27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
Previous Years: 2019
Preached at Church of the Assumption in Bellingham, WA
Recording
https://moorejesus.podbean.com/e/it-is-the-holy-spirit-s-work/
Transcript
Thank you to an Assumption parishioners for her help in editing this transcription.
Authentic Christianity is really hard. The last few weeks we’ve been talking about habits of discipleship. In the Next Step program, we’ve already talked about going to confession regularly, meditating on the Word of God. Last week we talked about six habits of discipleship that Saint Paul gives us: to be righteous, to be devoted, to be faithful, to be loving, to be patient, to be gentle. These are hard things to do. And I get up at this pulpit and I feel like I’m just adding more and more onto your list. You have to do this, and you have to do this, and you have to do this, and Christians do this, and it just piles up. And it would be very easy to feel overwhelmed by all of the things required by our faith in Christ, all of the things required by the teachings of the church. The consolation that I can give you is that it is not you who do the work. The faith is very clear, based particularly on the experience of the Old Testament, and Saint Paul’s interpretation of it: In the Old Testament we are given, line by line, everything that God expects us to do. And yet the people fail over and over and over again. They know exactly what they are supposed to do and yet every line of the Old Testament shows them failing to do so. And we would be exactly the same. Our experience would be exactly the same, because we share the same nature and the same corruption. Except that Jesus came.
And so those of us in the New Testament, we no longer rely on ourselves to fulfill the commands of God, but God Himself carries out the work. It was clear in the Old Testament we cannot save ourselves, we needed a Savior. And so, Christ came to save us. And that salvation didn’t end in 33 A.D. on the cross. That salvation continues because He continues to do in us the work. All of these things I’m talking about, all of these habits of discipleship, it’s not you who do them. It’s the Lord who does them in you. You struggle to be righteous or devoted or faithful or loving or patient or gentle. Fine. We all struggle. We’re all going to fail if we rely on our own efforts. But if you turn to the Lord and you say, “Lord, I need you to do this in me, I need you to be the one to be righteous in me, you to be the one who is devoted, or faithful, or loving, or patient, or gentle. Lord, I need that to be you, because I can’t do it myself.” Well, that’s the Christian impulse. That’s what we do. That’s what our faith is all about.
In our second reading, Saint Paul is writing to his mentee, Timothy. This man that he’s been walking with, he’s been raising up as a successor to himself. And Saint Paul talks about the imposition of hands. He’s referring to holy orders. Saint Timothy was one of the first bishops of the church, one of the first successors to the apostles. And so, Saint Paul is providing advice to this next generation of apostles, this first generation of bishops. What does he say?
“I remind you to stir into flame the gift of God that you have through the imposition of my hands.”
Now he is talking about holy orders, but we could see here also if we’d like a reference to any of the sacraments, because all of the sacraments are an expression of the Holy Spirit. All of the sacraments are the work of the Holy Spirit. In baptism you receive for the first time the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit takes up residence in your soul. In confirmation that presence is increased and expanded, it is confirmed. Every time you go to confession it is the Holy Spirit who forgives your sins. Every time you receive the Eucharist, you receive the presence of Jesus and also a fresh indwelling of the Holy Spirit. In holy orders, it is the Holy Spirit who allows me to be a priest for you, and in marriage, it is the Holy Spirit who gives you strength to minister to each other. And so, what Saint Paul is telling Timothy is don’t take this grace for granted. For so many of us, the graces, the infinite, unimaginable graces that we get through the sacraments, they sit at the bottom and lie dormant. It’s like a glass of chocolate milk that you haven’t stirred up yet. It’s just. It’s just there. All the good stuff is just kind of on the bottom, doing nothing.
You have all of that grace and Saint Paul is reminding us, stir it into flame. Don’t let that grace just settle to the bottom, use it. Allow God to work in you. Stir up his presence in your lives.
Saint Paul describes the Spirit not as a spirit of cowardice. Again, that’s allowing the grace to settle at the bottom. The teaching of the church is that a valid sacrament always brings grace. If I get up at this altar and say the right words with the right intention, and it’s bread and wine, that will become the Eucharist. And if you receive the Eucharist, you receive all of the graces that come from that, graces that you can never imagine. But that grace can just sit, right? If you just don’t stir it into flame. If we are cowardly, if we just pull back and don’t engage, we’ll never see the fruits of that Spirit, the fruits of that grace. Instead, Saint Paul tells us that that Spirit is a spirit of power, and love, and self-control. And here we see the connection to last week: self-control. Well, that’s righteousness. The Spirit you’ve received is a spirit of righteousness. If you struggle with righteousness, if there is a sin in your life that you are struggling with, that you can’t kick out, well rely on the Holy Spirit because He is a spirit of self-control. He will allow you to become the person that God made you to be through discipline and self-control, not giving yourself over to the passions of this world but living instead in an ordered way according to the order of God.
It is a spirit of love, again connected to last week. Devotion. Faith. Love. The Holy Spirit is the one who carries these things out in us. I’m always tickled by the church’s teaching on faith, hope, and love. These are theological virtues, which means you don’t do them. Love, faith and hope are lived out in your life through God. You simply say yes to the Lord doing those in your life.
