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Second Sunday after the Epiphany
St. Stephen’s Anglican Church
The Rev. Jeffrey O. Cerar, January 19, 2014


Life Is Sacred


Text: John 1:29-41

Today has been designated by the Christian Church as “Sanctity of Life Sunday.” Life is sacred, because all human beings were created by God in His image. In our time, this issue is of great importance. We live amidst a culture of death.

The issue of the sanctity of life is so important to the Anglican Church in North America that it is written right into our canons. Title 2, Canon 8 Section 3 says:

The unjustified taking of life is sinful. Therefore, all members and clergy are called to promote and respect the sanctity of every human life from conception to natural death.

This coming Wednesday is the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. This groundbreaking decision by the highest court in our land opened the floodgates of permissive legislation on the issue of abortion. Our Bishop, John Guernsey, has urged all of us to attend the annual “March for Life” at the Supreme Court on Wednesday. Last year one-third of the bishops in ACNA attended, as well as a large crowd of Anglicans and other Christians. What is the point of our march? It is not principally a political statement. It is a moral statement, calling our courts and our lawmakers to bring God and His divinely imposed moral standards back into our decision making. As John Piper has said, the issue of “taking the life of the unborn... is not just a social issue, or a justice issue, or a woman’s issue, or a children’s issue, or a health issue. It is... more important than all those. It is a God issue. And therefore a big issue.”

Today, the courts have become like the halls of academia, where you cannot make any headway with arguments based upon God, God’s will, or God’s moral standards. You have to show some public health concern.

Early on in the debate over abortion, the sides for and against broke down into what was called “pro-choice” and “pro-life.” In those days, people had what they thought was a persuasive argument that a fetus in the womb was not a real living human being. Pro-choice people have tried arguing about when a fetus becomes capable of rational thought—or capable of living outside the womb—or capable of feeling pain. But today, people don’t base their arguments on such things, because they just don’t work. Instead, the focus today is on “women’s health.” And typical of the way we think and talk these days, a whole lot is swept up into “women’s health.” It really means no more than a woman’s right to decide without government interference whether she wants to carry her baby to term or not. “Pro-life” is still “Pro-life,” because what motivates our traditional Christian moral stance is that God created every one of us in His image. And as we heard from the Prophet Isaiah this morning, God knows us in our mothers’ womb before we are even born. (Isaiah 49:1) Our lives are precious to God. Life is sacred.

There was an event in 1999 that had a great impact on how people perceived the fetus in the womb. That year a surgeon operated on an unborn child named Samuel Armas. He had spina bifida, and 21 weeks after conception, the doctor intervened to address his condition. He removed the uterus through an incision in her mother’s abdomen to perform the surgery. When he was done, the doctor was replacing the baby in the uterus when his little hand reached through the incision and grabbed the doctor’s finger. A photographer named Michael Clancy captured the moment on film. His dramatic photograph of the tiny hand grasping the surgeon’s finger was seen around the world. Many people were profoundly affected by that image. The photographer himself said that, at the instant he snapped that photo, he went from being pro-choice to pro-life.

Nevertheless, there is a strong push in our culture to uphold and expand people’s rights for abortion on demand. And because the moral fiber of our culture is in the balance, we go to marches, and we preach and we try to change people’s hearts.

Most of the moral issues that are dividing our country have to do with people’s rights to do what they want. And because arguments based on God and His will and His moral standards are not admissible in the public debate, those of us who make those arguments are considered bigots. Our opponents remind us that Jesus told us to love one another. At least they got that right. But they confront us with this question: Is it loving to tell people they are sinners if they do things they want to do? That laissez faire concept of love has got the soul of this nation in its grip. For if people’s individual rights to do anything they choose is the guiding moral principle, then our will is being lifted above God’s will. And any nation that does not surrender to God’s will is in deep trouble.

Our culture has had a grave impact on the thinking and decision making of Christians. Many faithful, believing Christians have had abortions. In fact, in 2012, 32% of all unplanned pregnancies among evangelical Christians ended in abortion. From many years of experience, we know what devastating consequences that brings about.

And what does the church have to say to them? Does it say, “Oh, don’t worry. A woman has a right to decide what she does with her body?” Well, thank you. But it still hurts her to think what that child might have been. It still nags at her soul day after day. What the enemy sells as freedom is in reality bondage.

No, what the Church has to say to those parents of abortion, and to everyone whose life has been damaged by sin is this – we heard it from the mouth of John the Baptist this morning in John’s Gospel:

Behold the Lamb of God. Behold Him who takes away the sins of the world. [John 1:29]

My brothers and sisters, this is the message of the Gospel.

And we, the Church, are the embodiment of Christ’s love to the world. He has told us to love one another as He loves us. So

Yes, that’s right, a community of sinners. The Bible is very clear on that. There is no one who is without sin. Not a single person. But there are many, many, whose sins have been forgiven by the one who died on the cross for us to set us free from our sins.

It is almost a certainty that there are people here today who have had an abortion. And it is almost a certainty that you are suffering as a result, and have suffered for many years. Please, please, accept that love and that forgiveness and that healing from the Lamb of God. I recently saw an interview of a young woman named Fallon Phillips, who had had two abortions. She was the member of a church that had taken a strong moral stand against abortion. Her biggest fear was that the Christians in her church would condemn and reject her if they knew her secret. But she was listening to a preacher talk about the love of Christ, and she said that love engulfed her and overwhelmed her. And she was freed to tell her secret. She said that the way she was received by the church was the complete opposite of what she had expected. And not only did she survive, but she said, “After that day, I was never the same. He became everything to me. Jesus Christ became everything to me.” (www.pastorsforlife.com)

We who know and love the Lord Jesus do not have to deny what His word says in order to feel loved. We don’t need to twist around what we know to be God’s will in order to feel good about ourselves.

So on this “Sanctity of Life Sunday,” let us celebrate that God created human beings in His image. Let us celebrate that life is sacred. Let us celebrate that, even though every one of us is a sinner, Jesus came to forgive our sins, and He will do that for us because nothing can separate us from His love.

You may not be able to go to Washington, D.C. on Wednesday to march for life. But there is a lot you can be doing.

And, if you have had an abortion yourself and are still struggling with the pain and the guilt and secrecy of it, trust the love of Jesus that lives here in our midst. Go up to our prayer ministers after worship and ask them to pray with you and for you. Or come and see me. I would be blessed to minister to you. This is an open invitation to everyone who carries a burden or harbors a secret that won’t let go of you. Please come and let me pray with you and share Christ’s love with you.

All life is sacred, whether born or unborn, male or female, mother or father. It is sacred to God, and therefore He does not want it to end. And so He sent His only Son into the world so that all who believe in Him may not perish but have everlasting life. Eternal life. Life is sacred. And that is why God’s forgiveness is so freely available to every person who ever lived, for He knit all of us together in our mothers’ womb, and we are all sinners in need of God’s love.

Behold the Lamb of God. Behold Him who takes away the sins of the world. Turn your eyes upon Him. Look full in His wonderful face. And in His grace, may each of us be healed as Fallon Phillips was, who said, “My life was never the same again. He became everything to me. Jesus Christ became everything to me.”

© Jeffrey O. Cerar, 2014

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