Continuation of the reading of the gospel according to Saint Luke. At that hour, notice this first sentence. At that hour, at that very hour, some pharisees came and said to Jesus, get away from here for Herod wants to kill you. But Jesus said to them, go and tell that fox. Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow.
And the third day, I finish my course. Nevertheless, I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following. For it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem. Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who were sent to you, how often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings and you would not. Behold, your house is forsaken.
And I tell you, you will not see me until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the lord. This is the gospel of the lord. Well, the first sentence from Saint Paul's letter to the Ephesians today is remarkable, and I want to tie that in for no obvious reason except I wanna tie them in with this first sentence that Saint Luke records this morning. That first sentence of Saint Paul is what sentence that we have heard. Our Lord said without me, you can do nothing.
Notice he said nothing. And we daily work hard to prove him wrong. We try to prove he we can do something without him. And here's Saint Paul talking to those good old Ephesians. He's been pretty severe with them too, you know.
And he says, be strong and that's that's been the whole tenor of his letter. You guys are are are almost at the bottom of the barrel, so come on, straighten up. And what's the key to this straightening yourself up and walking with the lord and in his ways and avoiding all the pitfalls and the very attractive ways of the pagan world in which with which they were surrounded. Does Paul say, look within yourself, seek your fulfillment, get with it, eat Wheaties, go to a psychiatrist, Take a good hefty drink of bourbon. Paul says, be strong in the lord and in the strength of his might.
So let's take that to heart. It's worth thinking about. But don't forget the farmer. Don't forget the farmer. We can't get out of the driver's seat completely.
You know, the I've used this story, but it's a it to me, it brings the home the the this point home. We just can't turn ourselves over to god and say, god, here I am. Now you just do everything. I'm here for the ride. Just, put your safety belt on and have a cup of tea at your corner and at your elbow and be quiet.
God will take over. That's been tried, but you can't you can't justify that in the New Testament. There is nothing of that kind of passivity in Jesus Christ or in any of the epistles. To come back to that farmer story, you know, the the minister is running around on Sunday only with his wife having a nice drive in the country. He comes up to this beautiful beautiful farm, farm, admires it.
They stop and they look at it. You see, they spy a man leaning on the well kept fence, nicely painted white, you know, beautiful. You can tell a good farm by the fences. And so they stop. And the minister says, he said, this is a magnificent farm.
The man says, yep. And then the minister goes on to say how beautiful, magnificent it is and what a tribute it is to God's goodness to man That his rains fall and the and the seeds sprout and it's glorious. And the farmers leaning on the fence listens to it all very piously. So and when the the minister is finished giving tribute to God, which is perfectly right, as you this isn't you've heard this story. The the farmer said, well, he says everything you said is very true.
But he said, you should have seen this place when god had it alone. So you when you talk about Saint Paul and when you talk about giving ourselves all over to Christ, remember the farmer's story. We have a role to share play. Now this was you see, this is the great problem of the sixteenth century reformers. How do you put my contribution Because it's an essential contribution.
How do you put that in when Christ says, without me, you can do nothing. When you have a statement like this of Saint Paul, I as I said, I'm not gonna try to put the two together by justifying them or explaining them. I'm only saying that's the way it is. And if Saint Paul wrote that sentence, be mighty in the lord, that's where all your strength is, he wrote plenty, plenty to urge us, to warn us about our part, our role, the portion that we have in this saving mission, which is my eternal salvation. So you've got to hold these two things together.
But too often, we don't hold them together. We only grasp on the one part, little old me. I look inside and I say, Lord, how can I do that? I am so weak. I'm so this.
I'm so something else. I'm so nothing. Some of this, you know, you you read this in the lives of some of the saints and it nauseates me. That's not why they became saints because they wrote that kind of malarkey. If on the one hand, we say with Saint Paul and with our Lord, without you, I can do nothing.
At the same time, we can say with Saint Paul that with Christ, we can do everything. Now Saint Paul is a very ticklish theologian to follow, you know. He's the great he's the great theologian of Luther and the Protestants because he emphasized this idea of faith so much. But the point is that is not true to Saint Paul. It's extremely incomplete because if Saint Paul emphasizes faith, he certainly emphasizes action on my part.
And you have to put the two together. Well, that takes up almost all our time. But I want you to notice that first sentence from Saint Luke this morning where it says that the pharisees came to Jesus and said, look. You've gotta flee. You've got to take refuge.
You've gotta get out of here because Herod's looking for you. Why did they do that? That was a very friendly gesture. They didn't want Christ to be to be taken in by Herod. They knew that Herod had no love for him.
And notice it was sort of a mutual relationship. Christ calls him a fox. So it's the pharisees who come to Christ here and says, look, get out of here. You're in danger. We don't want you to be taken by that guy.
So the pharisees, you see, weren't all that bad. To keep that in mind, that word Pharisee has been been, overworked and it's been thrown around very loosely and unjustly and unjustly. As I say, if you wanna see a parallel, look the word Jesuit up in an unabridged dictionary. But I want you to take all that thought of Saint Paul. Notice the first sentence that he says in his in this reading from the Ephesians.
Be strong in the lord and in the strength of his might. And then pray and pray and pray that each one of us does his and her part. We have an essential contribution to make. This is something that Thomas Moore, writing from the tower when when he knew he was about to die any hour, any minute. This is the thing he emphasized very much.
The necessity of our action, but accompanied or however you wanna say this with God's grace. Because in the last analysis, Jesus said, without me, you can do nothing. In the name of the father, the son, and holy spirit. Amen.