All Saints Episcopal Church, Thomasville
Epiphany 3, 2006

"You were bought with a price."
(I Corinthians 6:23)

        About twenty years ago at a clergy retreat I learned a little poem by George Herbert.  My Sunday School class is familiar with it, and I've quoted it to the congregation before.  Herbert wrote it specifically about the priesthood, but its truth applies to any serious human being attempting to live out the Christian faith.  Quite frankly, when I find myself at night in the quandary which Herbert describes as "a noise of passions ringing me for dead",this poem if one of the few things which can help me fall asleep.

It begins with the joy one feels at his ordination when the bishop dons the new priest with the Eucharistic vestments:  the stole and chasuble.  It is a time when most of us feel that we've got the world by the tail and that we're utterly invincible:

Holiness on the head,
Light and perfections on the breast,
Harmonious bells below, raising the dead
To leade them unto life and rest:
Thus are true Aarons drest.

The poem is titled Aaron, after the head of the Levitical priesthood in the Old Testament.  The verse describes from the book of Leviticus how the priest should be properly vested.  And, for the clergy being ordained today and I include myself among them, it describes our sense in invinceabiltiy.  Holiness, light, perfection, harmonious bells raising the dead.  Oh how wonderful, but oh how naïve!

After a few years in his chosen vocation, the priest realizes that he's not all that he thought he was cracked up to be.  He discovers all the more the demons residing in those dark crevices of his spirit, not to mention the world, the flesh and the devil as manifested throughout his congregation, throughout the Church, and throughout the world -- and he wonders whether he's really cut out for such work:

Profaneness in my head,
Defects and darkness in my breast,
A noise of passions ringing me for dead
Unto a place where is no rest.
Poor priest, thus am I drest.

To dwell on such misery is suicidal, but fortunately he remembers not just who, but what he really is.  He catches a ray of light:

Only another head
I have, another heart and breast,
Another musick making live not dead,
Without whom I could have no rest.
In Him I am well drest.

He then gets even more confident and courageous, coming to a tremendously important revelation:

Christ is my only head,
My alone only heart and breast
My only musick striking me even dead:
That to the old man I may rest,
And be in Him new drest.

Back in the second verse he was so depressed and unsure of himself:  so guilty that he felt unable even to celebrate the Holy Mysteries -- "Poor priest, thus am I drest."

But to be in Christ; to know that you belong to Him because He has bought you with a price; to know that you are in Him and that He is in you because He has bought you with His blood; to begin to be aware of this is the only way any of us can begin to don these vestments and stand at that altar and in this pulpit (or sit in these pews) week after week and make the attempt to call ourselves Christian.  And thus the poem ends:

So holy in my head
Perfect and light in my deare breast,
My doctrine tuned by Christ, (who is not dead,
But lives in me while I do rest)
Come people, Aaron's drest.

 Apart from being one of the most wonderful things I know, the poem is one of the purest and simplest statements of the Christian faith as seen through the eyes of classical Anglican theology.  It speaks to us right were we are:  with our lives broken, battered, and shattered by sin.  And yet it offers to us the only hope we have for our salvation:  the knowledge that Jesus lives in the heart of you and me while we do rest.  If that isn't Good News of which our collect speaks, I don’t know what is:

Christ is my only head,
My alone only heart and breast
My only musick striking me even dead:
That to the old man I may rest,
And be in Him new drest.

 I'm not sure we really believe this, probably because when we get right down to it, it sounds quite unbelievable -- that He who is not dead now lives in me while I do rest.  And yet, the consequences of failing to believe that He lives in us -- because we are dead to sin and were bought with a price -- are nothing short of catastrophic if not diabolic.  I say diabolic because such thinking (that we really are our own and belong to ourselves) is the by-product of the devil himself: "All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." 

The result of such a mindset, if not properly rebuked, can carry us to the brink if not the center of self-damnation.  Would that every single one of us never forget that the central principle of hell according to Thomas Merton is "I am my own."

 How might we apply the fruits of this poem, as well as the fact that we really have been bought with a price and therefore are not our own; how might we apply these facts to our daily lives?   I think most of us here this morning like to think of ourselves as good Christians.  We may not go around saying it, and we most likely don’t like hearing other people say things like:  "I'm a good Christian", or "He or she is a good Christian."  Prayerbook Episcopalians generally don't talk like that.

