A House Divided: The Third Sunday in Lent (March 3, 2023)

Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and a house divided against a house falleth.

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” as the saying goes. As I was sitting with the readings this week, I thought of the character Boromir from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Boromir is a tragic figure because even though he’s one of the heroes recruited to help destroy the evil Ring, he sees its power and thinks he can wield this evil object for good. He is unsuccessful; the Ring corrupts what’s good, not vice-versa. In this way, Boromir illustrates a tendency in each of us to make our own version of the Faustian bargain, to try and justify our co-existence with evil so that we can accomplish some abstract good. The Scriptures are clear that this approach doesn’t work: “Walk as children of light. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.” The point today is that time’s up on co-existing with the sin and vice in our lives; if our goal is to get through Lent to Easter, from this time of penance to Resurrection, then we have to ruthlessly purge sin from our lives.

In our Old Testament reading this morning, Israel is preparing to enter the Promise Land. The land had already been Israel’s but it was currently occupied by the Canaanites, a group of people bent by evil practices like idolatry, temple prostitution, incest, and human (especially child) sacrifice. Israel was a fledgling nation and God’s chosen people and so they couldn’t co-exist with this wickedness without being corrupted. So, they were called to drive the Canaanites occupiers from the land. While the Israelites did eventually take the land, they were ultimately unsuccessful in following God’s command by driving out the Canaanites completely. As a result, they sowed the seeds of their own exile later on as the presence of the Canaanites opened them up to idolatry and many of the same crimes against humanity that the Canaanites had committed.

On the First Sunday in Lent, read the story of the temptation of Christ in the wilderness and we talked about how in that story, Jesus is being depicted as a new Israel who obeys God where the Old Testament Israel failed. Today, we see that in exorcising demons, Jesus did what Israel failed to accomplish in clearing out the land. Jesus performs an exorcism at the beginning of the reading and this elicits two reactions from those who witnessed it. The first group believes Jesus must be possessed by a demon; the second takes a wait-and-see approach by requesting more signs. The second group is an example of unbelief but that first group is not only hostile; they’re nonsensical. How can Jesus cast out demons who are on Beelzebub’s side by the power of Beelzebub? Rather, he says, when he casts out demons by the hand of God, it’s the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God. He demonstrates this by telling a story of a strong man who gets spoiled by a stronger man. In the story, the devil is the strong man who possesses a soul and he gets displaced by a stronger man, Jesus. So the devil goes out of the person and returns with seven other demons. But, here, Jesus gives a warning: if they return and are able to regain that soul, it’s even worse than the original state from which the soul was rescued. Jesus understood what Boromir and the Israelites seemed unable to understand: it’s a zero-sum game. Most of us, of course, aren’t literally possessed by demons, thanks be to God, but this doesn’t mean that we can’t fall into a very similar trap where we convince ourselves to participate with the demonic. Our Faustian bargains usually aren’t so dramatic and, perhaps, that makes them more dangerous because we make them every day in the little things and barely notice it.

St. Paul understood this zero-sum principle and applied it in his teachings masterfully. In Ephesians 5, he provides us with one of his vice lists that shows us very clearly that there are two ways we can follow and no compromise is available between them. He does this by listing triplets of vices and provides an alternative to them: you can give into fornication, uncleanness, and covetousness or you can become a saint. You can participate in filthiness, foolish talking, and jesting or you can use your words to give thanks to God. You can give into sexual promiscuity, uncleanness, and idolatry or you can receive an inheritance in Christ’s kingdom. The first way is partaking in the unfruitful works of darkness. And of course, what St. Paul provides in that list is by no means exhaustive; we should understand the works of darkness as including anything and everything that fails to imitate Christ. These actions are not only rebellions against God, but they dehumanize others and, ultimately, ourselves. We become less human when we live in the darkness. And for this reason, these works of darkness are not really desirous, even if they might appear so on the surface level. Darkness is characterized by a lack: it’s the absence of light; similarly, these works of darkness are an absence of the Good. They prevent us from being who we are supposed to be. But the second way is the way of light. To walk in the light for Paul is to imitate Christ, the light that shines in the darkness. When we imitate the light, we’re becoming who we were made to be and, in treating others as humans, not only do we call them into the light, we become more human ourselves. The light then, is a much more desirable way to be because it brings a kind of clarity and fullness. But, as Joshua tells the people of Israel as they’re getting ready to enter into the land: choose this day whom you will serve.

And this is the choice before us today. There are just a few weeks of Lent left. How will you spend it? This is the time to confront those works of darkness in our lives through the spiritual tools of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. To accomplish our goal, we must engage in a two-fold movement: on the one hand we must till the ground by getting rid of the evil that plagues us; on the other, we have to plant by taking hold of good and virtuous things. We cannot co-exist with the evil in here; it can only be fought. A house divided against itself cannot stand.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.