He is no unkind physician who opens the swelling, who cuts,
who cauterizes the corrupted part. He gives pain, it is true, but
he only gives pain, that he might bring the patient on to health. He
gives pain, but if he did not, he would do no good.
(St. Augustine: Sermon xxvii)
        
Last week, we studied Satan’s temptations of Jesus Christ, and Christ’s response to them. You will remember that we were interested in answering our Lenten question, Who is Jesus Christ. In rejecting the evil and cleaving to the good, Christ revealed to us who He must be in order to redeem and save us. We learned that if Christ was to save us, He must be the Son of God made Man. This, in turn, means that He must embrace our human condition and fight sin from within its nature. This week we shall come to see the nature of sin and our powerlessness over it. The way of man’s life involves manifold temptations. The same way is complicated by the seriousness of our fallen condition. Only the humility of the Son of God made Man can deliver us from the Devil’s hold over us.

This morning, we read in the Gospel that Our Lord Jesus Christ comes to the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, (St. Matthew 15. 21) to the borders of the pagan Gentile world. Jesus never went into non-Jewish territory. He would leave that for His Apostles once He had returned to the Father. Jesus’ motives should intrigue us. Jesus intends that all men should be saved. He must offer salvation to God’s chosen people first. Yet isn’t it interesting that He even finds Himself drawn to the borders of heathen nations? Today, He had just preached to His own people about how sin originates in man’s heart and soul. He said, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. (St. Matthew xv. 8) Jesus’ Jewish brethren maintained the Old Testament Law through meticulous religious observance. Outwardly and visibly, they were pious. But inwardly and spiritually, their hearts were far from Him.         

So, the Spirit leads Jesus to the borders of Canaan. A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, among his own kin, and in his own house. (St. Mark vi. 4) A Syrophoenician woman, a Greek inhabitant of Canaan, will approach Jesus. From outside of Israel, she had learned that the Jews had brought those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatics to Jesus for healing. (St. Matthew 4. 24) She had heard that Jesus’ cures were instantaneously efficacious, and she was determined to have it also. Jesus was led by the Spirit, and she wasted no time. We read that she cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil. (St. Matthew 15. 22) She comes from afar not for herself but for her daughter. She bears the burden of her daughter’s illness in her spirit. Her daughter’s misery is her misery. She will supplicate Jesus to condescend to heal her daughter. She cries out for His mercy, but we read that He answered her not a word. (Ibid, 23) Jesus is silent. St. John Chrysostom writes: The Word has no word; the fountain is sealed; the physician withholds His remedies. (Homily LII: Vol X, NPNF:I) Jesus, however, is keen to elicit from this woman a confession of faith.

The Apostles clearly cannot see what Jesus is doing. While they have been with Him for some time and have witnessed what He can do, they prefer to hoard Him selfishly, so that seeing, they see, and do not perceive. (St. Mark 4. 12) Like the pious in every age, they are consumed with what Jesus does rather than with His intention and meaning. So, they exclaimed, Send her away, for she crieth after us. (St. Matthew 15, 23) The woman has interrupted the Apostles’ experience of Jesus. They want only to be rid of this pest. Theirs is that heartless granting of a request, whereof most of us are conscious; when it is granted out of no love to the suppliant, but to leave undisturbed his selfish ease from whom at length it is exhorted. (Trench: Gospel) They will admit no impediment to their selfish ease. Jesus, however, will engage the woman, though at first, He tries and tests her with His silence. Christ is silent that the woman must be more earnest in her prayer.

