Sermons

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

This week’s gospel reading picks up where last week’s left off, both literally and thematically. Jesus has just told his disciples that they ought not to expect gratitude for the services they provide in their ministries; anybody who works in the helping professions can probably attest to the practical truth of this advice. It is their job, Jesus told them, they are servants to the gospel now and to demand thanks from every life they touch would be both haughty and unrealistic. After this teaching our Lord, now on his way to Jerusalem, meets ten lepers, one of whom is a Samaritan and the other nine of whom we are supposed to assume are Jews. He heals them and instructs them to show themselves to the priests, in accordance with Levitical law. Upon realizing that Jesus had healed them, only the Samaritan returns to give thanks. Jesus’ advice to his disciples seems to have been prophetic.

I have often wondered what precisely went through the minds of the nine other lepers, the ones who didn’t give thanks, upon realizing they had been healed. I presume that they were probably taking the long walk to Jerusalem together, the Samaritan having taken off in the opposite direction to Mount Gerazim to see his own priests. I wonder if perhaps the nine were a little relieved to be rid of the Samaritan. Jews and Samaritans having rarely interacted except to bicker during this period of history, their “friendship”, as it were, was probably a case of misery loving company, and there are few things more miserable than leprosy. Samaritans prayed to the God of Israel just like the Jews, but they did it on the wrong mountain and they kept all nature of strange Assyrian customs. A dubious lot, indeed! Best to be rid of that one!

They were probably also rather anxious to get back to life as usual, their families and friends and farms. And we can hardly blame them. The sooner they could get checked out by the priest in Jerusalem the sooner they could be home after an absence of what could easily have been years. Besides, this Jesus character probably understood that they had important, unfulfilled obligations. He probably knew they appreciated it anyway. They might send a nice birthday card next Christmas to let Him know how things are going. Sound familiar?

I’ve clearly presented caricatures of nine raging ingrates, precisely because I think that Luke is, himself, presenting us with caricatures. This is why it is significant that the one who returns is a Samaritan. I think we are supposed to envision the nine as a group of profoundly needy people but with a disturbing sense of entitlement. Do we not often petition God with this same mindset? Do we not often receive the blessings of this life assuming that we have earned them by virtue of our hard work or our piety or simply the fact that we have been lucky enough to be blessed in the past?

The Samaritan comes into the world an outcast amongst the people of his own land by virtue of his birth, and so leprosy is but another factor contributing to a more general marginalization. When Jesus heals him, life remains far from ideal. It is precisely because of this that he is able to appreciate the kindness that Christ has afforded him. He gets a glimpse of the wondrous power of God who is the creator of all things and giver of all gifts. He is better able because of his circumstance to see that all things come from God and that it is only by his grace that we are sustained.

Ironically, the nine others don’t go back to perfect lives, either. They have their own struggles and difficulties. If they are not grateful for the tremendous gift Jesus gave them right after they were healed, how much less grateful will they be in a couple of years when they have all but forgotten their miraculous recovery due to other challenges in their lives. What’s more, they lack the kind of attitudes which open the way to the realization of the countless blessings which they also experience.

“Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him.” Here we begin to see what true gratitude looks like. It is not an issue of quid pro quo, as there is nothing, alas, that we could give, even our heartfelt worship, which is to the benefit of our God, who is perfectly complete in Himself. We have thankfully grown beyond burning offerings to sate vengeful gods, as our pagan ancestors did in the days of antiquity. No, the gratitude we are obliged to show God is somehow an end in itself.

It helps, I think, to have some knowledge of the original Greek text. The word in this passage that our English bibles translate as “thanked” is the word εύχαριστών, from which we derive the word “Eucharist.” We all know that our weekly celebration of the Eucharist is a profoundly meaningful act of faith. It is also the single most profound act of the kind of gratitude that we see in today’s gospel reading. We join the Samaritan, “praising God with a loud voice” as we join the company of heaven singing the Sanctus “Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory.” We join the Samaritan prostrating at the feet of Jesus as we kneel before his altar here. Just like the Samaritan, we are foreigners- we are foreigners entering the realm of the divine, living on the border of the holy, where, as one writer put it “(the) single most determinative aspect of our humanness, our finitude, is exposed. The presence of the Holy reminds us of our limits, our weaknesses, our death. Yet in this borderland we also know joy and transcendence and we experience life as Gift.” It is with the earnestness and humility of this Samaritan that we approach this altar here and the metaphorical altars in all of our lives. And it is when we do this with true thanksgiving, with εύχαριστώσ, that we can begin to see the work of God in us and through us.

