Homily for 7/19/26

As I told the first service this morning, I have been eager and desirous for this sermon for years.

I've been at St.

Mark's now just over three years, which means we're cycling back.

We follow a three-year lectionary, so that the readings are set out for three years, and after three years you go back to the start.

So we are now back at the start of when I first started preaching here, which means I've been thinking about this sermon for about three years now.

And boy are you gonna get it.

Got a lot to say to you people.

Some of it's a Seinfeld reference, it's okay.

It's all right.

We begin with the book of wisdom.

The book of wisdom is a type of literature that we call apocryphal.

Apocrypha is not a category that we have given the text.

Apocrypha is a category of literature which was posited by Saint Jerome.

So Saint Jerome, one of the church fathers, he translates all of the Bible into Latin.

And he's really the first to do this.

The Psalms had been in Latin, you had a couple books in Latin.

You have what's often referred to as the old Latin manuscripts.

Those are the books of the Bible which predate Saint Jerome.

But Saint Jerome was the first to go back to the Greek and the Hebrew and to translate it into the vernacular, the language of the people.

And that document is called today the Vulge, which literally means vulgar.

It's the vulgar translation of the Holy Scriptures.

Now, Saint Jerome, because he was an overachiever, did not merely translate the text of Holy Scripture.

In that same manuscript, he writes an introduction to every book of the Bible.

He later goes on to write a commentary, but it's in that introductory matter that he explains some of the things about those books that you might need to know to understand why it's included or how to read it in the church.

I digress from that point, but suffice it to say that along with a canonized text, that is, this book that we call the Bible, there are also canonized interpretations.

There's a way to read it.

And if you're ignorant of what surrounds that text, it's very easy to misread it.

I'll give you one example.

The Song of Solomon is an allegorical text about the union between God and Israel, our soul in the Trinity, Christ in his church, but it uses a lot of marital images.

But if you try to read it not as allegory, you'll wonder why there's a very strange textbook in the Bible, right?

Well, that's not what it is.

And if you read it in such a way, you are no longer reading Christian literature.

Because there is a way that we approach these texts, and that requires knowing something.

So, why do we have this category of text that we call apocryphal?

Who can tell me?

Nobody's read Saint Jerome.

Say that again?

For private, private education.

Yeah, so a lot of these books were read in private, that's kind of true, but the apocrypha has always been read in the liturgy.

We just read it very publicly.

In the liturgy.

The 39 articles say we read these texts for the example of morals.

These texts tell us how to live.

And the church has always read them and found instruction in them on how to live.

So when we read this book of wisdom, we should expect to find something about the manner in which we live or should live as Christians.

And in fact, that's kind of the conclusion of the text.

The one who is righteous must be kind.

It's a great takeaway.

That's a moral injunction, because that's what this text is.

But this passage from the book of wisdom is actually teaching us something more than that.

It's telling us about the very nature of God.

It's not a list of platitudes.

Otherwise, it could have concluded with that one verse and just bullet pointed it.

But it rests that injunction.

Those who are righteous must be kind.

It's weighted to or united to a theological concept.

The author of Wisdom has done a lot of meditating on holy scripture and says, this is what we derive from this principle.

And this principle is very interesting.

For your strength, says the author, is the source of righteousness, and your sovereignty over all causes you to spare all.

Something that happens quite often in when people approach God, they want a God who is imminent, who is near, who is merciful, and in doing so they make him little and like us.

The book of wisdom makes the opposite move.

The mercy of God is not because he is like me, because he is utterly unlike me.

God's mercy and righteousness, his goodness towards me, does not rest in him being anything like me, but because he is above me and beyond me, because he is in control of all.

Your strength is the source of your righteousness, and your sovereignty over all causes you to spare all.

It is because God is over all, that God can also care for all, and God can save all.

This is a fundamental Christian principle.

It is because God is omnipotent that we can trust Him in every area.

The God that I pray to in California is the same God that I would pray to on the moon.

Not very quickly.

I wouldn't last very long on the sun.

But no matter where I go in the cosmos, it is the same God who presides over it all.

And therefore salvation can be found anywhere in the cosmos.

E.J.

Bicknell, who we're reading for our adult Sunday school right now, he says, this theology of the omnipresence and omnipotence of God, his control over all and his presence in all space, is the assurance that we may call to him in all contexts and all situations, and we can trust in him wholly.

And so that's not merely spatial, that's also in spheres of our lives.

