St. Matthew's Church

2300 Ford Road
Newport Beach, CA 92660
(949) 219-0911
office@stmatthewsnewport.com

The Rt. Rev'd Stephen C. Scarlett

Trinity Sunday – Sermon

I once read somewhere that Trinity Sunday is the only feast of the year that celebrates a doctrine. However, I’ve come to realize that statement is misleading. For God is Trinity, and we can hardly say that God is merely a doctrine. In fact, a primary error with regard to the Trinity is the attempt to understand the Trinity as formula rather than as experience.

The word Trinity is not in the Bible. But we use lots of words that are not in the Bible to explain the truths the Bible reveals to us. The words “transcendent” and “Incarnation” are not in the Bible either, but both describe biblical truths about God. The Bible is the record of how God has revealed himself to man. Theological statements such as “God is Trinity” are the result of the church’s inspired reflection on that revelation.

This is not entirely different than the way scientists develop laws and principles about the world. It is said that Newton discovered the law of gravity when an apple fell from the tree and hit him in the head. That is to say, the law of gravity resulted from reflection on and experience of the creation–just as the doctrine of the Trinity results from reflection on and experience of the revelation. The difference is that one must have eyes of faith in order to see the revelation.

One consequence of the fall of man is that we lost our sacramental vision. Because of sin, man cannot see God. He cannot see that the creation is an outward and visible sign of a glorious Creator. Man tends to see the visible world as an end in and of itself. Or, if he sees through the physical to the spiritual, his vision is not 20-20. His vision is clouded and he falls into error or heresy.

It is only through our experience of redemption in Christ through the Holy Spirit that our vision is fully restored to us. This is why, in all the resurrection appearances in the gospels, some act of revelation had to take place before people could actually “see” the risen Christ. The Father reveals himself through his Son. We are able to comprehend, or “see” the revelation through the Spirit. The Trinity must first be known as an experience before it can be understood as a doctrine.

This is precisely what Jesus tells us in the gospel (John 3:1-15). “Verily, verily I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” The word “see” in this verse does no mean merely to look at. It means to know, to understand. Without the gift of the Spirit, by which we are born again, we cannot know God or understand the nature of his kingdom.

The same point is made in the epistle (Revelation 4). St. John saw an open door in heaven and a voice invited him to “Come up hither.” “Immediately” he was “in the Spirit” in the presence of God. Only through the Spirit was John able to ascend into the presence of God and see heavenly things.

We must first know the Father through the Son in the Spirit before we can understand that God is three persons who are united in one substance of being. We must be worshipers of God before we can be theologians. This has important implications for the mission work of the church. It suggests that there are limitations to the effectiveness of purely rational arguments in evangelism. We can’t bring people to knowledge of the Trinity by mere force of argument. For how can we get people to see, by mere logic, what Jesus himself says they can’t see unless they are first born again? Evangelism must always begin with the prayer that those who are spiritually blind may be given the gift of sight. Conversion only takes place when God enables someone to see.

When we understand that we are spiritually blind because of sin, we understand that sin involves the loss our contemplative nature. This is why the gift of restored vision in Christ leads to worship and contemplation. The ability to see leads us to understand the genuine meaning and value of created things. Now we look at the creation and see the glory of the Creator. Now we look at bread and wine and see the body and blood of Christ. Fallen man lacks this vision and, therefore, is drawn away from worship and contemplation. He focuses on the physical as an end in and of itself. This is the very definition of idolatry.

This is especially evident in the modern world. Lack of contemplative vision causes people to see  things in utilitarian terms because they are blind to the intrinsic value God has given them. When we see the creation as a sign of the Creator, we begin to understand the value and mystery of each part of the creation. We are moved to wonder and exploration–exploration, but not exploitation. For  one who truly sees understands that we can explore and enjoy the majesty and mystery of God, but  we cannot use God or his creation for our own ends.

The modern world does not value worship because it has no sacramental vision. All things are valued only in economic terms, or in terms of what I think of them–in terms of their subjective value to me, not the objective value God has given them. However worship and contemplation are central activities for the person who truly sees. For when we are born again, we begin to see the kingdom in all things and the Spirit calls us to “Come up hither” into heaven where we can see God.

Our restored vision enables us to see God’s Trinitarian nature. God the Father, whom we cannot see, who is beyond our comprehension, is continually making himself know in tangible ways through his Son, who is the very image of the Father. And we perceive the revelation of the Father through the Son by means of the Spirit, who opens our eyes to see. Three persons, yet only one God–“As in was in the beginning is now and ever shall be.”

The more we see, the more we realize that the there is much more to see. We talk about eternal life, about the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come. Sometimes we wonder what it will be like. We can begin to contemplate eternity by imagining how we will experience the world when the vision provided by faith gives way to fully restored sight; when we not only join with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven in the Spirit by faith, but actually spend time in conversation and fellowship with them; when we not only commune with God through sacramental signs, but actually see God.

We know God in Christ through the Spirit. But we do not yet fully understand God as Trinity. This is a good thing, for it means that there is much mystery to explore and discover, both in time and  in eternity. As St. Paul says, “Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I am known” (1 Corinthians 13:13).

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Pentecost – Sermon

Jesus rose on Easter as the “firstfruits of them that slept.” With the gift of the Holy Spirit, the harvest is completed and the experience of resurrection is extended to all of God’s people. We who were dead in our sins are raised to new life through the Spirit.

In Genesis, God created man from the dust and “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (Genesis 2:7). This life giving connection to God was lost through by sin. As God said, “In the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17). The death caused by sin was the severing of man’s communion with God through the Spirit. We may appear to be alive in the body apart from God, but we are, in fact, dead. We cut off from the source of life and destined for the grave and eternal separation from God.

The drama of redemption that we have rehearsed again since Advent comes to fruition on Pentecost. Pentecost is the moment when the dead receive again the breath of life. The gift of the Spirit restores us to the communion with God that we lost through sin. As Ephesians says, “You he made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins.” (Ephesians 2:1). Through the Spirit, we are have eternal right now and the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the body on the Last Day.

The whole creation shares with us the hope and promise of resurrection through the Spirit. As Romans says, “The creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now”  (Romans 8:21-22). The sacraments, in which physical elements become means of grace, in which physical elements already participate in the new creation through the Spirit, anticipate the time when God will make all things new.