“Who is like the Lord our God, who sits enthroned on high but stoops to behold the heavens and the earth? He takes up the weak out of the dust and lifts the poor from the ashes.” The psalmist gives us a picture of a God who is very present, who though lofty by nature meets us along the road, just as he did the lepers. Sometimes God meets us when we are most uncomfortable: when we are weak or poor or ill or sad. It is at these times that God may seem the most distant. But, it is during these times when we must try to not shut our eyes to God’s grace but rather gaze at its resplendent fullness which is illumined to us by the living Christ. And we must approach God with gratitude, bowing before the one who gives us himself.

+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.

One of the uncomfortable things about our tradition of Christianity (particularly for the preacher, who must try not to lead others into error) is that our peculiar place between Roman Catholicism and Reformed Protestantism means that some rather important doctrinal matters have been very carefully nuanced. Maybe the most famous of these is found in our catechism–which I encourage you to read through from time to time; it starts on page 844 of our Book of Common Prayer. Anyway, some of you know that one distinction between Roman Catholicism and most Protestant churches pertains to the number of sacraments–Sacraments being those objective means of Grace, performed by the church’s ministers (though some more evangelical protestants would disagree with that definition). For Roman Catholics there are seven and for most Protestants there are two.

So how about us? Well in one place, the catechism states that there are “two great sacraments given by Christ to his Church”, those being Holy Baptism and the Holy Eucharist. Then a few pages later five other “sacramental rites which evolved in the Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit”–confirmation, ordination, holy matrimony, reconciliation of a penitent, and unction–that they are, indeed, means of grace, but that “they are not necessary for all persons in the same way that Baptism and Eucharist are.” You’ll learn later on in my series on Anglican Church history that there has since the Sixteenth Century been a concerted effort to have a broad enough church for those of both more Catholic and more Reformed sensibilities to be able to conscientiously be a part of the church, and I think this threads the needle quite nicely.

All of that is just to set the stage for an issue of doctrine which is even thornier, and which one has to do a bit of digging to find something like a satisfying answer as to what the church teaches–namely, the nature and effects of faith. Probably the closest we can get to an official stance is found in the 39 Articles of Religion, finalized in the Church of England in 1571 and confirmed by the Episcopal Church at its General Convention of 1801. (Here is some more homework for you- because the Articles are also in your prayerbooks, beginning on page 867.) In the eleventh article, it says that the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone is “a most wholesome Doctrine, and very full of comfort.” Then the very next article says that good works “do spring out necessarily of a true and lively faith.” This suggests two things as I read it. First, that there is what a philosopher would call logical implication (a relationship of necessity) between faith and morals. Second, and more to the point of what I’m building up to, that faith is to be understood as something more than simply believing a claim for which we don’t have evidence.

I said at the outset that our church’s carefully staked-out middle-ground ecclesial territory sometimes makes it difficult for the preacher. I should have said, it makes it difficult for me, and as recently as last week’s sermon you might have noticed me trying to balance on that razor’s edge of saying both that, on the one hand, we cannot earn our own salvation by being good but, on the other hand, God expects us to grow in virtue and not doing so has consequences.

I think it comes down to understanding faith in the fullest sense of its meaning in scripture, as it was carefully summarized in articles eleven and twelve, and as we see it borne out in both the Old Testament lesson and Gospel appointed for today.

We don’t hear to often from the Book of the Prophet Habakkuk, but we should pay it more attention, because it is generally regarded as the basis off of which the Apostle Paul developed, thanks to Divine Inspiration, his own rather nuanced view of the nature of faith. It’s important to the arguments found in the epistles to the Romans, the Galatians, and the Hebrews; and Paul rather explicitly casts himself as a sort of “new Habakkuk” in his sermon in Antioch in the thirteenth chapter of Acts.

In any event, central to both Paul’s project and our own understanding is that last half verse of today’s Old Testament lesson: but the righteous shall live by faith. The Hebrew reads “vetzaddik yichyeh beemunatov”–the just shall live by firmness or steadfastness or fidelity. We might have already guessed that to live by something, suggests that that something must be more than mere, tepid cognitive assent. Understanding that the word itself, translated for us as faith, means something like firmness or steadfastness makes the point clearer.

Likewise, the disciples’ desire that the Lord should increase their faith in today’s Gospel suggests that it is something more than believing a proposition. It could, of course, mean something like “make our certainty about this proposition’s truth stronger.” When we look to the Greek, however, we get something closer to the Hebrew of Habbakuk: Πρόθες ἡμῖν πίστιν–add to our faithfulness or trust.

Now, two things: first, this more active way of understanding faith presupposes that one believes certain propositions. Perhaps that’s obvious, but a full-blown postmodernist philosopher might quibble with this assumption. So we take it as a given that saying something like “I steadfastly trust in the resurrection of the dead” logically requires one to believe the resurrection is a true fact. Second, it is important that we recognize that it is not our active faithfulness which justifies us. Nor for that matter would our mere, tepid cognitive assent do if that were all faith meant. It is the action of God which does it all; we’re talking here of acceptance of God’s saving plan rather than our personal agency in that plan.

