Father Peter F. Hansen
Sermon for the Sunday after Ascension
May 23, 2004
A Multitude of Sins
“The end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer. And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins. Use hospitality one to another without grudging. As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God ”
Christ has risen from the dead, and Christ is ascended up on high , to be seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven. In this we rejoice. We rejoice for Him, because He was reunited with the Father after His sojourn on earth among His creatures. You may imagine how hard it was for the infinite and eternal Son of God to descend to earth, become a mere man, live among sinners, learn our flaws, our weaknesses, our failings from the perspective of one of us: and ultimately become an innocent victim of man's hatred, conspiracy and murder. He is now in glory with His Father and has been given all power in heaven and earth, under the Father, to reign and rule the universe with equity and truth.
But we also rejoice that we now have a high priest whose presence in the heavens assures us of God's good will and pleasure toward us. He looks at His Son, and He sees us, redeemed mankind in Him . As the Father loves His Son, He loves all who love Jesus Christ. For Jesus is eternally man, as well as God. And as man, He knows our griefs, our needs, our sorrows, our confusions and our confessions, and as a man and as a priest, He gives us the Father's forgiveness that He Himself bought for us at a great price. Christ's ascension gives us that comfort, that Christ our brother is our great advocate and intercessor with God.
We are also assured of the coming of the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, who has been sent to indwell the believers in Christ. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is so mysterious that we hardly scratch the surface of that power in a lifetime. Suffice it to say He is powerful to do in the Church anything needed to bring a maximum number of people to Christ, to heal every wound, to make peace on earth among nations, to end poverty, to end racial strife, to knit families together, to sanctify every life unto God, and make our worship of God as glorious as heaven. This for starters. The power that resides in the Church of Jesus Christ, that Spirit of truth, ought to revolutionize the planet.
So, why hasn't it happened, not in 2,000 years?
Well, it has happened, in small measure . More people follow Christ than follow any other religion on earth. Miraculous healings have occurred, in some places the dead have been raised from the grave . Much peace has been known among nations that might otherwise have continued to war for ages. Christian charity goes out to feed the hungry of the world and bring them a better way to live. Christianity is practiced among every race on earth, bringing together people of all colors, ethnicities, and national heritage. Families have remained in loving devotion through strife because of the love of Christ and the aid of church fellowship. Lives are changed every day for the better. And our worship is beautiful, and Christian worship is the glory of mankind . What is potentially a completed work of the Holy Spirit on earth has been partially done. What has held back its fuller glory?
Our sins. A multitude of sins, in fact. Jesus Christ gave us everything we might need to change the world. If you complain about the world, about ignorance, evil, sickness, war, hunger, poverty, racism, divorce, rebellion among the young, human depravity, and addictive behaviors: you share in the heartbreak of God as He looks at mankind. But if you complain about the world, you condemn yourself, for you are as much of the problem as anyone . The sins of the Church, the sins of Christians are keeping God from working powerfully where you live.
Why else did St. Paul write so many lists of sinful behaviors, such scathing letters disclosing and condemning stupid actions and unChristlike beliefs? He was not writing about the sins of the pagans alone. He encouraged his fellow believers in Christ to stop joining the pagans in their sins. Why did St. John tell us that if we confess our sins, God is faithful and even justified to forgive us our sins? He said so because Christ died and rose for us just so we might be free of sin always. And why did James write about confession as well? He wrote for us to: “ Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much… Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him; Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins. James 5:16-20
Hiding a multitude of sins was the phrase St. Peter wrote about in our Epistle today. He offered charity among Christians to cover a multitude of sins . We misread this passage, I believe, throughout the churches. We don't know what that means.
Charity means sacrificial love . It means knowing what my brother needs and giving it to him, even at great cost to myself . St. Paul & St. Peter both knew the cost to themselves of charity. It cost them their lives . Their witness to the world of men, their brothers and sisters lost in this wicked world, was to bring forward the faith of Christ to the ends of the Roman Empire in one lifetime. It also brought the wrath of the empire down on them personally as Paul was beheaded and Peter crucified upside down. Charity that covers sins brings pain to the lover, pain and loss.
