For the very beginning of [wisdom] is the desire of her discipline; and the care of discipline is love. And love is the keeping of her laws; and the giving heed unto her laws is the assurance of incorruption. And incorruption maketh us near to God. (Wisdom vi. 17-20) The Book of Wisdom is traditionally ascribed to Solomon, son of David, and King of Israel. He lived some nine hundred years before the birth of Jesus Christ, and he is known for his wisdom. The First Book of the Kings tells us that he prayed for wisdom, so that he might have an understanding heart to judge [his] people…[to] discern between good and evil. (1 Kings 9) Solomon was granted his wish and became so full of God’s Wisdom that the rulers of the world came to sit at his feet in order to learn. Solomon was not wise in his own conceits; rather he knew that true Wisdom is a gift from God. And he reminds us also that without God’s Wisdom we cannot hope to be saved. So, he exhorts his readers and listeners to pursue the instruction and discipline of Holy Wisdom. It is given to man to instruct him in the ways that lead to eternal life. Instruction is understood as the work of a loving God. When a man allows himself to be instructed in Wisdom’s ways, he realizes that he is being led forward into the reality of incorruption, and so he begins to love Wisdom as a Divine Attribute and virtue which is generated in the human heart. God’s gives his Wisdom to us to reveal His love for us and our own desire for Wisdom increases. Now you might be saying to yourselves, well this all sounds all well and good, but what does it have to do with my life? The answer is everything because we were made to know, to understand, and to love. For this Man was made and not merely to know and understand the surrounding creation, nor to love our fellow men. All of that is important enough. But the point is that we were made for knowledge, love, and discipline. Solomon knew all of this, and this is why he goes to all the trouble of explaining it to us! Indeed, we were made not only to know but to love God because He is the source, origin, and cause of all knowledge and love. And His knowledge and love are given to us that we might find the discipline that leads to incorruption and brings us near to God. (Wisdom vi. 20) So, we wonder, but how do I find this knowledge and love? Well, if you are an inquisitive and conscientious student of the natural world, you can find a lot of God’s knowledge and love at work there. In nature, you will find substances, qualities, quantities, relation, place, time, position, having, acting, and being acted upon. The principles of order and arrangement reveal truth, beauty, and even goodness that you neither create nor control. If you take the time to be quiet and still enough, you will find God’s mind and heart at work. And what you should come away with is a deep sense of awe and wonder at the marvels of the created universe. Such an endeavor starts a man on the journey after Wisdom. The Wisdom that is found is clearly Divine. No man’s reason has made the vast universe that surrounds him or painted it with beauty and goodness. No man’s reason has combined minute particulars into one harmonious and majestic whole. Nature itself, if we would only contemplate it, leads our minds to the fount and wellspring of God’s Divine Wisdom. And yet there is more. While we are contemplating nature and discovering the principles of truth, beauty, and goodness in it, we might wonder next how we do it. We do it through the operation and activity of the soul. The 17th century Anglican Bishop William Beveridge tells us that we ought to marvel at this fact also. He says that he comes to know that he has a soul because he can reason and reflect. (W. Beveridge: Thoughts on Religion, 1) Other creatures have souls but don’t know it. They act and know it not; it being not possible for them to look within themselves, or to reflect upon their own existence and actions. But this is not so with me, the good Bishop says. I not only know that I have a soul, but that I have such a soul which can consider and deliberate on every particular action that issues from it. Nay, I can now consider that I am considering my own actions and can reflect upon [my own] reflecting. (Ibid, 2) The same soul with which the Bishop reflects upon his own reflecting, then moves out of itself to examine and study the whole of the universe, mounting from earth to heaven, from pole to pole, and view all the courses and motions of the celestial bodies, the Sun, the Moon, the Stars; and then the next moment returning to myself again, I can consider where I have been, what glorious objects have been presented to my view, and wonder at the nimbleness and activity of my soul. (Ibid, 2,3) The good Bishop reminds us that we can move out of ourselves to consider the whole of the universe with our souls, and then return into our souls, and still reflect upon and study all that we have seen and heard, though not present to it through our remembering and recollection. What a marvel! Have you ever considered it? And more than all this, the same soul can move the body and all its parts, and even understand, consider, argue, and conclude; to will and nil; hope and despair, desire and abhor, joy and grieve; love and hate; to be angry now, love and appease.(Ibid, 3) What a miracle is this man that each of us is! And what does all of this mean if not that we are made to know and to love and to discover finally that God’s Wisdom is the source and cause of it all? And yet there is this difficulty. Bishop Beveridge reminds us that we are not merely souls or spirits like angels but are souls who inhabit bodies. And our bodies always tend towards corruption, disintegration, and death. Our souls and spirits are spiritual and incorruptible. But they are joined to flesh which decays, fades, and passes away. The place of the soul’s trial and testing, in the here and now, is with the body. The way the soul and body cooperate will determine the eternal and incorruptible state of the whole human person, body and soul, in eternity. Should the soul seek God’s Wisdom, apply it to the whole person, then in the end times man will be saved. Should he refuse the rule and governance of God’s Wisdom in this life, he will be damned. This brings us back to the Wisdom of Solomon. In our opening quotation we read that the application of Wisdom to the soul and body demands our submission to instruction and education. God’s instruction and education reveal the love and care of Wisdom for every human being’s ultimate welfare and wellbeing. To submit to this Divine labor, the human soul must lovingly receive the instruction that Wisdom enjoins. Wisdom desires to direct the soul to order, tame, and discipline the body. St. Paul says in this morning’s Epistle reading that we must not be debtors…to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if [we] live after the flesh, [we] shall die. But if [we] through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, [we] shall live. (Romans viii. 12, 13) When Wisdom is applied to the body, the whole man is right with God, for he is then moved and defined by the Spiritual Truth that God intends for the body and the soul. If Wisdom is not applied, then man faces spiritual death in which both soul and body shall live alienated and separated from God forever. St. Paul says that They that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. (Ibid, 8-10) He says in another place that Christ [is] the wisdom of God and the power of God. (1 Cor. i. 24) Living by God’s Wisdom, is to live in Christ. This means to accept the loving instruction and discipline that His Spirit brings to man’s life. As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. (Romans viii. 14) Life in Christ is an invitation to become the sons and daughters of God, whereby we [can] cry, Abba, Father.(Ibid, 15) This opens us to a relationship with God whose Wisdom will enable us to love to keep [His] laws…bringing us near to incorruption…[with a] desire for [the] wisdom [which] brings us near to [His] kingdom. (Wisdom vi. 18-20) We find God’s Wisdom in nature and then in the life of Jesus Christ our Lord. In submitting humbly and adjusting our lives to Christ, we can be moved by the Divine Wisdom and reveal it to others. In this morning’s Gospel Christ tells us that by [men’s] fruits, ye shall know them. (St. Matthew vii. 20) A man’s spiritual worth are measured by the thoughts, words, and deeds that issue forth through his body from his soul. But Man must beware lest his soul does not embrace Christ’s indwelling presence. False prophets who come to us, appearing as sheep are often ravening wolves, (St. Matt. vii. 15) who desire to confound God’s Wisdom and sever us from eternal happiness. To them, the Cross is foolishness. (1 Cor. i. 18) We must be vigilant against them so that Christ, the Crucified Wounded Healer, can overcome us with His Sacrificial Love. We reach our end only if we pray that God will put away from us all hurtful things and give us those things which be profitable for us. (Collect Trinity VIII) Solomon knew that hurtful things sever us from the sacrificial life that surrenders to God’s Wisdom, as he looks forward to the Cross of Jesus Christ, which is God’s Wisdom made flesh. Christ reminds us, Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in Heaven. (Ibid, 21) So, with Bishop Beveridge, [let us] resolve…in the presence of Almighty God, that from this day forward, [we] will make it our whole business…to look after [our] happiness in Heaven, and to walk circumspectly those blessed paths, that God appointed all to walk in, that ever expect to come to Him. (Ibid, 4) Amen. ©wjsmartin Graft in our hearts the love of Thy Name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness, and keep us in the same… (Collect Trinity VII) You must have noticed that in addition to our Scriptural lessons appointed to be read each Sunday, we pray something called a Collect. A Collect is a short general prayer of a particular structure used in Christian liturgy. (Wikip…) In the tradition of Common Prayer, the Collect sums up into one prayer the theme of the day or the focus of any given Sunday’s readings. You will have noticed that our Collects are poetically worded and beautifully crafted expressions of theological truth. Yet there is always a danger in them. One might be so swept up with the form that one forgets the substance. Their melodious meter might sweep up such aesthetic appreciation that we miss the theological truth that they contain. We might liken it to the harmony of a song that stirs us with melody devoid of meaning. Countless numbers of people have enjoyed certain songs or choruses, only to realize that, on closer examination, the ideas they express are evil. We love the music, the sound, the beat, and the combination of notes, and yet, if we examine the meaning, we are appalled to find their meaning! But our Collects were formulated to do exactly the opposite. Their beautiful forms were crafted to lead a man into the truth. From there, they are meant to lift the soul into the powerful presence of God. Listen, again, to the opening words of this morning’s Collect: Lord of all power and might, who art the author and giver of all good things.... The words flow so beautifully that they are music to our ears. And yet, what are they arranged to do? They lead and guide our minds into the truth about God. God is omnipotent. He is the Creator and Giver of all good things. He is the author of primal goodness and meaning and is the giver of that supplemental goodness that yields salvation. He makes all things and because they are made by Him, they are good. He offers to redeem certain things also, namely the hearts and souls of one part of creation that has rejected His goodness and preferred their own. The goodness He desires to effect for man is the redemption of his fallen nature. Beyond the goodness that He creates, is a goodness that will conquer, subdue, and overcome man’s rejection of it. His added goodness promises to carry us out of bondage to the elements of this world (Gal. iv. 3), which, as St. Paul reminds us, He gives in response to our Fall. His added goodness is offered to us so that we might conquer evil. So, God’s power and might were present in the creation and are present to us now in redemption. His unchanging desire and intention for us is to continue to make all things good. Having claimed and confessed that His power and might alone make all things noble, right, and true, we pray that what God intends for us to receive through love or an act of the joyful will. Graft in our hearts the love of Thy name. God does not force or compel us to love Him. We must desire and long that God’s power and might might enable us to love [His] name. (Idem) Thus, we long to be infused with a love for Him that excels and surpasses all other loves – loves that tempt and distract us from the source and origin of our true and lasting joy. We yearn for that love that opens our hearts and souls to the power and might of God’s Grace. Acknowledging that this power and might alone can generate goodness in us, we see that its first effect must be love. We know that goodness for man is salvation and reconciliation with the same God. We know too that we cannot have it unless we love and will Him from the ground of our hearts. Yet, we cannot end here. We know that our love for God must never be a fly-by-night, temporary, occasional, impermanent feeling, or emotion. So, we pray, Increase in us true religion. True religion is the flower and fruit of that instinct, passion, and desire for the rule and governance of God’s goodness in our own lives. Without the Spirit of Divine Love, we shall never become accustomed or habituated to the virtues of truth, which are the only means to our salvation. William Law tells us that the Spirit of Love is not in you till it is the spirit of your life, till you live freely, willingly, and universally according to it. (The Spirit of Love) The Spirit of Love must be translated into the spirit of our lives with the increase of true religion. True religion is a reflection and imitation of God’s holiness and righteousness – of His goodness, truth, and beauty. St. Paul tells us in this morning’s Epistle that when [we] were the servants of sin, [we] were free from righteousness. (Romans vi. 20) What he means is that before we woke up and came to our spiritual senses, we were in bondage, or slavery, to the elements of this world. Because of that, we were headed for trouble, sin’s reward – spiritual death, to be bereft of God’s enduring good things for ever. But now, he says, we are being made freed from sin, [and are becoming] the servants of God. ( Ibid, 22) Our Collect for today echoes Paul’s desire and hope for his flock. Increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness…. If we are defined by true religion we must be fed and nourished with God’s goodness, [having our] fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. (Ibid, 22) Desire for the love of God in our hearts moves us to find that true religion that conforms to the pursuit of salvation. What we are praying for, then, is the love of God that leads to godly discipline. Through discipline, we find liberation from bondage to all that is unclean, unholy, and unrighteous. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Ibid, 23) If the love of God is to be ordered in us as true religion, God’s goodness must nourish our hearts in the victory over evil. At the end of our Collect, we pray that God, of his great mercy might keep us in the same. Perhaps, here, we come finally to the hardest part of the whole Collect for this Seventh Sunday after Trinity. We pray that God’s holiness and righteousness might become permanent habits in our knowing and willing. And this leads us to our Gospel for today. In it, we read of God’s ongoing response to man’s desire for Him. In Jesus Christ, we find the one who is with us and for us every step of the way on this hard journey. Just as Jesus had compassion on the multitude then, so He continues to have compassion on us now. Then He fed a multitude of four thousand men with seven loaves and two small fishes. (St. Mark viii) We read that he had compassion upon them because they had a desire for the kind of life that our Collect encourages. He has mercy always upon those who follow Him first and foremost, for the long haul, and from afar. The multitude has now been with me three days, and if I send them away fasting to their own houses, they will faint by the way; for divers of them came from afar. (St. Mark viii. 2,3) Jesus will meet the needs of those who follow Him faithfully. At that time, He took a little food – seven loaves and two small fishes and multiplied them so that they could feed a multitude of people. Jesus is one with the Father. He is the Lord of all power and might and is the author and giver of all good things. Through His compassionate love, He begins to graft in [the multitude’s] heart the love of [God’s] name. They have put God’s Word in Jesus Christ first. Then, they desire to increase in true religion since they have traveled long distances and have now been with Him for three days. (Idem) Now, He will nourish [them] with all goodness as a reward for their faithfulness and thus keep those who are faithful in the same. (Idem) Jesus will answer our prayers today as well. What we pray for in our Collect, Jesus provides. He knows that we grow weary and faint as we journey after salvation. He knows that we struggle to leave far behind our slavery to sin and the elements of this world. (Idem) He understands that our feeble powerlessness always threatens to overwhelm and possess us. He understands even that the music and beauty of our Collect might not be enough to increase in us true religion. So, He ministers to us. Even today, He takes a few morsels of bread and a small portion of wine and makes them into His Body and His Blood. In receiving the miracle of Christ’s Real Presence with us and for us, we are welcomed into the summation of all good things. In them, because He is the author and giver of all good things, what He says they are, they must become for us. In the Holy Eucharist, we come to believe that Christ offers us all of Himself. In it, He offers to us the substance of His sacrificial love. In our frail souls, we must understand that when we pray, Graft in our hearts the love of thy name, we are praying for the indwelling of Jesus Christ. This indwelling is the Real Presence of Jesus Christ, who desires to heal us with that love that has given Himself to us completely on the Cross of Calvary. Christ is like a Surgeon who grafts His perfect Body onto our frail, sickly flesh and fills us with His Blood so that in Him and through His Spirit we might be able to love God the Father’s holy name once again. T. S. Eliot provides the image: The wounded surgeon plies the steel That questions the distempered part; Beneath the bleeding hands we feel The sharp compassion of the healer's art Resolving the enigma of the fever chart. (The Four Quartets: East Coker, IV) Christ grafts in our hearts His love of God’s Holy Name. The wounded surgeon has bled for us in His death and lifts us into the healing balm of His Resurrection. True religion feeds on all manner of His love and goodness. Christ the Surgeon enters our sinful systems with the sharp compassion – the tough love of His Divine cure. The sharp compassion of the healer’s art demands His Cross and ours. Here, God’s Holy Word lovingly invites us to feed on Him and sing the song of salvation, to keep us in the same. (Idem) Amen. ©wjsmartin Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. Dietrich Bonhoeffer The Cost of Discipleship We begin today’s sermon with a quotation from Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the 20th century’s great Christian witnesses and martyrs for the faith. Bonhoeffer, as many of you know, was a Lutheran pastor and theologian, who was a key mover in the German Christian resistance to Hitler during the Second World War. Bonhoeffer was born into a prominent German family, studied at the University of Berlin, and trained for the ministry in Barcelona, Spain, and then at Union Theological Seminary in New York. While in New York, he began to realize the power of God’s Grace in a radical new way. He spent much time at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, where, he would later say, I moved from phraseology to reality. He moved from believing in the words that constitute doctrine to living it out practically. Bonhoeffer’s life was cut short. Accused of being an accomplice in the plot on the Fuhrer’s life, Hitler hanged him. He was 39 years old when he died. But up until his death, he left the world with remarkable reflections on the Gospel and the understanding of God’s truth. He suffered many things, but chiefly he suffered to live in Jesus Christ, and his writings led men to embrace not cheap but costly Grace that comes to man only through the Sacrifice of God’s own Son. Cheap grace, of course, is easy enough to fall into. Fallen man is lazy and cowardly when it comes to suffering. Cheap grace pleases the soul that cannot bear to keep his eyes on the Cross. Cheap grace is found in just persons that have no need of repentance (St. Luke xv. 7) or forgiveness. Cheap grace characterizes those who irrationally presume that man should neither play any part in redemption nor have a relationship with God the Father, through the suffering of the Cross, by the hard discipline of the Holy Ghost. And while cheap grace might make many feel good about themselves, the fact of the matter is that cheap grace can’t save us. Cheap grace makes a mockery of Our Lord’s suffering and crucifixion. Cheap grace is a fraud and a lie that proves costly to those who embrace it. Christians believe in costly grace. Costly grace involves serious confrontation with the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Grace, of course, is freely given. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. (1 Tim. ii 3,4) God gives His Grace to save all men, but on His terms. His terms involve the Cross and every man’s relation to it. It is never forced; through his free will man, can either accept or reject it. Man must play a part in his redemption. He does this by using his free will to embrace God’s Grace. Following the decision to embrace it, either it lives on or it dies. God’s costly grace is offered to the soul freely, requiring that constant vigilance that wills to grow spiritually through suffering. In this morning’s Epistle, we are invited to contemplate costly Grace. Grace, as understood by St. Paul, requires surrender and suffering. The costliness of Grace is first found in the price paid by God to save all human beings. The cost paid by God the Father was the death of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. The cost paid by Christ was His life, freely and lovingly given to us all on the Cross. The cost paid by the Spirit is the incessant loving determination to incorporate us into this life of Grace. The Spirit, alive and well in the heart of Jesus, reveals His Yes to God, and thus a life that suffers perfectly to do the Father’s will. For Christ, to be moved by God’s will through the Spirit meant that it would cost Him His life. Grace is not cheap. It is purchased with the lifeblood of Jesus of Nazareth. Christians are called to embrace the costly Grace that flows into human life through the death of Jesus Christ. Christians must enter the death of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is our Yes to God, and Yes to God means death, real death. But how can we enter death before we die? Can we die before our physical natures give up the ghost? On the face of it, it seems implausible. Death is death, and we die when we have breathed our last. So, what does it mean to enter Christ’s death? Death is a cessation, an ending of life as we know it. Death leaves life behind. Death is an end, which most think is final. Christians must disagree. Death for Christians, in addition to being something that we shall all endure in a physical way, is also a spiritual virtue – a habit in time that will ensure our journey into a new kind of life. Christians believe that spiritual death is an inward and spiritual virtue. Of course, man dies to things every day. The cost of pursuing what he loves demands that man must die to whatever threatens his betterment and well-being. In the Christian sense, the cost man pays is dying to his old sinful self. And this is precisely what St. Paul is talking about in today’s Epistle. Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore, we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. (Romans vi. 3.4) Grace is costly, not cheap. Grace comes to us through the suffering and death of Jesus Christ. Grace comes to us in Christ’s Yes to God, which Yes demands death – first His, and then ours. Death is needed, spiritual death, our deaths to ourselves, the cost we must pay for Grace to abound. This is the cost of Grace. It is the death of Jesus Christ shared with us. It must mean our spiritual death to sin in Him. Death is linked by St. Paul to baptism. He teaches that we are initiated into the death of Jesus Christ. The death of Jesus Christ is God’s response to our sin. Christ brings sin to death in Himself. The Father gives Himself to us completely in his Son’s Yes. He sends His Holy Spirit to us that we too may say Yes to Him and die. Grace is costly, it requires nothing less than everything. If we desire the Grace of God, we must say Yes to God and die to ourselves in Christ’s death. Imagine it if we took Jesus’ Yes to God seriously. Imagine if in the face of sin’s determination to destroy us, we continued to say Yes to God. Imagine if we found that Grace is not cheap, but costly. What would happen? Again, it will cost us everything. It will cost us our families, our friends, our riches, our possessions, and all else. What is significant, though, is that it will cost us ourselves. Grace is not cheap. It comes at a price. Our Yes to God demands all of ourselves, our souls, and our bodies. Sin’s aim is to kill life, both physical and spiritual, and to convince us that this life’s death is final and conclusive. But if we say Yes to God in the face of sin’s temptations, we shall die to the lie that sin will forever enslave us. We shall die to the lie that we cannot rise up out of death, here and now, by the Spirit of Jesus Christ. When we say Yes to God in the face of sin, we deny sin any power over us at all. When we say Yes to God, the unchanging love of God’s power will surround and envelop us. We become alive, alive to God and all the potential for eternal life with Him. Suddenly, the true, the beautiful, and the good will enter our hearts. The power of God will generate new life out of our old sinful selves. Our Yes to God will become the birth of His life in us, through Christ, and by the Spirit. The perfect and persistent Yes to God of Jesus is crucified by man – by us. Death is sin’s end, and Jesus embraces it in His Yes to God. Jesus doesn’t respond to sin but only to God. Even His wrongful and unmerited death can become a reality where man says Yes to God. In Jesus’ death, we find the pattern and model that can say Yes to God. Our baptism into Christ’s death calls us to suffer the cost. His death is our Yes to God and is summarized in today’s Collect. O God, who hast prepared for them that love thee such good things as pass man’s understanding: Pour into our hearts such love toward thee, that we, loving thee above all things, may obtain thy promises, that exceed all that we can desire. When we say Yes to God in Jesus Christ, our old Adam needs never again be the slave of sin. Our Yes to God in Christ means that we can love Him above all things, dying to ourselves, with a righteousness that exceeds the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees (St. Matthew v. 20). God’s Grace in Jesus Christ is justice and righteousness that exceeds and eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It will cost us everything not to render evil for evil. Grace is costly but God’s justice is Christ’s loving Yes to God and the forgiveness of our sins. It will cost us ourselves if we love Him above all things to obtain His promises, which exceed all that we can desire. (Idem) Costly Grace leads to true and unending life with God because we cooperate with our Master, Jesus Christ, as He works His redemption into our souls. Costly grace is Christ’s work in us. Let us persevere with the aid of Christ’s healing Sacrament, Broken Bread and Poured out wine as Broken Body and Poured out Blood for our suffering souls’ refreshment and encouragement. Amen. ©wjsmartin …The people pressed upon him to hear the Word of God… (St. Luke v. 1) Trinity Tide, as we have said, is all about growth and fertility. We wear Green Vestments during this season to symbolize harvest, growth, and fruitfulness. In this season we learn how to love and obey our Heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, His Eternally Begotten Word and Logos for us made flesh, through the indwelling of our Lord the Holy Ghost. Our spiritual exercise is illustrated in the Gospel lesson as we see how the people pressed upon Jesus to hear the Word of God. Today, we learn that hearing the Word of God is one thing, and doing something about