The God is the God of the moon and the God of California and the God of the oceans, is also the God in every area of my relational life.

And therefore I can call upon him in every relational structure, and I can find mercy and help from him in every relational structure.

He is also the God of my workplace and the God of my family and the God of my automobile.

And so there's nothing which cannot be blessed by God.

And so we find this principle.

God's infinite love for us, his acting on our behalf is found in him because he is over all.

St.

James tells us the first the same thing in his epistle.

He says, God is not unfaithful, right?

He says, if you confess your sins, he is faithful and what?

Justice to what?

Forgive you your sins.

But wait, justice and mercy are supposed to be opposites.

Right?

St.

John tells us that it is God's justice, the fact that he is the judge, because he is the adjudicator, because he is the one sitting at that side of the table, making judgment over all things.

There is where mercy is to be found.

He is just to forgive.

Justice is the cause of his mercy.

So therefore, we should not read it in saying, ah, I want a God who can wink at me a little bit.

I want one who will turn a blind eye.

I want one who won't be so serious and discerning, who won't search into every matter.

If God could just chill out on a couple of things, that God cannot save you from those things.

It is because he is the righteous judge ruling above all.

There is mercy for us.

The psalmist says that salvation dwells with God that he might be feared.

Because he is the one alone that we fear, he is also the one alone who can save us.

This salvation rests.

And so through such works you have taught your people that the one who is righteous must be kind.

Because he who is righteous and great and above all is kind.

How does Jesus prove the perfection of God?

Who remembers?

He says, Your Father in heaven is perfect, and he proves the perfection through something we experience every day.

Who recalls?

It causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust, Jesus says.

Because there is a goodness that he delivers universally to all, this is proof of the perfection of God.

So the transcendence and the perfection and the greatness and the otherness of God is precisely what allows me to experience his goodness here.

Salvation is here because he is above all.

Think of our collect, for example.

We prayed at the beginning of the service.

O God, you declare your almighty power chiefly in what?

Showing mercy and pity.

The mercy of God is demonstration of his almighty power.

He who alone can show mercy.

And so he is utterly other and beyond.

You are sovereign in strength, says wisdom, but you judge with mildness, and with great forbearance you govern us.

For you have power to act whenever you choose.

The goodness and mercy of God, according to the author of wisdom, rests in the fact that God does whatever he will.

That God is not constrained.

We say that God is utterly free and beyond necessity.

He does not need, he is beyond contingent, he's not based on anything.

And it is because he is free and other and baseless that there is mercy to be found.

This is why we call God love.

That teaches us something of the relationship of God to us, but it also tells us something about the very nature of God Himself.

Because love has no contingency.

Love is baseless, love is free.

One of the examples we talk a lot about in Sunday school is this.

Eric Maskell, who is a very famous Anglican theologian, one of his favorite questions to ask people was, Does your spouse love you?

And you would say, Yeah.

And then you'd ask, how do you know?

And then you say something silly like, Well, she makes me coffee every morning.

Like, oh, so you can measure love and coffee now?

And you've never made coffee for someone you didn't dislike?

That's every barista.

Right?

So they're in love with them?

Or does your spouse stop loving you when they stop making you coffee?

Right?

No, as soon as you give a why and a because, you find out how pitiful and little and shallow that reason is.

Because love by definition is not contingent.

It's not based on a because.

As soon as you add a because, it by definition ceases to be love.

So then Eric Maskell would switch the question again.

Do you love your spouse?

And you'd say, Yes, of course.

And you ask, why?

And then no matter what you say, you're in trouble.

Right?

My wife is beautiful.

Well, when she's older and that beauty fades, you're not gonna love her anymore?

That sucks.

Right?

My wife is brilliant.

She has her master's degree in Russian literature.

She can read in like three languages and synthesize vast amounts of material.

But God forbid she's in an accident and she doesn't have access to those faculties she had before.

Do I stop loving her?

Well, I hope not.

It wouldn't be much love then, right?

My wife has acts of kindness towards me, or she's likable.

Well, if she stops being kind, I'm gonna stop loving her.

My love ceases on her bad days, and her love for me ceases on my bad days.

No, because this is not the nature of love.

So then, it is not based on contingency.

We already have this experience.

This good that we do for another person is not based on any constraint placed on me.

And so it is true of God when we say that He is love.

We are constrained.

We have free will and free knowledge and free pleasure.

These are the three categories that St.

Bernard of Clairvaux gives us, and they're really helpful.

