Lent III

Ephesians 5:1-14     Luke 11:14-28

"Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one God: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might...And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart...And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes." (Deut. 6: 4-6, 8) One of the unique features of the Anglican Liturgy is that we are privileged to hear a portion of these words (known as the Shema Yisrael) every time Holy Communion is celebrated in the "Summary of the Law", thus we stand in perfect continuity with the Old Testament. We as Christians affirm our monotheistic faith, and our confidence that in Jesus Christ the Law of Moses, the writings of the Prophets and the rites of the Temple are appropriately and perfectly fulfilled.
    

The Jewish Encyclopedia has the following to say: "According to the Talmud, the reading of the 'Shema' morning and evening fulfills the commandment 'Thou shalt meditate therein day and night' (Josh. i. 8; Men. 99b). As soon as a child begins to speak his father is directed to teach him the verse 'Moses commanded us a law, even the inheritance of the  congregation of Jacob' (Deut. xxxiii.4), and teach him to read the 'Shema' (Suk. 42a). The reciting of the first verse of the 'Shema' is called the acceptance of the yoke of the kingship of God." And that is what we intend to do as well, accept the yoke of the kingship of God. And we know that it is not a burdensome thing, for our Lord Jesus Christ tells us that His yoke is easy and His burden light.
    

Our faith is one that involves not just the head or the heart, but our whole being. Thus, for observant Jews, the wearing of phylacteries (small leather boxes containing texts of the Law) on the forehead and left arm during morning prayers is a way to observe the commands of the Law and reinforce the all-encompassing nature of belief in the One, true God; somewhat akin to the practice of Christians wearing crosses, carrying prayer ropes and participating in the Sacramental life of the Church. Tangible things (bread, wine, oil, water, salt, ash) remind us that it is our whole person that is committed to living a life in Christ. The Word made flesh is not just an intellectual proposition to which we give assent. The material world is a good and not hopelessly corrupted and to be shunned and degraded, and thus the idea that it doesn't make any difference what we do "in the flesh" (for good or ill) as long as we believe correctly must needs be forsworn. If it's still languishing in there, now is an opportune time to bring your religion out of your head.
    

But, just as God can (and does) use the material world to display His greatness and generosity, so too the depths of hell have been allowed to wage war against this generosity. Consider the case of possession in today's Gospel. “And [Jesus] was casting out a devil, and it was dumb. And it came to pass, when the devil was gone out, the dumb spake; and the people wondered. But some of them said, He casteth out devils through Beelzebub the chief of the devils. And others, tempting him, sought of him a sign from heaven. But he, knowing their thoughts, said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and a house divided against a house falleth.” (Lk. 11: 14-17) There are three significant things happening in this part of the Gospel lesson that we hear today: the power of the devil is driven away and a mute person speaks, the incredulous and slow to believe are reduced to name calling and personal attack, and our Lord Jesus Christ uses forceful logic to turn the complaint of the crowds on its head.
    

As to the first point, the actual physical healing and deliverance, the Venerable Bede has the following to say: “Matthew saith that the devil, by which this poor creature was possessed, was not only dumb, but also blind; and that, when the possessed was healed by the Lord, he both saw and spake. Three miracles, therefore, were performed on this one man; the blind saw, the dumb spake, and the possessed was freed from the devil. This mighty work was then done in the flesh, but is now fulfilled spiritually every time men are converted and become believers. For from them the devil is cast out, and their eyes are given to see the light of the Faith, and their lips, which before were dumb, are opened that their mouth may shew forth the praise of God.” (Bk. 4, ch. 48, on Luke 11)
    

Three miracles were performed on this man. Perhaps it is no coincidence, then, that on the first Sunday of Lent we are presented with Jesus' 40 day fast in the desert where Satan attempts to offer him three seductions (physical, spiritual and temporal gratification), and that now on this third Sunday of Lent we are presented with three remedies to these temptations accomplished by our Lord in the life of one of His people. While the powers of darkness are limited by their creaturely status, they do know enough to goad us on to exploit our moral and spiritual weaknesses. We learn as much in the Book of Job when Satan complains that Job is only a righteous man because he is under the faithful providence of God. Take away his material prosperity, the devil contends, and he will be cast into the realms of despair and unbelief. So God allows Job to be tempted and Satan is given reign to act on his human frailties. “Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand.” (Job 1:12)
    

To be a slave of sensual desire is in a real sense to be blind to all else, save one's own desires and baser cravings. To presume on the intentions of another without speaking to them to learn the truth of the matter is also a grave injustice. To think that we can do everything on our own, that God, while benevolent, isn't really involved in the everyday business of living one's life but rather relegated to an outside 'second storey' is the ultimate desire for power. So when this man is delivered from the influence of the devil, in a real sense he is an illustration of the spiritual program that Jesus sets up for us beginning with His own 40 days in the desert.
    

