The Twelfth Sunday after Trinity (September 4, 2022)

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 had a lunch with someone who is not Anglican recently. It was a really fun conversation and we debated theology for some time. One thing that this person was kind of perturbed about is that in sacramental traditions, the impartation of grace is tied to matter and ritual. This, he was basically contending, is a sign that we don’t truly and properly believe in grace; that we are works-based. This is of course not true. In sacramental theology, the first point we make is that God is the primary actor in the sacraments. However, because we understand that we’re creatures and God is our Creator, it’s not a problem for us to say that God uses secondary causes, like water, bread and wine, priests, and all the other material and creaturely aspects of sacraments to bring about our salvation. If we truly understand what the Church teaches about sacraments, we can see that sacraments aren’t a reason for us to boast in our works; quite the opposite: sacraments are a sign that we are completely dependent on God. It’s good for us to be reminded of our dependence on him sometimes and I think this is what St. Paul does in our Epistle reading this morning.

The section in 2 Corinthians in which our reading is ensconced is this apologetic offered by St. Paul for his ministry. St. Paul better than anyone understood this given his own story: from persecutor of Christians to one of the most profound preachers of the Gospel. “This is a true saying, and worthy of all men to be received, That Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief,” he says elsewhere. So for Paul to defend his ministry, he can’t really hold himself up on his own; he understood an important point: we, as human beings, are not sufficient of ourself. To be a creature is to be inherently limited. We can only be in once place at a time. We can only know a finite amount of data. While we like to think we can control everything about our lives, we are often not in control. And while this might cut against our pride, it’s good that we have limits because those limits are what make us “us.” You are who you are because you were born in the particular place you were at the particular time you were to your particular parents who gave you a particular education so that you could do particular jobs that were a part of your particular vocation so that you could contribute to the particular family. This is what it means to be a creature: our particularities, our finitude make us who we are but it also means we’re limited. Jude told us the other day that “when he retires from playing professional baseball, then he’ll start playing professional hockey.” Somehow, I think his limits might prevent him from doing both those things. Or even one of those things. Now, if we take the Bible seriously, the issue isn’t just that we’re finite creatures; the problem is compounded by the fact that we inherit deficincies in our nature because of the Fall. We call this Original Sin. In the preceding passage in 2 Corinthians, St. Paul describes some misadventures due do his finitude: he went to a city called Troas because he had an opportunity, but while there he couldn’t find his dear friend Titus and he “had no peace of mind.” So he went to Macedonia. Despite his limits, however, listen to what he says about this little excursion: “thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place. For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ.” Even though he maybe didn’t achieve what he hoped to in Troas, he’s confident that God still used him to accomplish divine purpose.

And this highlights the central theme for us today: our dependence on God. If we are limited by our finitude and our particularities, then we know that God is not. God is not limited like we are. He is pure being, not potential, he is not limited by space, he is omniscient, and he is in control of everything. We know this has to be true because of the very first verse in Scripture: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” This is a revolutionary sentence. In paganism, the gods occupy the same box we do; they’re just another part of the universe. They might be more powerful than we are, but they’re not omnipotent. Zeus can do a lot, throw lightning bolts, send storms, make or break people’s fortunes. But he’s limited. He’s limited by his own passions and temper, by his nagging wife Hera, by his lust for women, and the wills of the other gods. Our God isn’t like that. He’s not limited. But here’s the beautiful fact about the God of Scripture: He doesn’t leave us alone. He’s always working. And yes, it’s true that he can miraculously intervene for us in certain circumstances. But he also intervenes for us through other people, specifically through the Church. God is the primary actor when the Church acts because the Church is the Body of Christ, but he still uses secondary causes, the members, to accomplish his will. St. Paul actually makes this argument explicitly. He doesn’t brag in himself because he’s a minister and can do all these wonderful works. The opposite:” And such trust have we through Christ to God-ward: Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament;” Paul understands that his dependence is not on his own self-reliance, but on God. And this, by the way, is why prayer is so important. Prayer is a recognition of our complete dependence on God. It’s not our attempt to control him or coax him into doing what we want; it’s about adjusting our will to his will and conforming ourselves to the image of Christ.

And what our relationship of dependence tells us about God is that he will bring us to completion. To this point, St. Paul uses two examples in our passage this morning. “The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” This is the story of salvation-history. Here, St. Paul uses “the letter” to mean the Mosaic Law given to Israel by God. Its commandments are good because it showed the Israelites how to live holy lives but it was insufficient because of the state of Israel’s heart. As a result, the letter of the Law only ever brought death because it gave a standard Israel could never follow. In Galatians, St. Paul says “the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ.” The Law prepares us for Jesus who teaches to live into the spirit of the Law. We see this in the sermon on the Mount: You have heard it said do not commit adultery, do not murder, etc.; but I say don’t look at a woman lustfully or get angry in your heart. The spirit, of whom St. Paul is a minister, gives life. It’s not about the letter of the Law so much as it is about the Spirit enlivening our hearts and guiding us into truth, beauty, and goodness. So if we look at the way God has organized history, he gave the Law for a very specific purpose and it didn’t return void but found its fulfillment in Jesus Christ. We see another example of this argument when St. Paul describes the story from Exodus 34 when Moses came down from the mountain where he met with God and his face was shining so bright that he had to wear a veil when he was around other people. Paul uses this as an argument from lesser to greater: “if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away: How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious? For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory.” God was faithful to the promises he made to Israel by sending Christ; he has moved salvation history along from an epoch of death to an epoch of life in Christ and the Spirit. And so we can say if God has been faithful to his word this far, we know he will continue. Philippians 1:6 “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:”

So what does that mean for us? It means we need to cast ourselves on God, recognizing that dependence we have on him. But how do we do that? Well the most important way to do that is to pray. Prayer is about recognizing our dependence on God. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” You may have seen the quote by Soren Kierkegaard in the newsletter: the purpose of prayer is “to change the nature of the one who prays.” Mary’s prayer at the Annunciation was “be it unto me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38). Jesus prays the same prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane right before his arrest as he accepts the cup given to him by the Father, “nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42). These two prayers are model prayers for all of us because prayer is not ultimately about persuading or controlling God; Prayer is about submitting ourselves to God. So pray. Pray during the Mass. Pray the Daily Offices during the week. Pray for others and the world and your needs. When we do this, we recognize our need for God. “Almighty and everlasting God, who art always more ready to hear than we to pray, and art wont to give more than either we desire or deserve; Pour down upon us the abundance of thy mercy; forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask, but through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord. Amen.”

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