Free will is the fact that I make choices.

You and I make choices all the time.

But it doesn't mean they're informed choices.

You can make a choice, and it can be a very bad choice, because you know bad things.

And so we need free knowledge.

Our mind has to be enlightened.

Now there's bad stuff on the table and good stuff on the table, and I'm free to choose between them.

But I don't always choose the good stuff.

Because I don't always have free pleasure, which is to bring about that thing that I choose.

Uh, when we do our theology tutoring on Wednesdays with the teens in the parish, the analogy I've used before, imperfectly, but I like it, and so you're gonna get it, is that I have a concept in my mind of human flight without an airplane.

I've read Superman comics.

I can conceive in my mind of levitation, but I can choose it all day long and never lift off from the ground.

Because I do not have the ability to bring about what I choose if it's outside of my constraints and necessity.

So, God, apart from constraint, apart from necessity, who has power to act whenever you choose, says the book of wisdom, this is the proof of his love and goodness towards me.

Because love is not based on constraint.

And so the God who is over all, loves all, and can save all, thanks be to God.

And so my hope in the gospel rests in the transcendence and otherness of God, God the Holy Trinity, not in making him like me.

To make him like me is the sin of presumption, which the prophet Samuel is the sin of what?

I haven't asked this in a while.

Everyone got tired of me asking about it.

So here I am.

We got a break from it.

Idolatry! The Prophet Samuel tells us the sin of presumption is the sin of idolatry.

Why?

You're making God in your image instead of being made in his.

And so that God that I bring near to me by making him like me is not a God who can save me.

In fact, it's an idol of my own mental construct.

The God who is over all is the God who can save all.

The God who has no needs is the one who can act on my behalf and not his own.

Right?

As the scriptures say, even if I were hungry, I wouldn't tell you, God says.

And even if I needed, you think I don't have enough of my stuff?

What could you give me?

Nothing.

It is precisely that I cannot give him anything that makes this whole thing gospel.

It's also, according to wisdom, what makes this whole thing possible.

If I were responsible for laying enough track to get to eternity, I could not be saved.

And so there is a universal God and therefore a God who can save all.

This is the lens we need for St.

Paul's epistle to the Romans.

For I consider the suffering of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that has been revealed to us.

Great.

St.

Paul says again, God is sovereign in every circumstance that includes my suffering, and so there's a glory in this.

But what's interesting is he doesn't he doesn't stop there.

He continues in this passage.

He makes a very interesting, I think, exegetical turn.

Alright.

Even in our suffering, there is a glory there awaiting for, because even in our suffering, God is sovereign.

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.

He then moves outside of our suffering to this universal glory that the God of the universe will bring about for even the universe.

Strange.

It makes sense only if we take wisdom into account.

The God over all can save all, and that includes fish and streams and birds and the sun and the moon.

All of creation waits with eager longing for the revelation of the sons of God, because that is their salvation.

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.

For the creation was subjugated to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjugated it in hope.

That the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

The same glory which is for the children of God, St.

Paul says here, is also for the fish and the grasshoppers and the trees and the grass.

All of creation will participate in that same glory.

I talk about this a lot, so we'll be brief.

There's that threefold separation and fall, which takes place again and again and again and again in the book of Genesis.

And you find it in other books as well, but you know, we'll speedrun it because I talk about it a lot to get to my point.

Adam and Eve sin against God, and they're immediately separated from each other, and they're immediately separated from the land.

Adam and Eve sin against God, they turn on each other bitterly, and then they're kicked out of the garden, and the curse of Adam is that the land rises up against him in rebellion.

Happens again, Cain sins against God, he immediately kills Abel, and then the ground rejects him.

It cries out against him, and he's separated from the earth itself, so as to never find peace anywhere on the earth.

Happens again at Babel, we rebel against God.

The tongues are divided and we're separated from each other and we're scattered across the face of the earth.

And so we find the restoration of these falls in the church.

Christ has united us to God in himself.

God and man will never be separated from each other again, thanks be to God.

This is the scandalous hope of the incarnation.

And our healing with each other has taken place at Pentecost, where the tongues are divided at Babel, they're united at Pentecost.

And so this heavenly organism that we call Christ Church is the healing of the nations, the healing of all peoples, where all people can be united together in the common profession and praise of God the Holy Trinity.

But Scripture is waiting for that final healing.

The restoration of all things by the God who is above all things.

