Episcopal Church of the Incarnation

West Point, Mississippi

The Third Sunday in Lent (B)

Exodus 20.1-17 Psalm 19 1 Corinthians 1.18-25 John 2.13-22

May the Lord be in my mind, on my lips, and in my heart, that

I may rightly and truly proclaim His holy Word. Amen.

“What sign can you show us for doing this?” (John 2.18) The question asked of Jesus is the same question the world asks of the Church and of all people of faith. It’s a variation on the reputation of folks from Missouri, expressed as “Show me”. The language of the psalm today may sing that “The heavens declare the glory of God” and that “The law of the Lord is perfect and revives the soul”; the psalm may go on to declare that “The fear of the Lord is clean and endures forever,” but the world prefers to rely on worldly wisdom. In the gospel story, those who question Jesus don’t engage with what He tells them, dismissing His teaching with the words, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” (John 2.20)

Which brings us to what St. Paul has to say about worldly wisdom: “[T]he word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing ...” (1 Cor. 1.18), and that the wisdom of the world has been rendered foolish by God. So, who’s being foolish? We who claim to follow Jesus Christ may quote Paul with some satisfaction, but those who do not believe will say that we are being self-referential only, and that quoting Scripture to prove any point proves only the depth of our own folly. Those who debunk faith indeed claim that God is Himself no more than an idea in our own minds.

The British biologist Richard Dawkins has gotten quite a lot of press in the past year. Richard Dawkins is a notable scientist, holding a chair in biology at Oxford University. His best-selling book The God Delusion argues that science in general, and evolutionary science in particular, has made belief in God unnecessary and obsolete. Indeed, Dawkins argues that you cannot be an intelligent scientific thinker and still hold any religious beliefs. As I said, he’s a best-selling author and a notable scientist, although I find that his arguing about theology makes about as much sense as my buying The Field Guide to British Birds and then claiming to be an expert in biology.

So, do we just accuse each other of folly or delusion? Do we, as people of faith, then expect that there is an “either/or” opposition between finding authority in Scripture and what science has to teach us, for example, about the evolution of life forms? Let’s be careful. If we reject science then we reject that in His order of Creation God has given us enquiring minds that allow us to better understand life through observation. On the other hand, if like Dawkins we argue that “evolution proves that God does not exist,” then we ignore the scientific method, for such a statement does not involve a testable hypothesis–it fails to follow the scientific method. In other words, despite being made by an eminent scientist, such a statement is no more than a statement of that inverted faith which atheism is, which takes us right back to Paul’s description of judgment in Romans: that those who deny God “claim[] to be wise [and are thus] fools ...” (Rom 1.22).

Believers do not claim to be wise in the world. With Paul we “proclaim Christ crucified” (1 Cor. 23). We say that God’s plan of salvation is not revealed by human wisdom, and in this we see that the truth which God reveals is external to our own knowledge. But that is not the same thing as saying that human knowledge is to be rejected. Science describes the world, even if it cannot describe salvation. Science flows from the Reason with which God has enlightened our minds, and if scientific observation and theory point toward God’s process of creation being effected in an evolutionary manner that is in no conflict with a mature faith, for even the account found in Genesis describes a process of creation which takes place in stages, and the Bible itself informs us at Psalm 90.4 that “... a thousand years in [God’s] sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.”

Let’s not be threatened by human knowledge; indeed, let’s celebrate it, but let’s recognize that human knowledge has limits. Again and again we see that if we rely on human knowledge only we end up in a world in which self-interest alone rules. It's human nature to focus on the self first, and to do wrong even when desiring to do right, leading the psalmist to pray, "Above all, keep your servant from presumptuous sins; let them not get dominion over me" (Ps. 19.13). And what does God do? He gives us His only Son, the one who is without sin, to take away the sins of the world and to rescue us from this life of death, when we repent and turn to the Lord. In the confession we make weekly, we "... acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness ... the remembrance of which is grievous unto us." We pray that we may ever "serve and please [God] in newness of life,” by and through the merits and intercession of that same Son whom God gave for us. Having made this confession, before receiving the most Holy Eucharist we acknowledge that if we trust in our own righteousness our taking Communion is presumptuous, and that we must trust in the manifold mercies of God.

Notice the extreme contrast between the mind and heart that confesses fault and prays for God's mercy, and the mind and heart of the one whose actions and words broadcast that he is a "law" unto himself. Once I accept that I don’t make the rules, then hearing the Ten Commandments is of more than just academic interest. I recognize that there are rules, and that they apply to me, however much I may wish for unfettered freedom-of-action.

Compare the mind and heart of the follower of Jesus Christ with the way of the world. In this so-called Postmodern world, actions and words display symptoms of reference to the self at the expense of each other, and on the here-and-now instead of the eternal. The mind focused only on what's current ignores thousands of years of human history and two thousand years of Christian witness. The mind focused on self-actualization only says, "I'm the most important person in the world, and whatever you have to say about life doesn't matter unless I agree with it." The self-focus and self-interest which are the way of the world make foreign to many a psalm which says, "The fear of the Lord is clean and endures forever; the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether” (Ps. 19.9).

"Righteous altogether." Righteous. "We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness ..." Compare and contrast yet again: As followers of Jesus Christ we not only do not trust in our own righteousness, but unlike the world we recognise that righteousness exists. We recognise that there is a difference between what is good and what is evil, and that it is God and not us who defines that difference. In other words, we don't make the rules, but pray that these laws–which define our relationship and duties to God and our relationship and duties to each other–may be written on our hearts.

Maybe it would be nice to be able to make the rules, to be able to get out of bed one morning and say, "I'm a little short of cash today, so I guess stealing is OK for me." But the problem is that when Adam and Eve ate of the tree, they may have gained the knowledge of good and evil, but they did not gain the wisdom needed to use that knowledge. That wisdom belongs to God, and lacking that wisdom human beings chase after a fantasy of no rules at all, of being little gods and goddesses who make their own "rules", and so have perfect freedom. And what is the result? This fantasy of perfect freedom becomes the slavery to sin, and taken to an extreme a mind which says “I decide what is good” can result in the atrocities of the Nazis, the Bolsheviks, and the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge (in which millions were executed for such "offenses" as trying to express love for a family member).

When we look not to heaven but to ourselves to define what is right and good, the result is slavery. When "truth" is defined only by personal experience and self-reference, the only "law" is that of self-interest, and self-interest will always end up in a set of circumstances in which duties to God and to each other are forgotten or ignored. And who will free us from this slavery, this slavery to sin in which God and our neighbor are forgotten or ignored? Thanks be to God, by faith we are not perishing. The message of the cross is real to us, a message which informs that human wisdom may not reveal salvation, but God’s wisdom does.

Lent may be the season in which we “acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness,” but it is also a time in which can say, "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" We pray with the psalmist to be cleansed from secret faults and kept from presumptuous sins, but like the psalmist we also declare that the law of God is to be desired more than gold, that by God's law we are enlightened, that in keeping God's law there is a great reward. And what is this reward? The gift of God Himself. God to guide us, God to save us; God Himself to demonstrate that where the world may see folly He offers loving redemption.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son,

and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.