On Pentecost, the outward sign of the gift of the Spirit was the tongues of fire, dividing and resting on the head of each believer. For subsequent Christians, the sign of the gift of the Spirit is the water of baptism. St. Peter describes this succinctly in the conclusion to his sermon on Pentecost:  “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Act 2:38).

On Pentecost, the evidence that each believer received the Spirit was that each spoke in various languages of the ancient world. This enabled all the pilgrims who were in Jerusalem for Pentecost to hear about Jesus in their own languages. The ongoing evidence of the Holy Spirit’s presence in us is what we call “the fruits of the Spirit” (cf. Galatians 5:22). People know that the Spirit is active in our lives because they can see the change the Spirit causes in us.

Baptism does not guarantee either the fruits of the Spirit or ultimate salvation. We must also experience what the church refers to as “conversion of the heart.” Conversion of the heart is the encounter with God that makes us aware of our sin and leads us to repentance, confession and the experience grace and forgiveness through Jesus Christ. The sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation are the objective signs of the gift of the Spirit. Conversion of the heart is the subjective condition that enables us to receive the gift effectually. In many baptized Christians, the gift of the Spirit is latent rather than active because they have not yet come to genuine repentance and sincere faith in Jesus, they have not yet experienced conversion of the heart.

Conversion of the heart is a continual process. As we “Walk in the Spirit” (Galatians 5:16) we become more aware of our sin, make better confessions, experience more of God’s grace, develop new virtues and manifest new fruits of the Spirit. We lead a life prayer precisely so that we may “daily increase in thy Holy Spirit more and more until [we] come to thine everlasting kingdom” (BCP 297).

Jesus said in the gospel (John 14:15-31). “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him” (John 14:23). When Father and Son make their home in us through the Spirit, we begin to love as God loves. Love is the chief virtue and the preeminent fruit of the Spirit.

Romans says, “The love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” (Romans 5:5 NKJ). This is why Jesus said, “A new commandment I give unto you. That you love one another as I have loved you. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35). The Holy Spirit both enables and commands us to love in the manner that we have been loved by God.

Love is the unifying language that undoes the confusion of Babel and causes us to speak with one heart and one mind. Love is the unifying language that enables all to hear and see the gospel. Love enables us to forgive and let go of our petty grievances. Love frees us from selfishness, and causes us to serve with a joyful heart where ever God calls us to serve. Love enables us to sacrifice, to give up the temporal for the eternal after the pattern of Jesus.

St. Paul reminds us, in 1 Corinthians 13, that we can do all manner of religious and charitable deeds, but if they are not motivated by love, we gain nothing from them. As Jesus said after recounting all the good religious practices of the church in Ephesus, “Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love” (Revelation 2:4).

If our hearts are unconverted or our love has grown cold, we must return to Pentecost and pray, in the words of our sequence hymn: “Come thou Holy Spirit come and from thy celestial home, Shed a ray of light divine…Heal our wounds, our strength renew; On our dryness pour thy dew. Wash the stains of guilt away. Bend the stubborn heart and will; Melt the frozen, warm the chill. Guide the steps the go astray” (Hymnal 109).

Pentecost reminds us that Christian faith is a life giving experience of resurrection. It can never be reduced to mere doctrine or rules. Doctrine describes the experience. Moral rules are the responsibilities and implications of the experience. But the essence of our faith is union with the Father through the Son in the Spirit. The essence of our faith is the experience of love–which comes to us through the gift of the Spirit. Thus, we pray on Pentecost, “Come Holy Ghost, fill the hearts of thy faithful people and kindle in them the fire of thy love.”

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Ascension – Sermon

The most ancient confession of Christian faith was to say, “Jesus is Lord.” When the early Christians said this, they meant that Jesus has sovereign authority over the world. The One who had been arrested, beaten, crucified and buried demonstrated his power over all things by rising from the dead and ascending the “right hand” of God.

In the ancient world, the confession that “Jesus is Lord” was heard in contrast with the confession  that “Caesar is Lord.” The various Caesars claimed for themselves the titles “Son of God” and “Savior of the world.” They demanded obedience of their subjects and expected the people to trust them for security and well-being. The confession that “Jesus is Lord” was a direct threat to the claims of Caesar. This is why many Christians were killed for their faith. Either Jesus was the world’s true Lord and Savior or Caesar was. Neither church nor state allowed its citizens to make the contrary confession.

In the contemporary world, the confession that “Jesus is Lord” doesn’t always carry the same weight. We tend to view such confessions as personal opinions rather than claims about the nature of the world. To say, “Jesus is Lord” often carries the meaning that Jesus is Lord for me, without any sense that my confession has implications for anyone else. This reflects the perspective of our times that there is no ultimate truth. Therefore, each is entitled to his or her own.

This is highlighted by the question asked by some evangelists: “Do you accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?” While this is meant to emphasize the personal decision to follow Jesus, it implies that what Jesus is for me he may not necessarily be for the whole world. He may be my personal savior is the same way I have a personal assistant or a personal trainer. Each has a certain authority and competence, but all are subject to my personal willingness to let them work in my life.

This accounts, to a significant degree, for why the witness of the church is not particularly powerful in our time in the western world. The Lord Jesus is presented as one who may help us manage life, as one who may be called upon in time of crisis, as one who may comfort us in times of need. But he is not always confessed and followed as Son of God and Savior of the World.

It is an interesting meditation to consider what would happen if life threatening persecution broke out in America. How many of us would be willing to die for the confession that Jesus is Lord? However, in reality, our challenge is different. The devil  attacks our faith in more subtle ways. The chief way our faith is attacked is by the tendency to separate faith from the real activities of life. The Lord Jesus is not denied. Rather, faith in him is rendered innocuous.

This dualism may have been institutionalized by a former president who comforted our Protestant nation by assuring the people that his Romans Catholic faith would not in any way influence the way he ran the country. The assurance carried the implication that his faith would have just the same influence as the people’s Protestant faith had on their real lives–not much. Thus, faith becomes a private thing that is not allowed to touch what we actually do.

