Proper 17B September 2, 2012 St. James
Lenoir
“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father,
is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself
unstained by the world. Jesus said, “Nothing outside a person . . . can defile,
but the things that come out are what defile.”
It is a real pleasure
it is to be with you all today. I’m Tom Rightmyer. I was rector at Redeemer,
Shelby, in the 1980’s. Mike Cogsdale helped us celebrate the church’s 125th
anniversary. When Mike was President of the NC Council of Churches I was a
member of a Council committee and on the Ecumenical Committee of this diocese.
I’m retired and live at Deerfield in Asheville.
This sermon is about the connection of belief and behavior. Our life work is to keep together what we do
and what we believe. Our beliefs and thoughts influence our behavior, and our
behavior influences on what we think and believe.
You have heard of the 7 major sinful tendencies that separate
us from the love of God: Pride, Wrath, Avarice, and Envy are sins of the mind;
Sloth, Lust, and Gluttony are sins of the body. All these natural
characteristics become sinful when they get between us and God and between us
and others.
There are also 7 capital or major virtues that can help us
grow closer to God, and increase the connection between our beliefs and our
behaviors: Four are called natural
virtues: Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude or Courage. Three are
called theological virtues: Faith, Hope, and Charity or Love.
The natural virtues of Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and
Fortitude or Courage are taught by Plato in the Republic, by Aristotle, by
Cicero, and in the intertestamental books of Wisdom (8.7) and 4 Maccabees
(1:18-19) and by St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas. The theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and
Charity or Love come from I Corinthians 13.
Prudence comes from the Latin pro-videntia to “see ahead.”
It includes the reasonable ability to control our actions by good judgment, by “common
sense” to have a right judgment of a situation and to do the right thing in
that situation. We generally learn prudence as we practice it. Prudence keeps
us out of trouble.
Justice is having a right judgment of what properly belongs
to us and what properly belongs to others. Children are generally blessed with
the virtue of justice. They know and frequently say what is fair and what is
not. Power tends to corrupt the virtue
of justice.
Fortitude or Courage is the virtue that helps us deal with
the fears, pains, and dangers that come to us in a fallen world. Fortitude
includes steadfastness, perseverance, honesty. “Having done all to stand.” Moral
fortitude is the ability to do what is right despite opposition.
Temperance is the virtue of moderation, moderation in our
use of the things of this world for ourselves and others. When we recycle we
are exercising a contemporary virtue of Temperance. We learn these natural
virtues in life as we practice them.
These four natural virtues are common to all people, but the
three spiritual virtues are God’s special gifts to bring us closer to him, and
to help us to be more integrated people, with lives that more closely
demonstrate in our behavior what we believe in our hearts.
Faith is God’s gift to make it possible to believe. We
receive the gift of faith by hearing of God’s love in creation and in the life,
death, and resurrection of Jesus. As we hear and we learn God’s love pours out
on us, over us, and through us, to bring us to himself. Faith is a personal
gift from a personal God to bring us into personal relationship with him. The
gift of faith is a free gift; we don’t earn it by anything we do, but once we
receive the gift and the giver, we offer ourselves in gratitude.
Hope is God’s gift of happiness. By hope we desire a better
life here and hereafter and are motivated to work toward that better life for
ourselves and for others. Hope strengthens the other
virtues in our life. In the Epistle to the Hebrews (10.23) we read, “Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for
he who has promised is faithful” and in the Epistle to Titus (3.6-7) “This
Spirit he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that having
been justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of
eternal life.”
Charity or
Love is God’s gift so we may love God above all things and in all things for
his own sake, and love our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God. In St. John’s Gospel we learn that Jesus
loved us to the end, to his painful death on the cross, and told the disciples
and us, (15:9, 12) “As the Father has loved me, so I
have loved you; abide in my love.” And “This is my commandment, that you love one
another as I have loved you.”
The virtues offer a framework to evaluate how
our faith and our behavior relate to one another. If we will pay regular attention
regularly both to how we behave and what we believe, and if we will pray
regularly God’s grace in Jesus will strengthen us and will bring us closer to
him. Amen.
