Ascension Tide is one of the shortest of Church’s liturgical seasons, lasting only ten days. Forty days after Easter, Christ has ascended to the Father. Ten days later, He sends the Holy Spirit into the Apostolic Church at Pentecost, or Whitsunday. In these few days, we are called to examine the significance and meaning of the Ascension for us.
         
By His Ascension, Jesus Christ has restored redeemed humanity to God the Father. Every part of our fallen human nature has been healed and glorified in Him and now sits at God’s right hand to draw us upward. Heaven is now our true home. From there, Christ intercedes for us and prays the Father that we might freely will to go where He has gone.
         
On Ascension Day, we glimpsed the sovereignty of Christ manifested gloriously in His return to the Father. He returns to Heaven as its Lord, having subdued the earth, reclaimed it for God, and redeemed those who believe in Him. His Ascension seals the fate of the universe. Christ, who humbled Himself to redeem mankind and creation, now asserts His rule from Heaven until His coming again, to judge both the quick and the dead.

The extent to which His followers can convert the nations depends upon His continued rule of their hearts and souls. Without the rule of Christ within us, His most holy Incarnation would be left without witness and success. 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)
 
All creatures have always felt something of this magnetic power of Christ, the Logos, the Wisdom of God that perfects all things in an imperfect world. The apple tree grows and bears fruit following laws written upon it by God. Farm animals provide nourishment and reproduce, continuing the cycle of life. Even fallen man, at the very least, reproduces and lives on in his children. All creation follows the Lordship of Christ by laws inscribed in its nature.

Yet for man, there is more to be discovered in the magnetic power of Christ. For restless souls, seekers, and explorers, the magnetic power of Christ satisfies the deepest longing for union with God and eternal happiness. St. Peter says this morning that the end of all things is at hand. (1 St. Peter, iv. 7) Something more decisive and lasting has been accomplished and finished in the life of Christ. Man’s alienation from God has been overcome, sin has been conquered, death has taken on new meaning, and Satan has been put in his place. Repair, redemption, and salvation have now become real possibilities through God’s Grace. The human life of Christ is offered to all men as the way home to Heaven. For those who follow Christ, there is a summons and call to ascend with Christ in heart and mind, and with Him to continually dwell.

But, as St. Peter reminds us, Ascension for Christians means more than gazing up into the Heavens. It is a call to be born again inwardly and spiritually as the Ascended Christ reigns in our souls. St. Peter insists that we must be sober and watching unto prayer. (idem) If the magnetic power of the Ascended Christ is to be effectual in our lives, we must submit spiritually to His sovereignty. As Bishop Westcott writes, Christ is not only present with us as Ascended: He is active for us. (Sermons…) Beneath the surface of life in the body, we are called to embrace His action, which intends to make us into something beautiful and true.

So, we must set our hearts on things above and not things of the earth. (Col. iii. 2) With Paul Claudel, we must confess that the time has come for us to take our flight, body and soul, toward our Higher Cause. (I Believe, 160) In Christ, the higher cause and greater meaning of life is to be found. If we have our conversation with Him in Heaven, to love His appearing, we shall be dissolved into His love. (Jenks, 352) As we ask Him to begin to reign and rule as King Supreme from the thrones of our hearts, He will draw us up from the poor perishing enjoyments here below to the glorious and eternal gifts above.

Today, Christ promises us that from His Ascended Glory, He will send the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth. (St. John, xv. 26) The Spirit will testify to Christ’s salvific power, establish His magnetic power as the source of our redemption, and effect our transformation. But the Spirit will also protect us amidst the world’s hostility.  

They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me. (St. John xvi. 2,3)
 
While we may suffer in the body, the Spirit will protect or souls.
        
The Ascended Christ pleads our cause at God’s right hand. To live in this eternal security, we must allow Christ’s character to rule and govern our souls. Bishop Westcott said long ago, heaven is first a temper and then a place. May Christ’s temper reign in us, enabling us to live above ourselves and walk in Heaven’s ways. For when the Holy Ghost comes to us, we pray that He finds our hearts and minds already conformed to the Ascended Christ and longing to share His Grace with others.

This week, as we prepare for Pentecost, where in your daily life is Christ calling you to set your hearts on things above and not on things of the earth (Col. iii. 2)? May we allow the Ascended Lord to draw us upward in heart and mind so that when the Holy Spirit descends, He finds us ready.
 
Amen.
©wjsmartin

 
Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that since we do believe
thy only begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, to have ascendended
into the heavens; so we may also in heart and mind thither ascend,
and with Him continually dwell,
who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost,
one God, world without end. Amen. (Collect, Ascension Day)
 
        
Today we celebrate the Ascension of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The imagery is, of course, that of rising up and returning to God the Father. Christians believe that Christ that the Word, the Logos, having been made flesh, made man, now glorified returns to the Father. What has come from God, for us men and for our salvation, now unites Himself with the source of our redemption and salvation. Thus, today, we must study Christ’s return to God, His call for us to follow Him, and the character of soul that is necessary for the journey.
        
Christ’s return to God is the reconciliation of His person with the Godhead. His person, in time and space, was, of course, human, and so with Christ’s ascension we celebrate the return of glorified man to the Father. What this means is that man’s nature has been redeemed, repaired, and restored in Jesus Christ. What God the Father did for us in time and space, in the humanity of Jesus, is now sealed in Heaven. Being made complete, man is once again made whole and one with the Creator. And this healthy restoration means that man has a future in the presence of God the Father forever, not limited to the conditions of the creation, but with the Creator in Heaven. That the Ascension, in literal terms, is the God/Man’s reconciliation with Heaven, gives our minds an image of Christ’s return to what is above, superior, greater, better, and most perfect. The outward and visible Ascension of Christ draws our minds into a victory that not only transcends sin, rises above sin and death, but rises above the created humanity to return it to Divinity.  
        
But the significance of the Ascension is found in Christ’s intention for us. His Ascension is not the record of a selfish Son of God reclaiming the Divine Nature He set aside for a time to save us. Christ intends for us to follow Him. The Nature of God is that perfect love that longs eternally for his creatures to be one with Himself, through knowledge and love. Christ Himself had promised the Apostles and Disciples that His most holy Incarnation, His being made man, was for the express purpose of sharing the benefits of His life and death with those who would believe and follow Him. Having been crucified by man’s sin, Christ returned in Easter Resurrection to explain His victory over sin, death, and Satan. Rather than expecting his followers to honor a dead hero, Christ invited his followers to enter into the new life whose proper inspiration and end is Heaven. Christ

shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God: and, being assembled together with them, commanded them tshat they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me.

The Apostles were eyewitnesses of Christ’s Resurrection from the dead. To them, Christ promised the impartation of the Holy Ghost, that they might share in His risen life. To ensure that they might partake of the merits and blessings of His Resurrection, Christ would have to leave them. In His heart he holds all believers. In his heart he carries us into Heaven.  From Heaven, Christ’s Incarnation would expand and grow in the hearts of all men who would believe and allow His union with God to change, transform, and perfect their lives for a future with Him in the Kingdom. Christ was then calling them, and men in all ages, to prepare for the coming of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost. He was inviting them in heart and mind to thither ascend and with Him continually dwell, to follow Him in His Ascension back to the Father. By ascending back to the Father, as St. Leo reminds us, Christ was not abandoning us but providing us with a more universal and sacramental presence. (De Resurr. Sermon II). In His Ascension, Christ is no longer insisting upon His physical presence in time and space for comfort, relief, and happiness. Rather, in His Ascension, Christ now will be present to us inwardly and spiritually, in heart and mind, in as many places as there are believers in the world. Rather than limiting Himself to ancient Palestine, two thousand years ago, now Christ promises to be present to all believers in all places until His coming again. But what is key, is that He will be present only in hearts and minds that thither ascend, rise up and into the presence of His union with our Father in Heaven. With willing desire and strong belief, you and I are invited to ascend into the presence of God the Father, through Jesus Christ our Lord, by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. Again with St. Leo, Christ ascended that faith might be more excellent and stronger, sight gave way to doctrine, the authority of which was to be accepted by believing hearts enlightened with rays from above. (idem)
        
Today, our Collect reminds us that the end of the Ascension is that we should with Him continually dwell. It is true enough that Christ ascends into the cloud, beyond or sight and comprehension. But if we remember that He holds us in His heart, He sees us still, within Himself, to be made one with the Father. The Ascension reveals to us that we are His and that He reigns supreme and sovereign over all believers. In and through Christ, if we believe, we can ascend in Him over all barriers and obstacles to Heaven. To embrace this truth practically, our everyday lives become occasions for surrender to His rule. Christ’s Ascension in heart and mind is not merely for monks and mystics. As we rear our children, we ought to pray for Christ’s loving guidance. As we work at or various occupations, we can plead for Christ’s wisdom. As we struggle to die to sin, we plead Christ’s power to gain the victory. When we believe and surrender in these ordinary moments, the ascended Christ will respond.

In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. (St. Mark xvi, 17, 18)
 
But all of this, only if we continually dwell with Christ. His Grace shall enable us to slay all our devils, speak with new tongues about His wisdom, power, and love alive in us, destroy the attacks of any serpentine generation of vipers, devitalize deadly poison, and heal the infirm.
        
My friends, Ascension Day exhorts us to ascend and dwell with Christ who pleads our cause at the right hand of the Father. St. Paul asks, If God be for us, who can be against us? (Romans viii. 31) In Christ, we find the love of God made flesh that subdues all sin if we would participate in His power. The character we seek to imitate and put on is Christ’s. If we continually dwell with Christ, He will repair and redeem us for salvation and ultimate union with the Father. If we ask Him for His help, follow His counsel, and submit to His lordship, we shall overcome earth’s seeming alienation from Heaven. And then, also with St. Paul, we shall believe and know that
neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (ibid, 38, 39)
 
Amen.
©wjsmartin
        
        

 
These things have I spoken unto you, that in me 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, from which pious pagan farmers prayed for deliverance. What was for pagans a day devoted to petitioning the false gods for help against threats to the harvest, was taken up and used by the Church as a day for appealing to the one true God, the source of spiritual growth.

In Medieval England, this took on a practical form. The priest would lead his people out of the church, through the fields, and around the parish boundaries in a solemn procession. They carried the cross and banners, sang the Litany, and prayed for God’s blessing on the crops, asking Him to protect the wheat and barley from disease, drought, and storms so that there might be a plentiful harvest.
 
This Rogation theme flows directly from today’s Gospel. Jesus tells His disciples: Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, He will give it you. (St. John xvi. 23) As His forty days of Resurrection come to a close, and His Ascension approaches, Jesus prepares His followers for a new way of being with Him. No longer will He be present with them in the flesh. Instead, He will be with them through the Holy Spirit. The whole purpose of the Incarnation was to restore human nature, reconcile it to God, and to reopen the way to Heaven.

Jesus continues: Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. (Ibid, 24) What is this joy? Christian joy descends from Heaven in Jesus Christ, redeems human nature in Him, and lifts our lives back to the Father. In Christ we discover who we truly are, creatures made to live in joyful union with God.  Neither sin, death, nor Satan could break Christ’s perfect union with the Father, and He desires to share that same unbreakable union with us.

Christ is moved and defined by the Father through the Holy Spirit for our salvation and joy. True joy is not found in bodily health, temporal happiness, or earthly success, all uncertain and impermanent. True joy is found only in union with the Father, through Jesus the Son, by the presence of the Holy Spirit. To become true sons of the Father who are made to do His will, we must be born inwardly anew through Heaven’s power, wisdom, and love.
This coming Thursday, Christ ascends back to the Father. To share in His joy, we must follow Him in spirit and in truth so that where He is, there we might be also. (St. John xiv. 3) Yet Christ’s Ascension profits us little unless we ask the Father for the Grace to live in Him under the Holy Spirit’s rule. Salvation and joy are not ours by natural right but come by Grace and by choice.

