Third Sunday of Lent (Year C)
COMPLACENCY
Today's
readings ought to be approached with reverence and holy fear! We
ought to do that of course every
week, but particularly this week because they speak to us of a very
great spiritual problem that we suffer in our own time and in this
part of the world. The
problem that our readings today address is the problem of
complacency. I suggest to you that Christians in western Europe are
generally far too complacent – and what God's Word says to us in
the readings today, is that complacency will lead to downfall –
spiritual ruin.
For example, why is it that people in our society are far more
careful about not insulting Muslims than they are Christians? Why is
it that when religious freedom is trampled upon in our society the
most we can hope Christians will do is write a letter to their MP?
Why is it that when our society proposed to introduce the legal
destruction of unborn babies that we were not raging with righteous
anger and demonstrating on our streets? Why is it that when
Christians going about their normal work who refuse to promote
something that goes against their faith, are arrested, are fined, are
demoted, are sacked - we do very little or nothing about it? Why is
it that we have allowed our society on the back of equal rights
legislation to close down Catholic adoption agencies? Why is it that
when the prime minister proposes to re-define marriage in law most Catholics protested just by sending a post-card to
their MP? Why is
it that when in the last few days a police chaplain has been sacked
for publishing his support for traditional marriage on his personal
website, we have done very little?
What
will we do when teachers will be prevented from following their
conscience in the class-room, refusing to support gay marriage and
when they will almost certainly be sacked, what will we do? Anything? What
will we do if foster parents are prevented from telling their
children their beliefs in traditional Christianity? What will we do
as religious freedom after religious freedom is eroded in our
society? What will we do? The track record is not good! It is likely
we will do very little; at most contact our MP. And eventually our
nation will become a truly secular state and truly anti-religious.
And sadly brothers and sisters WE will have allowed
them to be eroded because of our complacency.
The erosion of religious freedom has been somewhat subtle of course.
The forces of this erosion don't portray themselves as being
anti-religious, but of being about stopping offensiveness,
of stopping us hurting feelings, of stopping us promoting prejudice,
of keeping our religion private and not imposing it on others.
One
of the reasons that we have allowed all this to happen is because
inside we have allowed our faith to be dulled. We don't like it when
our faith makes us feel uncomfortable, when it stirs us up, when it
challenges us. We don't like it. We like a faith that makes us feel
comfortable. We like a faith that settles our disturbing feelings.
What we want is just peace, an absence of conflict, within – that's
all!
Brothers
and sisters let me tell you today: that is NOT what God wants for
you, for me! God expects you and I to bear fruit in our lives, good
fruit (not moderately nice fruit). God is who He is, but He is also a God
who acts! He abhors complacency! He spits out of His mouth the
lukewarm! He does not want lukewarm followers!
In the parable of the fig tree in the vineyard, He says,
through the words of the gardener, about the fig tree that is not
producing fruit, “leave it one year and give me time to dig round
it and manure it: it may bear fruit next year; if not, then
you can cut it down.” Yes He
has mercy and gives it one more year but there will come a time when
He will say, “Cut it down.” St Paul referring to the lesson we
ought to learn from the Israelites who perished in the wilderness,
and never reached the Promised Land, says, “All this happened as a
warning... The man who thinks he is safe must be careful that he does
not fall!”
We
think God is a good chap, He won't really condemn us, He is a God of
love, and love means He will not give us a hard time. That
is not true! Love actually means He WILL give us a hard time. Love
means He is angry about our sins! He is angry because our sins
disfigure us, and distort the image of God within us. His anger is
actually good news for us because it means He really cares about us!
Does a mother or father show their love for their children if they
let their children continue in sinful behaviour? Of course not! They
are angry with their children's sinfulness! Love makes them angry!
They really care! God loves us more than we can imagine – but that
also means that God is angry with us, children of His, when we sin
against Him.
And
complacency is a great
sin of omission. We like to think it is a little sin – but it is
not. For evil to triumph it requires only that good men do nothing.
Not doing what we could have done. It is being lukewarm about our
faith – it is about avoiding anything that disturbs us, anything
that offends, anything that brings conflict. Being lukewarm is being
happy with a modicum of contentment and avoiding anything that
disturbs that. Being lukewarm about our faith means we will avoid
letting people know our beliefs, especially the beliefs that offend
others! Being lukewarm means we hide our faith under a bushel. We
only let it out on certain occasions, otherwise we carry on as if
everything is okay, that we are nice and inoffensive people!
His
Holiness Benedict XVI stepped down because he knows the successor of
Peter needs great energy to do what needs to be done, and although he
has done what he could
do even at a senior age, now his body is failing he knows he must
pass it on to someone who has
the needed energy. But unless we
become Catholics who are not complacent, but who have energy and
ardour for our faith, Catholicism and Christianity will continue to
decline in Europe no matter how energetic the new pope is. There is a battle going on, and our complacency
means what we want to do is avoid conflict, avoid showing that we
object to what is going on, avoid showing others what our faith
means. Complacency means we tend to drop our weapons: we tend to not
persevere in prayer when it becomes difficult, it means we tend not
to grow in knowledge of Scripture lest we hear God's Word, it means
we do not have a care to increase our knowledge of our faith because
then it will present us with too many challenges and require too much
time and energy of us. Complacency therefore means we surrender our
weapons! And of course without weapons we are bound to try to avoid
conflict!
We must approach the readings today with holy fear! We must listen to
St Paul saying that the Exodus is a warning to us all. God heard the
cry of His people in oppression in Egypt. He extended His arm against
the Egyptians with mighty wonders, and through Moses led His people
through the waters of the Red Sea to the Exodus. There He instructed
them on how to live their lives. But time and time again they
rebelled, they were disobedient, they were wayward, they did their
own thing as soon as Moses' back was turned! And St Paul tells us
that we should see this as a warning for us all, that many of them
perished before they reached the Promised Land! We also need to hear the
words of our Lord today, “unless you repent you will all perish as
they did.”
If there is only one tendency to sin, that we do something about this
Lent, brothers and sisters, let it be complacency that we really deal
with!
IH
2nd
March 2013