There is a curious false form of charity that is more popular in the churches these days than sacrificial love. It takes another name: Tolerance . It offers no light, gives no real comfort, forgives nothing, and clouds minds and hearts with a fog of platitudes and well-meaning phrases about something it calls “ love ,” but doesn't know the meaning of the word. Tolerance demands that no one speak ill of anyone or anyone's actions . A multitude of sins is covered under tolerance, so it must be charitable, mustn't it? In the fog, the self-congratulations spread among the truly unrepentant and further cripples the horrified sinner who needs a way out of his dilemma.
Why did the Holy Spirit come to earth, if the church sees spirituality as a way to embalm every sinner in his sinfulness? Let the letcher letch. Let the adulterer continue her adultery. Let the drug addict continue shooting up: it is our responsibility to see he has a clean needle, though. Let the teenagers have their sex lives, uninhibited, so long as we give them condoms, and should they make a mistake, we abort our own grandchildren. Let the homosexuals have their way of life, and let them marry each other, raise children, teach school, lead scouts and choirs and churches . Who is to say they aren't better people than we are? Who can judge? We are so kind and loving not to judge anyone, well, almost anyone . We are tolerant. The only sin left is intolerance . We won't tolerate it.
Why did the Holy Spirit come to earth, but to shed a light on us and reprove us of our sins? The letcher has to know his pornography fuels an entire underworld keeping countless women in bondage, drugs, and death. He must stop his letching . The adulterer has to stop her betrayal of the sacred altar of marriage and save her family from the shame and distress of divorce , if possible. The drug addict and alcoholic have to be stopped from destroying their lives and the lives of their families. Teenagers need to be taught abstinence until marriage, instead of having the schools invite Planned Parenthood to give them sex lessons. And why? For one thing, sexually transmitted diseases soar into the multi-millions of new cases annually among the young. Planned Parenthood is directly responsible for sterility, illness and death of countless youth. Your toleration of teen sex is abandoning our children to those who sell abortion to the state in order to kill your grandchildren. Homosexuals need to learn the truth as well. Their lifestyle kills people : themselves and their partners. The sexual practices of gay and lesbian people have been clearly demonstrated as against the will of God and the nature of His created order. Gay lifestyle and philosophy alienates men from a God who can heal them. The church's new toleration merely tells them to stay as they are.
Charity that covers sins means tell ing the truth, in love, willing to go the length, to suffer for it, to be castigated and accused falsely for our witness in a sinful world. But real love means saying what God would say: these sins are an abomination to God in the sight of heaven because they are enslaving lives and destroying souls. Toleration is singing a hymn while the smoke of Auschwitz darkens our skies ; smiling and celebrating our pro-choice attitude while girls stagger out of Planned Parenthood having killed their babies and gutting their womanhood ; blandly watching our young people stagger in stoned and thinking how we once experimented; and patting ourselves on the back for our broadmindedness as Anglicanism worldwide suffers a fatal blow from accepting unacceptable morality and anti-biblical, anti-God personal practices.
The reason the world is going to hell is that the Christian church has decorated hell's portals and now welcomes everyone in. What do we do to stop this slaughter of a generation? Charity : the will to love and suffer, to witness truth in love and pay the cost, just as Jesus did. Charity : to cover sin , that is to recover the sinner and put away his sins through real Christian lifestyle teaching and repentance, confession, absolution and restoration . We have been given the ministry of reconciliation to God, not redefinition of sin that only leads to a redefinition of God Himself.
The Church of Jesus is the only real cure for this sin sick world. If our enemy silences its voice from telling the truth in love, if he turns our love it into a pallid, limp and vapid tolerance, the Church is not worth saving, for it could then save no one, not even itself.
PFH+