Salvation Is Free, But Not Cheap!

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, Brooklyn Center, MN

Sunday, September 26, 2021

From our youth to our death, we are likely going to struggle with our ego. We want to be in control. When things have boundaries, we like it because we feel we can manipulate them and use them as we see fit according to our reasons. But today’s Gospel presents us something quite different. John and other disciples of Jesus come across a man who is casting out demons in Jesus’ name. And immediately they are disturbed. Why? Because they are confronted with something that is out of the norm. The man casting out demons is not one of them. He is not part of their group and without delay they want the unattached exorcist to cease and desist his activity. But Jesus tells them not to forbid the man for whoever is not against us is for us. Jesus does not want them to have a narrow view of the new life he brings into this world. He wants them and everyone of us to understand that the Kingdom of God has dimensions of God himself. So, they must give the Spirit free range to act and operate. It is not for them to control who should be delivered from demons. It is not for them to call down fire from heaven to consume people, which we know they asked later in the Gospel. They must let God act as God wants. It’s a sad thing they are more concerned about controlling this man than they are filled with joy over the fact that men and women are being freed from oppression from the devil, simply because it does not come from their hands. 

After that, Jesus goes on to tell them that the love of God must find expression in a limitless fashion that nothing is more important than God, that everything in their life centers around God and is subordinate to their love of God. So, if there is anything in this world that prevents them from giving themselves over to God fully, from serving others fully, from growing in holiness, then it must ruthlessly be cut out from their lives. With incredible bluntness, Jesus speaks about cutting off one’s hand and foot and plucking out one’s eye: If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. If your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter into the kingdom of God maimed and deformed than to enter into hell with all your organs in tact. Is Jesus promoting self-mutilation? Of course not! He is asking us to cut off all the NOUNS—persons, places and things that can potentially fracture our relationship with God. And if we allow such to happen, it is a fatal liability. For some of us, consumption of alcohol is our demon, our occasion of sin. For others, it is the TV, the internet, the social media etc. 

The hand is the organ we use to reach out and grab and grasp things. As St. Augustine tells us, our souls are wired for God. Our hearts are restless until they finally rest in God. But we have occasionally reached out to creatures, to finite things of the world and grasp them with all the energies we can muster. The foot is the organ we use to set ourselves on a definite path. As disciples of Christ, we are called to walk on the path that is Christ. But do we always do this? In our quest for the four false substitutes for God— wealth, honor, power and pleasure, we’ve abandoned the light. As for the eyes, they are the organs that enable us to see. We are fashioned to seek after and look for God. But have we actually been looking for God sincerely? Haven’t we spent a lot of our times and lives looking for God in the wrong places? Are we willing to pluck out our eyes spiritually, and to abandon many of the behaviors that have given us sinful pleasures? As the deer yearns for running streams so should our souls long for God (Psalm 42:1).

Within each of us, there’s a battle going on. It is a battle for the life of each of us. At the end of this battle, we will either hear Jesus say, “You are mine!” or hear Satan say, “You are mine!” Salvation is free, but not cheap. It must cost you something— self-denial and total abandonment to God our loving Father and Creator.