This separation of faith from real life is a patent rejection of the Ascension–not to mention the Incarnation, Cross and Resurrection. For if the Lord Jesus ascended in order to “fill all things” (Ephesians 4:10); if “all authority in heaven and earth” has been given to him (Matthew 28:18); if he was given “dominion, glory and a kingdom that all peoples, nations and languages should serve him” (Daniel 7:14) then no part of life be separated from the confession that “Jesus is Lord.”

We may never be dragged before the magistrate and asked to burn incense to an image of a king. However, we confess or deny that Jesus is Lord all the time by what we do or fail to do. As Jesus said, “Why do you call me Lord and do not do the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46). We confess or deny Jesus is Lord by our presence or absence in his church on the Lord’s Day. We confess or deny that Jesus is Lord by tithing or failing to tithe. We confess or deny that Jesus is Lord by our commitment to or neglect of the life of prayer. We confess or deny that Jesus is Lord by our treatment of the least of his brethren. We confess that Jesus is Lord by doing what we do as business people, teachers, lawyers, accountants, artists, laborers, mothers and fathers as unto the Lord and not unto men, seeking first the kingdom, not merely temporal rewards. We confess that Jesus is Lord by obeying his commandments, especially when obedience is costly. The confession or denial of the truth that Jesus is Lord cannot be kept as a private thing. The evidence is there for all to see.

Of course, there is a major challenge to our confession that Jesus is Lord. There is injustice, oppression and the killing of innocent people. There are tornadoes, floods, natural disasters and tragedies. Indeed, the world seems to be falling apart. How we can say that Jesus is Lord? How can we say that Jesus is in control?

In fact, Christian faith provides the most reasonable way to understand what is happening. The ascended Lord Jesus was himself subjected to the injustice and tragedy of life in this fallen world.  The life of Jesus reveals that God is able to save his chosen through the real pain of life. The cross was the raw material for the Resurrection. This teaches us that our pain is part of the process by which we are being remade into the image of Christ. Jesus is Lord precisely because he is able to bring order and beauty out of the chaos and disorder of this fallen world. What looks to the world like the pain of death is, in reality, the birth pangs of God’s new creation. Jesus really is in control, working in all things for good for those who love him and are the called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).

Jesus is Lord. He is not merely our private or personal Lord and Savior. He is the Lord and Savior of the World. “At the name of Jesus, every knee should bow…and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:10-11). The two angels at the ascension said, “This same Jesus who is taken up from you into heaven will so come in like manner as you have seen him go into heaven.” For, “He must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:25-26). Jesus is Lord. He calls each of us to be faithful  servants, in thought, word and deed, in everything that we do, as we wait for him to come again, renew the creation and raise us from the dead–“according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all unto himself” (Philippians 3:21).

 

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Rogation Sunday – Sermon

“Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you. Ask and ye shall receive that your joy may be full” (John 16:23f.).

For the last three weeks our gospels have been from John 16. They have not been in sequence. We first read the middle, then the beginning and now the end. But there has been a thematic progression.  First Jesus explained how the sorrow of the cross would give way to the joy of resurrection. Then he explained how the resurrection would give way to the ascension and the gift of the Spirit. The gift of the Spirit leads to today’s promise: our prayers will be answered.

The church, the Body of Christ, is the continuing presence of Christ in the world. If we take this literally, as we are supposed to take it, this has implications for prayer. Jesus always prayed with confidence. He knew the Father heard his prayer and he knew the Father would answer. His prayer at the tomb of Lazarus is instructive. St. John tells us,

Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me. And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth (John 11:41-44 KJV).

Through the Spirit, Jesus lives in us we live in him. Thus, we are able to pray in the same way he prayed. As Jesus said, “Ye shall ask in my name: and I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you, for the Father himself loveth you.” The prayer of the church is offered in Christ and through Christ with the confidence that the Father hears us just as he hears Christ.

This great privilege of prayer is expressed in the Liturgy when we are “bold to say Our Father.” Bold means confident and without fear. United with God through his Son by the Spirit, we can barge into the Holy of Holies, call God Father and start demanding things: “Thy kingdom come…Give us…our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses. Led us not into testing. Deliver us from the evil one.” This is not arrogance. It is the humble confidence that God is, truly, our Father in heaven.

The first petition of the Lord’s Prayer is the petition that governs all prayer in Christ. “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done.” Prayer draws our lives into the kingdom and brings the kingdom into our lives. When we experience all of life–our vocation, our success, our failures, our sickness, our health and our death in the light of the kingdom, we are able to see how God is making all things new. We are filled with the joy and the hope of resurrection.

Misdirected prayer loses sight of the kingdom and tries merely to manage life in the world. It asks God merely to help us succeed in temporal tasks and put far off the day of death. It asks God to give us more of what this world has to offer and assesses God’s answers merely in terms of how we are faring in the world.

For example, we pray for healing through the sacrament of unction. However, our prayer is not merely that God will always take away sickness so that we can get back to ordinary life in the world.  Some people see God as a kind of emergency room. When life is good, they do not offer themselves to God in thanksgiving. But when something goes wrong, they make haste to run to God so that he will fix it and they can return to their faithless life.

Prayer for healing “in Christ” is offered knowing that we are going to die and that some sickness or injury will be our last. Unction brings the kingdom into our sickness and our sickness into the kingdom so that our experience of the sickness itself is transformed. When there is physical healing, it is a foretaste of the resurrection. When there is not complete healing, there is, nonetheless, the experience of triumph. We who have the Spirit have already conquered sickness and death in Christ.  “Though [we] were dead, yet shall [we] live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die” (John 11:25-26).

We must bear in mind that Jesus made his promise about prayer to ten men who were murdered for their faith and one who spent much of his life in exile. We do not conclude that God failed to answer their prayers because they were not saved from their afflictions. God saved them through their affliction, not from their affliction–just as God saved Jesus through the cross, not from the cross. They apostles died triumphantly and, indeed, joyfully. None had regrets. None wondered why God was doing this to them. Through prayer, they experienced their lives and deaths in the light of the kingdom. They asked and received and their joy was made full.

St. Paul’s prayer did not fail because God did not remove his “thorn in the flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7-10). God showed him how God’s power was made perfect in Paul’s weakness. Through prayer, the thorn in the flesh was experienced in the light of the kingdom so that it became a means of grace and a source of joy. Through prayer, our afflictions are united with the cross and filled with the hope and promise of Easter. Our afflictions become means of grace. They are no longer the pains of death. They are transformed into the pains of birth. We can face them joyfully and expectantly.