Jesus finally responds. He says, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. (St. Matthew 15. 24) In St. Mark’s Gospel, He says, Let the children first be filled. (St. Mark 7. 27) In both, He means that His mission is first to the Jews because they should be the Children of Promise. Yet Jesus, the Great Physician, nevertheless begins to open this heathen woman’s spiritual swelling. The Apostles are silent. She is neither daunted, disheartened, nor disturbed. It appears that she needs Jesus with a more determined fervor and faith than the Apostles do. As audacious and brazen as she appeared to the Jewish Apostles, her faith moves closer to Jesus. The more acute the disease, the more urgent is the need for the physician’s immediate attention. Then came she and worshipped Him, saying, Lord, help me. (St. Matthew 15.25) She will insist that Jesus is her Lord and will submit to His rule. As Calvin writes, We see then that the design of Christ’s silence was not to extinguish the woman’s faith, but rather to whet her zeal and inflame her ardor. (Calvin’s Comm’s. xvii) She will not be thwarted in her entreaty.

Jesus is first silent and then discouraging. He rubs salt into her wound. Jesus says: It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs. (St. Matthew 15. 26) He calls her a dog. He hurls at her the ancient Jews’ prejudice of the Gentiles. Yet, if we look more closely, Jesus is trying to tease out of this woman not only faith but humility and meekness. Is he mocking this woman or the Jews? He knows that this woman, no matter what her race or cultural origin, possesses a faith that will put His faithful Jewish followers to shame. 
         
This Gentile is going up to Jerusalem with us, this Lent. She needs Jesus completely. She hangs upon His every word and refuses to let Him out of her grip. She will follow Him come what may. She believes that Jesus the Man comes from God. Jesus calls her a dog, and she responds. Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table. (St. Matthew 15. 27) Humility comes to her with ease. She will endure Jesus’ severe mercy and hard love. She may be a dog and not a lost sheep. But she knows herself to be dog who needs the Master’s medicine. Jesus can become her Master. I am a stray dog who, when found, will sit at my master’s feet. A dog belongs to its master. I sit at his feet but will not be cast out -under but not forsaken. I belong to thee, O Lord. She insists, Very well, let me be a dog. If you are the master, I shall eat of the crumbs that fall from the table, whose feast is meant for your chosen people. The crumbs shall be more than sufficient for my daughter’s healing. As St. Augustine says, It is but a moderate and a small blessing I desire; I do not press to the table, I only seek for the crumbs. (Serm. xxvii, vol. vi. NPNF) Her daughter is sick. If she must needs be a dog, so be it. She believes that Jesus hast the words of eternal life.’ (St. John 6. 68) Lord, evermore give [me] this bread. (St. John 6. 34) 
         
With her words, this woman storms the gates of Heaven in Jesus’ heart. Jesus says, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour. (St. Matthew 15. 28) Jesus cauterizes her wound, and her faith ensures that her daughter is healed. In the end, it is her faith that secures the healing she seeks. Faith in Jesus Christ, the Wisdom of God, and the Power of God, always obtains Jesus’ healing. This woman’s faith answers our Lenten question. Who is Jesus Christ? This woman believes in the Son of God made Man. In faith, she believed that Jesus need speak the word only and [her daughter] would be healed. (St. Matthew viii. 8) St. Mark writes that when the woman was come to her house, she found the devil gone out, and her daughter laid upon the bed. (St. Mark 7. 30) 
         
With our opening, St. Augustine reminds us that [Christ] the Good Physician gives pain, it is true, but He only gives pain, that He might bring the patient on to health. He
gives pain, but if He did not, He would do no good. (Idem) So, we must be willing to confess the truth about ourselves if the Son of God made Man is to humble Himself, come down to us, and redeem and save us. Christ comes down from Heaven to diagnose our condition and provide the cure. He intends for us to know and confess who we are –Yes, Lord, I am a dog. Matthew Henry warns us that there is nothing got by contradicting any word of Christ, though it bear ever so hard upon us. But this poor woman, since she cannot object against it, resolves to make the best of it. ‘Truth, Lord, yet the dogs eat of the crumbs…. (Comm. Matt. xv.) 

