[Sermon composed for the Sunday broadcast at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, Phoenix AZ (https://www.stmarysphoenix.org/online) for The Fifth Sunday in Lent, March 21, 2021.]
✠ In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen
Christians are odd creatures. We walk two realities. We engage in multiple dimensions. We are both bound by time and outside time. We are both mortal and immortal, carnal and spiritual. Those who have grown close in their walk with God are noticeably different to anyone really paying attention. We do not start out that way, however. Many people move only in one world, aware only of the mortal, the carnal, that which is bound by time.
It is an oddity, that is for certain. Some would even say it is organic fertilizer. For those of us raised in the mindset of the Enlightenment, where empirical materialism is the ONLY mode of being and the ONLY standard of engagement, it is pretty much incomprehensible. For others who did not completely buy-in to the Enlightenment, it is less incomprehensible, but then the opinions diverge as if a Corelle plate were dropped one too many times and it finally broke into a million tiny little slivers.
The one thing, however, that drives how much we participate in both worlds is the state of our relationship with God. At the heart of that is the concept of Sin and Redemption, or in theological shorthand, Atonement.
We have three readings today that touch on Atonement. Our first reading[1] from the Prophet Jeremiah denotes a new covenant between Israel and God which is more personal and where the Law, the Way of God, is now instinctual and present. The second reading[2] from the Epistle to the Hebrews describes Jesus as the Great High Priest, the perfect example of humble obedience despite His exalted station. The third reading[3] recounts Jesus foretelling His Sacrifice to draw all to Himself and to drive out the ruler of the world. At the heart of these readings is the promise that a new covenant mediated by the Great High Priest will wipe out sin and permanently restore the relationship between Humanity and God.
Make no mistake, and the teaching of Holy Mother Church is very clear about this; Humanity has an inherited condition created by Sin and that creates more Sin. This condition is called Corruption, also known as Death. In our earliest days, whatever the reason, we chose separation from God, and this choice, cutting us off from the source of life, meant that those who chose thus would die, both physically and spiritually, and sadly that condition passed to their progeny.
This presents a grim reality and an unenjoyable prospect. Unchecked, the condition causes both physical and spiritual deterioration until the form of the creature is no longer recognizable. The body dies and decays. The soul withers to nothing, a whisper of what once was, bereft of the body that gave it definition.
With a hopeless situation like that it is little wonder that as a species we generally act out with hopeless abandon, right? While we view those actions as the main problem, they merely are symptoms of the underlying condition, attempts to self-medicate the despair, a palliative to keep us from feeling the degeneration until the end finally comes. God in His love gave Humanity the freedom to choose this path, and to His sorrow Humanity engaged upon it.
It does not seem fair, does it? That someone in the far past would make a choice that affects us in the present. We did not ask them to make that choice for us. Whether or not we would make that choice is beside the point, the choice was taken from us. In bitterness we ask why a loving, just, and all-powerful God would allow that. After all, if God is loving, God would let us each make our own choice and not compel us, right? If God is just, then God would make that choice available to each and every one of us and not let a far distant ancestor make that choice for us, correct? If God is all-powerful, then could not God arrange things to bypass any inherited condition with which we get saddled?
The Good News that we preach is that God has bypassed that condition, that God does offer us that choice, and that God will in His love allow us to make that choice freely. All of our readings today highlight that. A new relationship. Eternal salvation. The ruler of the world driven out. Our sins and corruption destroyed, blotted out, never to be remembered ever again. How wonderful that is, what joyful news, what a relief and such a hope that is offered to us!
But what about that inherited condition, that corruption that compels us to the place of the dead?
That is the second part of the Good News. Corruption is embedded into our being, as immutable as a law of physics (in fact, some have argued it IS a law of physics). As such, mere humans have no hope of rooting out something that is part of their very fibre. To overcome this, God took on Humanity, became flesh, became one of us. He perfectly united in one Person Divine and Human Nature, He became “just as we are, except without sin.” As Jesus Christ, God possessed a mortal Human nature that could suffer, could sustain injury, and could suffer death just as we do. Except without sin. When He did suffer and die in obedience to God’s plan, Jesus shared in that condition that afflicts all of us and so after sustaining horrible injury to His body, He died. However, it was the perfect union of Human and Divine natures without the confusing of the two that proved the lynch-pin of our redemption. As God, Jesus Christ possessed the Divine nature that could not sustain injury or corruption, and it was by the power of that nature that the corruption attached to the Human nature was undone. In the act of dying and rising in the person of Jesus Christ, God removed the barrier that prevented Humanity from engaging fully with Him.
So God has removed the impediment which prevents each of us from making the choice, that choice which was ripped from us aeons ago. Each of us has been made free to choose to continue with God or to make our choice to remain as we are. Each of us are free to walk in both worlds or only in one, to chose to move forward with God and walk in His ways or to turn our back as our forebears did and follow the same dreary path. The good news is that the offer is there while we still breathe and will be presented to us again at the end (which is why we pray for the dead).
When we choose the Ways of God, we partake in that miraculous redemption in our baptism, where we mystically unite ourselves with Jesus in His death, burial, and resurrection. In it we are mystically cleansed from our sins through His sacrifice and rising. When we make that choice and seal it with the Sacrament, we begin anew a life where we are free to be what God intended us to be, the servants of His reconciliation and grace, the instruments of His peace and mercy, the light to a darkened world. We daily live the Way of the Cross, forsaking our focus on self but taking up the Cross, dying to self and living to God.
Have we flagged in our zeal, fallen short of our calling, forgotten our choice, or even turned our backs on it? No matter, God will receive you back with joy. Have we not yet made our choice? No matter, for as it says in Hebrews, today is the day of salvation.[4] Have we chosen otherwise, turned our back on God? No matter, for God will have mercy and will abundantly pardon any who turn back to Him.[5]
As we mark this last week before Holy Week, as we enter that time when we remember, relive, and participate in the great drama of our redemption, let us remember that as the Body of Christ we are not only playing out a drama or re-enacting history, but we are walking with Our Lord in those final days in Jerusalem. So let us not harden our hearts as our forebears did in the wilderness, but hear Him, walk in His ways, join Him in His suffering, and at the last be transformed by Him by the power of His Resurrection.
✠ Through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, Saviour save us. Amen.
Christos Pantocrator, 6th Century CE, St. Catherine's Monastery, Sinai, Egypt. The face of Christ has two distinct halves to illustrate the hypostatic union of Divine and Human in the hypostasis/person of Jesus Christ.