In the Episcopal Church liturgical calendar, today is the Feast of Antony, Abbot in Egypt, who died in the year 356. Antony lived in a time of tremendous change for the early church. In 312, Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity (there’s some debate on when, if ever, he was personally baptized) and in 313 officially decriminalized Christian worship. In a matter of decades, Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire.
For three centuries, Christianity had been an underground religion, barely tolerated in the best of times and actively persecuted most times. To be a Christian meant living on the margins of society, socially outcast and civilly disadvantaged. One had to give up friends, family connections, opportunities for advancement and wealth—and often it meant giving up life itself. Suddenly, all that was reversed. Christianity was now fashionable, the Emperor was its patron, and people were lining up to be baptized.
This troubled many Christians, who feared that it was now “too easy” to be a follower of Christ, that without the suffering and persecution, the giving up of comfort and safety, they were somehow not truly following the way of Jesus. Antony was one of these, and his answer was to give up his wealth and comforts to live as a hermit in the desert, laboring with his own hands to grow food and produce necessities (by desert, I’m assuming this means deserted lands, not arid land incapable of agriculture). He did not entirely remove himself from society, however, and would preach in towns and do works of charity through his labor. In time, he attracted like-minded Christians, with whom he founded one of the very earliest monastic communities.
The readings for this feast day, as one would expect, are on point with Antony’s desire to truly follow Jesus. In particular, the epistle reading 1 Peter 5:5-10 and the gospel reading Mark 10:17-21.
The gospel reading from Mark recounts the story of the young man who tells Jesus he has followed the commandments and asks what else he must to do inherit eternal life. Jesus tells him to sell all his possessions, give the proceeds to the poor, and “follow me.” This, of course, resonates with me as a Franciscan and is often quoted as a call to live simply and give generously to the needy. Poverty is one of the three traditional vows taken by Franciscan friars (and other religious orders), and my third order Franciscan community calls for living as simply as practical while living in the wider world. What’s omitted, however, is the denouement in verse 22: “When he heard this, [the young man] was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.”
What we possess—our stuff—is tricky. We believe that we own it, but so often it owns us instead. It’s hard to let stuff go—it has a hold on us to the point where so much of what we do revolves around keeping our stuff, getting more stuff, and, most insidiously, measuring our self-worth by the quantity and quality of our stuff vs. our neighbor’s stuff. No matter if that stuff is clothes, cars, houses, money in the bank, or gold bars in a Swiss vault, we obsess over it and fear losing it. We fear that without our stuff, we lose our identity.
Jesus calls us in a different direction. Stuff is just… stuff. Trust God to provide what you need (and yes, God helps those who help themselves—this isn’t a call to be passive), and do not worry about what you don’t need. As Peter writes in today’s epistle:
Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time. Cast all you anxiety on him, because he cares for you.
It always boils down to love, doesn’t it? I don’t need stuff to be happy; all I need is God’s love, which is unconditional and infinite.