With the example of the Syrophoenician’s faith and humility, let us confess that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves. (Collect, Lent II) Let us beg deliverance from all evil thoughts that may assault and hurt the soul. (Idem) With her, let us abandon the lust of concupiscence in Gentiles who know not God. (1 Thes. i. 3) Jesus longs to find a faith that will open to His humility, His coming down to us, from Heaven to earth, from God to us as Man. Let us all admit that we are dogs. He calls us out as dogs because God calls us not to uncleanness, but unto holiness. (Idem) Jesus is always overcome by the faith of dogs who feed on His crumbs to conquer the Devil and break His hold over us. Jesus may resist us at times, but only to tease out that faith that will have Him, and Him alone as the Son of God made Man, whose humility rewards that of today’s Syrophoenician woman.  
Amen.
©wjsmartin
 

Give us Grace to use such abstinence, that, our flesh being subdued to the Spirit,
We may ever obey thy Godly Motions in Righteousness and True Holiness
To thy Honor and Glory, Who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost,
One God, world without end. Amen. 
(Collect Lent I)
 
         
One of the most important questions facing any human being who strives to know and love God is Who is Jesus Christ? The answer to the question very much reveals to us if and how God and Man can be reconciled. We seek to answer the question as our faith seeks understanding for the very practical purpose of our salvation. Who is Jesus Christ? Throughout Lent, we shall ask this question. Lent reveals Who Jesus Christ is by way of His having been tempted to be Who He is not. He was tempted not to be the Son of God as man. This means that Jesus Christ was tempted never to become the Son of God made man. Put more simply, He was tempted to redeem and save us not as Man.
 
And today’s temptation narrative by St. Matthew follows on the heels of John’s baptism of Jesus in the river Jordan when 

the heavens were opened unto Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon Him: and lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. (St. Matthew iii. 16, 17)
 
Who is Jesus Christ? Jesus Christ is the Son of the Father and anointed in the descent of the dove. Mystified mortals are mesmerized by Messiah, who has come to save us all and will defeat the enemies of our Heavenly Father. This is our hope. But what we read next confuses us. Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. (Ibid, 1) Who is Jesus Christ? Our faith seeks understanding in these words. The Spirit – the Holy Ghost, who has descended from Heaven with the Father’s blessing leads Jesus not into Jerusalem for a triumphal coronation but into the desert and wilderness for struggle, trial, and temptation by Satan. The Son of God begins the mission of our redemption with suffering! For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. (Hebrews iv. 15) 
John’s Baptism demands another Baptism, a Baptism by Fire and the Spirit. Jesus’ first order of business is to undergo the temptations that we all endure. Jesus was anointed to suffer and to be tempted, as we are called into suffering and temptation. Baptism is followed by the manifold assaults of the world, the flesh, and the Devil. Who is Jesus Christ? He is the Son of God made man. If He is to save and redeem us, as Man, He will redeem, repair, and reconstitute human nature.
         
Who is Jesus Christ? We read that when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an-hungered. The Spirit has led Jesus the Man into the isolated wilderness of the desert where He fasted successfully for forty days and forty nights. Thus, the Son of God made man, like us, is hungry. As Man, the Son of God knew real and extreme hunger. Satan tempts Man hardest when we are hungry and alone in a place of deprivation. 
         
Satan takes his cue. If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. (Idem) The Son of God, God’s Word, who brought waters out of the stoney rock (Ps. lxxviii. 16) nourishing the ancient Hebrews in the wilderness, can surely use His Divine Power to satisfy His earthly hunger by turning the flat rocks into bread. Satan tempts Jesus to prove that He is the Son of God by putting Man’s bodily needs before Divine nutriment. Who is Jesus Christ? Jesus will redeem us first by hungering and thirsting for [God’s] righteousness. (St. Matthew v. 6) The Son of God was made Man so that man might become a son of God once again.  Later, Jesus will insist Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, that….all things may be added unto you. (St. Matthew vi. 33) Submitting bodily need to the desire and love for God is the first order of business in Christ’s redemption of Man.

