"Heaven is The Intrinsic Reward" - Sermon for 5 Pentecost 7-13-25

Altruists claim that humans can act selflessly to help others, expecting no benefit or reward.

Rubbish! say the psychological egoists. Everyone expects and receives at least the intrinsic reward of feeling good for having done good for someone in need.

Christianity is not alone among the world’s religious traditions in placing a high moral value on altruism. It’s one imperative we all have in common. But if we look more closely, I wonder if Jesus, at least, wasn’t a psychological egoist. He promises an intrinsic reward.

When you give alms, Jesus said, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Come, inherit the kingdom prepared for you, Jesus said, for I was hungry and you fed me. And because you did it for the least of these, you did it for me.

Loving your neighbor as yourself, Jesus affirmed, gets you written into God’s will, especially when the neighbor is an ancient enemy, like those ne’er-do-well Samaritans; or a newer one, like a rival political party.

Altruism versus psychological egoism is an argument at least as old as the New Testament. Are we saved by faith, as Saint Paul claimed, or by works, as Saint James retorted? Abraham and Rahab – patriarch and prostitute alike – James reminds us, both acted on promises of a reward; their works showed their faith.

Of course, Saint Paul gets the label sola fides – faith alone – laid on him unfairly. Paul mostly agrees with James. The faith of the Colossians, we heard today, acts in tandem with their good works.

And, more famously, Paul wrote to the Corinthian Church that faith without love – love being the impetus for and epitome of works – is empty; null and void.

I once read somewhere that we ought to believe that we’re saved by faith, that our salvation is not up to us but to God; but we ought to behave like we’re saved by works, that our salvation is up to us.

That synthesis of faith and works – belief and behavior – seems, to me at least, closer to Jesus’s message.

Perhaps the same synthesis could apply in the argument between altruists and psychological egoists as well.

Don’t worry about getting the intrinsic reward of a warm feeling in your heart; just don’t let it go to your head. Let your Father, who sees in secret, reward you – in heaven and on earth – and let that be enough.

Truly, what more should we ask for?

Father Daniel S.J. Scheid, SCP

Fifth after Pentecost C: Proper 10 – July 13, 2025

All Saints’ Episcopal Church, San Francisco

“Heaven is The Intrinsic Reward"