The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
‘When I think on my ways, I turn my feet to your testimonies.’
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‘In this Gospel we are told.
How Peter in the days of old,
Was sifted.
And now though ages intervene,
Sin is the same, while time and scene,
Have shifted.’
So the poet Longfellow wrote. This poem, called The Sifting of Peter takes the form of a commentary upon the passage from St. Luke’s Gospel, ‘Behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he might sift you as wheat.’
Temptation is a universal human experience; it is that experience which St. Paul speaks of when he writes, that which I would do, I do not do; and that which I would not do, this I do.
It is a strange experience, if we are to be honest, for fundamental to the experience of temptation is that we desire something that we ourselves know to be evil. It is not a temptation if what we desire to do we falsely believe to be good. In that case, we are merely ignorant, or confused, or stupid. But temptation is different, and it we all know; that we long for what we admit is wrong.
Our history with temptation begins as soon as we are a child able to understand our parents’ yes’s and no’s. As soon as we are told to not touch, then we see the pleasure of touching; and when we are told to not eat, then so sweet becomes the act of eating. Nothing has much changed since the Garden, that as soon as we know of a Law, we see the appeal in breaking it.
And as soon as we break it, what arises within us? We feel first shame, for we realize beyond any denial that we are now the kind of person who does what we know to be wicked.
Then we go into hiding, for we believe that if we can ignore the sin itself, and then conceal it from others, it will be as if it never happened.
And then we know guilt, for no matter how well one hides it from others, and no matter how much we try to push our crime out of our minds; yet conscience accuses; conscience, which is the piercing through of the Final Judgment into our present moment.
These things: temptation, then shame, then guilt, they are no small part of our lives. We bury ourselves in work; we bury ourselves in our friendship and relations; we go to Church; and largely so that we can feel that we are doing the ‘good things,’ and hopefully enough of them that they compensate for the ‘bad things’ we have done in life.
If we are not so dutiful to do what we should to try to make up for our sins, we do not bury ourselves in work or family; rather we just bury ourselves; we bury ourselves in entertainment, in distraction, in TV and games and drink, anything that clouds out the talk within our minds, and with it, the persistent talk of conscience that chirps even into the night, like a cricket on the sill.
Though we rarely think of it so, our modern society is largely engineered to remove any sense of guilt or shame from our existence. We need not do good to others, for we pay taxes, so that the government can do good for us. We need not feel ashamed, for we are tolerant, and our shamefulness is not the result of shameful behavior, but of an alternative lifestyle, that no one can judge.
Psychology as a practice involves itself seemingly in whole to the abolition of the experience of shame and guilt, to help us ‘move on.’ It tells us that such emotions are not a reaction to a reality of our life, but a sort of mental hiccup. It is an illness, that springs up into ‘depression’ and ‘anxiety.’ And like any illness, it just needs to be medicated away.
Sure, there are some who seek to address the shame in their life through new habits of life, new habits of thought, resolutions, decisions. But ultimately they see guilt and temptation in the same way as the therapist: it is all something that happens within you, and within your mind.
Yet temptation to sin has never been something that just happens within us, nor is shame and guilt something that we impose upon ourselves.
As I said before, the pangs of conscience are not a psychological experience, but the accusation of the Law that will one day, and even now does, attack us. It is the piercing through of the Last Day into the Here and Now.
And so too, temptation happens from without.
For our Lord speaks to us this day: ‘An enemy has done this.’
It is an interesting thing. Our Lord speaks of a man who plants a field. When he returns, he finds that the field is grown up; and it is filled with both wheat, and with weeds. The servant asks: ‘How is it that weeds have grown up, when you sowed only good seed?’
It would be the most obvious thing for the master of the house to berate the servant: ‘What did you do when I was gone? Did I not leave this in your care? Did you plant the weeds?’ And so cast the servant into the outer darkness.
But this he does not do. Rather he makes a simple response, and one that is the greatest consolation to us all. ‘An enemy has done this.’
Too often we adopt the same view of temptation as the world, though instead of the storm of temptation and shame and guilt playing out in our own mind, we put God in the place of our conscience.
Now, all of a sudden, the drama is between us and God. We, who are obligated to please God, and God, who is so very hard to please. Surely, we say that God is good, and this is true. But since He is good, that makes us only seem all the more bad. The fact that He is all the more lovable makes it that much worse that we do not love Him as we should. God is perfect, and so we become wretched.
It is as the poet wrote: ‘He hath a daily beauty in his life that makes me ugly.’ So it is that the more wonderfully we think of God, the more overcome by shame and guilt we are, for the accusation of heaven thunders out only greater.
For this reason, poor Christians spend their lives in terror before the Lord, convinced that He cannot forgive them, convinced that they cannot be worthy of the blood of Christ. If God seeks servants who are loyal to Him, few indeed are those He finds.
But this is not so. For it has never been about just us and the Lord. It has never been merely a sinner in the hands of an angry God. For you see, there is a third actor, there is an enemy.
From the beginning, a serpent has crawled into the Lord’s Garden, and a lion prowls God’s good earth; and everywhere it seeks the same: to devour the man of dust; to desecrate the image of God. For He is a murderer from the beginning and the father of lies.
It is he who tempts you by a whisper from outside that speaks the charms of sin against the beauty of virtue; it is he who then mocks you when you reach out your hand to the forbidden thing; and it is he who in the judgment levels every accusation against you, who sings out the Law of God, and cries out your manifold violations of it. It is he, the devil, this Satan, who justly charges you of your evil.
And yet this same Satan—he who speaks only truth about your sin and wickedness—it is he whom our Lord now calls ‘an enemy.’
For our Lord has not come into the world to destroy His image. He has not now come that He might break that which He once formed from the dust of the earth. Why should He? Are not you, who are baptized, baptized into His death and resurrection? Are you not in Him and with Him? Were you not put to death upon a cross? Were you not raised again on the third day? You, dear Christian, are His image; and it is an image that will no longer be defaced.
But indeed, the wrath of God shall be poured forth upon all unrighteousness, for it shall be poured out upon the enemy, him for whom the pit of fire even now is being prepared.
You, my dear Christians, will indeed be tempted, for the tempter still seeks your soul. You, child of God, will sin, and sin again, and shamefully sin; for him who hunts you does not hunt you without weapons. In your guilt, you may look up to heaven, or down to earth, and ask yourself ‘How can God forgive one who has done this evil. How can God keep one who has betrayed Him so. I deserve nothing but death and hell. For I am a worm, and not a man.’
But the Father looks down. He looks down into the night of your soul, and sees you in your despair. Though you cover yourself in sackcloth and ashes; though you hide your spirit from God; yet He looks down, and sees you.
And this alone He speaks:
‘An enemy has done this.’
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Preached by Pastor Fields
Sermon Texts: Isaiah 44:6-8; Romans 8:18-27; Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43.