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| Do we make mountains out of molehills when we say that we (and our ancestors) are virtuous? |
Three points: what we are to do with all these names; the standard of evaluation; and the place of Christ in all this.
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1. Ancestors – the reading of the names. Why do we honor them? Scandalous. Do we redefine virtue around what they did? No, virtue and truth are timeless; and very little of what they did was virtuous or true. But “what is truth?”
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2.We wouldn’t know truth if it was standing right in front of us. We see the world through the log of pride that is stuck in our eye. We have even lost the undestanding that there is a single underlying truth: there are only things that people believe. This post-modern relativism is the Matrix, the hegemony, of our culture. Hollywood is fantastic at making fantasy look real. Ironically, we have become so lost, so detached from the Truth, that good fiction is the closest many of us come to it.
The example of maps and orienteering. Given a map and the data around you, you should be able to figure out where you are; what the world looks like; what the truth of things is. But we are so lost and muddled that we cannot do this. Instead of using the map to figure out where we are in relation to where we want to be, we use it to tell us that we are already there.
• It’s like if you wanted to go to the big mall in Providence, so you take your map of Providence, and you lay it down in front in front of you and compare the features on it to the ones in the world around you… So you look up and you see not the gold domes of St. Michael’s, but the dome of the State House; then you look just over there and you see not the useless (but very beautiful) Woonsocket train Station, but the Amtrak station. A little further and you see not Chan’s, but the Cheesecake Factory. And as a result, you end up shopping at the Salvation Army instead of Macy’s and thinking that Nick’s New York Style Weiners is the center cut filet at Ruth’s Chris Steak House. This is ridiculous, but I think it describes pretty well just how delusional we are about the truth and virtue.
• Let’s explore this idea of maps a little bit more. Because I’m less concerned about you getting to Providence Place (even I can find it without my GPS) than I am about getting us to see Truth and Virtue and how they conform to our own lives. It’s silly to think that anyone could mistake Salvation Army for Providence Place, or Nick’s for Ruth’s Chris; but this kind of phenomenon really does happen to orienteerers when they are lost, and I am pretty sure it happens to us when it comes to virtue. Work with me here: imagine the virtues as a map of what our lives should look like: Humility, Charity, Gentleness, Temperance, Joyfulness, diligence. Now we take that map and put it over our own lives. Talk about turning molehills into mountains!
•We have some serious terraforming to do! Build up those anemic swells of virtue! Tear down the false virtues of pride, freed, lust, wrath, gluttony, envy, and sloth. Don’t settle into believing that the map of righteousness describes your life.
3. Our ancestors often got it wrong. Left on our own, we will get it wrong. But the thing that our ancestors got right prophesied and prepared the world for the coming of the Source of All Virtue and Truth. For us, Christ is the perfect model of what we should become; the “Orient from on High”; the perfect map and compass that allows us to see exactly who and where we are, how far we are from who and where we need to be, and what road or changes we need to take to get us there. He is the “Sun of Righteousness” that illumines our lives and drives out every dark fantasy. And we celebrate His Incarnation, His Light, His Truth, at the Nativity.
Are you ready? I daresay that you are only ready for him if you use your own map and your own reckoning. We prepare through repentance, we prepare through fasting, we prepare through humbling ourselves to the support of all those around us. We are not ready: don’t let this Nativity be just another day; don’t let its celebration be just another service; don’t look to the past for what is right and true; don’t look to your own life to define what is good. Look to Christ.
