Pie in the Sky
Sixth Sunday of the Year. Fr Leon Pereira issues a call to heroism.
The gibe that Christians believe in ‘pie in the sky’ derides an otherworldly eternal salvation, while neglecting the needs of this world. These two, eternal salvation and temporal liberation, must co-exist. No one denies that we ought to liberate the socially, economically and politically oppressed. The dispute is over how.
In the film Priest (1994), the older priest is a kind, pastoral man. He is left-wing and into Liberation Theology. He also has a concubine with whom he cohabits. This last moral failing is depicted sympathetically; after all, he does so much good. The younger priest is kind but rigid (rigidity—the bête noire of our time!). He becomes humble and loving by accepting a sexually-active homosexual relationship. The film-makers were evidently not fans of clerical celibacy!
Everyone has moral failings, everyone has sins. A chronic toleration of sin, however, is not the same as accepting that we are sinners. Just as one cannot study theology without faith in God (you would only be doing religious studies, not theology) so too one cannot live the life of the Spirit while compromising with the spirit of this world, the evil one. Scripture says,
If we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. (1 Jn 1:6-7)
There was a bishop who, in the face of overwhelming evidence, admitted to a series of adulterous relationships with women. He still believed he was a good pastor, and wanted to continue his ministry. As a parting shot he remarked, ‘At least I never preached on sexual morality’. The implication is that he wasn’t a hypocrite. That’s true. He was something worse. Imagine a woman subsisting on a meat-only diet, and dying eventually of colon cancer. She consoles herself saying, ‘At least I never fed my children vegetables’. She’s not a hypocrite. She’s something worse—a mother who failed as mother. That bishop was a father who failed as father.
A fundamental flaw here is thinking: It’s all up to me, I’m doing God a favour. This lie enables us to live with sin, in sin, and not to notice it anymore. We conceal it with presumption, like King Charles II’s ‘Surely God will not damn a man for allowing himself a little pleasure?’, and the assurance that it will all come out in the wash. It is from such clerics that we get an exaggerated mercy, an emptied hell, and pats on the back all round. The only real sins are polluting the environment and being right-wing, for which there is no forgiveness—only cancellation.
In this graceless Christianity, there is no call for Christian heroism. The other side of the coin of It’s all up to me is the horrible conviction: It’s God’s fault. From bankrupt clerics we hear that Christians cannot be heroes. Their thinking is: It’s not my fault that my wife left me, and so I have a new sexual partner now without matrimony. It’s not my fault that my sexual attractions are this way or that, so why repress them? It’s God’s fault for making me this way!
Where there is no grace, politics are everything—plotting, shenanigans, manipulating the Church. Redefining adultery, fornication and perversions will make everyone a saint. No sin means no redemption is necessary. This graceless poverty manifests also in the current pandemic. Reasonable precautions should always be applied. But the excessive restrictions and widespread fear which paralyse worship and charity show our own bankruptcy. As Auden wrote, we are ‘children afraid of the dark / who have never been happy or good’.
If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable people of all. (1 Cor 15:19)
There is ‘pie in the sky’, and our citizenship is in heaven (Phil 3:20). It isn’t all up to us, and it isn’t God’s fault. God loves us, more than we dare to believe. His grace will not be lacking to make us heroes and more—even His children.
Readings: Jeremiah 17:5-8 | 1 Corinthians 15:12,16-20 | Luke 6:17,20-26
Image: detail from All Saints by Fra Angelico, photographed by Lawrence Lew OP.