In stillness and quiet, we must study the life of Christ to discern where He came from, what moved Him to live and die for us, and to where He has returned. Everything that Christ did flowed from the Father’s will. I came forth from the Father. (Ibid, 28) That is why He must now leave us in the flesh, to send the Holy Spirit and establish a new spiritual way in our hearts. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. (1 St. John ii. 15) The Apostles had to release Christ in order to receive Him in the Spirit. ‘Ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.’ (St. John xv. 19) Jesus chooses us out of the world and desires to bring us back with Him to Heaven.
Christ has overcome sin, death, and Satan –the world– through the Holy Spirit. If we would share in His victory, we too must be moved and defined by the same 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)      

Therefore, we must not only hear [God’s Word] but be doers of it. (St. James i. 22) If we only hear but do not live it, we quickly forget who we are and what we are made for. Only by living the Word can we enter the perfect joy for which we were created. Living the Word sets us free and gives us true spiritual liberty. As the Collect for this Rogation Sunday prays: O Lord, from whom all good things do come: Grant to us thy humble servants, that by thy holy inspiration we may think those things that be good, and by thy merciful guiding may perform the same. (Collect: Rogation Sunday) The liberty that leads to eternal joy begins in the mind. By the Holy Spirit, we must ask for the Grace both to think what is good and, by God’s merciful guidance, to put it into action.
Practically, this means that we must be conscientious askers. Every day this week, let us pray the Rogation Collect slowly and then list before God one area of our lives where we need His holy inspiration and merciful guiding. Let us choose one thing that we might do differently, one act of obeying God more fully, one person whom we must forgive, one moment of self-sacrifice, and ask the Holy Spirit to give us the freedom to do it.

As we contemplate the glorified Christ, we see God’s perfect model for human life. We ask the Father to form the same goodness in us so that we might be kept unspotted by the world (St. James, i. 27) and overcome the world through faith. For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. (1 John 5:4)
By believing in Jesus Christ and receiving His Holy Spirit, we can become overcomers. In Christ, through faith, we can overcome the world and all its sorrows –seeking not earthly rewards, but the strength and perseverance to defeat our sin and live for God. In this way we may at last attain the joy for which we were created, the joy that Christ has purchased for us forever.
Amen.
©wjsmartin

 
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
 
         It will be forever and always the case that the greater benefit of Christ’s mystical presence is a challenge to earthly-minded men. Earthly-minded men are captive to the flesh. Given this, they rely too much on human interactions rather than the Holy Spirit. They are like the proverbial Mary Magdalene, who, once Christ is risen from the dead, reaches out to touch Him. That Christ rebukes her is a warning to us all. The Resurrected Christ is on the move back to Heaven. And the Heaven He enters in His Ascension, is the Heaven that must move and define our lives on earth.
        
Of course, life in and through the Holy Spirit, rather than life with and present to the tangible Christ, is no easy business. We are earthly-minded because our souls inhabit bodies. Most of our commerce and converse is in time and space with other men and women. The flesh consumes us because this is what we are most used to. But our Lord would have it otherwise. He intends for us to be one with Him in and through the Holy Spirit. He fully insists upon a new kind of living that finds protection by His Grace and reliance upon His promised mercy. And why should it be otherwise? We have come from Heaven, are made to return to Heaven, and should be practicing His presence if we hope to be saved.
        
Christ’s logic is, of course, correct. Who amongst us can truly say that this life is perfectly fulfilling, always joyous, and bereft of any temptation to sadness and despair? Our most cherished relations are often disappointing. Family members confound and confuse us. Friends let us down. Enemies seem insistent on meddling and causing us grief. No, this world is no heaven, and we ought not to expect it to be. Any life on this side of heaven is bound to be full of joy struggling with woe, hope tempered by disappointment, and love threatened by unfaithfulness. This world, a world endured by our Blessed Saviour Himself, shows us how fickle mortal men can be. Our dogs and cats might be faithful, but don’t put too much trust in our fellow me.
        
Thus, Christ today seeks to root and ground us in a greater form of relationship and religion. As our Collect warns us, Christ comes to order our unruly wills and sinful affections. Our wills or best intentions are always thrown off course and challenged by sinful desires and expectations. What is key for all believers is the unshakable and constant intention of God to heal and redeem us if we accept His Grace. What is most important at the end of the day is our relationship with Him. And what this means is that we must be involved in Christ’s personalism, that promise of intimate friendship which is necessary if we hope to reach Heaven’s embrace. Given such, our first order of business is to love His commandments and set our hearts on His promises so that in the face of the sundry and manifold changes of this world, our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found. (Collect Easter IV)
        
So, in this Easter Tide, you and I are called to treasure and cherish Christ’s gift to us, the gift of His plentiful life, His loving death, and the meaning of His resurrection. What is most important is the meaning of it all for us, as we acclimate ourselves to His will and way. Christ has come down from Heaven to save us. Every good gift and every perfect gift cometh down from above…from the Father of lights, (St. James i. 17) as St. James reminds us this morning. Far from being able to save ourselves and find perfect happiness, we rather rely on God for this work, a work He perfects in His Son. God’s gift in His Son knows neither variableness nor shadow of turning. Christ came down from Heaven with one fixed and unalterable purpose, to save us and reconcile us to our Heavenly Father. His ultimate purpose was to transform us by the same Son, His Word, the meaning and principle of all existence. Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. (ibid, 18) In the Incarnation of His Son, God intends to rebirth us from above so that as His Grace offers us redemption in the offering of Jesus, we might accept the offer and find new life moved by truth otherwise beyond our reach. And for this reason, as those who follow Christ and become His friends, our first order of business is contemplation. You and I are called to contemplate and study the life of Christ, begin to learn its significance for us, and embrace it inwardly and spiritually as the food of our salvation. Thus, we must be listening to Christ, quick to hear, with our mouths shut, slow to speak, resisting all frustration and eagerness to take offence, slow to wrath. (ibid, 19) What threatens to defile and dirty us, we must reject. Ill will has no place in the lives of those whose chief business is the imitation of Christ. We must rather receive with meekness the engrafted Word, which brings salvation to our souls. (ibid, 21)
        
And as Christ reminds us in today’s Gospel, our minds should be fixed on true joy and against earthly sorrow. Our establishment in Christ will depend upon Christ’s going away so that the Comforter, the Holy Ghost, might come to us. Earthly sorrow at Christ’s departure treats His action like a tragic end and not an exciting new beginning. But Christ would have it otherwise. Christ’s new beginning for us involves far greater joy. When the Holy Ghost comes to us, we realize that Christ, who was with His disciples in one place and at one time, might now be available to all peoples in all times. When the Holy Ghost comes, Christ will convince the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment. (idem, 8) This same Comforter is the One who meets us powerfully in the very midst of our earthly challenges. When family members wound us or when friends betray us, the Holy Ghost will not remove the pain and suffering by any magic. Rather, He will enter into it. He is the one, who in our darkest hours, enables us to pray Abba Father. His strength enables a betrayed spouse to respond with forgiveness, to pray rather than react to a child who abandons the faith, and to armor the believer with courage against a mocking crowd full of malice.
The Holy Ghost’s comfort doesn’t deny our sorrow but transforms it. He convicts us of our sin, but we need not despair. He provides Christ’s righteousness when our own is too weak. He reminds us of His judgment of the Devil so that we do not fear the machinations of malicious men. In sum, the Comforter gives us the goodness of God to persevere in an imperfect marriage and to resist the onslaught of depression and seeming despair. He won’t take us out of bad experiences, but He will change our view and understanding of them. Rather than needing to clutch onto a merely earthly Christ, we shall rely on who and what Christ is in God the Father and by the Spirit. Clinging to Christ’s Spirit, we shall find increasing power to persevere, forgive, and even rejoice against sorrow in difficult times. Thence comes our joy, which no man can take from us. (idem, 22)
 
Amen.
©wjsmartin      
        

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
 
        
Time is a strange thing. No sooner do we seem to catch it, and it is gone. Tempus fugit, the old Latins said. And how true it is. Time flies. Seconds become minutes, minutes hours, hours afternoons and evening, then days and night, and weeks, and months, and years. And because of this, it behooves all men to make the best of time, the times. In some valid and worthwhile way, man is made to redeem the time with thought and action that bless and consecrate it all to a greater purpose, through knowledge for joy.

Capturing time, of course, is only possible for men. Human beings alone, after all, can think about time, appreciate it, and preserve it in memory. No other creature has the gift of remembering good times for joy and even remembering bad times for education and repair with the time that we still have.

This latter course, redeeming the time, learning from it, changing for the better is what human life used to be all about. Men used to learn from the mistakes they made in time and for times. They used to muster up the courage to replace mistakes committed in past time with correction in the present for the future. This is the only way man can become better and good as he pursues excellence through knowledge for happiness. In time we fail and then succeed if we are determined to recover our integrity for the satisfaction that comes with learning.

Of course, for Christians, of all men, the urgency of redeeming the time is of utmost significance. Christians believe that every thought they think, every word they use, and every action they do constitutes a record in time of who they are and what reward they shall win for it. This is because Christians believe that they are imago dei, made in the image of God, and to perfect that image in likeness by the use of reason and free will. Christians, in other words, believe that God has made us for Himself through thinking and willing the good in time for eternity. Every snatch of time matters because in it we reveal who we are, what we know, and what we love. And all this has eternal significance. In the end, how we use our time will determine where and what we shall be for eternity.

So how does this relate to our opening quotation from St. John’s Gospel? We are in Eastertide, and in this season Christ is teaching his Apostles how He has redeemed the time and times for God the Father and for them. In other words, He is teaching them how His thoughts, words, and works reconstitute and recapitulate human nature for God. He is giving them a repaired version of fallen human nature so that forever thereafter men who believe and follow Him might redeem the time for its return to God.

So Christ today presents us with a solution to the human predicament. By reason of sin, man cannot redeem the time for eternity. The best that fallen man can know and will is a kind of approximation to eternal joy. And to be fair, the record of fallen man’s attempts at imitating the divine and putting it into play for human life was not all wrong and sinful. Ancient man, whether Jew or Gentile, sought after God. Ancient man believed more in the divine than in the human. The pyramids of Egypt, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Lighthouse at Alexandria, the Temple at Jerusalem, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, the works of Plato and Aristotle all testify to man’s intention to redeem the time and bring God’s goodness into play in human life. But neither Jew nor Greek could save himself or redeem the time for something beyond time, but was always locked into the repetition of moments and memories. In Christ alone can all times be remembered for the good of eternal joy.

For this reason, Christ gives us radical new way to understand time. Christ has come into time to redeem it and reconcile it to God. The facts of time that He reconstituted as man for God are not to remain the absolute truth. Time is made to be swallowed up in eternity. Every thought Christ had, every word He spoke, every deed He did were part and parcel of moments of time filled with eternal purpose for man. His earthly Incarnation was a tool and instrument for man’s redemption of time for eternity. Time has a future if men will follow Christ back to its source and meaning. Thus, He says, a little while and ye shall not see me (idem). His most holy Incarnation is not ultimately to be grasped by bodies with bodies in time, the way men depend upon others for goodness and joy. Rather, He must leave the time and space medium to be with and for His followers in a new way. A little while and ye shall see me because I go to the Father. (idem) Christ must leave us because He intends that we should see and know him inwardly and spiritually, in time but for eternity with the Father. The real meaning of Christ for the world could forever thereafter mean seeing and knowing Christ as Logos, in the heart and soul, as the informing principle of life for salvation to as many as would believe. In other words, Christ the Word and Wisdom of God intended to be made flesh in His followers not bodily but spiritually, not materially but supernaturally. Christ, the way, the truth, and the life (St. John xiv. 6) would be present to His followers as the spiritual road we must follow, the truth we must embrace, and the life we must live with His Spirit animating us by rule and governance.

Christ says a little while. If truth be told, He was only and ever with His friends for a little while, thirty some odd years to be exact. But who He was in the flesh and what He did through the flesh, though only present for a little while, made all the difference in the world for those who would believe. The time He redeemed with His teaching and preaching, healing and loving, suffering, sacrifice, and death were all a collection of times expressed in the flesh for a little while that could lead to eternity. What would matter most would be remembering that little while and what was accomplished by Christ in it. His friends would be called to remember and treasure that time in which He established a new pattern and model for redeeming the time, and all times, for eternity. Christ’s life was to become his followers’ life. Christ’s truth was to be theirs. Christ as the way was the road they must travel.

