SERMON FOR THE THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EASTER
May 02, 2004
MISSION OF OUR LADY OF WALSINGHAM, CORONA, CALIFORNIA

by: Rev. Fr. Richard L. Stapp

    From the Epistle: "Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul."

    This spare line of scripture is loaded with Christian ideal and belief It encapsulates our dilemma of how to live as Christians and citizens of heaven; yet slog our way through the bogs of our mortal life here on earth. Peter calls us strangers and pilgrims. And so we are indeed strangers and pilgrims; and particularly so in the post modern world reeling about almost totally drunk on the wine of secular license.

    Karl Marx called religion the opiate of the masses, meaning that he believed religion, especially Christianity, made humanity socially irresponsible, luring suffering mankind into a sort of spiritual stupor that inclined us to tolerate social and economic injustice while anticipating the glories and satisfactions of heaven.  His antidote was a social paradise that resembles a human ant colony dedicated to and solely for the preservation and continuation of the nest into an eternity of gathering, consuming, procreating, and dying.  Marx' successors put a lot of emphasis upon the dying part by getting rid of millions who did not share this vision of an earthly paradise. But, no matter, the entire whacko scheme ended up on the trash bin of history in our own lifetimes.

    Marx had it wrong about Christians as well. Christians are aliens in this world to be sure; but we are not otherworldly in our sense of our moral obligation for others that resides in our Lord's command to love our neighbor as ourself. Christians who forget that other Christians are fellow travelers in this world and ignore their well being fall into heresy and apostasy. Christians here on earth, as it has been said, are a colony of heaven. And that colony is under constant siege.

    Saint Peter warns us against fleshly lusts that war against the soul. Fleshly lusts does not mean the simplistic temptations of sex that seems to inflame the rhetoric of many protestant preachers. King David, after all, used murder to cover up his lechery; and although he was rightly punished for his outrage, the crime was not the essence of David's role in God's revelation.

    Peter is referring to a wide range of distractions that divert us from our duties and obligations as the citizens of heaven. These are the temptations that aggravate the over bearing ego of mankind and make us come to believe that we are self-sufficient and therefore independent of God.

    There have been times in the past when Christianity drifted into a mystical view of our earthly existence resulting in an abdication of moral responsibility for the behavior of government, such was the case in Imperial Russia in the centuries before the Bolsheviks came to power.

    Peter requires us to have an honest conversation with unbelievers (Gentiles in his reference). That honest conversation manifests itself in good works that mark us as Christians and the children of God.

    Last Sunday, at St. Mary Magdalene, the sermon focused upon a parallel idea of the decline of Christian culture; and the inculcation of that culture as a societal norm is the true focus of Peter's Epistle for this Sunday.

    There has been and continues to be a precipitous decline in the world ethos that has been the inspiration for our western civil zation for centuries. This refers to that Christian based philosophical and social ethos that has given birth to the great humanistic and democratizing ideals that became western civilization that has influenced and changed most of the world. The ideas of the worth of the individual (love thy neighbor) and the dignity of each of us as a child of God is rooted in Christian love meaning the love of the commandments of God.

    Christians give effect to their spiritual conversion in their conduct toward each other and in their support of the state in its role as the principal physical restraint upon evil and lawlessness.
Peter is not advocating slavish submission to the government; but rather a recognition that government, properly conceived and orchestrated, will act to preserve law and order over and against the chaos that would and has ensued in every instance where there has been a breakdown of governance.

    Christians should not submit to an unlawful and evil governance, and indeed even in these post modern times Christians have been sent to prison for obeying God and not men; and that is as it should be.

    Freedom itself is a particularly nasty temptation for the soul of the Christian. One of the aspects of gnosticism is a heresy known modernly as antinomianism. Antinomianism is an idea, not dead and gone in past ages by a long shot, that conversion to the Gospel or sanctification frees the Christian from the obligation to observe the moral law. Ina purely gnostic sense this is the idea that conversion by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ renders physical behavior or material consequences irrelevant or um po nt because the material world is separate from and has nothing to do with the spiritual world.

    In the early 16th century in Germany, a close relative of this idea arose during the protestant reformation; and particularly among the Lutherans; where a colleague of Luther named Johannes Agricola came up with the idea that held that salvation by faith alone negated the obligation to observe by works the moral law. Agricola may not have intended such a literal invitation to immorality but he never recanted of this idea either. Luther hi self tried to downplay this rather bizarre interpretation of the consequences of salvation by faith alone with varying success.

