The Episcopal Church of the Incarnation
The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 11](A)
Gen. 28.10-19a
Ps. 139.1-11, 22-23
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.
Outline of a
Sermon Delivered Extemporaneously
1) “Where can I go then from
your Spirit?/ where can I flee from your presence?”
a) In Psalm 139 we encounter
poetry that is considered by many to be the most eloquent poetry in all of the psalter.
i) And this eloquence is
directed to what?
(1) To the fact that God knows
all there is to know about me, having wrought me Himself.
(2) To the fact that all of
Creation is God’s, and there is no place where I can secret myself from God,
for He will “[s]earch me out ... and know my heart.”
2) I know this psalm very well,
indeed, for I spent the Summer of 2004 as a chaplain
in a large hospice in
a) The psalm reminds us that we
are always in God’s hand, and that He knows us better than we do ourselves.
3) Perhaps the psalm features
in ministry to the dying because at death we think of judgment.
a) Judgment, as described in
our Gospel lesson, of those who will “shine like the sun in the kingdom of
their Father” and judgment of those whom the angels will “throw ... into the
furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
b) God knows our hearts,
indeed, and so when Jesus speaks of judgment–as He does throughout this whole
section of Matthew–we need to pay attention.
i) We need to pay attention
when He says, “Let anyone with ears listen!”
4) Now, I’ll admit that it is
tempting (it would almost be fun) to at this point switch into a sort of “fire
and brimstone” style of preaching.
a) I’ve always wanted to say
something like, “Who here has been to
i) To follow this up with: “You know those commercials in which it is
said, ‘What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas’?”
(1) “Wrong! God saw you there!”
(a) And then go on to preach
about damnation.
b) It’s tempting because
caricature can be attractive. Every
preacher is at some level curious about what it would be like to be Elmer
Gantry.
c) But the problem with
preaching “fire and brimstone” is that despite the fact that Jesus does clearly
warn us that judgment is real, His focus must remain our focus, and His focus
is that there is Good News to share.
i) Good News which tells us
that God wills not our damnation but our salvation.
(1) He wills our
salvation, and has sent His only Son to redeem us.
(2) He wills our salvation, and
sends His Spirit to us, that by the Spirit we may cry “Abba! Father!”
ii) The Good News is that we
have to work very, very hard to get into Hell.
5) God wills that we should be
saved. He wills that we should enter the
kingdom of heaven, and gives us foretastes of His kingdom when by His grace we
experience His presence in the eucharist; when by His
grace we can experience goodness and love; we can experience truth and beauty.
a) So how do we get to Hell?
i) We get there by going
against God’s will–His will for our salvation–by focusing on our own will.
(1) In Paul’s words from Romans,
“... creation was subjected to futility .. by the will
of the one who subjected it ...”
(a) In other words, by human
will. When Adam and Eve fell so fell all
of Creation.
(b) And in this fallen state we
can focus of our own will, to the exclusion of God, to, in Paul’s words, “live
according to the flesh”.
6) It takes a conscious act of will, it takes us working at it, for any one of us to be
damned. God does not damn, He gives us
the choice and the power to damn ourselves, and every time we try to hang
ourselves He gives us more rope.
a) But some people do
succeed. Some people work hard enough,
and focus on their selfish ends so completely that they become completely
absorbed in themselves, only to find that this fulfillment of self becomes that
outer darkness, that furnace of fire, in which there is weeping and gnashing of
teeth.
7) All of us have in some place
and in some time and in some way been to “Vegas”.
a) We’ve been to that place
where our absorption in our own means and ends has been something that we have
wanted to keep secret.
i) Only to find that, as the
psalm reminds us, there are no secrets from God.
(1) There is no “Vegas” in
creation except that heart which closes in on itself.
(a) That heart which closes
inward and says, “This is mine. This is
my secret in which I joy. This is that
place where I can go and say ‘Here, here can I fee from God’s
presence.’”
(i) And when I get there, what
do I find?
(ii) That the place where I have
fled is surrounded by a high wall that I have myself built.
1. That I have built by saying
that my will and not God’s shall control.
2. That I have built by working
hard, so hard, to frustrate what God intends.
a. If that isn’t Hell, what
is? Rather than shining like the sun in
the kingdom of my Father (rather than sharing the light of love), in Hell I
would sit in darkness, in the shade of the wall I have myself built to keep out
God’s light.
8) In the words of the psalm,
“darkness and light to [God] are both alike”.
a) And they are, for God’s will
is that His love reaches me, that I may share this
light and shine like the sun.
i) “Darkness is not dark to
[God].”
(1) But it can be to me if I so
will it, if I will my own damnation.
9) And if I focus not on myself
but on God, then what? Then I live in
hope, and “in hope we are saved”.
a) Then I have opened my ears
to listen as Jesus has taught me to listen.
i) To listen, and to say as
does the psalmist, “Search me out, O God, and know my heart.”
(1) Know my heart, that it is
yours.
In
the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.