Sermons

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

One of the problems faced by theologically inclined people like me is that there is always a danger of over-theologizing leading to inaction. This is not to say that theological reflection is not in itself a worthy endeavor, but rather that sometimes other methods are, perhaps counter-intuitively, more direct routes to truth.

Take that age-old problem that we call theodicy- the problem of evil. Why do bad things happen to good people? We can spend a lifetime sitting and thinking about how to explain evil and never come to any satisfying conclusion. Indeed, some have done so, and some have even lost their faith in the process.

Or we could set out to bring some comfort to the afflicted, to help the orphan and the widow and the beggar in what small ways we can and eventually come to some satisfying conclusion, not in the form of a theological axiom which one can publish and give lectures about, but in the form of the satisfaction one receives in knowing that she has done God’s work, in knowing that while evil exists and cannot be explained, one has nonetheless done something to weaken its hold over the most vulnerable.

We see these two approaches—action and reflection—in this morning’s Gospel, and at least in the instance of the man born blind, the former was apparently the proper approach. Here is a man who is in tremendous need, a blind person in those days almost invariably being condemned to a life of panhandling, no other profession being open to one so disabled. And how do the disciples respond? They see the encounter as an opportunity for theological reflection. “Rabbi,” they ask, “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” There is, of course, in their question a false assumption, namely that misfortune is directly linked to some specific trespass. I have mentioned before from this pulpit something called a deuteronomic view of history, which is the commonly held belief that such a simple connection exists between sin and hardship (or, for that matter, between righteousness and fortuity). We need not revisit this view in great depth again today, except to say that Jesus seems to reject it, but not in the manner we might expect.

Jesus does not take the time to respond to the disciples by presenting an alternative philosophical system; he does not (at least on this occasion) unveil a new definition of weal and woe, offering details of their nature and various causes. Rather, he quickly dismisses the suggestion that somebody’s sin caused the man’s blindness, and then says that there’s work to be done. He moves quickly from reflection to action. “We must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day;” he says, “night comes, when no one can work.”

Now, I’m not saying that good old theological reflection of the sort where one sits down surrounded by dusty books producing weighty texts about theodicy and other theological problems is bad or unnecessary. We’d be as blind as the Pharisees if men and women had not done that work, and the Church would be sorely lacking if everyone adopted an unreflective sort of faith. You see, it’s teaching—doctrine—which produces and permits conviction, and without convictions our efforts are meaningless. In this sense, theological reflection has to precede action if said action is to rise to the status of Christian charity.

What I am saying, though, is that Christian discipleship is as much a matter of the heart as it is a matter of the head, and when the latter crowds out the former our theology can be unmasked as no sort of theology we’d want to publish. Imagine if the disciples had received the kind of answer they presumably wanted from Jesus: a sustained reflection on the problem of evil complete with definitions of terms, Old Testament references, and a few clever bons mots to keep there attention. It would probably be good reading, but the man would have remained blind, and Christ would have been seen as being more interested in theological problem solving than in caring for the needy.

What is even more notable here is that a faith sustained by works of charity can enlarge one’s theological perspective. The problem the Pharisees had in this morning’s reading was a dogmatism resulting from what we might consider a lack of love. If the Pharisees had loved their formerly blind brother they would have rejoiced in his being cured, and they might have been able to enlarge their view of God to encompass the work of Christ. As it happened, they cast the formerly blind man out because their small faith could not allow for that which was to them theologically problematic.

We do well, I think, to heed the warning implicit in this story. We are just as capable of falling into dogmatism as the Pharisees and we’re just as likely as the disciples to see a suffering brother or sister as a theological conversation starter rather than seeing him as one to whom we might show mercy and loving-kindness. When we choose to reach out, our own understanding of God’s love is increased. We start seeing that needy person not just as a target for our charity, but as one already gifted, whether he knows it or not, with God’s charity, as one already loved by the one who is love and in whose love we also abide. That is to say, our view of God, our theology, is made more expansive and more truthful when we walk in love, and it may be increased to an even greater degree than the best theological reflection can accomplish.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

When Annie and I were at the beach last month, some of our housemates insisted on turning on the television on a Friday evening to watch these British programs that PBS has been airing weekly at least since I was a kid. Boy have things changed, though, if my one experience in a decade-and-a-half is to be trusted. While I recall a mix of anthologies based on Victorian novels and sitcoms that I always thought would serve as a powerful cure for insomnia, what greeted us on public television that evening was nothing short of trashy. We saw a “documentary” (notice the inverted commas) about Wallis Simpson and the late Queen Mother which should have been titled
“the Real Housewives of Windsor Castle.” Perhaps I’m a bit uptight, but I thought the primary appeal of the program was that it appealed to the prurient interest.