To be sure, we ask for specific things in this world hoping that God will give them to us–and sometimes he does. But all prayer in Christ is an experience of the kingdom. Success and fulfillment are experienced as welcome foretastes of future glory, when all of our desires will be fulfilled. Disappointment and pain are experienced as the cross that is already full of Easter. As St. Paul says, “Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (2 Corinthians 4:17).

This is our salvation. We have been saved from the futility of life in a fallen world. Through prayer, we see that nothing about our life in Christ in this world is merely of this world. Through prayer we are able to taste eternity in time and experience right now the joy of the coming kingdom. This is why St. Paul teaches us to “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). This is why Jesus says, “Ask and ye shall receive that your joy may be full.”

Fourth Sunday After Easter – Sermon

Today’s gospel (John 16:5–15) calls to mind the appearance of the Risen Christ to Mary Magdalene on Easter Day. She grabbed him, as if to say, “I’m not letting you get away again!” Jesus told her, “Don’t cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father” (John 20:17). In today’s gospel, Jesus explains why the ascension will be beneficial. “If I go not away, the Comforter will not come to you.” Mary needed to let Jesus go so that he could return to the Father and send the Spirit.” Union with God in Christ through the Spirit is better than merely standing next to Christ.

The Father sent the Son into the world to fulfill the Law of Moses and offer the perfect sacrifice. Having completed that work, Jesus returned to the Father to be eternally present with him as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Atonement for sin having been accomplished once and for all, the door was opened for the new age of the Spirit (cf Joel 2:28).

Through the Holy Spirit, Jesus, who was present in his body on earth in one place at a time, is now present in all places at all times. The effects of the redemption Jesus accomplished at one moment and in one place now reaches all moments and all places through the Spirit. This is the “New Creation.” In the beginning, God spoke, and the Spirit accomplished what his word commanded. In Christ, God spoke again and then sent the Spirit to make all things new.

Jesus describes the ministry of the Spirit as having two points of emphasis. First, the Spirit  confronts the world with the truth of its sin and rebellion against God. The Spirit will convict the world “of sin, because they believe not in me.” During Lent, we talked about making a good confession, focusing on the deadly sins and talking about the virtues. This kind of confession is only for those who have already put their faith in Jesus Christ, who already have the Spirit. The world does not accept that Jesus is Lord. The world has not received the Spirit. The Spirit speaks to believers from within so that we may grow in grace. But the Spirit confronts the world from without so that people may repent and believe.

Hebrews says, “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things” (1:1). The sin of the world is the refusal to listen to the Word that God has spoken. Thus, the gospel involves an unavoidable confrontation. The Spirit, and the church which is filled with and led by the Spirit, confronts the world and calls it to repent and believe.

The church ought not to confront obnoxiously.  We are, as St. Paul says, “Ambassadors for Christ,” as if God did beseech the world through us to “be reconciled with God” (2 Corinthians 5:15). We are not self-righteous ambassadors, for each of us was once a rebel. We always bear in mind that the same Spirit who convicts the world also convicts us of sin when we err and stray from God’s ways. That is why we return each week as penitents, asking again for forgiveness and a new measure of the Spirit.

Nonetheless, there is an unavoidable and necessary confrontation between the community that confesses Jesus as Lord and the world that does not. We reject the modern tendency to take the edge off of the gospel, to pretend that all religions are the same, to pretend that Christ came only to comfort and not to confront. It is, indeed, offensive to the world to insist that Jesus is Son of God and Lord of all (Revelation 19:6). It is offensive to the world to say that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14:6). It is offensive to say to the world to say that “He who has the Son has life and he who has not the Son of God has not life” (1 John 5:12). But this is the offense of the gospel.

Jesus said that the second thing the Spirit will do is “guide [the church] into all truth” (John 16:13). This puts us in a privileged position in relationship to the world. We know the truth, and the truth has made us free (John 8:31-32). This knowledge of truth is a gift. It comes to us because of God’s grace, not because of our merit. We also were blind, but God has given us eyes to see. As Jesus said, “Blessed are the eyes that see the things that you see” (Luke 10:23).

To be possessed of the truth in the midst of a world that opposes it is, simply, to be the Body of Christ. It is to experience exactly what Jesus experienced in first century Israel. Jesus was the witness for God to Israel. The church “in Christ” is the witness for God to the world.

The church offers the world a sacramental sign of the truth, not just a verbal message. We don’t just say, “Christ is risen.” We are the community of the resurrection. We died and rose with Christ through baptism. We are risen with Christ and we ascend with Christ through the Spirit. The death, resurrection and ascension of our Lord are not merely things we believe; they are what we experience in Christ. We are a sign to the world that the coming kingdom is already here.

Our challenge as the church is to be a faithful witness to the truth in our doctrine and our life. The great temptation of the modern church is to aim at success rather than faithfulness. Of course, we want hearts to be converted and the church to grow. Faithfulness will have its measure of success. But sometimes faithfulness will fail. Sometimes the world will reject it, belittle it and, even, crucify it. Our vocation is to be faithful anyway. We are witnesses to the truth, and the truth is the truth whether it succeeds or fails.

Fr. Schmemann put it this way: “What are the church and each Christian to do in the world? What is our mission?” He answers, “It all depends primarily on or being real witnesses to the joy and peace of the Holy Spirit, to that new life of which we are made partakers in the church” (For the Life of the World, 113). It all depends on our lives being real witnesses that our good Lenten confession led to a renewed experience of forgiveness, which results in an increased practice of love. The Spirit leads us to love in each circumstance, sometimes ministering to the least of these–comforting the afflicted, and sometimes saying, ‘This is wrong,” or even, “You are wrong”—afflicting the comfortable.

Jesus will ascend to the Father and send the Spirit to convict the world of sin and lead us into all truth. We, who have the Spirit, are witnesses to the truth.

