We veil the statues and pictures in the church. As Jesus hid himself from his adversaries in the gospel, so now his image is hid from us until the celebration of his passion on Good Friday. The veiling removes from our sight the images that present the results of the passion—the life giving crucifix and the holiness of the saints. This makes our meditation on the passion more stark and solemn.

These external preparations are meant to aid our internal preparation. Passiontide calls us to bring the fast to a worthy conclusion; to make a good confession, experience forgiveness in a new way and grow in faith, hope and love. A good confession is the result of a conversation in prayer. We must ask God to reveal to us what is really going on in our lives—and then listen for an answer. We must ask the deeper questions. For example, if we struggle with anger, we must not just confess anger. We must also ask, “Why am I angry?” There is likely a deeper wound and a need to forgive at the root of it.

We ought to confess a lack of prayerfulness. This is always at the root of our struggles. Holiness is the fruit of God’s sanctifying presence, which we experience through prayer. A person who does not pray cannot make progress in the faith; for that person will try to do better by mere human effort, and that effort will always fall short of God’s will.

Our faith is not about trying hard to obey rules. Our faith is about knowing God as he is revealed through his Son by means of the Holy Spirit. If we do not know God, we cannot know our sins or experience forgiveness. Passiontide invites us to come closer to God; to enter into the Holy of Holies through the Passion to be both convicted and cleansed of sin.

Our gospel provides a meditation about the dangers of not knowing God. Jesus said to his adversaries, “It is my Father that honoureth me; of whom you say that he is your God: yet ye have not known him.” Let us highlight by repetition the charge Jesus levels against his foes: “You say that he is your God, yet you have not known him.”

St. John calls these adversaries “the Jews.” This pejorative title does not refer to all Jewish people. Both Jesus and St. John were Jewish. “The Jews” refers to the Jewish leadership that conspired to have Jesus arrested and executed. They were enemies of Jesus but, we must remember, they were religious people. They were faithful attendees at their local synagogues. They went to the temple for all the prescribed feasts. They prayed their “daily offices.” They followed the rules. Yet they did not know God.

There is danger in religion. This danger is present even for people who think they are not religious; for, in fact, all people are religious. Even those who don’t believe in God or who believe but say they reject “organized” religion are religious. If you observe their lives, you will see patterns of behavior that they practice religiously. For some work is a religion; for some art; for some sports; for some nature. The question is not whether our lives are filled with routines of worship and service. The question is, “Whom does our liturgy serve?”

The danger is that human nature tends to create religious patterns of behavior for comfort and protection. We create routines that shield us from people, situations and truths that make us uncomfortable. And, we tend to use them to distinguish ourselves from others. We do what we do because we don’t do what “they” do. This enables us to be self-righteous.

“The Jews” thought their interpretation of the Torah was the answer to Israel’s problems. They viewed everyone who did not submit to them as an enemy. Jesus offended them because he told them that they needed to repent also. Yes, the tax collectors and sinners needed to repent; but, said Jesus, so did the scribes and Pharisees. The characteristics sins of the former group would have been lust and gluttony. The characteristic sins of latter would have been pride, covetousness and envy. These latter sins often have a nicer cover, but they are no less deadly. This is why they are more dangerous.

“The Jews” had taken the sting out of their religion as it applied to them. They were happy to sting others, but not so happy to be stung. Jesus was a reformer who insisted that the full meaning and demands of Torah applied to everyone. He taught that when the full meaning of the Torah is brought out, everyone gets stung.

We are also reformers. Our mission is to renew and reform the tradition we have received. If our work of renewal and reform is to mean anything, we must also insist that the full meaning and demands of the gospel apply to everyone. We must not excuse our favorite sins, while highlighting the sins of other people. Our practice of the faith must convict each of us and lead each of us to repent and change the way we live. Only after that happens do we have anything to say to anyone else.

For example, we value worship in the beauty of holiness. But we must not love merely the form and the beauty; we must also learn to love and desire the holiness. We value the poetic language of our prayers and confessions. But are we sorry for our sins? Are we allowing God to change us? We possess a rich treasury of hymnody and choral music. But are our hearts really open to God in worship? We have held on to the faith? But will we now fulfill our mission to share that faith with those who do not know God?

