Sermon for Third Sunday in Lent
The Rev’d David Curry, Rector of Christ Church, preached this sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent, based on the Gospel reading, St Luke 11:14-28.
“Seven other spirits, worse than the first … enter in”
All sermons should come with an advisory, a warning that this may be dangerous to your health, either because it is too underwhelming or too demanding, too controversial or too boring. Or too long or just plain impossible. Today’s sermon is all of the above. You may want to ponder the Athanasian Creed or the Thirty-Nine Articles; if you can find them in the Prayer Book before the end of the sermon, extra bonus points and kudos to you! An advisory, I suppose, is most appropriate for today. It is the 15th of March, after all. Beware the Ides of March!
This gospel is the necessary counter to our greatest fault, spiritual pride. The capital sin of the seven capital or chief sins, we might say, pride is the head of all the deadly sins. It is actually the principle that is at work in all of “the seven deadly sins,” to use the categories which belong to the Christian moral tradition. Why? Because pride is the explicit denial of the grace of God without which we are indeed dead in ourselves. (more…)