Who is Jesus Christ? He is the one who knows for certain that Man is tempted to prioritize earthly hunger and thirst before his need for God. But Jesus’ meat is to do the will of Him that sent Him. (St. John iv. 32,34) Jesus Christ responds to Satan, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. (St. Matthew iv. 4) With St. Paul, in today’s Epistle, Christ knows that in patience, afflictions, necessities, distresses, stripes, imprisonments, tumults, labors, watchings, and in fastings (2 Cor. vi. 4) – in the flesh, Man is forever tempted to make a false god out of earthly sustenance. Who is Jesus Christ? Jesus is the Son of God made Man, whose example calls us into a new way of life that places spiritual nourishment before bodily fulfillment. Stones are stones. Bread is bread. Yes, Man’s body needs bread, but it can never be satisfied truly until first we allow ourselves to feed on the bread of God’s Will.
         
Who is Jesus Christ? Jesus is determined to become the bread of God’s will. Satan persists and will tempt Jesus a second time to imperil His calling. Satan’s temptations prolong the hunger of the Son of God made Man. The body is deprived of food; so the soul is tempted to provoke God.  The Man is famished. Perhaps Jesus should tempt the Father to prove that He is the bread of God’s will. He trusts in God, then let Him deliver Him now, if he will have Him: for he said, I am the Son of God. (St. Matthew xxvii. 43)

Then the devil taketh Him up into the holy city, and setteth Him on a pinnacle of the temple, And saith unto Him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou thy foot against a stone. (St. Matthew iv. 5,6)
 
Satan tempts Jesus to prove His true nature as the Bread of God’s will by throwing Himself down from the pinnacle of the temple. Pious men are gathered in the court of the Gentiles, always waiting for heaven’s signs. Who is Jesus Christ? Jesus is the Son of God made Man. Grace does not destroy but perfects human nature. The Son of God made Man will not command faith from miracles, as Satan commanded bread from stones. Christ is tempted to avoid and flee His call to become the bread of God’s will for man. Man was not made to be redeemed by threatening to risk His own life with death, banking on Divine intervention. Man is a rational creature. Man’s reason and free will, the most divine attributes of his nature, have alienated him from God. The Whole Man must be redeemed as the Bread of God’s Will.  Christ must redeem man from sin. The Bread of God’s Will must suffer the effects of fallen man’s reason and free will – his sin, to make him good, true, noble, and acceptable to God once again. Who is Jesus Christ? Jesus Christ will redeem reason and free will by suffering at the hands of sinful men. Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. (St. Matthew iv. 7) The Bread of God’s Will made Man never provokes and tempts God irrationally and arrogantly for Divine approval or intervention. Faith does not seek to turn stones to bread or death into life. Faith seeks to understand sin and conquer it through suffering and sacrifice.
Who is Jesus Christ? Satan has one last temptation. Surely if Jesus is the Son of God made Man, He can still be tempted by the will to power. The Son of God made man is tempted to covet with greed the Divine Nature. The Bread of God’s Will is tempted lastly to be as God before He has endured all that He must as Man and for Man. Jesus’ last temptation is secure His own power and glory over the world. Jesus the Man is tempted to become His own god as the master of his own destiny.

Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. (St. Matthew iv. 8,9) 
 
Satan tempts Jesus to become the Bread of God’s Will as God and not as Man. The Bread of God’s Will is tempted to redeem all men as God and not as Man. The last temptation is the worst. It tempts Jesus to become not earthly bread as Man becoming not earthly but the Devil’s bread. Jesus is tempted to become one with the Devil and separated from God. Jesus is tempted to give it all up –to do evil that good may come of it. (Idem, Knox, p. 65) Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. (St. Matthew iv. 10) The Son of God has come to reveal the Father’s wisdom and truth as Man and for Man. The Bread of God’s Will must become broken bread and poured out wine, or broken body and poured out blood. Then the devil leaveth Him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto Him. (St. Matthew iv. 11) 
         
Who is Jesus Christ? The Bread of God’s Will made Man. The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. (St. Matthew xx. 28) At the end of our Gospel lesson, we read that Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him. (St. Matthew iv. 11) Luther tells us that the good angels came down from Heaven to feed Him. The Bread of God’s Will, Jesus Christ, the Man, can now be fed in body. The Bread of God’s Will can now be ministered to by angels charge concerning [Him]. The Bread of God’s Will made Man can now become the suffering and sacrifice that identifies with fallen Man’s nature to repair and redeem it. Now Christ can become our broken bread and poured out wine, our broken Body and poured out Blood. The Bread of God’s Will made Man. Food for Men Wayfaring, ever obeying [God’s] Motions in Righteousness and True Holiness (Collect), as Man for all men and their salvation.