The words of Jesus in gospel ought to shake us a bit: “You say that he is your God, yet ye have not known him.” Is there any danger that the outward form of our religion does not match the inner reality? Is there any danger that we say prayers to God and sing about God, but do not actually know God? As we enter into our meditation on the mighty acts whereby Jesus has saved us, let us remember that Jesus didn’t suffer and die so that we might live nice, comfortable lives. Jesus comes to us like “a refiner’s fire and a fuller’s soap” to purify and cleanse us so to that our offering will be acceptable (Malachi 3:2). Are we ready?

Passion Sunday sets the table for the last two weeks of Lent. It tells us who Jesus is and what he has done. We veil the crosses and pictures and eliminate the Gloria Patri. But the real preparation for Good Friday and Easter must take place in our hearts. Jesus is coming to Jerusalem to die for our sins. Will we listen to the voice of God and make a good confession? Are we ready to be forgiven? Are we willing to be changed?

The church is sacramental. The Bible calls us “the Body of Christ”—the same language that is used of the Sacrament. Each Christian is a sign of the presence of Jesus in the world. Jesus’ standard of judgment will be, “Inasmuch as ye did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it unto me” (Matthew 25:40). This means that our interaction with each other always has a deeper meaning and larger implications.

Fallen humanity is not able to see the sacramental meaning of life. Fallen humanity sees the creation as just a physical reality and life in this mortal body, in this world as the ultimate thing. This is what the Bible calls living according to the “flesh.”

In today’s gospel, large crowds were following Jesus. St. John tells us that they were attracted by "the miracles that he did on them that were diseased." The word for miracles means literally, "signs." This reflects their sacramental character. When Jesus turned water into wine, healed the sick and created bread, these actions were signs that revealed that Jesus is the Son of God, “by whom all things were made.”

St. John tells us that the crowd did not understand the signs. They followed Jesus because they saw him as a source of free food and health care. They would make him their ruler and he would free them from all the afflictions of life. They lacked sacramental vision—the ability to see the larger truths towards which the signs pointed.

In the section of John 6 immediately after the gospel, Jesus tried to escape from the crowd. When the people finally caught up with him, Jesus, essentially, picked a fight with them. He said, "You seek me not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled; Labor not for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures unto eternal life" (6:27).

The feeding of the multitudes hearkens back to the Old Testament, where God fed Israel with manna in the wilderness. Here Jesus did the same thing. He led the people away to a deserted place in order to feed them with miracle food. Jesus explained, “I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven that a man may eat thereof and not die” (John 6:48-50).

God gave the people of Israel miraculous food in the wilderness to sustain their physical bodies. But they all died anyway. Jesus would give himself as a kind of food that imparts and sustains eternal life, life that will never die. This is the meaning of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Jesus. It is food that sustains the eternal life that was given to us in baptism. As Jesus said, "Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life and I will raise him up at the Last Day” (John 6:54).

Sacramental food is not merely “spiritual” as opposed to physical food. The Sacrament is what God intended all food to be. Man was created as union of matter and Spirit. God always gave man food for both. God gave man sacramental food in the beginning, the fruit of the Tree of Life. This food was intended to sustain man in his union with God. Through sin, man partook of the creation without regard to God's will, with ingratitude for the life God had given. Man’s union with God was severed. Man came to live on a merely physical level. Man lost his sacramental vision. He began to pursue only the food that perishes.

By his life and death, Jesus restored us to the union with God that we lost through sin. We no longer live merely “in the flesh.” We live in bodies, but we also live in the Spirit in union with God. Our lives are now sustained by the Bread of Life. The Bread of Life is the same food as the fruit of the Tree of Life. After the first sin, man was forbidden to eat this food (Genesis 3:24). Now, in Christ, this food is accessible to us. We may eat and live.

The feeding of the multitudes reveals the pattern of life for God’s New Creation. Jesus took the loaves and offered them back to God in Thanksgiving. God multiplied the loaves so that they were sufficient to meet the need. This was man’s original priestly vocation; to take the creation that God had given and offer it back to God in thanksgiving. All that man offers to God in thanksgiving is given back to man to use with God’s blessing.

