The More Excellent Way

THE SUNDAY CALLED QUINQUAGESIMA, THE SUNDAY NEXT BEFORE LENT

On this Sunday morning, we find ourselves at the last of the three 'Gesima' Sundays, which serve as a transitional time between the festive Epiphany wine of Cana and the sobering starkness of the Lenten wilderness, which after forty days, presents the cup of suffering and lamentation from which our Lord will deeply drink on Good Friday. But the way of the cross begins in the desert.

Remember our Lord, who arising from Jordan's waters, immediately crossed over into the desert. But unlike Israel before him, Jesus, the true Israel, conquered the world, the flesh, and the devil. In fact, his overcoming in the wilderness was a foretaste of the final victory he would win over sin and death on Golgotha's cross.

We, like our Lord, we are being led into the wilderness of Lent except, unlike Jesus, we will not make this journey alone. For we are joining Christ in the wasteland, he is our companion, our guide, our strength, and defender. We are very much like Israel was in the desert (in fact, St. Paul himself makes this connection for us in the tenth chapter of his second epistle to the Corinthians). The story of Israel's exodus and wilderness journey finally the story of Jesus, and it is the story of the church, our story.

Having heard the cries of his people, God redeemed his children from the enslavement of Egypt. He brought them safely through the waters, and as a pillar of cloud by day and a fire by night, the Lord led His people into the desert for forty years. Have you ever wondered why God did this? Well, I can tell you it wasn't because they were lost! No. God led them in the wilderness for forty years to prepare them. It was a time of preparation, to refine and ready a people to enter into the blessing of God, the fullness of his promises, their promised inheritance which lay just across the banks of the river Jordan.

We tend to view God's dealings with Israel punitively, as punishment, but God's discipline is meant to refine, reform, to draw his nature and character out from under the hardness of the heart. Those Forty years were a gift of grace, given to displace pride with humility, fear with faith, and disobedience with love. Love: to reform a people back into the fullest expression of their Maker: love. To mirror the image of God, who is Love. Then, and only then would God's people be prepared to enter into the land; into the blessing and joy set before them.

The wilderness was the ground upon which the Lord would forge and imprint his people with Divine love; to prepare them. This is precisely what we hear in today's reading from Deuteronomy. Through his prophet, God exhorts those in the wilderness saying, "You shall, therefore, love the LORD your God and keep his charge, his statutes, his rules, and his commandments always... what he did to you in the wilderness until you came to this place.

For your eyes have seen all the great work of the LORD that he did. You shall, therefore, keep the whole commandment that I command you today, that you may be strong, and go in and take possession of the land that you are going over to possess, and that you may live long in the land that the LORD swore to your fathers to give to them and to their offspring, a land flowing with milk and honey." The commandment they were to keep, above every other law, is Love. To love God and love others. This, beloved, is the more excellent way (1 Cor 12:31).

In the same way, God offers to his church forty days of Lent as a means of preparation. Lent's wilderness journey is not without a destination. Like Israel before us, the wilderness is leading us into the blessing of promise. For on the other side of the Jordan lies the majesty and joy of the resurrection! Milk and honey await the desert sojourner. For the dark and rigorous season of Lent does not end in death, but in life, "weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning."

And although we might suffer thirst and hunger and encounter temptations and trials along these forty days, we musn't lose sight of the promise. And, we must avail ourselves unto the gracious hand of the Lord, who will use this coming Lent to form you into the image of his love. If we are willing to be led by Christ as Israel did.

This is why we have been given these past three 'Gesima' Sundays. To begin the work of self-mastery by elevating the virtues. On Septuagesima St. Paul, in his Epistle, compelled us to 'Strive for the mastery' of the Christian life with temperance. In the Gospel of the laborer’s: justice. Last Sunday, fortitude was illustrated in St. Paul's account of his sufferings for Christ's sake, and the virtue of honesty by the parable of the Sower, some of Whose good seed fell on honest and good hearts.

And on this Quinquagesima Sunday, we are called to not only embrace but become the chief of all Christian virtues: love. For as the Apostle says, "now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity." Now, you might be wondering why charity is used in speaking of God's love (and even if you aren't, let me explain anyway).

