25th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A) – September 24, 2023

St. Paul – Lyons, KS

Isaiah 55:6-9; Psalm 145:2-3, 8-9, 17-18; Philippians 1:20c-24, 27a; Matthew 20:1-16a

Meta-Nous: Go Beyond Your Current Mindset

Do you remember the day you found out, really found out that the Sun doesn’t actually rise and set? That is doesn’t rotate around the Earth every day? That the Earth is actually the one rotating around the Sun? Am I the only kid that heard that and was like, “Uhm…nah! No it doesn’t!” Or the day you found out that the Moon actually doesn’t produce any light, it just reflects it. Fill in your own example (I know these are pretty dumb), but here’s what I’m getting at: do you know that experience where some core, fundamental, almost axiomatic way that your look at and understand reality is totally debunked? And your world kind of falls apart. It does! Your “world-view” falls apart. The world, reality, your life—the way you see the world and reality and your life—all of a sudden the “world” is a different place. But at the same time, the world hasn’t changed at all! The Sun never rotated the Earth. Someone just pointed reality out to you. And if you walk around saying that the Sun rotates the earth, you get laughed out of the building.

Does this Gospel reading grind anyone else’s gears? Or just mine? “Everyone gets paid the same? Really?” And what’s this about, “The last will be first, and the first will be last”? No, Ricky Bobby always taught me, “If you ain’t first, you’re last!” Why does it grind our gears? Because if that’s true, that changes everything! It’s mind-blowing!

Today, we’re starting a new series that I’m calling Meta-Nous…cuz I’m a nerd. All of our readings today (and then our reading from Philippians the next three weeks)—all of these readings are about one thing: a change in mind, a call for us to see things differently, to see reality more clearly. Things haven’t changed, we’re just being taught to see more clearly. And in the language of the New Testament, of Paul, of Jesus—the language of the Gospels calls this metanoia. Metanoia is just a combination of two Greek words: meta and nous, a “going beyond the mind.” Like the meta-verse is going beyond the universe? Facebook is a subsidiarity of Meta, beyond this world. Ok? Metanoiate is actually the first command out of Jesus’ mouth! We usually translate it as “repent,” but literally it means, “Go beyond your current mindset, meta-nous, have change of mind, a change of heart.” This Gospel, it’s a real “mind bender.” Our second reading from Philippians (we’ll talk about it more here in a second)—Paul’s letter to the Philippians is all about putting on a new mind. First reading from Isaiah says it most clearly: The Lord says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts…As high as the heavens are above the earth, so…are…my thoughts above your thoughts.” What did we hear from Paul a few weeks ago in his letter to the Romans? “Do not be conformed to this world [the way this world thinks], rather be transformed by the [what?]—by the renewal of your mind” (c.f., Romans 12:2). 

Here’s the point (and this is what we’re going to talk about today and really dive into with the help of Paul’s letter to the Philippians the next few weeks)—here’s the point: the fundamental task of our day and age is to hear and to proclamation the gospel in such a way that our minds, our mindset can be transformed, changed from one way of seeing reality to a different way—to God’s way of seeing reality. And the good news is this: this is not a new problem—just a recycled old problem, really old. Our day and age is more like the Church 2,000 years ago than it is like the Church 200 years ago, because we swim in a culture and mindset and worldview that is as hostile to just about everything our faith holds dear—a culture and mindset and worldview very similar to the one faced by the earliest Christians. Jesus knew this; Paul knew this. And this is why time and time again, we are confronted with readings from the New Testament commanding, asking, begging us to do one simple, fundamental thing: metanoiate, meta-nous, go beyond this mindset, this way of seeing the world and reality, and see it in a new way. We get very preoccupied with certain moral behaviors—and rightly so, it’s egregious. But—but, our way of acting flows from how we see, our mindset. And so step number one: metanoiate, meta-nous, go beyond this mindset, this way of seeing the world and reality, and see it in a new way.

What Did the Roman Philippians Do?

And this is what Paul’s letter to the Philippians is all about—and we read it today and the next three weeks. Philippians is one of the most popular of Paul’s letters. It is only four chapters long, takes up three pages in the Bible. You could read it in ten minutes. And if you know the context of Philippians, you know why it’s so important for us today.