Sin is ingratitude. When we sin we say to God, "I will do as I please with the gifts you have given me." When we sin, we partake of the creation without regard to God’s will, without regard to the deeper meaning of created things and without giving thanks. Our non-Eucharistic partaking lacks the blessing and presence of God. We use the creation wrongly because we are blind to the sacramental meaning of created things. Our lives become disordered and discontented because we live only in the flesh. We are cut off from eternal life. This is the pattern of life from which Christ has saved us.

We exercise the priestly vocation to which we have been restored in Christ when we gather around the altar each week. We offer bread and wine to God. Like the loaves in the feeding, the bread and the wine represent the creation and our participation in it. We offer the creation back to God in thanksgiving. We offer ourselves, our souls and bodies to God in Christ and through Christ. The miracle of consecration that occurs is two-fold; ordinary food that perishes becomes the bread from heaven that we may eat thereof and not die; and ordinary mortal people become the body of Christ.

The pattern of the Eucharist is the pattern for life. We are called, as St. Paul says, to give thanks in everything (Ephesians 5:20, 1 Thessalonians 5:18). We give thanks for the eternal life that God has given us by obeying the commandments; by honoring the image of Christ in other people; by using our gifts in service to the kingdom. As all of life is offered to God in this manner, Christ becomes present in all things to sustain us and bring his order out of our chaos.

We are able to live new lives in God’s kingdom because our sacramental vision has been restored through baptism and faith. We were blind, but now we see. Now, we understand the signs. Now, we labor for the food that endures unto eternal life.

Replacing evil with the good is the pattern established in baptism. In baptism, we renounced the world, the flesh and the devil, and we received the gift of the Holy Spirit. The service for baptism in the 1549 Book of Common Prayer actually contained a prayer of exorcism. The priest prayed, “I commande thee, uncleane spirite, in the name of the father, and of the sonne, and of the holy ghost, that thou come out, and departe from these infants…” Then he prayed, as we still do, “Give thy Holy Spirit to these infants that they may be born again.”

The Eucharist is a renewal of our baptism. We confess sins of thought, word and deed in order to remove evil from our lives. We receive Christ is the Sacrament so that the evil will be replaced with the good. We depart, filled again with the Spirit, to do the good works God has prepared for us. The gospel suggest that unless we open our lives to the Holy Spirit and actually do the good God has prepared for us, we run the risk of falling  back into evil that is greater than what we confessed in the first place.

The epistle is an exhortation to live in the light of our baptism. “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of the light” The problem, or challenge, is that it is easier to talk about baptismal renewal than to actually experience it. It is easier to confess our sins than it is to overcome them. It is easier to desire virtue than to practice it. It is easier feel loving feelings than it is to act with the motive of love.

Part of the difficulty results from confusion about how God’s grace interacts with our own efforts in the Christian life. There is an emphasis in American Christianity on what is called “justification by faith.” This is the truth, which we proclaim here often enough, that we are saved by the grace of God and not by what we do. As Ephesians says, “By grace are ye saved through faith, and that is not of yourselves; it is the gift of God” (2:8).

However, once we have experienced conversion of the heart and have been baptized into Christ, our essential mode of being changes. We no longer live merely “in the flesh.” We live “in the Spirit.” Life in the Spirit requires work on our part. This “work” does not consist of things we do that will earn God’s favor; this work consists of acts of the will that open our lives up to God’s grace and make it effectual so that it actually changes us.

The principles of growth “in the Spirit” correspond to ordinary principles of growth. God gives us a body and a mind as a gift. If we want to become stronger or better informed, we must actually engage in exercise and study. We would laugh at someone who says they want to be stronger and smarter but is unwilling to work out or read.

God gives us his Holy Spirit. If we want to become stronger in the Spirit and grow in our knowledge of God, we must engage in spiritual exercise and study. We ought to laugh at those who say they want to be more like Christ, but never pray, fast, gives alms, makes a confession, receives the sacrament or put their spiritual gifts to use.

The grace of the sacrament is free. But you have to get out of bed and make the effort to come to church to receive it. Grace comes to us freely through prayer. But we must actually stop what we are doing and talk and listen to God if we are to receive that free grace. Fasting is a means of grace. But we must actually not eat or not partake of some other pleasure if we are to receive the free grace offered to us by fasting. Good works require that we actually do some good thing.

