Trinity Four Sunday

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“In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can flesh do to me? … In God, whose word I praise, in the Lord, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me?” (Psalm 56.1, 10-11 – ESV). 

When asked about the attempt by the 21^st-century culture wars to cancel certain personages of repute in history, a renown English historian said: “All intelligent people are able to contextualize greatness, [especially when a great man or woman changes history positively. Unfortunately, in this current age, those great men and women are being denigrated without context for ideological purposes]. In ancient Greece there was a law in the city states against denigrating your gods and heroes. Although of course I am not in favor of a law about it, I think that what they got right was that if you do denigrate your heroes, for a society, in that way, madness lies.”¹ With that definition, we can conclusively state that our current culture, is mad. We need look no further than the evidence of this modern denigratory, cancelling force, which can be seen in the toppling of our great men and women’s names, virtues, and statues at key historical sites, memorials, schools, and universities from sea to shining sea. — Could it be true, that our society, and the societies of other free nations around the world, have chosen that way in which madness lies, versus virtuous truth and honor unveiled through our classical and historical heroes and leaders?  

If they have, it is nothing new. As we know, a great effort was made in the first century to topple and cancel JESUS, because He claimed to be the prophesied Jewish Christ, or Anointed One. Two thousand years ago on a hill outside the gates of Jerusalem, at a place called Golgotha, the place of skulls, a monumental effort was made by the leaders of two nation states to pull down our LORD. The way that they chose was also madness, and we know and confess that they were unsuccessful. — Collectively, the ‘gates of hell’ have not prevailed against JESUS and His followers. And a footnote for history – those gates shall never prevail. — Yet, some individual living stones, in the fabric of the Church’s glorious majesty, sadly, have allowed themselves to be pulled down, though their LORD remains on High. You see, we Christians are under attack by the world, the flesh, and the devil, and are daily asked to compromise our foundations – our faith – our hope – our LORD – and to walk in the way in which madness, lies. And if we do, we can likewise be toppled – cast down – defeated. — But we are to take heart, brothers and sisters of St. Mark the Evangelist, though we daily face cancellation, our LORD JESUS Christ has said, “In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome/subdued the world!” (St. John 16.33).  

Today’s scope of lessons from the Old Testament, the Psalms, and the New Testament, proclaim forth a clarion call to the living stones of the Church – Christ’s followers – the sons and daughters of GOD – to guard themselves from being pulled down, denigrated and cancelled by the world and its madness. Have you not heard St. Peter’s encouragement from his first epistle? There he says: “Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the Word [of GOD], that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the LORD is gracious. Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through JESUS Christ” (1 Peter 2.1-5). — But, for those rejecting the Holy Scripture’s counsel, the LORD hath said: “How long will ye give wrong judgment and accept the persons of the ungodly? They know not, neither do they understand, but walk on in darkness/madness; for all of the foundations of the land are out of course” (Psalm 82.2 & 5).    

Good people of St. Mark’s, how then do we maintain a sturdy and firm foundation that modern, progressive humanism will never topple, and which is a bulwark against madness? — First, JESUS makes it plain that to proceed in this life without knowledge and understanding is to be like a person without sight. — And being without sight, to follow another person without sight or knowledge, who has canceled all historical reason and truth, is to couple ourselves to a fool, whose destiny is the bottom of an ideological, philosophical and or theological gutter. — JESUS asks, “Can the blind lead the blind? Shall they both not fall into a ditch?” (St. Luke 6.39). To avoid such a destiny, we are encouraged, then, to couple ourselves to a true Hero, a Master – One who has the words of Life – One who has true Sight.  

For no one is above his Master, JESUS says, but if he is to become perfect or fully trained, then the student, the disciple, must become like his Master. Thus, to be a master of the ethics, virtues, laws, and statutes of the Triune GOD of the Bible, what signposts do JESUS, and the Holy Scriptures, point us toward, that we might remain on sure footing – on strong foundations of truth, and not on sinking sand?  

Since Christian discipleship aims at bringing Christian students to Christ’s likeness, we must always, look to Him, to JESUS for guidance. — JESUS begins with perfection, and His admonition is for mercy. He says: “Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful” (St. Luke 6.36). Of course, when we hear such a command by our LORD, we immediately stop in our tracks and say: ‘What – merciful like the Father? Who then can be saved?’ — Thus, JESUS qualifies His statement by saying: “Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you” (St. Luke 6.37-38). — To be merciful as GOD is merciful, we are to condescend our wills to the status of equality of those who need our mercy. We are to judge and condemn them not for their plight or how they arrived there. If that person is low and poor of spirit, especially if it is because of something they have done to us, then we are to forgive them, give them our hand, and raise them back up again, raining down the Father’s mercy upon them as He has rained it upon us. Then we will be lifted up to the mighty foundations of godliness, being merciful as our Father in Heaven in merciful. The exact thing blind teachers are seeking to cancel.  

Proverbs 19.17 says, ‘He who has pity upon the low, the weak, the needy, and the poor, joins himself to the LORD, and [the LORD] will pay back what is given – pressed down, shaken together, and running over.’ — “[Do likewise, JESUS says,] … and you will be sons and daughters of your Father in Heaven” (St. Matthew 5.45). 

If these words of JESUS are not compelling enough for us to consider the measure of mercy we might measure out, perfectly, JESUS would have us consider another parable to persuade us unto His perfect training. The LORD says: “And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me remove the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the plank that is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck that is in your brother’s eye” (St. Luke 6.41-42).  