The Apostles had to learn the hard way that Christ’s spiritual nature was far more important than His earthly presence. Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. (ibid, 20) They would sorrow at His eventual departure from them to return to the Father in Ascension. And the sinful world would be glad to have gotten rid of Christ the interloper and nuisance. But He insisted that His friends would need to redeem the time, His time, the little while that He was with them, for the work of their salvation and that of many others. Christ’s time on earth, short though it may have been, contained within itself the seeds of eternal truth for future joy.

Today, my friends, Christ is inviting us to see His Resurrection in Easter Tide for the spiritual truth that it reveals. Just as His death must become our death to sin and Satan, His resurrection must become our rising up into new life. Holding the short time of His visitation in our memories, it must become the instigation for death and new life as we embrace the pattern that He establishes for us. The imitation of Christ really means habituating our lives to His for salvation.

Thus, in this morning’s Epistle, St. Peter says, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul. (1 St. Peter ii. 11) Christ was a stranger to this world and its sinful ways, and we must follow His example. Christ was a pilgrim, journeying from Heaven down to earth and back again, and we too must understand that this is our origin and destiny. As He abstained from fleshly lusts, warring against the soul, we must do likewise. And all this because in
Christ, we can redeem the time for the future of eternal joy. St. Peter continues by saying that our lives in time and through time must be beyond reproach in the eyes of nonbelievers that they might see the goodness of God in Jesus Christ alive and at work in us. If we are redeeming the time in Jesus Christ, nonbelievers might end up praising God and joining us. St. Peter concludes by saying we should obey earthly rulers since even their limited goodness is to punish evil and encourage goodness. We cannot redeem the time for eternity until we begin to redeem the time in an earthly manner as Christ did, submitting Himself to Caesar’s justice. That Caesar’s justice is not final is no reason to subvert it, for if Caesar keeps the peace, we have better conditions in which to redeem the time by spreading the Gospel.

Of course, redeeming the time will always involve suffering. Christ promises it. The world may oppose us, and our own fallen natures might be just as frustrating. But if we remember that in time Christ has redeemed us, His earthly life can become the pattern of our new lives, as we die to sin and come alive to righteousness. Though time flies, in and through it we shall find redemption and eternal joy.
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. Christians believe that they have been found by Jesus Christ, the Shepherd and Bishop of their souls. In Baptism, we believe that Christ has found us and has begun the process of our redemption and salvation. Our redemption demands Christ’s care of our souls.  Original sin was wiped out in Baptism, but still, we commit actual sins. So, we must submit ourselves to the care of Christ the Good Shepherd as He helps us to overcome the sin which doth so easily beset us. (Hebrews xii. 1)        

But first, we must learn what we, as the sheep of Christ, look like. This morning’s lesson from First Peter helps us. Here, St. Peter addresses the newly formed Church in Asia Minor. Most of its members are servants or slaves. Christian slaves have welcomed Jesus Christ as the Good Shepherd who has found them and wants them as His own forever. Not surprisingly, they are having a hard time with the spiritual liberation that Christ brings. Because they are slaves, they are tempted with resentment, bitterness, and anger against their earthly overlords. St. Peter understands how difficult it must be for these earthly slaves to have patience with and forgive their masters. The earthly slave is owned by another man and treated as chattel or property. So the exhortation to longsuffering and love is a high calling indeed!

But the ancient slaves addressed by St. Peter provide a useful picture of the lost fallen human being in any age. For what is a fallen man but a slave to sin? And what is a lost man but one who is subject to powers in the dark unknown? And what are suffering and sacrifice if not the normative conditions for getting better and finding excellence in any worthwhile endeavor?
Prior to this morning’s Epistle reading, St. Peter says this to the slaves. 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) 
The first order of business for St. Peter is not the earthly liberation of the slaves. Far more important is the spiritual state of their souls as an instrument of their true liberation, or salvation. They are called to be humble servants who respect and honor their earthly masters no matter what characters their earthly masters might possess. St. Peter’s advice seems irrational, unjust, hardhearted, and cruel. And if he were writing to fallen men whose only hope was earthly equity, we should have to judge him as wrongheaded. But St. Peter is not writing to unbelievers but to those who have been found by God’s Good Shepherd through a greater justice that rewards redemption and salvation through true freedom.

St. Peter knows that true freedom is inward and spiritual. He knows also that it is the gift of God to those who believe. He insists that it is found only in Jesus Christ, in whom God’s goodness alone enables man to triumph over evil. For Christians, the first order of business is to cleave to God’s goodness through Jesus Christ, come what may. No matter how dire a believer’s situation, he can always embrace God’s goodness as the instrument of eventual liberation through salvation. Given this, he must accept punishment for faults with patience. It is just and logical that he be punished for wrongdoing. God does not praise or bless a man who is punished for his sins. But when a man is faultless and does good and is punished for it, he must likewise be patient. In Christ alone, man can suffer patiently and unjustly for doing well. For this reason, St. Peter reminds the slaves, whose first aim is to please God, that they are worthy of praise and approval if they endure pain while suffering unjustly. Patience of the innocent sufferer wins credit in God’s sight. (ibid, 20)

St. Peter even goes on to remind Christian slaves that suffering is part of Christian life. 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 because Christ, the Good Shepherd, God’s own Son, walked the way of suffering, we should expect nothing less on our own spiritual journey. Christ suffered in our stead and for our good.         

Christ suffered of His own free will for us and our salvation. He never sinned. He was not crafty, deceitful, dishonest, or duplicitous. He was not selfish. He didn’t fight tit for tat. When subjected to torture and death, He did not threaten his persecutors. Rather, He put Himself into the hands of the Heavenly Father for God’s judgment. He took on our sins and put them to death so that we too might be dead to sin and alive to righteousness in Him.

In today’s Epistle, Peter intends to turn the souls of the slaves to Christ for that true liberation that no man can threaten. And in so doing, St. Peter makes the radical claim that no human situation or condition, however difficult, excuses the Christian from patient suffering and forgiveness of enemies. Christ is the forgiveness of sins made flesh to be received in the heart of every believer. The slaves have been forgiven their sins by Christ and must forgive their masters. And too must we. Both Peter, the ancient slaves, and we must remember that they were once like sheep like without a shepherd. (St. Matthew ix. 36) With Peter, all believers can become evangelists of the forgiveness of sins and Christ’s Resurrection. Peter was a slave to his own fear and cowardice when he denied Christ; the slaves were still sinners, and we are sinners. But now Christ, the Good Shepherd, offers to free all believers from the author of evil in this world and his malicious friends.
           
Today Jesus says to us, I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. (St. John x. 11) Today is Good Shepherd Sunday. And on this Second Sunday of Easter, we are called to meditate upon how Christ is our only Good Shepherd. Too often, we are led astray by hirelings, false shepherds and pastors, who are cowards that flee the necessary conflict and warfare of human life that is necessary for both the procurement of elementary goodness and then salvation. Christ is no wolf in sheep’s clothing. He courageously laid down His life for us. He went to the Cross to wage the last battle against sin, death, and Satan. The Captain of our Salvation promises us that if we follow Him, we must sacrifice, suffer, die to sin, and then embrace and spread His goodness. That we might suffer at the hands of a world that cannot welcome Christ’s presence and posture must never deter us.  

Today, St. Peter shows the slaves and us that Christ, the Shepherd and Bishop of [our] souls (idem), was also a slave. He giveth His life for the sheep. (St. John x. 11) Christ the Good Shepherd was the voluntary Slave who worked freely and completely for the good of two Masters – His Father and His sheep! He 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, take on punishment for their sin, and then break sin’s chains through the perfect power of the forgiveness of their sins. 
Christ the Good Shepherd, risen from the dead and ascended back to the Father desires to become our servant or slave even now. If we do not allow Him to be our servant, we have no part in Him. (St. John xiii. 8) The Good Shepherd cares only for our welfare and good. Because the Good Shepherd is God’s servant or slave who alone has mastered our sin, we must hear His voice and obey Him.
Christ, the Good Shepherd, has come into the world to find us, His lost sheep. Will we allow Him to be both our slave and Master as He enables us to follow the blessed steps of His most holy life? (Collect, Easter II) If we do, forgiveness and patience are necessary virtues that will liberate us from all slavery and save us.  
Amen.
©wjsmartin

 
If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above,         
Where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affections on 
Things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life
Is hid with Christ in God. 
(Col. 3. 1-3)
       
There is something rather strange about our Easter Epistle, which was addressed by St. Paul to the infant Church at Colossae in a small Phrygian city in Asia Minor, or modern-day Turkey. Easter Sunday is the first of 40 days. Before He ascended back to the Father, during the period of 40 days, Christ appeared to Saints Peter and John, to Saint Mary Magdalene, to the women, to Saint James and all the Apostles, to some five hundred, to Saint Stephen prior to his martyrdom, and later to St. Paul as one born out of due time. (1 Cor. xv. 8)  So why does Mother Church have us reading an Epistle that seems to be all about the spiritual relationship that we have with Christ after Pentecost? In it, St. Paul speaks about our relationship with the hidden God. Your life is hid with Christ in God. (Col. iii. 3) We haven’t even begun our 40 days of getting used to the Resurrected Christ than the Church turns our minds upward and into the Heavenly realm!
        
So what is this business of our lives hid with Christ in God? For St. Paul, something has happened on the Day of Resurrection that forever changes our lives in relation to God the Father. Jesus Christ is not a mere soul or Spirit. Jesus Christ, the God/Man, has risen from the dead. Article IV of the Thirty Nine Articles of Religion states this: 

Christ did truly rise again from death, and took again his body, with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of Man's nature; wherewith he ascended into Heaven, and there sitteth, until he return to judge all Men at the last day.  
 
St. Paul believes that Christ indeed died in a natural body and rose a spiritual body. What he means is that Christ raised up the body through which He lived and died and yet has transfigured it. 

His soul took back his body, and penetrated it through and through making it spiritual…this spiritual body is transparent, obedient to the Spirit, unconstrained and lightsome…the instrument of the Divine Saviour’s soul. (Mouroux, p. 89)
 
The Risen Christ is, then, a glorified unity of body, soul, and spirit. He is the same Lord who died once for all our sins. His Risen Body bears the wounds of His Crucifixion, reminding us that He has borne our sufferings and sin and brought them to death. But the same wounds remind us of His ongoing love for us, as this spiritual Body that He bears will expand and deepen to include us in His new Resurrected life. But even during the 40 days of His Resurrection, He begins to call believers into the new Body that He will share with all who will follow Him. This Body has been raised up with the Father’s Blessing and the Spirit’s power. This spiritual Body is in more than one place at one time. Peter sees Him and then simultaneously so does James. Magdalene has seen Him and so too have the men walking on the Road to Emmaus. Jesus’ Body is already spiritually greater than what our earthly senses can ever comprehend. It is of such a nature that will ensure that our lives [can be] hid with Christ in God. 

Of course, it takes time for the Apostles to realize what is going on. The 40 days of Christ’s Resurrection are necessary. For Man to come to understand timeless Truth, it all takes time. But in that time what they come to realize is that Christ is calling them to become one with Him in a new way. Christ is now ready to share Himself with them in the way that has enabled Him to conquer sin, death, and Satan and to open to them all, simultaneously, the Gates of Everlasting Life.  
         