Nevertheless, most of us would want to admit to ourselves that we really are fairly decent -- that we're more good than we are bad -- and that we really are making some sort of progress.  And, hopefully each of us is making some sort of progress to grow as we say into the mind of Christ.

But there's a little heresy particularly prevalent among Anglicans called Pelagianism.  Pelagius was a British monk who basically thought that one could save himself through his own good works, and that God's grace was essentially something only for wimps and weenies.  Pelagians are proud of the fact that they've managed to make it to where they are on their spiritual maps -- and that they've done it pretty much all on their own.  Walter Klein, a former bishop of the Church in a book written for his clergy, states that:

"The modern Pelagian is a hard-working, responsible person who has fully earned the respect that most people give him.  His friends lean on him, and he has an assortment of splendid traits, every one of which he has acquired by sedulous cultivation and improvement.  His progress in Christian virtue has never been seriously interrupted, nor has he ever been impeded by those curious interior difficulties that haunt so many Christians of his acquaintance."

Bishop Klein says that this is a theoretical description, and that thank God he has never really met anyone completely like this, but doesn't his description hold more than a ring of truth for you?  It certainly does for me.  Sustained by his own self-approval, as well as leaning on the approval of peers and superiors, such a person cannot but in time feel unfulfilled in his vocation -- with his priesthood or with any other endeavor. 

George Herbert knows of which he speaks.  So does any other priest.  So does any other serious Christian.  Despite our efforts and achievements, we know our profaneness, our defects and darkness, the noise of passions ringing us for dead -- unto a place, where is no rest.

 Our fault is that we have perpetually been attempting to be that "good Christian", but doing so by using only our own mere creaturely resources.  We've been attempting on our own, only what God's grace alone can accomplish.  And hence, we really are failing in that quest to become that "good Christian". Bishop Klein hits the nail on the head when he concludes:  "The Pelagian is always trying to make the situation right for himself.  The Christian, without being passive, is chiefly interested in what God will do to make him right for the situation."

We all have our Pelagian bouts, moments, and phases.  Our ideals, our expectations, and our aspirations really are deeply tainted -- far more than we often realize -- with Pelagianism.  And that is why we are never more than relatively fulfilled.

Allow me to repeat:  'The Pelagian is always trying to make the situation right for himself.  The Christian, without being passive, is chiefly interested in what God will do to make him right for the situation."  Quite simply, the Pelagian belongs to himself.  The real Christian knows he belongs to Christ -- and in Him alone is he well drest.  So really when we get right down to it, anyone who makes the claim, "I'm a good Christian", is a Pelagian at heart.  In fact he or she is as far from being a Christian as anyone might ever imagine.    Further, and far more than he or she would care to admit, that person is unhappy and unfulfilled.

 It is part of the wonder of classical Anglicanism -- as well as classical Christianity -- to see the beauty of Christ dying on the Cross, which is of course why we call it Good Friday.  John Donne speaks of this "beauteous form" of Jesus dying on the Cross, and how that "beauteous form assures a piteous mind."  The reason we call Good Friday "good" is from that day forward, we ceased to belong to ourselves.  And beloved, our Baptism is the sacramental sign that we no longer wish to belong to ourselves.  It is the acknowledgement that we belong to God -- and that we were bought with a price.

 To close, today's collect has us pray for the grace to answer the call of Jesus, and to proclaim to all people the Good News of His salvation.  But please be aware of this one thing:  We cannot begin to proclaim that Good News to others, until we are ready to proclaim it to ourselves and to believe it with all our heart.  And what are we to believe? 

"Christ is my only head,
My alone only heart and breast,
My only musick making me live not dead
That to the old man I may rest,
And be in Him new drest."

To believe anything less is to be an unfulfilled Pelagian, and to deny to ourselves and others God's greatest gift -- which is to see Jesus not just working in our lives, but actually doing the breathing, living, and loving for you, me, and everyone else who would dare call himself a Christian.  Such is the only way you or I can ever get what we might call any real rest.  God looks upon us, as we are found in Him.  So,

Holy in our heads,
Perfection and light in our dear breasts,
Our doctrine tuned by Christ, (Who is not dead,
But lives in us while we do rest.)
Come dear people.  We are drest.