This shouldn’t have surprised me as much as it did, I suppose. This is an unpopular opinion, I know, but I did some years ago attempt to watch Downton Abbey, and found it utterly unappealing. I I never got what the fuss was about. As with other programs of its ilk (Upstairs Downstairs, &c.) I guess I was always unable to get my head round whether the audience was meant to recognize the sickness inherent in a society with such rigid class distinctions or to feel some kind of nostalgia for it. Perhaps both- and I suppose that’s what the tacky program about the “royal wives” was aiming for- eliciting both a disgust for the beneficiaries of an undemocratic social structure while tempting contemporary hoi polloi with visions of the same structure in which they imagine themselves at the top.

The peculiar thing about these programs, as well as more artistically meritorious novels and films set in pre-war Britain is the complex view of class is that they appeal so much to American readers and viewers. The obsession with maintaining what society deemed to be the proper relationships between members of different social strata (especially when the distinctions seem so very slight from our perspective) can be confusing. Okay, maybe an American divorcee, socialite though she be, might not be a popular Queen of England, but Lady So-and-So not being able to marry a doctor or lawyer or priest because he’s a little too middle class should a rather foreign concept to us, but it’s the basis of an awful lot of culture (both high- and middle-brow) that we seem to eat up.

And yet, maybe it is uncomfortably close to our reality and we don’t want to admit it. The basic human weakness which gives rise to the complex social rules one finds in a Downton Abbey or a Victorian or Edwardian novel is still with us. We still have this tendency to separate “us” from “them”, “our kind of people” from “those people”. It may not be entirely, or even predominantly, a class issue anymore, but we’ve nonetheless retained the sinful inclination toward holding those who aren’t “our kind of people” at arms length, whether they be immigrants and refugees or the adherents of other religions which we’ve turned into frightening caricatures.

The upholding of social divisions as somehow divinely instituted was as great a temptation in Jesus’ day as it was in pre-war England or 21st Century America. The woman at the well was not “our kind of people”, and I think we can forget how radical Jesus’ decision to even acknowledge her really was. For one thing she was of the wrong religion; Samaritans and Jews, while having much more in common than either would have acknowledged, had such different theologies that each claimed the other’s religion a heresy so profound as to preclude contact. This morning’s Gospel puts it pretty plainly: “for Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” The conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman mentions perhaps the most important difference, as far as they were concerned, namely that the Samaritans prayed to God on a different mountain than the Jews, who insisted that Mount Zion in Jerusalem was the proper place for worship. We might see this distinction as trivial today, but for Jews and Samaritans, it was of the greatest importance.

What’s more, the Samaritan woman’s lifestyle would have branded her a less than wholesome acquaintance. She had been married five times, and we can assume from her reluctance to share this information that she had not just been five times a widow. The man she was now with was not her husband, and suffice it to say that cohabitation was far less commonplace or socially acceptable in the first century as it is today.

Perhaps this is why the Samaritan woman came to the well at noon. All of the other women would have drawn water in the morning, and one can imagine the taunting that a loose woman in a Samaritan village might receive from her fellows. She was likely unpleasantly surprised to see Jesus at the well that day, having hoped that she could get her water covertly, without facing once again the public’s scorn.

And yet, thanks be to God that her attempt to hide was foiled by the Savior’s presence. Thank God she was found, not only because it led to a whole village coming to faith in our Lord, but because it remains a powerful example to us today, who are just as likely as the Samaritan villagers to scorn those whom we don’t understand, who are just as likely as the disciples to be astounded by one who reaches out to those who aren’t “our kind of people”.

Jesus deemed one so unlike himself in background and social standing and general wholesomeness not only as a good person with whom to share a drink of water, but as an appropriate witness to his message of redemption, as a person adequate to the task of being a missionary. When we, like Jesus, can see this potential in those who make us uncomfortable, they’ll cease to cause us discomfort. When we stop worrying so much about what our fellows think about the fact that we consort with marginal people, when instead we take the example of Christ, who broke bread with prostitutes and sinners and a Samaritan woman at a well, we might start to see that Christ’s message of salvation is for everybody, and that Christian fellowship is bigger than our own provincial attitudes about the caliber of person with whom we like to interact. Let us pray, then, to be open to the people whom we don’t yet hold in high regard, knowing that God’s judgment of a soul matters more than ours. The seeds of God’s grace can be found in soil whose richness we do not at first discern, and the living water which we carry might cause growth. The most unlovely soul might need nothing more than a glass of that water to quench his seemingly undying thirst, and it is not our prerogative to withhold it, because it’s not ours to begin with.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

“And lead us not into temptation.” We make this prayer to our heavenly Father every week, and some of us every day. This makes God’s action in this morning’s Gospel very curious indeed: “After Jesus was baptized, he was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” What God does is precisely the opposite of what is asked of God in the Lord’s prayer. By the Holy Spirit God the Father leads His Son directly into temptation.