And then, interestingly, power. A spirit of power. We didn’t talk about this last week, but we are constantly facing a battle between good and evil. This world is caught between the Lord and those who would oppose Him. And the powers of evil are horrifying. The powers of evil are very difficult to face. I think particularly of our own age, we are seeing the most people leave the church today that we have seen since the Reformation. It is the greatest apostasy in 500 years, and the Reformation was probably the greatest apostasy, really, since the early Arianism, the early Arian controversy. And so we are facing a very, very difficult evil. The evil of unfaithfulness. The evil of “religion is not necessary, a relationship with the Lord is not necessary for salvation.” How do we face that down? All of us are touched by that in our families, in our friends, in our social groups. How do we look this de-Christianization in the face and say we can do anything about it? How do we go up against a society that is more and more marginalizing the Christian faith?
Well, we’ve been given a spirit of power, and that power is the power that raised Jesus from the dead. And so, if we can look death in the face and say that death has no power over us, what power does unfaithfulness have? What power does secularism have? What power does materialism have? It has no power because dwelling in us as Christians is this spirit of power. If only we would stir it into flame.
In the gospel, Jesus tells us that if we have faith the size of a mustard seed, we could say to a mulberry tree, “be uprooted and planted in the sea”, and it would do it. In another gospel, Jesus uses the image of a mountain. A mountain would move because of faith the size of a mustard seed. Well, of course, because it’s not our work. We don’t do it. It is God who does it. It is His Spirit who is dwelling in us who does it. All we have to do is say yes. All we have to do is assent to the work of the Spirit, and so that “yes” is the size of a mustard seed. If we just say yes, then God will move mulberry trees and mountains. God will do miracles the likes of which we could never imagine, because we don’t do it. I can’t do a miracle. You can’t do a miracle. I’m incapable of even carrying the burden of priesthood, for goodness’ sake. And yet, by saying yes, the Lord carries it out in us.
Immediately after this, He tells us that as Christians, we should regard ourselves as unprofitable servants, doing what we were obliged to do. A phrase that seems sort of disheartening, sort of down putting, humiliating. But I can tell you it is an incredible joy to be an unprofitable servant, because, again, it is not I who do the work, but it is the Spirit who does the work in me. The Spirit who does the work in us. We are unprofitable servants because after everything we’ve done, we just sit back and say, “well, that was God. That wasn’t me, that was God. God did this. The Spirit dwelling in me did this, and all I did was say yes. All I did was show up. I am an unprofitable servant, doing what I was obliged to do.” And praise God for that. It is an incredible joy, an incredible blessing to watch God work. Why would I want to take that credit? Why would I want that pressure? I simply want the Lord to work, and I simply want to show up and watch. And that’s all we have to do with that mustard seed of a yes.
We may ask ourselves, okay, that’s all well and good, but how? How do I stir into flame the gift of God that we have through the sacraments? We have to make space for the Holy Spirit. We have to make space for Him to work. A spirit of cowardice tells us that we can’t do it, we are incapable no matter what we’re facing. Maybe we’re incapable of facing down or eradicating a sin in our life. Maybe we’re incapable of a hard conversation. Maybe we’re incapable of this word I keep using, evangelization, talking to somebody about Jesus. Not a stranger on the street, necessarily. Maybe someone in our family, someone in our friend group. Taking relationships that already exist and making them Jesus relationships. We might hear the priest say that from the ambo every week, and we might say, “that’s not me. I can’t do that. That’s weird and I’m not good at that.” Well, are you a Christian? Do you have the Holy Spirit? Because if you do, you are capable of it. But you just have to say yes, and you have to make that space. You have to be willing to take the next step out in faith. You have to be willing to go just beyond yourself a little bit, go a little bit more than you’ve done before. Because if you’re in control, if you have everything arranged, there is no space for God. But if you give up that control, and if you make a space for vulnerability, for difficulty, if you make a space for failure, it is in that space that the Holy Spirit comes. And so, you will see Him stirred up into flame if you believe that He is with you. And everything the church has ever said says that He is with you. If you believe anything the church says, believe that. You have received the Holy Spirit through the sacraments. If you believe that He is with you, and you believe that He will take care of you, that very scary step into new territory, that making space for the Lord, you know that He will fill it. That’s the teaching. That’s what we know. That’s what Saint Paul tells us. And you will see Him act more and more. The first step is very difficult. And I tell you, the next 20,000 steps? Also pretty hard. But you learn to trust the Holy Spirit. You learn to say, “you know what? I did this hard thing this one time and He actually showed up. To my great surprise, He actually took care of me. And so, I’m going to take another step. And I’m still scared because it’s a new thing. And yet He showed up again and again and again and again and again.” If He does that enough, the world will be saved. It is His work. It is what He does. It is not your responsibility, you just need the mustard seed. You just need to say yes, to do what you are obliged to do and be the unprofitable servant. If you show up and say yes, then you will marvel at the things that you see God do in and through you.
Fr. Moore 