Sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 17 (August 30, 2026)
Transcript
This transcript was generated by YouTube AI and further edited for readability.
May only truth be spoken here and only truth be heard. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Please be seated.
About three years ago, I had the gift of being able to go on an 8-day silent retreat at a Jesuit retreat center on the Atlantic Ocean, which is like just about this close to heaven.
And at this retreat center, you follow the Jesuits in engaging the spirituality and the prayers of St. Ignatius of Loyola, right? Great Counter-Reformation leader. And the practice of Ignatian spirituality essentially boils down to using your full humanity, and in particular the gifts of the imagination, right? This incredible creative human imagination, to immerse yourself and enter into the stories of Scripture and to have them come alive for you in your heart, in your mind, in your spirit, and to see how God takes your hand in the midst of the story and what God wants to show you.
And I had some remarkable experiences. But that is not what I want to talk about.
I had experiences where I was seeing the face of Jesus and he was seeing my face. And what I want to talk about is that in every one of those experiences, as they were happening, there was a little voice inside my head.
And here is what that voice would say to me.
The first one was, "Oh, this is embarrassing. Do you think this is for real? Oh my goodness. Look at you. Pity, another voice."
Same voice. Another thing that it said is, "Oh, honey, this is all well and good when you're sitting there contemplating your navel for eight days, but wait till you get back to the real world. You think you're going to be having visions of Jesus all over the place?"
So, do you get the idea?
I told my spiritual director for the retreat about it.
She said, "Meredith, that is very interesting." She said, "Now, I have a question for you. Do you think that voice is the voice of God?"
And I said, "Well, sister, no. I suppose not."
She looked at me, and then she said, "I had to think more about because it really felt like me."
But then I looked in my heart and I said, "No." You know, if someone else was telling me about an experience like this, I would never say to them, "Oh, honey, that's embarrassing." Or, "That's all very well and good, but good luck with that in the real world," right? I wouldn't say that. So, no, not my voice.
She said to me, "Meredith, who do you suppose is talking?"
And that is when I began to take Satan seriously, a little bit uncomfortable for an ex-Evangelical. You could put me in the sort of ex-Evangelical category. You could put me in the post-modern category. And even now, as I take Satan seriously, you know, I worry. I think, oh, are they going to think that I'm talking about, like, a guy with a pitchfork?
But I have been poked and prodded in my life by inner voices that through this retreat I learned are not the voice of God and are not the true voice of my heart.
And I have had to begin to take seriously the idea that there may be other forces at work in my mind and in my heart that are evil, that exist, as our baptismal service says, to seek only to corrupt and destroy the creatures of God.
And that is how I learned to see that voice.
Because if the voice in my head is seeking to destroy the gifts that God has given me, or if there are any voices in your head that have or do seek to corrupt and destroy the gifts that God has given you—gifts of consolation and contemplation, gifts of hope and perseverance, gifts of talent, of things that you are called to do—and there's little voices saying, "Who do you think you are? Or do you really believe that stuff?"
There's a line in the New Testament that says, "Beloved, believe not every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they are from God."
When we ask ourselves these questions, is that God? Is that the voice of God? And we know in our hearts it's not.
And is that my true voice? And we know in our heart that it's not.
Then Jesus showed us what to do. Right? This passage from the Gospels, which is mighty uncomfortable.
"Get behind me, Satan. You are a stumbling block to me."
Get behind me. You're in the way of what God is calling me to do.
The truth is that God has given us gifts of discernment. As we grow in Christ, we learn more and more to hold every voice up to the light of the love of God.
You might reread this passage from Romans today, which shows you what the truth is: following the voice of God.
"Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."
We pray to God, "Increase in us true religion."
That is the religion that reveals in our hearts the true voice of God and helps us to distinguish the voice of the accuser, the denier.
Jesus says, "Get behind me, Satan." My spiritual director at that retreat told me to say, "Get out of here."
Just matter of fact, I don't need your input. Thanks very much. No thanks.
And to move forward into whatever God is calling me to do.
I think that the practice of the discernment and the testing of spirits to see whether they come from God, it begins with our internal work with discovering the voices within, right?
And figuring out which ones are worth listening to and which ones can go on, get in line, get behind us.
There are many voices coming from outside too, are there not? In your relationships, from folks who call themselves religious leaders, from leaders in government?
The same test applies.
Does this seem like it could be said truly in the name of God?
Or has the speaker of this statement set their mind much more on human things than on divine, true, and loving things?
We learn to discern that too and to set aside teachings, ideas, policies that are not truly of God, that don't measure up to this standard in Romans: contributing to the needs of the saints, extending hospitality to strangers, and maybe most importantly, blessing those who persecute you. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
In the week ahead, you might want to take this up as a practice.
It's best done with a little bit of stillness, but allow yourself to notice, of the many, right? For most of us, it's a cacophony of inner voices that are telling us what to do and how to do it, and what to think and who to think it about, especially about ourselves.
So, to pay attention to that cacophony of inner voices and to think of that line: to test the spirits to see whether they are from God.
Is this the voice of God?
Is this the true voice that God has given me?
If not, get behind me. I don't need you in my way today.
And move forward in love and in faith, overcoming evil within and without, with good and love.
And the true voice of God.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.