A Sermon Delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on March 1, 2009 at the Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Medical Center, Huntington, WV
Intro:
How many of you realized that when you made your profession of faith, you were signing up for temptation? How many of you might have changed your mind if you knew that temptation would be part of your Christian life?
Temptation starts the day we sign on to God’s covenant with us. Just like Jesus, the moment we are baptized, we become fair game for the evil one’s temptations. In fact, temptation is allowed by God in order to advance us in the spiritual life, to test our character and to help us know what areas of our life need work.
Temptation is allowed by God to sift us – just like Jesus told Peter, that Satan had asked permission to sift him life wheat. This sifting allows for the purification process and is a normal part of our covenant life with God. Temptation is used by God for the ultimate purpose of winnowing out the imperfections in us that keep us from being unified with God. Without Temptation and the struggle with it, we become like Oscar Wilde, who famously quipped, “I can resist anything but Temptation.” However, those who face temptation well become pure of heart and ultimately enjoy intimate union with God – even before going to be with Him in heaven.
Today, we’re going to look at briefly at the stages of the Spiritual Life and talk about the the unique temptations that come to us especially in the second phase.
Let’s pray. Father we ask that your Holy Spirit would come now to open our hearts and minds to your Word and your Will for us. Help us to understand your purposes in our lives and draw us ever closer to you through your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ, AMEN.
Exposition
Today is the first Sunday of Lent. On Wednesday last week, we gathered at Hope House to mark the beginning of this season of prayer and fasting, and to receive the ashes of death, assisting us to know that our time on earth is limited. We are imitating Jesus and his time of forty days in the wilderness. We have forty days of fasting – and six Sundays of feasting in the midst of it, making for the entire period of Lent.
Again, the purpose of Lent is to offer us a time of reflection, self-examination and purification leading up to the celebration of Easter. However, even though we observe the season of Lent, there is a sense in which our entire lives should be, as St. Benedict pointed out, a perpetual observance of Lent, the purpose of which is to help us advance in our spiritual lives.
The Stages of Spiritual Growth
It has been observed by Fr. Benedict Groeschel and many others that write about spiritual growth, the there are three basic stages to our growth:
I. The Purgation
II. The Illuminative Way
III. The Unitive Way
Purgation
Purgation is the first step and happens quickly after our profession of faith. Before I became a Christian I swore like a sailor, was arrogant and self-centered, and used others for my own devices. After God invaded my life, these grosser sins were quickly purged out of me in such a dramatic way that people who knew me recognized that Something had happened to me.
Purgation often gets rid of driven needs. In this stage, we renounce serious sin gladly and put away deliberate sins. Then we begin to become aware of sins of Omission as well as the sins of Commission. The prayer of confession in the Book of Common Prayer addresses this: “We have sinned in thought, word and deed, by things we have done, and by things we have left undone…” The initial purgation stage introduces us to the concept of dying to ourselves, and we learn the joy of doing God’s will, not our own. As we grow in Grace the old defenses fall away and we become more open and vulnerable as people. Ironically, the end of this stage may lead to rejection and persecution by others.
When I became a Christian, my former roommate rejected me with scathing criticism and ridiculed me for being such a ‘weakling’ and hypocrite. When I got baptized, my parents were happy for me. I think they thought that I would finally begin to settle down and live a ‘normal’ life. But as I pressed into following Christ wholeheartedly, they began to worry for me. They expressed doubt about my fanaticism and regarded my newfound joy as another one of my crazy enthusiasms. Needless to say that was very painful. But it was a sign of the fact that I had entered the second phase of spiritual Growth, Illumination.
The Illuminative Way
As we enter the Illuminative Way, we begin to grow into the light of knowing God and the Scriptures and to live a truly Christian lifestyle. Obedience comes easily and we begin to really Trust Christ. Our prayer life begins to flow, we learn to enjoy Silence and listening, and Good Works flow out of our love for God. Yet at the same time, we become aware of finer levels of disobedience, of character flaws and of challenges to follow Christ. The Scriptures exhort us to press on towards the prize and to leave behind the simpler teachings, so each of us must press into this illuminative stage of growth and the challenges that await us there. I think this is the place where we can most relate to
Jesus as he was tempted in the Desert Wilderness.
Two Approaches to the Desert
There are two ways of approaching the Desert experience: Cooperating with it, and resisting it. Jesus of course, was completely obedient to the Father and so cooperated with this important stage of his ministry. The result of his time in the desert was confirmation of his obedience and being launched into his earthly ministry.