    In any event, antinomianism had a considerable following among the Calvinists and was a popular idea among the followers of Oliver Cromwell in England.

    St. Peter, on the other hand, commands us to converse in good works in order that our conduct will glorify God. The Apostle John told us in his general epistle of a couple of Sundays ago that a Christian is defined by his faith in our Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God. This, in turn, inspires the Christian to love his fellow Christian and to keep the commandments of God. Therefore, true Christians cannot operate as denigrators of the commands of God by avoiding obedience to them. In fact, keeping God's commandments is an integral aspect of being a Christian.

    Moreover, Christians are law abiding citizens of the world as well. Peter tells us to submit to every ordinance (meaning, of course, those laws that are not contrary to God's commands) for the Lord's sake; whether the Emperor's command or that of his subordinate governors. Peter is using contemporary references to the government of the Roman Empire as they are the only references that he had at hand. But, whether to Romans or in our own time and place, it does not matter. We are expected as Christians to obey the law and abstain from evil even if we are only temporary residents in this world and true citizens of a heavenly kingdom.

    Christians should keep in mind that submission to any governmental authority must always be in the service of God and not for the state because the state has no value in and of itself; and never will. Caesar's demand for a pinch of incense, as it were, is still intolerable because it represents an act of worship and we are forbidden to worship idols.  

    In Byzantium it was sometimes difficult to distinguish between the Church and the state. And to the extent that the church becomes a participant ii secular culture it probably has lost a proportionate degree of its religiosity.

    Honor all men. Love the brotherhood Fear God.  Honor the King. The honor of all men is to see our fellow human beings as Christ saw them. In the Christian perspective our fellow human beings are distinguished by their unique creation by God and not as they are classified by title, position, race, or creed. The Christian's attitude judges less from externals than it does from the mere fact that our Lord is a loving God of infinite compassion.

    Loving the brotherhood is the genuine affection that Christians have toward one another as children of God and co-heirs of the Kingdom. Christians should regard each other with the same respect mandated by Jesus himself:  Love one another as I have loved you; with a deep indulgence for differing opinion so long as that opinion is consistent with the gospel. Too often Christians are ridiculed because we will not accept as truth those heresies propounded by the profane that mock the gospel and refute our Lord's plain instruction. Our respect for other Christians is not diluted by our objections to their moral syncretism.

    The fear of God is another thing altogether. It is certainly different from honoring the king which is the command linked with it. First the fear of God. Fear of God does not mean a cringing worshiper who anticipates getting zapped if they don't get the prayer just right and it does not mean servility either. Moreover, it does not mean a syrupy sentimentality stereotyped as the timid but kindly pastor or parish priest. The fear of God is respect grounded in love. As Proverbs says, the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.

    There is a tendency rooted in pride which underlies every endeavor undertaken by humanity to exalt the human ego as the source of inspiration and perfection. The cosmos are examined in minute detail producing scores of theories as to how matter came into existence and why it behaves as it does; or some cases as it does not behave.

    The fear of God is the Christian's spiritual understanding that all existence is dependent upon God for its being. There is absolutely nothing in the heaven or in the earth that does not begin, continue, and end in God. Our humanity is purposed to serve God in an eternity that is at one and the same time majestic and mystical. We have never not been citizens of heaven which is our true home with our creator. We get only a gh se of the enormity of the glory when we scan the sky on a clear night and are mesmerized at the magnificence of creation.

    The fear of God is reverence mediated by love. Kings, or their modern alter egos, get deference as agents of God for particular purposes, but God gets the reverence and the worship.
Those who do not fear God are those who run after false gods created in the imagin tion of their minds to validate or warrant pride and decadence. They celebrate social schemes that proclaim that economic well being is the only value worth the effort of philosophy because spiritual well being and visions of the heavenly feast can hardly put din e on the table.

    Those who do not fear God quickly become morally confused. A fact demonstrated in one history after another down through the annals of time. The moral sickness of human pride and envy leads inevitably to disrespect of one's neighbor and to certain murder even as Cain killed Abel in the very sight of God.

    Peter's letter stands as a caution to all Christians of their duties and obligations as children of God as the psalmist says:  Lord who shall dwell in thy tabernacle? Or who shall rest upon they holy hill? Even he that leadeth an uncorrupt life, and doeth the thing which is right., and speaketh the truth from his heart ... He that setteth not by himself but is lowly in his own eyes, and maketh much of them that fear the Lord. He that sweareth unto his neighbor, and disappointeth him not, though it were to his own hindrance ... Whoso doeth these things shall never, fall.