Examination of Conscience – Candle in a Cave

17 August 2025

Sermon: Proper 15 RCL C – “Crisis”

One day, when Vice President Calvin Coolidge was presiding over the Senate, one senator angrily told another to go “straight to hell.” The offended senator complained to Coolidge, as presiding officer. Coolidge looked up from the book he had been leafing through while listening to the debate and wittily replied, “I’ve looked through the rule book. You don’t have to go.”

Another short reading for you this morning. This one is an excerpt from the Prophet Micah.

“The godly has perished from the earth,
and there is no one upright among mankind;
they all lie in wait for blood…

Their hands are on what is evil, to do it well;
the prince and the judge ask for a bribe,
and the great man utters the evil desire of his soul… 
Put no trust in a neighbor;
have no confidence in a friend…

for the son treats the father with contempt,
the daughter rises up against her mother,
the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
a man’s enemies are the men of his own house.”

It’s a different translation, but that last section is what Jesus was quoting in our Gospel reading today.

Micah prophesied from 742 to 687 BC, and his main complaint—the Lord’s complaint—was directed against both the social and religious elites. His complaint was against the wealthy, who showed no regard for the poor, and the religious leaders who showed no regard for the poor in spirit. Therefore, Micah foresees a coming crisis.

The word crisis originally comes from the Greek and is a medical term. Merriam-Webster defines it as “the turning point for better or worse in an acute disease or fever.” In this case, the “better or worse” means you either live or you die.

In the case of Micah, the evil—the social and religious elite—will repent, or the evil will be destroyed. As for the latter, Micah speaks of the destruction of Jerusalem.

“Therefore because of you  Zion shall be plowed as a field; Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins,  and the mountain of the house a wooded height.”
(Micah 3:12)

An unfortunate consequence of the punishment of evil is that the innocent often become caught up in the destruction. Today, we rely on the non-emotive term, collateral damage, to describe the death of innocent people, so we don’t have to admit we killed them.

So, when the crisis—the pivotal moment for better or worse—arrives, A) the people will repent, return to the Lord, and live, or B) Jerusalem will fall, and the wicked, along with the collateral damage, will perish.

How did it all turn out? In 586 BC, Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian army sacked Jerusalem, destroyed the First Temple, and exiled the people.

Micah warned, “The path we are taking is leading to our destruction. We’re about to experience a certain hell on earth, but I’ve checked the rule book, and we don’t have to go.” The crisis arrived, and the people chose… wrongly.

By examining these events, we can find a pattern for any crisis.

A specific path is chosen, but there are early warning signs that it may be the wrong path.
A shrugging of shoulders, thinking it’ll be OK, or the status quo rules.
The early warning signs begin to turn into real problems. Sirens are sounding.
The symptoms are addressed, but not the root problem. It begins to fester.
A catalyst or trigger of some sort pushes it all over the edge. Hell on Earth follows.
The crisis—the turning point for better or worse—blossoms.
Options: Strong corrective measures are implemented to prevent a disaster or destruction.

In our Gospel, Jesus said, “You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky—a cloud rising in the west or a south wind blowing—but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”

Jesus said, “You’ve chosen a certain path, but there are warning signs everywhere—your country is occupied, there is trouble within, the religious system is broken, and there is no fear of God. Yet, in your arrogance, you shrug your shoulders, thinking everything is A-OK. The prophets, like John the Baptist, have sounded the alarm. You believe the solution is to ratchet up the requirements of the Law, but you’re missing the point. It’s not the Law that’s the problem; it’s you! All you’re doing is oppressing the people and further angering the Father. You’ve created Hell on Earth, so you can either turn and repent, or all this will be destroyed. ‘Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.’ (Matthew 24:2) But,” Jesus said, “I’ve looked through the rule book, and you don’t have to go that way.

How did everything turn out? In 70 AD, Titus and the Roman army sacked Jerusalem, destroyed the Second Temple, and enslaved or scattered the people. The exact same pattern and result of the crisis that occurred in the time of Micah.