Remember brothers and sisters how we began this conversation. It began by noting the revisionism that is going on in the cultures around us – that there are popular ideologies that are trying to refute, through a persuasive retelling of history, Christ’s teachings, and thereby calling what is good, evil, and what is evil, good. These ‘cancelationists’ accentuate their message and movements with sporadic but strategic, threatening and sometimes kinetic physical force. They are in essence building bulwarks and barricades that seek to protect the logs of untruth in their own eyes, viz., their own philosophies and ideas. And they encourage their disciples to vociferously criticize GOD’s people that are specked with imperfections.  

The point is this. The powerful people in each society, if they are not making the concerted effort to move their people to godliness and godly character, are exerting power over the people to make them more like themselves – blinded with untruth. The ‘cancelationists’ are trying, or have already excised from the public record, much of what is good, true, and beautiful about the Judeo-Christian memory in history. They are not seeking to follow the foundational teachings of human perfection that Christ JESUS has preached, and thus they seek to promote untruths and false realities, breeding only shadows of perfect human nature – flattened, merciless, judgmental, skeptical, selfish, fearful, and loveless. 

In today’s Gospel, JESUS takes direct aim at these teachers and warns His disciples against them. For they, (the Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes), were hungry for the power to cancel any Jew that did not conform into their image. And in so doing, they became less and less ‘the light to the nations’ that GOD had called them to be, and more and more ethnic and religious elitists. Their campaign, over hundreds of years, was expunging the historical Hebrew record of the Abrahamic memory of GOD’s faith and hope of the past, forcing onto the people, a new and untruthful image of GOD, which was radically different than what was given them through the oracles of the prophets and patriarchs. With these shepherds in the lead, Israel was becoming only darkness and blindness to the nations, and more importantly, blindness within themselves. — “They were hunting for specks in each other’s eyes with magnifying glasses but could not see that there was a plank—a single massive root of disobedience against what GOD intended— in their own eye”². Knowingly or unknowingly, they were seeking to cancel GOD and the intent of the spirit of His Law, which was mercy and truth. — With this, JESUS took issue, just as He is taking issue with the elitists of our day, compelling His Church, now, to push back on these false teachers by living and speaking His mercy and truth, loudly, by not taking on their blinding logs.  

St. Mark’s notice the flow of JESUS’ arguments from today’s short excerpt from the Sermon on the Plain, found in St. Luke 6 – they reveal the shortcomings and untruths of many of today’s prophets of the ‘cancellation culture’. “The sequence begins with the riddle about the blind leading the blind. Beware, JESUS is saying, of other teachings which look as though they’re offering guidance but will in fact put you all in the ditch. The next saying seems to be a comment on this point: students can’t advance beyond their teachers. There’s no point studying with the Pharisees; all you will be at the end of the day is another Pharisee. JESUS is challenging his hearers to break out of the molds they are being offered, and to come to the startling new way He is pioneering – [the Way of the Everlasting Gospel of love of GOD and neighbor]. The next riddle, about the speck of dust in the other person’s eye and the plank in one’s own is also a warning against a certain type of teaching. As with the blind in the previous saying, the question is: can you see clearly enough to lead, let alone criticize, someone else? What people criticize in others is frequently, though not always, what they are subconsciously aware of (or afraid of) in themselves. The speck and the plank are a classic case of what psychologists call, ‘projection’.”³  

An American philosopher once said, “Those who ignore history, are bound to repeat it.”⁴ Has modern man lost the ability to contextualize virtue or are there just that many people with beams in their eyes, that they would rather denigrate and expunge the historical record of our heroes, because they have chosen the way in which madness lies? — Brothers and sisters of St. Mark’s the truth is this. We are Christians, and we stand for what is good, true, and beautiful. It is a wonder to us that the people of the world, who we want to like us, because we like them, revile us. — JESUS said: “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil” (St. John 3.19). Some have chosen the way of madness over peace, and they revile the Light and the people of the Light. So, the LORD JESUS comforts and encourages us when He says earlier in St. Luke 6: “Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you, and revile you and cast out your name as evil for the Son of Man’s sake. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy! For indeed, your reward is great in Heaven, for in like manner their fathers did to the prophets” (St. Luke 6.22-23). 

Dear Church, JESUS has called us out of the way of madness, and we are not to cancel others who seek to cancel us. We are not above our Master, and for this, we are to be perfectly trained by Him, so we will not fall into the sewage heap of cancellation history. If we are faithful to Him, as He is to us, we will rule and reign with Him, the Risen LORD, sitting with Him upon His Throne. (cf. Rev. 32) Let us, therefore, be the people of GOD that walk with our eyes wide open, removing the beam from our own eyes, so that we might, with mercy and righteousness, graciously help our brothers with the specks in theirs. For the measure that we use, will be measured back to us by our LORD at the Last Day. (cf. Lk. 6.38) Therefore, St. Mark’s, hear this as a first principle in your Christian-walk, life, and discipline: “Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful” (St. Luke 6.26). Amen. 

1 Murray, Douglas. “Uncancelled History”. The Churchill Project: Hillsdale College. Accessed 7 July 2025. https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/murray-uncancelled-history/  

2 Wright, Rt. Rev’d N.T., Luke for Everyone, ((London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2015), 77. 

3 Wright, 76.   

4 Santayana, George, Life of Reason, Reason in Common Sense, 1905.