First Sunday After Easter – Sermon

It is at least a bit curious that the body of the Risen Christ retains the scars from the nails wounds in his hands and the spear that pierced his side (the gospel John 20:19f.). We might expect the resurrection to clear up all cosmetic blemishes. We might hope that our own resurrection bodies will be free from our current scars. But there is a particular point to the wounds that Jesus shows to the Apostles. They reveal him to be the eternal sacrifice, the “lamb as though it had been slain” of Revelation 5:6, who takes away the sins of the world.

The resurrection gives the wounds new meaning. On Good Friday, the wounds were signs of defeat, bearing witness to the power Rome had to subdue any who threatened her dominion. They were signs of agony, protracted pain and humiliation. Yet, on Easter Day these same wounds have become trophies of victory. Jesus shows them as if to say, “I have taken the world’s best shot, and I have conquered the world.”

Rome controlled people through the fear of death. By rising from the dead and conquering death, Jesus  rendered that threat futile and powerless. When Rome tried to crush the early church by killing the followers of Jesus, the strategy failed. The martyrs faced death bravely and willingly, trusting in the promise of Jesus that “he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live” (John 11:25). One church father observed that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”

We who have been baptized into Christ can also face death bravely. We do not need to be afraid of death. In fact, we are not supposed to fear death the way the world fears death. Jesus didn’t promise that we wouldn’t grow old and die. He didn’t promise that none of us would die young or out of season–He died young and out of season. Jesus promised that “though [we] were dead, yet shall [we] live. He promised to “raise [us] up at the last day” (John 5:40). If we believe him, we will not be afraid of death.

In Christ, we also conquer the circumstances of life that once defeated us. We call Jesus the “saving victim” (Hymn 209). Jesus was, in modern psychological jargon, “victimized.” Betrayed by a  friend; conspired against by the leaders of the nation he came to save; subjected to a travesty of justice and brutally beaten and killed. Poor, pitiful Jesus. Yet, the Risen Christ is not pitiful as enters the upper room on Easter night, through closed doors, and shows the disciples his trophies of victory. He is majestic and triumphant. The victim has become a conqueror.

We also have wounds. We also have been victims. People have done stuff to us. Circumstances have conspired against us. Some have won the lottery of misfortune more than their share of times. There are different ways to respond to the inequities of life. We can become perpetual victims, poor and pitiful, letting people walk all over us because someone else once did. We can become stoic, keeping a stiff upper lip. We can become angry, allowing the wounds to boil over into rage.  We can become Christian Scientists or positive thinkers, putting on rose colored glasses and pretending that it really didn’t happen. In presented his wounds as trophies, Jesus gives us the Christian answer. We can conquer through the power of forgiveness and the power of faith.

We conquer sin by being forgiven. Our lenten confessions resulted in the renewed experience of forgiveness in Easter. Sin that is forgiven no longer holds us captive. Easter replaces oppressive guilt with God’s peace and new freedom in God’s service.

We also conquer by forgiving others the sins they have committed against us. Sometimes this is hard because the wound is deep. However, just as Jesus said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” we also can let go of our personal demand for retribution. We also can commit the task of judgment to God and trust him to take care of it. To forgive other people is to refuse to be captive to the pain and anger that is produced by the sins they have committed against us.

To forgive we must have faith in God’s sovereignty. We must believe that God is able to create his good out of our suffering in the very same way he created Easter out of Good Friday. We must accept the new life God wants to bring out of our pain and let go of the life we wish we had.

Consider the example of Joseph. His brothers cruelly sold him as a slave to foreigners. He spent twenty plus years in exile from his family, was wrongly accused of crime and languished for years in a foreign prison–all because of the malicious envy of his brothers. But Joseph did not remain a victim. He came to recognize the good that God intended to bring out of his suffering. Instead of harboring a smoldering bitterness, he was able to forgive. As he said to his brothers, “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20).

Many people live with regret, always wishing they could have the life that was taken from them.  They are wounded, angry and in search of vindication. Regret and anger cause people to the miss the life of grace and peace that God offers now. All regret is fantasy. It is a wish that things could be as they can’t be. And it is prideful. To regret, to hold on to my pain and anger, is to insist that I have the life I wanted rather than to accept the life that God has given me.

Redemption is reality. It is the good that God gives us in our real lives right now. When we forgive and are forgiven, when we put our faith in the power of God to make all things new, people and circumstances no longer have power over us. “This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith” (1 John 5:4). Faith enables us to trust that God will judge rightly in his good time, and faith gives us the freedom to live a new life in Christ. As Romans says, “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us” (Romans 8:31-37).

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Easter Day – Sermon

Most people would call Easter a miracle. Jesus, who died and was buried on Friday, rose from the dead on Sunday morning. To rise from the dead is to live again in the body. This is why the empty tomb is significant. It is not just that the spirit of Jesus lives beyond the grave. It is that the spirit of Jesus was reunited with his body and his body came back to life.

The modern objection to Easter is that this is not in accordance with what we regularly observe. We put dead bodies in the grave all the time, but they never come back to life three days later. The natural process of decay results in death and, crazy advertizing claims notwithstanding, there is no known way to reverse or undo this process.

However, Easter does not contradict what we observe in the natural world. Rather, Easter is possible because what we observe in the natural world is not all there is to see. Resurrection is not merely a natural occurrence. Resurrection is a supernatural occurrence.

The are realities that we cannot see. The Creed says that God is the “Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.” The invisible is what we call the “supernatural.” It is not contrary to the natural world, but the supernatural transcends the natural and is not limited by it.

When the supernatural enters into the natural world, things can happen that are not ordinarily possible for mere nature. God became man in Christ. In the Incarnation, a supernatural being, God, who cannot die, took on human form in a body that died. And death was conquered. This cannot be explained in terms of the merely natural. But is can be explained in terms of the supernatural–and it makes perfect sense. Christmas makes Easter both possible and inevitable.

We know the natural world by observation. We know the supernatural world by revelation, which is received through faith. Because the resurrection is a supernatural event, it cannot be understood by natural sight. This is one point on which every gospel resurrection story agrees. People see the evidence or even look at the Risen Christ, but they do not understand what has happened until something provokes or provides the faith that is necessary to see.

St. John saw the empty tomb and did not understand what had happened. John understood and believed only after he saw the linen clothes and remembered the prophesy of Jesus that he must rise from the dead. Mary looked right at Jesus, but did not recognize him until the Good Shepherd called his sheep by name and she recognized his voice (John 10:3-4).

