Easter V + May
14, 2006 + St. Paul’s Church, Lake James
+ In the Name of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Today, a focus of this sermon is something we don’t often talk
about in the Episcopal Church, although some other churches are very concerned
about it. It’s something most Episcopalians don’t even think about very much,
although, at least in theory, we do believe it. The name of what I am talking
about is “heresy.” Consider for a moment.
What does that word, “heresy” mean to you? What connotation attaches to it for
you?
For many conservative Christians, heresy can be beliefs which are
not only wrong, but dangerous since they may subvert true religion and
make an on-going relationship with God more difficult, if not impossible. So,
they would say, heresy is not just to be avoided, but actively repudiated
by all right-thinking Christians. At the opposite end of the religious spectrum,
those called “liberals” usually have quite a different view. For them, heresy
may seem to be daringly heroic, naughtily exciting, and, at times, a weapon to
be used against beliefs or practices which they think are based on unthinking,
blind acceptance of formalistic or authoritarian religion. As usual, a
traditional Anglican view tends to see some truth in each extreme position, but
also finds weaknesses in each.
Before you begin to wonder if Father Zadig has become confused
and instead of a sermon, is giving a lecture intended for a seminary class in
theology, let me tell you what brought this sermon into being. It began last
Sunday when the Epistle bothered me, made me uncomfortable, and even had me
squirming a bit in my seat. I wondered what others in church thought as they
heard the reading, but then, the rest of the liturgy distracted me and I forgot
all about it. That is, I forgot until I studied the readings for today, and then
all those uneasy feelings of last week came flooding back. In case you have
forgotten last week’s Epistle (or perhaps weren’t even in church last Sunday)
let me read some of what it was that upset me. From Chapter 3 of the First
Epistle of John: “No one who abides in God, sins!”
I don’t know about you, but when those words were read, I
wanted to look for a place to hide, and that’s hard to do if you’re the priest
presiding at the Mass!
This morning as we heard more of John’s Epistle, there was
more of the same! “Anyone who hates is a
murderer! Anyone who does not love, abides in death!”
And then, in today’s Gospel, our Lord says “Whoever
has my commandments and keeps them, that’s the person who
really loves me.” Finally, as if to make it all more
troubling, in the Collect for today, the Church has us pray that God would grant
us so perfectly to love Jesus that we will “steadfastly follow in his
footsteps!” It’s doubtful that anyone here this morning has ever been able
to do anything “perfectly” – even including loving Jesus, and, as far as
being “steadfast” – that is never wavering, few, if any of us are likely
to be able to claim that, either! So, when it comes to keeping God’s
commandments perfectly, not even our patron Saint, Paul, could claim that,
putting us, I think, in the company of the vast majority of human beings. It’s
not that we don’t care, or don’t try, but that at times, we really botch
things up! So, Saint John’s statement that “no one who abides in God, sins”
can make us feel as if we are people who just don’t belong, people very much
on the outside looking in. Have you ever found yourself wishing you could edit
the Bible and just leave out some troubling texts?
Well, what does all that have to do with “heresy?”
In traditional
theology, “heresy” is not so much a false teaching as it is taking one part of
the truth and proclaiming it as if it, and it alone, is the complete truth. It’s
as if you were to take a slice of apple pie and insist that that single
slice was, in fact, the whole pie – that there was no reality to any other parts
of the pie.
Going back to St. John’s Epistle, if we simply say that no one
who abides in God sins, we have a problem. First of all, we know that we,
who surely hope we “abide in God” do sin. Secondly, as we get to know our fellow
Christians, we realize that they sin, too! So we are left with a teaching which
doesn’t seem to correspond with reality. But then, if we look at the first
chapter of the very same Epistle, we find these words:
“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and
the truth is not in us. But, if we confess our sins, God is faithful and
just, and will forgive us!” So, in the very same letter,
St. John includes two seemingly contradictory statements: (1) that no one
who abides in God sins and (2) that all of us sin, or, in his own words,
if we even think we haven’t sinned, we’re just fooling ourselves!
Great truths are always paradoxical, containing within themselves
many balancing, sometimes competing or even seemingly contradictory aspects.
Orthodoxy, true Christian orthodoxy, is far more complete than the
partial and often simplistic positions which constitute heresy. So, in that
light, let’s go back to our consideration of St. John’s statement that “no one
who abides in God, sins.” If we analyze what is going on in us when we sin, and
what sin is, St. John’s words make sense. In moral theology, the
definition of sin is “a free and deliberate choice to reject what is known to be
God’s will in favor of doing what one wants.” Let me repeat that. Sin is a
free and deliberate choice to reject what is known to
be God’s will in favor of doing what one wants.” In other words, one
cannot sin by accident! It takes a free and definite choice for something to
be a sin. We can certainly do bad things by accident, or without intending to do
them, but to sin we have to know something is against God’s will and choose to
do it anyway. So, when we reject God’s will and choose our will instead, we are
not “abiding in God” – we are not seeking or perhaps even concerned with
doing God’s will. We are just doing what we want to do. Fortunately, by God’s
grace (and at least at times by our own desires) few if any of us stay in that
state of self-centeredness and rebellion. Instead, we tend to live our lives as
if we were yo-yos, choosing God, rejecting God, choosing God, rejecting God, and
on and on. So it really does make sense to pray for the grace more truly, more
consistently, or, as the Collect puts it, more perfectly to know Jesus to be the
Way, the Truth, and the Life which will then strengthen our desire more
steadfastly to follow His way rather than ours.
I suspect I’ll
always have a negative reaction to such bald statements as “no one who sins
abides in God” (at least, at first) and so may you. But I hope you’ll remember
(and I hope I’ll remember too) that those words, while quite true, express only
part of a larger truth, so that making judgments or reaching conclusions based
on Biblical texts while ignoring other equally true Biblical texts is not only
wrong, it’s heretical!
So, is “heresy” a
terrible danger or a daringly open way to see reality? I suggest the answer is
“neither of the above.” Heresy is just an inadequate and incomplete way of
expressing the Christian religion, and I can’t imagine anyone being willing to
settle for that. Can you? Well, Good News fellow sinners and fellow lovers of
God. We don’t need to!
+ In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit.
The Reverend Alfred T. K. Zadig
