Sermon by the rev'd. John C. Bauerschmidt

Lent 3, Year B
March 19, 2006
Christ Church, Covington

“For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate’” (Rom. 7:15).

There’s a short story by Raymond Carver, “A Serious Talk”, which chilled my soul a few months ago when I first read it. Burt arrives on the day after Christmas at the home of his estranged wife Vera. It’s a typical American suburban scene: house, driveway, patio. As Burt drives up, he sees an upturned pie lying in the drive. Very strange. We learn that the pie was dropped the day before, when Burt and Vera and their children gathered to exchange presents. Burt doesn’t live here anymore, and on Christmas Day he knows that he has to leave by six o’clock because Vera’s friend and his children are coming over for dinner. After presents have been opened, Burt’s family scatters to prepare dinner, and he’s left alone in front of the fireplace. So of course, he stuffs a box of artificial logs in the fireplace, watches them ignite, and then leaves, taking the six pies on the sideboard with him, “one for every ten times [Vera] had ever betrayed him” (“A Serious Talk”).

Which brings us back to the driveway and the dropped pie and the following morning where the story begins, when the repentant Burt comes back. The good news is that the house hasn’t burned down; and of course Burt wants to apologize and talk. Vera’s had enough, though you have the sense that this scene has been played out before. Burt fixes himself a drink, and then another. The phone rings several times, with a voice asking for “Charlie”. Burt keeps hanging up, but finally Vera manages to get on the phone. And of course, Burt takes the carving knife from the Christmas turkey and cuts the cord to the phone. “He left through the patio door. He was not certain, but he thought he had proved something… The thing was, they had to have a serious talk soon” (“A Serious Talk”).

It’s a menacing story, relentless in its depiction of Burt’s compulsion. He just wants to be happy, to be with his family, but he also wants to be right, so his own behavior drives them further and further away. He’s powerless to change; guilty, angry, and accusatory, all at the same time. There’s no repentance, no forgiveness, and no transformation for Burt.

The point is not that the fictional Burt is particularly wicked, but he does illustrate something that the Apostle Paul talks about in our second reading. “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate’”. If we ask ourselves what’s wrong with the human race, we might stumble over this phenomenon first of all. We can’t seem to get it right, no matter how hard we try. We do the wrong things, over and over again, things we end up regretting, in the grips of what seems like a powerful compulsion. We don’t do the thing we want, but we do exactly the thing we hate.

Thank God, then, we don’t live in the world of Raymond Carver’s short stories. Don’t get me wrong: Carver has diagnosed precisely our powerlessness, our compulsiveness, our addiction to being right and relying on our own power. Lent is a good time for us to listen to the diagnosis. But our world contains something else (if we have the eyes of faith): grace, God’s power and presence in our lives.

Through grace, we rely on God, and give up relying on ourselves. We get grace through relationship with God, through reflection on who we are, through prayer, through the sacraments of the Church. We discover that God is the giver of the gift that makes real life possible. He loves us in spite of ourselves. In this relationship we discover that it is Christ who lives in us; that in him we can do all things. From grace comes repentance, forgiveness, and transformation. We’re empowered through the Holy Spirit who lives in us. This, the Church confidently proclaims, is the real end of the story, if we have the imagination to let God write out the finish in our lives.

John Bauerschmidt is Rector of Christ Church, Covington.

Return to Recent Sermons