Monday, October 09, 2006

Sermon for 18th Sunday after Pentecost 8.10.06

18th Sunday after Pentecost 8.10.06 Forgiveness

Our Lord heals both body and soul as He raises the paralytic and forgives his sins.

It takes more authority and power to forgive sins than it does to heal the body. Any doctor can attempt healing and often succeed, but who can forgive sins?

Only God. Because all sin is an offence against Him He has the right to determine how to deal with that sin.

So Our Lord, demonstrating His divinity and His infinite authority tells this man he is forgiven, and so he is.

He demonstrates the power at work by raising the man’s body physically. He is made well again, all deformity removed.

So sin deforms the soul and needs to be removed.

We are ‘raised up’ from our sickbeds every time we experience the mercy of God.

Raised up in two senses: 1) that we are in better spiritual health and 2) that we are raised beyond the power of that sin to hurt us again – we will not (need not) commit that sin again.

It is one thing to receive mercy (not difficult). Quite another to ‘retain’ that mercy, so that we do not lose it and fall back into sin. This is much harder.

Easy to say we are sorry. Easy to be sorry. But so hard not to do it again.

How can we get stronger at retaining mercy, so that it works in our soul for healing and we become immune to that sin or tempation to which we have succumbed.

We say in the act of Contrition that we will not sin again. Yet when we go to Confession we are probably confessing the same sins over and over.

What went wrong? How can we fix the leak in the spiritual system that lets the grace escape and leaves us back where we were before?

The main thing is to believe that change is possible. We might think we are so weak that we will certainly commit the same sin again.

Yes we are weak, but someone else is strong. It is by the grace of God that we hope not to sin again. It is His strength we draw upon.

And it is something of an insult to Him to say that we cannot change when He Himself is changing us!

We are weak but we become less weak as we are exposed to His grace. What seemed impossible now becomes achievable.

We might have thought of Confession as a carwash where we clean the car but fully expect the car to get dirty again, and we come back next week, or month etc. There is no change to our behaviour; we just come back every week and get washed.

But Confession is not a carwash. It is more like going back to the factory where we are remodelled and made into a brand new car. I don’t wash the car; I get a new one each week!

The Sacrament of Confession is an encounter with the Son of God, the One who has power over both body and soul; the One who has authority and power to forgive, to raise up so there is no falling back.

Is it cruel of God to expect us to be perfect? No more than the doctor is cruel in trying to heal us. God can see that our sin is a deformity. He simply removes that deformity. How can it be cruel to make us into something better than before?

His mercy is curative as well as liberating. It is a complete cure. You will never even want to sin again once you open your heart to this mercy. And you will not sin again.

It may need more than one confession to get this right, but each confession is part of the process of total cure. Rise up, take up your mat and walk! Go, and sin no more!