[Sermon recorded for the online service for the Seventh Sunday of Easter/First Sunday of Ascensiontide, 2020, for St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, Phoenix AZ. The recording of the service with the sermon will be uploaded to St. Mary’s YouTube channel at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYhabTo2anglPbHHA3SyHKQ]
✠In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Psalm appointed for Mass this Sunday always has a strange effect on me. It is what you call a trigger, and I have a lot of triggers. Nearby pizza triggers the doom of any diet I may embark upon, for example, or the smell of baking bread brings up memories of my mother, who turned the process into an Olympic sport. This trigger, however, is different:
“Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered;
Let those who hate him flee from before His face!”[1]
Many of you know by know that for a while I was a member of a Russian Orthodox parish. This Psalm is the kick-off of what we Orthodox call the Pascal Stichera, a collection of Psalm verses and liturgical poetry concluded with the Paschal Troparion. It’s a VERY triumphant piece of poetry, and the setting our parish used (common to many Russian parishes, I might add, in both the Patriarchate and the Orthodox Church of America) is perfectly suited to convey the triumph of Christ Jesus over Death, Sin, Hell, and the Devil.
This Psalm triggers in me the desire to belt out the Paschal Stichera, to loudly proclaim in song at the top of my lungs the joyful message of Our Lord’s Death and Resurrection, into which we are baptized. Fear not, I will not inflict that on you today. The singing, I mean. You are still going to get the message.
In our reading from Acts, for example, Our Lord Jesus tells his disciples, and by extension us, that He’s going away for a bit, but in the mean time He’s expecting us to be His witnesses.[2] His witnesses to what? That God has reconciled us to Himself and has destroyed that old enemy Death:
“Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down Death by death!”
In the Gospel reading, Our Lord Jesus said, “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”[3]You see, this has been the message of the Church, the Assembly of the Faithful, from the beginning. Knowing God is Life. Not knowing God is Unlife, that is, it is Death. Because we mortals are subject to Death, we therefore are consigned to not knowing God. God, in His consistency to His nature, that is, for the sake of His Name, would not stand for that, to abandon us to forgetfulness and oblivion. So He sent Jesus to us to effect a reconciliation of us to Him, by short-circuiting the cycle of Death:
“And upon those in the tombs bestowing Life!”
But so that we may know the only true God, the message has to get out there. In St. Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus does just that when he tell is disciples to,
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”[4]
And what did Jesus command them? To love the Lord their God with all their heart and soul and mind and strength, and to love their neighbours as themselves,[5]that is, to rise above our mortal natures, our baser instincts, and to actuate the Image of God within us. While our mortal selves compel us to compete, to survive, to look out for the self, the Image of God within us tells us to cooperate, to look out for others, to be mindful of what is beyond us.
History, however, is full of failed examples of this; even a cursory self-examination bears this out. After all, our old Master, Death, is a very potent force. All our shortcomings, missteps, failures to hit targets, or God forbid, outright descents into evil, are pre-programmed into us because of our mortality. Because Adam sinned, he became subject to Death. Because he became subject to Death, his descendants became subject to Death. Because we are subject to Death, we sin. Jesus, however, in perfectly uniting both Human and Divine natures in His person of the Son, as Human submitted to Death, but, because Death could not hold the Divine, He destroyed Death. In His own person, in His Death and Resurrection, Jesus reconciled us to God and ransomed us from Death, that is, he emancipated us slaves from our horrible master by sacrificing Himself and in that sacrifice destroying that very monster that holds us in thrall. We partake in that in the Sacrament of Baptism, in a very real sense confessing our mortality, our sinfulness, by dying to it in our descent into the waters, and in rising from them rising to the new life of God’s children remade in His image.
Great message, right?
There is a wee bit of a fly in the ointment. I am not talking about a small fruit fly or gnat, but a big gnarly deer fly the size of a small bat. That fly in the ointment is the fact that some people just do not want to hear the message. There are also some in our old master’s employment who do not want us to get the message out, because they have major stock in the old enterprise. Make no mistake, the Adversary is real. Whether he is the author of Death and Sin as some say, or he is the first slave to Death and Sin as others say, the fact of the matter is they are both in cahoots and up to their eyebrows in each other’s shenanigans. While I’m a bit glib about it, I want you to remember that the present age (the World), our fallen mortal natures (the Flesh), and our eternal adversary (the Devil) really don’t want us humans to reconcile to God. Do not take it personally, of course, all that hatred and ill-will toward us is really directed at God (small comfort, I grant you!). Jesus’ Death and Resurrection is a major kink in their plan to stick it to God,
“Let them vanish like smoke when the wind drives it away;
as the wax melts at the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God.”[6]
Their rear-guard action, however, is no picnic. The Epistle reading acknowledges this. “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.”[7] It seems the Apostle Peter in his teaching had some insight here. “Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour.”[8] Again, there is that rear-guard action against the damage Jesus inflicted on their cause. Here is where the Apostle calls us, his community, to action:
“Discipline yourselves; keep alert.”[9]
“Resist him, steadfast in your faith, for you know that your brothers and sisters throughout the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering.”[10]
This is why we have for centuries encouraged each other to come together for prayer, as the disciples did in the upper room, to avail ourselves of the Sacraments when we can, to dig into Holy Scripture, to pray continuously, because this message and new life has a lot of opposition out there.
Jesus knew that it would get rough (after all, look at what they did to Him!). He prays, “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”[11] He knows that the effort will be more than our feeble natures can exert, but, “The God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you.”[12] Jesus ascended so the Holy Spirit could descend, as He promised, “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.”[13] In the days to come there will definitely be more trials, more difficulties, more annoyances, but we have a promise of Grace, and Help, along with the Peace of being reconciled to God.
“But let the righteous be glad and rejoice before God;
let them also be merry and joyful.”[14]
Pentecost is coming…get ready.
Through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, Saviour save us.✠
[1] Ps. 68.1
[2] Acts 1.8
[3] Jn. 17.3
[4] Mt. 28.19-20a
[5] Mt. 22.37-39; Dt. 6.5; Lev. 19.18
[6] Ps. 68.2
[7] 1 Pet. 4.12
[8] 1 Pet. 5.8b
[9] 1 Pet. 5.8a
[10] 1 Pet. 5.9
[11] Jn. 17.11
[12] 1 Pet. 5.10
[13] Acts 1.8
[14] Ps. 68.3