Amen.
©wjsmartin 

Turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping,
and with mourning: and rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto
the Lord your God: for he is gracious and merciful,slow to anger, and of great kindness,
and repenteth him of the evil.
(Joel ii. 12,13)
 
         Today is the first day of Lent. Ash Wednesday marks the first of forty days of Lent, in which you and I are exhorted to fast, abstain, and repent. Tradition has it that Pope Gregory the Great ordered the custom of keeping Lent in the West in the 6th century and was the first to call today the Dies Cinerum, or Day of Ashes. Ashes in the Old Testament were coupled with sackcloth, and they were outward and visible signs of repentance and the desire to be changed by the goodness of God. In the early Middle Ages, Aelfric, the English Benedictine abbot, wrote
We read in both the Old Law and in the New Testament, that the men who repented of their sins bestrewed themselves with ashes and clothed their bodies with sackcloth. Now let us do this little at the beginning of our Lent that we strew ashes upon our heads to signify that we ought to repent of our sins during the Lenten fast.

You will notice that the Medievals were sprinkled with ashes rather than anointed with oil and ashes, as is our contemporary custom. At any rate, the outward and visible sign is meant to lead us to inward and spiritual confession, contrition, and satisfaction.
        
The three parts of penitence come to us, again, from the Middle Ages. What is always the greatest danger with the Sacrament of penance or confession is, of course, its relation to the external and visible world of other people. The danger is heralded by our Lord in today’s Gospel lesson. Jesus is speaking about fasting, but Jewish Tradition of His day linked fasting to abstinence and penance. He says,

When ye fast, be not not as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face, that thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.

Immature spirituality or bad religion is forever about keeping up appearances. Keeping up appearances is done only in relation to what other people think about us. Jesus is not interested in what others think about us but what God thinks about us. Fasting, abstinence, and penance are done in relation to God and for our betterment. The immature Christian is moved and defined by what other people think about him, or what he thinks other men ought to think of him! Our Lord makes clear that such outward and visible displays and parades of holiness are unholy and arrogant. The true meaning of penance or penitence must involve an inward turning of the heart or soul to claim and confess our sins, to be sorrowful over them, and to make amends by God’s Grace. Confession is all about the soul’s journey into God.
        
Our Lord’s admonition is not wholly dissimilar to what the ancient Greeks taught about self-knowledge. Originally, the Greeks appealed for Divine Truth at the Oracle of Delphi. From this place, tradition has it that the Seven Sages of Greece or the god Apollo, exhorted their Greek devotees with these words: Know thyself. Confession in Christianity and know thyself are really two similar concepts. In either case, we are encouraged to confess and admit who and what we are, our limitations, and our desire to be made better. Confession is self-knowledge. When we confess who and what we are, we are honest about what we have done and what we have left undone in relation to God and His goodness. When we acknowledge our limitations, thanking Him for strength, we nevertheless express sorrow or contrition over our weaknesses and failures. When we long to do better, to make satisfaction for our errors and sins, we desire to open ourselves to a process of advancement and betterment that the Divine or God alone can bring about. Neither the ancient Greeks nor the ancient Jews ever imagined becoming better without being made better by the Good or God.
        