Not only does this pattern of crisis occur on a large scale for nations, but it also applies to individuals.

I believe it has been at least a week since I last mentioned a Stephen King book, so…

In The Stand, one of the main characters, Larry Underwood, has been experiencing troubles in his life. As he reflects on it, he remembers another person who faced a time of trial—Jory Baker.

Jory was a guitarist, and a good one at that. He even played in a band that looked as though they were going to make it big, but then Jory was involved in an accident. This was followed by intensive rehab and a little drug called Demerol. Jory got hooked, and when he no longer had access to Demerol, he turned to heroin. He ended up on the streets, begging for change and his next fix. Hell on Earth. Crisis—the point where he could choose either life or destruction. Over eighteen months, Jory managed to get clean and stay clean. He chose life.

As he remembers this, Larry thinks, “No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just … come out the other side. Or you don’t.” (p.575)

We understand that all these crises—whether between nations, within individuals, or any type in between—are the direct result of the conflict between Heaven and Hell, with the prize being the soul of God’s people. In C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, the demon writes, “We want cattle who can finally become food; He [God] wants servants who can finally become sons.” Therefore, in every situation, we must be those who can properly “interpret the present time.” And yes, we must be able to do this for the world and society around us, so we don’t blindly follow the masses to destruction, but equally important, we must learn to unemotionally and honestly “interpret the present time” of our own lives. How do we achieve this?

We must learn to take a step back from our lives and unflinchingly scrutinize them, as if from the outside. Are there warning signs that we may be headed in the wrong direction? If so, are we glossing them over or pretending that they’re really no big deal? In our arrogance, are we convincing ourselves that we’re right, even when evidence suggests otherwise? If we do recognize areas of concern, are we just treating the symptoms while ignoring the real problem? Is a crisis actually developing or already upon us—Hell on Earth? To be blunt, if it looks like you’re heading to hell, remember, there’s nothing in the rule book that says you’ve got to go. Ask yourself, “If in my analysis of the present time and path, will I come out the other side… or not?” If the answer is “Yes,” give thanks to the Lord your God. If the answer is “No,” then pray for wisdom and courage to change. After all, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8:36)

The life of a Christian person is often and mistakenly solely measured by emotions. Do I feel the joy of the Lord? Am I at peace? Do I sense God’s presence in my life? If you answer “Yes” to these questions, then you feel like all is well. However, we can’t rely only on our emotions. As Christians, we must sometimes sit down, like an academic, and study our lives—properly interpreting the present times—and then be prepared to make the necessary course corrections. In doing so, with God’s help, we will safely come out the other side.

Let us pray: O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

9 December 2022

Advent Devotional: Prepare

This devotional was for The Episcopal Church of the Resurrection’s annual Advent Devotional series.

Now the Feast of Unleavened Bread drew near, which is called the Passover. And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to put him to death, for they feared the people.

Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was of the number of the twelve. He went away and conferred with the chief priests and officers how he might betray him to them. And they were glad, and agreed to give him money. So he consented and sought an opportunity to betray him to them in the absence of a crowd.

Then came the day of Unleavened Bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. So Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and prepare the Passover for us, that we may eat it.” They said to him, “Where will you have us prepare it?” He said to them, “Behold, when you have entered the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him into the house that he enters and tell the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says to you, Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ And he will show you a large upper room furnished; prepare it there.” And they went and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover.

