Eleventh Sunday of the Year -- June 12, 2005, A

            In today’s second reading, St. Paul’s letter to the Christians at Rome, we find ourselves, perhaps, potentially accused of something that we would never have thought ourselves guilty.  Paul writes that we were, in some sense and at some point, enemies of God:  “Indeed,” wrote the Apostle, “if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, how much more, once reconciled, will we be saved by his life.”  Enemies and reconciled with God. 

            This assumption on the part of St. Paul (and, indeed, the whole teaching of the Church) that we are, in our natural state apart from the grace of God, at enmity with God – this teaching points to a surprising and disconcerting fact about a human person’s relationship with God.  And that is that it can never be neutral.  For you see, God is not neutral toward us, toward you or me.  And if the God who made us is not neutral toward us, then there is no, cannot be, neutrality on our part.  To claim differently is to be like someone who has fallen into a fast-flowing river and is being carried downstream and yet claims a neutrality because he is not trying to swim to safety.  That rushing river is life.  In life, there is no neutrality toward God, because God, the author of all life is not neutral toward us. 

            We see this in all the readings.  In the first reading there we discover a God who was not neutral toward the people of Israel.  Even before they knew themselves as God’s special people, God was not neutral toward them, for He chose them to be His people.  And we hear in one of the Old Testament stories from one of their greatest of leaders, Joshua the successor of Moses, a speech that banned all neutrality as not even possible.  That great man and warrior warned all Israel:  “Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods which your ancestors served beyond the River, and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.  And if you be unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

            We see the same contempt for neutrality in today’s Gospel, where Jesus (whose very presence and preaching could easily cause a riot of opposition) sent out the twelve apostles to interfere in every corner of Israel.  No place was to be left in peace, in some pseudo neutrality.  God has come among us in Christ, and there must be a reckoning.

            I remember years ago talking to a close friend of mine about my intentions to sort of reinvestigate the Christian faith.  He laughed and said it sounded like I was talking about choosing between flavors of ice cream.  What do you mean, I asked.  “Well,” he responded, “I think I did the same thing you are contemplating, and I discovered that it all -- the whole story of Jesus Christ and the Church -- that it is all true, and for a long time I had not a moment of real peace.  I saw that the story is true; I saw that the crucifix bespeaks of a most dreadful historical event.  Now, I know, that some kind of answer, a response is absolutely demanded of me.  A challenge has been flung in my direction; the gauntlet has been thrown down before me.  I cannot be neutral to this and haven’t been.”  What did you do, I asked.  “I surrendered,” he responded. 

            Over the years I have come to believe that it is better to actively fight God than try to ignore him.  The danger of apathy is that we think we are sort of neutral, just treading water in the middle of the river of life, and yet we are drifting -- maybe even rushing -- ever further from God.  To fight God, you’ve got to at least draw near in combat. 

            But God didn’t come amongst us to fight us, but to win us.  And here we bump into one of the hardest things to really take in, really one of the hardest things to truly believe, and that is that God loves us.  There is nothing whatsoever neutral about love.  There can be, and is, something tremendously active, even offensive, intruding, interfering about it.  And when we realize that we are here dealing with a perfect, infinite love, a love unlimited in any way, it gets a bit frightening.  For love does outlandish things, such as St. Paul describes in the second reading:  “But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us... Indeed, if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, how much more, once reconciled, will we be saved by his life.” 

            That’s why Jesus Himself said that the people of the last days would run around saying, “Peace, peace” when there is no peace.  That’s why Jesus said something the modern world would like to take out of the records of his teaching, that he had not come to bring peace but division, division because it is impossible to stay neutral to what he had to say; it is impossible to stand and remain in the middle confronted by his broken body on the cross; it is impossible -- when presented with the hard fact of an empty tomb and his totally transformed disciples -- to remain completely detached and nonpartisan in the face of the claim of the resurrection.   For something dreadful and awful beyond words and equally as glorious as to be unspeakable has happened.  God has loved us with a desperate love, and that love is anything but neutral and will not allow for neutrality on our part.  “But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us”:  a truth beyond all earthly consolation or a disturbing challenge that will not stop nagging at the back of the mind, the conscience.  One or the other.  Apathy or seeming indifference is just another expression of “no,” of rejection, of a continuing of that enmity toward God that is perhaps its most poisonous when cloaked in the rags of a false neutrality. 

            There is no neutrality.  God’s love for us makes that an eternal impossibility.