it is quite another. St. James tells us to be…doers of the Word, and not hearers only. (St. James i. 22) This is where most well-intentioned Christians get caught up. Hearing God’s Word and saying, I agree with that, is one thing, doing it or applying it to human life is quite another. Today, let us see if we might press upon Jesus to hear God’s Word so that, being caught up in the Net of His doing, our lives might begin to be transformed by God the Holy Trinity. Prior to this morning’s Gospel lesson from St. Luke, Jesus had been thrown out of His hometown of Nazareth, barely escaping with His life. No prophet finds acceptance in his own country. (St. Luke iv. 24). So He traveled into Capernaum where His teaching was acknowledged as authoritative. Here He cast a demon out of a possessed man, healed St. Peter’s mother-in-law who had been gripped with a fever, and restored others who were diseased physically or spiritually. Finally, He retired to a desert place and prayed. But crowds of people caught up with Him because they wanted more. But the more that Jesus was preparing to give them –God’s Word and Will for man, would require some doing by Jesus. So, we find Jesus moving down into the fishing village of Gennesaret. We read that Jesus entered into one of the ships, which was Simon’s, and prayed him that he would thrust out a little from the land. (Ibid, 3) If we would press upon [Jesus] to hear God’s Word, we must thrust out a little from the land (Ibid, 3) away from the hustle and bustle, confusion and noise of human life, to free us from those earthly preoccupations that would distract us. Over and against the usual course of human affairs, God’s Word must stand alone with men of prayer to address them from a place of concentration, that they might serve Him in all Godly quietness. (Collect Trinity V) Notice that in today’s Gospel, some are on shore and some are in the boats with Jesus. Some will hear the Word, and some will experience its Power in human life. Peter, James, and John have accompanied Jesus in the ships. And while both groups are intended to be caught up in the net of Christ as his spiritual fish, as Archbishop Trench reminds us, the Apostles must be converted first so that they may then become Christ’s doers of the Word and, thus, fishers of men. I think that Saint Peter, in particular, and then Saints James and John, represent in this story the Church and her ministers. The people on the shore represent the fish that will be caught up on land once the Apostles have been caught up in Christ’s Net from the deeper spiritual waters of the sea. There are different levels and stages of faith, trust, and obedience that pass first from Christ to His Apostles, and then from His Apostles to all others who would be saved. Some men are ready to hear but not yet digest. Others will hear the Word and then experience the Power of its Love. First, the faith of the Apostles, who have thrust out from land and onto the sea with Jesus, must be tested. We read: Now when He had left speaking, He said unto Simon, launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught. (Ibid, 4) Simon, like his fellow fishermen, and unlike the crowd, has had a long and unsuccessful night of fishing. Most of the other fishermen are on the shore, exhausted, cleaning their nets, licking their wounds, and perhaps downcast at another night of failing to catch any fish. Matthew Henry tells us that One would have thought this should have excused [the Apostles also] from Christ’s sermon; but it was more refreshing and reviving to them than the softest slumbers. (Comm. Luke V) The fishermen on shore did not see much sense in thrusting off onto the waters again with Jesus. But the Apostles did. While others slept, the Apostles would use their powerlessness, failure, and fatigue as a trigger for turning more faithfully from themselves towards Jesus. The Apostles worked their bodies hard to catch fish, but when they failed, fully spent, they turned to Christ for the reviving of their souls. Christ knows our weakness, and it is when we feel this most truly that He will draw out new and vibrant faith. Simon Peter responds to Jesus: Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless, at thy word I will let down the net. (Ibid 5,6) Peter faithfully obeys. And when they had this done, they inclosed a great multitude of fishes: and their net brake. And they beckoned unto their partners, which were in the other ship, that they should come and help them. And they came, and filled both the ships, so that they began to sink. (Ibid, 6,7) Peter, James, and John were overwhelmed by the catch. They called on their partners to help to relieve the weight of the treasure trove of fish that was sinking their boats. Where the Apostles had failed, Jesus would succeed. We read that when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord. For he was astonished, and all that were with him, at the draught of the fishes which they had taken: and so was also James, and John, the sons of Zebedee, which were partners with Simon. (Ibid, 8-10) St. Peter is overwhelmed by the Power and Love of God in Christ the Word and nature’s response to it. Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Cor. i. 24) effects what might happen in nature on a favorable day but is accelerated now with supernatural intervention. Human ingenuity is one thing, but to be caught up in the provision that God’s Word yields is quite another. Peter feels his own deep sense of unworthiness as radically other than the Power and Love of God in Jesus. He falls down as one undeserving of such a gift. Archbishop Trench tells us that the deepest thing in a man’s heart…is a sense of God’s holiness as something bringing death and destruction to the unholy creature. (Miracles, 102) Peter’s faith and obedience yield a miracle greater than the draught of the fishes. Peter knows himself as an unholy creature in the presence of an all-loving God. The Love of God in Jesus Christ must always startle us with a Power that confounds all our expectations. The first step towards a right relationship with God is the fear of the Lord. It is the beginning of wisdom that learns humility in the presence of the all Holy God. Father Mouroux reminds us that man must realize that [he] is dust and ashes before his God; however much he abounds he is always a poverty-stricken thing hanging on the Divine Mercy, and however much he may be purified he is still a sinner face to face with Holiness. (The Meaning of Man, p. 217) The fish which the men have caught are still alive, flailing, thrashing, and thwacking with all their might to return to life in the sea. Peter, on the other hand, rendered dead to himself, is still, and falls down and endures a spiritual undoing that he cannot resist. He finds himself the chief of all sinners in the face of an all Loving and Powerful God who promises him new life. Christ catches Peter, James, and John in His Net. They find themselves in a state of Grace, in which all the contradiction is felt, God is still a consuming fire, yet not anymore for the sinner, but for the sin…[for they are in] the presence of God…[whose] glory is veiled, whose nearness…every sinful man may endure, and in that nearness may little by little be prepared for the…open vision of the face of God. (Trench, Idem) Jesus says, Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men. (Ibid, 10) Jesus intends that Peter, James, John, and the other Apostles should come alive as fishers of men. So, what does it mean to be caught up as spiritual fish into Christ’s Net and to become fishers of men? Our Gospel concludes: When the [Apostles] had brought their ships to land, they forsook all, and followed Him. (Ibid, 11) The Apostles were called to be fish out of water –to forsake the world, the flesh, the devil, and themselves. They were called to be all of one mind, having compassion one of another, loving as brethren…pitiful…courteous; not rendering evil for evil…but contrariwise blessing…eschewing evil, ensuing good, seeking peace and ensuing it. (1 Peter iii. 8,9) Forsaking all is a spiritual disposition that zealously puts Christ first, hears, obeys, and follows Him into the New Life that He brings from above. Forsaking all will also mean following Jesus to His Cross. We press upon Jesus to hear the Word of God (Idem) to become doers of [it]. (Idem) We leave our earthly occupations and thrust out a little from the land. (Idem) We launch into the deep with Jesus and cast our nets out for a draught. Trusting with faith in the Word of the Lord, which alone can sink the ship of our sinfulness, we shall be caught up in the catch of Christ’s Net. Faith in God’s Grace can flourish and bloom [only if] it is welcomed; it can act [only if] it is activated, [for] all the infinitude of its power comes from the adoring passivity in which it lies open to God. (Mouroux, p. 217) The Apostles could have returned to fishing for fish. But another miracle is at work here. God’s Power and Love will overcome fallen men and bring them into His dying life on the Cross. The Son of God alone, wholly removed from His natural glory and bliss in Heaven, is the real fish out of water. We can become fish out of water also as Christ catches us up in the Net of His death for our future in Heaven. Being caught up into Christ’s Net, He will enable us to be followers of that which is good…suffering for righteousness’ sake…so that happy we may be (Idem), serving Him in all godly quietness (Collect) and fishing for men. Amen. ©wjsmartin …The people pressed upon him to hear the Word of God… (St. Luke v. 1) Trinity Tide, as we have said, is all about growth and fertility. We wear Green Vestments during this season to symbolize harvest, growth, and fruitfulness. In this season we learn how to love and obey our Heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, His Eternally Begotten Word and Logos for us made flesh, through the indwelling of our Lord the Holy Ghost. Our spiritual exercise is illustrated in the Gospel lesson as we see how the people pressed upon Jesus to hear the Word of God. Today, we learn that hearing the Word of God is one thing, and doing something about it is quite another. St. James tells us to be…doers of the Word, and not hearers only. (St. James i. 22) This is where most well-intentioned Christians get caught up. Hearing God’s Word and saying, I agree with that, is one thing, doing it or applying it to human life is quite another. Today, let us see if we might press upon Jesus to hear God’s Word so that, being caught up in the Net of His doing, our lives might begin to be transformed by God the Holy Trinity. Prior to this morning’s Gospel lesson from St. Luke, Jesus had been thrown out of His hometown of Nazareth, barely escaping with His life. No prophet finds acceptance in his own country. (St. Luke iv. 24). So He traveled into Capernaum where His teaching was acknowledged as authoritative. Here He cast a demon out of a possessed man, healed St. Peter’s mother-in-law who had been gripped with a fever, and restored others who were diseased physically or spiritually. Finally, He retired to a desert place and prayed. But crowds of people caught up with Him because they wanted more. But the more that Jesus was preparing to give them –God’s Word and Will for man, would require some doing by Jesus. So, we find Jesus moving down into the fishing village of Gennesaret. We read that Jesus entered into one of the ships, which was Simon’s, and prayed him that he would thrust out a little from the land. (Ibid, 3) If we would press upon [Jesus] to hear God’s Word, we must thrust out a little from the land (Ibid, 3) away from the hustle and bustle, confusion and noise of human life, to free us from those earthly preoccupations that would distract us. Over and against the usual course of human affairs, God’s Word must stand alone with men of prayer to address them from a place of concentration, that they might serve Him in all Godly quietness. (Collect Trinity V) Notice that in today’s Gospel, some are on shore and some are in the boats with Jesus. Some will hear the Word, and some will experience its Power in human life. Peter, James, and John have accompanied Jesus in the ships. And while both groups are intended to be caught up in the net of Christ as his spiritual fish, as Archbishop Trench reminds us, the Apostles must be converted first so that they may then become Christ’s doers of the Word and, thus, fishers of men. I think that Saint Peter, in particular, and then Saints James and John, represent in this story the Church and her ministers. The people on the shore represent the fish that will be caught up on land once the Apostles have been caught up in Christ’s Net from the deeper spiritual waters of the sea. There are different levels and stages of faith, trust, and obedience that pass first from Christ to His Apostles, and then from His Apostles to all others who would be saved. Some men are ready to hear but not yet digest. Others will hear the Word and then experience the Power of its Love. First, the faith of the Apostles, who have thrust out from land and onto the sea with Jesus, must be tested. We read: Now when He had left speaking, He said unto Simon, launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught. (Ibid, 4) Simon, like his fellow fishermen, and unlike the crowd, has had a long and unsuccessful night of fishing. Most of the other fishermen are on the shore, exhausted, cleaning their nets, licking their wounds, and perhaps downcast at another night of failing to catch any fish. Matthew Henry tells us that One would have thought this should have excused [the Apostles also] from Christ’s sermon; but it was more refreshing and reviving to them than the softest slumbers. (Comm. Luke V) The fishermen on shore did not see much sense in thrusting off onto the waters again with Jesus. But the Apostles did. While others slept, the Apostles would use their powerlessness, failure, and fatigue as a trigger for turning more faithfully from themselves towards Jesus. The Apostles worked their bodies hard to catch fish, but when they failed, fully spent, they turned to Christ for the reviving of their souls. Christ knows our weakness, and it is when we feel this most truly that He will draw out new and vibrant faith. Simon Peter responds to Jesus: Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless, at thy word I will let down the net. (Ibid 5,6) Peter faithfully obeys. And when they had this done, they inclosed a great multitude of fishes: and their net brake. And they beckoned unto their partners, which were in the other ship, that they should come and help them. And they came, and filled both the ships, so that they began to sink. (Ibid, 6,7) Peter, James, and John were overwhelmed by the catch. They called on their partners to help to relieve the weight of the treasure trove of fish that was sinking their boats. Where the Apostles had failed, Jesus would succeed. We read that when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord. For he was astonished, and all that were with him, at the draught of the fishes which they had taken: and so was also James, and John, the sons of Zebedee, which were partners with Simon. (Ibid, 8-10) St. Peter is overwhelmed by the Power and Love of God in Christ the Word and nature’s response to it. Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Cor. i. 24) effects what might happen in nature on a favorable day but is accelerated now with supernatural intervention. Human ingenuity is one thing, but to be caught up in the provision that God’s Word yields is quite another. Peter feels his own deep sense of unworthiness as radically other than the Power and Love of God in Jesus. He falls down as one undeserving of such a gift. Archbishop Trench tells us that the deepest thing in a man’s heart…is a sense of God’s holiness as something bringing death and destruction to the unholy creature. (Miracles, 102) Peter’s faith and obedience yield a miracle greater than the draught of the fishes. Peter knows himself as an unholy creature in the presence of an all-loving God. The Love of God in Jesus Christ must always startle us with a Power that confounds all our expectations. The first step towards a right relationship with God is the fear of the Lord. It is the beginning of wisdom that learns humility in the presence of the all Holy God. Father Mouroux reminds us that man must realize that [he] is dust and ashes before his God; however much he abounds he is always a poverty-stricken thing hanging on the Divine Mercy, and however much he may be purified he is still a sinner face to face with Holiness. (The Meaning of Man, p. 217) The fish which the men have caught are still alive, flailing, thrashing, and thwacking with all their might to return to life in the sea. Peter, on the other hand, rendered dead to himself, is still, and falls down and endures a spiritual undoing that he cannot resist. He finds himself the chief of all sinners in the face of an all Loving and Powerful God who promises him new life. Christ catches Peter, James, and John in His Net. They find themselves in a state of Grace, in which all the contradiction is felt, God is still a consuming fire, yet not anymore for the sinner, but for the sin…[for they are in] the presence of God…[whose] glory is veiled, whose nearness…every sinful man may endure, and in that nearness may little by little be prepared for the…open vision of the face of God. (Trench, Idem) Jesus says, Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men. (Ibid, 10) Jesus intends that Peter, James, John, and the other Apostles should come alive as fishers of men. So, what does it mean to be caught up as spiritual fish into Christ’s Net and to become fishers of men? Our Gospel concludes: When the [Apostles] had brought their ships to land, they forsook all, and followed Him. (Ibid, 11) The Apostles were called to be fish out of water –to forsake the world, the flesh, the devil, and themselves. They were called to be all of one mind, having compassion one of another, loving as brethren…pitiful…courteous; not rendering evil for evil…but contrariwise blessing…eschewing evil, ensuing good, seeking peace and ensuing it. (1 Peter iii. 8,9) Forsaking all is a spiritual disposition that zealously puts Christ first, hears, obeys, and follows Him into the New Life that He brings from above. Forsaking all will also mean following Jesus to His Cross. We press upon Jesus to hear the Word of God (Idem) to become doers of [it]. (Idem) We leave our earthly occupations and thrust out a little from the land. (Idem) We launch into the deep with Jesus and cast our nets out for a draught. Trusting with faith in the Word of the Lord, which alone can sink the ship of our sinfulness, we shall be caught up in the catch of Christ’s Net. Faith in God’s Grace can flourish and bloom [only if] it is welcomed; it can act [only if] it is activated, [for] all the infinitude of its power comes from the adoring passivity in which it lies open to God. (Mouroux, p. 217) The Apostles could have returned to fishing for fish. But another miracle is at work here. God’s Power and Love will overcome fallen men and bring them into His dying life on the Cross. The Son of God alone, wholly removed from His natural glory and bliss in Heaven, is the real fish out of water. We can become fish out of water also as Christ catches us up in the Net of His death for our future in Heaven. Being caught up into Christ’s Net, He will enable us to be followers of that which is good…suffering for righteousness’ sake…so that happy we may be (Idem), serving Him in all godly quietness (Collect) and fishing for men. Amen. ©wjsmartin To be a Disciple is to be a devoted love-slave of the Lord Jesus. Many of us who call ourselves Christians are not devoted to Jesus Christ. (Oswald Chambers) I have opened this morning’s sermon with these words of Oswald Chambers because I believe that the dangers of false Discipleship are everywhere present in this morning’s Gospel lesson. In it, we read that Then drew near unto [Jesus] all the publicans and sinners for to hear him. And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them. (St. Luke xv. 1,2) What we have, it would seem, are the publicans and sinners huddled around Jesus, eager to hear His Word, and the Pharisees and Scribes standing off at a distance, murmuring and judging Him. First, we find those who are interested in and desperately needing what Jesus has to offer, and then the self-righteous Jews judging both Jesus and the company He is keeping. Nestled in between the two groups are, as always, the Apostles. Now, Jesus knows exactly what the religious and pious Jewish Elders are thinking, and so He offers two parables. The truth of these parables is not specifically addressed to the publicans and sinners but to the Scribes and Pharisees and even to the Apostles. But, of course, what Jesus teaches is always meant for all, that whosoever hears His words might become a true Disciple. So Jesus asks, What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbours, saying unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost. (Ibid, 4-6) Zoologists tell us that sheep are selfish animals which congregate towards a safe center. (Flock and Awe….) Occasionally, one errs and strays from the way of the sheepfold, and so the shepherd must set out to find it. There is no indication that the ninety and nine detect that one of their members is missing. Provided they are safely fenced in by the sheepfold, they are content and satisfied. The one who does miss the lost sheep is the shepherd, who then rejoices when he finds it. Jesus suggests that the Pharisees and Scribes are more like the ninety and nine safe and contented sheep than like the shepherd. The untold dangers associated with forsaking their communal safety and seeking out the lost sheep are paralleled with the Pharisees’ fear of ritual pollution through contact with publicans and sinners -spiritually lost sheep. For, as Archbishop Trench remarks, they had neither love to hope for the recovery of such men, nor yet antidotes to preserve and protect themselves while making the attempt. (N.O.P’s. p.286) The publicans and sinners are clearly more like the lost sheep in need of being found by the loving shepherd. The shepherd values the lost sheep so much that he leaves the ninety and nine because, for him, every sheep is of great value, like a repentant sinner who needs to be rescued and saved by God. Jesus says, I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance. (St. Luke, Ibid, 7) Clearly, then, the truth found in Jesus’ parable rebukes the self-righteous, selfish contentedness of the Pharisees, who cannot be true shepherds because they were never lost sheep who became true disciples. A true Disciple of Christ will not be self-righteously satisfied but, like the lost sheep, like the publicans and sinners, whose lost state elicits repentance and the saving Grace of the Good Shepherd. Jesus continues with another parable. Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it? And when she hath found it, she calleth her friends and her neighbours together, saying, Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost. (Ibid, 8,9) The light symbolizes Christ and the woman images Mother Church. By the light of Christ, the woman, -the Church, sweeps her house, -the world, and seeks diligently until she finds the lost coin –souls who are lost in sin. As with the first parable, the woman rejoices when she finds what she has lost, just as there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. (Ibid, 10) The true Disciple of Christ will learn that he is like the lost coin. As such, he is like the publican or sinner who is lost in his sin but is afforded neither value nor worth by the Pharisees and Scribes of his own day, –or the religious authorities in any age, who have judged him to be lost in sin, unlike themselves. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, comes into the world to find His sheep lost in sin to give them new meaning and worth. As a lost coin, the true Disciple finds his worth and value in the One who persistently seeks him out, mercifully rescues him, and lends him new virtue as He redeems him. Of course, for the Pharisees and Scribes, the truth contained in Jesus’ parables fell on deaf ears. And it wasn’t that they were wholly devoid of holiness or goodness. In so far as they followed the Law, they were obedient to God. But the problem for them, and the threatening danger for the Apostles and Disciples of Christ, is their indifference to the cost of discipleship – for Christ tells them that they weren’t good shepherds because they had never known themselves to be lost sheep or lost coins. Jesus tried to show the Scribes and Pharisees that they were not paying the price or cost of discipleship. The cost or price of discipleship is the admission of being lost in sin. They truly refused to move beyond the confines of their law and tradition to see that what it taught was that all men are lost in sin. The Scribes and Pharisees could not see that the Law was meant to teach all men to repent because they were lost in sin and in need of God’s Grace to save them from it. The cost of discipleship is identification with the publicans and sinners. What Jesus suggests is that before anyone can become a shepherd, he must first have been a lost sheep. This doesn’t mean that Jesus, the Good Shepherd, was ever lost. But His followers must know themselves to be lost sheep and lost coins because, unlike Him, they cannot save man from sin. A man cannot try to get lost, for then he is not lost but just hiding and concealing himself. What Jesus means is that every man, and especially priests, must realize that he is lost because he is a sinner who has erred and strayed from God’s ways like a lost sheep. (General Confession) Jesus says, Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven. (St. Matthew v. 20) Now, clearly, what the Pharisees and Scribes missed and what every true Apostle and Disciple of Christ should embrace are the virtues of humility and meekness. Pride, humility’s opposite, puffs a man up with a sense of his own self-important religiosity. The proud man measures his own goodness against other men’s sins. He has no need of redemption or salvation because he does not realize that he is lost in sin and must repent. But the publicans and sinners flocked to Jesus because they were lost in sin and painfully sensed that they had no value. Until Jesus’ coming, they had no one to bear the cross of their lost and worthless spiritual state. In Jesus, they find one who lovingly finds them and promises them new worth and value by stirring them to repentance and hope for salvation. Jesus sees in them the makings of true disciples; in them he finds those who know that they are lost and are now being found. You can’t be found until you feel the pain of being a lost sheep and a lost coin. The true Disciple of Christ will be a man who once was lost but is now found. With St. Peter in this morning’s Epistle, he will be subject to his fellow men, and clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble. (1 St. Peter v. 5) The true Disciple of Christ will humble [himself]…under the mighty hand of God, that God may exalt [him] in due time. (Ibid, 6) True humility expresses man’s utter need for God’s caring love and healing power in Jesus Christ alone. The truly humble man subjects himself to his fellow men because he shares the same dreadful disease of being lost in sin, in equal need of redemption from the One who can carry his cross. St. Peter says, Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: Whom resist steadfast in the faith, seeing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world. (Ibid, 8,9) The true Disciple of Christ sees the same afflictions…in our brethren in the world, living under the pain of despair and the death of sin. The afflictions of all men belong to our common condition that finds worth and value in Christ and His Cross. My friends, let us study the cost of discipleship that Christ teaches in his parables. We shall not grow spiritually if we look with arrogant pride upon the world full of lost sheep whose condition we do not share. We shall grow spiritually if, with the publicans and sinners of old, we draw near to Jesus, who comes to find us and carry us on His shoulders to the Cross of His Love. God resisteth the proud, and giveth Grace to the humble. (1 Peter v. 5) We shall advance, knowing we were as sheep going astray but have now returned unto the Shepherd and [Bishop] of [our] souls. (1 St. Peter ii. 25) We shall mature spiritually, realizing that Christ, like the woman in today’s Gospel, has searched the world diligently for His lost coins of great value and found His hidden treasures in our broken hearts, made to find worth on His Cross. There will be joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth…than over ninety and nine just persons who have no need of repentance. (St. Luke xv. 10,7) The sinner’s humility is greater than the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees. He repents to be lifted with Jesus up onto His Cross. On the Cross of His Love, Jesus suffers and dies that we who were lost in sin can be found and redeemed. Amen. ©wjsmartin The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God… The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever. (Isaiah xl. 3, 6-8) Today we celebrate the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. John the Baptist was six months older than Jesus and was born to prepare the way for Christ’s birth. Of course, technically, being in June, we are six months away from Christmas, so the Church in her wisdom has got it chronologically set his Feast Day for June the Twenty-Fourth. Every year, we celebrate John Baptist’s birth in Trinity Tide, our season of continual acclimation to the life of God the Holy Trinity. In this season, we are called to be as the Father is, and to know through the Son’s Wisdom and Word by the operation of the Holy Ghost’s Will and Love. True life is found in our confession of the true faith, acknowledging the glory of the eternal Trinity in the power of the Divine Majesty to worship the unity. (Collect, Trinity Sunday) True life for redeemed Christians is found in steadfast faith and defended from all adversities that threaten our union with God the Holy Trinity. In Trinity Tide, you and I are called to die to our old sinful selves and to come alive to the Father, through Jesus the Son by the Holy Ghost. Thus, it is fitting that the Feast of John Baptist should fall in this sacred season. For John Baptist’s difficult and short life gives us a good introduction to our habituation to the life of the Trinity. John was not unlike you or me. His understanding of himself is a perfect paradigm for our approach to God the Holy Trinity. John Baptist is the precursor and forerunner of all men who would know themselves as needing God the Father’s Son and Word through the Holy Ghost. Let us therefore see if we can prepare ourselves to welcome the Father’s Word of Love into our souls. John’s conception and birth were unusual, to say the least. So too is the conception and birth of God’s Word in any man’s soul! His father was a priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abia, and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. And they had no child, because that Elisabeth was barren, and they both were now well stricken in years. (St. Luke i. 5-7) John’s parents were unable to conceive a child. Those who prepare to welcome Christ the Word’s coming into the world cannot conceive it either. Grace is essential. John’s conception was miraculous. So we read that Zacharias was visited by the Angel of the Lord, as he was ministering [alone] in the temple, and he was and when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him. (Ibid, 12) The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prov. ix. 10) and the wisdom to be born in John Baptist is sired by those who fear God with awesome wonder and reverence. The Angel informed the aged Zacharias that he and Elizabeth would give birth to a son in their old age. For with God nothing shall be impossible. (St. Luke i. 37) Zacharias doubted, And Zacharias said unto the angel, Whereby shall I know this? for I am an old man, and my wife well stricken in years. (Ibid, 18) Because of his doubt, he was struck dumb until the birth of the child. He was told that the child’s name would be John. John means Graced by God in the Hebrew. John’s conception and birth were unusual and his life would be even more so. He was called to be a Nazarite, of the sect of Jews whose lives were given to total abstinence, mortification, and fasting. For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb. And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God. And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. (Ibid, 15-17) John was called to take up the mantle of Elijah the Prophet in order to prepare the Jewish People for the coming of Christ. The extreme conditions of his calling were necessary to focus solely and whole-heartedly on the Advent of his cousin, Jesus. John began his mission by quoting Isaiah. