But the Greatest of These

Graham Greene, an English Roman Catholic, wrote a dark, brilliant novel, The Power and the Glory. It centers on a Roman Catholic priest on the run. The story is set in the1920's, in a southern state in Mexico where the Marxists have taken control (which actually happened in his lifetime) and subsequently executed every priest except this one. To make matters worse, the man is a fallen, broken man who has gotten a woman pregnant, breaking his vow of celibacy; and he has drowned his shame in a lifetime of alcoholism. His daughter and her mother despise him. The common people live in the tension of both desperately clinging to his existence and the hope associated with his office, and at the same time rejecting him as shameful and a loser. He lives in the tension of his abject moral failure and at the same time the unrelenting call of God to serve His people. Thus, when he finally escapes into a neighboring state, he cannot live with himself. "The whiskey priest," as he is called by the masses, goes back home into a Marxist hell.

It is not long before he is captured and identified by a Judas-type character as the long-sought whiskey priest. The Marxists exult that at last the land will be cleansed of all religious influence. They hastily prepare his execution, drag him to the wall, and shoot him to death.

Where's the significance in that? What worth could a life like that possibly have? Honestly, what is the worth of your and my lives? That's at least part of what Greene is asking.

Or to put it another way, is there anything which "carries over" from this life to the next? Is there anything that happens here which lasts forever, which we will find somehow present in the Age to Come? Does anything we do here that carries eternal worth, thus infusing it today with ultimate significance?

The classic answer of evangelicalism, at least since the early 1900's, has been "faith." Faith in Jesus Christ carries over. We will find it present in the Age to Come, as well as the fruits of it. Faith is the means by which a person crosses over into salvation. It speaks of one's worth to God, and our participation in another's coming to faith, as we would say, speaks of the significance of our lives as well. All of this is true, biblical, and to be treasured.

But it is a grossly incomplete answer, according to Scripture.

Does not St. Paul say that three things abide? Faith, hope, and . . . love (I Corinthians 13:13). Paul is saying that these three carry over. What we do in faith, hope, and love are eschatological in their essence. They arise in the Age to Come and break in upon us in this Age of the Already but Not Yet. They connect the two Ages. Therefore, they have worth and provide significance.

But listen closely to all of I Corinthians 13:13: "So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love."

Acts of agape love, you see, a love which only comes from God and simply cannot be done or conceived of or embraced or participated in except in and through Jesus Christ. . . acts of agape love that arise from the life, suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus are the primary evidence today that we are citizens of the Age to Come, of the Kingdom of God. They are a key measure of our significance.

In my favorite of all U2's songs, Walk On, a song about significance and crossing over to a place we've never been, Bono does a voice-over riddle in the opening measures, saying, "Ah love, it's not the easy thing - the only baggage you can bring; love, it's not the easy thing - the only baggage you can bring is all that you can't leave behind." In other words, acts of love, the kind that only comes from the heart of God, through the life and death of Jesus, is the only "baggage" we get to take with us into the life to come. These are the evidences of our significance.

As the whiskey priest is executed, it is clear to every reader, every participant in the book, that his life is meaningless, worthless, insignificant. He is a loser. Nothing remains. And yet, in the two pages that remain in the book, three miracles occur - you will have to read the book to find this out for yourself - but three miracles are the sign for the Roman Catholic of the sainthood of the person. And only later do you realize, as a reader, that he loved the woman with whom he had had a child. He loved his daughter. He loved the people of God. He loved the lost masses. And, in a moment of grace in his last night, in a dank jail cell, he loved God.

The only baggage you can bring is all that you can't leave behind. Which means self-sacrificing love that comes from the heart of God. It's all we can take with us.