-Luke 22:1-13 (ESV)

Prepare

The Passover that Jesus asked John and Peter to prepare for is the greatest of festivals during the Jewish year. It is a memorial of the night when the tenth plague swept through Egypt, killing all the firstborn of the Egyptians but “passing over” the Jews. In the process of establishing the festival (Exodus 12), God gave the Jews several laws on how to prepare for and celebrate the festival in the subsequent years. For example, one of these laws prescribed the removal of all leaven from the home. Over the centuries, these laws became more strict and codified, leaving no room for error. Not all are as fastidious as others in adhering to the requirements, yet one author reports, “We have a pious friend in Israel who airs out every book in her home in case there should be any bread crumbs in them.” (Source)

Although not prescribed by Holy Scripture, the Church has established two seasons of preparation: Advent and Lent. In Advent, we prepare to celebrate Jesus’ birth and to prepare for his second coming, and in Lent, we prepare to celebrate Christ’s victory over death. With regard to Advent, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “There are only two places where the powerful and great in this world lose their courage, tremble in the depths of their souls, and become truly afraid. These are the manger and the cross of Jesus Christ.” (God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas, p.26) If that be the case—which it should be!—then we should not enter lightly into our encounter with him in the manger, but instead, we should seek out the “old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil” (1 Corinthians 5:8) and prepare our hearts so that we might humbly kneel before our Lord and King.

In 2008, during his general audience, John Paul II said,

The liturgy of Advent, filled with constant allusions to the joyful expectation of the Messiah, helps us to understand the fullness of the value and meaning of the mystery of Christmas. It is not just about commemorating the historical event, which occurred some 2,000 years ago in a little village of Judea. Instead, we must understand that our whole life should be an “advent”, in vigilant expectation of Christ’s final coming. To prepare our hearts to welcome the Lord who, as we say in the Creed, will come one day to judge the living and the dead, we must learn to recognize his presence in the events of daily life. Advent is then a period of intense training that directs us decisively to the One who has already come, who will come and who continuously comes. (Source)

As we “prepare our hearts to welcome the Lord, let us heed the words of St. Paul: “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves” ( 2 Corinthians 13:5a), and cleanse yourself of the “old leaven.”

Jesus said to Peter and John, “Go and prepare the Passover for us, that we may eat it.” In like manner, go and prepare yourselves so that “at his coming, [he] may find in us—in you—a mansion prepared for himself; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.” (Collect for the Fourth Sunday of Advent)

The Rev. Dr. John Toles

Rector

St. Matthews

23 October 2022

Sermon: Proper 25 RCL C – “Distorted Image”

A rural middle school in Northwest Florida was recently faced with a unique problem. A new fad arose amongst the 8th-grade girls with the use of lipstick. They began bringing, sharing, and trading with their friends to try out all the latest styles and shades. The gathering point for this activity was one specific bathroom at the school. That was fine, but after they tried out all of these lipsticks, they would press their lips to the mirror, leaving dozens of lip prints every day.

Every night the custodian had to clean them off, but the next day the girls would put more lip prints on the mirror. Finally, the principal decided that something had to be done. So class by class, the principal paraded 8th-grade girls to the bathroom to meet with the custodian.

She explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian who had to clean the mirrors every night. To drive the point home, she asked the custodian to demonstrate to the girls what a pain it was for him to clean the mirrors. He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet, and began cleaning off the lipstick. After repeating the process a few times, the mirror was clean. There was no more lipstick problem.

You have probably noticed that we’ve been remodeling the bathrooms. Many thanks to Sharon, Dora, Jackie, Gina, and Michael for all the work they’ve put in on this. There are a few more things to be done, but we’re close now. One of the last items will be the mirrors—one may be in the main women’s but not yet in the others. I told Gina the other day, “It may be a vanity thing, but it seems rather odd to walk into a bathroom and not have a mirror.” It’s not like I stand there preening, but it’s nice to make sure there’s nothing stuck in the teeth—I would say check the hair but not much of a problem there.

The odd thing—and perhaps you’ve experienced it also—is that I can look at myself in a mirror and think, “Not too bad,” but then I see a picture of myself, and it’s, “Who in the world…?” As it turns out, there is a bit of science behind it.