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight. (Is. xl. 3) John was gifted by God’s Grace to know that he lived in a wasteland and wilderness, barren of all goodness, full of evil, ridden with pride, envy, malice, and deceit. He is alone like so many who pray and wait for the coming of the Lord. He is a faithful Jew as you and I are trying to be faithful Christians. Yet, at the same time, like all of us, he believed that places bereft of God’s goodness are always ripe and ready for the coming of the Lord. All earthly comforts were inimical to John, all vanity and vexation of spirit were dangerous. John knew that the world must be stripped of mammon’s niceties if man would prepare for the coming of Christ into his soul. Nothing in this world can match John’s hunger and thirst for righteousness. Every valley shall be filled and every mountain shall be made low. (Idem) The valley of humility, unselfing, lowliness, and spiritual poverty is a necessary spiritual home for the coming of Christ. The high mountain of pride, envy, wrath, and covetousness must be crushed. All self-absorption and narcissism amounted to nothing for John. He believed that the One for whom he prepared was the Saviour and Redeemer of the world. He lives for Christ’s coming and this alone. All else is reduced to the meaningless nothing in comparison to what he awaited. So, John was clothed in camel’s hair and ate locusts and wild honey. (St. Matthew iii. 4-6) From his position of austerity and self-denial, John Baptist cried Repent ye for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. (St. Matthew iii. 2) The way of repentance leads us to abhor that which is evil and cleave to that which is good. (Romans xii. 9) John’s cried out to the men of every age that they might know their sin and what it ruination it brings. Repentance is a self-conscious admission of sin and sorrow over it. It requires that humbling of the self that knows that sin has offended God who is all good and deserving of all our love. Repentance is spiritual cleansing that moves us to admit, claim, and confess how our sins have run clean contrary to God’s will for us and others. In John Baptist, you and I can identify with one who is clearing the human slate of all that stands in the way of Christ’s coming into the world and our souls. Clinging to ourselves is the chief obstacle to Christ’s Incarnation and Mission of Salvation for us. No doubt, it is difficult for us to imagine being as John Baptist was. We are so encumbered by a world of senseless noise, beastly ways, no fear of God, and not so much as any acknowledgment that we have souls, let alone bodies, that need Christ and His coming! John Baptist knew better. We might not be able to embrace the austerity of his life and complete possession with the coming of his Lord. But here a little and there a little, we might be able to make those changes that secure our hearts for Christ and His coming to us in this Trinity Tide. Perhaps, we need that consciousness of our sin that leads us into deeper prayer for God’s mercy in His Son through the Holy Ghost. With John, we ought to make time for prayer, beginning with repentance, to begin to become unselfed as he was. When we repent, we pray for the death of our old sinful selves and a deeper longing for what Christ longs to become in us. John Baptist ended his days in prison, awaiting execution by beheading in King Herod’s prison. He had no rights under the Romans and was an alien to Caesar’s privileges. He was left alone, unable to follow his cousin Jesus and to witness what wonders He was working in the world. Perhaps John Baptist’s last state is mirrored in our own. With John, we find that our abstinence and self-mortification seem senseless and meaningless in a world that has abandoned Christ’s coming from the Father through the love of the Holy Ghost. John’s life was cut short, but perhaps our spirits can identify with his. Our spirits have been beaten down by forces of evil that John never imagined possible. John would lose his earthly life prematurely, but our spiritual lives too have been cut down by Satan with what feels like death. All around us we find sadness, self-loathing, and self-hatred that amount to death. But in John’s death, you and I can find hope. In his darkest hour, John remembered his father Zacharias’ prophesy. And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways; to give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the day-spring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. (St. Luke, i. 76-79) As John Baptist was about to die, Christ was being made alive. As we die to sin, Christ longs to live in us. Christ too would be executed on His Cross, without any just cause or reason. But Christ would die, to make all men alive. This is our hope. John Baptist’s death was taken up into the Day-spring on high that visited [him], to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. (Idem) John said, Christ must increase, and I must decrease. (St. John iii. 30) The evil of this world is no excuse for despair. Amen. ©wjsmartin To be a Disciple is to be a devoted love-slave of the Lord Jesus. Many of us who call ourselves Christians are not devoted to Jesus Christ. (Oswald Chambers) I have opened this morning’s sermon with these words of Oswald Chambers because I believe that the dangers of false Discipleship are everywhere present in this morning’s Gospel lesson. In it, we read that Then drew near unto [Jesus] all the publicans and sinners for to hear him. And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them. (St. Luke xv. 1,2) What we have, it would seem, are the publicans and sinners huddled around Jesus eager to hear His Word and the Pharisees and Scribes standing off at a distance murmuring and judging Him. So, we have those who are interested in and even need what Jesus has to offer, and then the self-righteous Jews judging both Jesus and the company He is keeping. Nestled in between the two groups are, as always, the Apostles. Now, Jesus knows exactly what the religious and pious Jewish Elders are thinking, and so He offers two parables. The truth of these parables is not specifically addressed to the publicans and sinners but to the Scribes and Pharisees and even to the Apostles. But, of course, what Jesus teaches is always meant for all, that whosoever hears His words might become a true Disciple. So Jesus asks, What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbours, saying unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost. (Ibid, 4-6) Zoologists tell us that sheep are selfish animals which congregate towards a safe center. (Flock and Awe….) Occasionally, one errs and strays from the way of the sheepfold, and so the shepherd must set out to find it. There is no indication that the ninety and nine detect that one of their members is missing. Provided they are safely fenced in by the sheepfold, they are content and satisfied. The one who does miss the lost sheep is the shepherd, who then rejoices when he finds it. Jesus suggests that the Pharisees and Scribes are more like the ninety and nine safe and contented sheep than like the shepherd. The untold dangers associated with forsaking their communal safety and seeking out the lost sheep are paralleled with the Pharisees’ fear of ritual pollution through contact with publicans and sinners -spiritually lost sheep. For, as Archbishop Trench remarks, they had neither love to hope for the recovery of such men, nor yet antidotes to preserve and protect themselves while making the attempt. (N.O.P’s. p.286) The publicans and sinners are clearly more like the lost sheep in need of being found by the loving shepherd. The shepherd values the lost sheep so much that he leaves the ninety and nine. Why? Because to the shepherd every sheep is of great value, like a repentant sinner who needs to be rescued and saved. Jesus says, I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance. (St. Luke, Ibid, 7) Clearly then, the truth found in Jesus’ parable rebukes the self-righteous, selfish contentedness of the Pharisees, who are neither true shepherds nor potential disciples but self-interested sheep. A true Disciple of Christ will not be a selfish sheep but like the lost sheep or like the publicans and sinners, whose straying and wandering wait to be found by their shepherd. Jesus continues with another parable. Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it? And when she hath found it, she calleth her friends and her neighbours together, saying, Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost. (Ibid, 8,9) The light symbolizes Christ and the woman images Mother Church. By the light of Christ, the woman sweeps the house – the Church, and seeks diligently until she finds the lost coin – sin-sick souls whom she has negligently lost. Again, as with the first parable, the woman rejoices when she finds what she has lost, and so there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. (Ibid, 10) The true Disciple of Christ will learn that he is like the lost coin. As such, he is like the publican or sinner who knows his sin but has felt to be of no value or worth to the Pharisees and Scribes of their own day– or the religious authorities in any age, who have judged him to be beyond redemption. But if he follows Jesus, he knows that the Good Shepherd will find him and redeem his value. As a lost coin, the true Disciple finds his worth and value in the One who persistently seeks him out, mercifully rescues him, and lends him new dignity and virtue as He redeems and restores him. Of course, for the Pharisees and Scribes, the truth contained in Jesus’ parables fell on deaf ears, and not because they were wholly devoid and destitute of holiness and goodness. In so far as they followed the Law, they were obedient unto God. But the problem for them, and the threatening danger for the Apostles and Disciples of Christ, is their indifference to the cost of discipleship – for Christ tells them that they ought to be like the Good Shepherd who searched for the lost sheep or the woman who swept the house in search of the coin she had misplaced. Jesus tried to point out that the Scribes and Pharisees were not paying the price or cost of discipleship. For they refused to move beyond the confines of their law and tradition, beyond of the security of the treasure they thought they possessed, in order to risk it all for the riches to be found in the conversion of one sinner. The Scribes and Pharisees could not be good shepherds, precisely because they had never known themselves as lost sheep or the lost coin, or like the publicans and sinners. The cost of discipleship is identification with the publicans and sinners. What Jesus suggests is that before anyone can become a shepherd, he must first have been a lost sheep. This doesn’t mean that Jesus the Good Shepherd was ever lost. But his followers must know themselves to be lost sheep and lost coins before they can become His fellow shepherds. A man cannot try to get lost, for then he is not lost but just hiding and concealing himself. What Jesus means is that a man must realize that in relation to God he is very much like a lost sheep or lost coin because he is spiritually lost with lost value to God and His Kingdom. Jesus says, Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven. (St. Matthew v. 20) Now, clearly, what the Pharisees and Scribes missed, and what every true Apostle and Disciple of Christ should embrace are the virtues of humility and meekness. Pride, humility’s opposite, puffs a man up with a sense of his own importance and worth. Pride measures its own goodness against other men’s sins. It has no need of redemption or salvation because it does not embrace with meekness its utter dependence upon God to secure any worth or value. But the publicans and sinners flocked to Jesus because were lost without any value claim. Until Jesus’ coming, they had found no merciful friend who cared enough for their spiritual wellbeing to find and rescue them. In Jesus they find one who lovingly finds them and promises them new worth and value by stirring them to repentance and hope for salvation. Jesus sees in them the makings of true disciples; in them he finds those who know that they are lost and are now being found. One can’t be found until he knows that he is a lost sheep and a lost coin. The true Disciple of Christ will be a man who once was lost, but is now being found. With St. Peter in this morning’s Epistle, he will be subject to his fellow men, and clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble. (1 St. Peter v. 5) The true Disciple of Christ will humble [himself]…under the mighty hand of God, that God may exalt [him] in due time. (Ibid, 6) True humility reveals man’s utter need for God’s caring love and healing power in Jesus Christ alone. The truly humble man subjects himself to his fellow men because he shares their same dreadful disease of sin and knows himself to be in equal need of redemption. St. Peter says, Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: Whom resist steadfast in the faith, seeing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world. (Ibid, 8,9) The true Disciple of Christ sees the same afflictions…in our brethren in the world, assaulted by confusion, madness, and sin. The true Disciple of Christ knows that their afflictions belong to our common condition that finds worth and value in Christ alone. My friends, let us study closely the cost of discipleship that Christ teaches in his parables. We will not grow spiritually if we look with pride and arrogance upon the world full of lost sheep whom we judge to be beyond the pale of salvation. We will grow spiritually if, with the publicans and sinners of old, we draw near to Jesus humbly. We will be infused with Christ’s righteousness if we remember that God resisteth the proud, and giveth Grace to the humble. (1 Peter v. 5) We will grow when we realize that we were as sheep going astray but have now returned unto the Shepherd and [Bishop] of [our] souls. (1 St. Peter ii. 25) We will grow like the woman in today’s Gospel, searching the world diligently for the lost coins of great value, Christ’s hidden treasures, our future brethren, who are made to be our equals in the gift of repentance and redemption. Let us remember that there will be joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth…than over ninety and nine just persons who have no need of repentance. (St. Luke xv. 10,7) Righteousness, greater than the Scribes and Pharisees is the Love of Christ in our hearts that bleeds to Death on the Cross until He finds the lost sheep and lost coins in us and for others. Amen. ©wjsmartin Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. (St. Luke xvi. 25) Last week we were invited to participate in the life of God the Holy Trinity, one God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. We have entered Trinity Tide. Trinity tide is all about belief that grows into God’s Wisdom and Love. Trinity tide is about submitting to the Being of God the Father, embracing His Wisdom and Word in the Son by the Love and Will of the Holy Ghost. Our season of Trinity is the longest in the Church Year because it takes time to allow God to penetrate our being, knowing, and loving. Now, as we all know, learning to love God’s Wisdom and Love is difficult. In fact, we really do need to have a vision or knowledge of His Goodness if we hope to apply it to our lives. In the New Testament, we are constantly reminded of what this vision is and is not. Today, we learn from the Pharisees what it is not and from our Lord Jesus Christ the true vision of it. Prior to today’s Gospel, Jesus had just warned His hearers that Ye cannot serve God and Mammon. (St. Luke xvi. 13) Mammon means both riches and possessions in both the Hebrew and Greek. It can also mean that in which one trusts. Archbishop Trench reminds us that while the Pharisees’ way of life was sparing and austere –many of them were ascetics…. their sins were in the main spiritual, (Par., 343) their real sin was covetousness. For they did not trust in God’s provision, were all rooted in unbelief, in a heart set on this world, refusing to give credence to that invisible world, here known only to faith. (Idem) Their theological vision extended only as far as the Ancient Law, and they believed that this was as close as man got to God. As a result, they enviously resented the vision of God’s Wisdom and Love in the life of Jesus Christ. They coveted their own vision and power. So, Jesus gives them a parable. There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day….(St. Luke xvi. 19) St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that the worship of Mammon is here illustrated in the prosperity of the wicked by way of temporal success. (St. TA: Hom. Trin. I) First, we read that the man was rich in earthly things. Second, he was clothed in purple –the costliest of colors in the ancient world, which adorned princes and kings. Third, in fine linen –secured only at a high price from the looms of Egypt. So, the rich man would have had a robe of princely purple and an inner tunic of the softest linen. We know that this was his customary attire since he wore it as he fared sumptuously every day. That he has no name is, according to the Archbishop Trench, indicative of the fact that he is everyman, or most men who live forever for this world and seldom give any thought for the next. We read also that there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. (Ibid, 20,21) Those who are destined for the Kingdom have their names written in the Book of Life. The poor man’s name is Lazarus. His name is also translated as Eleazar, and it means the one whom God has helped. That he is a beggar is clear. But because he was full of sores (Idem), in earthly life he was unable to walk and so was carried and laid him at the rich man’s gate (Idem) by those who, no doubt, prayed the rich man would have mercy upon him. That there was no relief for this man’s hunger is seen in his desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table. That stray dogs came and licked his sores, reveals that he was ignored by his fellow man. The brute beasts had compassion and mercy upon Lazarus clothed in sores while the rich man and his associates clothed in purple and fine linen fared sumptuously. One had hosts of attendants to wait upon his every caprice; only stray dogs tended to the sores of the other. (Trench, 349) So, we find a great contrast between the rich man and Lazarus. Lazarus’ sickness and poverty provide us with a vision of the external and visible signs of man’s true state without the Grace of God. St. Thomas tells us that Lazarus reveals to us that adversity in this present life, though short-lived, characterizes the life of the saint in three ways. First, there is poverty of possessions –a beggar named Lazarus is a vision of spiritual indigence and that poverty of spirit that needs God more than anyone else. And fear not, my son, that we are made poor: for thou hast much wealth if thou fear God and depart from all sin and do that which is pleasing in His sight. (Tobit iv, 21) The vision of true riches is found when we fear God and depend upon Him for any and all manner of goodness that He might bestow upon us. Second, St. Thomas says, the life of a Saint is found in contempt of this world. ‘Lazarus was laid at his gate.’ ‘We are made as the filth of the world and are the offscouring of all things unto this day.’ (1 Cor. iv. 13) If men follow Jesus, the vision of God, they will be ignored and abandoned at rich men’s gates, who ignore them. Third, the saints will endure bitterness of tribulations and afflictions –‘Full of sores.’ Discipline and correction provide a vision of the means that our Heavenly Father uses to refine our faith, perfect our hope, and deepen our love for Him in Jesus Christ by the Holy Ghost. For whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth. (Hebrews xii. 6) Next, we read, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom. (Ibid, 22) Lazarus is a vision of the Saint who is taken to Paradise at the time of his death. We learn also that the rich man died and found himself in Hell whence he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. (Ibid, 23) St. Thomas reminds us, Lazarus was received with honor and glory by the Angels. The rich man was buried with honor and glory by unnamed earthly men...only to end up in Hell. (Idem) Lazarus is relieved of his suffering and pain and we hear no more from him because Heaven’s Mercy is now his treasure. The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God and there shall no torment touch them. (Wis. iii. 1) But the Rich Man, like the covetous Pharisees, is left out. His soul and body are tormented because he coveted his vision of God in the religious duties of his own day and did not love his poor neighbour. To make matters worse, he has a vision of Paradise and knows that Lazarus is in a better state, having been relieved of his earthly suffering and poverty. So, he cries, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. (Idem, 24) The Rich Man cries out for relief from his earthly body’s torture because, like the Pharisees, he is still covets the vision of his former position. Send Lazarus to me; surely he is now fit enough to wait upon me! The parable gives us a vision of the hard truth of God’s Justice. Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. (Ibid, 25) O thou who trusted not in God but in earthly mammon, who trusted in perishable commodities and relied upon them solely to ensure your impermanent happiness, see what you have forsaken! Because you did not believe and trust in me, saith the Lord, you shall live with what you desired most forever in eternity! Men have one life to live, and at death they shall be judged. When a man dies, he is either taken up or cast down. If he is taken up, he cannot descend to help his lost brothers; if he is cast down, he cannot ascend. At the end of life, the vision of God or gods shall be rewarded with Heaven or Hell. The rich man, with his eyes still centered on earth, asks Abraham to rescue his earthly family. Send Lazarus to my brethren that he might serve up the truth to them (Ibid, 29), for if they see Lazarus risen from the dead, they will believe. (Ibid, 30) Abraham assures him that they will not be persuaded though one rose from the dead since they did not hear Moses and the Prophets. (Ibid) Even a vision of Resurrection seldom saves covetous ‘good men’. For I say unto you that unless your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. (Matt. V. 20) We have a vision of this in Christ on His Cross where, though He became Lazarus, poor and abandoned, in the poverty of His death, He was already hard at work doing for poor fallen men what they could not do for themselves. In this life, Lazarus was poor, but he is now rich in Paradise. The rich man is now poor in Hell, clinging arrogantly to the vision of God that rejects His Wisdom and Love in Jesus Christ. The rich man is destined to live forever in the illusion of his own worth. He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love. (1 John iv 8) Today, by God’s Grace, let us acquire a vision of ourselves in poor Lazarus, reaching out to Christ alone, knowing that we cannot pass through Heaven’s gate unless we obtain Heaven’s mercy, ‘hoping to obtain crumbs that fall from [God’s] table’. Lazarus, full of sores, is like Christ on His Cross, longing to make His death into new life. In Lazarus and in Christ, we desire to eat of the crumbs that fall from [God’s] table. Like Lazarus, if I have no strength of will, no nobility of disposition, no excellence of character, Christ says, “Blessed are you”, because it is through this poverty that I enter His Kingdom….I can only enter His Kingdom as a pauper. (O. Chambers, August 21) Lazarus the pauper is a vision of Christ who became poor, that [we] through His poverty, might be rich. (2 Cor. viii. 9) Amen. ©wjsmartin After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter. (Rev. iv. 1) Today is Trinity Sunday. So, following the traditional Western lectionary, we enter the season not of Pentecost but of Trinity Tide, not disrespecting the Holy Ghost or the importance of Pentecost, but acknowledging that our life in God’s Spirit must come from the Father and the Son. Trinity means three, and Trinity Tide is an invitation into the threefold life of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. Should we make the mistake that many do in abandoning the Trinity for some ungrounded season of the Spirit, we might find ourselves moved far more by our own spirits and fanciful feelings rather than by the Holy Spirit’s mission to establish Jesus Christ in us, as the express image of the Father’s Person. (Hebrews i. 3) Christianity is a religion founded on the facts of Divine Revelation. Its God is a God who wishes to be known. (The Christian Year, p. 142) Christians believe that God the Father created all things through His Word or Son by the efficacy of the Holy Spirit they exchange. Christians believe that the Father has never ceased to illuminate His people through His Word by the strength of the Spirit they share. In His Incarnation, Christ Himself reveals the same Trinity when He obeys the Father through the Spirit, even unto death upon the Cross. (Phil. ii. 8) And following His Ascension, Christ invites all men into new life which He has won for them, promising to send…the Holy Ghost (St. John xvi. 26) whom the Father will send in [His] name that they may persevere in their journey to the Kingdom. So, God the Holy Trinity reveals Himself to His people, a door is opened, and man learns the way that leads him higher and higher. A door is opened in this morning’s appointed Psalm. It is the Lord that ruleth the sea; the voice of the Lord is mighty in operation: the voice of the Lord is a glorious voice…. The voice of the Lord divideth the flames of fire; the voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness…the voice of the Lord maketh the hinds to bring forth young…in His temple doth every man speak of His honor…the Lord remaineth a King forever. (Psalm xxix. 4,7,8,9) David the Psalmist is overwhelmed by the Father’s Word, who rules, creates, moves, informs, and rules the whole of creation through the Holy Spirit’s Ghostly Strength. Isaiah the Prophet is likewise undone as a door is opened to his soul also. He saw the Lord upon the throne, high and lifted up, [whose] train filled the temple…that above it stood the seraphims…. