Sermon for the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity
“Be renewed in the spirit of your mind”
It is a wonderful phrase set in the midst of a powerful passage from St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, a passage which opens us out to the possibilities of our being transformed into better and more thoughtful people, literally new people. At issue is whether we have learned Christ – the constant challenge in our lives, I might add – “if so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus.” It means a change, a change of mind, of attitude and outlook. What stands out is the very thing missing from our culture and church – teaching and a commitment to intellectual and spiritual life. We are, I fear, like those whom Paul calls the Gentiles, who walk, he suggests, “in the vanity of their mind[s]”, their “understanding darkened”, “alienated from the life of God” through two things: “ignorance” and “hardness of heart.” Tough words!
The consequence, as Paul sees it, is a dissolute and aimless life – “lasciviousness,” and “all uncleanness with greediness” are the terms he uses. He could be commenting on our world! Yet it is precisely in the face of such things that something new and strange is revealed; a change in attitude and outlook. By God’s Word and Spirit we are called to a new life, a constant “renew[ing] of the spirit of our minds.”
Paul makes it clear that this change in attitude and outlook is founded in the motions of God’s love towards us in Jesus Christ. The Epistle reading ends with the exhortation to be “kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” Forgiveness. (more…)