All of this is important, because it suggests that we are saying something more substantive than “I accede to the truth value of this proposition.” We’re saying, I put every bit of my trust in this truth and it changes how I live my life. In a few moments we will, as we do every Sunday, recite the Nicene Creed. I’ve heard it said, in jest, that the reason they moved the Creed from its traditional place immediately before to immediately after the Sermon in our current prayerbook was to correct the preacher if he had spouted any heresy from the pulpit. That is certainly a fringe benefit of the revision if nothing else.

In any event, it does give me the opportunity to suggest that this week, when we recite it, we might consider what it means if we are saying not just “I believe these propositions” but “I put my whole trust in them.” Indeed, I think this was the intention of the Fathers at Nicaea. It is obscured by the fact that our version is essentially a translation of a translation–We believe, translated and subsequently pluralized from the Latin Credo (I believe), itself translated from the Greek Πιστεύομεν (We have faith or trust or remain steadfast in).

Consider that, and consider how placing your trust wholly, steadfastly in our triune God, in the Incarnation, in the Resurrection, in the Communion of Saints, and in the hope of the life of the world to come might change your lives and the lives of those you love here and now.

+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.

We have, for the past few weeks been reading from the First Epistle of St. Paul to his young apprentice, Timothy. Reading this rather discursive letter as a whole, we find that Timothy’s church in Ephesus was beset by a myriad of false teachings and false teachers. Impious superstitions; speculation which both wasted time and drew people away from the Faith once received; consent to scandalous and illegal behavior; condemnation of perfectly proper, Christian activities, like getting married and even eating.

False teaching was legion in this little church, and so were those who propagated the heresies. Worst of all, these false teachers were making a killing. We learn in today’s reading that the besetting sin in this community seemed to be love of money. They put their faith in mammon, hoping that wealth would save them. This is what in theological terms is called a “false soteriology”, which is a fancy way of saying that one can find life, and truth and purpose and salvation where these things are not to found. It is something that we fallen people fall back into, time and time again. So did Blessed Paul, who counted himself the foremost of sinners.

We are not in a world much different from Paul’s, I’m afraid. I know that I am barraged every day with false objects of hope, and sinner that I am, sometimes I put my trust in those things, hoping to find salvation there: whether it’s money, or the positive regard of my fellows, or self-sufficiency, or any of a number of countless idols the world constructs for me or I for myself. I suspect few of us are saintly enough to avoid placing our trust in these things from time to time; but it is not at the altars set up by this sin-sick world where we find salvation.

Anyway, that is what it is to live life on the terms that the world has set for us, and that is what the apostle is warning us against. The good life, he says, is forged by virtues like righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. These are what St. Paul tells us to pursue, but the pursuit of these virtues isn’t what leads to salvation, either. Rather they are the proper response to the gift of salvation already wrought upon the cross and given freely to those who would accept it. Salvation is not primarily about how we live our lives, as important as that may be, but who it is that gives us life.

Indeed, after he lists the virtues of the Christian life, Paul goes on to explain why we ought to cultivate them: Fight the good fight, keep the faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. Our Lord made the good confession before Pontius Pilate, Paul tells us, and we find that confession in St. John’s Gospel: My kingdom is not of this world. We are meant to live as a people set apart, because we really are. By virtue of our Baptism we are made citizens of a kingdom that is not of this world. We are a priestly people, brought by Baptism into the Mystical Body of Christ and continually fed and reconstituted by the Very Body of Christ.

In the Fourth Century A.D., St. Ambrose of Milan, that Doctor of the Church and champion of the Faith in one of Christianity’s darkest hours, wrote a hymn which remains popular on the feast days of Apostles. The hymn extols the virtue of those whom the church recognizes as saints, but much of it applies equally to the ordinary saints of the church, the regular saints, like you and I, who are saints not by virtue of wondrous deeds, but by a simple confession of our belief in our Lord and our Baptism into His Body. From the third verse of that hymn:

Theirs is the steadfast faith of saints,
and hope that never yields nor faints;
and love of Christ in perfect glow
that lays the prince of this world low.

These aren’t miraculous acts, but the simple acts of faith we are called to live out as baptized people. To pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance. It is in living by these uncomplicated, but sometimes impossibly difficult virtues that we show forth to the world that though we are in the world, we are not of it. We show the world the power of the God in whom we find salvation. We show that in the waters of Baptism we are truly changed and will never be the same. We show to the prince of this world that the Kingdom of God will prevail, and for this there is much rejoicing in Heaven.

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