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. (Is. vi. 1-3) The Thrice-Holy Trinity humbles the prophet with awe and wonder. Woe is me! For I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. (Ibid.5) The Father sends one of the seraphim to purify the prophet’s tongue of all evil, that the Spirit might inspire him to articulate God’s Word and Wisdom to his fellow men. And in this morning’s Epistle we learn that the same door in opened in Heaven to the Apostle and Evangelist, St. John, who is called to come up higher. Of course, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is difficult to understand. St. Augustine of Hippo, that great 4th century North-African Doctor of the Church, finds an image of it in the human soul: The human soul is – it exists; the human soul knows –it understands; and the human soul wills – it loves. So also God is, He knows, and He wills. God is pure being -He exists always; God is pure knowing – He begets His Word or His Son eternally; and God is pure loving –His will and love proceed as Spirit always. God is one substance who expresses His spiritual life through three Persons. (De Trinitate. Aug., Dr. Robert Crouse summary) Man is one substance who exists, thinks, and wills. Man is alive, he thinks and speaks, and he wills and loves. God is one as well. The Father exists eternally. He speaks His Word and expresses His Thought eternally in His Son. He wills through His Spirit of Love and the Son returns the compliment through the same Spirit. But God is more than just Himself. He creates and makes through His Word by the Spirit of Love that they share. God intends to be known and loved. He persists in His intention even after Man’s Fall. He sends His Son in the flesh to repair, redeem and return Man to Himself. This morning’s Gospel illustrates the Way nicely. For here we read that a Pharisee, a ruler of the Jews, named Nicodemus came to Jesus by night. (St. John iii. 1) Matthew Henry tells us that coming to Jesus by night is an act of prudence and discretion. For we should all come to be with Christ ‘when the busy world is hushed’ that we might then better learn from Him. Coming to Him by night shows [also] a greater zeal for truth since we are willing to forsake the evening’s pleasures for the sake of the truth. (Comm: John iii) St. Thomas Aquinas tells us coming to Jesus at night symbolizes also that honest state of obscurity and ignorance that seeks to find God once again. (TA: Comm. John iii.) In the night, Nicodemus approaches Jesus in the calm of night, with zeal seeking to know. Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. (St. John iii. 2) Nicodemus knows that Jesus’ teaching is divinely inspired. He asserts boldly that God is with Him because of the miracles Jesus performed. Moved by Christ’s wisdom and goodness, Nicodemus is nevertheless blind to the meaning and nature of Christ’s Person. Jesus says: Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God. (St. John iii. 3) He means that the mysteries of eternal salvation can be seen only through the cleansing of regeneration in the Holy Spirit, (Tit. iii. 5) in the righteousness of faith. (TA, Idem) Nicodemus is confused: How can a man be born again when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb? (Ibid, 4) Nicodemus knows that he exists, knows, and wills but cannot fathom how he can be born again. Jesus helps Nicodemus to understand. Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.(St. John iii. 5-7) If fallen man does not come to know that he needs rebirth through water and the Spirit, he cannot be saved. The washing of the body with water is an external and visible sign of how the Holy Spirit is sent by the Father to cleanse man of sin by the Wisdom of the Son. Man is born of the flesh, and so neither his body nor soul can save him. Jesus says, Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. (St. John iii. 8) Jesus says that the wind comes and goes, and we can never master its mysterious movements. We inhale and exhale and never think about where our breath came from and wither it goes. Jesus says, If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? (St. John iii. 12) Nicodemus is a religious ruler in Israel who should remember that the Father’s Word gives life and meaning to all creation through the undetectable breath of His loving Spirit. Nicodemus, if you do not humbly believe and remember that the invisible Spirit gives you life and meaning, how will you see the Wisdom that will birth you again inwardly and spiritually through my Death and Resurrection for a better heavenly future with my Father? We speak of what we know, and bear witness of what we have seen. (Ibid, 11) The Word of God made flesh, the Son, reveals what He knows from the Father through the Spirit. Nicodemus does not yet know that no man hath ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man, which is in heaven. (Ibid, 13) Man has fallen from God; he cannot know or will the good that reconciles him with God. The Son of Man came down from Heaven in the likeness of fallen flesh to redeem it with the Spirit’s Love on the Cross. That which is born of flesh is flesh; that which is born of Spirit is Spirit. (Ibid, 6) And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life. (Ibid, 13-15) Only if he believes and knows that Christ’s Death alone conquers his sin, can man die to it and be born again through the Spirit, lifted into Resurrection and Ascension for reconciliation with the Father. Behold a door is opened, as God makes all things new. God the Holy Trinity desires for us to participate in His life that we might reveal it to others. We do not worship a distant and unreachable God. Behold a door is opened. Jesus reveals the Father’s Wisdom by the Holy Spirit as He descends to work His redemption into our souls and bodies. Obeying the Father, in the Love of the Spirit, Christ the Wisdom of God dies for us that we might live. Our Father desires that we should be born again each new day as the Holy Ghost brings the Word of God to life in us. Our One God longs that we should surrender to His Grace, to be as the Father is, to know as the Son knows, and to love as the Spirit loves. And then as born again as sons and daughters of the Father, we shall sing out the Son’s Word of salvation with the Spirit’s Love that makes Heaven and Earth one, through Jesus Christ our Lord –both flesh and Spirit in obedience to the Father, perfectly blended to save you, me, and all others. Amen. ©wjsmartin He dwelleth with you and shall be in you. (St. John xiv. 17) Today we celebrate the feast of the Pentecost. In the Church of England, it is called Whitsunday - White Sunday, because of the white garments worn by those who are traditionally baptized on this day. Pentecost derives from both the Latin and Greek word pentecoste that means the fiftieth day. For the ancient Jews, it marked the day on which God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, fifty days after Exodus from Egypt. It was also a day of thanksgiving for harvest, falling often in May when, given the temperate climate, the Israelites ingathered wheat, oats, peas, vetch, lentils, and barley. The early Jewish-Christians translated this thanksgiving feast into the Holy Ghost’s harvesting of souls for Christ’s Kingdom. On the first Pentecost, the Holy Ghost descended with the fiery Love of the Ascended Christ into the hearts of the Apostles, vesting and mantling them with the spiritual gifts that would generate new communion with God the Father. So, today we are bidden to contemplate this new movement of the Holy Ghost at the time of the Church’s first Pentecost. Yet, we should not think that the Holy Ghost had been dormant prior to the coming of Christ. The Old Testament is full of references to the Holy Ghost’s mission to fill the Ancient Jews with the fire of the Father’s Love and hope for salvation. In the Creed, we say I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son…. We believe that Love shared between the Father and the Son is the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost is the Third Person of the Holy Trinity, the Lord and Giver of [all] life. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. (Gen. i. 2) We must remember that the Holy Ghost gives life to all creation. And mortal man must remember that He inspired into him an active soul, and breathed in a living spirit. (Wisdom xv. 11) In the Old Testament, the Holy Ghost is the Spirit who comes upon priests, prophets, and kings to fortify them with Ghostly Strength to defeat God’s enemies. King David says that The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and His word was in my tongue. (2 Sam. Xxiii. 2) He spake by the prophets. (idem) We know also that the Spirit brought punishment and correction to the Ancient Jews through men like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, and others. Monsignor Knox tells us that by the Holy Spirit men were moved to say various things, much of which it is difficult to understand, and some of which they probably didn’t understand themselves. They were carried away by the impetus of the Holy Spirit, and the great point is that many of the things which they said, or rather which He said through them, were prophecies about the coming of Jesus Christ. (The Creed in Slow Motion: p. 143) The Holy Ghost was always descending from above to prepare the Jewish people for the complete revelation of Father’s promised salvation in His Son Jesus Christ. He prepared them for the day when the Word would be made flesh and then for the day when the Word would incorporate them into Christ’s dying life and a living death. Jesus Christ had established the pattern of Heaven’s fiery Love made flesh. The Holy Spirit would invite eager hearts to welcome the same Word into their flesh. What is of uttermost importance to the Spirit, or the Holy Ghost, is that the Father’s Word might once again live in all of us. The Holy Ghost brings us into relationship with God the Father through Jesus Christ. Christ has ascended to the Father, and from there He desires to indwell all men with the fire of their Love, redeeming the raw materials of human life to forsake all and follow Him. For Christians, Pentecost is the moment where earthly life begins to blend with Heaven’s Desire. For Christians, Pentecost is that moment when the fire of God’s Love begins to burn away our sins and infuse us with all righteousness. It is the fulfillment of the promise offered by Jesus to those who would become His friends and the Sons of the Father forever. If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him: but ye know Him; for He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. (St. John xiv. 15-17) But the Holy Ghost comes with neither force nor compulsion. If ye love me, is conditional. Christ honors man’s free will. If…then.... The Holy Ghost comes only to those who desire Christ’s fiery Love. The ongoing work of salvation depends upon man’s assent to Christ’s offer. The first instance of it is found in today’s Epistle, taken from Acts. And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. (Acts ii. 1-4) The first witnesses of the Pentecost were in doubt, or, mocking said, these men are full of new wine. (Ibid, 12, 13) We tend then to think that what happened to the Apostles long ago was wholly paranormal and even irrational. But we forget that the recipients of Heaven’s Love were neither irrational nor out of their minds. They were common fishermen and observant Jews. They were pious, hard working men who believed genuinely in Jesus Christ and awaited His next move. Their last days with Him were spent in sadness, fear, and shame. Later they were surprised by Joy and filled with justifiable wonder and astonishment. But they were open and obedient to the Spirit’s stirring, and in some deep way it all began to make sense and fell into place. Their transformation in relation to Jesus all happened, mostly, in one place –the upper room or cenacle. This is where we first find them today. In it, they had learned of an impending betrayal that Christ foretold. To its safety, they had fled in fear and cowardice when He was dying on the Cross. Into it again came the Risen Christ to invite them into the fellowship of new life. In the same cenacle today, we find that He has sent to them the Holy Ghost. And while these men and women are not any different from you or me, one thing is significant: as before, in the same place, they were watching and waiting for what would come next. They were gathered together in unity of purpose. (Ibid, AV, Knox, ii. 1) Jesus had said, Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high. (St. Luke xxiv. 49) Because they believed Him and trusted His promise, the Holy Ghost came upon them, and they began to spread the Good News of the salvation He had won for all men from the Cross, the Empty Tomb, the Ascension, and beyond. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. (Ibid, 3) This was all long ago. What does it mean for us today? The cloven tongues like as of fire will be given to us also if only, we believe. We may not be given the gift of speaking and spreading the Good News of Salvation in Jesus Christ with other tongues or in foreign languages. But the Holy Ghost intends to come to us so that we share the Good News of Jesus Christ and the salvation He has won for us. So, we must ask ourselves Do we love Jesus enough to keep His commandments? If not, or, if we hesitate [to obey Jesus], it is because we love something else in competition with Him, i.e. ourselves. (My Utmost…, p. 307) If Pentecost will have any meaning for us, we cannot speak or reveal this Love to the world unless the Holy Ghost, the Holy Trinity’s Spirit of Love, brings us to Christ’s Cross, into His death to sin, and to His Resurrection, His life of righteousness. The Holy Ghost’s Love both destructive and constructive (Claudel, I believe, 177) Christ says I will not leave you comfortless. (St. John xiv. 18) The Holy Ghost comfort us by bringing our sin to destruction and by constructing us into new Sons and Daughters of God the Father in Jesus Christ. Our Collect prays that by the same Spirit [we might] have a right judgment in all things…evermore to rejoice in His holy comfort. (Collect, Whitsunday) Thus, we pray that The infinite and eternal Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who workest all in all…will pardon all our resistance to His motions…and will fan the flames which He ever enkindles in our breasts. We pray that He may…enlighten our minds and purify our hearts that we may be fit to receive and entertain Him, as the Guide and Comforter of our souls, working mightily upon our hearts, fitting and suiting our souls to that glory which is unspeakable and everlasting. (B. Jenks, 354) At the first Pentecost, the irresistible force [of the Holy Spirit]…was compressed into a single narrow compass; and the result was a kind of flood, a kind of explosion. (Sermons, Knox, Ign. Press, p. 477) That flood or that explosion is the rushing mighty wind of Christ’s Spirit of fiery Love that longs forever to carry us into His Kingdom. With the poet let us pray that the work of His fiery Love will ravish us. With all thy Heart, with all thy Soul and Mind, Thou must him love, and his Beheasts embrace: All other Loves, with which the World doth blind Weak Fancies, and stir up Affections base, Thou must renownce, and utterly displace; And give thyself unto him full and free, That full and freely gave himself for thee. Then shalt thou feel thy Spirit so possest, And ravisht with devouring great Desire Of his dear self, that shall thy feeble Breast Inflame with Love and set thee all on fire With burning Zeal, through every part entire; That in no earthly things thou shalt delight, But in his sweet and amiable Sight. Amen. ©wjsmartin Ascension Tide is one of the briefest liturgical seasons that the Church follows. In fact, it lasts only ten days. We believe that on the fortieth day after Easter, Christ ascended to the Father. Ten days later, the Holy Spirit is sent into the womb of the nascent Church on the feast of Pentecost or Whitsunday. So we have but a few days to examine the significance and meaning of the Ascension for us. The Ascension of Jesus Christ restores human nature back to the center of all reality and meaning, so that the Holy Spirit might come forth and begin to incorporate us into the life of the Holy Trinity. In the simplest of terms, Christ, the Son of God fully Glorified, as the Son of Man, returns to the Father to establish a permanent place or home for the Saved and God’s Elect. Every aspect of Human Nature in need of repair and restoration has been Redeemed in Christ and now sits at the Father’s Right Hand, interceding for us and pleading that we may join Him there forever. Jesus prays the Father that we might participate in His royal redemption, salvation, and glorification forever. Christ Jesus had been preparing men of faith with hope for His coming love long before His Incarnation. In this morning’s Old Testament reading, we find that faith in Isaiah, who yearned and longed after a fuller manifestation of God’s real presence and power in a world that did not know Him. For, there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee: for thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities. (Is. lxiv. 7) But the prophet’s faith was solid and certain. He abandoned himself to God’s Ghostly Strength. But now, O Lord, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand. Be not wroth very sore, O Lord, neither remember iniquity forever: behold, see, we beseech thee, we are all thy people. (Ibid, 8,9) So having acknowledged his sin and the wickedness of God’s people, the prophet faithfully cried to God for deliverance and salvation. We see this same faith and hope in the Psalmist this morning. He has no faith that his friends will aid him when confronting the assaults of his worst enemies. He confesses in all meekness and humility, O help us against the enemy, for vain is the help of man. (Ps. lxiv. 12) And so the fire of his heart is stirred passionately within, as he reaches out to sing the song of faith. O GOD, my heart is ready, my heart is ready; I will sing, and give praise with the best member that I have. Awake, thou lute and harp; I myself will awake right early. I will give thanks unto thee, O LORD, among the peoples; I will sing praises unto thee among the nations. (Ps. cviii. 1-3) From the ground of his soul, the fire of faith envelops, informs, and consumes his heart. He is swept up out of himself by the music of heavenly delight. He thanks God antecedently for what he believes, and hopes shall shortly come to pass. For thy mercy is greater than the heavens, and thy truth reacheth unto the clouds. Set up thyself, O God, above the heavens, and thy glory above all the earth; That thy beloved may be delivered: let thy right hand save them, and hear thou me. (Ibid, 4-6) And if this faith and hope were alive in Isaiah and the Psalmist, think about the power of their presence in the souls of the Apostles on the Day of Christ’s Ascension. Very few human beings have ever come as close to God’s Word as those who experienced the Word made flesh in Jesus Christ as the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Apostles, and His first followers. Few have experienced their sinful poverty of spirit more self-consciously in the presence of God with us and for us. Few have suffered and embraced the gift of the forgiveness of sins from the hands of the Giver more poignantly and acutely than the Apostolic band. Few have then been stirred with the same fiery faith and love to embrace the hope of Resurrection and new life that the Ascended Christ longs to impart to all men in all ages. But this fiery trial and victory of faith and hope were never meant to be special gifts reserved only for holy men and Saints of long ago. This is the fiery faith that we too must recover and regain if we hope to be saved. Jesus Christ’s Ascension is the crowning moment in an ongoing history of the faith of men who fervently desired Him long before He came, and joyfully embraced His presence long after He had gone. You see, the Ascension is that moment when the burning bush and fire of man’s deepest desire for God are perfected and consummated, and then expanded and enlarged as Christ calls and summons all men into the wake and trail of His love’s upward blaze. As Paul Claudel writes, Jesus Christ, the Man-God, highest expression of creation, rises from the depths of matter where the Word was born by uniting with woman’s obedience, toward that throne which was predestined for Him at the right hand of the Father. From this place, He continues to exercise his magnetic power on all creatures; all feel deep within them that summons, that injunction, to ascend. (I Believe…159) What the Son of God made flesh offered to the Father in the fiery passion of pure Sacrifice, Death, Resurrection, magnetically draws our hearts up and away from the earth. Christ has conquered sin and death and lifts us up into the presence of the Father. Jesus says, And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. (St. John xiv. 3) Jesus will come again to us next week at Pentecost, through the Descent of our Lord the Holy Ghost. But before Christ’s descending fiery love begins to penetrate our hearts for our ongoing earthly pilgrimage, we must contemplate His Ascent to the Father. We must diligently pursue the Divine flame of fiery love that lifts Christ’s living death and dying life back to God. In His Ascension, with Bishop Westcott, we are encouraged to work beneath the surface of things to that which makes all things, all of us, capable of consecration. Then it is, that the last element in our confession as to Christ’s work speaks to our hearts. He is not only present with us as Ascended: He is active for us. (Sermons…) Beneath the surface of His flesh, within His Sacred Heart, He holds us. This Love has always moved Christ, as He stooped down from Heaven to wash, heal, teach, and forgive us. This is the Love that suffered our rejection, torture, and crucifixion of Him. This is the Love that rose from death, and now in the Ascension cries Come follow me into Resurrection and beyond. Austin Farrer says this: WE are told in [the] Old Testament how an angel of God having appeared to man disappeared again by going up in the flame from the altar…In the same way Elijah, when he could no more be found, was believed to have gone up on the crests of flaming horses. The flame which carried Christ to heaven was the flame of his own sacrifice. Flame tends always upwards. All his life long, Christ's love burnt towards the heart of heaven in a bright fire, until he was wholly consumed in it, and went up in that fire to God. The fire is kindled on our altars, here Christ ascends in fire; the fire is kindled in the Christian heart, and we ascend. He says to us, Lift up your hearts; and we reply, We lift them up unto the Lord. Like the flame, our desire must tend upwards and burn towards the heart of heaven in a bright fire. We pray that this flame will kindle the fire of Christ’s Love for the Father in us. We lift our hearts up unto the Lord and begin to sense the fire of His Love. We come into the presence of our heavenly Father through Christ and realize that the end of all things is at hand. (1 St. Peter iv. 7) In Heaven’s bright light, we see Christ, who has by himself purged our sins [and] sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high. ( Hebrews i. 3) Christ has redeemed us and welcomes us to sit with Him in Heavenly Places. Our old sinful lives have died in Christ on His Cross of Love. His fiery Love has instructed us in forty days of Resurrection. The same intensity of Love pleads our cause at God’s Right Hand. St. Peter tells us this morning that to ascend through Jesus back to God the Father we must live wisely, and keep our senses awake to greet the hours of prayer. (Knox: 1. St. Peter iv. 7) Too long in this low place we have been the slaves of gravity and the law of matter. Too long have we been at the mercy of chance and vanity. The time has come for us to take our flight, body and soul, toward our Higher Cause. (I Believe, 160.) Our spiritual senses must rise into the fire of Love’s journey to our end. Christ now reigns gloriously in the greatness of His power and majesty and desires us to have our conversation with Him in Heaven, to love His appearing, and to be dissolved into His love. (Jenks, 352) We must ask Him to begin to reign and rule as King Supreme from the thrones of our hearts, enflaming us with constant charity among ourselves that covers a multitude of sins (1 St. Peter iv.8) Let us pray today that we may feel the powerful attraction of Christ’s Grace and Holy Spirit, to draw up our minds and desires from the poor perishing enjoyments here below, to those most glorious and everlasting attainments above where Christ sits at the right hand of God. (Idem, Jenks) And may our deepest faith and love find words most fit, in this: Lord, when the sense of thy sweet grace Sends up my soul to seek thy face. Thy blessed eyes breed such desire, I die in love's delicious Fire. O love, I am thy Sacrifice. Be still triumphant, blessed eyes. Still shine on me, fair suns! that I Still may behold, though still I die. Though still I die, I live again; Still longing so to be still slain, So gainfull is such losse of breath. I die even in desire of death. Still live in me this loving strife Of living Death and dying Life. For while thou sweetly slayest me Dead to my selfe, I live in Thee. (A Song: Richard Crashaw) Amen. These things have I spoken unto you, that in my ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. (St. John xvi. 33) Today, we find ourselves on the Fifth and final Sunday of the Easter Season. Today is called Rogation Sunday because our English word is derived from the Latin word rogare, which means to petition, ask, or supplicate. The tradition of Rogation Sunday hails from the 4th century and was standardized in the Latin Church by Pope Gregory in the 6th century. It was originally a Roman festival called Robigalia, which comes from robigo – meaning wheat rust, a grain disease, against which pious pagans petitioned the gods by sacrificing a dog to protect their fields. In England, on Rogation Sunday clergymen and their flocks process around the parish boundaries to bless the crops and pray for a fruitful harvest. But the original purpose of Rogation Sunday goes back to Jesus’ opening words in today’s Gospel: Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, He will give it you. (St. John xvi.) Jesus’ words follow the prophecy of His eventual Ascension back to the Father, where He says, In that day, ye shall ask me nothing. (Ibid, 23) Jesus was preparing His Disciples for His risen and ascended life that He would share with them. Its blessing and benefit, as we learned last week, would depend upon the coming of the Holy Spirit. Jesus teaches us today that we must ask the Father in or through His Name for the Holy Spirit. Jesus is the Word made flesh through whom we pray and supplicate the Father. This is why we end every prayer with through Jesus Christ our Lord. Again, Jesus says, Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. (Ibid, 24) Notice that we are encouraged to ask so that our joy may be full. (Idem) Eastertide is all about learning to ask for what shall fulfill our heart’s deepest desire – the fullness of joy. God forever longs to share this joy with us, and it comes in Eastertide as we embrace resurrection from sin, death, and Satan. To begin to obtain that joy, we must set our sights on those things which are above and not things of the earth. (Col. iii. 2) In heart and mind, we must follow Jesus home to Heaven to find eternal joy. But what is this joy? Christian joy is found in Jesus’ eternal nature as God’s only-begotten Son or Word, who always desires to do the Father’s will. True joy is found by entering that eternal delectation and delight. It is not found first and foremost in bodily health, through earthly ambition and success, by securing temporal riches and treasures, or even in gaining converts and seeing God’s work succeed! True joy is found by returning to the Father, through Jesus Christ’s Spirit so that we might delight to do God’s will. True joy is found in becoming sons of the Father who are made to do His will. Christ, of course, is the eternally-begotten Word, the Son and Offspring of the Father’s will. By His Redemption of our fallen human nature, Jesus invites us once again to become God’s sons through Him. To do so, we must leave behind the cares of this world, which choke God’s Word. We must follow Christ in spirit and in truth as He returns to the Father. To get into right relation with the Father, we must ascend with Him that where He is, there we might be also. (St. John xiv. 3) If we shall ascend, we must ask the Father to help us live through Jesus Christ under the rule and governance of the Spirit they share. Herein alone, we shall find true joy. For this to happen, we must make time and space for contemplation. Bishop K.E. Kirk has this to say about it: Contemplation, or the Prayer of Simplicity or Quiet, is the highest interior activity of the spiritual life - indeed, it aims not at being an activity at all, but at reducing the soul to a purely passive condition in which it may listen, unimpeded by thoughts of self or the cares of the world, to the voice God alone.'As rest is the end of motion so contemplation is the end of all other…internal and external exercises; for to this end, by long discourse and much practice of affection, the soul inquires and tends to a worthy object that she may quietly contemplate it and...repose with contentment in it.' (Some Principles of Moral Theology, p. 163) Stillness and quiet are necessary to first situate us in the right spiritual space with God. In stillness and quiet, our souls must be reduced to a purely passive condition, open to the Father’s presence -to His Wisdom, Power, and Love. Jesus says today, The time is coming when I shall no longer speak to you in parables, but I will tell you plainly of the Father. (Ibid, 25) In stillness and quiet, in the simplest way, Christ will reveal to us His true nature. His true nature is that He came forth from the Father. (Ibid, 28) St. Thomas tells us that he says this for three reasons: (1) That He might manifest the Father in the world: ‘No man hath seen God at any time; the Only Begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.’ (St. John i. 18) The Word and Son of God came into the world to reveal the Father’s presence to us. (2) To declare His Father's will to us: ‘All things that I have heard of My Father I have made known unto you.’ (St. John xv. 15) The Word of God came into the world to reveal what He has heard of the Father concerning our salvation. (3) That He might show the Father's love towards us: ‘God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him….’ (St. John iii. 16) [Easter Homilies: XII] The Word of God came into the world to reveal the Father’s love for us in the death of His Son. This is the Father’s joy. In stillness and quiet, if we contemplate the life of the Word made flesh, we shall find the omnipotent power of God with us in Jesus Christ. This is His joy. But because everything that Christ said and did for us in time and place came from the Father, Christ must leave us because by His leaving He gives us an example. ‘Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.’ (1 St. John ii. 15) ‘Ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.’ (St. John xv. 19) Jesus ascends to the Father for Aquinas that: (1) That he might intercede with Him for us: ‘I will pray the Father.’ (St. John xiv. 16) (2) That He might give to us the Holy Spirit: ‘If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you.’ (St. John xvi. 7) (3) That He might prepare for us a place with the Father: ‘I go to prepare a place for you.’ (St. John xiv. 2) To which place may He lead us. (Idem) Jesus is our Lord and pleads our cause with the Father. Jesus leaves us to send the Spirit to incorporate us into His Death and Resurrection inwardly and spiritually. Jesus leaves us to prepare our future home in Heaven with the Father. In this, our hearts should be filled with all gratitude and joy. God’s Word has been spoken through Jesus Christ in order that we might be redeemed. To be redeemed and saved, we must not only hear it, but desire to obey it (St. James i. 22), as St. James says this morning. St. James insists that we must be willing to obey God’s Word, Jesus Christ, above ourselves, so that in still and silent contemplation we might live in Him. We shall obey Him because this alone leads us to unending joy. Monsignor Knox tells us that being a hearer of God’s Word and not a doer – the man who looks in the mirror and forgets what manner of man he is, is like someone who listens carefully to a reading of Thomas a Kempis’ ‘Imitation of Christ’. He understands it and thinks that the book is really about Christians like himself – he finds a reflection of himself in it. [But] it is only if he will give a good long look at our Lord’s teaching that this self-satisfied person will see the real picture which it conveys, very different indeed from the ‘self-portrait’ that he first found in it! (Epistles and Gospels: Know, p. 138) Contemplating Christ the Word made flesh reveals our own self-portraitsstanding in sharp contrast to whom and what God would have us become in deed and in truth forever. (1 John iii. 18) The Word made flesh now glorified, pleads our cause and sends His Comforter to recast us in His image and likeness as He prepares a place for us. (Idem) In Christ, our end, we see the perfect law of liberty that moves in and out of the Father’s presence with renewed ease. Christ has perfect liberty and joy. Now, we can ask the Father to reap the harvest of His victory over sin, death, and Satan in us. If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain. (St. James i. 26) Spiritual silence enables us to think those things that be good, and by God’s merciful guiding may perform the same. (Collect: Rogation Sunday) Mother Teresa writes this: I n the silence of the heart God speaks. If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you. Then you will know that you are nothing. It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself (–with His Holy Spirit.) Souls of prayer are souls of great silence. (Mother Teresa, In the Heart of the World…) As we contemplate the glorified Christ, we confess that we are empty and nothing, asking the Father to harvest in us the salvation that Christ has won. For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? (1 John 5:4-6) By believing in Christ through the Holy Spirit, we can become overcomers. In Him, let us ask for true religion…in silence, visiting the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and keepingourselves unspotted from the world. (Ibid, 27) Then, in the Spirit of Jesus Christ, we shall be of good cheer because He has overcome the world. (St. John xvi. 33) Amen. ©wjsmartin Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. St. Matthew vii. 13, 14 Our opening quotation, taken from St. Matthew’s Gospel, gives us a useful segue into our study of the meaning of Resurrection in this Eastertide. In it, Jesus Christ tells us that most people go to Hell and few go to Heaven. Pardon me for cutting to the quick, but these are Jesus’ words, and this is Jesus’ analysis of the fallen human condition. I am quite sure that He always wants it to be otherwise, but Truth is truth. Far from being a condemnation or sentencing of His own people to Hell, these words should be taken as a warning for us all when we think irresponsibly that we are already saved and bank on Cheap Grace or think that our religion and good works are going to save us. None of this is good theology and it certainly isn’t Biblical. Most men go to Hell because they choose the broad way over and against the strait gate, the narrow way that alone leads to salvation. Of course, none of this is pleasant news and too many Christians threaten their salvation by believing untruths like my God wouldn’t damn anyone. Many Christians don’t think. Of course, God damns people. If He didn’t, He wouldn’t give them the respect they deserve as being free willing creatures that can choose irrationally to reject Him. God creates man with reason and free will and to discover their respective perfections. So, our Good God loves us so much that he allows us not to want, find, love, or put Him above all things so that we can go to Heaven. Our God is Good and so never compels anyone to love Him enough to be saved. God gives to every man his due or will render to every man according to his deeds. (Romans ii. 6) So, we might want to wake up to the fact that man’s deeds come from man’s choices. Man’s choices are the result of his free will. What moves and defines us mostly means that we have used reason to will freely and to determine the character, state, and condition of our souls, forever. This is God’s loving justice. He respects us enough to allow us to fall in love with Him, or not. So, if we hope to be saved, we must want it. To want it, we must find it. To find it, we need look no further than God’s revelation of it in His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. (St. John xiv. 6) Christians believe that salvation comes to fallen man through Jesus Christ by participating in the Redemption He has worked out for us, fulfilling Divine Reason and freely willing it. Jesus died and rose for us. Now, it is up to us to want, find, and love it more than all other things. Of course, we cannot really want, find, and love it more than all other things, unless we need it. Coming to discover that we need it is the hard part. To need it comes only when we have taken a long, hard look at ourselves and found ourselves to be, on the best of days, destitute of that joy and happiness that God’s Reason and Will alone generate for us in Jesus Christ. I have said that needing what Jesus brings is the hard part. Most of us, wouldn’t you say, think that we are alright, are good enough, and shall, more than likely, just scrape by to enter the Kingdom? Such wishful thinking on our part. Jesus says that we must find the strait gate and enter the narrow way if we hope to be saved. And the strait gate and narrow way reveal no easy business. The old adages no pain, no gain, no suffering, no salvation, and no Cross, no Crown take in Jesus Christ’s pattern of suffering and death. What we need is the strait gate and narrow way of Jesus’ Passion for us. We can only come to need it if we realize what Christ has done for us. We can only realize what Christ has done for us when we come to know ourselves as sinners. In these dark, dark days, where the idolaters of our world convince us that God loves us just the way we are, this is challenging. But surely, we don’t really believe that we are pure and righteous. St. James, long ago, knew that Man never is, and so exhorts us to Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you. (St. James iv. 7,8) Jesus Christ came into the world to help us to need God when He promised to send the Comforter unto us, [who] will reprove the world of sin. (St. John xvi. 8) The Comforter, Christ’s Holy Spirit, longs to awaken us to our sins,born of self-reliance and self-righteousness, which kill the Word of God, Jesus Christ, in our souls. God’s Word is the expression of His Reason and Will for us in Jesus Christ. St. Thomas Aquinas says he will convince, rebuke, the world, as the one who will invisibly enter into their hearts and pour his charity into them so that their fear is conquered and they have the strength to rebuke. (Aquinas: John’s Gospel) What we come to need is the Comforter, or the Holy Spirit, who fills our hearts with the charity of God, which has conquered all our fear with the strength to rebuke all sin on Jesus’ Cross. Next, Jesus say that the Comforter will reprove…the world of righteousness. (Ibid, 10) Aquinas, with St. Paul, the greatest of convicted Christians, proclaims that we are sold under sin… There is none righteous, no, not one. (Romans iii. 10, Ibid) and that the world must be convicted always by the righteousness that [we] have ignored or neglected. (Idem) Through the Spirit, the Father lovingly shows us that we have rejected and neglected God’s Crucified Son. The Father made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2 Cor. v. 21). Finally, the Comforter will rebuke…the world of judgment because the prince of this world is judged. (Idem) Aquinas insists that the devil has received his due. Thus, the world is reproved by this judgment because being unwilling to resist, it is overcome by the devil, who although expelled is brought back by their consent to sin: "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies" (Rom 6:12, Idem) In Christ’s death, we discover that we need and can find, want, and love the strength to know that Satan has been judged. (Idem) When we come to need Jesus, we begin to find and want and love God’s Reason and Will for us. In Christ, our faith must be tried and tested by His Crucifixion. This is where the rubber meets the road. If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you….The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. But all these things will they do unto you for my name’s sake, because they know not him that sent me. (St. John xv. 18-21) If we are made one with the Cross of Jesus, we shall be hated by the world. Christ’s Victory over sin, death, and Satan in the Crucifixion enables us to order [our] unruly wills and affections [as] sinful men. (Collect Easter IV) The Holy Spirit strengthens us to become servants of Christ’s righteousness as we endure this world’s hatred. The Holy Spirit will enable us to love the thing that the Father commandeth and love the thing He doth promise. (Collect…) Nevertheless, I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. (St. John xvi. 7) Christ longs for more in us. He persuades us to need, want, find, and love Him inwardly and spiritually. This is why He must depart from us in the flesh. St. James writes Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath. For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. (St. James i. 19.20) Christ desires to dwell in our hearts by faith. With Christ living in us, through the Holy Spirit, if we are swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath, (Idem) we must resist all vengeance. Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. (Romans xii. 19) To journey from Christ’s Crucifixion into Resurrection is difficult but filled with the belief that God is the judge and will give every man his due, what he wants, with neither force nor compulsion. So, St. James concludes: My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience… Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him. (St. James i. 2-4) Christ is with us truly in spirit and in truth. Our temptations now can become good and useful ways to help us to need, want, find, and love the way that overcomes all our sins. Jesus, the Word of Truth, will soften our old hardened, sinful hearts, convict us through the Holy Spirt and give us new hearts of love, leading us through the straight gate and narrow way that lead to salvation. For, Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Of his own will begat he us with the Word of Truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. (St. James i. 17, 18) The gift of the Father is Jesus Christ, His only-begotten Word, who cometh down from the Father of Lights, whose Reason and Free Will with neither shadow of turning always long to beget us anew, whose Good News is the strait gate and narrow way that enable us to need, want, find, and love Him and the salvation He has won for us forever. Amen. ©wjsmartin But praised be the LORD, who hath not given us over for a prey unto their teeth. Our soul is escaped even as a bird out of the snare of the fowler; the snare is broken, and we are delivered. (Ps. cxxiv. 5,6) Easter Tide is all about eschewing those things that are contrary to our profession and following all such things as are agreeable to the same. (Collect Easter III) Easter Tide teaches us that we have been admitted into the fellowship of Christ’s religion. (Idem) So, in this holy season, we undertake the hard labor of dying to our old selves to be formed in the new Resurrected life of Christ. We die to ourselves as we petition God to show [us] that are in error the light of [His] truth. (Idem) In Easter Tide, we pray that the Holy Ghost will not give us over as a prey unto the teeth of Satan and that Christ will give us a way to escape out of the snare of the fowler. (Idem) Satan is the fowler who intends to trap us like birds of prey in his net. But Jesus intends to invite us into His Resurrection, as He leads us from sin to righteousness, from death to life, and from Satan’s temptations to His victory over all that might separate us from our foreordained communion with God the Father forever. Our Resurrected Lord Jesus Christ invites us into a relationship that will ensure our deliverance to the Kingdom He shares with our Heavenly Father. To enter this relationship, with St. Peter, in this morning’s Epistle, we must come to discover ourselves as strangers and pilgrims (I St. Peter ii. 11) in this fallen creation. This means that we must become aliens to this world, to the creation and its spirit-killing sin. St. Peter insists that the starting point is to abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul; having [our] conversation honest among the Gentiles: that whereas they speak evil against [us] as evil doers, they may by [our] good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation. (Idem) We must say no to any inordinate lust that is not of God. Isaiah the Prophet says that for the iniquity of [our] covetousness was God wroth…smote [us in times past]…and hid [Himself](Is. xviii. 17) Our sinful selves had forgotten the secret things that belong to the Lord our God (Deut. xxix. 29). But Jesus reveals to us the hidden things of God so that as born-again Christians, by the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ we might become strangers and pilgrims to this fallen world. St. Peter reminds us that we must be cuttingly candid about the hidden spiritual warfare that threatens to envelop us if we forget God. David, the Psalmist, reminds us If the Lord Himself had not been on our side…when men rose up against us. They had swallowed us up alive, when they were so wrathfully displeased at us…The deep waters of the proud had gone even over our souls. (Ps. 1-4) David claims that the troubled sea…[whose] waters cast up dirt and mire, in which is…no peace, always threatens to devour and drown our souls if we forget God’s Hidden Power. When we struggle to be faithful to God we are hindered and even harassed by those who have no fear of God before their eyes. (Rom. iii. 18) We shall be assaulted by a blasphemous and brutish generation, that set their mouths against Heaven, out of [whose mouths] belch forth impieties and impurities, to dishonor God who made them, to grieve the souls of his servants, and to spread the contagion of their ungodliness. (B. Jenks: P.P., p.240) David knows that Satan and his human friends are his enemies. David flees to God’s strength in all humility. Praised be the LORD, who hath not given us over for a prey unto their teeth. Our soul is escaped even as a bird out of the snare of the fowler; the snare is broken, and we are delivered. Our help standeth in the Name of the LORD, who hath made heaven and earth. (Ibid, 5-7) David believed that the hidden, Invisible God alone had the strength and love to deliver him. David believed that God alone could chase away the birds of prey that would [ensnare and] devour God’s Sacrifice in his heart. David trusted that God alone could drive out the unclean beasts that would trample down the plantation of God’s Grace in his soul. (Jenks, 224) David knew that the Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. (Ps. lxvi. 11)Against the clear and visible threats of his earthly enemies, in the meekness of his heart, David humbled himself before God, for that continual proneness which was in him to sin against His Maker and Redeemer, that made him so unlike to God, and so contrary to what His holy laws required him to be. (Jenks) David was a stranger and pilgrim in this world. He looked forward to the fulfillment of God’s promises in His Son, Jesus Christ. Christians know that the benefits of Christ’s Resurrection promise to deliver us all from our sin. But for that power to liberate us effectually, we must declare spiritual war on this world and its ship of fools. Fools trust in themselves and their own fallen reason. He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool. (Prov. xxviii. 26) A fool despiseth wisdom and understanding. (Prov. i. 7) Fools rejoice when they should lament and mourn when they should rejoice. Because they are at home in this world and not strangers and pilgrims in it, they trust only in what they see and perceive. Because they are earthly minded, they say to themselves that surely God doesn’t care about this or that. They are like the fool who hath said in his heart there is no God. (Psalm xiv. 1) They have forgotten that God is everywhere and cares about everything since He is the author of it all! Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. (Ps. cxxxix. 7-100 David mourns when he forgets the Invisible God and that he is truly a stranger and pilgrim to this world. David’s heirs, the Apostles, who witnessed Christ’s Resurrection, must trust in the promises of God’s Invisible Wisdom, Power, and Love. We are summoned to be moved by faith from death into the fruitfulness of Christ’s Resurrection. We are being moved into goodness. But the journey does not end here. St. Thomas Aquinas writes: Now, by His Resurrection Christ entered upon an immortal and incorruptible life. But whereas our dwelling-place is one of generation and corruption, the heavenly place is one of incorruption. And consequently it was not fitting that Christ should remain upon earth after the Resurrection, but it was fitting that He should ascend into Heaven. (Idem) The Resurrection is all about a transition to from what is good to what is better. (Idem) In the Resurrection, the Apostles and we see the revealed and unhidden glorified state of Man on route home to Heaven. He tells us that the wise Christian will be sad for Jesus’ return to hiddenness. For, by sadness of evil, man is corrected. (Easter III: TA) Christ leaves us in the flesh for us to repent in spirit. Unless we mourn over what our sins have done to God’s Word made flesh, the Resurrected Christ cannot begin to make us better for His Kingdom. Thomas reminds us also that Christ is risen from the dead and become the first fruit of them that slept. (1 Cor. xv. 20) The movement from darkness into light is the first fruits. A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father. (St. John xvi. 16) Jesus Christ, the eternally begotten Son of the Hidden but Living God, must return to God. As the Apostles became strangers and pilgrims to this world, with them we must learn to follow Christ back to the Father, invisibly, in Spirit and in Truth. (St. John iv. 24) Being strangers and pilgrims in this world is just the beginning for St. Peter and his friends. Abide in me, and I in you. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. (St. John xv. 4, 5) Christ is preparing to ascend to the Father. If the Hidden Christ begins to be born in the hidden recesses of our believing and hoping souls, He will make us better. We must never be at home or at rest in this world. Our journey is like a woman with child. A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world. And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you. (Ibid, 21, 22) The expectant mother is sorrowful over what is yet hidden, that her newborn babe will be born into the world. If we wisely endure all suffering and sorrow, as strangers and pilgrims in this world, for joy that the hidden Christ is being born in our souls, we shall see Him again in Heaven forever in immortality and with incorruption. The end that we seek is the consolation of the hidden Divine Presence. Being strangers and pilgrims, we hope for what we see not but with patience wait for it. (Romans viii, 24) What is hidden consoles us. I will see you again, and you will rejoice. (St. John xvi. 22) With St. Peter, if we wisely and joyfully embrace the Hidden Christ who ascends to the Father, we shall be occupied with well doing, [that we] may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men, and not using [our] liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of God. (Ibid, 13) Believing in Christ’s Hidden Nature, as strangers and pilgrims, here and now, our weeping and lamenting shall join the hope that our sorrow shall be turned into joy. (Ibid, 20) With well doing, Christ’s hidden victory over all our sin and suffering makes us better.! Then others shall be astonished that the hidden love of the Invisible Godin the Spirit of the Resurrected Christ is carrying us all to Heaven, no longer as strangers and pilgrims, but those who are at rest and made the best for home in His Kingdom. Amen. ©wjsmartin For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls. (1 St. Peter ii. 25) In Eastertide, we are called to become members of Jesus Christ’s Resurrected Body by remembering that we were lost sheep or sheep going astray who have been found. Of course, we have been found by Jesus Christ, the Shepherd and Bishop of [our] souls, because He is the the forgiveness of sins. Our Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, always longs to find us in our sins and to forgive us. The forgiveness of sins is really meant to divide us from both sin against God, others, and even ourselves. First, Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, reveals God to us once again, and we discover that we have erred and strayed from God’s ways like lost sheep. (General Confession, BCP 1662) With regard to the second, we see, outwardly and visibly, how our sins have scattered God’s other sheep away from Him. With regard to the third, we find in the end how we have been lost sheep in need of being found and saved from our sins. In Eastertide we not only rejoice that we have been found by Jesus Christ the Good Shepherd but we find also what it means to live in and through our Resurrected Saviour as the forgiveness of sins takes roots in our souls and rises into love and mercy. Yet, what is so helpful about the Church’s selection of readings in Easter Tide is that she does not pretend that this new life as the Good Shepherd’s lost and found sheep is no easy business. Of course, for many, this Good Shepherd Sunday will be lost to souls who don’t understand to what lengths the Good Shepherd goes to find, heal, and save us. Most people think that Good Shepherd Sunday ought to be about Jesus the kindly, caring, gentle herdsman and guardian of His flock. Our Prayer Book warns us against any superficial sentimentality regarding the relationship between Christ the Good Shepherd and His sheep. Today we learn what it means to be lost and found by the Good Shepherd. What the sheep of Christ look like and what the Good Shepherd expects are illustrated in this morning’s First Epistle of St. Peter. St. Peter addresses the newly formed Church in Asia Minor, full of the lost and found. Most of its members are servants or slaves. The general impression Peter gives is that Christian slaves are having a hard time with how the the forgiveness of sins works into their spiritual lives. Not surprisingly, they are trying to remember that they were lost and are now found as they serve Masters who are treating them cruelly and disdainfully. St. Peter is keen to identify with their pain and suffering and encourage them to remember how Christ the Good Shepherd not only finds them but continues to carry them home to His Kingdom. St. Peter’s counsel seems irrational and unjust. Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. (1 St. Peter ii. 18) If he were writing to earthly-minded men, whose justice is inevitably unjust, we should judge his advice to be hard-hearted and cruel cold comfort. But St. Peter is not writing to pagans and so his chief interest in not with social and political justice but with Divine justice overcome by Christ the forgiveness of sins. He writes as a member of the Body of Christ, and so he continues, For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps. (1 St. Peter ii. 21) St. Peter insists that the Good Shepherd, God’s own Son, has identified with all of our suffering and pain. Monsignor Knox reminds us, St. Peter remembers, too, how he followed in his Master’s footsteps, when Christ was led away to be crucified. (R.K.: The Epistles and Gospels, p. 125) He is only too conscious of the radical injustice done to God’s Good Shepherd and of his own powerlessness and then fear in the face of it. When he had been sitting by the fire in the cellar of the High Priest’s palace, he was surrounded by slaves, whose suffering was unjust. He too was shackled and enslaved to his own fear, cowardice, and impotence. He responded to evil by retreating into his own sin. Peter was a lost sheep. The slaves who surrounded him were lost sheep without any hope in this world. Peter was afraid of the same evil that bound the slaves. Yet, Peter was a lost sheep enslaved to own unfaithfulness and cowardice. Peter had become a slave to a far more cruel master than any earthly slaveholder. He was enslaved to the fear of imminent death by reason of association with Jesus. And because he was guilty of denying Jesus before the cock had crowed, he feared judgment. He remembered that guile was… found in his mouth, that when reviled, he reviled…again, and that when he suffered the accusation that he was one of Jesus’ friends, he threatened his accusers. (Ibid) But now in today’s Epistle St. Peter speaks as a lost sheep who was now found by Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd who became the forgiveness of sins. The Good Shepherd had forgiven him who once was a lost sheep and slave to sin and was now called into the new liberty of the Resurrection. So, Peter identifies with the slaves and exhorts them to welcome the Good Shepherd, who died as the forgiveness of sins and to forgive their earthly masters. Christ suffered for our sakes…who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: who when reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously: who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed. (Ibid, 22- 25) St. Peter became a sinful slave to the evil of this world voluntarily. The slaves he addresses are the hapless victims of other men’s wickedness, and yet they too are tempted to allow their earthly slavery to kill the forgiveness of sins. Both Peter and his hearers were slaves, but they are now invited into true spiritual liberation through Christ who is the forgiveness of sins and the resurrection and the life. The slaves too must confess that they once were lost but now are found. With Peter, they can remember God, their sinful unforgiveness of their masters, and that they were sheep like without a shepherd. (St. Matthew ix. 36)With Peter, they can become evangelists of the forgiveness of sins and Christ’s Resurrection. What they can reveal is that they are the free sons and daughters of the living God –whose forgiveness in them can conquer all evil because while their sins were many, His mercy is more. Christ, the Good Shepherd, frees all men from the author of evil in this world and his malicious friends. All of Christ’s lost sheep who are now found must endure grief, suffering wrongfully…take it patiently…[because] this is acceptable with God. (Ibid, 19, 20) St. Peter is inviting the slaves to see that the Saviour has suffered unjustly and has borne the burden of all men’s slavery to sin on the Cross of His Love. Like Christ, they must forgive those who are the cause of their suffering. For Christ is interested in all sinners –both slaves and free! The Good Shepherd saves and frees all men from all evil. If He – the perfect model and example of the unjustly tortured, punished, and crucified Slave, can forgive, then so too must all they who would be carried on His shoulders home to God. In fact, Jesus said, If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you…if they have persecuted me, they will persecute you…. (St. John xv. 18, 20) For Christ bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness. (Ibid, 24) Again, with Monsignor Knox, Christ’s wounds are healing stripes, and His death produces, of its own efficacy, a new death and the beginning of new life in us. (Idem) So the slaves and the slaveholders are invited into the new life of the Resurrection, as sheep who have been found, rescued, and saved by Jesus Christ. For ye were as sheep, going astray, but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls. (Ibid, 25 Christ the Good Shepherd’s transformative forgiveness is greater than all sin. St. Peter shows us that all men are sinners who need to be incorporated into the Resurrected Life of the One who has become a Slave for us all. And this Slave is the Shepherd and Bishop of [our] souls. (idem) He calls Himself the Good Shepherd in this morning’s Gospel, for He is the Shepherd of Souls who voluntarily becomes God’s Slave because, as He says, He giveth His life for the sheep. (St. John x. 11) So the Good Shepherd can be identified with the Slave who now works freely and completely for the good of two Masters –His Father and His sheep! He even lays down His life for His sheep because He knows that only then can His Father’s Love become a true Slave to their condition, bear its burden fully, and then break its chains through the power of the forgiveness of their sins. fBut even beyond this, Christ the Good Shepherd longs to become our Slave even now. He becomes the Father’s willing and happy Slave. Will He be our Slave also? He who is freely subservient, obedient, and docile to the Father’s longs to be our Slave and shepherd us into the Father’s embrace. The Good Shepherd cares only for our welfare and good. The Good Shepherd is the Slave whose service alone can conquer and overcome our sin. He alone is the Slave who must become our Master. He masters our sin by bringing it to death if we embrace the Spirit of His glorious passion, crucifixion, and resurrection. Christ, the Good Shepherd comes to find His lost sheep. Will we allow Him to be our Slave and Master? Like all lost sheep enslaved to sin, we cannot pay this Slave for mastering our sin in dying for us, and forgiving us freely, without compulsion, without any force. He demands no payment. He asks only that our hearts awaken to the fact that we are lost sheep without His Shepherding Slavery. Today, in all humility and meekness, let us allow God’s Slave to Master and Shepherd us. Then, we too shall follow the blessed steps of His most holy life. (Collect, Easter II) And with St. Peter and all the Saints we shall realize that Christ the Good Shepherd and Slave alone shepherds all lost and found slaves into everlasting freedom. Amen. ©wjsmartin Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. (Col. iii. 2) Our journey through the Lenten Season to Good Friday will have been of no use if it has not been characterized by affection. Set your affections on things above, proclaims St. Paul this morning, and not on things of the earth, and if we have been conscientious, this is exactly what we have been doing. Affection is passion, desire, yearning, and longing, and loving. And throughout the Holy Season of Lent, we have prayed that the Holy Spirit might purify the thoughts of our hearts so that we can follow Jesus up to the Jerusalem of His Cross and beyond. Our affections have been set…on the things above [and] not things of the earth, things which have come down to us in the passionate heart of Jesus Christ to lift us up higher. Out of the unquenchable love of His heart, Christ desired that our affections should rise up to embrace Him in the Death He died for you and me. From there to here, on this Easter Morn, Christ now longs that our affections might rise higher still into His Resurrection Love. Throughout our journey to Easter, we have learned that setting [our] affections on things that are above and not on the things of the earth is no easy business. And yet our distraction from it comes not from God but from us. God’s affection and desire for us have never ceased. From the Divine Depths, articulated and expressed in the incessant, loving Passion of Jesus on the Cross, the uninterrupted longing of God for our salvation has persisted. The Word has gone out. God’s desire and affection have never swerved from His Great Unseen Eternal Design. The Word of God came down from heaven to live in man’s heart. His Good Friday is but one moment in the unfolding drama of our Redemption and Salvation. The common lot of men are always too busy for Good Friday. Their affections and desires were otherwise occupied. The mighty engine of Caesar’s Rome could not accommodate the strange Passion of a loving God whose affection was lifted high on the Cross of suffering and dying for us. Even God’s chosen people, the Jews, could not feel such love and affection conquering their Law of sin and death. Even the fear and the cowardice of those with the best of intentions were rendered equally confounded by God’s unfolding affection. Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth. (St. Luke xxi. 26) Human affection for God is fickle, unreliable, inconstant, and ultimately treacherous. Man’s fallenness cannot bear God’s Omnipotent Love found in the death of His own Son. And yet, God’s Love persisted on the Cross with a Passion that longs always to redeem the affection of men in all ages, even His worst enemies. Father forgive them for they know not what they do. (St. Luke xxiii. 34) From the Cross, Christ said to the Good Thief, Come follow me. Today thou shalt be with me in paradise. (St. Luke xxiii. 43) From His Cross His loved reached out to His Mother and the blessed disciple. Come follow me. Woman behold thy son…behold thy mother. (St. John xix. 26, 27) From His Cross, His love shared the fear of the hopeless and longed to overcome their despair. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me. (St. Matthew xxvii. 46) Come follow me. From the Cross, Christ cried out, I thirst. (St. John xix. 28) because His thirst for God’s love was greater than enduring unjust Death. Come follow me. From the Cross, He cried, It is finished. (St. John xix. 30) Father into thy hands, I commend my spirit. (St. Luke xxviii. 46) Come follow me even into my death, as my death that shall become yours also. On Good Friday, I pray we began to see that something Divine was still at work. Sin would not put Christ down and death could not stop Him! On Good Friday, I pray that we began to see that Christ was conquering sin and death with the Omnipotent Power and Love of His Father. Christ died, and Man died. With pure affection, God made all things, and with the same affection He will remake all things. Christ’s love for us invites us into His Death. With sinful affection, we all desired God’s death. God in Christ suffered our sinful affection that sentenced Him to Death. God seemed dead. Christ was interred in the sepulcher, and with Him, it would seem, man’s affection for things above, which He was, was gone. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. (Genesis i. 2) Sin and death seemed to swallow up the Love and extinguish the Light. His Death held hope hostage in the cruel knot of confusion, fear, and despair. But, as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. (1 Cor. xv. 22) As we move from the seventh to the first day, something strange begins to happen. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. (Genesis i. 3,4) In the beginning, God lovingly made the Light to inform, define, and enliven all of creation. In the same Light now, incandescent beams of Divine Affection will open the eyes of believers’ hearts to a new creation being illuminated by that true Light that lighteth every man that cometh into world. (St. John i. 9) Darkness flees, sin is dead, death is conquered, and ignorance is overcome as the Divine Affection jumps up from Death in the heart of Jesus. The pure Affection and eternal desire of the Father of lights have transformed the Son as flesh from Death into New Life. The old Man is Dead, and the new Man has come alive. At first only angels and nature sense the strangeness of this Light. The elements stirred, the air was parted, the fire blazed, and the earth shook and fell before the rising Light that follows the passion and affection of its Mover and Maker. The Father’s immortal, immutable, and immovable course of affection for man’s redemption is on course and thus is still at work in the heart of Jesus. Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. (Romans vi. 9, 10) The question and answer of the prophet Ezekiel are fulfilled. Son of man, can these bones live? …And there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone. And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them. Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, Son of Man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them…(Ezekiel xxxvii. 1-10) Christ fulfills Ezekiel’s prophesy. Yes, these bones can and will live. In Him the Light of God blends with rising Love in the transfigured flesh of Man. The pure affection of Man for God brings Light out of Darkness and Life out of Death. God’s Word rises, informing still the now transfigured flesh of Jesus. Christ’s uninterrupted affection for God and Man is one Light whose Love makes Death into something new. Christ is Risen from the dead…Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us, therefore let us keep the feast…as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. (1 Cor. xv. 20, 22; 1 Cor. v. 7) But there is more. And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me. (St. John xii. 32) At first, the affection of both the Apostles and the women is confused. On this first day of the week, Mary Magdalene is moved still by her affection and love for Jesus, to anoint the dead. She finds the stone rolled away. Her affection for the Light is not yet redeemed. They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulcher, and we know not where they have laid him. (St. John xx. 2) In darkness, she believes that Christ’s enemies have stolen the body. But she remembers the words of the prophet: And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I have…brought you up out of your graves, And I shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live. (Ezekiel. xxxvii. 12-14) Her stirring affection for things above runs to find John and Peter. Their affection and love run to the empty tomb. As Eriugena says, John outruns Peter because contemplation completely cleansed penetrates the inner secrets of the divine workings more rapidly than action still to be purified. John represents contemplation and hope. Peter represents action and faith. The faith of Peter must enter the tomb of darkness first to then understand with John. (Hom. Gospel of St. John, 283, 285) God’s uninterrupted affection and desire for all men’s salvation is still at work in Jesus Christ. Stirring within the hearts of Mary Magdalene, Peter, and John are the affection for, faith and understanding in the Light that said, I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also. (St. John xiv. 18, 19) Christ is risen. Soon the Apostles will see Him and begin to Live in Him. Christ is risen. In the Resurrected Light that shines through His transfigured flesh, we must remember that we are dead and our life is hid with God in Christ. (Colossians iii. 2,3) In the Resurrected Light, let us reckon [ourselves] to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans vi. 11) In the Resurrected Light let us embrace Christ’s affection with our own –that affection and desire for becoming very members incorporate in His Risen spiritual and mystical Body, transparent, obedient to His Holy Spirit…apt and natural instruments of His will and way, (The Meaning of Man, Mouroux, p.89) reflecting His Light and Love into the hearts of all others. And with the poet let us rejoice and sing: Then comes He! Whose mighty Light Made His clothes be Like Heav’n, all bright; The Fuller, whose pure blood did flow To make stained man more white than snow. He alone And none else can Bring bone to bone, And rebuild man, And by His all subduing might Make clay ascend more quick than Light. (Ascension Hymn: H. Vaughn) Amen. ©wjsmartin He that is of God heareth God’s words… Last week you and I were meditating upon the freedom or liberation that comes to us in Lent through the life of Jesus Christ. You will remember that our Gospel lection for the day presented the miracle of the five thousand. Five thousand men with their wives and children had been following Jesus- behold we go up to Jerusalem, listening to His words and observing the miracles that He performed on many- blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it. (St. Luke xi. 28) In Jesus, they came to see God’s power at work in the world, and so were arrested with curiosity. But they were seekers. Only the restless and unsatisfied are seekers, searchers, knockers, and askers. A woman cannot cure her daughter of a vexing demon, and so she searches for the cure. The people in last week’s Gospel are hungry for the Word of God that Jesus proclaims. They follow Jesus and once their souls are fed so too are their bodies. They are fed doubly- in the body and the soul as we plead in today’s Collect. The five thousand-plus people who followed Jesus showed us that true freedom comes when the soul seeks out spiritual and heavenly things first. True freedom is found when the soul searches for spiritual joy and happiness. True liberation is found when man can be united to that which does not perish and is not corrupted. St. Paul likens true freedom to the generation or birth of God’s promises in the world. True liberation is found when we are born again in the spirit. After that, the body’s needs can be met. But only after that. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. (Matt. vi. 33) Lent is about freedom. Freedom is found when we walk with Jesus, follow Him, hear His words, and allow them to sink into the depths of our souls. To live in the freedom that Christ brings, we must be searching for God as what is other than anything that we find in the creation. If we have all the answers and have figured it all out, this is not the journey for us. If we spend our time in cynicism, suspecting all others of sinful motives, and judging them, mostly to protect us from facing ourselves, this is no journey for us. If we live well and are unthankful, this is not the journey for us. To embark on this journey, to find Christ’s freedom, we must open to God’s Grace- that power, wisdom, and love that we neither desire nor deserve. To find Christ and His freedom you and I must be open to the power of God that is not constrained by and limited to the conditions that we place upon Him. For if we subject God to our own constrictive rules for what, where, and when of His presence, we become like Christ’s enemies in today’s Gospel. We follow Christ to find our freedom. Today we learn that Christ’s enemies accuse Him of being a sinner. Christ tells them and us that he that is of God hears God’s words. (St. John viii. 48) Blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it. (Idem) One who hears the Word of God is not only searching but finding what is other than himself. Christ longs for us to hear and embrace what He receives from the Father. In His openness, He embraces Absolute Goodness and Truth. If I tell you the truth, why do you not believe me? (Ibid, 46) Jesus hears the Father and keeps His Word. Jesus keeps it and shares it. But His enemies say are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon? (Ibid, 48) Jesus’ enemies accuse Him of being a Samaritan- an outsider, a product of mixed racial parentage, an alien. And they are correct. Jesus is an alien and an outsider. He is, in a way, of mixed parentage; His Father is Divine and His mother is Human. But it does not follow that He has a demon. For Jesus is what He hears, what he keeps, and what he tells. He receives and imparts God’s Word. His enemies cannot abide this because they fear His intimacy with God. They cannot bear Him because they believe that God’s Word is theirs by right and appointment through the priestly ministration of their religion. Jesus tells us this morning that He does not have a demon but has God. He receives God so completely that God’s will is His life. He honors what is coming to Him as the Other, the Only Other who alone creates and redeems human life. Jesus Himself seeks, in His humanity, the Divinity of God. He seeks not His own glory but rather what His Father’s Wisdom and Love can show of the Father’s glory through Him. Jesus hears God’s Word and imparts it to all. Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death. (Ibid, 51) He who keeps the word that I receive and AM will not see death because God’s ever-approaching and present Word is not death but life, it is not sin but goodness, it is not error but truth. Do we, with Christ, search out and seek after what the Only Other, God, offers to us? Have we even begun this journey? Have we admitted that there is something to find, something to encounter outside of our sinful and sorry selves? Perhaps we are content with Christ’s enemies to cynically judge and condemn, to question motives, and find demons. Our God is a distant God, we claim. Our God is a curious concept or idea. For us to find true freedom in Christ, we must see that the Father expresses Himself to us in His Son. Christ comes into the world to present to us Who He always is. Before Abraham was, I am. (Ibid, 58) The everlasting Son, the Word without beginning, articulates in Himself the Father’s will and way. But we must give ourselves to Him. It is of no use to rely upon ourselves any longer. It is futile for us to think that our earthly offerings---the blood of goats and calves in olden times, money and status in our own, can save us and help us. It is only the life of Christ, a life perfectly open to the Father, that can save us. Christ The Son of God in the flesh perfectly translates the Word of God into human life and becomes the tabernacle in which we can begin to hear the Word of God and keep it. (Idem) CHRIST being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. (Hebrews, ix. 11) The journey into freedom that we make in the tabernacle of Christ is neither easy nor always pleasant. Being open to God means dying to the self. The Son of God made flesh dies to all -the world, the flesh, the devil. God’s Word is always embraced by Jesus and now will be expressed in suffering and passion. We go up to endure the Word of God communicated to us through passion and crucifixion. Passion means to suffer, to endure, to take on, and to withstand. Because Christ insists upon hearing the Word of God and keeping it, He will be rejected and killed. He is determined to fight God’s battle against sin, death, and Satan, come what may! He fights it even in death. Death will take on new meaning in Jesus. We go up to Jerusalem and the bloody sacrifice and death of Jesus will express God’s Word of love to our hearts and souls from His Cross. Under the tabernacle of Christ’s Passion, we shall begin to experience the fact that somehow in Christ all false gods and our delusional pleasures will die a hard death. In Christ, their powerlessness will be revealed, and their hold on us will be demolished. They will be silenced. For they are, in the end, meaningless. He is not open to them but to God. They will try to stop Him, and Christ-as-man will die. But He will turn the tables on them that resist His Omnipotent Love; they will perish. In Christ, under His tabernacle, we will be put to death also, not forcibly, but as we open our hearts freely to Him. In us, our sins must be put to death also so that the Word heard might be kept and articulated in our lives. Richard Hooker says this about the effect of Christ’s unbreakable bond with the Father even in death: The Creator of the World…the Wisdom of God [has] become such a Spectacle, as neither Men nor Angels can behold without a kind of Heavenly astonishment, we may hereby perceive there is cause sufficient, why Divine Nature should assume Human, that so God might be in Christ, reconciling to himself the World. (Hooker’s Laws, Book V…) We travel with Christ, under his tabernacle up to the Cross. This spectacle of the dying Son of God in the flesh fills us with heavenly astonishment. It seems all wrong, but Christ insists it must be Right. It appears utterly evil, but Christ insists it must be Good. It strikes us as an unclean oblation and Christ says that it is pure and spotless. This heavenly spectacle is the doorway to God’s Kingdom. We enter through Christ’s death. We begin to die in and through Him. Behold, I make all things new. (Rev. xxi. 5) Our selfish objections will be felt as nothing compared with the Love of God made flesh. Our religious pretensions will seem vain and fruitless. The life of man without God is over. The horizon of new freedom is opening before us in the death of our Saviour. Before Abraham was, I am. Therefore, took they up stones to cast at Him: But Jesus hid Himself, and went out of the Temple. (St. John viii. 59 We discover that the Creator of the Universe is unmasked as the Redeemer. St. Augustine says, But Jesus acts as a man, as one in the form of a servant, as lowly, as about to suffer, about to die, about to redeem us with His Blood; as He who is the Word in the beginning, and the Word with God. (St. Augustine: Tractates xlii, xliii) The Spectacle of God’s Omnipotent Love in death will undo us. God’s love persists. Love never dies. (1 Cor. Xiii. 10) God in Jesus embraces patience against earthly power. Patience is revealed as God’s Power of Passion. With patience Christ exhibits God’s Passion for us -the Heavenly Spectacle of irresistible freedom that reconciles the world to Himself. Amen. ©wjsmartin But praised be the LORD, who hath not given us over for a prey unto their teeth. Our soul is escaped even as a bird out of the snare of the fowler; the snare is broken, and we are delivered. (Ps. cxxiv. 5,6) Easter Tide is all about eschewing those things that are contrary to our profession and following all such things as are agreeable to the same. (Collect Easter III) Easter Tide teaches us that we have been admitted into the fellowship of Christ’s religion. (Idem) So, in this holy season, we undertake the hard labor of dying to our old selves to be formed in the new Resurrected life of Christ. We die to ourselves as we petition God to show [us] that are in error the light of [His] truth. (Idem) In Easter Tide, we pray that the Holy Ghost will not give us over as a prey unto the teeth of Satan and that Christ will give us a way to escape out of the snare of the fowler. (Idem) Satan is the fowler who intends to trap us like birds of prey in his net. But Jesus intends to invite us into His Resurrection, as He leads us from sin to righteousness, from death to life, and from Satan’s temptations to His victory over all that might separate us from our foreordained communion with God the Father forever. Our Resurrected Lord Jesus Christ invites us into a relationship that will ensure our deliverance to the Kingdom He shares with our Heavenly Father. To enter this relationship, with St. Peter, in this morning’s Epistle, we must come to discover ourselves as strangers and pilgrims (I St. Peter ii. 11) in this fallen creation. This means that we must become aliens to this world, to the creation and its spirit-killing sin. St. Peter insists that the starting point is to abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul; having [our] conversation honest among the Gentiles: that whereas they speak evil against [us] as evil doers, they may by [our] good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation. (Idem) We must say no to any inordinate lust that is not of God. Isaiah the Prophet says that for the iniquity of [our] covetousness was God wroth…smote [us in times past]…and hid [Himself](Is. xviii. 17) Our sinful selves had forgotten the secret things that belong to the Lord our God (Deut. xxix. 29). But Jesus reveals to us the hidden things of God so that as born-again Christians, by the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ we might become strangers and pilgrims to this fallen world. St. Peter reminds us that we must be cuttingly candid about the hidden spiritual warfare that threatens to envelop us if we forget God. David, the Psalmist, reminds us If the Lord Himself had not been on our side…when men rose up against us. They had swallowed us up alive, when they were so wrathfully displeased at us…The deep waters of the proud had gone even over our souls. (Ps. 1-4) David claims that the troubled sea…[whose] waters cast up dirt and mire, in which is…no peace, always threatens to devour and drown our souls if we forget God’s Hidden Power. When we struggle to be faithful to God we are hindered and even harassed by those who have no fear of God before their eyes. (Rom. iii. 18) We shall be assaulted by a blasphemous and brutish generation, that set their mouths against Heaven, out of [whose mouths] belch forth impieties and impurities, to dishonor God who made them, to grieve the souls of his servants, and to spread the contagion of their ungodliness. (B. Jenks: P.P., p.240) David knows that Satan and his human friends are his enemies. David flees to God’s strength in all humility. Praised be the LORD, who hath not given us over for a prey unto their teeth. Our soul is escaped even as a bird out of the snare of the fowler; the snare is broken, and we are delivered. Our help standeth in the Name of the LORD, who hath made heaven and earth. (Ibid, 5-7) David believed that the hidden, Invisible God alone had the strength and love to deliver him. David believed that God alone could chase away the birds of prey that would [ensnare and] devour God’s Sacrifice in his heart. David trusted that God alone could drive out the unclean beasts that would trample down the plantation of God’s Grace in his soul. (Jenks, 224) David knew that the Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. (Ps. lxvi. 11)Against the clear and visible threats of his earthly enemies, in the meekness of his heart, David humbled himself before God, for that continual proneness which was in him to sin against His Maker and Redeemer, that made him so unlike to God, and so contrary to what His holy laws required him to be. (Jenks) David was a stranger and pilgrim in this world. He looked forward to the fulfillment of God’s promises in His Son, Jesus Christ. Christians know that the benefits of Christ’s Resurrection promise to deliver us all from our sin. But for that power to liberate us effectually, we must declare spiritual war on this world and its ship of fools. Fools trust in themselves and their own fallen reason. He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool. (Prov. xxviii. 