Hear the words of the Collect for the Fourth Sunday in Lent:

Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that we, who for our evil deeds do worthily deserve to be punished, by the comfort of Thy grace may mercifully be relieved.

May the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be alway acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. We pray in the name of The Father, and of The Son, and of The Holy Ghost. Amen.

Last week I spoke about Satan and fighting against him and not serving him. The way that we know we have served Satan rather than God is through our willing sinfulness, and for this reason we could be, and should be, condemned.

However, there is a silver lining to this ‘willing sinfulness.’ The silver lining is in the fact that if we recognize that we have sinned, turn from that sin, and ask for forgiveness through our faith in Jesus Christ, we will be forgiven, and eternally saved.

The opposite of this is how we may recognize a willing servant of the evil one. When anyone does something wrong, and does not and cannot recognize that it is wrong, they are lost indeed.

We see in the world today a retreat from the ideas of right and wrong, from sin and righteousness, and from good and evil. Today the courts are filled with people crying that what they did was not their fault. They blame society, or their parents, or anyone else but it is not their fault and they ask to be excused for their actions.

In another case, someone who freely admits that they murdered another person is released from the consequences of their actions because they were declared ‘temporarily insane.’ As late as the mid-1900’s the question was never the mental state of the perpetrator, the question was always is this the perpetrator? If the answer to that question was yes, they were punished. Now, this seems to be used as a defense for everything to escape the consequences of their own actions.

This is just the question that Saint Paul asks the Galatian Christians in the Epistle for today. In Galatians 4:21 he asks:

Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law; do ye not hear the law?

If we are to be under the Law then we must abide by all of it or suffer the consequences of it when we break it. This statement raises the question, “What Law are we talking about in this statement as well as in Saint Paul’s statement?”

Is Saint Paul talking about the moral law of the Old Testament as embodied and stated in the Ten Commandments? Does this mean that we can go out and murder and steal with no fear of being condemned by God for these actions?

The answer to this question is a resounding NOT SO! The moral law of God is always in effect because God is morality embodied. It is not external to God it is contained within The Godhead. If this were not so then we could not say that God was sinless, for with morality removed, sin cannot exist because there is nothing to tell us what it is. All actions become equally valid, or invalid. It is then left for society to tell us what is a punishable activity with no morality involved.

What Saint Paul is talking about is the freedom from all the ceremonial law that had been built up over the centuries. These laws demanded actions and provided punishments for the Jew to live up to. It was very detailed and covered every facet of the life of a person that wanted to follow them, even to the tithing of the herbs that they used to flavor their food and grown in their own gardens.

This ceremonial law held the form of righteousness. The Jew believed that if they followed all these laws they would be as holy as God was. Unfortunately for them as well as for us, this could never happen. Today the following of them has been reduced to the point that a “righteous person” is one that follows 51% of them. Let me see if I only have to follow more than half to be ‘righteous’ which four of the Ten Commandments do I want to ignore today?

This type of ‘righteousness’ will do us no good at all and we will be condemned for living in this manner. James 2:10 makes this point abundantly clear:

For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.

This same idea can be true for ‘tradition.’ We must understand that if all we are doing here is following the ‘traditional prayer book’ because it is traditional, then we are as lost as these Jews were. Now, before someone gets upset about this, I am a defender of the traditions that we observe here and will in no way change them. They were put in place for our protection and guidance, just as the Ten Commandments were and are. Additionally, the sacraments of the Church provide grace to strengthen us in this life.

The point I am trying to make is that in both cases, IF outward form is all we have, then, we are lost indeed. Our Lord Jesus Christ, all the Apostles, and even the Prophets of the Old Testament were all making this same point. It is not the outward form of religion that will save us, it is our inward, spiritual reality that through faith does and will be the source of our salvation. The substance of faith is to be real if it is to save us, just as the mere form of religion is hollow and will not.

This leads us directly to the Gospel for today. I can hear the thoughts now, “Boy you are really stretching it now Father John.” In reality I am not stretching at all, for the feeding of the 5,000 makes my point indeed.

The vast majority of the multitude followed our Lord because ‘they saw His miracles which he did.’ There was no internal reality to their following of Him as all they wanted was a free meal and to be cured from their diseases. So, when push came to shove they went with the crowd and participated in His condemnation and Crucifixion. They had the form of religion, but no substance.

The point I will leave us with today is the question, “Is our religion merely form, or is there an internal spiritual reality to it? Is Jesus Christ our Lord and Messiah, or just some comfortable idea we pull off the shelf when we feel like it or when we are in trouble?”

These are hard questions to think on and the season of Lent asks us to consider. I pray we all know the correct answers to them and live our lives accordingly. In Jesus Name I pray for us all that we do.

Amen,

The Very Rev. Canon John Jacobs