.

What is the point of the Beatitudes, then? What is the point of this most shining moment in the Advent of Christ? Why did Jesus preach them? And why do they continue to form the kernel and essence of Christian belief? The answer is simple, but first we must cast our minds back over the entire corpus of Sacred Scripture. From Eden through the Law and the Prophets through the Holy Gospels and down to our own time here at the Hermitage, there have always been two realities ... actually, only one, for the other is a transitory illusion. There is God's view of life, which is changeless, eternal, and only good. And there is the world's view, which is unsteady, never dependable, and untrustworthy even from minute to minute. Jesus announces something that had never been heard before when He spoke these three words: the Kingdom of Heaven. .... had never been heard before! (Remarkable! Search the Scriptures yourself!). He tells us that it is approaching, that it is near, that it .... now is. For the Holy One has entered the world, and the Beatitudes are the rule of life in Heaven. And as the Kingdom of Heaven has broken through to our imperfect world, so the Lord of Heaven and earth announces a new regime, a new life, and a new rule for that life.

But as the world is the implacable enemy of Heaven, and as Heaven can never be reconciled to the ways of the world, those who seek to live Heaven's rule of life, here and now, will be destroyed. They will be broken and shattered on the wheel that attempts to right the world, to bend it back into joint. This was the point of the life St. Francis of Assisi. On a day, he decided for Heaven now. A few others joined him. Poor Br. Juniper! He was constantly going about in his Franciscan undergarments (now there's a frightening thought!) for whenever someone asked for his coat, he would always give them his garment, too. St. Francis lived the Beatitudes, and at a very young age, the world, which he loved, crushed his little frame. "Heaven now!" he cried, rejoicing to Brother Sun and Sister Moon and to the wolves along the way. And in that instant he became a hinge point between Heaven and earth — stretched, bent, wrenched apart, and finally shattered. This is the significance of his becoming the first human body to bear the Stigmata, the wounds of Christ. For the true and eternal hinge between Heaven and earth is a Cross on Calvary hill where even the Sacred Person of God is pierced for the world's disjointedness.

And the Beatitudes? They are an invitation, even a commission, to follow Francis and His Master into a lowly and meek martyrdom. For hidden within them, though ordered differently, is the same message offered by the Apostles: the eternal "life world" or the eternal "dust world."

No, there are not two Christs, nor is Sacred Scripture contradictory, (that shining and inerrant teacher!). But from the time of Eden to the present day, there will always be two realities: the Kingdom of Heaven and the Way of the World, but only one is true and real. And the God-Man, the Holy One Who has come into the world, holds both in tension within His mind and breast. He sends His Disciples into the world to ask, "Are you ready for Heaven now? "Two ways there are: life and death." Yet, these men do no more than repeat words offered by One Who is far, far more than a partly formed Disciple. From on top of Mount Sinai, Moses heard these words with his own ears:

I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death,
blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live. (Deut. 30:19)

An offer? No, that is not right. It is a divine command. Choose life.

Two men come to your door. They say, "Heaven now! .... and you can never again walk back into the house." For that world and that life must die. Hear the flinty words of the Lord Jesus when He said, "Who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is not fit for the Kingdom of God."

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