A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. This continues, of course, the conversation between our lord and Nicodemus. So then Jesus said to Nicodemus, the one who comes from above is above all. The one who is of the earth is earthly, and he speaks on an earthly plane. The one who comes from heaven, who is above all, testifies to what he has seen and heard, but no one accepts his testimony.
However, whoever does accept it certifies that god is truthful. For the one whom god has sent speaks the words of god. He does not ration his gift of the spirit. The father loves the son and has given everything over to him. Whoever believes in the son has life eternal.
Whoever disobeys the son will not see life but must endure the wrath of god. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Here again, we have one of our lord's very benevolent magnanimous forgiving all of full of understanding, etcetera, remarks. He says, whoever believes in the son has life eternal.
Whoever disobeys the son will not even see life, and that's not enough. It's not gonna be oblivion, but must endure the wrath of God. You don't see that on your Easter cards. But to come back to something else. When when Peter and his companion companion were were hailed hailed before before the the Sanhedrin, Sanhedrin, notice they had a choice.
And their choice was obeying the Sanhedrin, which is the highest spokesman in their, oh, well, I couldn't say their country, but the Sanhedrin represented the highest authority in the Jewish life. Much higher than the Romans, of course. They looked upon the Romans of a bunch as a bunch of usurpers. So that they Peter and his companion were in this dilemma. Remember, they were good god fearing Jews.
Never forget that. So here they're in a situation where they're called upon to do one of two things and they can't do both, and they have to do one. It's a it's a dilemma. Either they obey the Sanhedrin and stop preaching or talking about Jesus Christ, and that would be obeying the lawful authority, the religious authority, and as far as they were concerned, even the civil authority. Or they would disobey them because they said we have a higher order, we have a higher command, we have a higher obligation.
Now which way do you go? Which way do you go? This is a this is a century old conflict. So at least one of the most dramatic and pathetic dramas of Greek literature is based upon this very fact, where the heroine is is she supposed to obey the command of God which says you're supposed to bury the dead? Or is she supposed or must she obey the explicit command of the king of Thebes that she must not touch the corpse of her brother and let him lie where he fell on the battlefield and be devoured by carrion, by by birds and dogs.
What does she do? Well, she goes out and buries her brother, and she pays for it with her life. This is a very, very, very old a very old dilemma, and we face it once in a while in our own lives. We face it. How do you handle it?
Well, in my humble estimation, here's where you need. You need a third party. You need someone to talk to. You need a little bit of objectivity, that's first of all. Second, you wanna be sure that you that it is the law of god you're talking about.
Not something you imagine, not something you feel, not something that you have in a very vague way, but a very strong persuasion. Just remember, the vigor, the energy, the spirit of complete self sacrifice that people may have for their opinion doesn't prove the opinion true in the least. It just proves their sincerity. It has nothing to do with the veracity authenticity of what they are dying for or suffering for or anything else. It doesn't prove anything.
It's irrelevant. It's not irrelevant to the to the integrity of the person, but it's irrelevant to the the epistemological problem of whether or not what they say is true. That has no bearing bearing on on it. So here is a perennial problem. And how do we face it?
Well, as I say, the first thing you have to do is to know the law of god. Now, how do you know it? How do you know it? Just yesterday, was reading and it's very busy. You shouldn't read a book.
I tell you, it's very disturbing. As as Lewis says, if you're if you're gonna be a good god fearing atheist, you've gotta be very careful what you read. Indeed, you do. But the author of this, it just came out, the author takes for granted that there's no such thing as truth. Just takes it for granted.
It's not even debatable anymore. If they refer to God, they say, well, if he exists. You know, that's see, that's being that's being open minded. That's being unprejudiced. But if you see if you say if God you say God does exist, well, that's closing your mind, you see.
And that shows you're biased and prejudiced and narrow minded. So you must have an open mind. And as old man Chesterton said, remember, the reason for having an open mind is to close it on something. You don't put a door on a house to keep it open all the time. Well, anyway, this is the problem, But I come back to this.
It's all it's it's you you don't solve the problem by simply saying I have a problem. Oh, indeed, you may have the problem. And I'm faced with the following what what we call man made law, which we call civil law, the law of supreme court. Here you have this in the problem of abortion. Well, I'm not talking about windmills going back to our lord's time.
I'm talking about the president. Right now, we have this problem. There are plenty of people today. I mean good honest citizens, good solid people, they say, who are you to put yourself up against the Supreme Court? It's the law of the land.
They they they really believe this. It's called legal positivism. So this is the world we're living in. But you see, it's not enough to say, well, I have to make a choice between a man made law, and when by a man made law, I mean anything, from from a regulation made in Garrett Park, all the way up to something coming from the Supreme Court. They're all man made laws.
On the other hand, they may they may be operational in an area possibly beyond man, namely morals. Well, anyway, to come back, it's it's not enough to say I am fully convinced this is the command of God. The fact that you're persuaded of it, the fact that you're sure of it, the fact that you you're willing to give your life for it, as has happened, though, isn't isn't theory. Take Saint Thomas More. What an example that is.
All he had to do was to take a simple little make a make a little simple commitment to his king with whom he recognized. Remember, Thomas More had a good bit of the divine right of kings in him. But he said, I can't do it. It's against it's against the law of God. Now how did he know that was against the law of God?
It certainly isn't anything of the 10 commandments about Henry the eighth that I know of unless you've discovered another commandment. Because he was a Catholic and he he had an idea of what his church taught. Remember, that was not a defined doctrine in his day. Keep that in mind. And sometimes it's not always easy to know the truth of God.
Let's face it, of course it's not. It's not easy to know the truth about anything. Anything. Truth's not an easy thing to come by, you know. That is if you think there is such a thing as truth.
Of course, you eliminate the whole situation. You have no problems when you simply say there's no such thing as truth. They're just simply a matter of what I want, what I'm comfortable with, oh, all of the rest of it, you know, that we take today as as norms of ascent or the norms of what I would call an operational grammar of ascent. So as I say to you, it's not enough to think you know the law of God. You wanna know why you think it's the law of God.
Where did you get it? And I apply this to a lot of the stuff you read coming from our theologians. You only have as sources of truth, God's direct revelation, his revelation through his living church, or what we find in a book. And a book doesn't speak for itself. You need an interpreter, so you come back to the church.
Where else do you get truth, if you're talking about religious truth? You certainly don't get it by somebody being convinced they have it. And so, we come back to this. There's no question that we have the obligation of if we if we have to make a choice we a I often think of a a young girl who decides to carry her baby and have that baby. What a what a decision that is.
When all she would have to do is say there's nothing wrong with my aborting the baby. The supreme court says I can do it legally, and I'll even be praised for it in some areas. I mean this. This is no you know it's no exaggeration. That's what we've come to, but it's the fact of life.
But the second thing is and so far, it is to know what the law of god is. Where do you know where that is? How do you know it? And I have one answer to that. It's the living voice of his living church.
In the name of the father, and of the son, and holy spirit. Amen.