The epistle says, “Walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself for us.” Sounds good, but how are we going to do that? We must first receive his love. This will require a good confession of our sins leading to new experience of forgiveness. This will require some time in prayer to consider just what those sins are; then it will require us to make an actual confession. We must then consider, “What keeps me from loving as I ought?” We might well discover that we have selfish habits and attachments that get in the way of our desire to love. Dealing with these may require some practice of fasting, and some change in our daily pattern of living. We will need to recommit ourselves to prayer and begin to behave in ways that actually seek the good of the flesh and blood people with whom we live and interact. The point is that what sounds like a sweet and easy command—“walk in love”—is shown, upon further review, to require quite a bit of work from us—if we mean to obey it.

Without a willingness to work at replacing the evil with the good, we may consider ourselves to be Christians who are forgiven and loved by God; but our disordered patterns of thought and behavior may remain unchanged. The gospel suggests that we cannot maintain this status. If we do not work to cooperate with God’s grace so as to produce the fruits of the Spirit, we will actually regress into greater evil over time.

We are now two and a half weeks into Lent. If you have taken it seriously and fasted in some way, you may be a little grumpy or impatient by now. The appetite that has been denied may be whining. You may be struggling to keep your commitment to prayer. You may have intended to do good works but may not feel at all like doing them. This is all a good and necessary part of the work of spiritual growth. The point is not how you feel, but what you do. If you persevere in prayer, fasting and almsgiving, this will be season of growth. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve been perfect at it or not. It matters only that you continue in the work of removing the evil and replacing it with the good, by grace.

Paradoxically, it requires effort to be changed by grace. There is always the temptation to be satisfied with words and warm feelings. Thus, the woman in the gospel tried to change the subject. She exclaimed, “Blessed is the womb that bear thee and the paps which thou hast sucked.” But, Jesus—emphasizing that progress requires that we actually change the way we live; that we actually work on our confessions and actually practice doing new things—said in response to the woman, “Yea, rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it.”

Jesus was most favorable to those who religious resumes were less than pristine: People like the prodigal son, who squandered the family fortune (Luke 15:11f.); the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:5f), who had been married five times and whose current male roommate was not her husband; the blind man begging by the side of the road (Luke 18:36-43); the tax collectors and sinners with whom Jesus ate (Matthew 910-13); and the Woman of Canaan in today’s gospel.

The Woman of Canaan began the story with three strikes against her from the perspective of a righteous first century Jewish male. She was a woman, a Gentile and the mother of a daughter with a demon. Since demons don’t just accidentally possess people, we can conclude that this family dabbled in some things that weren’t exactly kosher. However, Jesus set her daughter free and called her a woman or great or “mega” faith.

The only other person in the New Testament whose faith Jesus described as “great” is the centurion whose servant Jesus healed. Jesus offered to come to the centurion’s home. The soldier responded that he was not worthy of a visit. A healing by remote command would work just fine. Jesus said he had not seen such great faith anywhere in Israel—that is, anywhere among those who could claim to be God’s chosen people (Matthew 8:5-13).

The Judaism of the first century judged the people mentioned above to be sinners, unclean, unfaithful or outside the covenant. Each accepted that judgment and, in each case, the judgment worked in the person’s favor. Each approached Jesus asking for mercy, not a reward for righteous behavior, and each received what each desired.

The point is not that God prefers those who sin to those who obey his commandments. The point is that those who understand they are not entitled to anything from God understand the truth about human nature. They approach Jesus with honesty and humility, asking for mercy—and Jesus, the Son of God, does what God always does to those who approach him with honesty and humility, asking for mercy. He gives it to them.

The great danger of religion is that it tends over time to cultivate a certain pride. We may begin to practice our faith and obey the commandments out of gratitude for all the God has done for us. However, over time, we may begin to develop a sense that our obedience is a result of some virtue that we possess by nature. We may become proud of our many years of sound moral living. We may begin to look at others whose outward appearance is less attractive and judge them to be less worthy of God’s favor. We may develop a sense of entitlement, as though we somehow deserve the grace of God. This attitude moves us further away from God because it is not true. The truth is that even after years of following Jesus, we are still sinners who are being saved by God's grace.

