Some Thoughts on Scripture and Ineffective Kerygma

Deacon Douglas McManaman

The Church of course has the task of proclaiming the gospel, the good news of deliverance, that is, the good news of Christ’s resurrection, the Christ who conquered death. The kingdom of God has been established in the Person of Christ, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (Jn 14, 6). The Truth that we are called to proclaim, however, is not so much a set of theses bearing upon a limited number of issues of personal morality, mostly of a sexual nature, but a Person, a risen Person whose mind we are called to make our own (Phil 2, 5).

Recently I read and commented on an article written by a US prelate, an article that to me came across as an attempt to provide a bird’s eye view of the relationship between the modern world–described as lost, confused and depraved–and the Church–or perhaps a conservative and faithful remnant within the Church that possesses and guards the “Truth” in its purity and fullness. The first few paragraphs of this article were devoted to sin, and the first specific example of what the bishop had in mind when talking about sin was the sexual revolution. This was soon followed by a reminder that the society in which we live denies moral absolutes and natural law, which in turn was followed by more examples that included abortion, the meaning and purpose of sexuality, the definition of marriage, and gender issues. These apparently constitute a sufficient moral characterization of the secular world we are living in. The focus of the article was clearly a moral one, but perhaps, I thought to myself, a wider and more complete description of contemporary society was forthcoming, but the examples were limited to “acceptance of contraception, homosexual activity, transgenderism, puberty blockers and surgery for minors and euthanasia”, which the author claimed are now being advocated for by some theologians, priests and bishops within the Church. 

I could not help but detect a radical change in temperature when I compared this article, rooted as it is in a very specific, limited, and legalistic/moralistic paradigm, and the actual gospels themselves. When we take a cursory glance at the gospels, for example, Luke and Matthew, we notice a very different hue, that is, an entirely different emphasis. Christ eats with tax collectors and sinners (thereby challenging the culture and social structure of prestige), he picks corn on the sabbath (violating religious law, which is made for man, not vice versa); he cures the man with a withered hand, delivers a dire warning to those who have plenty to eat now (“woe to you”), who laugh now, and blesses the poor, the hungry, those who are weeping now. Jesus speaks of the importance of compassion, he speaks of the true disciple, proclaims the coming of God’s kingdom and demonstrates that coming by raising the dead to life and working miracles, for example his power over nature. He speaks of following him along the way of the cross, and he gives power to heal, provides the criterion for greatness, which is humility and childlikeness; he commands us to forgive those who have trespassed against us, exhorts us to give alms and to sell our possessions, to trust in providence, and he derides the hypocrisy of the religious leaders.

He tells the parable of the good Samaritan which shines the light on the problem of putting ritual or liturgical purity over attending to the needs of our neighbour, and he teaches about the Lord’s incomprehensible mercy in three different parables. We encounter a single verse only on divorce (Lk 16, 18), followed immediately by eleven verses of a parable: the rich man and Lazarus, and more verses on the need for persistence in prayer, the power of faith, a note on humble service. We read about the presumption of the Pharisee and the humility of the tax collector, more on the dangers of riches, the healing of the blind man, the expulsion of the dealers from the Temple, the widow’s mite, and much more.

In Matthew’s Beatitudes we have poverty of spirit as a necessary condition for belonging to his kingdom, meekness, hungering and thirsting for what is right, mercy, the importance of peacemaking, undivided love of God, endurance in persecution, another single verse on divorce, followed by a multitude of verses on nursing anger, looking upon another with contempt and damaging a person’s reputation. We encounter more exhortation to remember the poor, to trust in providence, not to judge the hearts of others, to pray with faith, we see more cures, the scandal of eating with sinners and tax collectors, more parables of the kingdom of God, Christ’s compassion for the hungry and the subsequent miracle of the loaves and fishes, a single mention of fornication and adultery (15, 20), soon followed by another miracle of the loaves, more deriding of the religious leaders, a parable of the lost sheep which details not so much that they are lost as a result of their rejection of moral absolutes and natural law, but the fact that the Shepherd is concerned about and goes looking for the lost, and will not stop until he finds them. And of course there is the parable of the last judgment, which mentions nothing about sex, gender, divorce, homosexuality, or liturgy, but teaches us the meaning of attending to the hungry, thirsty, lonely, the sick, the imprisoned, with whom the Lord identifies so much that to serve or ignore them is to serve or ignore him.  