But there is something radically new in what Jesus Christ brought into the world. As we prepare to undertake another Holy Lent that will lead us to Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday, we do well to inform our confession, contrition, and satisfaction with the remarkable facts of Christ’s most holy Incarnation. With the ancient Greeks and Jews, there was always the need for making atonement externally and visibly, through the offering up of sacrificed animals, to appease the Divine wrath or displeasure at man’s sins and failures. That the ancients could never make full atonement for sins is obvious from the fact that they sacrificed animals for as long as they lived. But even today, with Christ’s exhortation to a deeper and more personal relationship with God, our Lord is preparing us for His own Sacrifice, which would eradicate the necessity of all others. By rooting and grounding confession, contrition, and satisfaction with the Father, Christ is laying the groundwork for what He is always doing for us in His lifelong journey up to the Cross of His love.
        
Christ’s whole life is a fasting that always involves confession, contrition, and satisfaction. Of course, Christ might be tempted by sin but eschews it and cleaves to the Good. Christ knew no sin. But still, His whole life takes on our confession of sin, sorrow over sin, and satisfaction for it. Christ knows us and He knows our sin. He alone, therefore, can take it on, bear all its ugly effects, endure it, and finally conquer it. He is our confession of sin, our sorrow over sin, and He makes atonement and satisfaction for it. He does what we cannot do to establish a new pattern and model for the new life with the Father. He is doing what the first Adam should have done but could not do. He puts Himself in our shoes and walks us back to the Father who seeth in secret but will reward us openly. (idem) Again, as St. Paul says, in his own enigmatic way, For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. (2 Cor. v. 22) In some mysterious way, the Word of God made flesh, was able to suffer and endure our sin, express a sorrow over it that we cannot, and make satisfaction for it in a way that is beyond our fallen nature’s capability. This is the satisfaction that the God-Man, Jesus Christ, makes for us. He satisfies the need for sinful man to be returned to God. He takes on our sin, takes in our sin, allows our sin to have its best go at himself, and He finally conquers it through the purity of His heart and nature.
        
Today, Christ invites us to commence a Holy Lent. Our fasting and abstinence, our confession, contrition, and satisfaction must be done in and through Jesus Christ. In this season, we shall be invited to participate in the Salvific Life of our Lord. This means that our pious dispositions and intentions must be rooted and grounded in the One whose suffering and sacrifice alone give all meaning and hope to our redemption. In Gesima Tide, we learned to journey with faith that seeks understanding. Our faith believes that Christ has established a relation to the Father that He alone could effect. Fasting and abstinence enable us to make a good confession, contrition, and satisfaction.  Our pious exercises have eternal merit only through what Christ has done for us. Christ’s fasting and abstaining from the world, the flesh, and the Devil lead to the suffering and death that will win our salvation. Christ’s confession, contrition, and satisfaction while expressing no sin on His part, will be taken on by Christ as a confession of sin for us and on our behalf, contrition and sorrow for sin for us and on our behalf, and He will make satisfaction for us and on our behalf. In Christ alone, can we find the right relation of ourselves with our Heavenly Father. In Christ alone, can we find satisfaction for our sins, as He alone can return our humanity to God and re-present human nature to God for recreation and redemption.
        
Now, I realize, this is all very difficult to understand. But if we try to believe and imagine that He becomes something for us so that we might become something beautiful for God, we might find it a bit easier. We end all our prayers with the words through Jesus Christ our Lord. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, we believe that we shall have the confidence to be accepted by the Father, forgiven by the Father, resurrected by the Father, and redeemed and atoned to the Father.  Through Jesus Christ our Lord, we believe that we can

Submit ourselves to God, Resist the devil, and he will flee from us. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to us. Cleanse our hands, as sinners; and purify our hearts, as double minded. Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let our laughter be turned to mourning, and our joy to heaviness. Humbling ourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift us up. (St. James iv. 7-10)

If we do this, our faith will find understanding in Jesus Christ, who has done for us what we could not do. If we do this, our fasting and abstinence, our confession, contrition, and satisfaction shall derive all efficacy from the good work of Jesus Christ for us, from the Father, and through the Holy Ghost. 
Amen.
©wjsmartin
 
 
          
        
 

And his disciples asked him, saying, What might this parable be?
(St. Luke viii. 9)