The faith that is able to see the Risen Christ is not gullibility, wishful thinking or hallucination.  Faith  is the ability to comprehend supernatural realities that cannot be seen by the naked eye. Supernatural truth is understood by faith in the same way that natural truth is understood by physical examination. This faith is a gift, and it is given to all to whom the Risen Christ reveals himself.

The absence of faith is the primary consequence of sin. Man created in the image of God was able to see God. Disobedience led to spiritual blindness, which is eyesight bounded by the physical world. This leads to idolatry, which is the worship of creation as an end in and of itself. Or, in the industrial age, it leads to the manipulation of the creation for purely visible and physical ends.

This is why we experience Easter as a restoration of sight. The Risen Christ restores to his people the ability to comprehend the supernatural, to see what cannot be seen with unredeemed eyes. The two men on the road to Emmaus walked with the Risen Christ for several miles without recognizing him–until he took bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to them; then, “Their eyes were opened and they knew him” (Luke 24:31). The Risen Christ appeared to the Apostles. They did not recognize  him–until he “Opened their minds that they might understand the Scriptures” (Luke 24:45).

Some say they would believe in the resurrection if they could see it with their own eyes. The Bible tells us that those who were there to see it did not believe it–until some special revelation enabled them to see. No one sees the resurrection by natural sight or physical proof. We “see” the Risen Christ by revelation, which is received through faith.

The Risen Christ is revealed to us in the same way he was revealed to the eyewitnesses. He is made known to us in the breaking of the bread. Our eyes are opened and we know him. We come to see him when he calls us to faith by name and we recognize his voice. He is revealed to us when he opens our minds to understand the Scriptures. This is not just reading the texts that say, “He is Risen.” This understanding is the ability to see how the whole biblical story of creation, fall and redemption is fulfilled in the death and resurrection of the Son of God. The Risen Christ is revealed to us when the Holy Spirit enables us to see beyond the merely natural to the supernatural.

The faith that sees the resurrection does not believe everything anyone says about the supernatural world. The faith that enables us to understand the truth about God also enables us to recognize the lies that are contrary to that revealed truth. Errors about the physical world can harm us. Errors about the spiritual world are doubly dangerous. Many who claim to see the supernatural are deceived.

We test what we see in the physical world by the laws of science. We test our spiritual experiences by the revelation the whole church has received. For we see the same Risen Lord that Mary and the Apostles saw. We have all received the one baptism for the remission of sins. We all experience the same peace of God that passes understanding. We are all waiting for Christ to come and restore us to eternal life in the body.

This is the promise of Easter. “Christ is risen from the dead and become the firstfruits of them that slept” (1 Corinthians 5:7). Christmas makes Easter inevitable. Our baptism and faith in Jesus make our own resurrections inevitable. We are all going to die. But Christ lives in us and we live in him. Thus, we, also, will be raised to new life in new bodies. The trumpet will sound and “the dead in Christ will rise” (1 Thess 4:16). “For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.” (1 Co 15:53). This hope is no less certain because it cannot be seen with ordinary sight. In the full light of the new creation, when nature itself becomes supernatural, we will discover that faith provides us with a more accurate and complete vision. Easter is an invitation to open our eyes and see. As Jesus said to Thomas, “Be not faithless, but believing” (John 20:27).

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Fourth Sunday in Lent – Sermon

The feeding of the 5000 (John 6:1f.) is the gospel for the Fourth Sunday in Lent because it presents the  pattern for Lent. Jesus leads us to a place where we do not have enough of what we want in order to reveal himself to us. The hunger created by the fast provides the opportunity for Jesus to feed us with true food. Lacking bread, we discover the bread of life.

We are afraid to fast. We depend upon our favorite things to comfort us. We are afraid of what will happen if we do not have them. The actual practice of fasting teaches us that we do not have to have them. We discover new freedom. St. Paul expresses the lesson of fasting in Philippians:

“I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content…I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (4:11-13)

Lent is not about our heroic, or less than heroic, attempts at self-denial. Lent is about finding Christ in the desert places. If we are always busy and frantic; if our lives are always filled with noise; if we are captive to every appetite; if we are never alone and quiet, it is harder to experience the presence of Christ. Jesus said, “I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him” (Revelation 3:20). Christ is always knocking but we are usually too distracted to hear. Lent provides the emptiness and solitude that are needed for the feeding miracle to take place.

When Jesus comes to us, we experience love. We experience a sense of spiritual health, wholeness and peace that no created thing can give us. This experience sets us free. Finding fulfillment in Christ, we learn that we do not have to depend upon any created thing. We can return to things as gifts and not as idols. This is the difference between the addiction of the world and the celebration of the church. The world indulges in order fill the emptiness, dull the pain and drown the sorrows. The church give thanks for the good that God has given and joyfully partakes of the same.

When we need things from the world and other people, our behavior is dictated by our neediness. We need to fill our appetites so we act selfishly. We are hurt and need others to acknowledge and soothe our pain. Our pain leads to anger, which causes us to harm others. We cannot love and be virtuous when, at the very center of our being, there is a hunger that is not filled, guilt that is not forgiven or a wound that is not healed. The experience of love in Christ enables us to love. When Christ forgives us and heals us and fills our emptiness with himself, our behavior  changes. We no longer need to take because we are empty. We can give because we are full.

There is a communal aspect to being filled, forgiven and healed. We experience Christ’s love for us, in spite of ours sins, through the members of his body who know us as we really are and continue to love us and serve us as Christ loves us and serves us. Our theology requires us to understand this. If the church is the body of Christ; if it is his hands, legs, feet and arms (cf. 1 Corinthians 12), it follows that our experience of Christ’s presence will be mediated, in large measure, by other Christians.

A few Christians throughout history have been called to be hermits. For the rest, the reluctance or refusal to serve and be served, to know and be known, to forgive and be forgiven in the church is a warning sign. Jesus fed a community that was gathered together, not five thousand isolated and alienated individuals. It is not necessary that every member of the body know everything about us. But we should have honest and open conversations and relationships with at least some other Christians that mirror our conversation and relationship with God. The members of Christ’s body are sacramental signs of Christ’s presence.