And so just as creation will participate in the glory of the sons of God, Saint Paul here says that the sons of God groan with creation for its restoration as well.

That we who are Christians are eagerly desiring the restoration of all things.

And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for the adoption of sons and the redemption of our bodies.

And in this hope we are saved.

St.

Paul tells us we are waiting for that thing, things.

And so there is a cosmic God over all, who can save all, including the fields.

A little while ago, excuse me, we celebrated rogation, where we went and blessed things like fields and cars and businesses and laborers and plows.

Why?

Because God can save businesses and plows and yards and all those things.

This is the gospel we've inherited.

So then, think of the parable that our Lord has given us.

This is the second parable in a matter of weeks about sowing.

So we come now with this lens of the universal God, who is over all and therefore can save all.

And because he needs nothing from anyone, he can give to anyone.

Great, I love this line.

Like, hey man, didn't you do it the right way?

Right?

And then continued, How then are there weeds?

But he said, An enemy has done this.

And so the servant said to him, Do you want us to go and gather them?

But he said, No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them.

Let both grow together until the harvest.

And at harvest time I will tell the reapers, gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.

What is the field?

Our Lord explains the parable.

What is the field?

Is the whole world.

And he is the God of the whole world.

And the Son of Man has sown his seed into the whole world, the scriptures say.

St.

Justin Martyr says that God, as cultivator of this field, which we call the world, has been preparing the whole world to receive the gospel.

The gospel is never arbitrary.

God doesn't hope.

God cultivates, and so he has prepared.

Prepared the whole world as his field for the reception of this seed.

What is the wheat?

The sons of the enemy?

The wheat.

Oh, the wheat.

The sons of God.

Sons of God.

It's me.

Maybe you.

And what are the weeds?

Sons of the enemy.

The sons of the enemy, thanks Max.

Okay.

Which were put there secretly and have grown up alongside them.

So the world, the scriptures tells us, is a mixed multitude.

You have this growing together of the wheat and the weeds.

Now.

The servants come to the master, frustrated.

And they ask him something that I think we as Christians get asked all the time.

What should we do with these weeds?

What does the master say?

Leave them alone.

The Lord has invited even the weeds to participate in this field which he has cultivated.

Three years ago, when I gave this sermon a kind of tongue-in-cheek, I addressed my sermon to the wheat, and that was half of it, and to the weeds.

And you could take away whatever you chose, depending on who you were.

But in that sermon, there is this presentation from our Lord.

He has spoken to the weeds and he has said, You are welcome here.

It comes with a warning.

But again, the perfection of God is proven to us in that the rain falls on the just and unjust.

And now the master of the field, who is not only its master, but also its maker, St.

Augustine would like to remind us, has said to the weeds, You are welcome in this field, leave them alone.

Why?

Why has he left the weeds alone?

For the sake of the wheat.

For the sake of the righteous.

We have to be very careful as Christians, because this parable tells us that by trying to uproot the wicked, we uproot ourselves with them.

That if you were to tear them out, you find yourself torn out as well.

And so the master of the field, who loves the field, who would die for that field, who has made that field, has said, leave the weeds alone for the sake of the wheat.

Another question we get asked all the time as Christians is: why does God allow evil?

Why is it here?

Why does he just start over?

Adam and Eve sin, great, kill Adam and Eve.

Start over.

Start from scratch.

I've been asked this many times.

God does not do this.

Why?

Because he loves Adam and Eve.

And so for their sake, he allows the weeds.

And for the sake of the righteous.

Now we have to be very careful here.

We're not speaking utilitarian.

I'm not saying that God is able to bring good out of bad, therefore he allows the bad.

That's true.

There's lots of writing on this.

What our Lord is saying here, the good which was founded by God in the beginning, which is continued from the beginning, because he loves it, for its sake, he allows the bad.

Now I mentioned this is our second parable about sowing, right?

Last week, you may recall, Ryan gave a very good sermon.

Good job, Ryan.

He's not here.

He's not here, so we can compliment.

Good job, Ryan.

Nobody say it to his face, though.

It keeps him humble.

Okay.

Ryan gave a very good sermon.

Um, and he gave a wonderful quote from St.

John Chrysostom.

St.

John Chrysostom asks about that parable, because that's the parable of God sowing in different kinds of soil, right?

And he sows in the thorns and he throws in the rock and he sowns on the path.

St.

John Chrysostom says, Is God a bad farmer?

Who walks out on a freeway and tries to plant seed?

