Homily 648 – 4 APE
Holy Transfiguration, Ames, Iowa
July 6, 2025
Epistle:  (93) Romans 6:18-23
Gospel:  (25) Matthew 8:5-13

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, One God.

St. Paul tells us this morning that we are all slaves to something.  That’s a bold statement.  And what God offers us is indeed free will to choose what we will be slaves to.  We can be slaves to the fallen-ness of the world, or we can be slaves to life.

It should be an easy choice.  The world, society, our ego, our selfishness and self-centeredness leads to death.  The path to God leads to life.

Why is this such a difficult choice for us?

There may be as many reasons as there are people in the world.  They all boil down to one great reason, I suspect.  We don’t know what life is.

We are confronted by our society – the world – with so many different ideas that try to tell us what life is.  Life is wealth.  Life is comfort.  Life is power.  Life is status.

That is the message in which most of us have been immersed throughout our lives.  Yet I remember a time, back in my childhood, and my parents and grandparents time, when life was family.  Life was neighbors.  Life was friends.

In other words, life was embedded in the concept of relationships.  Relationships with one another, and with God.  Somewhere along the line that changed.

The roots of it may be in the 1960s, when the young people of our land decided to not live according to societal rules.  They decided that the only thing that mattered was them, their desires.  They did temper that a bit, because there definitely was a message of loving others.

With the Vietnam War, and social upheaval around the military and the draft, the 1960s were in fact still somewhat about others.  “How can we do this to others?” was the question.  The answer of many was “I will not do this to others.”

Over the course of the decade, there was the war, there was the civil rights movement, there were protests.  There was rebellion.

In the 1970s something happened, though, that changed the fundamental nature of our world.  Our fallen world fell further.

On May 4, 1970, four students at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, died as a result of being fired upon by the Ohio National Guard.  There were numerous disclosures that our Government was lying to the people about the war being waged in Southeast Asia.

There was the oil crisis.  I was 9, and I remember the price of gasoline going way up, and people lining up for gas for their cars.

Interest rates soared.  Back then, a mortgage rate of 12% was considered great, since many were paying 18 to 20%.

Each of these events caused a reaction to Americans.  All of a sudden, the abundance of our world, the abundance of material goods and stuff, was no longer attainable.  There wasn’t enough to go around anymore.

We all became selfish.  The author Tom Wolfe in 1976 article in New York Magazine christened the 1970’s as “The ME Decade.”  All of a sudden, we had multiple “middle classes.”  Middle class itself was a step forward for society, being rooted in ensuring others had enough, in the abundance that was, to be comfortable.

But what emerged was a lower middle class, and an upper middle class.  The stratification of society continued through the relative abundance of the 1980s and 1990s, and into the new century.

And then – like 1973 – the bubble popped.  2008.  Most of us know the rest – prices went up again, the disparity between those who had and those who had not became more acute.  People were being materially harmed.  It was you against the world.

The result of this history is that by our day, for the last 15 years or so, we now know everything there is to know about people – and yet we don’t know them.  We know about them.  We know about them but have no relationship with them.

Life, as defined by the world, is caught up in getting more than someone else.  Or, if you can’t get more, make sure they get less.  There is the idea of “owning” someone – which is to say, exercising dominance over them, controlling them.

That is what life is today.

I don’t know about you, but that makes me enormously sad.  The weight of that simple fact pulls me apart at times.  But, as we are told, “what can you do?”  Go along to get along, we’re told.  Don’t make waves.

Brothers and sisters, Christ offers a different way.  Christ tells us that we have a choice to make.  Through St. Paul, Christ tells us that we can indeed choose to be slaves to our world – ultimately allowing the world to control us.

Or, we can not play that game anymore.

We don’t have to be focused on ourselves.  We don’t have to “win”.  The creation has abundance for everyone, regardless of where they are from or where they live or the class to which they are born.

We can crucify ourselves.  We can no longer care about the standards and the ways of the world.  We can be kind to others.  We can develop relationships and experience family and love.  In short, we can enslave ourselves to God – and follow what He tells us explicitly to do.

And then – trust God.  Just like the centurion.  Know who God is – with confidence.  The centurion knew only one thing about Jesus.  Two things perhaps.  First, that Jesus was compassionate.  And second, that Jesus had power and authority.

After all that, what life does God provide?  Once we get there, as we begin to trust God and believe God, we find anxiety diminishing.  We find peace.  We find contentment.  We find joy.

And maybe most important, we find love.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.  Glory to Jesus Christ!