26) A fool despiseth wisdom and understanding. (Prov. i. 7) Fools rejoice when they should lament and mourn when they should rejoice. Because they are at home in this world and not strangers and pilgrims in it, they trust only in what they see and perceive. Because they are earthly minded, they say to themselves that surely God doesn’t care about this or that. They are like the fool who hath said in his heart there is no God. (Psalm xiv. 1) They have forgotten that God is everywhere and cares about everything since He is the author of it all! Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. (Ps. cxxxix. 7-100 David mourns when he forgets the Invisible God and that he is truly a stranger and pilgrim to this world. David’s heirs, the Apostles, who witnessed Christ’s Resurrection, must trust in the promises of God’s Invisible Wisdom, Power, and Love. We are summoned to be moved by faith from death into the fruitfulness of Christ’s Resurrection. We are being moved into goodness. But the journey does not end here. St. Thomas Aquinas writes: Now, by His Resurrection Christ entered upon an immortal and incorruptible life. But whereas our dwelling-place is one of generation and corruption, the heavenly place is one of incorruption. And consequently it was not fitting that Christ should remain upon earth after the Resurrection, but it was fitting that He should ascend into Heaven. (Idem) The Resurrection is all about a transition to from what is good to what is better. (Idem) In the Resurrection, the Apostles and we see the revealed and unhidden glorified state of Man on route home to Heaven. He tells us that the wise Christian will be sad for Jesus’ return to hiddenness. For, by sadness of evil, man is corrected. (Easter III: TA) Christ leaves us in the flesh for us to repent in spirit. Unless we mourn over what our sins have done to God’s Word made flesh, the Resurrected Christ cannot begin to make us better for His Kingdom. Thomas reminds us also that Christ is risen from the dead and become the first fruit of them that slept. (1 Cor. xv. 20) The movement from darkness into light is the first fruits. A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father. (St. John xvi. 16) Jesus Christ, the eternally begotten Son of the Hidden but Living God, must return to God. As the Apostles became strangers and pilgrims to this world, with them we must learn to follow Christ back to the Father, invisibly, in Spirit and in Truth. (St. John iv. 24) Being strangers and pilgrims in this world is just the beginning for St. Peter and his friends. Abide in me, and I in you. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. (St. John xv. 4, 5) Christ is preparing to ascend to the Father. If the Hidden Christ begins to be born in the hidden recesses of our believing and hoping souls, He will make us better. We must never be at home or at rest in this world. Our journey is like a woman with child. A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world. And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you. (Ibid, 21, 22) The expectant mother is sorrowful over what is yet hidden, that her newborn babe will be born into the world. If we wisely endure all suffering and sorrow, as strangers and pilgrims in this world, for joy that the hidden Christ is being born in our souls, we shall see Him again in Heaven forever in immortality and with incorruption. The end that we seek is the consolation of the hidden Divine Presence. Being strangers and pilgrims, we hope for what we see not but with patience wait for it. (Romans viii, 24) What is hidden consoles us. I will see you again, and you will rejoice. (St. John xvi. 22) With St. Peter, if we wisely and joyfully embrace the Hidden Christ who ascends to the Father, we shall be occupied with well doing, [that we] may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men, and not using [our] liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of God. (Ibid, 13) Believing in Christ’s Hidden Nature, as strangers and pilgrims, here and now, our weeping and lamenting shall join the hope that our sorrow shall be turned into joy. (Ibid, 20) With well doing, Christ’s hidden victory over all our sin and suffering makes us better.! Then others shall be astonished that the hidden love of the Invisible Godin the Spirit of the Resurrected Christ is carrying us all to Heaven, no longer as strangers and pilgrims, but those who are at rest and made the best for home in His Kingdom. Amen. ©wjsmartin So then, brethren, we are not the children of the bondwoman, but of the free. (Gal. iv. 21) The theme for the Fourth Sunday in Lent is liberation and freedom from the slavery of sin. Our lections for the past three Sundays have been leading us up to this point. On the First Sunday in Lent, we learned that Jesus Christ was tempted like as we are, yet without sin. (Hebr. iv. 15) What we found, I hope, was that the first step on the road to freedom was Christ’s willingness to be tried and tested by Satan as we are. He resisted the temptations to sin through an act of free will that rejected slavery to all false gods. On the Second Sunday of Lent, we reduced ourselves to becoming loyal dogs which eat of the crumbs that fall from Jesus’ table because our freedom is found in faithful submission to God alone. And last Sunday, we learned that eating and digesting the fragments from Christ’s table means establishing the habit of hearing and keeping God’s Word which alone can free us from bondage to all demons. In sum, then, we are undertaking a difficult and daunting labor of liberation from all that separates us from the knowledge and love of God. The problem is that we become obsessed with our own good works and not with faith in God’s Grace. We are tempted to forget that believing in God’s promises alone liberates us to walk on the road to true freedom. St. Paul is very much aware of this pernicious proclivity in the human heart, and he addresses it head-on in this morning’s Epistle. In his case, what he finds is that Judaizing Christians are threatening the spiritual freedom of his flock. Judaizing Christians were early believers who taught that strict adherence to the Jewish Law was essential to salvation. For these Christianized Jews, following the Law seemed more important than faith in Christ, God’s own sacrificed Lamb and our Redeemer. They believed that circumcision, dietary regulations, and the ceremonial Jewish Law were necessary for salvation freedom. So, in effect, the ritual traditions of Judaism competed in their hearts with faith in Christ and the work of His Grace. The result was that Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit were subject to the Law. But St. Paul knew that devotion to the tradition of the Law could neither free nor save a man. If the Jewish Law had been able to save a man, there would have been no need for Christ’s dying on the Cross to save us all! St. Paul uses an allegory drawn from the life of Abraham to show that these Jewish Christians were behaving more like slaves than the free children of God. He uses the illustration of Hagar and her son Ishmael. You will remember that Hagar was the slave of Abraham’s wife Sarah. She produced the bastard-heir Ishmael for Abram. Prior to the conception of his children, when Abram was old, God promised him that he would sire an heir, and that he would be the Father of children more numerous than the stars in the sky. (Gen. xv. 5) And so, Abram and Sarai his wife got to thinking. They were old, childless, and beyond the age of conceiving a child. It was not that they had no faith, but their faith was not strong enough to trust in what seemed naturally improbable, if not impossible. They were too earthly-minded and in bondage to this world. They thought that the only way for Abram to sire a son would be to mate with Sarai’s slave girl Hagar. Abram did so and Ishmael the son of the bondwoman was born. But Abram and Sarai’s premature jumpstart on fulfilling God’s promise was wrong-headed. Abram and Sarai were enslaved to their own human ingenuity and the good work they thought they could conceive. They had not found the freedom that is the fruit of faith in God’s Word. But God had other plans for them and would elicit from them a faith in His promises that would make them the spiritual father and mother of many nations. Because of their increased faith in God’s Grace, they would eventually sire Isaac in their old age. They learned that faith and not human ingenuity is the virtue that trusts in God’s power to fulfill His promises. So, St. Paul tells us that the early Jewish Christians were behaving more like Ishmael the son of the slave woman than Isaac the son of promise. Because they were more consumed with reason and human wisdom and not with God’s supernatural power in Jesus Christ, they were enslaved to the flesh. But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now. (Ibid, 29) The early Jewish Christians were allowing their flesh to enslave the Spirit. For St. Paul, these Jewish Christians saw Jesus as the apex, apogee, and acme of their own obedience to God through the [Law of] the flesh. They were in bondage to Abraham’s obedience to God as the father of the Law and did not see their slavery. They could not see that the Law given to Abraham’s descendent Moses was the Law of Sin and Death. They could not see that the Grace of God in Christ alone could hear the Law, endure its Sin and Death, and conquer both. But St. Paul is not content to leave it at that. He takes another turn in his allegory that he hopes will eradicate Jewish bondage to the flesh. He tells them that though Hagar was the slave mother of the slave child Ishmael –and thus of all the Arabic people, she is no different from the earthly children of Israel. A better translation than our Authorized Version reads that Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. (Gal. iv. 25) For those who desire to be under the [old Jewish] law (Ibid, 21), there is no distinction between being a Gentile or Jew who is still enslaved to the Law of Sin and Death. St. Paul has added insult to injury. He tells the Jewish Christians that though they are by birthright the children of promise and the New Jerusalem to come, they look much more like the earthly children of Arabia, and that their cherished Mount Sinai is no better than an Arabic hill! As Monsignor Knox says, Mount Sinai, in Arabia, has the same meaning in the allegory as Jerusalem; the Jerusalem which exists here and now; an enslaved city, whose children are slaves. (The Epistles and Gospels, p. 100) Both Jews and Gentiles live in bondage to the elements of nature and her laws. They do so because all men are born slaves to sin. They can become Christians only through the freely willed act of faith in God’s promises. Historic Jerusalem is in bondage and can only find freedom in the spiritual Jerusalem of God’s kingdom. For, Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband. (Ibid, 26, 27) Sarah, well-stricken in years and barren by reason of nature’s laws, through Abraham’s faith, became the mother of promise and freedom. Mary, young and innocent, who was barren in the sense that she knew not a man, became the mother of the promise’s fulfillment in Jesus Christ. The faith of both looks forward to promises that are to be enjoyed in the liberation and freedom that are found in God’s own Kingdom. My friends, this Sunday in Lent is called Mothering Sunday, Refreshment Sunday, or in Latin, Laetare Sunday. The Latin is from the ancient introit to the Mass is Laetare Jerusalem: O be joyful, Jerusalem. Today we are called to remember that our salvation comes to us only through faith in God’s promises. So, as we continue our Lenten journey up to the Cross of Christ’s love, Mother Church desires to bring us out of slavery and into the freedom of faith. When we live as children of the bondwoman…born after the flesh…and in bondage, (Gal. iv. 23,24) under the elements of the world (Gal. iv. 3) doing service unto them which by nature are no gods (Gal. iv. 8), we are enslaved like Hagar and Ishmael. When this world’s natural attachments, human expectations, and earthly hopes consume us, we imperil and threaten the free operation of faith in God’s Grace. The problem is not with the world but with Christians who are too enslaved to it and thus are not being made free through faith from above. This problem is not new. And, so, as St. Paul rebuked the ancient Galatian church long ago, he admonishes and reproaches us today. My little children, I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you….(Gal. iv. 19 Jerusalem which is above…is free…the mother of us all. (Gal. iv. 26) For Christ to be formed in us, we must allow Him to work His redemption into our hearts. To allow that work to begin, we must freely desire that God’s Grace in Christ might become the Law of our lives. We should go up with Christ to die on His Cross. As Oswald Chambers writes: Some of us are trying to offer up spiritual sacrifices to God before we have sacrificed the natural. (M.U….Dec.10) The Law of Nature enslaves us to the old Law of sin. For this reason, we must pray that Christ may be formed in us. (Idem) As we follow Him up to the Jerusalem of His Cross, we must abandon ourselves to faith in His desire to conquer the Law of Sin, Death, and Satan. Abraham believed God and it was counted unto him for righteousness. (Rom. iv. 3) Jesus believed that only by the pure sacrifice of His whole life to God, in enduring Sin and Death, could He conquer them both and turn Sin to Righteousness and make Death the seedbed of the New Life. Jesus’ victory over Sin and Death alone opens the way to New Life and freedom with God our Heavenly Father. Cast out the bondwoman and her son. (Gal. iv. 29) Will we journey from earth to heaven, from Mount Sinai to Jerusalem in Jesus? Will we faithfully follow Him up to His Cross to find that as He pours out His Blood for us, Sin and Death have no power over Him? Will we approach the Gateway to Heaven, to Jerusalem which is above…free…[and] the mother of us all, and which earnestly longs to free us by Law of God’s Love in the Heart of the Crucified Wounded Healer? In Christ on His Cross, we believe that our bondage to Sin and Death is conquered. Sin could not stop Him, Death would not keep Him down, and Satan was rendered powerless. His Cross alone leads us to freedom. Amen. ©wjsmartin WE beseech thee, Almighty God, look upon the hearty desires of thy humble servants, and stretch forth the right hand of thy Majesty, to be our defence against all our enemies; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. The point of our journey up to Jerusalem in this holy season of Lent is not only to see with spiritual eyes what the love of the Word [that] was made flesh and dwelt among us (St. John i. 14) does but also to hear the same Word. We go to Jerusalem to hear what the Word of God in the flesh has to say to spiritual sickness and disorder and then also to spiritual hardness of heart, obduracy, and ill will. What Jesus says is all-important for a true understanding of the salvation into which He is drawing all who will desire it. For when the ears of sinful men are opened to the Word of God, not only can they learn of His will but, also, they can embrace the power of His love. The Word of God in the flesh is not only educational but spiritually transformative. Our theme for this Sunday is spiritual hearing. Our understanding of it is found in this morning’s Miracle of the Dumb or Mute Man. Prior to reading this passage from St. Luke 's Gospel, the Apostles had been hearing Jesus’ discourse on petitioning God the Father in prayer. Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. (St. Luke xi. 9,10) Jesus insists that the Father longs to hear from us. Earthly fathers hear their children and care for them. If [they], being evil, know how to give good gifts unto [their] children: how much more shall [the] heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him? (Ibid, 13) Then on the heels of this, Jesus comes upon a dumb or mute man. Here is a man who can neither hear, nor speak, nor ask. The dumb cannot speak in any rationally coherent way but can only laugh, cry, holler, and groan. If he had been suffering from this physical disability alone, his chief handicap would have been that physical deafness that prevents a man from uniting rationally with the world around him through speech. But what we find is that there is a more insidious reason or cause for this man’s inability to hear and to speak. He was possessed of a demon. Jesus was casting out a demon and it was dumb. (Ibid, 14) The real sickness that afflicted the deaf and dumb man was demonic possession. Otherwise, Jesus would have performed a bodily miracle only. But this man’s sickness was psychic and spiritual. Thus, Jesus expels a demon. He does this, no doubt, to teach His Apostles and us something about the nature of that evil which threatens both to possess and to overcome any man in this life. Jesus never treats the symptoms of spiritual disease and sickness alone but will rather attack and overcome the source and origin of the evil. This man can neither hear nor speak because the devil has possessed him. The devil’s one aim is to divide men from God and men from other men. His spiritual aims are as present to our world as to that of the New Testament. Thus, what we must desire from Jesus is that Divine mercy which alone can overcome and banish those demons, which threaten to ruin our spiritual lives by leading us to despair of communion with God and our neighbors. And it came to pass, when the devil was gone out, the dumb spake. (Ibid, 14) Yet, receiving the healing of one demon is never enough. We read that when the deaf mutant was healed, He spake. (Idem) And yet what did he say? Praise God! No sooner has one demon been banished from the life of the healed man who desires to speak –to thank Jesus and to ask questions about how he should now live the new life that had been given to him, than other demons worse than the first drown out his questions with a barrage of verbal attacks on Jesus. Where are they, you might ask? They are in the hearts and souls of those who attack Jesus for the miracle He performed on the deaf man. But unlike the demon that possessed the deaf and mute man, these demons are concealed. They are so hidden within the souls of the malevolent attackers that they don’t even know what they are saying. The demons have so effectively inured and acclimated these men to sin that they don't even recognize that they are possessed! These men believe that they are religiously related to the world around them through their piety and good works. Yet, while they might lead moral and upright lives externally and visibly, their hearts are far from God. So, once Jesus has healed the demon-possessed deaf and dumb, the people wondered. But some of them said, He casteth out devils through Beelzebub the chief of the devils. And others, tempting him, sought of him a sign from heaven. (Ibid, 14-16) See how far wickedness has advanced in the lives of these men! One miracle is not enough. They need proof that he is not demon-driven. Jesus responds to them: Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and a house divided against a house falleth. If Satan also be divided against himself, how shall his kingdom stand? (Ibid, 17,18) Jesus makes it clear that the devil has no interest in healing the deaf and the dumb. His design is to divide all men from God in Jesus. The devil is determined to bring men to despair of all spiritual healing, sanctification, and salvation. Satan cannot endure the man’s entry into the world of words through the Word of God made flesh. Satan’s singular intention is to overcome the love that moves Jesus the Word. Jesus’ love brings men to the good healing that God intends, and Satan is enraged. Jesus continues. If I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them out? therefore shall they be your judges. But if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you. (Ibid, 19, 20) Romano Guardini tells us that Jesus replies: Don’t you see how I war against Satan? How can you say that he works through me, which is the same as saying that we join forces to found one kingdom? (The Lord, Regnery, p. 119) Those who attack God’s healing power are Satan’s demonic friends who frantically attempt to set up a kingdom of appearances and disorder. (Ibid, 117) [Jesus’ enemies] have blashphemed against the Holy Ghost [by turning] against the heart of God; Jesus is saturated with the essence of God. To accuse Him of working through the power of Satan, is to touch the absolute in ill will. (The Lord, Regnery, 120) These men reveal the absolute in ill will and dare to disrupt the operation of Mercy in Jesus. Their malice, jealousy, and hatred cannot endure the spiritual goodwill, generosity, and love that Jesus the Word brings into the world. Jesus proclaims that He that is not with me is against me: and he that gathereth not with me scattereth. (Ibid, 23) The deaf and mute who is now able to speak is silent and, no doubt, curious about what his healing has provoked. He wants to receive the miracle humbly as an expression of God’s love but is tempted to suspect Satan’s mischief. The deaf-mute man has entered the dangerous world of words. Look and listen to what he sees and hears! He does not hear men who are awe-inspired in the presence of God’s goodness. He does not hear the silence of men made mute because God’s strong man is lovingly speaking healing on earth. Rather, he hears men who are threatened by God’s love in the heart of Jesus Christ. Jesus anticipates their feverish malice. When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out. And when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter in, and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. (Ibid, 24-26) Many men may be liberated from unclean spirits but forget that God’s Grace alone brings mercy. Because they have been overcome by God's Strong Man and deprived of the armour [of their own good works] in which they trusted, their souls are in danger of greater demonic possession. St. Cyril reminds us that The devil finds their hearts empty, and void of all concern for the things of God, and wholly taken up with the flesh, and so he takes up his abode in them…[So their] last state is worse than the first. (Cyril: PG 72, col. 699.) Jesus reminds us that He that is not with me is against me. (Ibid, 23) Healing is spiritual and if we ask for it, it shall fill our empty and fleshly hearts to walk as children of the light. (Eph. v, 8) Jesus calls the healed mutant forth into a promising future with God. Yea, rather, Blessed are they that hear the Word of God and keep it. (Ibid, 28) Hearing the Word of God in Jesus Christ is all about a relationship. Hearing the Word of God means thankfully receiving God’s healing Grace to conquer us who were sometimes darkness but are now light in the Lord. (Eph. v. 8,9) In Jesus, we hear of His intention to take the armour in which we have too often trusted and to scatter the spoils. (Ibid, 22) Jesus is the strong man who will establish His love in us and banish the devil. We need to ask for His ongoing healing. For, as Calvin says, Let us not then suppose that the devil has been vanquished by a single combat, because he has once gone out of us. On the contrary, let us remember that…he has knowledge…of all the approaches by which he may reach us; and that, if there be no open and direct entrance, he has dexterity enough to creep in by small holes or winding crevices. (Calvin’s Comm’s; Vol. xvii) Today, let us hear the Word of God in Christ who longs to break the power of those demons whose envy is the tribute that mediocrity pays to excellence. (F. Sheen) We are weak, but Christ is strong. If we pause for long enough to ask the Father for Christ’s healing power, His strong love will vanquish and overcome all our demons. Then, with goodwill and gratitude, we shall welcome Jesus’ healing power in others and ourselves. Amen. ©wjsmartin As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool repeats his foolishness. Proverbs 26:11 The season of Lent is nothing if it does not confuse human wisdom and turn man’s expectations upside down. For what the lections of this Holy Season attempt to show us is that the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He takes the wise in their own craftiness. (1 Cor. iii. 19) And again, as Isaiah records, therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvelous work among this people…for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid. (Isaiah 29. 14) In Lent, we learn that the Wisdom of God revealed in the human life of Jesus Christ often challenges and overturns the wisdom of this world. And I don’t mean to say that human wisdom or reason is destroyed, but rather man’s reason is stretched to the point of meeting and embracing God’s much higher and greater Wisdom. In last week’s Gospel, we read of a real challenge and trial that Christ underwent to resist the reason of this world and to embrace God’s Wisdom. You will remember that the Spirit led Christ into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. And there we learned that Christ resisted Satan’s temptations and banished him. The Wisdom that we gleaned from that Gospel is that Jesus Christ, God as Man, faced evil, resisted it, and in the end, overcame it. Man’s wisdom walks in step with the devil; it thinks that it can use the Divine Spirit for worldly ends, that it can make God subject to its whims and idle curiosities, and that it can be as absolute as God. (RDC. Lent I) What Jesus Christ reveals to us is that true Wisdom is God’s will and that the new humanity which He longs to offer us involves suffering, struggle, and sacrifice. The devil strives to sever Jesus and us from God’s will and way. He longs to hide us from ourselves, caging us into the world of our own vain imaginations and concealing us from God’s way of liberation and healing. He longs to hide us from the Wisdom of God, from seeing and knowing that the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding. (Job xxviii. 28) Jesus came down from Heaven to reveal God’s Wisdom through His human nature for our benefit. He came down to bring us back to the fear of the Lord so that the Divine Wisdom might be born in our hearts from above. But if we heed the message of today’s Gospel, we learn that there is another dimension still that must be added to our fear of the Lord if God’s Wisdom is to come alive in us. This is the character of desire. From our limited earthly passions and desires, we learn to fear the Lord. What we should desire is the Wisdom that His mercy gives birth to in our hearts and souls. In this morning’s Gospel, we see how alien, unfamiliar, and even foreign God’s Wisdom is to most men. Jesus had departed from Jerusalem and from His own people who would not receive the Wisdom that He came down to impart. The ancient Old Testament prophesied of the Jews’ pride. This people draweth unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. (Matthew xv. 8) God’s Wisdom had found no place to germinate and grow in the hearts of the religious Jews of Jesus’ day. Even Jesus’ disciples seemed hard-hearted and dimwitted. Jesus said: Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught? But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: These are the things which defile a man. (St. Matthew xv. 18-20) God’s Wisdom cannot touch and transform those who do not desire Him from their hearts. Those who come to need it realize that their earthly reason and good works provide no lasting health and happiness. Today, because He did not find any need for what He offered from His own people, Jesus left religious Jerusalem for the frontier territory where Israel bordered the land of the heathen. Perhaps the Wisdom that He carried would find seekers and searchers amongst the Jews’ ancient enemies. What Jesus finds confounds the reasonable expectations of both the Jewish Scribes and of His own Disciples. God’s Wisdom was first revealed to them. That a pagan woman’s understanding of it should have shown up the Jews’ blindness and resistance to it must have seemed wholly irrational to the Jews. So we read: Behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil. (St. Matthew xv. 22) Canaan means place of submission, humiliation, and lowliness. From an alien and barren place, so it seems, Jesus hears the cry for God’s Wisdom and Mercy. At first, Jesus seems deaf and unmoved by the plea. St. John Chrysostom writes that The Word [seems to have] no word; the fountain [seems] sealed; the physician withholds His remedies. Perhaps there is something in this desperate cry that moves Jesus to silent prayer. Wisdom is quick to hear and slow to speak…(St. James i. 19) Jesus is not ignoring the Samaritan woman. Rather, He will allow her to pursue Him with deepest passion and longing. He allows her to pursue her desire with persistence. He did, after all, come to this place for a reason, most Divine in His intention. The Apostles were irritated. His disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us. (St. Matthew xv. 23) The disciples long selfishly to have Jesus for themselves. Jesus seems to rebuke her. I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. (St. Matthew xv. 24) Jesus proclaims that the Jews first were called by God and were given the promises because they should have known themselves to be His lost sheep. She will insist that the Gentiles too were promised a share in it all! She establishes her claim by showing that she knows and feels deeply that she too is lost. Jesus tries and tests her faith. I will wound and I will heal, saith the Lord. (Deut. xxxii. 