We shy away from being known by others for the same reason we shy away from fasting and solitude. We are afraid of what will happen if others really know us, just as we are afraid of what will happen if the noise stops and we alone with God. So we keep a safe distance from the body of Christ, and we keep busy so as to avoid solitude and the presence of God. We are like Adam and Eve  hiding from God in the bushes–as if God didn’t already know us and see us as we are. And, honestly, as if others didn’t already know us and see us as we are as well!

This highlights the fact that, while the experience of Christ’s presence is real and life changing, it is not easy. It is easier to stick with our comfortable but unfaithful habits of behavior. It is easier to feel sorry for ourselves. It is easier to hold on to our anger and maintain our grievances. It is easier to run from the problem to the pain killer. It is harder to fast and pray. It is harder to be still and wait for God. It is harder to make a good confession. It is harder to be honest with others, to forgive and be forgiven. The truth will set us free, but we must face the painful truths before we are set free.

This is why the experience of union with God in Christ, and the health and wholeness that result from it, take time to cultivate. To be sure, we are forgiven for all our sins right now through faith. But disordered patterns of behavior and thought, feelings of guilt and unworthiness and emotions of anger and bitterness take time to conquer. It takes all of Lent to make a good confession. Progress is best measured year to year, from Lent to Lent. A recognizable virtue may be formed in us only after several years of spiritual battle. It takes time because real growth, like the growth of a child or a tree, takes time.

It takes time, but the result is certain if we will persevere in faith and do not give up. Lent will lead to Easter. Life “in Christ,” with all of its spiritual battles, will lead to resurrection and life in the world to come. The feeding miracle of the Eucharist fills us with this hope. We come as sinners; guilty, needy and wounded. We take the creation, the bread and the wine, which represent us–all that we are and all that we need–and offer it to God in thanksgiving. And God consecrates it, transforms it and multiplies it so that it becomes sufficient to feed us all. The “bread of life” satisfies our hunger. The “medicine of immortality” heals our wounds. We are filled with Christ and the promise of Easter. As Jesus said, “Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day (John 6:54).

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Third Sunday in Lent – Sermon

When I first started observing the Lenten fast and teaching others to do the same, I encountered anobjection. People would say, “I think it is more important to do something positive than it is to fast.” Bodily negation was eschewed in favor of doing good. This objection is a sort of half truth. It is, in fact, quitenecessary to disturb our comfortable patterns of behavior by self-denial in order to make room for positivechange. Nonetheless, it is half true. We must, indeed, aim at positive change. If we want to put to deathwrongly ordered desire by fasting and confession, we must consider what will take root in its place–lestsin confessed be replaced by more sin. For nature abhors a vacuum.

This is the essential point being made by the gospel (Luke 11:14-28). The witnesses to the exorcismfocused on the departure of the evil spirit. Jesus pointed out that the departed spirit leaves a void that maywell be filled by a greater evil–unless it is filled by good. The essential transaction of the Christian life is thatwe remove the evil by self-denial and confession and fill the resulting empty space with Christ in the formof what we call the virtues. Thus, 2 Peter exhorts us to be diligent to,

Add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-controlperseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindnesslove. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in theknowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even toblindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. (2 Peter 1:5-9 NKJ).

When we pray that the Lenten fast will be fruitful, we mean, precisely, that various virtues, Christ-likequality and “fruits of the Spirit” will be produced in us. We uproot weeds and break up the soil throughfasting in order to make room for the growth of the good plant.

Sin is a failure to love. We confess that we have failed to love so that we might learn to love more. Let’sconsider an example. This week’s epistle mentions fornication again. Our culture typically thinks of sex interms of personal pleasure. Thus, people think that to possess the virtue of chastity means to deny oneselfpleasure, with no particularly positive thing to be gained for it. But fornication is wrong because it is a failureto love. It is to use another for one’s own ends, without regard for what is good for the other. To be chasteis to love. It is to respect the image of God in another and control one’s desires so as to love and seek thegood of the other person.

Our culture tends to see the moral teachings of the Bible as rules designed to thwart human fulfillmentbecause the devil has done a good job of indoctrinating our culture. The truth is that virtue and obedienceare the pathway to a more fulfilling life. The law of God is meant to order our lives in the same way that theword of God orders the universe. Psalm 19 says,

The law of the LORD is an undefiled law, converting the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, andgiveth wisdom unto the simple. The statutes of the LORD are right, and rejoice the heart; thecommandment of the LORD is pure, and giveth light unto the eyes. The fear of the LORD is clean, and endureth for ever; the judgments of the LORD are true, and righteous altogether. More to bedesired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold; sweeter also than honey, and the honeycomb.Moreover, by them is thy servant taught; and in keeping of them there is great reward. (Psalm19:7-11 BCP 363).

As we cultivate virtues that lead us to habitually obey God’s law–principally, the law of love–the result isan increased sense of order, beauty and peace. Conversely, when our lives are governed by our fallennature, the result is disorder, turmoil, ugliness, sadness and hatred. Consider again this issue of sexualmorality. What if, for the last sixty years, everyone in our culture had followed God’s law calling forabstinence outside of marriage and faithfulness within it? Think of the social ills, cultural chaos and personalpain that would have been eliminated simply by doing what God says to do. There would be no epidemicof fatherlessness and no “welfare state.” There would be a lot less heartache, pain and misery.

Think of your own life for a minute. Would you be better off right now if you had always obeyed God’slaw and done God’s will? Is it not true that our own current discontent results from our lack of faith, hopeand love, or our lack of self-control, patience, kindness, fortitude or some other virtue? This is why, as weconsider how to make a good confession during Lent, we must also consider what the positive change wedesire looks like. We must name our sin, but we must also name the desired virtue. We must confess andremove the evil, but we must also begin to plant and practice the good.

Nature abhors a vacuum. Sin not replaced with holiness will be replaced with another, more insidious sin.This is one reason religious people can become self-righteous. Certain obvious sins of the flesh can beremoved so that we look outwardly good. However, in their place, more serious and subtle spiritual sinscan take root, such as pride, envy, covetousness, anger.