We said last week that the Gesima Season is all about embracing the self-discipline that will help us to keep a more holy Lent. Part of that discovery involves a real effort at persevering in our pursuit of understanding what Jesus Christ teaches us. Last week, we began our pursuit with Jesus’ Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard. As Archbishop Trench remarks, Jesus uses parables to withdraw from certain hearers the knowledge of truths which they were unworthy or unfit to receive. (Notes on the Parables, p. 7) Of course, being unfit or unworthy to receive means that their souls were neither ripe nor ready to think and pray about the truth. And in an age as intellectually uncurious and slothful as ours, this might seem to register as highly insulting. But we must remember that Christ, like Plato and Aristotle before Him, not to mention the Jewish prophets, was intent upon thinking faith. Thinking faith is wholly necessary to our salvation. By using parables, then, Christ leads men’s faith to search for meaning and understanding. With parables, much effort is required to move from the external and visible realm to the inward and spiritual.  

Notice, too, that the parables of the New Testament always make use of earthly and human illustrations to teach the truth. Jesus uses parables that are familiar enough to human life to reveal the moral truth and to elicit the willing of it for the sake of His Kingdom. Pope Benedict XVI says that Jesus can speak openly about the Kingdom of God to others or all sorts of people. But to those who will follow Him and become His disciples, He speaks in parables, precisely to encourage their decision, their conversion of the heart…. St John Chrysostom says that ‘Jesus uses parables to draw men unto him, and to provoke them and to signify that if they would covert, he would heal them” (Idem, cf. Homily on the Gospel of Matthew, 45, 1-2). Parables encourage us to think about what we believe, to discover the true meaning, and to will the truth of it all in our lives. Parables stir wonder, asking, seeking, and knocking. The man who seeks out their meaning is the one who desires to know and find happiness in the discovery of a truth that, at first, remains hidden to him. In the parables, each of us is given the opportunity to follow Jesus and to discover God’s hidden meaning, beneath the superficial layers of an otherwise emotional and appetitive existence.

Think about how very hard it is to decide to follow Jesus, to find the meaning in his Parables, and to embrace the truth for our lives. Last week, we prayed for the temperance that runs after God’s justice. This week, we are reminded that self-discipline is no easy business. This morning, St. Paul takes up the point as he addresses a community of new Christians in Corinth who are being swayed by false prophets to believe that no moral effort or self-discipline is needed at all. They were telling St. Paul’s Corinthian converts that he was blowing the process of conversion out of proportion. True Christianity, they insisted, involves really nothing more than a kind of new-age mysticism that assents to the truth without any need for applying it to human life. True Christianity, they insisted should involve an easier, softer way that shouldn’t command any moral effort or suffering at all. 

But St. Paul respectfully disagreed. St. Paul had digested the Parables of Jesus. For Paul, the life of Jesus Christ itself was a Parable intended to lead men to the long and hard study that should elicit imitation! Far from wishing to justify himself, St. Paul even desired to use his life as a kind of parable that might lead other men into the imitation of Christ. Remember, the parable uses real human experience to carry the seeker’s mind into spiritual wisdom. St. Paul’s life is used as a parable to teach his flock what Christian conversion entails. He shows us that true discipleship requires the same effort that discovers the meaning of any good parable and applies it. He asks, Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more; in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck…in perils of robbers, in perils of waters, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen…in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness…(2 Cor. 23-27) St. Paul’s conversion and discipleship involved running the race with temperance in all things to obtain an incorruptible crown. In other words, true conversion and discipleship will demand the training and discipline for running a spiritual race. This will require suffering and toil. As Paul suffered to die to himself and come alive to Christ, he was rejected by the outside world. Paul knew that the world and its pleasures threaten the presence of Christ within. Who is weak, and I am not weak (Cor. xi. 29), he asks? This business of becoming a Christian and staying the course are as real as the parable that his own life reveals. In other words, it hurts. Yet, he concludes, that the end justifies the means. If I must needs glory, I will glory in the things which concern mine infirmities. (2 Cor. xi. 30) The parable of Paul’s experience teaches us that with prudence and in humility Christ comes to implant God’s hidden Word, which is to be known and obeyed with the deepest sense of honor and privilege.     

