[Sermon composed for the Sunday broadcast at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, Phoenix AZ (https://www.stmarysphoenix.org/online) for Sunday, August 30, 2020, the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost]
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Lately I have been wrestling with the concept of delusion.
Delusion is pretty common, and we all suffer from it on a regular basis. Most of the time it is something like, “These jeans still fit!” or, “No, really, we are ALMOST there!” or, “My jokes are usually pretty good.” Those delusions are relatively harmless, if uncomfortable in one way or another. Some delusions, however, can be more harmful, such as, “Most members of my team are idiots,” or, “I’m totally indispensable,” or “Everyone cheats on their taxes, so I can too.”
Even more harmful are spiritual delusions. I do not usually hear this talked about much in Western denominations, but it is a big deal among Eastern Christians and it’s well worth bringing up. When I attended the Russian Church, I often heard the priest talk about прелесть (prelest).[1] Now, since the concept isn’t that widespread here in the West, we really don’t have an analogous term in English ecclesiology to go with this. The closest we can come to it is delusion, whether it be self-imposed or imposed from without. It can be as concrete as expressive thoughts, self talk, or attitude, but it all boils down to one thing, an inaccurate and distorted assessment of one’s spiritual state and place in the grand scheme of things. Also, and the East doesn’t really dwell on this part of it, spiritual delusion can include an inaccurate and distorted picture of others, their mission, their purpose in comparison to us, our own perceived purpose, and our own imagined mission, and even attributing our own delusions to the Will of God.
Yikes.
We can see that St. Peter fell victim to this in today’s Gospel account. If you recall, the account from last Sunday was about St. Peter’s confession that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, long expected.[2] Today is part two of the same episode. St. Peter had just made this confession, Our Lord commended Peter, and then Our Lord proceeded to tell His disciples that the Messiah’s mission was to suffer and die.[3] Somewhat predictably St. Peter freaks out. “No, no, no, no, NO!” we can almost hear him say. “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you!”[4] St. Peter was suffering a particularly neatly crafted delusion St. Peter and many others of his countrymen cherished, that the Messiah would come in glory and grind Rome into a small grease spot on the carpet and raise Israel to heights of glory it hadn’t seen since the days of Solomon. I say predictably, because we hear echoes of the same delusion today, that God will effect horrible retribution on OUR enemies and validate OUR agendas and raise US up to new heights of glory.
I don’t know about you, but that kind of hits close to home and makes me a wee bit uncomfortable.
That is one kind of delusion, but let me bring up another example from the Gospels. I will hearken back to the story of the Publican and the Pharisee.[5] Remember the Pharisee? This man is the poster child for prelest. Our Lord paints a very clear picture that the Pharisee has a pretty exalted opinion of his righteousness before God and his spiritual worth, but is very clear that among the two of them, it was the Publican asking for mercy who was justified, not the Pharisee. The deluded party here is clear, and the prevailing attitude is a clear warning to us. This leads us to ask how often do we fall into that trap? We get comfortable thinking that our prayer life, our volunteer work, our piety, our charitable giving are right on track, if not special and holy. Some of us can sustain that high for years, perhaps even a lifetime.
So now that we have unsettled ourselves with this particular revelation and have left us second-guessing ourselves and our motives, we need to find a foundation onto which we can anchor ourselves and work to keep ourselves free from delusion and self-deception. When Jesus in today’s Gospel tells us to deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow Him,[6] we begin to get a picture of what the solidly grounded life is. The big issue is using ourselves as the frame of reference. Asking ourselves questions like, “Am I praying enough?” “Am I praying right?” “Did I put enough in the plate?” “Did I clock the right amount of community service hours?” are ultimately self-defeating and prone to deluded thinking. Either we come up with a favourable (and inaccurate) self-image, or we come up with an unfavourable (and equally inaccurate) self-image. Again, the emphasis is to leave off self-focus and focus on others and how our actions impact others.
To help us out, St. Paul provides some concrete examples from today’s Epistle reading:[7]
· Love each other,
· Be sincerely affectionate with each other,
· Outdo each other showing honour to each other,
· Rejoice in hope,
· Persist through difficulties,
· Pray…a lot,
· Give for the needs of others,
· Be hospitable,
· Bless everyone, and we mean everyone,
· Share each others’ joys and sorrows,
· Get along with everyone,
· Do not be proud, but be the same with everyone, high and low.
St. Paul also includes: hate evil, do not seek revenge, and overcome evil with good. The whole thrust of this list is a removal of focus from one’s self and one’s self-interest and placing that focus on others and their interests. All our actions are to be for the benefit of others, our thoughts are to be for the benefit of others, even those who oppose, dislike, or even hate us. St. Paul mentions to hate evil, but let us not take that as an excuse to judge others because everything else in this list precludes us from getting all judgy like that Pharisee I mentioned earlier. St. Paul is very specific in another one of his letters, the first one to the Church in Corinth, where he tells us that love is everything and that it is kind, humble, and totally selfless.[8]
The thing about a spiritual delusion is that it turns your focus inward on yourself. You may speak with the tongues of men and angels, give your body over to the fire, have colossal faith, but if we are turned inward on ourselves we no longer have the capacity to love others.[9] We really can’t see the joys and sorrows of other people because we have narcissistically turned our vision inward. How can we love or honour someone, share in others’ joys and sorrows, when we cannot see past our own noses? How can we not be haughty when our number one concern is ourselves and our own personal self-sanctity?
Let us take it one step further. What if we are so self-absorbed that when our will is subverted that our thoughts turn to revenge? What if we are so self-absorbed that we think our intellect is so much more than that of the “lesser people” we are favoured to teach? The Good News is very clear, we have become a law unto ourselves and fallen back into the delusion that we are somehow on a higher level than others, if not the delusion that we ourselves are divine. Wasn’t that Adam and Eve’s great fall, to take that upon themselves?[10] No, we are to let God make the judgement whether we have been wronged or not and to work out the recompense for it.[11] No, instead we are called to pray for our enemies, do good to them, take care of them.[12] Again, we are called to remove the focus from ourselves and to focus on the wellbeing of others, no matter who they are or what they do.
I guess if we want a one-word answer for the problem of prelest, that word would be LOVE. That attitude of selfless giving to others with no thought for ourselves, in our actions, in our prayers, in our attitudes. St. Paul was not spewing Hallmark doggerel when he stated that the greatest of everything is Love.[13] St. John is clear in his first Epistle General that love is all important, that God Himself is Love,[14] and that we are called not just to lip service, but to action.[15] To deny oneself and to follow Christ is to show His love, no matter the cost. That, my friends, is how to avoid delusion.
Through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, Saviour save us.
[1] The Greek word for the same concept is πλάνη (plani) and is a frequent topic in the writings of Eastern Monastics, particularly the Fathers of the Holy Mountain (Athos). [2] Mt. 16.16. [3] Mt. 16.21. [4] Mt. 16.22. [5] Lk. 18.9-14. [6] Mt. 16.24. [7] Rom. 12.9-21. [8] 1 Cor. 13.4-8. [9] 1 Cor. 13.1-3. [10] Gen. 3.6. [11] Rom. 12.19. [12] Rom. 12.20, Mt. 5.38-41. [13] 1 Cor. 13.13. [14] 1 Jn. 4.8. [15] 1 Jn. 3.18.
