Sermon Archive

Will it be Magic, or True Love?

Fr. Spurlock | Choral Eucharist
Sunday, October 30, 2016 @ 11:00 am
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The Twenty-Fourth Sunday After Pentecost

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Choral Eucharist
11:00 am
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Scripture citation(s): Luke 19:1-10; Isaiah 1:10-18; II Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12

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In 1959 the Clovers released a song about a young man who was searching for love. He goes to visit that gypsy with the gold-capped tooth down on Thirty-fourth and Vine. He told her that he had been a flop with chicks since 1956. So, she read his palm, made a magic sign, and sold him a reeking bottle of love potion number ni-i-i-i-ine.

If loving and being loved were so easy, we’d all hold our nose and take a drink.

But we know that loving and being loved isn’t magic. Neither is it the tyranny of emotion, incalculable and fleeting as the wind and the weather. Loving and being loved by another is the intersection of two great acts of human will. I will love, and I will live a life worthy of the love I receive. The unwillingness to exercise that act of will by even one of two parties ensures they will never be joined together. But when the human will is mutually exercised, it has the power to weave two people into one relationship that is far more transformative than any magic potion or emotion is capable.

If we know that human love isn’t to be conjured by magic, why do we often treat God’s love as though it could? Two readings, our Old Testament lesson and our Gospel reading should dispel any magical thinking we might be prone to.

God is always searching for what is lost. But the Jews in Isaiah’s day, and Christians in our own day, too often place their faith in solemn assemblies, and complex religious ceremonies, when what God desires of them is the free exercise of their human will to love him and one another with repentance and holiness of living. Isaiah and Jesus set forth a choice between these two ways. Will it be magic or true love?

Isaiah’s contempt for magical thinking finds expression in God’s contempt for hypocritical religious ceremonies. “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me, saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams; and I delight not in the blood of lambs, or goats. Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, your appointed feasts my soul hateth: And when ye spread forth your hands covered with blood, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear.”

What God objects to is the lie that says, Look, I drag myself out of bed on Sunday morning, I put in my attendance at carefully orchestrated masses, I eat the bread, and drink the wine that I am commanded to do, I’ve enjoyed the choir, dropped my pledge payment in the plate, and when this solemn assembly is all over, I’ll go upstairs with my fellows and have a glass of champagne. Having fulfilled my obligations to God and to my neighbor I have now earned the right to get on with life on my own terms. And furthermore, I take offense at any prophet, priest, or obnoxious layperson that believes and suggests to me that God despises this attitude. But that way of thinking is magical; nothing more than reading the palm, making the sign, holding our nose and taking a drink. I’ve done the magic, now, God is supposed to love me.

That is a lie, and our relationship with God does not work according to such nonsense. This is how it does work: You are a sinner. I am a sinner. We are sinners, and we are lost. God is seeking out sinners to save. We need his forgiveness for our sins, and we desire his love, because without his forgiveness or love, we really can’t live. God’s forgiveness and love are absolutely free— they are a gift, and you can have the gift. It is like a great branching fruit tree. All you have to do is to reach out and take the fruit and eat it, all of it you want. But, proximity won’t fill you up. You can be at the foot of the tree but if you’ve turned your back on it, you can starve for want of it. Have you ever been apple picking? When you go, do you ever pick apples backwards, or do you face the tree? Picking apples backwards doesn’t really work does it? But turn around and face the tree, you can pick all the apples you need. It’s simplicity itself.

But what about Jesus you might say? Doesn’t he do the repenting and saving for us? This is another of the difficulties of our thinking, and it is rooted in Israel’s notion that a lamb, goat or pigeon could represent the people, and that if the proper procedures were followed the sacrificial animal becomes the sinner, and when the animal dies, the sinner dies too. No repentance, no change of behavior is necessary. All that was necessary was that you followed the ceremonial procedures. Now think how that might play out if the sacrifice is not an animal, but the Christ. And think about how God might look down and say, I’ve seen dead lambs and dead goats, and I’ve even seen my son dead on the cross, and I see the blood on your hands, but I don’t see that the blood has moved you any closer towards a life of love marked by repentance and holiness.

God will not be manipulated by magic formulas, and through the preaching of the prophets, and the example of his son Jesus, he seeks to discourage us from relying on the precision of ritual and careful attention to liturgy to remove our sin so that we can go on living as wickedly as we please. Surely you can see that God doesn’t want that. But we ought to be pleased to know that what God does want is simplicity itself.

Wash and be clean, says the Lord. Put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well. In other words, repent. That is, turn around and start feeding from God’s great branching tree of love and forgiveness. Then, though your sins seem to you bright and color fast, he’ll wash them cleaner than any fuller can make them. You shall be pure and holy, even as I am holy, says the Lord.

None of that is to say that what we do here and now in prayer, music, sacrifice and worship are of no value. It has great value and import, so long as we eschew any notion that says our worship is something done for us, or worse yet, performed for us or to us, (read the palm; make the sign; take a drink). Rather, think of our worship as being a way of personally expressing our praise and thanksgiving in response to God’s free gift of grace that we have sought to receive and he has sought to give us.

This brings me to our gospel story that is so charming it threatens to overwhelm its serious spiritual truth. Zacchaeus is a sinner, and he is seeking to find Jesus. Jesus is seeking out sinners to save. In the midst of a crowd of believers, critics and idle bystanders, they find one another. Jesus sees that Zacchaeus is looking for him. Zacchaeus learns that Jesus has been looking for him too, and wants to spend time with him. In response to this, Zacchaeus repents of his sins and intends to do well. You see, they are facing one another. Jesus tells him salvation has come to him. Do you see how free and easy that was? Unlike magic, it is truth itself. Unlike emotion, it is eternal. It is the supreme act of will exercised by two free and loving parties united, and woven together into one glorious and transformative relationship. What is true for Zacchaeus and Jesus can be true for you and Jesus. Jesus is already looking for you to save you. Will you turn around, as oft as is necessary and look for Jesus and be saved?

One last thought: After Jesus and Zacchaeus found one another; do you remember what they did? They went in to break bread and drink wine together, an outward and glad expression of the inward and transformative love and grace shared between them. It seems, in light of their love for one another, that was meet and right so to do.