Category: Sermons

“Have mercy on me, O Lord”

An appropriate text, I suppose, for anyone about to preach!

Dust and ashes, temptations, heartfelt desire. Such are the strong images that are before us in the early days of Lent. The dust of creation and of our common mortality and the ashes of repentance on Ash Wednesday, the temptations that challenge the truth of very being and belong to the disorders of our hearts on the First Sunday in Lent, all these raise important religious and philosophical question about human desire, “for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Mt. 6. 21). Unlike the Buddhist annihilation of desire, Lent seeks the redemption of desire. Nowhere, perhaps, is that seen more wonderfully and powerfully in this Gospel story for the Second Sunday in Lent. “Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David,” the Canaanite woman cries unto Jesus.

It is the recurring refrain of the Lenten season and so, too, of the pilgrimage of our lives, echoed in the liturgy of the Church: “Kyrie Eleison” – “Lord, have mercy upon us.” Is it about groveling and wallowing in self-pity? Is it about a sense of self-denigration and self-degradation – putting ourselves down, making ourselves feel miserable, the proverbial beating up on ourselves? No, emphatically no. For such things are, to be rigorously truthful, all about pride – the pride which cuts us off from truth, the truth of God and the truth about ourselves both in terms of our God-given capacities and potentialities and our all too real sins and wickednesses. We are too much with ourselves.

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“Have mercy on me, O Lord”

It is the recurring refrain of the Lenten season and so, too, of the pilgrimage of our lives, echoed in the liturgy of the Church: “Kyrie Eleison” – “Lord, have mercy upon us.” Is it about grovelling and wallowing in self-pity? Is it about a sense of self-denigration and self-degradation – putting ourselves down, making ourselves feel miserable, the proverbial beating up on ourselves? No, emphatically no. For such things are, to be rigorously truthful, all about pride – the pride which cuts us off from truth, the truth of God and the truth about ourselves both in terms of our God-given capacities and potentialities and our all too real sins and wickednesses. We are too much with ourselves.

Far from being a plaintive cry of the weak and the pitiful, “have mercy upon me, O Lord” is the strong prayer of the honest soul. Nowhere does the strength of that honesty appear more forcibly and clearly than in this gospel story. The prayer for mercy is incredibly insistent. The Canaanite woman in the story won’t give up and won’t shut up. She is like the blind man whom Jesus encounters on the way to Jerusalem who also cried out to Jesus “have mercy on me” that he might receive his sight. He, too, would not be silenced but “cried so much the more, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me” (Luke 18. 39).

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UPDATE (22 Mar.): This is the first of four Lenten reflections on The Kiss of Judas: Themes of Betrayal and Forgiveness in the Scriptures. The four addresses have been compiled into a booklet, which can be accessed here.

“Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?”

They are haunting and troubling words. All of the Gospels identify Judas in one way or another as the betrayer of Christ, the grand paradigm in a way of all betrayal. Luke alone has Jesus address Judas with this telling question in the very moment of his being taken captive (Luke 22.48), a chilling moment of truth and its betrayal. Mark, with admirable economy of expression, has Judas simply tell the crowd “whomsoever I kiss, that same is he; take him, and lead him away safely.” Whose safety, we may ask? “And as soon as he was come [Judas] goeth straightway to him, and saith, Master, master; and kissed him” (Mark 14. 44-45). Matthew identifies Judas outright as the betrayer. “Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, The one I shall kiss is the man; seize him. And he came up to Jesus at once and said, Hail, Master! And he kissed him” (Matthew 26. 48-49). Only John says nothing about the kiss of Judas, though he is very clear about Judas’ betrayal.

Luke gives us this most intimate moment of betrayal, a moment made ever so memorable by its intensity and its intimacy. It has, to be sure, captured the imagination of the artists, though depictions of the betrayal, like the crucifixion itself, are relatively rare at least in early Christian art. Apart from a few sarcophagi, the earliest artistic representation in a Church appears in Ravenna, Italy, at the Church of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in a lovely mosaic dating to the sixth century. But perhaps the most arresting artistic representation of the betrayal is Giotto’s fresco in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (1305/6). In a way it has become iconic. There are other representations to be sure – by Duccio in Sienna, Fra Angelico in Florence, and, later in the sixteenth century, Caravaggio in Rome, to name but a few – all of which connect the betrayal with violence as well. “Are ye come out as against a thief, with swords and staves, to take me?” Jesus says, (Mt. 26.55, Mk. 14.48). There are representations in stone and wood and in stained glass, too, scattered among the Cathedrals and churches of Europe and beyond. But one could hardly say that there was an excess of artistic representation of this momentous scene which is such a telling moment in the life of Christ. There is, after all, a disturbing quality about such a theme.

