jagienka | once more into the pulpit

Finished my sermon two minutes before I had to run out the door. Not good. I struggled a lot with this one. Engaging Augustine as a source and trying to explain the theological relevance of Christ's erections was a daunting and difficult task.

But I did finish it and I preached it at the competition at my slot. Results come out in a week. It's very unorthodox for the school & the competition, so I'm not sure whether that'll help or harm me. But I took part, which counts for something. Another notch in my preaching belt (cassock?).

For those interested

May the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts, be now and always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.

36(AS)Then Jesus came with them to a place called (AT)Gethsemane, and said to His disciples, "Sit here while I go over there and pray." 37And He took with Him (AU)Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and distressed. 38Then He said to them, "(AV)My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and (AW)keep watch with Me." 39And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, "My Father, if it is possible, let (AX)this cup pass from Me; (AY)yet not as I will, but as You will." 40And He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, "So, you men could not (AZ)keep watch with Me for one hour? 41"(BA)Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation; (BB)the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." 42He went away again a second time and prayed, saying, "My Father, if this cup (BC)cannot pass away unless I drink it, (BD)Your will be done." 43Again He came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. 44And He left them again, and went away and prayed a third time, saying the same thing once more. 45Then He came to the disciples and said to them, "Are you still sleeping and resting? Behold, (BE)the hour is at hand and the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. 46"Get up, let us be going; behold, the one who betrays Me is at hand!"

It is here, in the garden of Gethsemane, that we encounter Jesus' main struggle with the will. We see the son of God distressed and grieving. We see him getting upset with his friends – and to what end? It is the despair that comes from an intense inner struggle. Surely we've all been in such a place where we are overwhelmed by our concerns, where the tension within us rises until we feel ourselves about to snap. Jesus, being fully human, felt this too. And this struggle is good for a variety of reasons. It allows us to truly come to know ourselves and to allow God to work within us as well as allowing us the chance to discern God's will. At Gethsemane, Jesus already knows the will of the Father, but knowing the right path doesn't make it any easier to embark upon it. We are given free will, we are given the freedom to choose whether or not we wish to follow God's will. Sometimes we do, and sometimes we don't. But what must it have been like for Jesus, knowing with complete and total certainty what the Father asked of him and wishing for any other outcome. It is precisely Jesus' struggle and eventual acceptance of the Father's will during this scene in Gethsemane that makes the crucifixion and resurrection so much more powerful.

There is a definining moment in the struggle at Gethsemane – the moment when Jesus utters the words, “Your will be done.” A short sentence that carries with it enormous power. For in these words we get a glimpse of the pain and love, of the true emotion that Jesus felt in his time here on earth. We realize that there is a difference of wills in Christ – both the divine will of the Father and the human will of Jesus that is an essential part of his being. One of the beauties of the Christian faith is that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine. The struggle of these two wills in the garden only serves to strengthen the power of Christ's willing sacrifice.

However, this is where we can easily get tripped up. Jesus is the blameless lamb, the human without sin who is both human and God. If Jesus is without sin, then for some theologians like Augustine, he is also with disobedience. For sin is what draws us away from God. Sin is our human will being in discord with God's divine will. But if Jesus' sinless nature means that he cannot be disobedient, then how can he truly have free will? Isn't it necessary to be able to choose disobedience in order to truly be obedient. If there is no choice in Gethsemane, if Jesus is simply going through the motions, then we lose so much of his human nature.

In order for Christ to be an example of us, he has to be one of us – with everything that such a concept means. That's a lot of baggage. There's free will, there are emotions, there's lust and desire – frankly, it's a mess. For Augustine, lust is at the root of the problem – it's the perversion of desire that is not in accordance with God's will. The example for him was of erections – a physical reaction that cannot be controlled. It was evidence of the body not being able to submit to the will. And if we, as humans, can't even make our own bodies submit to our wills, how can we possibly think that we can submit to God's will for us? For Augustine, the alignment of the human will with the divine will is simply unattainable.

Let us apply this example to Jesus. Could it be possible that Jesus had erections? To raise such a question may seem to be blasphemous or trivial – but it can help us understand the humanity of Christ and what was truly at stake for him. In Augustine's ideal view of paradise, he says, “Then had there been no sin, the man would have sowed the seed and the woman would have conceived the child when their sexual organs had been aroused by the will; at the appropriate time and in the necessary degree and had not been excited by lust.” Perhaps, then, it is possible for Christ to have erections that are controlled by the will. If so, Christ's erections would be something that is pure, uncorrupted by lust and the perversion of desire and completely in accordance with the divine will.

What is the relevance of this? Is discussing Christ's erections the equivalent of arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? No, much more is at stake. in order to be fully human, in order for his death and resurrection to be fully efficacious, christ needs to be human. but if erections are evidence of things/body not submitting to God, and Christ does not have them, then he seems to lose some of his divinity. But if Christ is both fully human and fully divine – what then of his will? The human will can never be in accordance with the divine will. But if Jesus' will is purely divine, it cannot be disobedient to the will of God because it could not be out of alignment with the Father's divine will. If Jesus didn't have the chance to be disobedient, then he doesn't really have the chance ot fully accept the will of God. If we return to the story of Gethsemane, then we see the despair and the struggle of Christ – the battle of his will with the will of the Father. And it is his submission to the will of the Father that allows the death and resurrection to happen. He could have said no. In order for his Yes in Gethsemane to mean anything, he needed to have the option to say no.

Our will doesn't always coincide with God's will. Or even what we think we have discerned to be God's will. And that's the difficultly. For Augustine, it is simply not possible for the humans to align their will with God's – all they can do is attempt it. And yet, perhaps that is enough, perhaps as Thomas Merton says, “The fact that I think I am following your will does not mean I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you and I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.” For me, that's the goal of the Christian life – that's what we take away from the story at Gethsemane – the struggle of discerning God's will and attempting to accept it. If we truly desire what is God's will, then I'm sure God will help us the rest of the way.

I deviated from what's written as always, and I feel that eventually I'll make it to just having notecards or something and not reading at all. Because I dislike sermons that are read straight and I try not to do that. But naamah and marketsquare were there. (marketsquare competed too and did a good job!) My prof made it out even though he's on paternity leave, which was nice (and justified me not giving up on the sermon).