In this morning's epistle lesson we hear Saint Paul exhorting the Christians of Galatia (what is now central Turkey) to be guided by the Holy Spirit.  Since Paul had last been among them, the Galatians had come under the influence of people who insisted on the observance of the whole Jewish law; Saint Paul wants warn them that their salvation does not depend on the law, but on their faith in Jesus Christ.

Brethren, you were called to be free;
do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence,
but be deacons to one another in love.

 One of the lessons of the events of the last week is just how weak our flesh is.  We trusted, to a great extent, in the works of human hands:  tall buildings, strong buildings, aircraft capable of transporting large numbers of people at very great speeds, metal detectors, black boxes, laws, regulations, agencies, economic strength, military strength . . .

 The flesh is subject to temptation, above all by temptation to pride. We read in the book called Genesis about how the people came together at the great city of Bab-El and said:  "Let us build ourselves a tower with its top reaching the sky, . . .  and let us make a reputation for ourselves."   How likely is it that that mistake would be repeated?  Well, we can build towers, towers so high that the top seems to touch the sky, but even the tallest buildings made by human hands are fragile things.  One minute they are here, the next they are reduced to rubble.

 We, or some among us, are tempted to malice, murder, and suicide:  tempted by a great cause, tempted by a great hatred; tempted to kill, and to destroy.

 We are tempted to "wrath," that is, to unrighteous angerSometimes the provocation may be very great.  In the first day, one heard one's fellow citizens crying out for retaliation, for bombings of foreign capitals (any foreign capital), for rounding up one group of people or another.  But "the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God."  We are tempted to vengeance.  But "vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord."

 We are tempted to quarrelling and to factionalism.  One hears of some people, thanfully only a few, being beaten or humiliated because of their dress, or their accent, or because they were seen to be going into a particular house of worship.

 The flesh is weak.  It is beset by fear, by anxiety, by impatience, by feelings of helplessness:  by the desire to do something, but by uncertainty about what is to be done.

 The weakness and the temptations of this past week have been different from those of other weeks in the intensity with which they have been experienced.  They have been different from those of other weeks because of their very public nature:  because they have affected us collectively as a nation, rather than individually or locally.

 But day by day the weakness of our flesh lets us fall into temptations of one sort or another:  adultery and sexual improprieties, jealousy and rivalry, anger and malice, quarrelling and factions, religious indifference, drunkenness and mindless pleasure-seeking.  These are the sinful desires of the flesh that we renounced when we were baptized, but which are still snares for us.

 There is even a special theological term for it.  Saint Augustine called it "concupiscence":  the inability of our reason to control our passions.  As Saint Paul wrote to the Galatians, "[w]e cannot do what [w]e would."  This "concupiscence" is the consequence of our fallen nature.

 And we cannot by ourselves overcome the weakness of our flesh, because we cannot by ourselves restore our fallen nature:  no matter how good our wills, no matter how sound our reasoning, no matter how progressive our science.

 Only God could redeem our fallen nature.  Only by God the Son taking our nature upon him and dying on the cross.  Only by rising again from the grave.  And he promised:  "I will not leave you comfortless."  "I will ask the Father and he will give you another advocate to be with you forever, the Spirit of Truth . . . you know him, because he is with you, he is in you."  "The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all I have said to you."

 And this Spirit is the antidote to the lusts of the flesh; his strength is the answer to the weakness of our flesh.  If we will be led by the Spirit, we will nail our flesh, with its lusts (its concupiscence) to the cross, and we will obtain the fruits of the Spirit:  love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.

 We need to pray that we may be led by the Spirit.  And at this time, we need to pray that our nation, and our public officials, may be led by the Spirit.

 We have announced to the world that these acts of terror will not stand, that we will seek for and find those who planned and financed them, that those who have harbored and tolerated the terrorists cannot escape.  This new war could be prosecuted in various ways.

 In the weakness of our flesh, in our wounded pride, in our national pain and distress, we could strike out in wrath and vengeance.  We could, as the saying goes, kill them all and let God sort them out.  We could fight fire with fire and terror with terror.

 Or we could seek to do justice and to restore peace.  That could turn out to harder than seeking to do vengeance.  To do justice will require patience (because we cannot act until we know for sure that we have identified the enemy), it will require humility (because we will have to recognize the limits of our intelligence and our power), it will require temperance (because we our response must be measured). It will require the leading of the Spirit.

 Our objective must not be to inflict pain, even on those who have caused pain; it must not be to kill, even those hands are red with innocent blood; it must not be to vent our anger, even if we have much to be angry about.

Our objective must be to restore peace and to show charity, because that is what people do who are led by the Spirit.

 If we have been reading the newspapers, listening to the radio, or watching television during this past week, we have been told over and over by reporters, and commentators, and politicians, and experts of all sorts that our lives have been changed forever, that everything will be different.  But it isn't really true.

 Each of us will be confronted by the same temptations and the same kinds of temptations this week as we were last week or the week before.  What Saint Paul wrote in that letter to Galatia two thousand years ago still applies.

 In his address at the Washington Cathedral on Friday, President Bush quoted from another of Saint Paul's letters, the letter to the Romans:

I am certain of this:  neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities,
nothing already in existence and nothing still to come,
nor any power, nor heights, nor depths, nor any created thing whatever
can separate us from the love of God.

Church of Saint Mary Magdalene, Orange, California
September 16, 2001

* [NOTE:  This homily was given on the Sunday following the terrorist attacks on the United States (Tuesday, 11 September 2001.]

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