A reading of the holy gospel according to Luke. When Jesus had cast out a demon, some of the people said, he cast out demons by Beelzebub, the prince of demons, while others, to test Jesus, sought from him a sign from heaven. But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said to them, every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and house falls upon house. Now if Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? For you say that I cast out demons by Beelzebub.
And if I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore, your sons shall be your judges. But if it is by the finger of god that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of god has come upon you. When a strong man fully armed guards his own palace, his goods are at p are in peace. But when one stronger than he assails him and overcomes him, He takes away his armor in which he trusted and divides the spoil.
He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters. When the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he passes through waterless places seeking rest. And finding none, he says, I will return to the house from which I came. And when he comes back, he finds it swept and in order. Then he goes and brings Seven other spirits, more evil than himself, and they enter and dwell there.
And the last state of that man becomes worse than his first. And this is the gospel of the Lord. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. As attractive as this excerpt from Saint Luke is this morning, especially with this emphasis, disposition upon demons, I want to call your attention to these readings we have been having from Saint Paul to the Galatians.
And let's be very frank about this and say you can find other statements from Saint Paul and other of his epistles which are just as strong on this subject of faith on the one hand and good works on the other. Now here today in October 1980, we sit quiet in our pews and we listen to Saint Paul telling us about faith and the works and the law, and we are not moved at all, just to any real extent. I mean emotionally or passionately or physically or any other way. We've heard it all so often that it doesn't doesn't make any dent in us. In the sixteenth century, men and women were laying down their lives for this, for just what we were reading here this morning in the sixteenth century, in England especially.
This great problem, on the one hand of faith and the action of God's grace, or whatever word you want to use in any language to describe it, and on the other hand the value of good works, giving alms on all the rest. Remember, there was no public charity in those days. No social security or Medicaid or anything like that, keep that off the back of your head. So this great problem of faith and good works, it came to a boil, to an explosion, that's what it was, it was on Mount Helens of the sixteenth century with Luther. Now, no one who's read a little bit of history of the sixteenth century can sympathize with Luther's point of view.
It is so easy to get lost in the physical. As Cardinal Newman has stressed so often, and he knew the human heart as few people knew it or have known it. Everything having to do with the with the with the imagination, with image, with language, with all the picturesque ness of objects, real tangible objects that impinge upon us through all our senses. These are the things which are totally possessive of us. Unless, unless there is something to counteract it.
But when you put the two together, now you can use any forms you words you want for this dichotomy, matter, mind and matter, spirit and body, soul and body, any any any of these diabolical, that's what I say, these diabolical words which separate the human being into compartments, body and soul, mind and matter, tearing him apart and making him two things. And then if you take this next step, where for some unknown reason, we look upon matter and the body and the senses and all connected with it will be in some way matter or material, using that word in the current use. And if you take that step and say that is evil, you see what an impossible situation you are in. Because then everything which has to do with the body has going is going to be tainted with evil. Now you say, well, what common sense person can hold that?
Millions have held it. Millions hold it today. I've been reading this very fine book about Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan. It's called Helen and Teacher. And time it did this.
It was written by Joe Lash. She's very good, very contemporaneous. And here you talk about they talk about this beautiful soul imprisoned in her body, talking about Helen Keller. That she couldn't see, and she couldn't hear, and of course she couldn't speak, and that she was blind. So it's so this dichotomy, this splitting of the human personality into body and soul or whatever words you want, matter and spirit, mind and body or mind and spirit, any of these dichotomies which split the human being right through is going to wind up in disaster.
And any of you who have read some of the history of the sixteenth century reformation in England, you're going to say, how could it happen when you had honest to God, sincere Christians here, honest to God, sincere Christians there, and and murdering each other because of this proposition or this problem of faith and good works. Because you see, a man like Thomas More, who remember Thomas More is one of them that the that material in the body is evil. He's one of them. John Fisher's another one. So it wasn't just the Protestants.
But but Moore and and company, they while they insisted upon good works, and you'll find this in Moore's Meditations from the Tower, nevertheless, you see, they didn't deny the effect of grace. Of course, they didn't. No Christian could. But when you have a man like Luther, who insisted, you see, that the body and matter is filthy dung, which I think is an insult to first class manure, Anyone who's been on a farm knows how important that is. But when you say that the body is nothing but that, that man is intrinsically evil, then what's the use of talking about good works?
Yes. But you'll say, well, James says that faith without good works is dead. Luther said if he said it, it's too bad. Throw out the epistle. So it became it was called the straw epistle.
But that is not the way it was in sixteenth century England. They didn't throw James out. But it was this problem of how do you harmonize what I do, and I am a physical being. I'm not pure spirit. I'm a physical being.
Therefore, everything I do has it has something of the physical to it, of course. I'm a human being, not an angel. Never been accused of being an angel either. But anyway, the this idea you see of matter being intrinsically evil, it is a it's it's diabolical. Nothing but most tragic harm comes out of it, and yet we're still surrounded with this business.
We are still there. Now to come back to Saint Paul, if you just take a few sentences from now notice how Protestants have emphasized Paul. If you just take a few sentences from Paul, you can come up with what Luther said and what was said by some of the English Reformation people. Certainly you can, just the readings we had yesterday and today. And he has other things just as strong about the importance of faith.
But you see, are you going to say that Paul did not encourage the early Christians to do good? Well, you've got all his epistles where he's constantly telling them to live a good life and all that. So you see, again the picture isn't simple, it's not simple. We simplify it by being frightfully erroneous when we pick and we choose and we just select what we want. And as Thomas More riding from the tower with the threat not with a threat but with execution hanging over him when he wrote his consolation, why he faces up and he speaks most charitably of the of his Protestant opponents.
But he points out that it that we have to do good works, but but it's only by the grace of God that they become, as we today would say, meritorious. So today we try to put these things together, we try to bring together the totality of the human being, but you cannot possibly bring that totality together really and actually if you begin by dividing the human being up into some kind of a dichotomy of matter spirit and and matter body and soul. You see, our liturgy is full of it. When we say, May his soul rest in peace. That's a lot of malarkey.
It's awful. We're speaking of John Jones who died and we say, May he rest in peace. If you're speaking if you're praying for his soul, where's where's John Jones? And so we've got this terrible problem of us of the division of the human personality, it's still with us. I guess it'll be always be with us.
Coming back to Helen Keller, here she's a blind girl, almost one of the first things she learned to speak was short four line stanza from Whittier. And by golly, the thing she speaks is pure Plato. She uses the word Plato. And Plato, of course, is one of the most fundamentalists as regards this dividing of a human being into this great thing we call the soul, and then this other thing we call the body, whatever that is, the poor imprisoned thing. It's the cell, you know, the penitentiary of the soul.
And so this problem is still with us and it's in our personal lives. You take the difference between the words philanthropy and the christian word charity. You've got it right there? And so, if you think I'm in kind of overly zealous about this question, I'm not. I am not, believe me.
There is no there is no more serious problem that a human being faces than to ask what am I? And if I'm a single thing, then let's let's be realistic. Even though it makes the problem very complex, but let's deal with that in the totality of myself or the ego as we say. Because any other thing is unreal, and not only unreal, but a disaster. And if you don't believe me, read a little bit of the history of England in the sixteenth century.
Name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.