But, as evidenced in the Gospel, not everyone is pleased by this miracle worked by our Lord. How strange and unfortunate it is that our fallen nature allows us to be upset at the legitimate good fortune of others. It reminds me of the story of Jonah who is quite distressed at the conversion and repentance of Nineveh. Both of these scenarios present us with an immutable truth, as explained by William Barclay in his commentary on St. Luke's Gospel: “It is by no means uncommon for people to resort to slander when honest opposition is helpless....There is nothing so cruel as slander, for it is apt to stick because the human mind always tends to think the worst and very often the human ear prefers to hear the derogatory rather than the complimentary tale. We need not think that we are free of that particular sin. How often do we tend to think the worst of other people? How often do we deliberately impute low motives to someone whom we dislike?....To think of this will not cause complacency but call for self-examination.” (Barclay, Gospel of Luke, 148)
    

And I think this opposition of the unbelievers to the person who has been delivered and to Jesus Himself is a particularly apt example for us. It is awfully easy to assume that while Jesus, being true God and true man, naturally had an easy time confounding Satan and his temptations, we of creaturely status should not be expected to fair quite so well and so give up before we have even started. But our Lord is saying that not only will we need to contend with the wiles of the devil in our own lives just as He Himself did, but that He will not leave us alone, if only we willingly avail ourselves of His assistance. I have been know for offering the following bit of spiritual direction: God will not be outdone in generosity, and facing down temptation is no exception to this rule. Our Lord even tells us as much right before today's narrative. “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?” (Lk. 11:13)
    

The third thing going on in this narrative is Jesus' logical retort about the house divided against itself. And it makes a good complement to the story of the man born blind in St. John, chapter 9. In both cases, the aftermath of Jesus' healing is explored more fully than in most of the physical healings performed in the Gospels. We get a chance to hear the reactions of those who just cannot bring themselves to believe in our Lord. From St. John's Gospel: “Then said [the Pharisees] to him again, What did he to thee? How opened he thine eyes? He answered them, I have told you already, and ye did not hear: wherefore would ye hear it again? Will ye also be his disciples? Then they reviled him, and said, Thou art his disciple; but we are Moses' disciples. We know that God spake unto Moses: as for this fellow, we know not from whence he is.” (vs. 26-29) Here again what started out as true religion has been stuffed into a box, divorced from any sort of actual, lived context and become a self-referential denizen of the intellect alone. Both Jesus' healing of the deaf mute and the proclamation of the woman in the crowd, who by the inspired words she allowed herself to say must not have been far from the kingdom of God manifest at that moment, demonstrate the necessity of the journey from the brain to the lips. In the same way, it is one thing to think that one is sorry and in need of forgiveness, quite another to say so and ask for it out loud. Per Romans 10: 9, "[I]f thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." Now is an opportune time to bring your religion out of your head.
    

Again, as the Venerable Bede says: “But, saith the Lord, if Satan also be divided against himself, how shall his kingdom stand? Because ye say that I cast out devils by Beelzebub. In saying this, he sought to draw from their own mouth a confession that they had chosen for themselves to be part of that devil's kingdom which, if it be divided against itself, cannot stand.” 
    

From these three things: deliverance of the afflicted, the contempt of the stand-offish, and the irrefutable logic of the mercy of God, I think we can take away two things: a good lesson about the tragic consequences of following our own selfish schemes to the exclusion, if not the outright contempt, of our fellow men, and, on a more positive note, that healing and forgiveness is not only possible, it is there for the asking. It is so easy to put absolute faith in our own designs, to consider the outward circumstances of the moment with no thought of the underlying consequences, to judge by appearance alone and then to think we are justified in doing so solely because of our good intentions. That is what the Pharisees did, that is what earned St. Peter such a stern rebuke from our Lord when he proclaimed his willingness to stand in the way of the events of Good Friday. Instead, as we hear in Ephesians today: “Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour. But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints; Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks.” (Eph. 5:1-4)