Charity is how the King James renders the Greek word agape. Agape is a uniquely Christian word not found anywhere else in the vast lexicon of ancient writings. It is a word inspired by the Holy Spirit and used by St. Paul and other writers of the New Testament to describe the purest and highest of loves. It expresses the unparalleled and uniquely Divine Love, the perfect Love of God most fully demonstrated in the sending of the Son.

It is this pure love which compels the Lord into the passion and sufferings of Holy Week, it is a love which thrusts Him willing onto the pain and suffering of the cross. Every action of the Lord Jesus Christ: his miracles, healings, teachings, rebukes, examples, and so on are fully comprehended and found perfect in light of his self-less agape; the charity of Christ poured out upon the world.

Many have in consequence been led to think that almsgiving and kindness to the sick and the poor is the sum total of all religion, because of the superior worth here St. Paul ascribes to charity, exalting it above both faith and hope. But what the Apostle here speaks of, is not any one particular virtue or grace, but that which is the root and spring of all virtues and graces, and to possess agape is to be both like God and in God. The Christian virtues- temperance, justice, honesty, fortitude- are worthless if they are not accompanied and rooted in agape love.

As St Paul puts it in today's Epistle reading, "Though I speak with tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." Everything we do must be from Charity, not acting as slaves who work from fear or from the motivation of 'self-interest,' fasting and praying to be seen as the hypocrites do (Mat 6:5, 16) for neither fear nor self-interest converts the soul. They may change the appearance, perhaps even our behavior (temporarily), but will never reorder our desires and transform our very being. We'll make a lot of 'Christian noise' but never bring forth from the heart, the righteous song of the saints.

Friends, love must accompany our Lenten prayers, fasting, and almsgiving. We must avail ourselves to the wellspring of Charity alone, for only love will turn the soul from love of self and from the love of the world. The spiritual work of Lent is a work of charity, pursuing Love with an openness to the agape of Christ who alone can prepare our hearts in the wilderness.

And yet notice how this morning's Gospel keeps within the orbit of loving God, the great commandment to love others as well. See how Jesus loves the beggar who is blind. How he puts aside whatever it is he is doing and stands, and tells his disciples to bring the beggar to himself. See how he elevates the need of any who call upon the son of David, "Have mercy upon me!" See how he inquires of the man's need.

And without delaying, qualifying, or questioning, he loves. "And Jesus said unto him, Receive thy sight; thy faith hath saved thee. And immediately the man received his sight, and followed him, glorifying God: and all the people, when they saw it, gave praise unto God." Agape removes blindness. It opens the eyes of the heart; it manifests the glory of God.

Agape. This is the aim and goal of the Lenten journey. Hear the Apostle John, "Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and everyone that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another."

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent. And as you leave this Chapel next Wednesday, marked with the ashes of mortality. Remember that it is the mark of love. A reminder of the great love of God towards us in Jesus Christ! I mean, tor what other purpose did God decide to become a man and to suffer and die, then agape?

Without love, the Incarnation as the means of our redemption is entirely incomprehensible. Why would Jesus suffer and die for you and for me? Because God loves us, and God is agape. Friends, He could have satisfied his Divine justice without redeeming us from damnation. He could have destroyed Pharaoh and kept his people enslaved. But no. He wanted to satisfy the demand of justice and put His pure and perfect love on display. “He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed” (Isa 53:5). The agape of God had to suffer and die to be the supremely better love.

The most excellent display of Love the world has and will ever see will once again be put before us during Holy Week, in the passion of our Lord. The pain of the wilderness is a precursor, a necessary precursor, to the ultimate wasteland of death which our Lord endured for three days in the belly of Gehenna. And we are being prepared as well, to walk the way of sorrows, the way of charity. Love of God and love of others.

This is why, on this Quinquagesima Sunday, we are being tasked to saturate every aspect of our lives in the virtue of Charity because, without Charity, we will never, no matter how hard we try, please God. Friends, may this Lent be clearly marked by your charity. And may the wilderness mark you with the Divine agape. For the measure of our love towards God is to love immeasurably. This is the more excellent way of all who love the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let us pray,

O LORD, who hast taught us that all our doings without charity are nothing worth: Send thy Holy Spirit, and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity, the very bond of peace and of all virtues, without which whosoever lives is counted dead before thee: Grant this for thine only Son Jesus Christ's sake. Amen+