Episode Notes

A phrase from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians caught my attention this morning. He tells the Ephesians to redeem the time because the days are evil. The days are evil… It’s hard to image something written 2K years ago that could sound more contemporary. We are likely in the beginning throws of the collapse of a civilization. It has happened before, and if Jesus tarries it will happen again. Feeling our contemporary demise acutely we may miss the obvious, St. Paul was also in days which were evil, and that was long ago with much historical and social water under the bridge. We have no corner on evil days, mankind has been living in days which are evil for a very long time.

Episode Notes

When we study Jesus' life in the Scripture he appears as many things, he is a shepherd carrying for his sheep, a vintner growing and tending his vine, a creator bringing things into existence, a teacher showing the way, a miracle worker setting people free, a destroyer of death, a redeemer who offers his life to pay the price of our salvation and deliverance from enslavement to the enemy. He is certainly all of these things and more. The first clear apostolic proclamation to the world was: JESUS IS LORD!

Episode Notes

The temptation of any heresy is to choose. That's what heresy means, to choose. The tension between truth and love, the seeming tension, as if somehow we need to "strike a balance", is a false dichotomy. And whenever a choice is made, in choosing that thing that is chosen, the choice becomes something other than it is, when it is left without its partner. Things that are good and true are only good and true when taken together. As soon as they are broken apart, they become something else. Love becomes "tolerance", niceness, an occasion to blur reality in order to salve our broken psyche. Truth becomes some radicalized system which excludes judges, radicalizes and oppresses people. We have to ask, how can Christ himself, who is the Truth and who is Love, how can Christ be divided? We cannot choose! To choose is heresy.

Episode Notes

God has not predestined anyone to perdition- that notion is an obscenity to be denounced and rejected. We are not trapped in a hopelessly irreversible trajectory towards our fate. You can choose the good and the beautiful or you can do nothing in which case by tragic default you will succumb to the powers of this fallen state, the overlords of corruption and atrophy. These harsh taskmasters will carry you down a dark river to a place you do not really want to go but you will go because you did not bother to desire what you truly desire.  That is up to you. That is the power that God implanted in your being and which identifies you as human made in God’s image.

In times like these when everything has been thrown into disorder and chaos, when our lives have been disrupted by threat of sickness and death and loss of property and comfort we must be courageous and steady in our faith and in our living as well. There is no more important time than in this to live orderly.

We shall go on living- if you are a follow of Christ that is what you shall do, you shall live, that is not a prophecy that you will not get sick itis a fact- whether you get sick or not you shall live and so live your life free from fear, live courageously in faith.

The symbolism of ashes goes all the way back to Genesis chapter 3 where God is telling Adam the consequences of his sin. He tells him that the ground, the earth has been cursed and now since Adam broke the fast and ate the forbidden fruit his eating from now on –all the days of your life- will be in sorrow. He goes on: Through thorns and thistles and sweat and toil and pain will Adam eat and to make matters worse- in the end his eating will not result in life anyway. His painful eating will prolong his painful life but in the end he will return to the dust from which he came. “For dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return”

When you said I will fast and I will pray, and I will deal with my besetting sins over the next 40 days you picked a fight. And whatever this confrontation may mean we must not remove the demonic element from this discussion.

And we can be valiant because we have been armed with the ashes of penitence. Our foreheads have been sealed with the mark of Christ, we have been branded as his own and our victory is assured by His Resurrection. This call to battle was issued on Ash Wednesday at the conclusion of the imposition of ashes in the following collect:

Grant to us, O Lord, to put on the armor of our Christian warfare with holy fastings: that we, who are to fight against all spiritual wickedness; may be defended by the power of abstinence. Through Christ, our Lord.

The life of Jesus of Nazareth did not unfold before the eyes of God, it was all of it- always present before Him, His Birth, Passion and Glorious Resurrection the whole life fully present, His glory was present in his birth and in his death, there was no uncertainty about how things would end up.

Your life too- for all the doubt, uncertainty and vacillation, for all the weariness and wandering- your life, your whole life past present and future is all present before the face of God, God knows you in this way, even the you - you do not yet know is present before His face.