Mom was preparing pancakes for her sons, Kevin, 5, and Ryan, 3. The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake. Mom saw the opportunity for a moral lesson. “If Jesus were sitting here, he would say, “Let my brother have the first pancake. I can wait. “
Kevin turned to his younger brother and said, “Ryan, you be Jesus! “
Let’s take the scenario a little further. While all this was going on, Dad was getting ready for work. After breakfast, Mom got ready for work while Dad took the kids to kindergarten and daycare. The rest of the day Mom and Dad would deal not only with doing their jobs, but also with the relationships they had where they worked. Mom’s new boss hasn’t liked her from the beginning, even though she’s a wonderful employee who makes a lot of money for the company. It makes every day stressful.
Dad’s worried about their finances and has been tempted to do something just a little dishonest at work that would bring in a little more cash, but so far hasn’t yielded to the temptation. One of his employees is a very attractive woman who flirts with him a lot. He knows he could have an affair if he wanted to, but so far he hasn’t yielded to that temptation either.
After a full day of work, they both come home exhausted. There’s still work to do preparing dinner and getting the kids off to bed. Mom and Dad haven’t really had much of a conversation all day long, and yet they really don’t feel like it after everything else is done. So they just veg out in front of the television till it’s time to go to bed. The next day is pretty much the same. And the day after that.
Saturday’s spent grocery shopping, mowing the lawn, cleaning up after the hurricane, and so on. And Saturday evening there’s a big party at one of their friend’s home. After the festivities and they’ve returned home, Mom says to Dad, “Should we go to church in the morning?” Dad says, “It’s been such a tough week. I’m exhausted. Let’s sleep in.”
It all sounds pretty harmless. One small event follows another small event. One fairly trivial decision follows another fairly trivial decision, none of them amounting to much. But when you look at them as a whole package, a picture begins to emerge. Money problems, conflict in the workplace, boredom with the routine, temptations to infidelity, pressure to keep up with the Joneses, concern about how the children are doing, they’re still cleaning up after the hurricane, and everyone in the country is concerned about the victims of the hurricanes in other places as well as the victims of the greatest mass shooting that has ever occurred in this country. All of these things the realities of one week.
If you think any of this is harmless, or trivial, or insignificant, you’re badly mistaken. One decision leads to another decision, which makes the next decision a logical consequence, and before you know it, there’s a pattern that leads either to a further building of strong character in Mom, Dad, and the children, or to a weakening of the overall character of Mom, Dad, and the children.
Charles Baudelaire once wrote that the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. He does his work without showing himself. In the scenario I have painted for you, the Devil is present in making Mom and Dad think that their daily lives are basically routine, composed of small, unrelated decisions. C.S. Lewis said that “The safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”
In the parable we heard in today’s Gospel, Jesus foretells what his fate would be: to suffer death at the hands of the religious leaders of Israel. Here the Messiah had come, the one for whom all Israel had been waiting for hundreds of years, and the very people who should have welcomed him were the ones that gave him the most trouble. Was it just their own hubris that blinded them, or was Satan part of the reason why they were so opposed to Jesus? The answer is yes to both questions. When the Son of God came to this earth all of the forces of evil were marshaled against him.
Furthermore, we aren’t dealing with reality until we realize that this life is the setting for the cosmic war between good and evil. As St. Paul says in Ephesians, “We are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”
Again, C.S. Lewis said, “One of the things that surprised me when I first read the New Testament seriously was that it talked so much about a Dark Power in the universe—a mighty evil spirit who was held to be the power behind death and disease, and sin.”
When you came to church this morning, you may not have thought about it, but we were coming into the stronghold of the place where the people of God come to be healed from fighting the war in the world, to be forgiven when the world was victorious in our own lives, to arm ourselves to fight this Dark Power. Here, you’re putting on the armor that prepares you to fight this war. Here we partake of the food that strengthens us to go back to the front lines. That’s what Mom did when she exhorted her children to treat one another as Jesus would treat them. We need to live each day in the awareness of this reality, for we live in a war zone, the war between good and evil. When we live in Christ, we’re on the winning side. “The Spirit and the gifts are ours, through him who with us sideth: let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also; the body they may kill; God’s truth abideth still, his kingdom is forever.”
Sermon preached by The Very Rev. Fredrick A. Robinson
Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota, Florida
18th Sunday after Pentecost
8 October 2017