St. Philip's Sudanese, Lent 5
I want this morning to tell you a story. It is from long ago. Several theater plays they called ‘tragedies’ were based on its plot-line, the string of events. The king, facing danger in the war, sacrificed his child to the pagan gods. When he got home, he was murdered by his wife who was angry at him. Then their son, to avenge his father, killed his mother. Then the gods were to punish the son. You can see the cycle of violence, one act of revenge after the other. Finally the gods declared the truce, and the avenging spirits were given a new name, the gentle ones, and deflected from revenge into protecting the citizens. You can see the problem the ancient people of Athens, the same people gathered in the marketplace in Acts 17, were dealing with. How do you stop the cycle of revenge? You see it in many countries and many tribes in history. For example the catholics and the protestants in northern Ireland, until finally the mothers from each side said ‘enough.’ When in the summer of 2019, in Gambella, we visited the church, mother union members from warring tribes came to together to say ‘enough’ in the same of Jesus.
There is always something in the past to resent and be angry about! But we are too quick to forget the thing that another person might be angry with us about! We like the idea of starting anew, but it is hard to get there. How do we balance the need for justice with the call for mercy? This problem is found throughout history, and also throughout the Bible. Read psalm 137- the sadness of exile is followed by an honest expression of anger at the oppressors. How do we deal with this natural human urge? One answer in the Bible is the end, the kingdom of God. We are to leave judgment to God- this doesn’t mean there is not judgment, only that it does not belong to us. As we near Holy Week, as part of your Lenten discipline, ask yourself whom you need to forgive, and what cycle of bad feeling you need to let go of.
But the question comes- how is this in all honesty possible? Today’s readings offer the Bible’s answer, the divine strategy to break this cycle. It has to happen outside of ourselves. It has to be done by someone who is not part of anyone’s cycle of being wronged. And it has to be done by someone who has the power to do something perfectly new, once and for all, akin to the way that God made the world originally. The person to do so is God alone, but the person suited to such a task is one of us, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh.
Today’s readings show us how God freed us by breaking the old cycle of vengeance, once and for all, in a way that is freeing for us. And then I want you to see how this affects us, what it does to our story and our future. First the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, who is speaking to God’s people in exile. They are far from home. The wonder if his arm is long enough to save. They remember their sins. They resent those who oppressed them. Then the Lord says, through the prophet, that He is doing a new thing. He is breaking the old cycle. He is ending the winter of their exile. He alone can do it and in his mercy he wills to do it. This is good news indeed- gospel! Now you might challenge the prophet and ask- isn’t saving what he did in Egypt? Can't they see the same patterns, the old story now retold- well they would be right. But when God saves, it is always new. His action is newness itself. This is because he alone can break the old cycle. What he does makes it perfectly new, and in doing so defines who he is!
This brings us to the New Testament lesson. In his letter to the Christians in Philippi. Here in chapter three Paul tells him his resume, the list or all his accomplishments. And they aren’t bad things, except for the part about persecuting the Christians! He studied the Word of God. He comes from a religious family line. He lives a spiritual life. But then Paul calls all of that ‘rubbish.’ Isn’t that a little extreme? His point is to point out the contrast between what we can do on our own, and what Jesus alone can do. He has to come first. He alone can break the old cycle. It rules us through death, which has now become what Paul calls ‘the last enemy.’ Death makes it clear that we cannot change what matters most to change. But the resurrection of Jesus means that God does the one thing only he can.
And when the final fear of death is removed, then we can live the lives God created us to live. We are not without sin, and there is always a way for us to grow in the virtues, to see what charity would look like where we are, and to take a step toward it. We have not arrived, says Paul in Philippians. But this one thing you and I can do- to step toward the goal Christ gives to us. And the reason we can do so, he says, is the resurrection. For it is the truly new thing, the circuit breaker of resentment, the breaker of the old loop of revenge, the sufficient power to set out in the new life Jesus has called us to. This lent, may we yet more fully praise Jesus Christ, the spotless lamb and victor over death, and may He alone grant us a share in his new life. Amen.