Philippi is was a Roman colony in northern Greece. And the “citizens” of Philippi were actually Roman citizens, retired Roman soldiers. And since Rome was too crowded, and Caesar didn’t need a bunch of ex-soldiers getting restless and hungry in Rome, he settled them in Philippi. So citizens of Rome, but living outside of Rome. Paul’s letter to the Philippians is a letter to the small community of Christians also living in Philippi. So what was it like there for them?

Every day they were faced with a government that shared almost none of the values they held; a government which has no room for “cultural diversity” or “tolerance.” These Philippian Christians were faced with secular leaders who were arrogant, rude, power-hungry, deceptive, unfair. Slavery was rampant. Racism was rampant. Intolerance and bigotry and prejudice—rampant. Abortion and infanticide was common. The poor were neglected. Immigrants were not popular. Taxes were unfair. Life for the Romans was about having a good time, buying what you wanted, going to the gym to stay fit and strong, enjoying life. (Any of this sound familiar?) Ok, and what was behind all of this? Why did society and culture operate this way? Because if you saw reality the way Rome saw reality, this kind of behavior was normal—even celebrated!

Paul’s Command: “Behave as citizens of the gospel”

Now, this is where Paul’s brilliance comes in. The Philippians’ big question was: “In the face of all of this, what are we supposed to do?” And Paul has a simple answer: “Conduct yourselves in a way worthy of the gospel of Christ” (Phil 1:27). Classic Paul! People are just looking for some good advice, just want some simple answers. And what does Paul say? “Conduct yourselves in a way worthy of the gospel.” Great.

But that simple command from Paul is the point! That simple command: “conduct yourselves.” In Greek (politeuomai, πολιτεύομαι) it literally means “be a citizen,” or, “behave as citizens.” Do you see the brilliance? Paul commands the Philippians, “In the midst of all that is going on, behave as citizens…of the gospel. Not as Roman citizen, but as a ‘Gospel Citizen.’” Later on in the letter, Paul says, “Our citizenship [same derivative] is in heaven” (Phil 3:20). Behave as citizens of heaven. And so what is he saying? “Stop caring about this world and just wait until you die and go to heaven”? No! That’s not how citizenship worked then.

Remember, who lived in Philippi? Ex-Roman soldiers. So they were citizens of Rome, but living outside of the Roman walls. And so as “citizens of Rome” living outside of Rome, living in Philippi, what were these ex-soldiers supposed to do? They were to live their citizenship of Rome outside of Rome; spread the culture and civilization of Rome where they lived. When in Rome, do as the Romans do; when in Philippi, keep doing as the Romans do.

Do you see why this is so brilliant? Paul is playing on this concept! Paul urges the Christians—even in the midst of this culture, where the values and morals they embraced were not valued or accepted—Paul urges the Christians to live their “heavenly citizenship,” to live the newness of the gospel, this new kind of humanity outside of heaven, in the midst of this.

What Do You Need To Live Gospel Citizenship?

“Great. Thanks for the cool pun, Paul. But what does this mean??” Well, this is what Paul goes on to explain. And we’ll get there over the next few weeks. But simply put for now, what does it mean? It means “to put on a new mind,” to put on the mind of the Messiah—Paul is urging, begging the Philippian Christians to stop seeing and thinking as the world and the culture around them sees and thinks, and instead to start seeing things through the divine vision and thinking through things with the mind of the Messiah. Meta-nous, a new mind.

When we get stuck in our own way of thinking, when we get entrenched in our own ideologies and systems for making the world a perfect place—when we spend day after day after day thinking and complaining about the world and the country, and trying to change the world on worldly terms, through politics and power and money—when this is our vision of reality, when this is how we view the world, it only leads to frustration, despair, division, animosity. It ends up in the echo chambers called cable news. Paul is saying, “Yes, you live in a broken and backwards world. Yes, it is frustrating. And yes, analyzing the world on its own terms… Yeah, that’s never going to work out! But—but metanoiate, meta-nous: put on a new mind, begin to see things differently, and embrace a different citizenship.”