Often the things that lead to pride result from our circumstances, not our merit. For example, it is a great gift and grace if you were raised in a Christian family that introduced you to Jesus and taught you to obey the commandments. But that gift does not make you inherently better than another person, who, by accident of birth, was born into a family where abuse and disobedience were the norm.

The life and death of Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament and began the new age of the New Covenant. In the New Covenant, anyone who repents and believes in Jesus can become a part of God’s chosen people—no matter where that person has come from or what that person has done. Paradoxically, those who have come from bad places and done bad things are often more aware of their sin and their need to be saved. Thus, they often more naturally put their faith in Jesus. Those who come from “good” families and have lived outwardly moral lives often fall into a false sense that they are entitled to God’s favor. They often miss the grace of God as a result.

One hallmark of genuine Christianity is that we become more aware of our sin as we grow in faith. In the early stages of faith, we clean up our egregious, visible transgressions. But over time, as we come to see ourselves more clearly in the light of Christ, we become aware of our more subtle defects in motivation and attitude. We see more clearly how our love for God and neighbor falls short of the perfection of Christ. The point of this revelation is two-fold. First, it reminds us that we are sinners who need to be saved. Second, it keeps us striving to grow in faith hope and love so that we will be more like Christ.

If we realize that God accepts us by grace, in spite of our sin, we will be less inclined to judge other people. In fact, we will want others to know what we know. This is the foundation for a mission-oriented church. A mission-oriented church is a community of people who have experienced God’s grace and want to share the experience. It is a community that welcomes the woman of Canaan and does not tell her to go away because she is not entitled to God's favor.

Because we need to maintain humility and remain dependent upon God’s grace, God allows us to experience affliction and does not always remove pain from our lives. St. Paul was Christ’s chosen apostle to the Gentiles. He was given a vision of heaven where he saw things that “it is not lawful for humans to discuss.” St. Paul writes, “Lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me.” When he prayed for healing, God said, "My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:7-9).

Sometimes the very things we want God to take away from us are the very things that keep us close to God. Our afflictions remind us of our sin and mortality—“that dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return”—and make us dependent upon God’s grace. They ought also to give us a heart for others who are afflicted.

Our prayer before communion, what we call “The Prayer of Humble Access” is based on what the Woman of Canaan said to Jesus, except that we have taken her humility and raised it a bit. She claimed that, even as a Gentile dog, she might be given crumbs that fall from the master's table. We claim that we are not even worthy of these. Of course, we make our claim of unworthiness in rhythmic and attractive English so that we might be tempted over time to be proud of just how good we sound being humble! Surely God must prefer us to other Christians whose groveling is less poetic.

But this prayer and our whole liturgy, teach us that we are not entitled to anything from God no matter how long we've been at it or how good we look doing it. One purpose of Lent is to remind us that only those who ask for mercy from God are able to receive it. Only those who know and confess that they are dead in their sins are able to be forgiven and participate in Easter.

There is, of course, the biblical reason. Jesus is re-enacting and fulfilling the story of Israel. Since Israel was tested for a period of forty in the wilderness, Jesus had to spend a corresponding period of forty being tested in the dry and barren place. But there is another reason for testing to take place in the desert. The desert reveals things that are not seen as clearly in the rush and fullness of everyday life. As Moses explained to Israel,

You shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord. (Deuteronomy 8:2-3).

When all the stuff is taken away, we get a clearer sense of what is really going on within us. When they were in Egypt, the Israelites thought their primary enemy was Pharaoh and the Egyptians. When they were freed from that visible tyranny and led into the desert they discovered new, invisible enemies within: unrestrained appetites, an inability to persevere in faithfulness and an annoying tendency to “murmur.”

In the hustle and haste of life, we identify visible adversaries and goals: difficult co-workers and problematic family members; the desire to get ahead in our chosen career; the need to maintain appearances and reputations. Only when we withdraw from the heat of the battle into a place of stillness, apart from the stuff of life, are we able to see the more important interior battle that is taking place: the impulse of pride, which leads us to envy, jealousy and anger; disordered desire, which leads us to covetousness, lust and gluttony; and sloth, by which we avoid painful truths and difficult duties.