So how can our lives be hid with Christ in God? St. Paul reminds us in another place that Christ our passover is sacrificed for us; therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. (1 Cor v. 7,8) Christ Jesus our Saviour is Risen from the dead. He invites us into that life that has gained the victory not only over all sin but even over time and place. Just as Christ’s victory is complete, we can live in His victory. Jesus died at the hands of sinful men and their sin. But He died, being dead unto sin. Sin had no claim or power over Him. Christ conquered sin through His obedience to God the Father and because He has always been alive unto God. (Idem) In the Resurrection, Jesus Christ invites us to begin to participate in His obedience to the Father. Christ, even in death, was alive unto God. So now, even as we live and struggle against sin and death, we are invited to seek those things which are above. (Col. iii. 1) Not above and beyond our reach, but above and beyond our wildest expectations, above and beyond what we desire or deserve, above and beyond what Man can do for himself in any age. And yet not above and beyond what God’s love can and will do for us as Heaven reaches down to earth to lift us up back into His loving embrace. Not above and beyond God’s healing touch, His quickening Spirit, His ever-present and all-powerful presence, even here and now. But yes, above and within the heart of Jesus, whose Glorified Body and Being are with the Father pleading our case in all ages. Yes, above and within Jesus Christ Himself, in whom every aspect of our lives can become a new occasion for our rising up and out of ourselves, mortifying [our] members which are upon earth; [up and out of] our uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry…(Col. iii. 5) In our bodies, because in His Risen and Glorified Body, Christ is always in God. In our souls, because in His Risen and Glorified Soul, He (is) in us, and we (are) in Him. Christ is risen from the dead. Sin is finished, death is finished, and Satan is finished, if we shall discover our need for Him even now. Our lives are hid with Christ in God. (Col. iii. 3)

One last point. St. Paul uses the word hid, as related to hidden. Of course, St. Paul does not mean that we should hide our faith, leaving it under a bushel, as a light (St. Matthew v. 15) without function and utility for others. No, rather, we must let the light of our faith shine forth. But what St. Paul means is that the source of our life in Jesus Christ is hid with God securely concealed and invisible to the powers of this world, from most men, and even from the Devil. What this means is that we can be assured that our new life in Jesus Christ is safe and secure from all alarm and any harm with which the world threatens. What St. Paul means is that our true new life is in Heaven, beyond the control of human senses and earthly manipulation. What St. Paul means is that our new life is hidden with Christ, whom we do not see yet truly believe. Faith, knowledge, and love ultimately are hidden virtues that are generated by God’s hidden Grace and power in the human soul that leans on God for meaning and definition. And so, what the world should see are the effects of that hidden operation, whereby we are dying to sin and coming alive to God’s righteousness through the gift of His Grace from Heaven, where He ever liveth to make intercession for us. (Hebrews vii. 25) And it isn’t that the world shouldn’t notice it. But what the world might sense is a way of living in us that is beyond their normal experiences, something urging them on to seek out that hidden power seen in the unusually good habits of our lives that might stir them on to believe and discover God’s hidden work. 

On this Day of our New Life, as creatures Resurrected from sin and death, let us begin to live freely. On this day may true joy fill our hearts. Let us, therefore, thank and praise our Saviour Jesus Christ for dying for us, rising for us, and assuring us that if we believe, our lives are Hid in Him with God. Jesus’ Resurrection from the dead was for the Apostles a process. Slowly but surely, they began to realize that true life has come from God and can return to God because in Jesus Christ nothing on earth, and especially our own sin, need separate us from that love that conquers all for eternal life with unending joy.
Amen.
©wjsmartin

 

 
Today, we come to the Cross of Good Friday in order to discover the true meaning of Lent in the sacrifice, suffering, and death of Jesus Christ. I pray that as we quietly and silently look and listen, we shall discover what Jesus Christ alone can do for the world. We must try to penetrate and explore the love expressed in the crucifixion of our Lord. We should try to see how our sin has brought Jesus to His Cross. At the outset, we ought to pray for the courage to confess our guilt and to subject ourselves to the punishment that Jesus metes out to us today. Our sin wants God, His Word, and His Spirit far removed from human life. So today we shall be granted our wish. Today, a day to be remembered for all time, our sin has tortured and crucified the Son of God. Sin kills the Son of God made man.

But more significantly, God allows our sin to kill His innocent Son Jesus in order that He might respond to it. Christ will respond by taking our sin and its punishment into death. He will conquer the one and redeem the other for our salvation. Sin is irrational and malicious. Christ will allow it to have one last go at Him on the Cross. There, He will slay it. Christ alone can withstand its attack whilst remaining obedient to God to reveal His truth and righteousness. St. Paul reminds us that, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us (Titus 3. 5), and, by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God (Ephesians 2. 8-9). Or as Article XI of the 39 Articles reads, We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by faith, and not for our own works or deservings. Jesus Christ’s work alone can endure the worst that sin can do to Man. Jesus Christ alone can endure the pain while revealing also that God’s power, wisdom, and love are overcoming it.

So, we must come to the Cross today as those whose sin kills God’s Will and Way in Jesus Christ. He has said, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. (St. Luke ix. 23) He tells us that if we have a mind to come His way, we must renounce ourselves. (St. Matthew xvi. 24) Jesus intends for us to find God in Him. His light and love will offer us a path of spiritual death to all but His Father’s will in our souls. Jesus opens up those chilly horizons beyond death, when we shall be stripped of achievements, hobbies, comforts, and possessions, and left with nothing to live upon but love of God and man. (Farrer: Lord I Believe; Cowley, p. 52) 
        
Few men have ever taken Jesus seriously. Redemption and salvation, even for Christians, seem part-time jobs with occupational hazards. And yet Christ insists that Whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it. For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul, or be cast away? (St. Luke ix. 24,25) Jesus asks us to see that our determination to put the happiness of our temporal lives before the call of Heavenly Joy results in our crucifixion of Him and risks damnation.
Our sin tries to eliminate God from the world. It has its reward. (St. Matthew vi. 2) But God’s Word made flesh will not allow our sin, though it tortures and kills Him, to make His suffering and death final. We may make Jesus Christ our enemy, but He forever remains true to God the Father’s desire for our salvation as our friend. He obeys God even to the point of death on the Cross because He is determined to reveal the Father’s love for us. In the face of the Devil’s temptations, He trusts God and refuses to honor and save Himself. His mission and calling are to us, overcome our sin, liberate us, and give us a chance to be one with God once again.  Thus, from beginning to end, Christ battles sin and refuses to lend it any power whatsoever. 
We love God, because he first loved us (1 John 4. 19), and in this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. (1 John 4. 9)
 
Christ submits Himself to His own law for us, the law of sin and death, because He loves us and wants to save us. That he should be punished without just cause shouldn’t startle us. His death sentence in crucifixion resulted from irrational envy, resentment, and revenge from one quarter, with compromise, cowardice, and sloth from another. Yet still, He is determined to remain constant and resolute in His obedience to the Father, to reveal God’s power in loving suffering and death. Even more, Christ will reveal to us how suffering and death are the good tools of our salvation. Here, Christ continues to sacrifice Himself for us to do the Father’s will. Christ not only suffers the effects of sin but also identifies with the weakness and frailty of every human being who struggles to remain faithful to God in the face of all forces that oppose it. 

Today, Jesus Christ has put Himself in the place of every fallen man, both he who willingly sins against God and he who has been so wounded and abused that the very thought of God seems cold comfort. Enduring all the effects of sin, He will not fight sin with sin. Rather, He will suffer gladly, refuse to blaspheme and curse God, and trust in what comes next in His mission from the Father. On the Cross, the logic of sin must run its course and be brought to death. Because He will not sin, His righteousness will persist and win our salvation. His righteousness will conquer the sins we commit against Him, which put Him on the Cross. His righteousness will conquer the sins we have suffered from others that equally tempt us to live out our lives as victims in despair. No one is left behind. Nothing can stop Christ from answering sin with righteous forgiveness that makes death into new life.

Because Jesus Christ conquers our sin today on the Cross of His Love, we have reason to hope. Father forgive them, for they know not what they do. (St. Luke xxiii. 24) Christ dies for the wicked who sin willfully and whose hearts are still hardened. Today, shalt thou be with me in Paradise. (St. Luke xxiii, 43) Christ dies also for those who find him in the last gasp of life and repent, like the good thief. Woman, behold thy son. And to his disciple, behold thy mother. (St. John xix. 26,27) Christ dies for the faithful who have never abandoned him, but whose faith cannot yet make sense of His unjust and unearned death or His loving sacrifice. The Blessed Virgin and St. John can love one another while they wait in hope for Him to unfold more of the great mystery of Godliness. My God, My God, why hast thou forsake me? (St. Mark xvi. 34) Christ dies for those who have approached the precipice of despair, He feels their agony but overcomes their temptation. I thirst. (St. John xix. 28) Hungering and thirsting after righteousness, God will quench His thirst for our salvation. No matter what battles we face, through Jesus, inwardly and spiritually, we must cleave to the one whose love saves us. It is finished. (John xix. 30) The ransom for sinners is paid in full, justice is served, and His redemptive work is complete. Satan is left powerless. Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. (St. Luke xxiii. 46) Christ returns Himself as a living sacrifice to God. The Second Adam, sheltering us in His heart of hearts, returns us to God, inviting us to find in Him the way of return, through His perfect obedience, to the Father.
 
For as long as we live, we can go to the Cross of Jesus Christ and find His victory over our sins. For as long as we live, we can go to the Cross of Jesus Christ, repent, believe, and accept the invitation to participate in His death. His death is the gateway into new life. If we go to His Cross today, let us consider denying ourselves and taking up our crosses, blended with His, so that we might journey through Him home to Heaven.
Amen.
©wjsmartin

         

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He riseth up from supper, and laid aside his garments, and took a towel and girded himself.
(St. John xiii. 4)

Tonight, you and I are invited to the Last Supper of Christ. With the Apostles, we move into a realm that is fraught with fear and trembling, not grasping the meaning of it all or what will come tomorrow on Good Friday. The Apostles have been following Jesus for some three years, and they have experienced the hand of God extended to them and others through the life of their Master. There was so much to be thankful for, many miracles, much useful teaching, and more that man could ponder. But tonight, we sense that it all must come to an end. With the Apostles, we fear the premature suffering and death of the Master.

And yet, against our fears, before the agony in the garden, the torture, and the unjust death, Christ offers God’s goodness to us. Christ doesn’t sit down to explain what will transpire, or how and why He must die. Strangely enough, He leaves that for the future. For now, He must impress His Apostles with some degree of goodness that they can remember and repeat. Christ is focused on God’s goodness. And goodness must even characterize Christ’s sacrifice, suffering, and death. Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee. (St. John xvii. 1) 

Tonight, the goodness that Jesus offers to us is found in the Last Supper. It is the Feast of Passover. The Passover celebrates God’s passing over the homes of the Jews in Egypt to spare them from the last plague that He visited upon the Egyptians. The Passover celebrates how God enabled the Jews to pass over from Egypt to the Promised Land. Tonight, Christ prepares us for how God the Father formulates a new kind of Passover. Tonight, Christ prepares us to accept that He alone is the true Passover, God in the flesh who passes over us and takes upon Himself the hard task of defeating sin and death to carry us over into new life.

So tonight, Christ gives us two forms of future goodness that will ensure our passing over into the good work of Good Friday. The Apostles didn’t understand it then. Christ was laying the groundwork for what they would remember and understand later. The first form is the Holy Communion, and the second is the call to servanthood.

St. Paul reminds us that The Lord’s Supper, The Eucharist, or the Holy Communion was instituted on the night in which He was betrayed. (1 Cor. xi. 23) Tonight is the night on which Christ was betrayed. In the midst of this evil, Christ promises to be with His friends in the future. His promise will be stronger than all Man’s efforts to impede the salvation that He brings into the world. His promise will be even stronger than His bodily Resurrection on Easter Day, which was necessary but temporary. So, St. Paul tells us that Christ

took bread; and when He had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat; this is my Body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also He took the cup, when He had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood; this do in remembrance of me. (ibid, 24,25)

The goodness that Christ will bring to us is threatened tonight by betrayal and tomorrow by cowardice, malice, vengeance, and death. But tonight, Christ gives us strength in a form that will enable us to fight off all these potential sins. The new Passover is being established by Christ in His body and through His blood. St. Eusebius of Caesaria tells us that:
Since the body he had assumed was about to be taken away from their bodily sight, and was about to be carried to the stars, it was necessary that, on the day of His last supper, He should consecrate for us the sacrament of His body and blood, so that what, as a price, was offered once should, through a mystery, be worshipped unceasingly.

