Leo the Great.
10 November.
The errors of this age are old. The gospel of Christ continues to be offensive. In the sermon yesterday we were meditating on Psalm 25 (I am using the old Geneva translation) where the text included.
Turne thy face vnto mee, and haue mercie vpon me: for I am desolate and poore. The sorowes of mine heart are enlarged: drawe me out of my troubles. Looke vpon mine affliction and my trauel, and forgiue all my sinnes.
What is clear in the Biblical text is that we flawed. The Psalmist pled that our sins would be forgiven. The idea of sin is currently deeply offensive. We are being told, over and over, that we can perfect ourselves, and become our own myth. Outside the Christian faith this is often seen as a form of self development that develops spiritual power, and this perfection can either advance you through a cycle of death or rebirth, or become directly a God.
We are not God. Although we are not merely material and can be aligned and part of the transcendent, we are part of this creation. Which remains, though flawed, Good. God continues to be good. To despise the material world in which we live is not of Christ: to ignore the incarnation of Christ is an error. Pope Leo confronted both of these errors, and so do we.
Pope Leo was deeply dedicated to his service as pope. He saw himself as privileged to sit in the Chair of St Peter, as the servant of the servants of God. He worked diligently as “Peter’s successor.” Over time, Leo became known as one of the best administrative popes of the ancient Church. But, he was so much more. During his reign, he tirelessly fought to preserve the unity of the Church and its faith; and to ensure the safety of his people against invasions from armies which sought to destroy the Church and the Christian influence on culture which she brought to bear.
Pope Leo I focused his pontificate on four main areas. He continuously worked to oppose and root out numerous heresies which were threatening the Western Church. Among them were Pelagianism, which involved denying Original Sin and failing to understand the necessity of God’s grace for salvation. At the foundation of the Pelagian error was the mistaken notion that we can perfect ourselves without God’s grace and assistance. The other major heresy threatening the Church was Manichaeism.
This heresy denied the goodness of the human body, creation, and even matter itself. It failed to understand the full implications of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. In fact, it denigrated the human body. In short, it viewed everything material as evil. That denies the very teaching of the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. It also rejects the very heart of the Gospel message. Pope Leo I was a great defender of the orthodox teaching of the Catholic Christian Church and protected the full deposit of faith. The whole Church is still indebted to him for this.
This morning I posted the same text as a note. But it applies here: the gospel has to be truth or it cannot save. If it is a myth, it has no power to reconcile us with God. Myths are nice explanations, fairy tales, comforting maps that may be completely in error. But this is not what the Apostles taught.
2 Peter 1:16-21
Revised Geneva Translation
16 For we did not follow cunningly-devised fables when we opened to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. But we saw His majesty with our own eyes.
17 For He received honor and glory from God the Father when there came such a voice to Him from that excellent Glory: “This is my beloved Son, in Whom I am well-pleased.”
18 And this voice we heard when it came from Heaven, being with Him on the Holy Mount.
19 We also have the enduring Word of the Prophets—to which you do well to pay attention, as to a light that shines in a dark place—until the Day dawns and the Day Star arise in your hearts.
20 So that you first know this: that no Prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation.
21 For the Prophecy did not come by the will of man. But holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
I did not say you have to like truth. Truth does not care if you like it or not. The reality is that all of us have erred, we all have limitations, and the best we can do is our duty. There is no superman, there is but man. We are all flawed, we all have done what we ought not to have done, and not done what we ought to have done.
We also know that the word of God is not merely the work of man, but driven by the spirit of God. On the word of God we can rely, not because it is God, to be worshiped, but because it describes God in a manner we can and should spend a lifetime studying and meditating upon.
What we have to continually do is question the current practices of our lives, our communities and our congregation in the light of scripture. In general, the novel ideas are not novel, but old errors, and the way that it has always been done (and is often called not in keeping with the spirit of the age) is closer to the truth. One of the aims here is to remind us all that the spirit of this age is not in keeping with the truth. Our time is not a time of progress and a heaven on earth, but the inversion of that. Leo is a model, not perfect, but an example, of how the leaders of the church should behave.
I confess that there are very few Leos in this world. But God is sovereign, and we pray that we will again have leaders who will bring the truth, refer to beauty, and lead our nations back to the Creator and Saviour of this world.