You know?

Because that's what the parable gives us.

It says, Yeah, this guy sowed on a road, and of course nothing grew, because all the wagons went over it and the feet went over it and it all died.

Or who walks out to a thorn bush and says, I'm gonna plant my grain right here?

So is God negligent?

Or are his servants negligent?

Do they say, well, the master's not looking, let's just throw it anywhere and see what sticks.

That is by definition a bad farmer, right?

Ryan, as a farmer, said, waste a lot of money that way.

St.

John Chrysostom says, no, God can cultivate anything.

He can cultivate the freeway.

Again, he is not just the sower of the field or the master of the field, he is also the creator of the field.

And if he wants to grow wheat in rocks, he is able to do so.

If he wants to grow wheat and thorns, he's able to do so.

If he wants to plant a maze on the freeway, he is free to do so.

Such is the power of God.

St.

Augustine says something very similar about this parable.

God is God over all.

Again, it's not just the master of the field, not just the tender of the field, but also the maker of the field.

And so St.

Augustine says, those who are tares today, those who are weeds today can be wheat tomorrow.

Such is the power of God.

Those who are goats today can be sheep tomorrow, such is the power of God.

God is able to transform and transfigure.

And so again, we should not write off the weeds which exist for the sake of our spiritual health.

And we must recall, St.

Augustine says, that even they can be saved.

Okay.

This places a certain responsibility on us as Christians.

We may not become despondent.

We may not become hopeless, just as we may not presume.

Remember where this sermon started.

Many people in thinking about salvation presume to make God as if he were one of us.

It is the opposite that makes salvation possible.

In the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, there's a little office called the Office of Instruction.

And we use this when we prepare people for confirmations.

We still use it.

It's not in our prayer book, it's a supplement.

We still use it when we prepare for confirmations.

And it asks what your duty towards God is.

So for those of you who have been confirmed, what are the three things which are your duty towards God?

Which we talked about quite a bit before confirmation.

Love and that's one of them.

That's good.

That's a good start.

All of them interesting?

Alright?

Those last two are guesses.

The first one was right.

Love God, fear God, believe in God.

Now, commentaries on that office have told us that it's doing something very interesting.

It's mirroring the three theological virtues.

St.

Paul says, these three remain.

What are they?

Faith, hope and love.

Faith, hope, and love.

Okay, believe in God, that's faith, right?

Love God, that's love.

But there's an interesting connection here.

Because the office of instruction says to fear God, but St.

Paul talks about hope in God.

Why?

Because they're the same thing.

They are always united in Holy Scripture.

All throughout the Psalms, you hear this refrain: those who fear the Lord may hope in him.

The psalmist says, Salvation dwells with you, that's hope, that you might be feared.

So now we're hoping in God that we had feared him.

Or before we were fearing in God that we might hope in him.

Think of the Blessed Virgin Mary, when the angel appears to her, do not be afraid.

And then immediately the hope is fulfilled as she conceives our Lord in the womb.

Or think of the stanza, the second stanza of amazing grace.

Twas grace which taught my heart to fear.

Fear is a grace.

And then, grace, my fear is relieved.

Hope and fear have always been united in Holy Scripture.

Think of the parable, another parable of our Lord.

He says, fear him who can cast body and soul into hell.

Don't fear him who can cast only the body, kill only the body.

Fear him who can cast body and soul into hell.

In that act, he has told you to fear the one, but he's also told you how to escape your body and soul being cast into hell.

So fear of God is exactly what delivers you from the fear of God in that instant.

Once again, hope and fear are united.

The saints have told us this.

Hope without fear is the sin of presumption.

Which again, the prophet has told us is idolatry.

But fear without hope is despondency.

This is the fear of Judas.

Did he remorse?

Yes.

But he destroys himself.

He slays himself because he has no hope of repentance.

What separates Judas from Peter?

They both destroy our Lord.

Repentance.

Why did Peter repent?

Because he could still hope in God.

Fear without hope is despondency.

Hope without fear is presumption.

And together we see them united, always in Holy Scripture, because they are the same thing.

So then, when it comes to our salvation, our manner of living, or our engagement with those in the world, we should never presume upon the mercy of God.

All the while acknowledging that he who is the creator of the field can do whatever he wants with the field.

He can restore all.

Those who are tares today can be wheat tomorrow.

St.

Augustine would leave with the last warning those of us who are wheat today can be tares tomorrow as well.

And so we must work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.