Bishop Mark Lawrence–Mice in the Palace ”” Sin in the Heart

The thing we need to remem­ber as we try to get at this prob­lem of sin is that it is very hard to get at it at all. There is so much that pro­tects it from our inner eyes. The axiom of the Reform­ers is apro­pos here: “What the heart desires, the will chooses, and the mind jus­ti­fies.” When we try to get at the motives of the heart, the mind and will are for­ever get­ting in the way jus­ti­fy­ing our­selves. These are like lay­ers of gar­ments swirling around the heart of our sin. But in Christ we can pray that through the work of the Holy Spirit, who con­victs our hearts of sin; the liturgy’s use of Psalm 51 and the Litany of Penitence’s bru­tal nam­ing of sins; and with the Scripture’s con­stant entreat­ing us to turn to God’s mercy and for­give­ness; these will rend or tear through the lay­ers and lay­ers of these gar­ments even­tu­ally leav­ing the sin­ful heart revealed that we might by grace turn and look to Jesus Christ””to his cross and death. St. Paul’s let­ter assigned for today reminds us of this. “For our sake he [God] made him [Christ] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the right­eous­ness of God.” (2 Cor 5:21) He reminds us that the heart of our need is noth­ing less than the Cross; God’s for­giv­ing love, his rec­on­cil­ing work and grace. Noth­ing else will do. For once the sin in the heart is revealed and his for­give­ness received, the trans­form­ing work of God’s Spirit begins to tune our lives. And from here, through Divine-human coop­er­a­tion, even the dis­ci­plines of the Spir­i­tual life (as enu­mer­ated in the Ash Wednes­day liturgy, see BCP, p. 264) may be of ser­vice. But we must get the order cor­rect. Begin with the Lenten dis­ci­plines and we will go awry every time””going from infes­ta­tion of mice to cats to dogs to lions to ele­phants and back to mice again. Begin and remain in a grace-filled repen­tance that yields a torn and con­trite heart and God’s grace shall abound. Then we may seek God’s guid­ance about self-denials and devo­tion­als and what­ever else we find to mark our mor­tal nature in grace. Yet we dare not side step the word of apos­tolic procla­ma­tion””“We implore you on behalf of Christ, be rec­on­ciled to God.” (2 Corinthi­ans 5:20)

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