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“Then was Jesus led up by the Spirit into the wilderness,
to be tempted by the devil”

The Christian season of Lent traditionally begins with the temptations of Christ on the first Sunday of Lent. The whole idea of Lent, the quadragesima, is derived in part from Christ’s going into the wilderness and fasting for “forty days and forty nights.” It recapitulates the themes of the Exodus journey of the ancient Hebrews; the forty years of wandering in the wilderness of Sinai. It takes on a symbolic significance. At once a liberation from the yoke of slavery under the Egyptians, it was also a time of testing, and, above all, a time of learning. Learning what? Simply what it means to be the people of God, defined ultimately by God who reveals himself and his will in two ways: first, in the burning bush, and secondly, in the Ten Commandments, the moral code for our humanity, if you will.

These are astounding stories. And in a way they are recalled and reworked in the story of the temptations of Christ which sets us upon the Christian journey of life, a journey into the greater promised land of our redeemed humanity, our humanity forgiven and restored, like the paralytic in the lesson from Matthew’s Gospel, our humanity called and empowered, like Matthew, to follow Christ at his word to challenge and proclaim the new reality of God’s absolute mercy for our wounded and broken humanity. Somehow in the season of Lenten fasting we are also reminded of the joy of the new life of redemption. “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?” Jesus asks. It is a provocative question which calls attention to something new and wonderful in Christ which at once corrects and completes all that belongs to the rigour of the law and to the disciplines of Lent.

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“Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve”

The Christian season of Lent traditionally begins with the temptations of Christ on the First Sunday of Lent. The whole idea of Lent, the quadragesima, is derived in part from Christ’s going into the wilderness and fasting for “forty days and forty nights.” It recapitulates the themes of the Exodus journey of the ancient Hebrews; the forty years in the wilderness of Sinai. It takes on a symbolic significance. At once a liberation from the yoke of slavery under the Egyptians, it was also a time of testing, and, above all, a time of learning. Learning what? Simply what it means to be the people of God, defined ultimately by God who reveals himself and his will in two ways: first, in the burning bush, and secondly, in the Ten Commandments, the moral code for our humanity, if you will.

These are astounding stories. And in a way they are recalled and reworked in the story of the temptations of Christ which sets us upon the Christian journey of life, a journey into the greater promised land of our redeemed humanity, our humanity forgiven and restored.

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“Behold, something greater than Jonah is here”

The Penitential Service for Use on Ash Wednesday and at Other Times, found in the Canadian BCP (p. 611ff.) calls us “in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance, by prayer, fasting, and self-denial, and by reading and meditation upon God’s holy Word.” Locating the disciplines of Lent within the tradition of the Church and in its relation to Scripture, it provides a clear and concise explanation for the meaning of Lent. It is a challenge, to be sure.

Lent, in a way, concentrates the Christian journey of Faith into the span of forty days, forty days of a certain kind of focus and rigour, a focus and rigour that by definition belongs to the essence of the Christian Faith. We participate in nothing less than the Passion of Christ. And that is nothing less than the pageant of human redemption.

One of the prayers of the Penitential Service recalls The Book of Jonah, the story of the most reluctant prophet, no, let’s be clearer, the most recalcitrant prophet of all times! God says, ‘go to Nineveh,’ and Jonah jumps on a boat heading to Tarshish, trying to get as far away from God as possible and as far away from Nineveh, as well. Utter folly of course, as The Book of Jonah is at pains to teach us. What kind of God would God be, after all, if you could run and hide from him? Adam and Eve already tried that trick in the Garden of Eden, having hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God. “Where art thou?” God asked, knowing full well where they were but highlighting their sin and mistake. Nothing can be hidden from the sight of God. Our attempt to do so only proves our sin. Such is our predicament.

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“Behold, we go up to Jerusalem”

Quinquagesima Sunday signals the near approach of Lent. It is the Sunday before Ash Wednesday and in so many ways, it teaches us about the very meaning of Lent. It is a journey, a going up to Jerusalem, as Jesus puts it in Luke’s Gospel. It is a journey in love and by love as Paul’s wonderful and profound hymn of love in 1^st Corinthians puts it.

Jerusalem. Love. These are two of the key ingredients to the understanding of Lent. For what is it all about? Simply this. Lent captures in the span of forty days the entire meaning of Christian faith and love. What!? Surely that seems a bit much to claim. But no. Lent, a word derived from Old English that refers to the lengthening of the days that bring us to the joys of nature’s spring, recalls us to the journey of our souls into that greater light and life that is the Resurrection. But only through the disciplines of penitential adoration.

