The good is the enemy of the better. You can see this in athletes. Ball players work hard to develop their skills and if they have enough talent they become pretty good. The temptation at that point is to kick back and rest on your laurels. You’ve worked hard to reach elite status and now you don’t want to put in the extra hours of practice and exercises to be better. “I’m doing pretty good” and that becomes enough. The good is the enemy of the better for our country. We’re a good country with lots of opportunity, a country where the rule of law is honored, a country where life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are national values. However, we are tempted to rest in that goodness and not heed the call to be better – to overcome the barriers created by income inequality, to confront the legacy of racism which taints every aspect of society, to show that each individual human life is precious and needs to be respected. The challenge to be better does not negate the good but reinforces it. The good is the enemy of the better here at St. James. We’re a Church which is good at hospitality. We greet people and try to create a spirit where all are welcome. We celebrate the diversity which characterizes our membership. We aren’t a group of strangers sharing a space but feel a connection with one another. But being good at hospitality has blinded us to the need to be better – to get to know the names of people we see every week, to make sure to reach out to those we don’t recognize and greet them, to move out of the comfort zone of people we are familiar with. Our very goodness tends to lower our incentive to be better.
St. Paul tells us that the good is the enemy of the better in our personal life as well. “We earnestly ask and exhort you in the Lord Jesus that, as you received from us how you should conduct yourself to please God – and as you are conducting yourself – you do so even more.” You’re doing good, Paul tells the Thessalonians – and us – but they/we could be doing more. Sure, we haven’t murdered anyone recently. We are charitable when we are presented some need. We even speak to that cousin who caused great hurt. Pretty good. Jesus wants us to break out of our rut of being content with being good. We need to be better since life in Christ is not about being decent, it’s about becoming holy, it’s not about being respectable but about being righteous, it’s not about keeping the straight and narrow but walking the path of sanctity. We begin this Advent season with St. Paul telling us “pretty good” isn’t good enough. We should be doing more. We should be better.
This is an appropriate theme for the first Sunday of Advent since this is a season of expectation. As we remind ourselves of the first coming of Jesus into our midst at Christmas time, we are expecting Jesus to come again at the end of time. And if God chose to send the very best can we do no less but return the very best that we are? In the gospel for today Jesus describes what inhibits our ability to do more, to be better. “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy.” It isn’t evil, it isn’t malice, it isn’t even corruption that is the great danger. It’s drowsiness, listlessness, lethargy. We can sleepwalk our way through life being content with what is instead of pushing on to the more to which we are called. It’s fascinating the three causes that Jesus sees as producing this drowsiness, this slumber: “Carousing and drunkenness.” Well that makes sense. If you are spending all your time partying you won’t have the focus or energy to attend to growing in God. But what is even more interesting is the other cause Jesus lists: “the anxieties of daily life.” In other words, we can get so caught up in the grind of living that we can miss the call of God to be better. Paying bills, minding the house, raising the children, going to school, caring for to the neighborhood are all good things to do. But when these daily activities produce anxiety, become all consuming, we tend to miss the other things that God is asking of us. Trusting that God does give us our daily bread and will deliver us from evil frees us from anxiety so that we can push on to something better.
How to move from being good to being better? St. Paul tells us: “Increase and abound in love for one another and for all.” That seems obvious for Christians. It is so obvious that maybe we don’t even hear how radical is that call. To increase in love demands more than warm feelings but working for the good of others. In fact, love abounds when it is not limited to those we like but is bestowed even on those who drive us crazy. Abounding love moves one out of one’s own comfort zone into the arena of God’s care. It is good to love our family and friends. We become better when we love our enemies. It is good to greet those we know when we come to church. We become better when we welcome the stranger. It is good to forgive someone who hurts us. We become better when we forgive seventy times seven times. It is good to be kind to our brothers and sisters. We become better when we recognize there isn’t anyone out there who isn’t a brother or sister. It is good to pray every day. We become better when we pray without ceasing. It is good to hear the words of Jesus. We become better by putting the words of Jesus into practice. It is good to receive the body of Christ. We become better by being the body of Christ.