The most familiar image we have of ourselves is the one we see in the mirror. The only problem is that the image in the mirror is reversed, so when we see a picture of our faces, something seems to be a bit “off.” There are differences—although often minor—between the left side of our faces and the right. So, perhaps not consciously, but subconsciously our minds say, “There’s something not right,” and so we end up disliking the pictures of us. You can all run home and try this: take several selfies—smiling, laughing, etc.—then take the same pictures of yourself in the mirror. See which ones you like best. Bottom line: the mirror is a distorted view of what you actually look like to others, but the photograph isn’t the real you either—through the mechanics of photography, distortions appear there also. It is true; the camera adds ten pounds (in my case, about forty!) What it all comes down to is that we really do have a distorted image of ourselves. The person we see is not the person others see.

“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’”

In a spiritual sense, the Pharisee looked at himself in the mirror and saw a distorted image of himself. On the other hand, “the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’” In a spiritual sense, the tax collector did not rely on what he saw in the mirror. Instead, he looked within and saw his true self—a sinner. Ultimately, it wasn’t what either thought of themselves but what God thought of them. Jesus said, “I tell you, this man—the tax collector—went down to his home justified rather than the other.” The Pharisee was not likely a bad person, but he had fallen into a trap: God had bestowed upon him a great gift, yet instead of always viewing it as a gift, he came to view it as a possession. God had gifted him righteousness and holiness, and the Pharisee came to believe that this righteousness and holiness was his—of himself and not of God.

Luke Timothy Johnson, an outstanding theologian, writes, “What comes from another can so blithely be turned into self-accomplishment… The [Pharisee] is all convoluted comparison and contrast; he can receive no gift because he cannot stop counting his possessions. His prayer is one of peripheral vision. Worse, he assumes God’s role of judge: not only does he enumerate his own claims to being just, but he reminds God of the deficiency of the tax-agent, in case God hadn’t noticed.” (Sacra Pagina: The Gospel of Luke, p.274)

A gift does become a person’s possession, but regardless, it remains a gift. Take a child playing with their toys. Another child comes along and picks one of them up. What does the first child shout out? “Mine!” Yes. That is a true statement. It is theirs, but in the case of a child, it was a gift from a parent or someone else. The child had no means to gain the gift on their own. God gave the Pharisee the gift of righteousness and holiness, and the Pharisee cried out, “Mine!” In doing so, he created a distorted image of his spiritual self, but God would not be fooled. God saw the true person and was not pleased with what He saw.

We can look in the spiritual mirror and think we’re doing pretty good. In the words of Stuart Smalley, we declare, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me,” when we should instead be standing with our heads bowed in prayer, repeating the words of the tax collector, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” I’m not saying you’re all a bunch of heathen destined for thousands of years in purgatory, but we must step away from the mirror and look within instead of looking out. How do we do this?

Most weeks, we use the Confession of Sin found on page 360 of the Book of Common Prayer. It begins, “Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone.” When we use Form VI of the Prayers of the People, we use the confession on page 393: “Have mercy upon us, most merciful Father; in your compassion, forgive us our sins, known and unknown, things done and left undone.” These are considered general confessions. A general recognition that we have sinned, but there are times when we need to make a particular confession, that is, for example, not just saying we have sinned in things left undone, but spending time identifying those times when we chose not to act or speak when we should have. This is what is known as an examination of conscience. It is a very deliberate time when you look within, not to beat yourself up for what you see as shortcomings or failings, but to identify those areas of your life where you can improve so that you can make a particular confession, not just one in general; and then, through the amendment of life, seek to make the necessary changes of character. In doing so, we will again recognize the holiness and righteousness we have in our lives as a gift from God, and the image that is revealed is the image of the One who created us: the image of God.

Let us pray:
Almighty God, Eternal Father,
from the fullness of our souls, we adore You.
We are deeply grateful that You have made us
in Your image and likeness
and that You ever hold us in Your loving embrace.
Direct our lives so that we may love You with all our hearts,
with all our souls, and with our whole minds,
so that we may love all Your children as we love ourselves.
Amen.

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