St. Paul’s life and witness comprise a parable for us all. But why were his Corinthian converts so easily swayed by new teachers with a message of comfort and ease? I think that we can find all or part of the answer in this morning’s Gospel Parable of the Sower. Jesus tells us that A sower went out to sow his seed. (St. Luke viii. 5) At first, some fell by the wayside; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. (Idem) Some of the Corinthians had heard God’s Word superficially; the soil of their souls was like the wayside, trodden down by the ongoing traffic and business of this life so that they could not hear the Word. They had exposed their hearts as a common road to every evil influence of the world, till they had become hard as the pavement, till they had laid waste the very soil in which the Word of God should have taken root…(Parables, Trench, p.60) Such men, in every age, are always prey to the Devil and his minions since they live in a world that has been hardened, cold, and indifferent to the Word of God in Jesus Christ.

Next, …some [of the seed] fell upon a rock; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture. (Ibid, 6) Others had hearts like gravely rock. For them, the Word of God in Jesus Christ was first received with joyful expectations because it seemed so full of immediate gratification. They prematurely anticipated its benefits without counting the cost of growing the seed in the soul. They fell away because they would work out [their] salvation….with fear and trembling. (Phil. ii. 12) Salvation, they soon discovered, is a parable of real life, full of pain and suffering, doubt and confusion, hard labor and effort. Thinking is painful and costly. Like the sun scorching the blade that has no depth in the earth, these men’s hearts [are] failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth….(St. Luke xxi. 26) 

Next, we read that some [of the seed] fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it. (Ibid, 7) Perhaps not a few of the Corinthians honestly received God’s Word but choked and killed it with cares and concerns of this life. Here the Word grew for a season but only alongside inner anxiety and fear over the cares, and riches, and pleasures of this life (St. Luke viii. 14) that killed the growth of the Word within the soul. They were crushed, as the Gospel says, for the old man was not dead in them; for it may have seemed dead for a while…but unless mortified in earnest, would presently revive in all its strength anew. (Ibid, p. 65) These thorns and briars take the form of earthly happiness, to be found or lost. In either case, they had neither been killed nor banished from the soil of the soul, and so the Word could not grow. One or all these kinds of hearing, might explain what happened to St. Paul’s young flock and what can happen to us.

Finally, today’s Parable concludes with, And other [seed] fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundredfold. (Ibid, 8) The Parables are always about real life. In real life, seed can grow up effectually only in deep, dark soil that has been weeded and fertilized. Thus, in the soul, the seed of God’s Word can grow in our hearts only with much care, cultivation, and determined effort. Like St. Paul, we must expect both punishment from without and suffering from within if the Word of God in Jesus Christ is to spring up and bear fruit in our souls. With reason, each one of us can see the temptations that threaten the meaning and operation of God’s Word in this morning’s Parable. With St. Paul, we must proclaim, If I must needs glory, I will glory of the things which concern mine infirmities. (2 Cor. xi. 30) To will the good against all temptations is to find glory in the process.

In admitting that we are weak, Christ responds to us with the love that alone can grow His Word. God has made the soul; God plants His Word in it to save us. If we begin to hear God’s Word, to clear and cultivate the soil of our souls with sorrow and repentance, to tend the seed with carefulness and devotion, and not superficially and carelessly, by God’s grace we shall bring forth fruit with patience. (St. Luke viii. 15) Then you and I shall become a parable, where we hold the Word in earthen vessels. And we can ask with Milton:

…What if earth
Be but the shadow of Heaven, and things therein
Each to other like, more than on earth is thought? 
(Paradise Lost: v, 574-576)
 
Earth is a parable for the soul. In this morning’s Collect, we pray that the soul might be defended against all adversity. (Collect) We are protected against all adversity when our souls, in all humility, suffer to know the Word and will it by God’s Grace alone.  
 
Amen. 
©wjsmartin