Sermon for Passion Sunday/Fifth Sunday in Lent
`“Ye know not what ye ask.”
The Litany is quite a work-out, a spiritual work-out, we might say. In a way, it is about learning what to ask for and about what prayer itself means and looks like. It belongs to our life with God in Christ. “Prayer signals all the service that ever we do unto God”, as Richard Hooker notes. “Teaching bringeth us to know that God is our supreme truth; so prayer testifieth that we acknowledge him our sovereign good.”
This brings out an important point. Our good – our blessedness – does not lie simply or primarily in our knowing that we know God, a kind of self-consciousness, as it were, but rather in God himself. Prayer then is more than a self-reflective exercise; it is about “acknowledg[ing] him [as] our sovereign good.” That is the point of the Litany. It is grounded in God and grounds the whole of our life in God and with God. It is, to be sure, a kind of intellection, an activity of the understanding in which all the various aspects of human life are gathered to God in prayer. There is in the Litany a going out from God, revealed as Trinity scripturally and credally, and a return to God in and through the sequence of intercessions “for all sorts and conditions” of our humanity.
Our praying the Litany this morning complements the Epistle and Gospel readings. The Epistle from Hebrews is a tour-de-force of theological thinking about the mediatorial role of Christ. He is, to use the later and necessary theological language, both God and man, who in his pure and true humanity effects human redemption from sin and death. “By his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.” Such is the nature of his being “the Mediator of the new covenant.” What is that new covenant? Our life in God and with God in Christ as no longer defined by sin and sorrow, by death and despair. How is it accomplished? “By means of death,” by means of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.
And yet this is something which we see “but in a glass darkly.” Its full meaning and truth are veiled and hid from our eyes. We know it, of course, at least partially. The cross is veiled before us, but we know it is there. The point is that we don’t really feel its meaning deeply enough. And that has to do with us, with the state of our souls, with the nature of our self-awareness or lack thereof. We both know and do not know ourselves.
But we think we do. We think we know what we want. We think we know what is best for our children and for one another. That is what makes today’s Gospel so challenging and so compelling. It simply points out that we really don’t know completely and fully what is good for ourselves and for one another. In a way, the Gospel challenges and counters our ambitions, our desires for what we think is the good for us and for one another. We are very much like “the mother of Zebedee’s children,” who seeks prestige and prominence for her two sons, James and John; in short, power and position “in thy kingdom.” In such a request we understand a very common desire and one which drives so much of our world. ‘Look at me, looking at you, looking at me’ is one way of capturing the narcissism of the contemporary world and a feature of the selfie culture. We want power and prestige; ‘like me on Facebook! On Snapchat! On Instagram!’
