Starting With a Clean Slate

It’s an expression we use related to “new beginnings”.  It can relate to a new job, to a remodeled home and how it gets organized, or perhaps more appropriately, to a change in attitude after making a sincere confession.  All of these wipe clean what was before, and provide a path for changing the way in which things will be planned to happen afterward.

When the clean slate points to our spirituality, it has as its focus the level of our faith.  If we choose not to have the slate filled with failures that have just been wiped clean, our faith needs to be such that we live according to a plan that will not duplicate the shortcomings we fell into before.

St. Theophan the Recluse says this:

Sincere faith is the renunciation of your own mind.  It is necessary to make your mind naked and present it like a clean chalkboard to faith, so that she can draw herself on it like she is, without any admixture of foreign sayings and attitudes.  When the mind’s own attitudes remain within it, then, after the attitudes of faith are written on it, there appears a mixture of attitudes.  The mind will be confused, encountering contradictions between the actions of faith and the sophistries of the mind.  Thus are all who approach the region of faith with their own sophistries… They are confused in the faith, and nothing comes of it but harm.

What is the Saint explaining to us?

Faith is the renunciation of your own mind—the intellect is a gift from God, but too often used in a way where we allow it to supersede what the Spirit shows us in faith, and so its use becomes detrimental to us.  Faith must win over intellect.

Present (your mind) like a clean chalkboard to faith—We need to give our faith unencumbered access to “write” our path to salvation without the intellect in its way.  Then we must labor to conform the intellect to where the faith is leading us.

When the mind’s own attitudes remain, after the attitudes of faith are written on it, there is a mixture, and confusion and contradiction between faith and intellect—We can’t allow the righteous directions set by faith to be “overwritten” by an intellect attached to this world.  Faith leads us to the life that is eternal.  Intellect steers the life that ends all too soon here on this planet and its dirt.

Thus are all who approach faith with their own sophistries—Our faith gets lost in lies told by this world that get ingrained into our intellects.  Like the world around us, our intellects, which receive instruction from the world, can and often do lie to us.

They are confused in the faith, - If we give leave to our intellects to direct our lives when we really need to rely on faith, it’s easy to see how confusion results.  For example, “My faith tells me to reach out to and help the beggar on the corner.  My mind tells me that he’s a charlatan, and any good that could come from my helping him will be lost in sinfulness.”  The Holy Fathers teach that giving alms is NEVER a wrong thing for the giver, and the good that can come from it, “yay or nay” belongs to the receiver.  There is an account from the Holy Fathers of a monk who, seeing a beggar struggling with the cold, took off his coat and gave it to the beggar.  On the following day, the monk saw his coat - the very same on, in a shop window for sale.  He became angry with himself for not discerning that the beggar would misuse the gift - to sell it and use the money for some unrighteous purpose.  That night he had a dream, and he saw the Lord standing, wearing his same coat, with the Lord asking, "Do you like My coat?"  He understood then that his giving was righteous.  "God knows your hearts." (Luke 16:15)

So, “wipe our slates clean,” and allow the Lord’s finger to write what path or paths He chooses for us to take on this day, and in all successive days.  Fill the slate only with that which brings spiritual gain.  And as best we can, praying for His blessing to do so, let us with all our strength follow where He leads.

 

Sermon - 17th Sunday 2024

The Gift of Life [Luke 7:11-16]

   Glory to Jesus Christ!

It’s hard NOT to take life for granted!  Every day the sun rises.  Every day we awake, get dressed, go to work or to church.  Every day we eat meals, some of us browse the Internet, some read magazines.  All of these things are part of “everyday life,” and we seldom stop to consider what would happen if (or when) something removes them from us.

These days the news brings it all a little closer to home as we ponder the plight of our brothers and sisters in the southeast who have lost everything to Helene.  I heard an interview today of a man who drove nearly 6 hours from his home in North Carolina to a destination in South Carolina where he could buy the necessities to just keep on living—food, water, fuel.

Thank God it’s still warm, otherwise these unfortunates would be freezing as well!

Although percentage-wise the number of fatalities was small, it was large for any ‘storm’!  When it’s all said and done, over 200 will be dead, their families impacted forever, some unable to wash from their memories the terrible visions of seeing their loved one washed away before their very eyes in the raging waters of the storm.

We can’t bring them back.  Much as we’d like to, we don’t have that kind of authority over life and death.

But we serve One Who does have such authority.  And in being such a servant, we must live in that hope, and we must share that hope with others who we know are feeling quite hopeless right now.

In today’s Gospel, the widow of Nain had lost all hope.  She lives as an old woman.  In Jewish society in that time, women didn’t “earn a living” - they were provided for by their husbands.  If they were widowed, they relied upon male children to provide for them, or they would be destitute.

For the woman in today’s Gospel, she IS a widow.  She HAD only one son.  Now, he has died.

And so she walks with a funeral procession from the town of Nain out to a destination where she will lay the dead body of her only hope in this world into the ground.

She feels the grips of hopelessness tear her from the world she knew.

But our Lord knows all of this.  As always, He is at the right place at the right time.  As far as we know, neither the young man nor his mother ever expressed any faith in Jesus.  It doesn’t matter.  God can do as He wills!

And on this day, He wills to restore life, to give the gift of life.  He does so with His Word.  Young man, I say to you, arise!

Do we understand the power of those words?  They’ve been uttered before by our Lord.  At the home of Jairus, Jesus gives the gift of life to a little girl by saying, Little girl, I say to you, arise!  At the tomb of His friend Lazarus He speaks, Lazarus, come forth!

We don’t know if there were other instances of such raisings.  We know from the Gospel of St. Luke that disciples of St. John the Forerunner were present to see today’s raising.  St. Luke records that they returned to John and told him what they witnessed.  John in turn sent them back to Jesus with a question: ‘Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?’

John didn’t give them this question because HE needed the answer.  He sent them knowing that he would be murdered, and this was his way of securing his own disciples to their new Master.  In His response, Jesus says to them, Tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor receive the Gospel.

With the first of these, the Lord blesses those who are suffering in this world.  With the proclamation about the dead, they receive the gift of life still in this world.  With the Gospel, all of us, then, now, and until He returns, are granted the gift of life for eternity—if only we follow where He is leading us.

You see, the gift of life isn’t just for the physically dead—it’s mostly for the spiritually dead.  Let us embrace the gift before it’s too late.

Glory forever!