That is the key theme that recognizes the human problem of sin which separates us, individually and collectively, from all that belongs to the true good and happiness of our humanity. In the Christian understanding, that can only be found by our being in Christ and Christ being in us. Jerusalem is the ultimate symbol of the communion of saints and the community of blessedness which is the deep truth of all our desiring.

What do we want? In all of the confusions of our world and day, in all of the confusions of our churches and communities, in all of the confusions of our hearts and minds, we desire happiness and goodness, light and life, and, if truth be known, we desire to attain to such things everlastingly. Mistaken though we may be (and are) about the desires of our hearts and minds, the truth of what we desire is captured in the image of Jerusalem and in the deep meaning of charity or love. We seek nothing less than the love of God which is the truth of all that exists as its originating principle and as its end.

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“We must not put the Lord to the test, as some of them did
and were destroyed by serpents.”

Serpents in the wilderness; the serpent in the garden. Dust and death. And yet something redemptive and healing. The story of the Fall is a story told in the form of myth let conveying great truth. O felix culpa! O blessed fault! as the theological tradition puts it. And as for snakes and serpents, they, too, serve an arresting and symbolic purpose. I am always amazed at the cultural cross-overs and coincidences of images. The staff of Ascelpius is the symbol of the medical profession to this day. It is a serpent entwined about a rough wooden branch. The serpent as a sign of healing.

And in the ancient Epic of Gilgamesh, a serpent figures there, too. Gilgamesh, having learned that there is no permanence from Utnapishtim, returns to Uruk, wiser to be sure. He has been allowed to return however with the plant of rejuvenation called “the old men are young again,” an ancient form of Viagra, I suppose. On the way homeward, he stops at a refreshing spring to go for a swim, leaving the plant on the bank where its odour attracts a snake who immediately eats it. A just-so story, told to explain the phenomena of snakes shedding their skin and growing a new one, it also illustrates the fatalism of that ancient culture. Gilgamesh loses a gift for his city simply through a kind of accident and not through any fault of his own.

How much more different is the biblical account of the serpent in The Book of Genesis! The serpent is said to be “more subtle than any other wild creature.” And what does that serpent do? It asks questions. Such is a feature of human rationality. The serpent is a symbol of an aspect of our humanity, for good and for ill. What kind of questions?

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“But that on the good ground are they which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience.”

“As all the fruits of the season come to us in their proper time, flowers in spring, corn in summer and apples in autumn, so the fruit for winter is talk.” Good ground and a good heart and, as a result, good fruit brought forth with patience. How wonderful in what is, literally, the bleak mid-winter, to be reminded of spring time and flowers, of the fruits of summer and fall! How wonderful to be reminded that we are the ground in which God’s Word has been sown. What kind of ground will we be?

The quote is from Basil the Great, one of the outstanding fourth century theologians, one of the Greek Cappadocian Fathers who has shaped so much of the intellectual and spiritual history of Christian thought and life, both east and west. I love the image. The idea that talk is the fruit of winter. Something is meant to be alive and growing in us, in the soil of our hearts, even in the frozen wastes of a Canadian winter!

But what kind of talk, we may ask? After all this is a world of talking heads and talk, as is so often said, is cheap. Basil’s image, so appropriate on this Sexagesima Sunday, relates to two things in today’s Gospel: the seed which is the Word of God and the ground which is our heart. There can be no fruit on a winter’s evening that is not borne out of an honest and good heart, as Luke so powerfully suggests.

The talk which is the fruit of winter, in Basil’s sense, must be our talk of God, the talk which allows God’s Word to have its sovereign sway within our lives, the talk which lets God’s Word shape our hearts and minds but only because that Word has been planted and sown within us.

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“I saw a light above the brightness of the sun”

The story of Paul’s conversion is told to us three times, twice by Paul himself. All three accounts are given by the hand of another, namely, St. Luke, in his Acts of the Apostles. Three accounts might seem a bit much!

But only because Paul, it seems, is too much. It is the nature of strong personalities that they repel as much as they attract. They challenge our understanding and for some that is just too much. For many, whether within or without the Church, Paul is derided and despised, mocked and scorned. A figure larger than life, he is, at the very least, controversial; his epistles, challenging. There is a real struggle when it comes to the praise of Paul. And yet struggle lies at the heart of all conversion.

Without struggle there can be no conversion. The conversion of St. Paul is, above all else, a struggle. It is, in short, the breakthrough of the understanding that happens through the collision of opposing points of view.

The struggle concerns the integrity of the images of salvation in the Scriptures. How to reconcile the glory of the Messiah with the sufferings of the crucified Christ? The entire personality of Paul is taken up with this question. Something new has come into the world which challenges the older understanding of Israel. That something new is the Way of Christ.

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