The temptation of Jesus reveals that the real enemy of the people of God is the devil, the evil one. The devil was not revealed in the testing of Israel in the Old Testament, though he was certainly the invisible, instigating presence in it. As Jesus re-enacts and fulfills the story, Israel’s real enemy is identified and the focus of Jesus’ battle is established. Jesus will not contend against the Romans because they are not Israel’s chief oppressor. Jesus will conquer Satan, sin and death so that Israel can be truly free.

Many Christians focus on the visible enemies of life. They pursue success, health and happiness as these are defined by the world. They work and pray against all the barriers that arise in opposition to these goals. God is thanked when visible good is attained and interceded with when some visible good is not. However, as St. Paul says, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers…” (Ephesians 6:12). There is a larger spiritual battle taking place within the context of our visible battles. We are called to discern the difference between the enemies we can see and the enemies we can’t see. Or, better, we are called to discern how the invisible enemy uses our visible battles to undermine our faith. The task of discernment is called watchfulness, which means to be on the lookout for what is really going on in our lives.

The Christian vocation is not to pursue the things of this world. The Christian vocation is to pursue virtue and holiness in the use of the things of this world. Created things are good because God made them. But we turn them into idols and let them control us because of sin. True happiness is not to have whatever we want. True happiness is to be content with whatever we have. True freedom is not to do whatever we want. True freedom is the freedom to obey the commandments of God—the freedom to say no as well as yes.

The Temptation of Jesus reveals that we must sometimes deny ourselves in order to obey God; that we must often say no to the things of the world in order to say yes to God. Only by watchfulness in prayer and a commitment to fasting and almsgiving can we rightly discern and effectively fight the battle. We withdraw into the Lenten wilderness to watch and pray and discern the real enemy. We fast to learn that we do not live by bread alone but by the Word of God. We give to detach ourselves from covetousness and idolatry and to remind ourselves that “We brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out” (1 Timothy 6:7). By the practice of the disciplines, we learn to pursue, not merely life, liberty and happiness in this world; we learn to pursue faithfulness and holiness, without which, as Hebrews tells us, “No one will see the Lord” (12:14).

We also talk about making a good Lenten confession. The sin we confess is the absence of virtue and holiness, which is the absence of the ability to live faithfully as Christians in the world. Thus, our confessions must be accompanied by a renewed effort to practice the corresponding virtue, which, if we fully possessed it, would eliminate the need for future confessions. Rather than only asking, what my besetting sin? We ought also to ask, “What virtue do I lack that makes that sin beset me so much?”

St. Peter writes,

Giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love; for if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. (2 Peter 1:2-11).

Jesus conquered the devil in the wilderness. We imitate his forty day fast in order to share in his victory. As we withdraw in our Lenten wilderness, let us pray for the wisdom to see the spiritual battle that is taking place within our visible battles. Let us willingly practice such disciplines of prayer, fasting and almsgiving as will help us to renounce the world and “subdue the flesh to the Spirit.” Let us pray that new virtues will be formed in us by the Holy Spirit. And, as Romans says, “The God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly (16:20).

This is the essential point being made by the gospel (Luke 11:14-28). The witnesses to the exorcismfocused on the departure of the evil spirit. Jesus pointed out that the departed spirit leaves a void that maywell be filled by a greater evil–unless it is filled by good. The essential transaction of the Christian life is thatwe remove the evil by self-denial and confession and fill the resulting empty space with Christ in the formof what we call the virtues. Thus, 2 Peter exhorts us to be diligent to,

Add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-controlperseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindnesslove. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in theknowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even toblindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. (2 Peter 1:5-9 NKJ).

When we pray that the Lenten fast will be fruitful, we mean, precisely, that various virtues, Christ-likequality and “fruits of the Spirit” will be produced in us. We uproot weeds and break up the soil throughfasting in order to make room for the growth of the good plant.

Sin is a failure to love. We confess that we have failed to love so that we might learn to love more. Let’sconsider an example. This week’s epistle mentions fornication again. Our culture typically thinks of sex interms of personal pleasure. Thus, people think that to possess the virtue of chastity means to deny oneselfpleasure, with no particularly positive thing to be gained for it. But fornication is wrong because it is a failureto love. It is to use another for one’s own ends, without regard for what is good for the other. To be chasteis to love. It is to respect the image of God in another and control one’s desires so as to love and seek thegood of the other person.