The Scriptures however, tell of another cautionary example of people going out into the desert – the Hebrew Children, who left Egypt and were led by God into the desert of Sinai. This example has relevance to us as a church because Rhonda Hughey has pointedly said that the Divine Experiment was a vehicle to get us out of Egypt and into the desert.
The ironic thing about this comment is that the people of Israel, who were delivered from Egypt were given an opportunity to cooperate with what God wanted to do - namely taking them into the Promised Land - and then rejected it! As a result, all of them except two, Joshua and Caleb, died without entering the Canaan. You’ll remember from Psalm 95 this tale of woe:
Harden not your hearts,as your forebears did in the wilderness, at Meribah, and on that day at Massah,when they tempted me.
They put me to the test, though they had seen my works.
Forty years long I detested that generation and said, "This people are wayward in their hearts; they do not know my ways."
So I swore in my wrath, "They shall not enter into my rest."
For Forty years they were fed by the very hand of God and they lived with the visible presence of God – the pillar of smoke by day and of fire by night. But it didn’t matter. The people still complained and rebelled. They whined because they missed the meat and vegetables of Egypt and were subsequently punished by receiving meat quails that made them sick They got fiery serpents to rebuke their disobedience. They received the manna and got sick of it. They were given the Law of God by His very finger, and they turned to idolatry after only a few days of being left to their own devices. They tempted God at Meribah, when they complained to Moses about the water. And they failed to enter His rest!
So here’s the caution: When you go out into the desert, it’s possible to live with the manifest presence of God in your backyard and still die in the wilderness!
The Christlike Way into the Desert
In Ps. 95:7, God calls out to us …”Oh, that today you would hearken to his voice!”
And in Psalm 32 we read “I will instruct you and teach you, the way you should go, I will give you counsel with my eye upon you.” And we receive the caution, “Be not like horse and mule unintelligent, needing bridle and bit, Else they will not come near you”…Psalm 32:9
In other words, don’t be like the children of Israel, who were unintelligent and willful. Heed the call of God in your life. Be like Christ, who obediently went out into the desert and cooperated with the Holy Spirit as he submitted to Temptation from the Evil One.
St. Anthony
Around the year 285, St. Anthony heard the Gospel message to abandon all, sell everything and follow Christ. He then went out into the desert – of Egypt! He went there to practice his faith – to follow Christ literally and to practice Ascesis – spiritual training and discipline. He went to a place of emptiness to leave behind the world and all its temptations in order to be tempted by his internal and external demons. This is called apostatsis - the ascetic renunciation of the world.
The desert of Anthony’s Egypt was not the same as the desert of Sinai. Anthony’s quest was to find a way to voluntarily do battle with these internal and external demons and thus attain unity with God. The demonic here represents not only all that is hostile to man but also what is anomalous and incomplete in man. Anthony went out into the desert and submitted to Temptation in order to confront these demons in the utter stillness of the desert.
He lived a life that was, as it were, suspended in timelessness. He was also utterly self-sufficient and ‘autarkic’ (self-ruling). He achieved a ‘vertical’ existence with God that most other people only dream about, attaining the highest level of spiritual development in which he actually was able to become ‘All –fire’ as we mentioned several weeks ago.
“Anthony wished to invade and reclaim the devil’s territory in the name of Christ. It was an offensive maneuver on his part in order to transform the desert into a ‘land of devotion and justice’ thus making it into heavenly commonwealth where all the mores of contemporary society might be inverted.” Desert Father, pg. 34. James Cowan
Unlike the Children of Israel who were continuously resisting God, 34 years of ascetic practice turned Anthony into a living image of Christ. This temptation resulted in increased holiness, just like Jesus, who was tempted in the desert. His message was the same as Christ’s: obedience coupled to abstinence leads to holiness.
The means to Holiness
Just like Jesus, Anthony practiced fasting. Isaac of Ninevah, one of the later desert fathers, said, “Fasting is the champion of every virtue…” (Quoted in ‘Desert Father; A journey in the wilderness with St. Anthony’ by James Cowan.)
Cowan points out that “Hunger is the arbiter of the ascetic life.”
So we fast in order to bring our bodies into control and to allow God to highlight areas for purification by means of Temptation.