Christ prepares His Apostles then and us now for the mystery of our participation in the goodness of His redemption. We are invited to believe that bread and wine can become His body and blood for us. We are invited to believe that this special meal of earthly elements will become our share of spiritual nutriment at His Divine Table. Christ the God/Man will return to the Father. Christ the Logos will return to us through the Holy Ghost, as the Word to be made flesh in us, Sacramentally, until the end of the ages.

What Jesus did and said, He offered as a friend. 

Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. (St. John xv. 14, 15) 
 
Friends, Do this in memory of me. (idem) Bread is broken and wine is outpoured. On Good Friday, a Body will be broken, and Blood will flow. Friends, remember this. The two acts will not be divided in the end. Jesus Christ is man–body, soul, and spirit. He is also God, the Logos. The Man and God are one for us. Bread and Wine will be Body and Blood as one for us.

Tonight, the Body and Blood –soon to be broken and letted, are offered to the future memory, understanding, and will of His followers. Tonight, also, the Body and Blood stoop down to wash and to cleanse the dirty feet of His disciples. The Body and Blood of Christ minister to us, feed us, heal us, and restore us. Today, He is the servant who feeds with bread and wine, and cleanses with water. Tomorrow, He will wash us in the Blood of His dying Body. Both will be one. Tonight is tender and tame. Tomorrow will be callous and cruel. Christ considers both to be equally good and necessary.

But there is more that we should see and grasp before we move from the Last Supper to Good Friday. What Jesus does is who He is, the will of the Father in human flesh. Who Jesus is, is what He intends we should become. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another’s feet…These things I command you, that ye love one another. (St. John xiii. 14, xv. 17) The suffering servant will give us bread and wine so that His Body and Blood, His nature, might be assimilated to ours. The suffering servant will wash the dirty feet of our souls so that we too might repent, believe, and offer ourselves to all others. To be nourished for servanthood will be perfected in the sacrifice He makes for us on Good Friday.

Tonight, we find ourselves the unwitting recipients of God’s goodness in Jesus Christ. Jesus does what he does, and we have no part of him if He does it not. Jesus comes to wash our feet, and, with Peter, we ignorantly resist. Lord, thou shalt never wash my feet. (St. John xiii. 8) Our instinct is to refuse to allow God in Jesus Christ to stoop down to feed and cleanse us. We prefer a God who does not stoop down because of our pride. We’d rather He not notice our sins and our fallen condition. We pretend that we don’t want Him to stoop down and bother Himself with our filth. We really prefer not to think of our filth. We’d rather He pass over and pass by our sins. We’d rather He forget.

But in Jesus Christ, nothing must be forgotten. Friends, do this in remembrance of me. Maundy Thursday is one day. There will be more to remember on Good Friday.  With Father Jean Mouroux, we must begin to realize that Christ must endure our sin and suffer our punishment of Him in death to overcome it.  Out of a means of destruction Christ made the very means of life; of a punishment the means of healing; of an annihilation the means to a resurrection. (The Meaning of Man, p. 88) In response to our sin, Christ still loves us and wants us for His Kingdom. Christ wants us to remember His measureless love, insistent love, persistent love, and love in search of His friends from the Cross. The Cross must define the Sacrament of Maundy Thursday.  

If the Sacrament instituted tonight is to have any effect, we must follow Christ, the suffering servant, to the Cross. Bread and wine will remain bread and wine until we embrace His Body as the place of our healing through the Blood He sheds for our salvation. From the Cross of His love, God’s suffering servant stoops down to cleanse and heal us. St. Paul tells us that for as oft as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come again. (ibid, 26) Christ’s death is the gateway to eternal life. We must not only remember it but also embrace its all-effectual power to save us. The Body broken and the Blood outpoured will be with us for as long as we live. Our calling must allow His brokenness and bloodletting to heal, repair, and redeem us. In Christ’s death, through the Holy Eucharist, we can die to sin and come alive to righteousness. The Holy Eucharist must join our hearts to His in death and beyond.  Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. (1 Cor. v. 7)
Amen.
©wjsmartin

Palm Sunday
 
When Pilate was set down upon the judgment-seat, his wife sent
Unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man:
For I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of
Him.
(St. Matthew 27. 19)
 
Holy Week has been set aside from the time of the early Church to ponder our Lord’s suffering. Holy Week takes us to the one moment in history that judges all others. Holy Week takes us to the Cross of Jesus Christ.
Following Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, he said: All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad. (St. Matthew 26.31) Jesus prophesies His silent and lonely death on the Cross. His own Jewish people will demand His death on the Cross. The Romans will facilitate it for the sake of Roman Peace, the Pax Romana. His Apostles, playing the cowards, will abandon Him. Peter will deny Him and repent. Judas Iscariot will betray Him and hang himself.

Today, we remember that Jesus Christ predicted what the Jews, the Romans, and even His friends would do to Him. Today, we remember that Jesus Christ was willing to suffer and die because this alone could save us. Jewish malice and envy, Roman compromise and cowardice would not stop Him. The fear, cowardice, and fickle love of His Apostles will not shake Him. Rather, He will submit to the energy, wisdom, and will of God the Father to effect our salvation. The supreme significance of His suffering, sacrifice, and death will be worth the torturous labor.

Leading up to the Cross and its death, we find the Master’s remarkable silence. Pilate marveled greatly. (St. Matthew xxvii. 14) The Roman Governor’s wife pleads with her husband to have nothing do with that just man: for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.(ibid, 19) Pilate knows that Roman Law finds no just cause for Jesus’ death. Why, what evil hath he done? (Ibid, 23) Pilate’s wife senses that her husband is playing with a strangely divine kind of fire. The Jews, possessed with irrational spite and resentment, have not time for reason or justice. Let Him be crucified. Pilate, who was want to release a prisoner unto the people at the feast, acquiesced. He will wash his hands saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see you to it. (Ibid, 24) The Jews foolishly assume responsibility. His blood be on us, and on our children. (Ibid, 25)

Jesus Christ accepts man’s judgment of Him. He is rejected by virtuous pagans, righteous Jews, and His own Disciples. Jesus Christ will surrender to the unjust, unearned, and undeserved verdict of fallen man. Let them do their worst. Jesus Christ is not only Master of Himself, He is also their Master as well. (The Christian Year in the Times) The Divine Providence will be fulfilled in Jesus Christ, God’s own Word made flesh. Christ has a work to do, despite the obstacles. By the Divine Permission, He will overcome them and throw them back in our laps for consideration. His love for our salvation and hope for our acceptance of it will persist. With courage and humility, Christ will suffer and die. His painful sacrifice and suffering will be judged good and useful tools to conquer sin, death, and Satan.
This morning, with St. Paul, we remember that

though Christ was in the form of God, He did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. (Phil. 2. 6-8)
 
Today, Christ sets aside His Divinity in order to take on the predicament of our fallen conditon. As Man, he allows fallen human nature to judge and execute Him. Rather than grasping onto or clutching His Divine Power to rescue Him in the hour of His calamity, He chooses to cleave to it inwardly and spiritually. Christ will be the servant of God until the end, showing us how even in suffering and death He will cleave to God. He will continue to be the servant of God’s will and Word, which alone suffice to save us from the effects of sin. Sin tortures and kills Christ, but Christ still loves us and longs for our turning.

This week, I pray that each of us shall discover that the suffering and sacrifice of Jesus Christ alone can give us new life. In Jesus Christ, who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously (1 Peter 2. 22, 23), let us begin to see the Word of God’s Wisdom and Love in the power of His suffering and sacrifice. Christ is a servant of God alone. But as God’s servant, still even the sin that kills Him, the sin that rejects Him, can be met with the forgiveness of sins that Christ offers to all who will repent and believe.

We approach Christ and His Cross. He dies for us on a Friday that is forever called Good. On Good Friday, what threatens to be judged by Fallen Man as tragic, is made Good by the only one for whom it threatens to be otherwise. And while we can never say that He did not suffer pain and utter humiliation as man at the hands of sinful men, we must also say that He obeyed the Father until the end and never surrendered His goodness to evil. His obedience enabled Him to reveal the truth and righteousness even in suffering and death.

On this Palm Sunday, we sing Hosanna to the Son of David; Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord. We sing, Hosanna to the One who comes in the name of the Lord to suffer and die for us. Sin cannot stop Him. Death will not keep Him down. Satan is powerless over His mercy and love. God’s goodness will prevail as the mode and instrument of salvation. But to receive this goodness, we must hasten to His Cross, to discover the love that is its source.
Amen.
©wjsmartin

 
That by thy great goodness they may be governed and preserved evermore, 
both in body and soul…
(Collect, Passion Sunday)
 
        
The readings for the Sunday next before Holy Week invite us to study the doctrine of Christ’s sacrifice and priesthood. (Melville Scott, Harmony of Collects, Epistles, and Gospels) Today is called Passion Sunday, or the Sunday of the Atonement. Today we shall learn about the doctrine of the Cross. The death of Jesus Christ requires our attention as we learn the meaning of Christ’s sacrifice for us. Christ’s death must command such respect of intellect that sound doctrine will move our wills to submit to the great mystery of godliness. (1 Tim iii. 16)
        
Atonement Sunday calls us to remember the practice of atonement for sins in Jewish history and how Christ’s atonement perfects them all. In the Old Testament, the Jewish high priest would enter into the tabernacle at Jerusalem to make atonement for the people’s sins on the eve of Passover. He would have sacrificed a one-year-old male lamb, without spot or blemish. He then would have painted the doorposts leading into the inner sanctum of the temple, the holiest of holies, the presence chamber of God, with the blood of a sacrificed lamb. Next, he would sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat, the place signifying God’s encounter with man. Then, he would dredge the altar of incense, a symbol of prayer, with the blood. Finally, the priest would have undergone ritual washing for impurity and irregularity contracted by the bloody sacrifice. Thus, the Jewish high priest entered into the holiest of holies, the inner sanctum, only once a year, and every year, to make sacrifice for his sins and the sins of the people. For the Jews, sinful man came closest to God by the external and visible sacrifices of the high priest. The sacrifices could make neither the priest nor the people perfect, as pertaining to the conscience; which stood only in meats and drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordinances, imposed on them until the time of reformation. (Hebrews ix, 9,10) The Jewish priests would cleanse the external and visible world but could never make the conscience clean. Jeremiah had asked rhetorically; Shall the holy flesh take away from your crimes?’ (Jer. 11:15) A clean body never means a pure soul.
        
Canon Scott reminds us that Jewish promises are Christian realities, their hopes our certainties, their future our present. (idem) The Jews made atonement for sin with hope for what the Messiah would do in the future. The author of the Epistle continues.

But when Christ became an high priest of good things yet 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.
 
When Christ became our High Priest, in and through His death, through the tabernacle of His body, His external and visible nature, He promised to take us beyond the veil of His flesh (idem) back to God. When He finished His earthly mission to us, He ascended to enter into the holy place of Heaven to plead our cause through His eternal redemption for us. Through His Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension, Christ was opening the door of the Kingdom of Heaven to us, having torn down the wall of separation between the external world and the internal and invisible world of the conscience, man’s spirit. Christ’s atonement for our sins was made in time and space but was eternally effective. His redemption of our sinful human nature was made once for all, for the sins of the whole world, needing no repetition.
        
The Jewish high priest offered his sacrifice to atone for sins in the tabernacle made with hands. Christ offered his sacrifice in the tabernacle of His own body, not made with hands. The Jewish high priest offered the sacrifice through the blood of goats and calves, from lifeless and inferior creatures. Christ shed His own blood and offered Himself. The Jewish high priest entered the temple of Jerusalem, a model of heaven. Christ entered heaven itself. The Jewish high priest offered the death of a brute beast. Christ became His own brute beast and made His own death the test of His own obedience to the Father. Death would be no final punishment but now a way of entering into full and perfect life.