Our culture tends to see the moral teachings of the Bible as rules designed to thwart human fulfillmentbecause the devil has done a good job of indoctrinating our culture. The truth is that virtue and obedienceare the pathway to a more fulfilling life. The law of God is meant to order our lives in the same way that theword of God orders the universe. Psalm 19 says,

The law of the LORD is an undefiled law, converting the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, andgiveth wisdom unto the simple. The statutes of the LORD are right, and rejoice the heart; thecommandment of the LORD is pure, and giveth light unto the eyes. The fear of the LORD is clean, and endureth for ever; the judgments of the LORD are true, and righteous altogether. More to bedesired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold; sweeter also than honey, and the honeycomb.Moreover, by them is thy servant taught; and in keeping of them there is great reward. (Psalm19:7-11 BCP 363).

As we cultivate virtues that lead us to habitually obey God’s law–principally, the law of love–the result isan increased sense of order, beauty and peace. Conversely, when our lives are governed by our fallennature, the result is disorder, turmoil, ugliness, sadness and hatred. Consider again this issue of sexualmorality. What if, for the last sixty years, everyone in our culture had followed God’s law calling forabstinence outside of marriage and faithfulness within it? Think of the social ills, cultural chaos and personalpain that would have been eliminated simply by doing what God says to do. There would be no epidemicof fatherlessness and no “welfare state.” There would be a lot less heartache, pain and misery.

Think of your own life for a minute. Would you be better off right now if you had always obeyed God’slaw and done God’s will? Is it not true that our own current discontent results from our lack of faith, hopeand love, or our lack of self-control, patience, kindness, fortitude or some other virtue? This is why, as weconsider how to make a good confession during Lent, we must also consider what the positive change wedesire looks like. We must name our sin, but we must also name the desired virtue. We must confess andremove the evil, but we must also begin to plant and practice the good.

Nature abhors a vacuum. Sin not replaced with holiness will be replaced with another, more insidious sin.This is one reason religious people can become self-righteous. Certain obvious sins of the flesh can beremoved so that we look outwardly good. However, in their place, more serious and subtle spiritual sinscan take root, such as pride, envy, covetousness, anger.

Once we name the virtue that stands opposite of our sin, we must ask God to give it to us. We cannotbecome virtuous by our own efforts any more than we can earn forgiveness by our works. But we canpray, “Lord, increase in me the virtues of faith, hope and love” (cf. Collect for Trinity 14, BCP 209). We can ask God to give us humility, generosity, contentment, self-control and patience.” Then we can beginto practice these things. We can look for opportunities to give where we have been selfish, to be patientwhere we have been impatient, to be humble where our actions and attitudes have been infected by pride,to be self-controlled where we have allowed ourselves to be controlled by our desires.

We experience the power of prayer in the pursuit of holiness. St. John writes, “This is the confidence thatwe have toward [God] that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that hehears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him” (1 John 5:15).Sometimes we do not know if what we pray for is God’s will. However, we know for sure that it is God’swill that we grow in faith, hope and love (1 Corinthians 13:13) and in perseverance, kindness, faithfulness,self-control and peace (Galatians 5:22). Thus, as we learn during Lent to make a good confession of sin,let us also learn to pray for the virtues that we will begin to practice instead. As Jesus said, “Ask and yeshall receive, that your joy may be full” (John 16:24).

The Temptation of Jesus in the wilderness is meant to be read in the light of Israel's forty year experience of testing (Deuteronomy 8:2). The temptations all match up. The "stone into bread" test relates to Israel's dissatisfaction with the manna (Numbers 11:6, Deuteronomy 8:3). The temptation to worship the devil in exchange for all the kingdoms of the world relates to Israel's idolatry with the golden calves (Exodus 32:8). The temptation to jump off the temple relates to the time when God brought water out of the rock, where it is said that Israel "put God to the test" (Exodus 17:7).

The three scripture verses Jesus quotes are the verses of the Old Testament where God rebuked Israel for her disobedience in these three specific episodes (Deuteronomy 6:13, 6:18 & 8:3). The point is that Jesus fulfills the vocation of Israel, succeeding in the very tests that Israel failed. The implication is that the devil was present in the Old Testament as the ultimate source of Israel's temptations. This reveals that the true enemy of God's people is the evil one. This is the enemy Jesus defeated.