The Dangers of the Illuminative Stage
So, speaking of areas to highlight, here are some of the peculiar dangers of this second phase of the spiritual life, which virtually all of us find ourselves in:
Benedict Groeschel cautions that, ‘The greatest dangers of the illuminative way are spiritual ‘greed,’ a driven self-righteousness, and a conviction that one has been elected to carry out a special mission. Also problematic are Sensuality and Acedia. Let’s look at each of them in turn:
Spiritual Greed: when we become so intrigued with the spiritual journey that we forget or minimize other responsibilities. As opposed to the experience of many saints who find like Benedict that God is found in the fulfillment of life’s ordinary duties.
Self-Righteousness or Bitter Zeal. St. Benedict made reference to this in his Rule. Bitter zeal can result when others, who do not share our interests are not impressed with our insights or reject us. We can become angry and then bitter zeal is a thinly veiled form of aggression. There is a strong temptation to spiritual pride at this stage of development. It’s tempting to become frustrated with others who take a different approach to the spiritual life, and we may become competitive with others who are skilled spiritual directors.
Pride rears its ugly head when we know that we possess a certain level of ability and confidence in what we know and think we know better than everybody else.
The Dangerous Illusion of a Special Call: Rhonda Hughey warned of this in her remarks at the kick- off of the Divine Experiment. She specifically cautioned us not to anticipate or prophecy things such as: our area would become a Beacon to others, that we would draw others to ourselves and that all manner of grandiose things would come our way. The bare fact is that very few of us will progress beyond the second stage of growth and go on to the highest level of attaining Unity with God.
Sensuality. Yesterday at the pastor’s prayer meeting, there was talk about a man named Todd Bentley, of the Pesecola revival. He was being signally used of God but ended up falling into adultery because he ‘tried to keep ahead” of the Holy Spirit, taking too much on himself and folding under the great pressure of many responsibilities. King David is certainly an example from the Old Testament of someone who succumbed to sensuality in his prime.
Yet another danger at this stage is Acedia, or spiritual sloth, inability to care about anything. Kathleen Norris has written a wonderful book about this called Acedia and Me, a marriage, monks, and a writer’s life…. She calls this the temptation of mid-day. One can become bored when there are no spiritual fireworks. I have seen this personally in working with pastors. One client, a pastor, said that he was so burned out and lackluster that his great ambition in life was to become a greeter at Wal-Mart. This is the danger of not caring anymore, of falling into a funk and giving up in the struggle.
These temptations are all afflictions of the Illuminative phase, when one has moved beyond the elementary things and has progressed quite a ways in the Christian Life. God uses these increasingly finer levels of temptation to purify us and to eventually bring us into Union with Him.
Here is a [random] litany of things we can fall prey to in the Illuminative phase:
The Temptation to weakness,
The Temptation to strength,
The Temptation to control things,
The Temptation to fear lack of control,
The Temptation that Satan puts before us just before something good is about to happen.
The Temptation that Satan attacks us with just after something good has happened.
The Temptation that comes during prayer
The Temptation that comes because of lack of prayer
The Temptation to settle for a lesser good – not the very best
The Temptation to Spiritual Pride and spiritual snobbery,
The Temptation to Sloth and Mediocrity,
Temptation in the morning, temptation in the evening., Temptation when the sun goes down- There are temptations on every side – most of them coming to us in the disguise of something good. But God intends a good result in our lives as a result of Temptation.
The Godly Result of Temptations
John the Baptist exhorted his hearers: “prepare ye the way of the Lord…” Just as Jesus submitted to the time of temptation in order to prepare the way of the Lord and his earthly ministry, so to we can submit to testing in order to purify us for more fruitful ministry and for eventual Union with God. We don’t have time to address this last aspect today, but our eventual destiny is to become like God in every way.
Conclusion:
If, through the training of fasting and prayer, we allow God to confront and refine weakness within we will grow ever more like Christ and become ever more useful to His kingdom. Therefore we use the opportunity of Lent to develop a spiritual plan – giving up things – and also taking on New things as part of our journey. I encourage you all to actually write down your plan.
Certainly that plan will include reading Packer’s book The Thirty Nine Articles. I also urge you to utilize the booklet we have prepared: The Four Practice for Eighth Day Life. If anyone needs an extra copy I have them available. Both Fr. Mark and I are available to hear your confessions and we would very much like to schedule time with all of you individually to discuss your spiritual plans, so that on Easter Sunday we can all stand up and affirm our devotion to God in the Liturgy of Public commitment.
Friends, God is calling us up to Himself. He wants us to be Holy but this Holiness is not a burden – because He wants us to be like Him. Let us pray that God will grant us the grace to participate with his program for us, especially in times of Temptation. AMEN.
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