And, in some ways, our own forty day sojourn in the wilderness, our observance of Lent, is a time in which God leads us directly into temptation, too. If you’ve given something up—meat or chocolate or selfish thoughts or whatever—you’ve probably already been tempted by opportunities to avail yourself of that old comfort or that old habit. I know I have. If you’ve taken something on—a prayer practice or other spiritual discipline—you’ve probably already been tempted to be less than conscientious in keeping it up. The old ways are more comfortable; they’re safe. It is significant that in addition to power, the devil tempts Jesus with comfort (the comfort of a bit of bread in the midst of his fasting) and he tempts our Lord with safety (specifically, protection from falling down a cliff).

But why does God lead us into temptation? Why was Jesus led by the Holy Spirit into a time of trial rather than flight from it? Well, the simple answer is that sometimes God answers our prayers with a “no”, and that includes our perennial prayer to “lead us not into temptation.” But that doesn’t get to the larger question, the “why?” question, so here is my humble attempt at an answer.

It has been my experience that during the periods in which I’ve been most conscientious about prayer and fasting, in which my own relationship with God seems strongest, that I have been most open to temptation. It is usually the temptation which the church calls “sloth”, one of those deadly sins: laziness not in completing tasks at work, but in maintaining rigor and regularity in the very practices which has forged my relationship with my Lord, namely prayer and fasting. I find myself in pretty good company in this struggle. Ascetics and mystics from St. Anthony to Teresa of Avilla to Thomas Merton have noted the same struggle. Precisely when their prayer life seemed most effective, just when they seemed closest to God, was when the temptation to slack off a bit seemed most prevalent and most disastrous.

On one level, and at the danger of delving into creepy territory, it is because the enemy redoubles his efforts when he’s losing, when the faithful Christian has turned more profoundly from his crafts and wiles toward the loving God. The first Sunday of Lent is as good a time as any to remember that radical evil sadly exists, and that the defeat experienced by the agents of said evil incites them to tempt the faithful with even more resolve.

But this still doesn’t explain why God led Jesus and why God leads us through the valley of the shadow of death to begin with, why God gives these tempters the chance to snare us.

The answer is paradoxical but at the same time unsurprising. God leads us into temptation because God loves us. God loves us so much that He trusts us, which is perhaps the ultimate expression of love. God trusts us enough to give us the freedom to be petulant children if we choose, to rebel if we choose, and like the prodigal son to choose once again to return and be forgiven and to be given the fatted calf of boundless mercy.

God trusted Adam and Eve enough to place the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden. God loved them enough to give them the freedom to choose, to choose whether to obey or to yield to temptation. God loves and trusts us enough not to coddle us, but rather to give us the opportunity to choose to deny Him and disappoint Him. In other words, God gives us freedom to be adults. But God’s love and trust is even greater than this, for God gives the children of Eve the chance to return after countless mistakes—countless occasions in which we indulge in the same forbidden fruit as our forebears—to return and be saved, to make another go of it through fasting and prayer.

We may, of course, still ask God to “lead us not into temptation”, to deliver us from the time of trial, and God will sometimes answer with a “yes”. God knows what temptations will decimate us when we’re at a point of weakness, and we can be thankful when God spares us from the opportunity to fall back into a destructive pattern. But we can also be thankful, as hard as it may be sometimes, that God respects us enough to let us choose to rage and rebel. We can be thankful, as one prayer in the BCP puts it, for those failures and disappointments which remind us of our dependence on God alone. May this holy season of Lent, then, be for us not just a reminder of our sinfulness and our need for repentance, but also a joyous celebration of our redemption and of the freedom God gives us to accept it.

Let us be thankful that the chance we have to confess Christ with our lips and to believe on Him in our hearts means something, because we’re not automota, because we’re not robots who couldn’t choose otherwise, because being an adult is hard but God trusts us to grow up. Be thankful, and with thanksgiving return to the Lord who richly pardons and brings us to new and unending life.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.