For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? (Hebrews, ix, 13,14)

Christ offers His body to cleanse our consciences from dead works through the eternal Spirit. The Jews cleansed their bodies, but not their souls. Christ sacrifices His body because His soul is one with the Father. He does what we could never do. He dies purely and perfectly to the world, the flesh, and the devil so that He might unite us with God. St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us that the blood of Christ cleanses the conscience inwardly, which is accomplished by faith: ‘Purifying their hearts by faith’. (Heb.C9.L3, 446) Those who embrace Christ will be cleansed by His blood once shed, as His Spirit applies is power and washes us inwardly and spiritually. 

Christ makes death the seedbed for new life with God the Father. Death is necessary for us to inherit the eternal promises. From Christ’s death to sin and Satan, our faith and hope can find freedom in His Resurrection and Ascension, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. (1 Peter i. 4,5) We are baptized into His death (Romans, vi. 4). His Atonement is the payment made to God for all human sin. His Atonement has power for those who believe.
         
Today, Christ calls us to believe in what He did because of who He was. He alone can work out our salvation. We must begin to hear God’s words because we come from God. (St. John viii. 47) We need to learn again that Christ is the God-Man, who seeks not [His] own glory, but the glory of the Father for all men. (ibid, 50) 

Christ continues. Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it, and was glad. (ibid, 56) Inwardly and spiritually, with faith and hope, every day, with Abraham we must rejoice and be glad in Christ’s coming. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. (ibid, 58) Christ shares His eternal life with the Father, and has now come down from Heaven to share it with us. He will work out our salvation in His own suffering and sacrifice. Christ the eternal, I Am, I Am the Son of God, comes to return us to our Heavenly Father.
        
The history of God’s great I Am must find relevance for us today. Christ is the Second Adam, who will show us once again what it means and what it looks and sounds like to be the Son of God. We too can become the sons of God by imitating Him. From the first Adam, we have inherited sin and death. From the Second Adam, we can receive righteousness, spiritual death, and new life.  No man cometh unto to the Father, but by me. (St. John xiv. 6) Nothing now stands to separate us from God except for our own unbelief and the refusal to repent, die to sin, and come alive to righteousness. Christ’s death is the model for our own spiritual death. His death can become something good with power to save us. Pleading the power of His death helps us to resist temptations and die to sin. His death now, rather than being a tragic end, can become our inspiration for a new life, each and every day, as we follow Him home to Heaven.
Amen.
©wjsmartin

But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.
                                      (Gal. iv. 26)

At the beginning of Lent, Jesus said to his disciples, Behold we go up to Jerusalem. (St. Luke xviii. 31) Going up to Jerusalem is what our lives are all about. We go up with Jesus to see how He conquers the temptations of Satan and triumphs over sin for us. We go up with Jesus to discover that, like the woman of Canaan, we are more like dogs than men, aliens, and exiles to God’s promises, and yet still wholly craving the crumbs that fall from His table. So, we learn to long humbly for that mercy that persists in obtaining Jesus' mercy and healing. As dogs, we learn also that we are, often, dumb and mute, incapable of hearing God’s Word and expressing His will until His inward Grace opens our spiritual senses to His desire.
         
Our Lenten pilgrimage, our going up with Jesus to Jerusalem (St. Matthew xx. 18) will not be easy. If we fast, and if we pray, we might become distracted and even lose our way. The pull and tug of certain temptations may well have been overcome, but seven other demons worse than ourselves (St. Matthew xii. 45) overwhelm us. Satan realizes that he is losing our spirits, and so he attacks our bodies with renewed vigor through the elements of this world. (Galatians iv. 3) We have the best of intentions and yet feel ourselves the children of the proverbial Hagar, the bondwoman – enslaved to this world. We do want to become free men, children of promise, and followers of Jesus, who go up to Jerusalem which is above… and is free. (Galatians iv. 26) Yet the more we try, the further back we fall.
         
Today, Jesus Christ and His Bride, Mother Church, provide us with what we need. Today is Dominica Refectionis –Refreshment Sunday or Mothering Sunday–the day on which Mother Church feeds us with love and hope. Today, we are asked to stop for a while to contemplate God’s merciful care. Today, rather than feeling pulled down, we go up. Jesus went up into a mountain, and there He sat with His disciples. (St. John vi. 3) We go up to the mountain with Jesus so that He might remind us of our heavenly destiny. He knows that we are in danger of spiritual languor and sloth. He intends to provide us with that spiritual food that will give us dogged and dauntless determination to press on.…Jesus said, Make the men sit down…So the men sat down, in number about five thousand. (St. John vi. 10) St. John Chrysostom tells us:

That Jesus calls us up to rest at intervals from the tumults and confusion of common life. For solitude is good for the study of wisdom. (St. J.C.: Sermon…) 

Quiet contemplation and study, going up into the presence of God are necessary for spiritual sanity and restoration. And yet in Lent, the earth constantly drags us down. Whence shall we buy bread that [we all] may eat? (St. John vi. 5). Jesus asks this question of Philip. He intends to enlarge and deepen Philip's faith so that he might find hope in heavenly and not earthly nourishment. Philip has seen the finger of God at work in the miracles that Jesus has performed. Will he believe that Jesus can provide food that no man can afford and that can satisfy far more than the physical hunger of a paltry five thousand? What measure of faith does Philip have? Is he a child of Hagar born after the flesh or a child of promise? (Gal. iv. 23) Philip answers as one in bondage to the elements of this world. (Gal. iv. 3) He responds that even two-hundred penny worth is not enough for this crowd. (St. John vi. 7) Philip is thinking in earthly terms of an earthly solution. Too many people, too little money, he conjectures. Thus, Jesus intends to reveal the smallness and poverty of Philip’s faith. His faith should be in Christ’s power to fulfill all his needs. His faith should have seen, too, that if Christ has asked whence shall we buy bread, He intended to remind Philip that God alone provides our every need and want.

Philip’s faith is small and weak because of what he does not have. Andrew’s faith is small and weak because of what they do have. There is a young lad who hath five barley loaves and two fishes, but what are they among so many? (St. John vi. 9) To offer so little to so many makes a mockery of hunger. Andrew says there’s not enough. Andrew’s faith is as small and weak as Philip’s.
         
True faith and spiritual contemplation are always tempted to distraction over earthly things. We postmoderns spend far too little time in prayer, Bible reading, or contemplation. Jesus tells us to sit down, listen, and think. He asks us to remember that we are going up to Jerusalem, that we are dogs eating from the crumbs that fall from His table. (St. Matt. xv. 27) Crumbs will be more than enough. We only need a little food to strengthen us on our spiritual journey. We must not only hear the Word of God but keep it. (St. Luke xi. 28) Jesus says sit down. (St. John vi. 10) With the disciples, we must obey the Master.

And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down; and likewise of the fishes as much as they would. (Ibid, 11) 
 
Thanks for what seems to be so little is essential. What Christ gives to us will be more than sufficient to satisfy our hunger.  Andrew’s poverty will become Philip’s plenty. If we have faith, something small will be more than enough to keep us journeying to the Kingdom. 

The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field. Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof. (St. Matthew xiii. 31,32) 
 
If our faith is like a small mustard seed, and if we plant it in our hearts, it will greatly support us through the whole of life. Jesus says, gather up the fragments that remain that nothing be lost. (St. John vi. 12) Mustard seed faith feeds us and provides leftovers. The children of Hagar, living in bondage to the elements of this world (Gal. iv. 3) perceive only the smallness of mustard seeds, loaves, and fishes. They are like Christians whose faith is feeble, whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, who mind earthly things. (Phil. iii. 19) and will not trust Christ to provide all that is needed for salvation.

Faith’s nourishment is food for men wayfaring. As St. Hilary suggests, the substance [of the five barley loaves and two fishes] progressively increases. (The Passing of the Law: St. Hilary of Poitiers) Faith’s food is God’s love in Jesus Christ, which is never exhausted but continues to multiply itself in the hearts of those who believe. If we allow it, Christ’s love will feed our souls. He will feed our faith and cause it to grow. The seed of faith will embrace Christ’s all-powerful spiritual love. His love intends always to fortify and strengthen that faith that must follow Him up to Jerusalem, which is above, and is free. (Gal. iv. 26)
         
Faith feeds on and trusts in Christ’s continuous provision. Faith begins to acquire a taste for God’s love. In the fragments that remain are hidden gifts of mystic meaning. But, of course, if we persist in our addiction to material things, the earthly food and drink, clothing, riches, and treasures that perish, we are in real trouble. Not only will we, the proverbial children of Hagar, fail in spiritual things, but we will also be damned for want of greater faith in a higher love. Jerusalem, which is above, is free and the mother of us all. The hard question we must ask ourselves today is this: Are we intent upon reaching God’s Kingdom, and will we do what we must to get there? To get there, we must have faith in Jesus. To get there, we must grow this faith. To get there, we must be fed chiefly from Jesus’ hand, with spiritual food. To get there, we must begin to see that the fragments and crumbs of earthly food are enough. What we want is an increase of spiritual nourishment that strengthens our souls for digesting what comes next in our Lenten journey.
Amen. 
©wjsmartin
 
 
 
 

 
Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the Word of God, and keep it.
St. Luke xi.
 
In last Sunday’s Gospel, we read about the kind of humility and faith that find freedom from the Devil. A Syrophoenician woman besought the Lord for the healing of her daughter, who was grievously vexed with a devil. (St. Matthew xv. 22) In confessing who and what she was, the good lady expressed that faith that secures the redemptive power in Jesus Christ. She confessed herself to be a dog in relation to God’s people. Her humility and faith revealed her need for God’s Grace. Today, our faith becomes situated more soundly in God’s Grace as we begin to understand the true nature of our demons.

In this morning’s Gospel, we read that Jesus had cast a demon out of a dumb (or mute) man, and the dumb spake. (St. Luke xi. 14) The Devil controls those who are deaf and mute. Yet no sooner had Jesus healed the dumb-mute man, than a crowd of bystanders exclaimed that Jesus had cast out the demon through Beelzebub the chief of the devils. (Idem, 16) The Ancients believed that physical handicaps were divine punishment for demonic possession. That some who witnessed the miracle judged that Jesus was in league with the Devil should not surprise us. If healing could not be proved to come from God alone, Ancient Man concluded superstitiously that the Devil was up to his old tricks. Men who disbelieve and do not understand God’s power tend to blame everything on Satan.
        
The problem is that most men do not understand the nature of prayer. Most men live on the outside of themselves and thus judge a world around them without giving much thought to the spiritual world in relation to their souls. Unlike last week’s Syrophoenician woman, they never come round to seeing themselves as strangers to God’s Promises and unworthy of His Grace because of their sin. Unlike today’s deaf-mute man, they do not so much as pray to God in secret that the God who seeth in secret shall reward them openly. (St. Matthew vi. 4) Most men never ask that they might receive, seek that they might find, or knock that it might be opened to them. (St. Luke xi. 9) As a result, they are unaccustomed to God’s Grace. So, in today’s Gospel, as absurd as it might seem, they demand a sign from heaven, or another miracle, to prove that God alone is in Jesus casting out our demons.
        
The Syrophoenician Woman of last week’s Gospel becomes today’s deaf-mute man. Because the deaf man cannot hear, he cannot speak. His impediment separates him from the world of words. Unlike last week’s Syrophoenician Woman, he can neither confess that he is a dog nor reveal his need. His suffering and prayer are incommunicable to all other men. His fellow Jews judge him to be suffering because of his sins. Only when Jesus comes upon him to answer his prayer does the dumb speak, no doubt behaving like an infant child who rejoices when he is at last able to connect with the created order through newfound words.

The deaf-mute man’s prayer is heard by God. God responds to him in Jesus Christ. He is no sooner healed by Jesus than he senses some real opposition to the miracle, when the crowd says that Jesus must have been in league with Beelzebub, the prince of the devils. (idem) Next, he hears Jesus’ response.

