The Eighth Sunday After Trinity (July 21, 2024)

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

I love to play basketball. Shortly after the restrictions started lifting after COVID, my gym re-opened but the basketball court remained closed. I waited for months for them to do re-open it and finally, one day, the lock and chains were removed and we were free to go play. That first day, I was the only one on the court so I shot around for a while and then went home. The next day, people had caught on and there were games going on so I jumped in. After playing about 15-30 minutes, I went up for a layup and came down on the side of my foot, landing on top of someone else’s foot. It hurt and the popping noise it made didn’t help. I was able to get up after a minute and hobble off the court and went home. After a few weeks of hurting, I went to the doctor who told me she thought it was just a sprain, but it hurt so bad she got me an x-ray to make me feel better. Sure enough, it was a fracture in the fibular head which is kind of right behind the knee. It’s been about two years since that happened, so the fracture has healed, but sometimes that knee still hurts when I walk or run a lot. I tell you this because I think the way that the pain can linger after an injury like that has some parallels to our spiritual lives. The disordered desires that get instilled in us by original sin often remain, even after baptism has removed original sin from us; the choices that we made before following Jesus can still impact us even after we become his disciples. But what we see in our readings today is that even though we can feel those lingering effects of sin, there’s still a way out for us. And that way out is characterized by sonship.

A few weeks ago, we talked about baptism in Romans 6: “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.” This sounds victorious, and indeed it’s true: who we used to be is crucified with him, the body of sin has been destroyed, we do not serve sin. yet, if you keep reading in Romans, you eventually get to Romans 7, a chapter in which Paul desperately wrestles with the fact that, even after baptism, the Christian’s behavior includes actual sin: “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” On the one hand, we can say that sin is defeated in us by baptism and subsequently confession and our wounded nature has been healed. On the other hand, just like the pain lingers past the fracture, so we experience concupiscence, disordered desires, after baptism. My knee isn’t broken, but the effect of its previous brokenness is sometimes felt; similarly, baptism does away with sin, but the effects of sin in the form of concupiscence lives on. So what? Are things hopeless? Is there anyone to save us from this body of death?

The answer comes to us in Romans 8:1 “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” The resurrection of Christ affected not only a legal reality in which our debt is forgiven, but also brought about a formal adoption process whereby we have become sons of God. And so for all of us, whether you’ve been a Christian your whole life or only for a few days, whether you were baptized as a baby or yesterday, the starting point for any progress we make as Christians is always the fact of our identity as sons who have been adopted by God and made co-heirs of inheritance with Christ. This is what keeps us from the despair of Romans chapter 7: when I see myself and where I am now vs. what I hope to become, what I believe God’s grace can make me, I can continue to push forward by his power and might. You know in the world of personal finance, people who are in debt are told to pay off their debt in a snowball—pay off the small debts first. The reason for this is psychological: if you can pay off a balance, it gives you confidence and excitement to move forward and tackle harder, bigger debts. Again, there’s a parallel to our spiritual lives: we move forward step by step and, as we progress through “small” issues, the more we can take on the bigger things. But when it does feel like there’s no hope, we can always go to our Abba, Father, to ask for good things. James tells us that he is the source of every good and perfect gift. And Jesus reminds us that even earthly fathers give their children good things, so how much more will our heavenly Father give to us? And so we can trust him to give us whatever we need in order for us to continue becoming holy.

And how do we know that we are making progress in the right way? Anglican theologian Martin Thornton says the best way to assess our spiritual progress is through moral transformation: are we sinning less? This is a major thrust in today’s Gospel reading as Jesus gives us the criteria to assess prophetic authenticity: by your fruit you will know them. Our actions unveil who we are. So a good tree yields good fruit, not bad fruit; a bad tree yields bad fruit, not good fruit. This should give us cause for serious introspection because of what Jesus says in verse 21: “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.” Now we hear that and maybe we think there’s a contradiction between it and what we read in Romans 8. But there’s no contradiction, these are just two sides of the same coin. It’s true that we’re children of God, and it’s also true that we find ourselves in a process of becoming. On the one hand, we need to avoid laxity about this because the result would be for us to become malformed adult children who become enabled by presuming on grace. At the same time, we have to avoid the opposite reaction of crippling insecurity.

The most important thing about our life is our relationship with God and our pilgrimage to heaven. This journey entails a very real struggle with ourselves: we’re not who we’re supposed to be, we aren’t there yet. Concupiscence lingers, our flesh still wants what it shouldn’t have. But the Gospel reminds us that God’s lavish grace has made us adopted sons. As sons, he gives us the grace we need in order to make that journey. What do you do with what you have? Remember who you are. Hope for who you are becoming. And ask God for his assistance.

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