After reading this and other similar articles, I am inclined to offer some advice to the culture warrior who insists on a moralizing kerygma–as opposed to one well rooted in the gospel–, an approach that seems to have left things unchanged these past 50 years at the very least. When you are at war and you see that you’ve been losing the war for decades now and yet you continue to employ the same strategy, it is fair to suggest that you are a lousy general. You need to be replaced by one with fresh ideas and a more effective military strategy, one that actually works. Moralistic assertions of truths long rejected are not going to cut it. Furthermore, dividing the world neatly into “us” (the faithful ones who possess the “Truth”) and “them” (those on the outside, the confused, lost, and immoral) is not quite true to the facts. You have to be able to understand those who have left the Church–or have never been in the Church in the first place–and see that they indeed embrace many absolute moral principles and are in many ways good willed, but often carry emotional wounds that spawn inconsistencies in their thinking, like many in the Church who are on the “left” and the “right”. You have to be the kind of person who is able to enter into their lives, as Christ entered into the lives of those rejected, the outcasts, the downtrodden, the poor, those who were considered to be “forsaken” by God, and you have to be able to move them to love the Lord, but you can only do that the same way a mother awakens a smile in her baby, that is, by smiling at her baby. You have to be able to see the goodness in others and help them to see themselves from God’s point of view. Moralizing per se is ineffective. We should not confuse Christianity with Churchianity (Metropolitan Anthony Bloom)—such an approach has failed and continues to fail. We need a strategy that is more focused on relationships with real concrete people who are struggling to survive in this world, and less on relatively abstract moral arguments written for politically slanted Catholic journals that few people have time to read let alone know how to find. We need a strategy more focused on the Person of Christ and his message, which is a message of mercy, of the love and providence of God, that we are loved by God beyond our ability to conceive, that he loves us so much that he seeks us out and won’t stop till he finds us. In short, “relationship” is more fundamental than moral problem solving. 

Issues of personal morality are important and have their place, especially the direct killing of the mentally and terminally ill, but putting the cart before the horse keeps the horse from moving forward. I know of a man who overcame his addiction to pornography only after he fell in love with a woman. It was his experience of real love of a person that allowed him to see through the false love to which he was enslaved, the love of self. All the pontificating in the world would not have moved him off his addiction. Similarly, it is faith, which is a genuine confidence in a Person, namely Christ who loved us while we were sinners (Rom 5, 8), that is going to make all the difference in our lives. Martin Luther, one of the most misunderstood personages in the history of the Church, drew the following analogy that underscores the primacy of faith as trust: “When a man and a woman love each other and truly believe in their love, who teaches them how to behave, what to do, what to avoid, what to say or not say, and what to think? Their confidence alone teaches them all this and more. They don’t differentiate between actions: they do big, long, and many tasks as gladly as small, short, and few ones, and vice versa; all with joyful, peaceful, and confident hearts, each being a free companion to the other. But where there is doubt, people search for what is best; then they imagine different actions to win favor, yet they do it with a heavy heart and great reluctance. It’s as if they are trapped, more than half in despair, and often end up making a fool of themselves” (Luther, Martin. Treatise on Good Works: Modern, Updated Translation (p. 11). (Function). Kindle Edition. See also The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, 1997, by the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church. Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity). 

Faith in the Person of Christ is prior to everything else. Repentance is not so much what an individual does in order to merit forgiveness; rather, it is what a person does precisely because he has been forgiven. Zacchaeus is an example of this pattern; for his repentance and good works came only after Jesus’ decision to approach him, almost impose himself, or invite himself to his house: “…come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house”. We tend to think of repentance and good works as a precondition for salvation: “If you repent, then Christ will enter your life”. No, Christ draws close to us, he enters our lives, and his “intrusion” is an unmerited gift, and only then are we able to respond accordingly: “Behold, half of my possessions I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone, I shall repay it four times” (Lk 19, 8). Jesus did not go looking for Zacchaeus as though he knew Zacchaeus as a very generous soul concerned about the poor, a person of unimpeachable integrity; that’s not who Zacchaeus was–he was a hated tax collector who was indifferent to the poor and most certainly extorted others. Rather, Zacchaeus turns towards the poor and becomes a person of integrity precisely because Jesus found him first. 

We are all like Zacchaeus, especially St. Paul who viciously persecuted the Church prior to Christ’s approach that changed him forever. That is why the words of St. Isaac the Syrian are fitting: “Do not call God just anymore, for his justice is not manifest in the things concerning you” (The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian. 1.51.250.). What is manifest in the things concerning us is God’s absolute mercy. And, St. Silouan the Athonite prays: “How could I do other than seek You, for You first sought me and found me and gave me the ability to delight in Your Holy Spirit, and my soul fell to loving You” (A Year in the Holy Spirit with Saint Silouan the Athonite: A Calendar of Daily Quotes. Compiled by Elizabeth P. Fitzgerald. Kindle Edition, 2020. s.v., Feb. 14th. p. 17).