Once we name the virtue that stands opposite of our sin, we must ask God to give it to us. We cannotbecome virtuous by our own efforts any more than we can earn forgiveness by our works. But we canpray, “Lord, increase in me the virtues of faith, hope and love” (cf. Collect for Trinity 14, BCP 209). We can ask God to give us humility, generosity, contentment, self-control and patience.” Then we can beginto practice these things. We can look for opportunities to give where we have been selfish, to be patientwhere we have been impatient, to be humble where our actions and attitudes have been infected by pride,to be self-controlled where we have allowed ourselves to be controlled by our desires.

We experience the power of prayer in the pursuit of holiness. St. John writes, “This is the confidence thatwe have toward [God] that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that hehears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him” (1 John 5:15).Sometimes we do not know if what we pray for is God’s will. However, we know for sure that it is God’swill that we grow in faith, hope and love (1 Corinthians 13:13) and in perseverance, kindness, faithfulness,self-control and peace (Galatians 5:22). Thus, as we learn during Lent to make a good confession of sin,let us also learn to pray for the virtues that we will begin to practice instead. As Jesus said, “Ask and yeshall receive, that your joy may be full” (John 16:24).

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Second Sunday in Lent – Sermon

The lessons for the Second Sunday in Lent focus both on the faith through which we come to Jesus and the holiness required of those who come to Jesus in faith.

In the first century, Jewish people who were religious didn’t like Gentiles. The Gentiles were not a part of God’s people. They were seen as the enemy because the Gentile Romans were a barrier to Jewish independence and Gentile idolatry was an offense to God. Thus, it is remarkable that Jesus, after a brief encounter in the gospel (Matthew 15:21f) not only accepted the Woman of Canaan, but also identified her as a woman of “mega-faith.” To be sure, Jesus had already accepted and praised the pious Gentile centurion (Matthew 8:5f.). But the woman of Canaan was not pious.

The woman’s daughter was demon possessed, or at least demon harassed. We are not told how she fell into this state, but those who end up demonized have been in places they should not be doing things they should not do. This woman’s daughter opened her life in some sort of “faith” to the forces that bound her. Now, the woman turned in faith to Israel’s Messiah.

The disciples didn’t hate this woman. They merely saw her as having no value–“send her away for she crieth after us.” She was, in their minds, already destined, by race, affliction and gender to fall on the wrong side of the great judgment. Three strikes and your out!

Because of her unacceptable condition, this woman is one of the clearest examples of justification by faith in the New Testament. She had no family background, religious works or attractive appearance by which she might attempt to curry favor with the Lord. She only had faith–great faith–and that was enough.

This is the overarching point of the liturgy. We approach God as those who have “sinned in thought, word and deed,” “not trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercy,” not worthy even“to gather up the crumbs rom under thy table.” It is possible for the beauty and poetry of the prayer book to betray us here just a bit. For it may be hard to fully embrace our unworthiness when we sound so good confessing it!

Nonetheless, the liturgy teaches us that our family pedigree, our fine reputation, our success in the world, our money and our good looks do not matter to God. The things the world says we must have or pursue do not advance us one step towards the kingdom. In fact, they may keep us from the kingdom, for they may become idols that take the place of God.

That is why we are most likely to hear the good news when our lives are shaken in some way. When our child is ill or we find ourselves in some sort of need; when  a tsunami destroys a city or a nuclear plant begins to melt down; or during the second week of Lent when the fast, quite far from building spiritual strength, has begun to reveal to us just how weak we really are. Then we begin to realize, as the collect says, “that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves.” Then, like the Woman of Canaan, we begin to pray from the heart, “O Lord, thou son of David, have mercy on me!”

If you have every prayed to God in a state of affliction with any persistence, you understand the truth revealed in the gospel. God hears the prayers that spring from humble faith. “A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise” (Psalm 51:17). But then what? The epistle (1 Thessalonians 4:1f.) says, “God has not called us unto uncleanness but unto holiness.” Like the Woman of Canaan, we come to Christ in an unclean state. However, God then calls us to be clean.

The central issue in the epistle is sex: “That ye should abstain from fornication.” Nothing has  changed in two thousand years. The early church called people away from pagan promiscuity into a life of holiness. The modern church, when it speaks with the Holy Spirit, calls people away from the sexual license of our culture into a life of abstinence outside of marriage and faithfulness within it. This teaching wasn’t any more popular then than it is now.

It isn’t popular, but it is essential because the call to holiness is part and parcel of our healing and deliverance. It would have been strange for the Woman of Canaan to ask for exorcism and then bring her daughter back to the very same place where the demon first entered. It is strange for us to ask for forgiveness for things that we plan to keep on doing.

The real problem is human weakness. “We have no power of ourselves to help ourselves.” We get stuck in patterns of behavior that don’t fulfill us, but we can’t quite break free from them. We want to be forgiven because at some level we know they are wrong, but we aren’t strong enough to actually change. We have had sexual “freedom” in our culture now for over fifty years, and people are less fulfilled and contented sexually than ever before. Yet, sex is still presented as though it is the ultimate answer to the longings of the human heart. People want more, but settle for less because it is easier to give in to human nature that to fight for something higher and better.

It might help us if we understood that holiness is synonymous with freedom. To be holy is to be set apart from the world. Thus, it is also to be free from captivity to the world and its false promises. We  are not really free if all we have is some sort of judicial pardon from the punishment for sin, but are still stuck doing all the things for which we asked God’s mercy in the first place.

In Lent, we seek not only to be forgiven for our sins by faith, we also seek to be freed from captivity to sinful patterns of behavior. This takes effort. The purpose of fasting is to challenge our desires so as to bring them under the control of the Holy Spirit. If you find yourself struggling with the fast, that is a good thing. It means you are fighting a real battle. You are denying yourself, claiming new freedom, and the world, the flesh and the devil don’t like it and are fighting back. They don’t want to lose their hold on you.

The point in fasting and prayer where we feel weak is the very point where Christ is able to fill the emptiness with himself. This is why we must persevere in the struggle for the forty days of Lent. We will stumble and fall from time to time, but if we are to make progress we must continue to get up and resume the battle. Some of our besetting sins are only overcome by a commitment to prayer and fasting over time (cf, Matthew 17:21, Mark 9:29 KJV). Today’s gospel teaches us that if we persevere God will answer our prayer. He will give us both forgiveness and freedom.

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