39) St. Augustine describes His method in these words: He is no unkind physician who opens the swelling, who cuts, or cauterizes the corrupted part. He gives pain, it is true; but he only gives pain, that he may bring the patient on to health. He gives pain; but if he did not, he would do no good. (Aug, Serm. xxvii) Jesus applies God’s Wisdom and severe Mercy to this serious seeker. She bears the pain of her daughter’s demonic possession. She needs the God’s Great Physician. Her daughter’s disease has become her own. Then she came and worshipped Him, saying, Lord, help me. (St. Mattew xv. 25) Jesus feels her longing for what He has come into the world to give. Jesus is fueling her passion for God’s own cure and remedy. It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs. (St. Matthew xv. 26) He seems to insult her. She takes it as a welcome provocation. Already filled with Divine Wisdom, she responds, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table. (St. Matthew xv. 27) She is one tough Gentile woman! She cannot be stopped. Her poverty of her spirit is beautiful. She knows that she is alien to Israel’s promises; she claims neither right nor privilege to God’s Word and Wisdom; she knows herself as a powerless creature in the presence of God’s own Word and Wisdom. She knows that she is one dead dog who can be healed by God’s Mercy alone. She turns to the sole source and origin of all healing. The Wisdom in Jesus is what she will have. Yes Lord, unlike your own lost sheep, I am a dead dog. But, surely, even such a dead dog as I can find in you that Mercy that is great enough to let me eat of the crumbs that fall from your table reserved for your lambs. God’s Wisdom is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. (Ps. xlvi. 1) Jesus honors in this Gentile woman what He could not find in His own people or His disciples. O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. (St. Matthew xv. 28) Take note of this heathen woman’s wisdom. I wound and I will heal. (Idem) This woman finds no help in this world’s medicines. She knows in herself that what she needs comes from Heaven alone. They that are whole need not a physician but they that are sick. (St. Luke v. 31) This dead dog knows Heaven’s Cure and will have it from Jesus. Archbishop Trench reminds us that most people would have turned away in anger and despair from Jesus’ Wisdom. (Notes on the Parables…) But this woman is bereft of any human arrogant resentment. She is self-consciously powerless. She knows the power of Almighty God in Jesus Christ. Many would count this woman a fool in the face of what seems cruel mockery from Jesus. But this woman knows better. Here we find a truly liberated woman, full of wisdom, courage, and persistence! Where is the wise person?...Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. (1 Cor. i. 20, 21) The woman of Canaan was a fool for Christ. She knows that she has no power of herself to help herself. Her faith knows that both outwardly in her body and inwardly in her soul Christ can defend her from all adversities that may happen to the body and all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul (Collect, Lent II). This alien woman, a dog, will humbly and thankfully receive the crumbs that fall from Christ’s table being called not unto uncleanness but unto holiness. (1 Thes. iv. 4) Oftentimes, our Savior denies our initial petitions. He seems to say No to us. But Christ longs for us to seize the Wisdom of His Love and Mercy. This woman and we must respond My own strength, Lord, thou knowest…is weakness and…not to be trusted. (B. Jenks) To this woman’s great humility and faith, Jesus says Be it unto thee, even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour. (Idem, 28) We too should persist with humility and faith to find Christ’s healing. Amen. ©wjsmartin O Lord, who for our sakes didst fast forty days and forty nights, Give us Grace to use such abstinence, that, our flesh being subdued to the Spirit, We may ever obey thy Godly Motions in Righteousness and True Holiness To thy Honor and Glory, Who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, One God, world without end. Amen. One of the questions, which I hope we shall answer by the end of our forty days of Lent, is this: Who is Jesus Christ? The question is of utmost importance to our respective destinies. That the question has not been asked much in recent years is a sign that begs the question even more. Who is Jesus Christ? This is the question we shall ask throughout Lent. This is the Season in which, I pray, we shall find the answer. Lent reveals Who Jesus is by way of His having been tempted to be Who He is not. He was tempted not to be the Son of God as man. This means that He was tempted not to undertake the painful and necessary road to Gethsemane, Gabbatha, and Golgotha. Put more simply, He was tempted to redeem us by not suffering anything at all for our redemption and salvation. Now, remember, today’s Gospel temptation narrative follows on the heels of John the Baptist’s baptism of Jesus when Jesus emerged from the river Jordan and the heavens were opened unto Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon Him: and lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. (St. Matthew iii. 16, 17) Who is Jesus? This answer pleases our senses. The Father has anointed Jesus His Son and the Descent of the Dove confirms our expectations. Mystified mortals are mesmerized by the Divine Immanence. Messiah has come to save us all and will defeat the enemies of our Heavenly Father. So, we think. Thus, we hope. But what we read next confounds our expectations. THEN was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an-hungered. when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an-hungered. (Ibid, 1,2) Who is Jesus? We begin to find the answer to our question by being led up of the Spirit with Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted of the Devil. (St. Matthew iv. 1) The Dove who has descended from Heaven with the Father’s blessing leads Jesus not into Jerusalem for a triumphal coronation but into the desert for struggle, trial, and temptation by Satan. The Son of God begins the mission of our redemption with suffering! For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. (Hebrews iv. 15) Following the Baptism of John, who preached repentance, Jesus’ first order of business is to undergo the temptations that we all endure. Jesus was anointed to suffer as we suffer and to be tempted as we are tempted. Baptism is followed by the manifold assaults of the world, the flesh, and the Devil. We all know and have experienced it and Jesus blesses our suffering by enduring it Himself! We read on. And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. (Ibid, 3) The Son of God has been dignified and honored by the Father. The Spirit leads Jesus into that desert place where He has fasted from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The Son of God made man is not only famished but alone. Satan tempts us hardest when we are hungry and in isolation. Who is Jesus? Jesus is the Son of God who is with us after the fast, when we are alone and most sorely tempted by earthly things, like hunger and thirst, lust and gluttony. Satan begins If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. (Idem) The Son of God, God’s Word, who brought waters out of the stoney rock (Ps. lxxviii. 16) to nourish the ancient Hebrews in the wilderness can surely use His Divine Power to satisfy His earthly hunger by turning the flat rocks in the wilderness into bread. Satan tempts Jesus to prove that He is the Son of God by putting His own earthly needs before His Divine Commission. Who is Jesus? Jesus is the one who will redeem us by hungering and thirsting for [God’s] righteousness. (St. Matthew v. 6) The Son of God was made man so that man might become a son of God once again. Jesus will insist Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, that….all [other]….things may be added unto you. (St. Matthew vi. 33) Who is Jesus? Jesus is the one who knows that we all are tempted to put earthly hunger and thirst, our bodies’ needs and urges before God. We all have been consumed with food, drink, sex, and riches. But Jesus has meat to eat that Satan does not know of. His meat is to do the will of Him that sent…. Him. (St. John iv. 32,34) Jesus knows that Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. (St. Matthew iv. 4) St. Paul, in today’s Epistle, reminds us that only with patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in watchings, and in fastings (2 Cor. vi. 4) -in the flesh, do we discover Satan’s assault. Who is Jesus? Jesus is the Son of God with us in our first temptation when the world is barren and determined to assault and persecute us, and when we are tempted to put our bodies and the flesh before our souls and the spirit. Jesus is the Son of God who proclaims I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. (St. John vi. 35) Who is Jesus? Jesus is determined to become the bread of God’s will. Satan will not be deterred. He will tempt Jesus a second time with pride, envy, and wrath. Fasting in the body often brings anger in the soul and then envy of God’s pure and simple blessedness. Then comes the pride that tempts us to abandon and even harm the body altogether. He has denied the good of the body, Satan thinks, so let Jesus dispense with his body entirely, cleaving as he does to this ‘Word’ of God. He trusts in God, then let Him deliver Him now, if he will have Him: for he said, I am the Son of God. (St. Matthew xxvii. 43) Then the devil taketh Him up into the holy city, and setteth Him on a pinnacle of the temple, And saith unto Him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou thy foot against a stone. (St. Matthew iv. 5,6) Satan tempts Jesus to prove that He is the Son of God by hurling Himself from on high onto the pavement of the temple with pilgrims gathered to witness the event. Cast yourself down; surely God will not let one perish who places the good of his soul above that of his body. Who is Jesus? Jesus is the Son of God made flesh, with a soul in a body. Grace never destroys but perfects human nature. The Son of God will not command faith from miracles as Satan commanded bread from stones. We are tempted to avoid and flee suffering and sacrifice. Jesus shows us that we must not. Jesus will suffer and sacrifice His life for us all. He will not hurl Himself down but allow Himself to be lifted high on the Cross. Through suffering and sacrifice, Christ conquers all. Who is Jesus? Jesus is the Son of God made flesh whose humility and meekness will defeat sin, death, and Satan from the Cross of His love. Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. (St. Matthew iv. 7) Who is Jesus? Satan thinks that only one temptation remains. Surely if Jesus is the Son of God as flesh, He can still be tempted by greed and sloth. Jesus has come to save all men, but He wonders if Jesus is enslaved to God’s will. Jesus’ last temptation, brought on by exhaustion and sloth, is to covet with greed His Father’s power and to steal it for His own selfish glory. Like us, Jesus is tempted to become His own god, becoming the master of His own destiny and the definer of right and wrong. Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. (St. Matthew iv. 8,9) Satan tempts Jesus to despair of His Father’s Kingdom and to rule over His own. The last temptation is the worst since it lures us into the world of becoming our own gods, calling good evil and evil good. Jesus has Himself wholly to His Father’s kingdom. Finally, He is tempted to give it all up –to do evil that good may come of it. (Idem, Knox, p. 65) Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. (St. Matthew iv. 10) The Son of God has come to reveal the Father’s wisdom and judgment. The Son of God will freely offer Himself as God’s own pure Lamb, to make atonement for our sins and invite us into salvation. Then the devil leaveth Him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto Him. (St. Matthew iv. 11) Who is Jesus? The Son of God who became the Son of Man. The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. (St. Matthew xx. 28) At the end of our Gospel lesson we read that Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him. (St. Matthew iv. 11) Luther tells us that the angels came down from Heaven to feed Him. Now Jesus’ earthly hunger can be satisfied. The Son of God has come to set first things first. The Son of God will go on to win our salvation on the Cross of Calvary. He is the Broken Body and Poured out Blood. He is our Broken Bread and Poured out Wine. Food for Men Wayfaring. Amen. ©wjsmartin Today we begin the great season of Lent. Our liturgical season goes back to the earliest days of the Christian Church when the faithful were called into memory the journey up to Jerusalem and the great events of the Passion which came to pass in the life of Jesus Christ. Lent is a journey. Lent is a time of journeying in memory with Christ, so that we may embrace more profoundly the Word of God Ηimself in our souls. Journeying with Christ means being with Him and accepting his offer of friendship in love. “With its duration of 40 days, Lent acquires an undoubted evocative force. It tries to recall some of the events that marked the life and history of ancient Israel, also presenting to us again its paradigmatic value. Let us think, for example, of the 40 days of the universal flood, which ended with the covenant established by God with Noah and thus with humanity, and of the 40 days of Moses' stay on Mount Sinai, which were followed by the gift of the tablets of the Law.” (Benedict XVI, Ash Wednesday, 2006) Our First Sunday in Lent begins with the Jesus being tempted by Satan in the wilderness. But we shall also remember that He was led by the Spirit into this encounter. The Holy Spirit will take us with Jesus into a place where we have no food, no water, and no shelter. There we shall be asked to face both God our Heavenly Father and Satan’s opposition to His Son and Word made Flesh, Jesus Christ. There we must face our temptations and ask Jesus to help us to conquer them. It will help if we keep a journal or notes. We must honestly face our temptations when they arise, jot them down, describe the feelings associated with them, search out their origins, and give them over in our spiritual poverty to the Lord for destruction. This exercise will open us to the righteousness of Jesus Christ, which alone can conquer our sins. Lent should be a time of quiet stillness in the desert. We should know that Jesus is with us and wants to help us to resist temptation and cleave to His powerful goodness. In Lent we spend time in the wilderness with Jesus and we also prepare to go up to Jerusalem with Him. We pray to go up to the Jerusalem of Jesus’ Cross. In Lent, we shall follow Jesus up to the great city of the Jewish Kings to accompany Jesus into His unearned, unmerited, and wholly undeserved rejection, torture, suffering and death. We shall follow Jesus up to that experience that we, as fallen, sinful creatures have caused. Jesus is the Holy Child of God. Jesus is the Son of God made man. As man, He goes up to Jerusalem to do a work for us what we could never sustain. He will take on sin, death, and Satan. He will be tempted again to reject God the Father, to choose the evil over the good, and to abandon His mission and calling to win our salvation. He will be tempted at the point of extreme remove from God to say no to God and yes to Himself. On the Cross, as in the wilderness, Jesus will be with God and Satan alone. He will be attacked by all demons that threaten His relationship to God the Father. He will be tortured and crucified by all of us who, if we are honest with ourselves, want Him dead because that is what sin does. Sin kills the Word of God in the flesh of Jesus and in the flesh of all men. Jesus’ Crucifixion sums up and lifts up the reality of what man’s sin tries to do with God’s Word made flesh. Today we rehearse the age-old custom of The Imposition of Ashes. Ashes will be imposed on our foreheads, and we shall hear the words, Remember O Man, that dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return. (Genesis iii:19). The words, taken from the First Book of Moses Genesis, remind us that our bodies were molded and fashioned from the dust of the earth. These words humble us. They remind us that we are corruptible, that we all shall die, return to the earth, and decompose into what is next to nothing. But in God’s presence, we are reminded that we need another kind of death, a spiritual death, the kind of death that we must die with Jesus on His Cross of Calvary. We shall be reminded that we must die to the world, the flesh, and the devil, in and through Jesus Christ. We must go to Calvary to see the vision of a new death that becomes the seedbed of our new life because Christ loves us more than our sin and Christ forgives us our nailing Him to the Cross. Lent doesn’t end in death. Lent is all about a death that will lead us into new and Resurrected Life. We repent to believe. We believe to follow. We follow to die and then to rise into new life. Lent is part and parcel of our return to God through Jesus Christ’s Cross and beyond. Lent is about becoming partakers of His all-sufficient sacrifice on Calvary’s Cross so that we might ingest and imbibe the food and drink of His Sacred Love, His Body and Blood, that give us the strength to die to sin and come alive to righteousness. Today we pray that we shall begin our journey with Christ to His Cross and beyond. We look forward to Lent as a time of fasting and abstinence. We look forward to Lent as a time of pilgrimage with Jesus to His Cross. We look forward to Lent as a time of journeying into our death to sin and our coming alive to righteousness. We long for the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, to dwell in our hearts so that with His Wisdom, Power, and Love we might die to sin and come alive to righteousness. The old gods and our old sinful ways must be left behind. We must face our temptations. We must confront the stubborn and hard rocks of our old sinful selves. In the stillness, we must ask Jesus to assist us in our spiritual warfare. We must ask Jesus to enable us to sit still even in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation so that, with Him, we may embrace the power and submit to the Wisdom of our Heavenly Father. Remember the words of T. S. Eliot’s poem “Ash Wednesday.” “Because I do not hope to turn again…” This is how it begins. He hopes not to turn back and into a world of sin, illusions, lies, and false gods. Because I do not hope to turn again Because I do not hope Because I do not hope to turn Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope I no longer strive to strive towards such things (Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?) Why should I mourn The vanished power of the usual reign? He then turns to Mother Church and commits his soul to her rule and governance as he begins his Lenten pilgrimage. Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden, Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still Even among these rocks, Our peace in His will And even among these rocks Sister, mother And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea, Suffer me not to be separated And let my cry come unto Thee. Amen. ©wjsmartin Behold, we go up to Jerusalem (Matthew 20. 18) The Gesima season ends with an invitation to take up another beginning. Behold we go up. (Matt. 20. 18) We are invited onto yet another road, a spiritual road that leads to our death and new life with God. The road which we will tread is not an easy one. As we have said, it will require humility, temperance, courage, and concentration. Our self-discipline must be used in the service of a more difficult task. We must learn how to hand over our sin to the Lord for death. It will demand a death to all else but the love of God in Jesus Christ. Progressively our journey will be an invitation onto the Way, the Truth, and the Life. I am the way, the truth, and the life, (John 14. 6) Follow me, Jesus says, for behold we go up to Jerusalem. In other words, behold we must go up if we would follow Jesus to His Kingdom. Our journey will teach us many things about ourselves and about God’s Love. First, of course, we shall learn what happens when sinful man cannot endure the love of God in the heart of Jesus. Every one of us is fallen away from the love of God and the love of neighbor. Fallen man rejects God’s Love. God’s Love never ceases to be itself and this means that it insists upon conditions that most men cannot endure. Love is made flesh for us in the life of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is that perfect Love that never ceases to offer itself to all people in all ages. But fallen man rejects this persistent, insistent, and determined Love of God in Christ. God’s Love ceaselessly reveals the truth in Jesus Christ. That Love is consistent God’s expectations of us all. Long before the coming of Christ, the prophets foretold of how God’s Love would be received in the heart of sinful man. They foretold of how fallen man would not be able to endure the persistent presence of God’s Love in the world. Fallen man resents it when God’s Love threatens to challenge and disrupt the universe of material and earthly comfort. The prophets knew that most men would be hard pressed to abandon the false gods of this world for the sake of God’s Love. Even the Apostles themselves bear witness to how difficult it will be to embrace the love of God in Jesus Christ. They believe that Jesus is the Love of God the Father made flesh. But they cannot see that He must be delivered unto the Gentiles. (Luke 18. 31) Nor can they allow themselves to imagine that He shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on. (Luke 18. 32) That Jesus will be demoralized, derided, and despoiled is beyond what they think is right or appropriate for God’s Son. The problem is that their idea of Love knows no struggle, difficulty, or sacrifice. What they see of Love involves neither suffering nor self-denial. The Apostles desire to go up with Jesus to Jerusalem and yet they have no conception of how God’s Love in the heart of Jesus must suffer at the hands of sinful man in order to save them all. Jesus prophesies that they shall scourge Him and put Him to death. (Ibid, 33) But the Apostles understood none of these things: and this saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things which were spoken.(Ibid, 34) Calvin says that they had formed the expectation for joyful and prosperous advancement and therefore had reckoned it to be in the highest degree absurd that Christ should be ignominiously crucified. (J. Calvin: Harmony of the Gospels, xvii) Their hearts and souls want only to be lifted up and to feel good. They cannot see. They are blind to what true love means and does. And it came to pass, that as he was come nigh unto Jericho, a certain blind man sat by the wayside begging: And hearing the multitude pass by, he asked what it meant. And they told him, that Jesus of Nazareth passeth by.(Luke 18. 35-37) The Apostles cannot see or understand what Jesus has said to them. And what do they find? A man who is literally blind in another way stumbles onto their path. They are spiritually blind, but he is physically blind. But this physically blind man sees what the Apostles do not see. And he cried, saying, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me.(Luke 18.38) What he could not see with his eyes, he saw and knew with the eyes of his heart and soul. So, he cries out for God’s love in the heart of Jesus for mercy. In some deep way, he knows that the Jesus who is going up to Jerusalem will come down to minister to him. The Apostles are blind and thus cannot see the point. And they which went before rebuked him, that he should hold his peace. (Luke 18. 39) The Apostles are confused and irritated enough. Why should they allow some pathetic blind man to interrupt a journey already suffused in confusion? Yet, the blind man sees. He sees that he must reach out to God’s Love made flesh. He sees that he cannot let Love made flesh pass him by. With the eyes of faith and the determination of hope, he sees God’s Love and the Power in Jesus, and so he cried so much the more, Thou son of David, have mercy on me. (Luke 18. 39) Let the Apostles luxuriously wallow in philosophical confusion. This man sees plainly and will have some of that Love that condescends to men of low estate! Love is near. The blind man is determined to have it! Behold we go up to Jerusalem. And as we go up, we find one who was blind and truly sees, who has only heard of this Jesus and yet sees and understands! Love is going up to Jerusalem, and He will take with him those who see His love and desire more of His mercy. The relationship is established. Will we go up to Jerusalem? Will we follow Love, cry out to Love, implore Love’s mercy as we travel into the depth of its meaning and purpose? And Jesus stood, and commanded him to be brought unto him: and when he was come near, he asked him, Saying, What wilt thou that I shall do unto thee? And he said, Lord, that I may receive my sight. And Jesus said unto him, Receive thy sight: thy faith hath saved thee. (Luke 18. 40-42.) Yes, behold we go up to Jerusalem, and as we go up, the Love that will be mocked, spitefully entreated, spitted upon, still loves. Love reaches out to all. Here to a new friend who knew more than Jesus’ disciples because he truly saw who Jesus was and understood the power of His Love. The blind man reveals a faith that sees the Love that heals. This is the Love that is going up to His death. Thus, Jesus finds one who can assist Him in beginning the process. This Love cannot help but love. This Love cannot help but die to Himself as He comes alive to God in the life of His brother. Jesus sees faith and hope and responds with God’s Love. His says Receive thy sight: thy faith hath saved thee. (Luke 18. 42) Love says to the blind man, because you see me inwardly and spiritually, you shall see me now outwardly and materially. And, blessed are they who have not seen, and yet believe. (John 20. 29) Behold, we go up to Jerusalem. (Idem) On the journey up to Jerusalem, Love in the flesh is always Himself. It will never cease to be the Love received from the Father and passed on to all –friend and foe alike. Here a new friend asks for its power and receives it. The new friend has the eyes of faith with which to see. Will we desire this Love with the faith and hope of the blind man? We have been blind, but Love desires for us to see. As St. Paul reminds us this morning, Love or Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth. Love or Charity is always Himself. Love made flesh is always Himself. Jesus is Love or Charity made flesh. He suffers all resistance to God’s Love. His Love never ceases to be kind, benevolent, humble, and meek. He is never puffed up or proud, never seeks his own advantage and worldly comfort. In fact, Love always reaches down to lift others up. It stoops down to lift the blind man into the light of day. It will reach down from the Cross to see and know that those who are killing Him on Good Friday might have a change of heart on Holy Saturday to embrace Him wholeheartedly on Easter Sunday. Behold we go up to Jerusalem. (Idem) Will we begin to imagine that Love in the flesh must suffer innocently to reveal God’s persistent desire for all men’s salvation? Will we begin to imagine that Love in the flesh must become sin who knew no sin to vanquish sin and death? Will we participate in this death to sin, death, and Satan that we might begin to find new life in Him? Will we embrace the love that forgives the worst of sinners and their sin? Will we cherish the love that calls forth more generosity at the cost of loss to ourselves and sacrifice? Will we treasure that love that must suffer real mental and even physical anguish and loss in order to be made one with the suffering Christ? Will we see, with the blind man, that unless we believe and hope in the invisible work of God’s love in the heart of Jesus, we cannot be saved? Today, let us forsake all, follow Jesus, and glorify God. (Ibid, 43) With Calvin, those who are healed of their blindness show a grateful mind in presenting themselves to others as mirrors of the Grace of Christ. (Idem) With the blind man, we might even gratefully anticipate the Resurrection that stands behind the Cross. Most blest believer he! Who in that land of darkness and blind eyes Thy long-expected healing wings could see, When Thou didst rise! And, what can never more be done, Did at midnight speak with the Sun! (Henry Vaughn: The Night) In the midnight of darkness, behold we see! Behold, we go up to Jerusalem. (Idem) Amen. ©wjsmartin |
St. Michael and All Angels Sermons:
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