‘Eternal life is the real … wealth that Jesus promises’ to faithful

Posted: 05.08.09

After he had fed the crowds with the miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes, Jesus rebukes them not for following him, but for following him for the wrong reasons (cf., Jn:16). And people, then as now, often do seek Christ for the wrong reasons. We see this in the adherents of the “prosperity Gospel” preached by some of the TV evangelists. One of them, Benny Hinn, got his start right here in Orlando. These prosperity evangelists teach that Jesus is all satisfying because, “I drive a BMW. …” The trappings of wealth are seen as a sign of God’s blessings. This “health, wealth and prosperity” Gospel is, in fact, a heresy – a false teaching – which distorts the true Gospel message. But it has been a perennial temptation. St. Augustine – in the fourth century – remarked: “How many seek Jesus for no other purpose than that he may do good for them in this present life. Scarcely ever is Jesus sought for Jesus’ sake.”

To build one’s faith in Jesus on the promise of prosperity is to build on sand. For, faith in Jesus must be a faith in Jesus crucified. You cannot remove the cross from his message.

In the 1970s, in many of our parish churches, the crucifix was removed from its position of prominence in their liturgical décor. An image of the crucified Jesus was often replaced by a “happier” Jesus; that is, with an image of the Risen Jesus. Of course, the desire to give emphasis to the Resurrection, which is the basis of our faith, is certainly legitimate. But, one could ask if there was not also an attempt to accommodate the self-indulgence of our culture by downplaying the “hard sayings” of the Gospel.

If we buy into this “health, wealth and prosperity” Gospel, then inevitably we will undergo a crisis of faith when the cross intrudes into our lives. And the cross will intrude – whether through sickness, business failure or family crisis.

During the Easter season, the first readings are taken from the Acts of the Apostles, which chronicles the growth of the early Church after the Resurrection and Pentecost. Far from experiencing “health, wealth and prosperity,” the early Christians in their witness to Jesus Christ encountered opposition, persecution, imprisonment, as well as a whole array of physical hardships – hunger, shipwreck and illness. The first martyr, Stephen, experienced the cross in the opposition the Sanhedrin stirred up against him, in the false witnesses that distorted and defamed his message. Yet, even though he knew that what awaited him was death by stoning, “his face shown like that of an angel” (Acts 6:15).

For Stephen, it wasn’t money, or his acceptance by the authorities, or the acclaim of the crowds that made life valuable. It was God – the God who revealed in himself in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen from the dead. Stephen is dragged out of the city gates – and a certain Saul of Tarsus witnesses what happens; in fact, he holds the garments of those who stone Stephen to death. And Stephen, like the myriads of martyrs who will follow him (including Saul who after his conversion was known as Paul) gives witness, even through the deepest possible pain, that God is enough.

Jesus tells the crowds after rebuking them for following him for the wrong reasons: “Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. … This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.”

Faith in Jesus is food for eternal life. Eternal life is the real health, the real wealth that Jesus promises us – and it is a promise not only to be realized in the far-distant future, for he gives us a foretaste of that eternal life through our communion in his Body and Blood.

His body is real food – but it is given not as a guarantee for earthly prosperity, but as a pledge of future glory.

God’s work was accomplished by Jesus – through his Passion, death and Resurrection. It is a work that calls forth from us a great act of faith. This act of faith is expressed through our own giving of ourselves, our self-offering to the one sent from God, Jesus the Christ, not for the good he might do for us in this present life but, as St. Augustine said, for his own sake.

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