Do you believe that the gospel or that politics has true power?

What many of us do—what I did for twenty-six and a half years of my life, what I still find creeping into my mind even now—what many of us do is see the world through a very modern progressive vision of reality (yes, even if you’re a “conservative”). Why? Because this was the vision of our Founding Fathers. And the assumptions that underly that vision are based on a worldview that has no place for God—not the God we believe in anyway—and no place for the vision of reality presented by the gospel. It’s the reason so many people leave the faith: they don’t see it as pertinent to their life. Why? Because the way they see reality, the way they have been taught to see reality—the way that many of use unconsciously see reality—is antithetical to the gospel (we just happen to still come to Mass). And we’ll talk about this more.

But think! Paul lived in a world where slavery and racism and xenophobia were fine. So did he say, “Well, things are never going to change. Can’t do anything about it”? No. Did he say, “Let’s fight! Let’s stage a revolt and overthrow Rome”? No. Did he say, “If we want things to change we need to really, really get involved in politics”? No. What did he do? He “behaved as a citizen [not of Rome, but] of the gospel.” In Paul’s letter to Philemon, Paul sends Onesimus, a runaway slave, back to Philemon, back to his master. And in the letter, Paul encourages Philemon to welcome him back, “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother” (Phm 16).

Paul lived in a world where abortion was rampant. He never once brought it up. In a document over a hundred years after Paul, the Letter to Diognetus, we find one line about it—half a line. The Letter says, “Like others, [Christians] marry and have children, but they do not expose [i.e., abort] them.” That’s it. Were early Christians less pro-life? Were early Christians any less appalled by abortion or child sacrifice? No.

But the way the early Christians spread the gospel, implemented the behavior of citizens of the gospel, was not through politics, but through living it, through their witness. They simply lived a different citizenship. And why? Because they saw reality a different way. They saw reality through the mind of Christ himself. And this witness was powerful.

I’ve told you about my dad before. He’s a doc’ up in Wichita. And he worked a lot with the residents, the doctors in training. And there was this one resident he had who was pretty outspoken about her pro-choice and pro-contraception views. But her curiosity was piqued by this doctor, my dad, who lived life very differently from the other doctors. Here was this doctor who talked about how much he loved his wife (while the other doctors talked about “the ol’ ball and chain”). She noticed how this doctor loved his kids—only six at the time, little did she know—and was always talking about them, and how he couldn’t wait to go back home (while the other doctors talked about how they couldn’t wait to play golf or find any excuse to not go home). One day she got to meet my mom—some doctor dinner thing. And she talked with her for hours—and was changed by their conversation, by my mom’s witness. And I talked to this doc, and she said that it was through them—my parents living their life as witnesses, behaving as citizens of the gospel—that her opinions on abortion and contraception began to change. She said it was my mom that brought her to Christ. She’s now like 180º different. The gospel, lived, embodied—the witness of the gospel has power. Power to change even the hardest of hearts.

And living this is key! Christians don’t see each other as black and white, slave and free, right?—but Christians are often seen spouting off racist and prejudicial things just as quickly as anyone else: I’ve watched it happen here.Christians get pregnant just like anyone else, but they don’t abort their kids, right?—until you find out that around 50% of people who get an abortion are Christian (~25% are Catholic)—that’s one-to-one for the population. Christians love God and neighbor more than anything else, right?—except we were more upset that football was cancelled by COVID than when going to Mass or Sunday service was canceled. 

No—laws and “culture” and politics aren’t the issue, no. It’s me. The problem is me. It’s my heart. It’s your heart. It’s how we see the world, the vision of the world I have. The solution? Start thinking as God thinks, put on the mind of the Messiah, of Christ—metanoiate, meta-nous, have change of mind, a change of heart— and behave as citizens of the gospel.

Here in this Eucharist, we receive a grace, a gift from God that transforms out hearts—from hearts of stone to hearts of flesh. With devotion and faith, we profess that Christ is present here. And here, he gives us a new heart, a new spirit, a new mind. The change we seek is found here. And from here—and only from here—it goes out to all the world.