One of the chief errors of God's people is to misidentify the enemy. First century Israel thought her enemy was Rome. The Messiah was expected to come and defeat the Romans. This is why no one understood when Jesus chose the cross instead of the sword. The path of "obedience unto death" (Philippians 2:8) was a type of warfare aimed at destroying the kingdom of the evil one, but it had no immediate or obvious impact on the affliction of God people.

Jesus was aiming at a cosmic and eternal victory, not a temporal victory. To win that war he had to be faithful to God through a genuine human life. He had to endure opposition and injustice. He had to offer the sacrifice that would atone for sin and free us from captivity to the evil one (Hebrews 2:14-15). He had to lose the visible battle in order to win the spiritual war. Thus, at the very moment of apparent defeat, he uttered the words of ultimate triumph, "It is finished" (John 19:30).

Ephesians says, "We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world" (6:12). This is a reflection on the gospel. The visible battles we face in the world are part of a larger war. Our ultimate victory will be determined, not by whether we achieve fame, success or fulfilment of our desires. Our ultimate victory will be determined by whether or not we remain faithful through the ever-present temptations and tests.

Every challenge in life has two dimensions. There is the visible dimension of eating, drinking, working and playing, and there is the spiritual dimension of how these activities impact our faith and faithfulness. There are visible enemies–people and circumstances. And there is the invisible enemy, who uses the visible things to discourage and anger us; to make us covetous and envious. The challenge is to fight the right battle, to discern the presence of the unseen enemy and act faithfully so as to conquer him.

The tests are made more challenging in our time because of the cultural implication that faith should be an aid to success. There is a sense among many that if I believe in Jesus and do all the right things, life should go well. Thus, for many, a setback or misfortune becomes an unbearable test of faith: "Why is God doing this to me?" Many conclude that since God did not lead them to victory in the visible battle, they will no longer believe in him. This triumph of doubt over faith is precisely the victory the devil is looking for. He is pleased when we win the visible battle at the cost of our faith. He is even more pleased when we win neither the visible battle nor pass the test of faith.

Jesus did all the right things, had perfect faith and got killed for it. We must reconcile ourselves to the truth that the call to be faithful will sometimes cost us things we want. There is a name for visible things that are more important to us than God. They are called idols–and we must continually renounce them. We must be ready always to give up any thing that leads us away from faith and obedience. "Whoever does not forsake all the he has cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:33).

But there is also a paradox. The things we forsake, the things we offer in sacrifice to God, eventually come back to us in resurrected form. "Every one who has forsaken houses, or brothers or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life" (Matthew 19:29).

Jesus renounced the world, the flesh and the devil and surrendered his very life in obedience. However, he was raised from the dead and given a new, immortal body. God did rescue him and raise him. He was given all the kingdoms of the world (Revelation 11:15). He himself became the bread of life. Jesus said no to the demonic temptations because they were all lies. They promised a kind of fulfillment that they would not have delivered. The bread would have solved the problem of hunger only for a moment. The devil would not have given all of the kingdoms. There would have been fine print in the contract. The cheap trick would only have produced faith in cheap tricks.

The demonic voice offers us something that is desirable right now, but will not satisfy us in the long run. For this short term fix, the devil requires unfaithfulness or disobedience. Christ offers us resurrection, eternal life and the fulfillment, eventually, of every genuine human desire. He requires of us faith and obedience, which include a willingness to suffer some lack of fulfilment in the present moment. The devil is always in a hurry because he knows that his time is short (Revelation 12:12). Thus, the demonic voice tells us that we must have what we want now. God has, literally, an eternity to fulfill his promises to us. Thus, he is always telling us to be patient and faithful and wait for him.

The Lenten fast is a time to make sure we are seeing the real enemy and fighting the right battle. The disciplines aid us. Through prayer, we gain the wisdom and vision we need to perceive the devil's schemes. We are given the grace we need to embrace our share of the cross. Through fasting, we learn to subdue the flesh. We learn not to live by bread alone. Through almsgiving, we renounce our idols so that out treasure and our hearts may be fully invested in the coming kingdom. Easter and resurrection will make it all worthwhile. As St. Paul wrote, "Our light affliction, which is but for a moment is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; (2 Corinthians 4:17).