Everything from duty, nothing from love. That was the striking title of a chapter in a novel I recently read. I was hooked. I went on to read about the misery of a woman in a loveless marriage. Her life was full of wearisome tasks that wore her down. She had always been a dutiful person. She’d excelled in school. She’d held great promise, working hard to overcome a difficult childhood, until her life was derailed by an unexpected pregnancy and she was forced to marry at eighteen. Day after day, she fed the crying baby, washed the clothes, cleaned the farmhouse in which she lived with her husband, looked out at the loneliness around her, and despaired of her loveless marriage.
She found herself dreaming about creating more time so she could keep up with all the tasks demanded of her life. But each day, she got out of bed earlier than the day before to add more productive hours to her day. It seemed that more and more was required of her, and getting up earlier was the only way to cope. It never ceased. She was feeding a beast that couldn’t be satisfied. She couldn’t find love because duty was eating her up.[1]
Duty isn’t a bad thing, in fact, it can be a very good thing. I am, by nature, a dutiful person. The language of the Mass even tells us that it’s our “bounden duty” in all times and places to give thanks to God. Duty is an integral part of being a Christian disciple. Indeed, I often wonder whether the Church would be better off if more Christians had a sense of duty.
But duty can be stifling when it becomes the end and not the means. Duty is imprisonment when its aim is to please something or someone that’s never satisfied. So many strings can be attached to acts of duty. The duty-obsessed parent says to the child, “I raised you and cared for you and paid for your college education. I did what a parent is supposed to do. How dare you move out of the house and have a life apart from me!” Some churches say, “Your salvation is assured if you are in this fold and you simply follow these rules. If you’re obedient and dutiful and observant, you will be blessed. But should you leave the fold, you are anathema.” Yes, duty can be divorced from love. Duty can be the string that is attached to conditional love, which really isn’t love at all.
Everything from duty, nothing from love. Maybe this chilling statement summarizes the mindset of the crowds that approach John the Baptist. They’ve heard of a wrath to come, and they don’t want to meet that wrath. Perhaps they feel that the clock is ticking, and the alarm will go off soon. Maybe they need to make up for lost time. There’s a God who needs to be appeased, and they’d better hurry. And so, they arrive at John’s feet, by duty, we might say, rather than by love. John himself seems to encourage such duty as the proper response of a faithful child of God. Bear fruits that befit repentance, he says. Don’t rest on the laurels of your status as children of Abraham. Be dutiful, you brood of vipers!
But the crowds who come to John seem stuck on duty. And John’s exhortation to behave as if they are repentant also seems stuck on duty. The crowds don’t know what to do. There’s an urgency to John’s message, and they’re anxious, which is even more of a reason to demand specificity from John. “What then shall we do?”
But did John’s advice help the eager crowds, or did they become more stuck after John addressed them? Surely, those who had two coats went to share one of their coats with the unclothed. Surely, the tax collectors changed their extortionary financial practices. Surely, the soldiers tried to be a bit more just in their dealings with others. Surely, they all heeded John’s good advice. But did they become unstuck? Was everything still from duty? Was anything from love?
How often do we, too, get stuck on duty? Maybe in our own lives, we’re stuck right now. We get out of bed on Sunday mornings, pile on layers of clothing against the cold weather, and we show up here. We’ve heard there’s a wrath to come, and it sounds terrifying. The visions of hell, fire, and brimstone that we’ve heard about from TV preachers or that we’ve read about in Scripture sound a lot like words from the mouth of John. They’ve been used as sticks to beat people into submission. In gentler moments, they’ve been used as guilt-laced carrots to lure people into duty. But the duty that’s elicited by such tactics is based on fear, not on love. And once again, we’re stuck. We don’t know what to do about the state of our soul against the reality of future judgment. Duty seems the only answer when up against the specter of winnowing forks and an unquenchable fire.
And so, we show up here, or we kneel by the side of our beds at night, and we ask, “What then shall we do?” Perhaps it’s the threat of condemnation that has driven us through the doors of this church or to our knees by our beds. We want answers. What then shall we do? And the unspoken part of that sentence is the elephant in the room that we never want to name but is crystal clear. What we shall do is anything that allows us to escape the wrath of God and the flames of hell. Anything at all. Just tell us what to do. Everything is from duty, and nothing from love. We’re stuck.
Good works become the ticket into heaven. We use duty to get something, and love is nowhere in the picture. Let’s face it. In this earthly life, it’s so easy to become stuck. We’re stuck between the rock of God’s assumed wrath and the hard place of our compulsion to live and act justly. What then shall we do?
Maybe the answer lies in rescuing the image of John the Baptist and his fiery speech and his pointing hand from a crude summons to duty. Maybe the answer lies in following the pointing hand through duty to its ultimate reference, which is, of course, Christ, the Messiah. And if we follow John’s hand to Christ, we might be able to discern a deeper message beneath the call to duty, one that is indeed—as St. Luke’s words tell us—good news for us.
John isn’t pointing to good works themselves, which are bound up with Christian duty. John isn’t simply pointing to the good fruit on the tree as the end of all things. John is pointing to the image of God within each one of us that naturally bears the fruit of good works done faithfully and dutifully. John is pointing to the healthy root of the tree that will enable it to bear good fruit. John is pointing to the source of that tree’s life. And in this realization, we learn who we are and who we’re called to be. By virtue of our baptism into Christ in the Spirit’s power, we’re made children of God and heirs of eternal life. And through that same Spirit, God can raise up from our hearts of stone new hearts on fire with the love of God.
John calls the crowds to repentance not simply for the sake of duty; he calls them to repentance so that they can make an about-face in their lives and turn to see the wide-open arms of a God who has always been waiting for them to discover his infinite love. This God whom we worship and adore isn’t a hungry beast, demanding more and more good works. There’s no ticking time bomb of which we should be afraid. God doesn’t ask us to add more hours to our days to do more good works so that we can appease him. Through God-directed duty, God invites us to discover his love that frees us from the shackles of the machinery of all loveless duty that drains away our life. And it’s through repentance that we turn from our idols and misdirected duty to God, who desires love more than duty. With this God, because he loved us first, everything really is from love rather than from duty.
So, follow the hand of the prophet one last time. Don’t be put off by his fiery speech and rough appearance. Move through his words of repentance to notice where his finger is really pointing. It’s pointing through the duty of faithfulness to Love himself, Jesus the Christ. It’s pointing to the Son of God, who by virtue of taking on human flesh and defeating death through his resurrection from the dead has given us the power to become children of God. If we follow John’s finger, we will see more clearly who we’re called to be, which is a people growing more and more into the likeness of God. For John is pointing to Christ who was and is and is to come, who by the power of his Holy Spirit, reigns within our hearts and calls us to new life. And in him, we find that our bounden duty, however very meet and right it is, has now all become love. You see, although duty has its place, everything is really from love.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Third Sunday of Advent
December 15, 2024
[1] Chapter three from Kate Atkinson, Case Histories (New York: Back Bay Books, 2004)