Believe & Worship: A Sermon for the 4th Sunday in Lent

I recently read an article in which David Harrison, a retired priest in the Anglican Church in Canada said,

“Lent invites us to clarity of vision — about ourselves, the state of our physical, emotional, and spiritual being — and how we can grow and change to be more consonant with God, in whose image we are made. That is a life’s work, and Lent is the particular time of the Church’s year when our attention is called to this work.”

Our lessons from Paul and John both address this Lenten theme of clarity of vision, and how we can grow and change to be more consonant with God, in whose image we are made. In Paul’s Letter to his church in Ephesus:

“Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light— for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly; but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says,

“Sleeper, awake!
Rise from the dead,

and Christ will shine on you.”

This invitation to expose our inward darkness reminds me of the Collect for Purity:

“Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open, all desire known, and from whom no secrets are hid. Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts….”

The purpose of Lent – this season where we are invited into a deeper clarity of vision – is not to “expose our unfruitful works of darkness” so we can feel bad about ourselves. And it’s not even to try to make us better people, or, dare I say,  even better Christians.

The purpose of setting aside a 40-day season to spend time in intentional self-examination, prayer, study, and almsgiving is to steer us towards Christ, in whose image we were made. It is to steer us towards the divine image that we will one day fully and wholly reflect in our resurrected bodies.

You’ve heard me say this before, but the purpose for all these things that we do in Church is – at the end of the day – to simply to come to know and love Jesus more fully and deeply. And out of that love will flow good fruit. But the true good fruit is always rooted and grounded in an intimate knowledge and love of Jesus Christ, who reveals himself to us in a myriad of ways.

In the remarkable story of the healing of the blind man, clearly there is a literal and spiritual healing that takes place. If we ignore either of those truths, we miss the power of the story. I think perhaps the most powerful part of this story for me is at the very end, where Jesus tracked the formerly blind man down and had a final conversation with him. Here is the encounter:

“Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” He said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him. Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see…”.

What did the formerly blind man say and do once he realized that Jesus – the man who healed him – was the Son of Man? He did two very fundamental things in the Christian faith that we ourselves are called to do – he believed that Jesus was who he said he was. And in response to that belief, he worshipped him.

The text doesn’t tell us that he dropped everything and followed Jesus. It doesn’t say that he ran to the village to tell everyone what had happened to him. It simply says that he believed and he worshipped. I imagine that later on, the formerly blind man, in the words of Paul “live[d] as a child of light— and the fruit of the light that emanated from him was good and right and true.” I imagine that he shared the Good News of the gospel with others. I imagine that he did good works and served those who were in need since he himself had been on the receiving end of such charity.

But we must remember that all the extra things that we do during the season of Lent are rooted and grounded in one, primary purpose – that we might be able to see, know, and love Jesus more clearly and intimately. And, if and when that happens, our first, most basic response is simply to believe that Jesus is indeed the Messiah – the one who God sent to save us; that this Jesus who we are coming to know more fully is the one is whom lies eternal life. And, our second action is, in grateful response, to what we are doing right now. We are gathered here to worship the God who has brought light into our darkness; the God who has invited out of our blindness and into the light of his son Jesus Christ.

Believing and worshipping are two of the fundamental aspects of our lives as Christians. They are foundational parts of our Baptismal Covenant. And they are also much more meaningful when we do these two things together as the gathered Body of Christ. Because the reality is that most of us don’t always fully believe all the time. We struggle to believe all that we encounter in our Holy Scriptures. We struggle to believe everything that we have learned to be true about God, particularly in those moments when God feels absent from our lives. And when we find ourselves to be in one of these seasons of aridity, it can be all the more difficult to offer our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving in worship.

And when we find ourselves struggling to believe and worship, that is what the Body of Christ is for. Our brothers and sisters in Christ are here to believe for us when we can’t bring ourselves to believe. Our brothers and sisters in Christ are here to worship alongside us (or in place of us) when we don’t feel like offering praise and thanksgiving to God.

That, my friends, is the blessing of Christ’s Body, the Church. Together, we gather to believe and worship with one another and for one another.  As such, in the words of Paul, we are invited to awake from our sleep, “Rise from the dead, and [let] Christ will shine [upon us].”