A sermon on Romans 5:1-11 & John 4:5-42 by Nathan Nettleton

There is some stuff with pretty heavy names coming up in tonight’s worship. “Scrutinies” and “exorcism”. It sounds pretty daunting, doesn’t it. Perhaps it should, too, but it would be a good idea if we make sure we are feeling daunted for the right reasons and not because the names sound like they come straight out of mediaeval superstition or horror movies. It might also be a good idea if we look at how these daunting aspects of our faith fit within the overall picture of our place within the life of God. Fortunately, our readings tonight are rather helpful in this regard.

In his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul has a fair bit to say about the struggles of living the Christian life. This is the letter which contains his famous passage on not being able to do the things he intends to do, and instead finding himself doing the things he wishes not to do, because he finds sin lurking within him and pulling on the reins. And here in the passage we heard tonight, he speaks of weakness and suffering, and holds out the hope that at least suffering will produce endurance, and endurance will produce character, and character will produce hope. So at least suffering has some side-benefits, he is saying. He doesn’t seem to be offering that as any sort of explanation for the existence of suffering. He’s just saying its not entirely bad news.

What he does seem to be saying about why struggle and suffering continue to be part of our experience, is that God’s salvation of the world is still a work in progress. We are living in the time in between; the time in between God’s decisive victory over the powers of deathly evil and the final bringing to fulfilment of the reign of peace and joy made possible by that victory. And in this time in between, we’re kind of living with a foot in both camps. We have embraced the life of the coming kingdom, but we are trying to live it out in a world that runs according to other agendas and other interests, a world which continues to dole out suffering, misery, futility and death.

Now these special rites which our candidates for baptism or baptismal renewal will be undertaking shortly are all about what it means to live as committed followers of Jesus Christ in this tough in between time. We are getting close to the climax of this journey for those who have been enrolled in our Catechumenate for the last year. Over the course of the year, we have done our best to share with them the faith and life of this congregation, and we have asked of them that they immerse themselves in our faith and life and listen for the call of God in their lives, that they might know whether God is calling them to commit themselves to living out the fullness of baptismal life with us. But here, in this season of Lent, we are all together facing up to the fact that living out the fullness of baptismal life is at times an arduous and costly journey. As the Apostle says, the struggle may have some benefits, but it is a tough struggle nevertheless.

I was reading an article in yesterdays paper about the attrition rate among AFL footballers. Apparently, the physical and emotional battering that elite level footballers cop means that the average career is down to just under three years. I don’t know if anyone has done the research, but I don’t know that the survival rate for disciples of Jesus Christ is a whole lot better. Many of those who are baptised into the life of faith find that living it out amidst the competing claims of careerism, consumerism, nationalism and home-and-familyism is just too tough and too costly. John’s gospel tells us that many of those who flocked to Jesus decided that what he was asking was too tough and they tossed in the towel and went back to “normality”. Give another three years, and the odds are that some of those sitting around you tonight will have done the same thing.

So what we are endeavouring to do is to make sure that our baptismal candidates are going in with their eyes open and the word of warning in their ears. The AFL is trying to develop something similar! Actually, an important part of this annual Lenten season is to remind not just the candidates, but all of us, of these realities on a regular basis, that we might examine ourselves, and steel ourselves and seek renewed strength and resolve from God for the road ahead.

What we will do in a few minutes, and we’ll do it again next Sunday and the Sunday after, is hand over the prayers of the people to our baptismal candidates. In the part of the liturgy where we normally have the prayers of the faithful, we will ask the candidates to lead us in praying for themselves, for us, and for the world. This practice is known by the strange name of “the scrutinies”. The reason for this name is twofold. In part, it is because we are scrutinising them. If we are to baptise them or admit them into the membership of Christ’s body in this place, we need to discern whether they are fair dinkum. And so as we invite them to lead us in prayer, we trust that God will alert us if any of them are not really able to pray with sincerity and integrity. However, we will not be sitting here in judgment trying to work that out. We have already journeyed many months with them, and we have grown to trust them, and we would be the ones lacking in sincerity and integrity if we were suspiciously trying to catch them out rather than entering fully into the prayers they will be leading us in.

