Last Sunday, we remembered that Saint Paul has counseled both the Church at Galatia and the Church-at-large; . . . Saint Paul has counseled the Church that,

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

. . . And, in his enthusiasm, Saint Paul went on, last Sunday, to describe this yoke of slavery which we are to avoid; . . . he went on to describe the elements of corporeal slavery (slavery to things) . . . and the elements of spiritual slavery (slavery to fear) . . . and the elements of moral slavery (slavery to self-preoccupation).

    But today Saint Paul catches himself, . . . and fearing he has been too graphic about sin, he says to us,

Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.

As a remedy for his withering descriptions of the wickedness of sin, and anxious that we not begin any witch-hunts, pointing our fingers at one another with an air of moral superiority, . . . Saint Paul says, “Look to yourself, lest you too be tempted.”  In other words, Saint Paul counsels the Church that the temptation to excessive responses to sin, responses which do damage to the Body of Christ, either physical or spiritual; . . . responses which do damage to the Body of Christ are themselves temptations to sin.  . . . And so, Saint Paul counsels us to “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”  Bear, as a Christian Community, . . . as a Church; . . . bear not only the customary burdens (the bearable burdens) of sorrow and sickness and loss and hard times; . . . but also bear, Saint Paul says, the more repugnant burdens of wrong-headedness and stubbornness and tale-bearing and treachery and advocating what is contrary to Holy Scripture.  Saint Paul counsels the Church: . . . counsels all of us to not only bear the bearable burdens, . . . those burdens that you rush to the side of your friends to help bear in the face of sickness and death and the like, . . . but Saint Paul also suggests that it is the Church’s commission and privilege to rush to the side of our enemies as well . . . and bear their foolishness.  . . . Saint Paul suggests that Christ has called us to not only bear the bearable burdens, . . . but to bear (by divine grace, of course; . . . by prayer that implores God’s aid); . . . Christ has also called us to bear the unbearable burdens.  For, what does Jesus tell us in Saint John’s Gospel on Maundy Thursday(?):  . . . if I, your Lord, have washed you, so you must also wash one another.  . . . Because if Christ made Himself sin Who was no sin (as Saint Paul says in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians); . . . if Christ made Himself sin Who was no sin, then who are we to act as if we are superior to Christ!  Our Baptism is a sharing in Christ’s death upon the Cross.  We have died with Christ; . . . we have become nothing as Christ became nothing.  And so, Saint Paul says, “if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.”

    In this present time the entire Episcopal Church has deceived Herself.  There is, on the one hand, the General Convention consisting of the House of Deputies, which presumes to instruct us, . . . and the House of Bishops which is charged with care of the Faithful.  Both Houses, in these present days, have decided that Science explains more than Holy Scripture and that self-understanding is preferable to the Cross.  And some bishops have made no room in their dioceses to believe otherwise.  . . . On the other hand, there are individual parishes and priests and bishops who are appalled at the pronouncements and policies of General Convention, . . . and with great moral smugness have elected to cut off the Head of their Church . . . and have gone feeling about for the head of an African Province to replace it.  . . . Both parties; . . . both the General Convention and the parishes, priests, and bishops who have abandoned the Episcopal Church; . . . both parties, thinking themselves to be something when they are nothing, . . . have deceived themselves.

    But I want all of you; . . . I want this Parish to remember who you are.  It is not our place to take the side of one warring party or the other.  It is not our place to believe everything General Convention tells us, . . . nor is it our place to aspire to the moral high ground of General Convention’s critics.  Neither does it fulfill the heart of Christ to be indifferent about matters of sin, saying, “Oh well, if each is content with their decision, it isn’t my place to say one or the other is wrong.”  . . . On the contrary, it is our place, Holy Scripture counsels us through the person of the Apostle Paul; . . . “if a man is overtaken in any trespass,” it is our place not to baste them with the juices of our indifference; . . . it is our place to restore the one who is in error, . . . but to “restore him in a spirit of gentleness,” . . . bearing . . . Saint Paul says; . . . bearing one another’s burdens as Christ bore the wounds of thorn and scourge and nail; . . . bearing one another’s burdens and offering them up to Heaven, . . . saying, “Father, forgive.”

    The sum of it all is as Saint Paul says, . . . far be it from any of us to glory except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, . . . by which the world has been crucified to us, and we to the world.  . . . For, neither Scriptural revision counts for anything, nor Scriptural inerrancy, . . . but a new creation.  . . . We, this Parish, . . . we are a new creation; . . . we are the Body of Christ.  We have died to ourselves as Christ died; . . . we have become nothing.  We have become nothing in Christ’s death so that if there is any life in us; . . . if we are anything at all, . . . it is the Life of the Risen Jesus that God has breathed into us.  . . . And so, it is our obligation and privilege to live the Life of Jesus, . . . Who said, “as I have loved you, so you are to love one another.”  . . . And so, lest we become guilty of sin in condemning one another, . . . it is our obligation and privilege to bear one another’s burdens while attempting to lure one another away from the grip of sin; . . . attempting to lure one another away from the grip of sin in a spirit of gentleness, . . . and so fulfill the law of Christ.  . . . Peace and mercy be upon all of us who walk by this rule.