Episcopal priests become intimately acquainted with the religious life toward the end of their Senior Year at Seminary.  Until my Senior Year at General Theological Seminary in New York City, I was regarded by most people as a devout lay person particularly interested in “Church”.  But toward the end of my Senior Year I underwent a transformation.  Toward the end of my Senior Year at General Theological Seminary I became a religious ascetic for whom the equivalent of perhaps as many as thirty years of Prayer, Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience were compressed into a seventy-two hour ordeal known as “The GOE’s” — The General Ordination Examinations.  . . . These General Ordination Exams consist of three sets of three questions.  The student chooses to answer one question in each set and then has twenty-four hours to research each problem, pray over it, and prepare a typed discourse on the subject chosen.  The Senior Seminarian, for those seventy-two hours, becomes completely focused; . . . completely focused upon the business of God and of the Christian Life.  The world is forgotten; . . . the needs of the flesh are forgotten; . . . temptations to sin do not exist; . . . only the particular things of God, upon which we are preparing to or engaged in discourse on, have any meaning.  . . . When I took The General Ordination Exams, there was one problem that remains with me to this very day.  It had to do with a confession.  The problem stated that a penitent comes to me to make a confession in which he admits sorrow and contrition for having planned an act of terrorism.  I duly absolve him and send him on his way; . . . but several days later I read in the newspaper that the very act of terrorism which had been confessed is actually accomplished.  The question to be answered is:  should I go to the police with a possible lead; if so, why, and if not, why not?

    In my intensive research preparatory to answering that question, I ran across a very simple statement which made much more sense than all the learned articles of far greater length I had already read.  That very simple statement asserted that the absolution conveyed in the Sacrament of Reconciliation effects the redemptive grace of the Cross, which does not merely cross sin out, but eliminates it, . . . so that the sin which has been absolved does not exist in either the economy of time or the economy of eternity.  By my priestly absolution, the sin which you have truly confessed and for which you are truly sorry . . . does not exist, and it never has.  It is as if sin is the knot in this rope.  The grace of our Lord’s sacrificial and redemptive death upon the Cross undoes the knot, so that it no longer exists.  . . . And if you think about it, that’s the only way redemption can work, isn’t it?  Jesus undoes the sin of Adam so that we are a new creation, without spot or stain of sin.

    Since this wonderful thing has been accomplished for us upon the Cross, . . . in the Gospel Lesson appointed for today Jesus talks about what we are to do with this new life.  . . . First, Jesus tells us that sin exists as a tangible defect in time and eternity.  He is quoted by Saint Matthew as saying,

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and worm consume and where thieves break in and steal, . . . For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Sin is a knot which can bind us to things and desires for things so that we can’t get free of them; . . . sin is a knot which lashes us to to the world, to our own flesh, and to devilish schemes about both . . . so that we end up suffering their fate; . . . sin is a knot which can bind us to the world, the flesh, and the devil so that our hearts — our very selves — are devoured with them by time and corruption and damnation.  . . . But then, Jesus says,

Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

When we allow Christ to undo the knot of sin, . . . we are freed to become the eternal creatures God intended for us to be when He formed us in His sacred Image!  . . . Jesus calls our freedom a place; . . . He calls it a kingdom; by which Jesus means a stability of mind and of emotions and of spirit — a stability of the soul — which is rooted in the reality of God; . . . a stability of the soul which, like God, is merciful and morally balanced and humble and simple and hospitable and which communicates shalom, . . . shalom being a word that means not simply “peace” . . . but wellness and wholeness and grace; . . . a peace which passes all understanding.  . . . When Jesus speaks of the Father’s pleasure to give us the kingdom, . . . He means that the Cross bestows upon us the ineffable might of God to defend us from the ravages of malice and the corrosive effects of self-absorption and self-indulgence; . . . the ineffable might of God to defend us from believing that we are anything at all apart from Him.

    And how is this stability — this receiving of God’s kingdom; . . . how is it accomplished?  . . . It is accomplished in Baptism; . . . it is accomplished in renouncing the power of the world to have control of our lives; . . . it is renouncing the power of our own flesh to control our living; . . . it is accomplished in renouncing the power of sin to lash us to Death.  . . . It is accomplished in accepting, instead, Jesus Christ as Lord to govern us and as Saviour to forgive us; . . . to undo the knots in our lives.  A sacred and stable life is one which accepts Jesus as its Lord and Saviour in whom is placed her entire trust and love.  . . . Or as Jesus puts it in the Gospel appointed for today,

Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning, and be like men who are waiting for their master to come [to them] . . .

Jesus tells us to be dressed to do the hard work of righteousness and to illuminate the world with the wholesome, hospitable, and welcoming light of faith; . . . Jesus tells us to be servants who represent the kindness of their master, . . . not like irresponsible people who serve no one but themselves.

    . . . And a wonderful thing will happen when we do this, Jesus says; . . . it shall not be for us with God as it is with the world.  For, when the world is your master and you wait for something good to come your way, . . . its arrival requires even more vigilance than before . . . for fear of the moth; . . . for fear of the worm; … for fear of the thief who breaks into your home to steal.  . . . But when we wait for God to knock; . . . when we are poised to throw open the door as soon as we hear our master’s footstep, . . . the master will smile, Jesus says; . . . He will smile and say, “Your faithfulness and vigilance are such a blessing to me . . . that my greatest desire is that you will permit me to bless you; . . . that you will take bread from my Hand and drink wine from my Cup.”

    And it is this Kingdom . . . which the Lord God Almighty gives to Rachel Simone today; . . . the means by which Christ shall untie each of her knots as they occur, and the place where her master shall feed her and make of her life something ineffable.  . . . But Rachel is a mere infant right now.  She doesn’t understand the high and sacred thing that the Lord God Almighty shall do for her.  So, in order for Rachel to discover the wonder of the gift God is giving her today and the deathless love He has for her in giving it, . . . it falls to the adults who are gathered here; . . . it falls to all of us to teach her.  For, who else is there but the adults who are Rachel’s parents and godparents to teach her what it means to renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil?  Who else is there but Rachel’s family to teach her, by stages, to love and trust what Jesus says to her in Holy Scripture and prayer . . . and to bring her knots to Him, who is Rachel’s Saviour, to undo?  Who else is there but this Church Family to help and encourage Rachel’s parents and godparents in their nurture of Rachel’s soul; . . . who else is there but this Church Family to pray with Rachel and to be fed with her by God as children of the Father?

    Rachel Simone having no one else but us to teach her mastery of her spiritual life, God grant you all the grace to will to do what you promise Him today, and power to accomplish it.  God grant you all the fortitude and faith to be responsible spiritual parents and brothers and sisters in Christ to Rachel Simone, who is God’s little lamb . . . and to whom it is the Father’s good pleasure to give His Kingdom today.