So the much more important reason why it is called the scrutinies, is that these prayers are tough prayers which invite the candidates to scrutinise themselves, to examine their own hearts and minds and call on God to strengthen them to live out their prayer, and to unify and empower us all that we might together grow into our prayer. In particular, these prayers invite the candidates to confront the powers of evil and sin which so easily entangle us. Every time we turn on the television, open our letter boxes, or check our emails, we are assaulted by messages, beliefs, values, and temptations which would seek to invade and colonise our hearts and minds, taking on a life of their own, and drawing us into conformity with the demonic greed, fear and selfishness of the world around us. None of us can escape it, so we must arm ourselves to live with it without succumbing to it or being destroyed by it.

So, in the spirit of the Lord’s prayer with its cry to save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil, we will ask our candidates to voice their commitment to renouncing evil and turning to Christ, and we will command all remaining evil in them to be gone in the name of Christ. This is traditionally called exorcism and has long been part of the church’s preparation of candidates for baptism. One of the ways you can tell that we don’t think of it as a magic spell that will, in and of itself, change the person’s life forever is that we will do it again next Sunday, and the Sunday after. And it is something that is available to any of you in the church whenever and as often as you discern yourself as needing it. Clearly this tell us that the struggle with evil and sin is an ongoing one. We can’t inoculate these candidates against the poison of evil and sin in one session, or even three. We are passing on to them our own experience and strengthening them for the battles ahead.

Now probably all I’ve done so far is make the journey of discipleship sound even more impossibly daunting than it did before. But wait! There is hope! There are wonderful promises, even in tonight’s readings, and rather than being mere dangled carrot, the gospel writer and the Apostle would have us know that all this talk of struggle and hardship are mere blips within an overall story of promise and hope.

In the wonderful story we heard about Jesus and the woman at the well, we heard how Jesus invites the woman, and in fact all of us, to seek in him the wellspring of the water of life. Those who drink this water, he promises, will never be thirsty again for the water will become a spring of water gushing up to eternal life. Now when you hear that, the prospect of having to do the hard yards through the dry deserts where callousness and hostility seek to drain us of life and hope suddenly doesn’t seem near so perilous. When you have guaranteed access in Christ to a spring of water that gushes up to eternal life, the heat of hostility and the fires of hell can do their worst, but we will live and flourish and grow.

Our reading from the Apostle Paul was perhaps even more explicit in putting the whole thing in perspective. Although, as we have noted, he speaks of suffering and the possibility of drawing some gain from the pain, the real point of this passage is in the material that frames those comments and speaks of being put right through faith and finding peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And these comments really do frame the tough realities of this in between time, because he looks back to what has already been achieved and forward to what is yet to come, so that we might live with hope in the here and now.

Paul hammers the point that we don’t have to prove ourselves in the midst of the present conflicts before God will accept us and open the wellspring of life to us. It was while we were still weak, while we were still sinners, while we were still impossibly entangled in the corruption and ruthless competitiveness of the world, that Christ died for us. Paul is mind-boggled by this, and is trying to awaken us to the same awe and wonder. It was not for those who deserved it that Christ put his life on the line. It was not for those who had earned it or proved themselves worthy. It was for the ungodly, the hard-hearted, the hostile and bitter; it was for us at our very very worst. And, says Paul, you can’t imagine a more dramatic proof of love than that. Christ died for us, knowing that most of us would ignore his love, and that even of those of us who responded to his call, many many of us would drop out and declare it all too tough. But God loved us so much, that he went through with it even knowing that.

And on the basis of that, Paul then looks forward and says that if all that is true, then you can be even more, much more, sure that God will follow through on what has been begun in Christ and bring our salvation to fulfilment and give us life in all its fullness. God would not make that level of self-sacrificial investment in us without being able to see the job through and bring us into the promised land of freedom, joy and living water bubbling up to eternal life. All the struggles we steel ourselves for and pray for one another in now, are all framed within the unshakable promise that God’s love for us would stop at nothing, and that God’s all-conquering grace and strength are more than enough to see us overcome anything and everything that would stop us or harm us or destroy us.

So now it is as a people who are held secure in the safe arms of the God who gave himself for us and will bring us home to glory that we stand to proclaim our faith and then entrust our prayer to these candidates whom the crucified and risen Christ has pledged to bring home to glory with us.