Every kingdom divided against itself, he says, is brought to desolation. And a house divided against a house falleth. If Satan also be divided against himself, how shall his kingdom stand? (St. Luke xi. 17, 18)
 
No doubt, our liberated man understood nothing of what he heard. Jesus implies that the deaf man had been divided from God’s kingdom and lived in desolation. Because Satan was not divided against himself, with the help of his fellow demons, he ensured that this deaf man was separated from the civilized world. This man knew of his division from the world and spiritual desolation. That he had miraculously been carried into a world of potential goodness was no doubt the clearest truth presented to his newly liberated senses. Satan’s singular intention was to keep him deaf and mute. Jesus of Nazareth intends to free him. But though the healed man does not yet understand, he now hears and can begin to try to comprehend Jesus’ words.

With the miracle, our sufferer might have wondered why the bystanders were creating such chaotic and irrational confusion. We read that Jesus knew their thoughts. (ibid, xi. 17) Jesus confronted the irrational malice and envy of the crowd, who seemed bent on remaining deaf to Jesus’ part in the miracle.  If I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them out? therefore shall they be your judges. (ibid, 19) If Beelzebub had cast out the demonic spirit, such goodness must have come from Satan. But why would Satan want to heal anyone and bring goodness to life? No, Satan is not pleased with the deaf man’s healing. So Satan, rather, finds new friends in the malicious and skeptical crowd.

But if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you. (ibid, 20) Christ insists that the finger of God alone enables a man to hear and then to learn language that will lead to understanding. So, the demons, united with Satan, would try to undermine the deaf man’s healing with confusion and division. If Satan couldn’t prevent the healing, he would fill the crowd with malice and ill will intent upon turning the deaf man against Jesus. The Jews who were deaf to Jesus and listening to the Devil were claiming that Jesus’ Spirit was destroying the deaf man’s soul.
But Jesus will show us that the deaf man, who was originally secure in Satan’s grip, was now being released from it.

When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace: But when a stronger than he shall come upon him, and overcome him, he taketh from him all his armour wherein he trusted, and divideth his spoils. (St. Luke xi. 21, 22)
 
The Devil and his friends have desired that all fallen men should be deaf to God’s Word. Some will be literally deaf, like today’s deaf man, and others will be spiritually deaf, like the hard-hearted crowd. The Devil tries to convince all men that there is no freedom from his power. But Jesus here implies that a stronger than he has come down from Heaven and upon him. Satan is like a strong man who keeps his palace in peace, undisturbed and unchallenged. Think of how sin so often seems to have us in the Devil’s grip so that we don’t think that there is any way to be freed from it. But what if a stronger than he, Jesus Christ, has conquered him, taken away his armour, and divided his spoils? What if Christ has come into the world to free us from Satan the strong man where the Devil’s victory becomes his defeat?

The deaf-mute man has been healed by Jesus Christ. But what of the malicious crowd who could not hear Jesus? Jesus says that

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, xi. 24-26)
 
The crowd of Jews thought that they were purified and made clean by the Law that united them to God. For four hundred years their religion had gone unchallenged, and their spiritual house was swept and garnished. They had come to believe that they were more righteous than sinners, like the deaf man. Unlike the deaf man, the Jews didn’t think that they needed God’s strong man. They saw unclean spirits come and go. They walked through dry, empty places, sought rest, and finding none, returned to their own houses. They saw no good in the temptations that come to every earnest believer in the wilderness. So now, they were vulnerable to seven other spirits more wicked than [themselves]. The bystanders’ unclean spirits had merely gone out, preparing to enter yet again. The danger for the crowd (and religious people in all ages) is always much worse since they find no rest on dry and empty days in the wilderness. So, the last state of them will be worse than the first. (idem)

This morning the Word and Son of God made man, Jesus Christ, puts His finger on our problem, and desires to cast out all our demons. The true miracle we must seek today is that, with St. Paul, we realize that we were sometimes darkness, but now…are light in the Lord. (Eph. V. 8) With the deaf-mute man, though we don’t yet understand, we have seen the light. The goodness that Jesus brings to the deaf man should become our goodness, or what we seek out habitually. With the dumb-mute man of today’s Gospel, let us believe that Christ’s light alone can carry us out of darkness. But let us also be vigilant and conscientious about embracing God’s goodness. Whenever Christ delivers us from Satan, he exorcises our souls. Every act of Christ’s healing is a moment that should trigger our gratitude with determination to live and grow in His light and goodness, as we learn to say yes to His powerful redemption.
Amen.
©wjsmartin    

 
Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table.
(St. Matthew xv. 27)
        
Last week, we studied Satan’s temptations of Jesus Christ and Christ’s rejection of them. In rejecting the evil and cleaving to the good, Christ revealed to us who He must be in order to redeem and save us. We learned that if Christ was to save us, He must be the Son of God made Man. This, in turn, means that He must embrace our human condition and fight sin as one of us. This week we shall learn of our powerlessness over sin and how we need Christ to conquer it in us. Only the humility of the Son of God made Man can deliver us from the Devil’s hold over us.

This morning, we read in the Gospel that Our Lord Jesus Christ comes to the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, (St. Matthew 15. 21) to the borders of the pagan Gentile world. Jesus will approach non-Jewish territory and call sinners out of it. Christ is drawn to the borders of heathen territories. Christ is drawn to the world of the non-elect. Today, He had just preached to His own Jewish people about how sin originates in man’s heart and soul. He said, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. (St. Matthew xv. 8) Jesus’ Jewish brethren maintained the Old Testament Law through meticulous religious observance. Outwardly and visibly, they were pious. But inwardly and spiritually, their hearts were far from Him.         

So, the Spirit leads Jesus away from His own people. A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, among his own kin, and in his own house. (St. Mark vi. 4) A Syrophoenician woman, a Greek inhabitant of Canaan, an alien and foreigner to Israel’s promises, needs Jesus. In a foreign land she had heard word that the Jews had brought those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatics to Jesus for healing. (St. Matthew 4. 24) She had heard that Jesus’ cures were instantaneously efficacious, and she was determined to have them also. But Jesus own people were thankless and ignorant. So Jesus finds relief in a foreigner. She approaches Him. We read that she cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil. (St. Matthew 15. 22) She comes from afar not for herself but for her daughter. She bears the burden of her daughter’s misery.

But we read that Jesus answered her not a word. (Ibid, 23) Jesus is silent. St. John Chrysostom writes: The Word has no word; the fountain is sealed; the physician withholds His remedies. (Homily LII: Vol X, NPNF:I) Jesus looks into her heart and would hear more from this amazing woman.
The Apostles clearly cannot see what Jesus is doing. While they have been with Him for some time and have witnessed what He can do, they prefer to hoard Him selfishly, so that seeing, they see, and do not perceive. (St. Mark 4. 12) Like the pious in every age, they are consumed with what Jesus can do for them and not others. So, they exclaimed, Send her away, for she crieth after us. (St. Matthew 15, 23) The woman has interrupted the Apostles’ spiritual experience of Jesus. They see the woman only as a nuisance and pest. They have no compassion or love, and especially for this heathen foreigner. Jesus ignores them. He is fascinated with this Greek woman. Jesus will be swift to hear and slow to speak. (St. James i. 19) Christ must be silent, as we know only too well, so that we might bring our complaints to Him.

At first Jesus responds, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. (St. Matthew 15. 24) In St. Mark’s Gospel, He says, Let the children first be filled. (St. Mark 7. 27) In both, He means that He has come down from Heaven first to the Jews, the Children of Promise. But Jesus, the Great Physician, is drawn into the Gentile’s healing also. The children have already been filled to no avail. Jesus moves out to a world beyond Israel. Christ has come to the border of this woman’s nation for a reason. She is honored and blessed. When Christ finds us, we must discern that He comes for a reason and on a mission.

Remember, this woman seeks not bodily healing but the restoration of her daughter’s sick soul. This supplicant is a woman of character. She knows that sin emerges from the heart. She knows that her daughter is in the grips of the Devil. She has no power of herself to help herself. (Collect, Lent II) She does not seek out superficial cures to bodily diseases but would have an exorcism. So, we read, then came she and worshipped Him, saying, Lord, help me. (St. Matthew 15.25) Christ’s silence does not destroy her faith but rather emboldens it with zeal and ardor. Nothing short of the Lord of Life can save her daughter from spiritual death.

Jesus is first silent and then rubs salt into her wound. Jesus says: It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs. (St. Matthew 15. 26) He calls her a dog, the ancient Jews’ slander of the Gentiles. Had she been bereft of all faith, Christ wouldn’t have said it. He is determined to elicit her faith from her heart. He is going to show us how we all must become as servile dogs to Him as our master. We must all learn our own low place with meekness and humility. 
         
Jesus calls her a dog, and she responds calmly but firmly. Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table. (St. Matthew 15. 27) She is humble and courageous. She will accept Jesus’ severe mercy and hard love. If she cannot be a lost sheep of the House of Israel, she will be a dog. She knows that she is a sick dog who needs the Physician’s medicine. More so, she thinks that she must be a stray dog, who has been found by her true Master. Jesus came to her, for she was not able to come to Him. He found her and not the reverse. She may not be able to eat with the Lord at His table in the Kingdom, but she will sit at His feet as a dog who catches the crumbs. The crumbs will be more than enough to heal her daughter. She has a small petition, drive the demons from my daughter’s soul. She needs only a small blessing. Fragments and crumbs will suffice. 
         
Had the woman been entitlement-minded and arrogant, she would have gone off in a huff. Rather, she storms the Gates of Heaven with humility. Jesus says, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour. (St. Matthew 15. 28) In the end, this woman recognizes Jesus as the Son of God. Whatever the Lord says, she will obey. Though His medicine stings and hurts ever so much, she will take it for her own good and that of her daughter. Jesus came to her for a reason, and she will have whatever portion of His Grace she is allotted. In faith, she believed that Jesus need speak the word only and [her daughter] would be healed. (St. Matthew viii. 8) St. Mark writes that when the woman was come to her house, she found the devil gone out, and her daughter laid upon the bed. (St. Mark 7. 30) 
         
St. Augustine reminds us that [Christ] the Good Physician gives pain, it is true, but He only gives pain, that He might bring the patient on to health. If He did not give pain,
He would do no good. (Idem) Jesus reminds us that we are dogs, and our faith must make the best of it. Christ comes down from Heaven to diagnose our condition and provide the cure. He will elicit our confession –Yes, Lord, we are dogs. Matthew Henry warns us that there is nothing got by contradicting any word of Christ, though it bear ever so hard upon us. But this poor woman, since she cannot object against it, resolves to make the best of it. ‘Truth, Lord, yet the dogs eat of the crumbs…. (Comm. Matt. xv.) 

With the example of the Syrophoenician’s faith and humility, let us confess that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves. (Collect, Lent II) Let us beg deliverance from our demons, or from all evil thoughts that may assault and hurt the soul. (Idem) Let us abandon the lust of concupiscence in the Gentiles who know not God. (1 Thes. i. 3) Jesus longs to find a faith that will secure His mercy, come what may. Let us all admit that we are dogs. He calls us out as dogs because God calls us not to uncleanness, but unto holiness. (Idem) The faithful dog forever needs his master and will serve him for the whole of his life. So, my fellow dogs, let us remember that loyalty to Jesus alone will save us from the Devil.   
Amen.
©wjsmartin
 

That ye receive not the Grace of God in vain.
(2 Cor. vi. 1)
     
On this First Sunday of Lent, we confront the reality of sin. If we don’t take sin seriously, we cannot move to the Cross of Christ on Good Friday to find meaning in it. Sin as a concept that troubles men in all ages. The ancient Greeks and Romans were mostly embarrassed by it and chalked it up to irrationality or a failure to think clearly. For the Jews, it was a palpable reality and something with which they struggled continuously. Sin emerges onto the pages of history then not only as bad philosophy but as what distracts man from serving God.
        
The problem of sin comes to a head in the New Testament. In the Gospels alone we find the baneful power of sin expressed fully. If sin is not real, if sin is only a philosophical error, missing the mark, or an absence of the good, then the teaching of Christ is useless. The purpose of the Incarnation of Christ will have no meaning unless He came down from Heaven to deal with the malignant presence and power of sin. Christ came down from Heaven to declare God’s power and judgment against sin. In so doing, He would reveal to man what sin does and then how He conquers it. If we study the life of Christ, we shall discover how sin condemns us. Christianity has no meaning if sin has no power. But in Christ, we find that its power is only as great as we allow it to be.
        
