Trinity XIX                                                                                                                                                        Fr. F. W. Burgett

Trinity Anglican Church                                                                                                                                      Given 10/30/11

“Jesus said, ‘Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.’  And he arose, and departed to his house.  But when the multitudes saw it, they marveled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.”

In our Gospel today, Jesus performed yet another miracle to convince people that He was indeed the Son of God.  Of course, the message was not fully received.  They did marvel and they glorified God because they knew God gave the power to perform the physical healing.  But they were offended by Jesus’ earlier statement, “Son, be of good cheer;  thy sins be forgiven thee.”  They thought it blasphemous to claim to forgive sins.  They knew that with God’s help, men can perform miracles.  They also knew that only God can grant forgiveness for sins because sins are an offense to God.  They were upset because they failed to recognize Jesus as God.

At least they understood whose job it was to forgive sin.  They, like us, surely attempted to redefine sin and minimize the need for forgiveness.  But the strict interpretation of Old Testament scriptures greatly limited the opportunity to redefine sin.  Today, many people ignore the Old Testament altogether.  Then they pick and choose which things to acknowledge from the New Testament.  If a requirement is difficult, people assume it is no longer required in our age of enlightenment.  Sins are a difficult subject to address.  On the other hand, miracles can be fun.  First, they are almost always positive.  Second, what was once considered a miracle due to lack of scientific knowledge is often expected in our world.  We do many things today that would have seemed miraculous in another age.  Still, we are not overriding or suspending the rules of nature.  We are simply learning to use them more effectively.

If the Pharisees saw some of the things we can do today, they would have considered them miracles, but they would not have considered them blasphemous.  They would have recognized that the ability to perform the miracle came from God.  They would assume the man or woman performing the miracle was an instrument of God.  We may occasionally chasten the Pharisees for following their laws so blindly.  But, at least they did not attempt to rewrite the laws and assume themselves to be God.  Jesus’ first statement about forgiving sins clearly violated their understanding of the division of labor between man and God.

Today, we have greatly confused that division of labor.  We can perform miracles in some cases and seem intent on assuming the tasks of judgment and forgiveness as well.  We can indeed understand God’s created world, but we cannot create any part of it in any sense of the word.  We learn how to manipulate the raw materials provided by God, but we remain unable to create any of them from scratch.  As we learn more about how to manipulate God’s world, we have also assumed we are capable of determining the destiny of mankind on our own.

In some circles, “sin definition” has been removed from God’s job description.  We assume we can decide which actions and thoughts create an offense against God.  Would you ever assume you can decide which things offend your neighbor?  As much as we might like to do so, we know we cannot totally determine what is in the heart or mind of our neighbor.  Is it any more appropriate to assume we can do so for God?  God spent over fifty-seven hundred years revealing himself to mankind.  With that level of patience and determination, we can safely assume that God know his own mind.  Furthermore, we have the history of his revelations in Holy Scripture and can determine that he has not changed his mind in all that time.  The revelations of Jesus Christ in the New Testament did not change God’s intent for mankind.  It did not invalidate those things that were considered an offense to God.  It simply gave us better guidelines with which to determine God’s will.  We cannot redefine sin according to cultural norms.  Sin can only be defined in terms of God’s intent and that has not changed.

The Epistle today tells us, “the Truth is in Jesus” and that we are to put on the new man, which is created in righteousness and true holiness in God’s image.  How can we put on the new man and walk in God’s image in righteousness and true holiness if we make up our own rules?  Look at the worldwide church.  In those areas of the world where it is rooted and grounded in the rich tradition of apostolic and catholic faith, the liberating and life-giving Gospel of Jesus Christ is proclaimed as it was received.  It is not modified to reflect the current social norms and the church is growing in those areas.  In those areas of the world where the Word is modified to accommodate the social norms, the church is declining. The Anglican expression of the faith was imported into Africa by the colonists.  It is ironic that they are now sending traditional priests to England, Canada and the United States in an attempt to bring the traditional church back into our culture.

When we remove all the substance from anything, it becomes irrelevant and meaningless.  That is what is happening to many parts of the church today.  The One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church is not just a religion, nor just a system.  It is not a thing at all.  It is somebody.  Christianity is Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, in whom and though whom, and by whom, we become, by adoption and grace, His sons and daughters.  It is in and through and by Christ that we know Him as Father.  Our Gospels begin, continue and finish with Jesus Christ, crucified, risen, ascended, and glorified.  He is the Word made flesh.  He was incarnate and born in order to die for the redemption and salvation of the world.

The Gospel of Christ is about costly love.  Justice, peace, freedom, hope and new life are obtained and bestowed through the shedding of blood.  Every just cause in human history echoes the principal of atonement.  Love, like any accomplishment, is costly.  We cannot ignore the basic principle that life is often acquired through death.  Christianity is all about love;  unconditional and costly love.  God “so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son.”  Notice the direction of that statement.  People did not cause Jesus to become incarnate.  God sent.  God gave.  God’s love burst forth into our lives in the person of Jesus Christ.

Many of us are comfortable with the status quo in our individual lives.  Still, we recognize the problems in the world around us and we worry that we are losing something that is irreplaceable.  We really don’t want diluted and decaffeinated Christianity.  Only the full-blooded, catholic, scriptural gospel of Jesus Christ will change lives and change society and change the world God loves so much.  It is better to wrestle and deal with the whole faith, than attempt to change it or conform it to our own wills and pleasures.  Where there is no Gospel, no tradition, no faith, no standards and no morals;  there is no purpose, no mission, no witness, no change and ultimately no church.  We are called to obedience.  We are not called to tinker and change scripture, tradition, faith or morals.

Some might say that Christian discipline is boring.  Our faith is not boring.  The faith worth sharing is full-blooded, bold and demanding.  The martyrs did not die of boredom.  They died following the commandments of Jesus Christ.  They died preserving the scriptures and traditions of the faith.  The faith they died for is expressed in the Sacraments.  These sacraments are moments of grace and occasions when God’s unbounded love meets us face to face.  However, we cannot just set back and let it soak into our being.  The fullness of the faith requires action based on the application of our God-given reason.

The faith worth sharing is not into short cuts, easy answers, isms, and issues.  It is an eagerness to share the whole faith, the whole tradition and to wrestle with all the demands of the Gospel and the commandments.  It is not enough to be engaged with vesture, liturgy and community.  We must deal with and express the full meaning of the whole tradition.

We must preserve the fullness, richness, depth and tough demands of the Gospel and the Anglican tradition.  St. Paul warns the world in his second Epistle to Timothy about changing the Gospel message.  “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine;  but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;  and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.”  This was written in the first century of our Lord.  We are in the twenty-first century and we are seeing exactly what Paul predicted.  Mankind is busy developing fables that tickle their ears and make them feel powerful, in control, and even godly.  It is simply another manifestation of man wanting to be God.

We believe the truth is preserved in a balance of Scripture, Tradition and Reason.  We cannot ignore the Scriptures that make us squirm with guilt.  We cannot ignore the Traditions that require discipline.  And we cannot let others determine what is right and reasonable in the world.  We have been given the full life of Christ and we must preserve it intact and proclaim it as completely as we are able.

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven;  but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.