6th Sunday after Pentecost 4 July 2010 Sermon

6th Sunday after Pentecost 4.7.10 Does God matter?

Our new Prime Minister has gone public that she does not believe in God, or any form of religion. One analyst suggests that she will resonate well with the majority of Australians for holding this view because neither do they believe, at least not in any very serious way.

There are some people who do not believe that God exists.
There are others who are not sure if He is there or not.
There are others, a much greater number, who believe there is a God but who live as though there is not. (They can be called practical atheists; theoretically they believe; in practice they do not.)

Non-belief is often held up as a very reasonable and sensible position. It avoids the ‘excesses’ of religion, particularly of Catholicism, and enables people to pursue a sort of middle ground whereby we can have a little bit of all the various social evils: such as abortion, euthanasia, pornography, homosexuality ... without making any unseemly fuss.

Those who believe in God to such a degree that they would try to express that belief in moral or social matters are held to be fanatics, and dangerous to the common good.

The average Catholic is put under pressure by this prevailing ‘sensible’ view to relax our beliefs and moral standards and just go along with whatever society is doing.

We are allowed to believe in God, but not too much. Believe in Him only to the point that we can go to church if we like, but don’t take it any further than that. God must not be allowed to ‘intrude’ on the running of our world.

This makes a very strange, surreal situation for us who do want to take God seriously.

We find ourselves isolated not only from the world in general but even from most of our own Church – sadly most Catholics go along with the ‘middle ground’ approach.

The epistle today helps us to see the real reality, how things really are with God and the world.

St Paul reminds us that in baptism we have broken with sin, and from then on must live a new kind of life, a life dominated by the thought of God and the desire for heaven. This and countless other New Testament passages tell us that we have left the world and all its false and futile ways behind.

Going back to worldly thinking would be like the Israelites returning to Egypt once having been set free.

We hear this and accept it, but the practical application is another matter. We need to be very sure of our ground before we can go beyond a merely comfortable Catholicism, just keeping up enough observances to feel religious without actually being so.

Believing in God is not something that works by half measures; it must be all or nothing.

There are some things in life that have to be done completely or not at all. An aeroplane taking off is one example. If the pilots of a plane intended to take off only a little bit but not too much then the plane would crash somewhere for sure.

If we dive into the river we are committing ourselves to swim. Thus the waters of Baptism require a kind of diving-in, a commitment which is required for the whole thing to make sense.

But if we do commit then we discover the joy and fulfilment that is waiting for anyone who is prepared to take the leap.

We must go further; half-way is not enough and will never satisfy. Too much muddling around and we will probably join the world which is created by God but tries to pretend He is not there. We don’t want to go that way even if it does open up the way for better jobs or higher positions.

We ask God to make Himself known to us in such a way that we can be riveted onto His will and never in any way oppose or resist Him.