A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. One of the 12, whose name was Judas Iscariot, went off to the chief priests and said to them, what are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you? They paid Judas 30 pieces of silver. And from that time on, Judas kept looking out for an opportunity to hand Jesus over. On the first day of the feast of the unleavened bread, the disciples came up to Jesus and said to him, where do you want us to prepare the Passover supper for you?
Jesus replied, go to this man in the city, that's Jerusalem, and tell him, the teacher says, my appointed time draws near. I am to celebrate the Passover with my disciples in your house. Disciples then did just as Jesus had ordered and prepared the Passover meal or supper. When it grew dark, Jesus reclined a table with the 12. Now in the course of the meal, Jesus said, I give you my word.
One of you is about to betray me. Distressed at this, they began to say to Jesus and to one another, surely it is not I, Lord. Jesus replied, the man who has dipped his hand into the dish with me, he is the one who will hand me over. The son of man is departing just as scripture says of him, but woe to that man by whom the son of man is betrayed. Better for him had he never been born.
Then Judas, his betrayer, spoke up. Surely, it is not I, rabbi. Jesus answered, it is you who have said it, and this is the gospel of the lord. Praise to you, lord Jesus Christ. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen.
One of the most decisive influences in turning Clive Staples Lewis from his atheism to believing in some kind of god, was a man by the name of George McDonald, Scottish writer of the second half of the nineteenth century, very, very popular. And because of my interest in Lewis, I've been reading some of George McDonald's books, which are coming back into print, incidentally. They're called novels, but they're very special kind of novels, believe me. Now in the course of the latest book, The Marquis Secret, there is a remark in there about a preacher, a Scottish preacher. And the question was asked is this, when he gets up in the pulpit and preaches, does what he say bring his congregation closer to God?
And I thought about that a bit. You know, when I get up here and preach, who am I preaching to? What am I trying to do? What am I supposed to be doing? What's the criterion or the standard of success up here?
Whether you like what I say or dislike what I say, whether you think I'm good or poor or indifferent, whether I irritate or, calm or make things peaceful and try of course, you can get a lot of this, you know, out of a bottle of scotch. You don't need a preacher to do that. What what is supposed to be accomplished here? And the answer is, does it bring you and me closer to God? It's that simple.
Now I say this on the eve of Holy Week. When the church with her with the wisdom, wisdom, the the and the experience and the insight, the understanding of human nature based upon two thousand years of of survival, we will have all kinds of ceremonies. Now what do they do for you? There's no merit in ceremony. There's no religious merit in ceremonies or investments or in buildings unless they are instrumentalities of bringing you closer to god.
That's the absolute solid bottom line. All of these things are worthless unless they bring you individual and remember, there's no collective you. Nobody is saved or damned collectively. Keep this in mind. This is not the current doctrine, but it's the gospel truth.
There is no reality beyond the individual. Therefore, it is you, the individual you, who has to turn to God. And all of these externals have their worth in so far as they help you back to god. And I say that I use the word back, and that isn't fair. You wouldn't be sitting in these pews this morning if you weren't trying to be with god almighty.
And when I say god almighty, I want to immediately bring in his son, Jesus Christ. Because as I said Monday, you can't imagine god, you can't use us, you can't make a single true statement about god almighty. He's beyond us, completely beyond us, or he is not god. It's that simple. But Jesus Christ, oh, that's entirely different.
He is one of us. One of us. He had a different paternity, that's true. But outside of that, he is absolutely one with us. The son of god become man.
And as I said, we can grapple with that. You can talk about that. You can make propositions about that which are either true or false. Not by feeling, but by my intelligence and my reason. So I said, kick feeling out of the window and keep it out.
But on the other hand, I hasten to add, we are almost, almost creatures of our feelings and not of our intelligence. Remember Cardinal Newman, who wrote the Grammar of Ascent, which is I say the best thing that's ever been written on the question of human knowledge, and faith, and belief, and trust, and all these things. Just as he said, he said it's almost a definition of a human being to say that he is an irrational animal. See, that's the contradiction of the old saw that man is a rational animal. And he's right.
All but the key word there is almost, and don't ever forget it. That keeps us safe and sound and very factual. Very factual. So I'm not underrating I'd be crazy to to to downgrade feeling and the importance, but they are not the criterion of faith or love or trust or penance. They are no test of your allegiance to God and his son, Jesus Christ, how you feel, whether you're comfortable with it.
Now we had to say that that Christ went to his crucifixion like a lamb. That's right. That's not true. He didn't. He went most reluctantly, and he begged his heavenly father to the point of of sweating blood to be spared.
Now that's not like going like a lamb. Let's see let's come to grips with the reality. Being a Christian is not fun. Being a follower of Jesus Christ can be extremely uncomfortable. And whether you're comfortable with your with your religion or not is no test of anything except your human pursuit of comfort.
And you won't find much in our lord's teaching to justify that attitude. Because remember, all he promised you and me if we were to follow him, all he ever promised us was a cross. That's the test of being a Christian, carrying a cross. And that's not fun. That's not being comfortable.
That's not having peace. That's not having tranquility. That's carrying a cross. And I often think when you're in a tight spot like it's like you're carrying a trying to carry a piano up a stairs. Have you ever done anything like this?
When you think your very bones are going to give out, and you say, I if I take my hands off, the blooming thing's gonna fall through the floor, and you keep on carrying it. See, we we usually we talk and yet we don't bring these these things down into the nitty gritty daily life. And religion is worthless unless it does that, unless we have it in our daily living, unless we have some realization of what it means to carry a cross. Now some people have literally done it, and they'll do it this Good Friday in different parts of the world. They'll they'll have a cross and they'll carry it.
But we have crosses to bear. We don't have to be artificial. As I've said in many instant in most instances, if not in every, it's not a question of whether we will have a cross to carry. We will have a cross to carry. The question is, do we carry Christ's cross?
Do we carry it with him? Now all I wanna say this morning is this, you're going to go into Holy Week. Make it the Holy Week was made holy by Jesus Christ. Whether it makes you holy or not is greatly dependent upon you, not entirely. Don't don't get into that mold.
We are not Pelagians. We can do nothing without Jesus Christ. Keep that in mind. You can do nothing without your lord. And so as we go into holy week, you go into it within his company.
He'll do his part, that's for sure. You have to do yours. And it's not an automatic process. Don't be lost in the externals. These are important.
But don't be lost in them. They are not engine themselves. They are tools. They are instruments. They are the screwdrivers which drive the screw into the wood.
They are not the screw and they don't and and and they are not the things which are the valuable things that the screw does in holding a structure together. They are tools. They are instrumentalities. They are not ultimates in any sense of the word. And the question about them, just about what comes out of this pulpit, is simply this, does it bring you closer to god?
May it be so. The name of the father and the son and the holy spirit. Amen.