Of course, Scripture gives us a remedy for sin. But first it locates the cause in ourselves. We need not blame our genes, or our family bloodlines, since a little study of the issue will lead us to admit that we have only ourselves to blame. The root cause of sin is prideful selfishness. Our awakening is a call to self-knowledge. If the moral conscience is not awakened, we cannot diagnose sin as a real problem. If we do not grow up to the extent that we claim and confess our own role in our sinning and in the damage that it does to us and others, Christ cannot help us. Christ comes down from Heaven to awaken in us that integrity of character that knows itself, confesses its sin, and then finds its remedy in Him.
        
In this morning’s Gospel, Christ reveals to us the origin of sin’s problem in His own temptations. That He was tempted as we are to sin is a revelation that should be endearing to us. The Son of God made flesh comes down from Heaven to redeem and save humanity by becoming one of us. He comes into our condition and gets under our skin to tackle the problem of Original Sin. That Christ was made man is no magical remedy against sin. Christ exposes Himself to what every fallen man endures each day and puts Himself into our predicament. What Christ does in His temptations is to bless and sanctify, make good, the necessary battle which we must wage against sin if we would be saved. Because nothing can be too hard for God, even the battle against sin can reveal God’s power to conquer it.
        
The temptations that Christ endures are, respectively, temptations for the body, soul, and spirit to prefer some subjective good to God. The Devil tempts Christ after he had fasted forty days and forty nights in the wilderness, and he was hungry. (St. Matthew iv. 2) Fasting in a wilderness separates Christ from all things. Imagining that the fast might be over, Christ is tempted to put earthly hunger before God and to forget that God has supported him with spiritual power. The first temptation is to perform a miracle to secure immediate comfort by rushing into the satisfaction of earthly hunger. If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. (ibid, 3) Christ the Son of God made man is tempted to secure our salvation by making stones into bread. Christ is tempted to prove that He is the Son of God by performing a miracle that violates the laws of nature. No man makes bread from stones. No man should expect it from God either. The fast, which depended only on God’s power, must continue until Christ situates Himself correctly with His Father. Hungering and thirsting after righteousness (St. Matthew v. 6) is the Son of God’s first business. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you. (St. Matthew vi. 33) Christ as man will redeem us by putting the nourishment of the soul before the body, so that we too might do the same. Christ rebukes Satan and says, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. (ibid, 4)
        
Christ is tempted a second time.

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 dash thy foot against a stone. (ibid, 5,6)

If Christ does not come into time and space to make fleshly nourishment and comfort into a god, perhaps the Son of God might be tempted to win our salvation by rejecting the body altogether.
Now, Christ is tempted to threaten his body by throwing Himself off a skyscraper to prove that He is the Son of God. Here, the soul is tempted to reject the body in a vain attempt to provoke God to rescue Him. But Christ knows that God will redeem human nature in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, and in fastings. (2 Cor. vi. 4,5). Christ will not prove that He is the Son of God by provoking God to perform another irrational and unnatural miracle. Christ is still fasting and hungry! He can only prove that He is the Son of God by putting first things first. If Christ is to redeem human nature, He must suffer. Christ is still suffering hunger pangs! No good is ever achieved without suffering and sacrifice. Every farmer, craftsman, and artist knows the same. Earthly hunger is good and must find its proper place in relation to fasting. Christ still fasts to resist temptations to false gods. He must suffer in body and soul to perfect our union with Him. Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. (ibid, 7)
        
Christ is tempted a third and final time.

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 worhip me. (ibid, 8,9)

The Son of God is still fasting and suffering. Finally, He is tempted to prove Himself by becoming another god in this world with a kingdom that competes with His Father’s in Heaven. In other words, He is tempted to be the Son of God without redeeming man, without submitting His spirit to the Divine Will but by severing and detaching from God, altogether worshiping the Devil, only to become another fallen angel. Thus, as Man, Christ, in spirit, was tempted to become His own god. But Christ responds,

Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him. (ibid, 10. 11)
        
As Fulton Sheen reminds us, all the Devil’s temptations are shortcuts to salvation, tempting Christ to circumvent the path that alone leads to our redemption. For man to be saved, his body, soul, and spirit must be redeemed for God. Had Christ neglected to endure suffering, sacrifice, and death, He never would have taken on the punishments for sin and made them good. Suffering, sacrifice, and death are the greatest obstacles to God and His purposes. Christ, the Son of God, would be most tempted to become unfaithful to God in the face of the sin that demanded His suffering, sacrifice, and death. But especially here, Christ the Son of God will transform sin into righteousness and death into new life.
        
In taking on our nature, Jesus Christ identifies with the longer and harder way home to God. That fallen man must journey on a longer and harder path, learning to order comfort, tame pride, and learn proper detachment, does not make it either sinful or wrong. Longer and harder journeys after any form of goodness are always more rewarding than what comes to us by instant gratification. Hard work need not be a punishment but a gift. That Christ was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews iv. 15) remains His most appealing draw since He alone consecrates a natural necessity to supernatural ends. Christ did not sin but suffered and died at its hands. Christ rejected any kind of diabolical freedom from God, and because of this, He knew that redemption could only be won once He had defeated Satan in the final battle, the last temptation, from the wilderness of the Cross, where He, wholly innocent, wholly pure, would be most tempted in body, soul, and spirit to surrender. For it was on the Cross that Christ would prove that He was the Son of God, and we believe that there, at last, the angels came and ministered unto Him. (idem)
Amen.
©wjsmartin
 
 
 
 
        

 
For he knoweth whereof we are made : he remembereth that we are but dust.
(Psalm 103, 14)
 
        
Ash Wednesday inaugurates the season in which we are invited to come to our spiritual senses. Our tradition of smearing ashes on our foreheads commences a time in which we remember who and what we are and how God in Jesus Christ responds to it. The ashes of Ash Wednesday remind us whence we came. In one account, from the Second Book of Genesis, we come from clay, the earth, and are thus reminded that we are but dust. The other account is a theological conclusion drawn from the First Book of Genesis indicating that we all are made out of nothing, ex nihilo in the Latin. Our second summary is no more promising than the first. It turns out that we are but dust that has come from nothing. What it means is that before God began to create all things, and man in particular, since he can think about it, mankind didn’t exist. God alone is I Am, forever and eternally Himself. All else was nothing until God commenced the creation.
        
The thought of coming from nothing and being qualitatively no more than dust or ashes is a real challenge. It runs against the grain of our self-worth and self-integrity. We like to think that we have some meaningful substance and that our bodies and souls comprise an entity that is of some worth. But Mother Church would have it otherwise. We begin Lent with the thought of where we came from and that we might never have been, never have existed, but for God’s desire to create and make us.
        
The thought turns us then to God. Why did he make us in the beginning? Nothing forces God to do anything. So, we conclude that it was His desire and love to make and create all things with meaning and substance. As freely as our Heavenly Father wills to think, likewise He wills to put His thinking into a tangible reality other than Himself. We conclude that God loves to express Himself in creativity, the creativity of His creation.
        
Having said this, we do well to remember that while we are reminded of coming from dust and ashes once a year, God remembers or knows it always. This is part and parcel of who we are in the mind of God. And coming from dust and ashes reinforces our tendency to be moved and defined by nothingness. Within our natures, because we are created out of nothing, we have a propensity to move towards it. All men, made out of nothing, sin. Sin is nothing or has no meaning or substance to God. But for us, having contracted Original Sin, we are subject to its pull, the pull towards nothingness in relation to God.
              
Our ashes are made out of the dead and burnt palm fronds from last year’s Palm Sunday. Once they were something beautiful and good. Now they are a stark reminder of death, spiritual death, and our sin as spiritual death to God. The burnt palms, now ash, remind us of our eventual death to this world. They should remind us also of our need for an ongoing spiritual death as we come alive to the reality of our sin, the pull towards nothingness, which might well be rewarded in Hell, a place reserved for those who preferred their own dust and ashes, their own nothingness, to all the potential reserved in God’s will for our lives in Heaven.
              
Claiming, confessing, repenting, finding sorrow, and purposing amendment of life cannot come without the humility that remembers that we are but dust, created out of nothing. We have not made ourselves. We cannot save ourselves. Christians believe that without the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, our destiny will be Hell, a real nothingness in comparison to what we could find in God’s Heaven.
              
Lent is a wakeup call for all Christians. In today’s Epistle the prophet Joel writes,
turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning:
and rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God:
for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil.
                                                               (Joel, ii, 12, 13)
 
Lent is all about acknowledging that we are but dust and ashes, who have come from nothing, and all too often have returned to it in sin. We are encouraged to be honest with ourselves and from where we came. Weeping and mourning over our sins is an honest and adult approach to God. We are encouraged not to tear up our garments, but to break or tear open our hearts as we come to our Lord. The cause of our serving sin, in dust and ashes, making ourselves into nothing of any spiritual value or worth, comes from our inward man, from the heart, from our free will choosing to serve ourselves rather than God in Jesus Christ. God, for His part, is always the same, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness. God knows what the pull of dust and ashes into nothingness has done for us. He welcomes our return always.
              
The importance of Lent as an inward and spiritual exercise is emphasized by Jesus in today’s Gospel. He insists, When ye fast, be not as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces that they may appear unto men to fast. (St. Matthew vi. 16) Returning to God is not an occasion for public pride and arrogance. Our fasting and abstinence in Lent is between us and God. We are dust and ashes and, thus, not worthy to boast of any good works or pious endeavors. We came from nothing and should be quiet and humble as we undertake a serious and holy Lent. Jesus tells us to anoint our heads. The head is the seat of our knowledge and free will. Our souls must be anointed to do the Lord’s work. We are to wash our faces; the seat of the human personality and character must be cleansed for our Lenten fast. We need not appear unto men to fast. Our Lenten discipline is not for show, not for the stage of human applause and approval. Our fasting needs to be known only to God, for from Him alone can our dust and ashes, our nothingness be made into something beautiful, true, and good. If we do this, God who seeth the soul in secret will reward us openly. (St. Matthew vi. 17, 18)
              
The most common question asked in Lent is what are you giving up? It really is nobody’s business but mine and God’s. Our dust and ashes cannot emerge from the nothingness of sin unless we engage in a serious spiritual work with God and His Grace. We have much to do in Lent. Again, with Joel, we must pray, spare thy people, O Lord, and give not thine heritage to reproach that the heathen should rule over them. (ibid, 17) The heathen are content to be as dust and ashes enslaved to the nothingness of sin. If we are private and conscientious in our working out of sin and the working in of righteousness, the heathen will have no reason to say, where is now thy God but might actually see that He has been making us into something substantial and meaningful for His Kingdom.
Amen.
©wjsmartin
 

Gesima Tide ends by inviting us onto another beginning. 

Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished. (Matt. 20. 18) 
 
Christ invites us to go up to Jerusalem on this last Sunday in Gesima Tide, up to the Jerusalem of His Cross. There, we shall come to see and know our sin for what it truly is, no longer hidden, as what crucifies the Word of God in the flesh, Jesus Christ. We shall discover also what the hidden nature of God in Jesus Christ will do for us men and for our salvation. With this newfound knowledge, I pray that we might discover a newfound spiritual foundation that readies us for Lent.
        
Of course, discovering this kind of knowledge is not easy. The Christian whose faith seeks understanding soon discovers problems. On our first Gesima Sunday, in the Parables of the Workers in the Vineyard, we learned that understanding is the reward or crown bestowed upon those whose faith submits to God’s Grace with all humility and meekness. We struggled to learn that God’s singular gift is an incorruptible crown is just and for those who labor for what they neither desire nor deserve. Through the parable, Christ intended for us to struggle intellectually in the spirit for the Grace that is always unmerited. Last Sunday, we learned of the prudence and perseverance that enable us to reach the end.

Today, we discover that as we labor and toil to embrace the truth, all our doings without charity are nothing worth. (Collect, Quinquagesima) Our prudent work in the vineyard of the Lord must be conditioned by charity. First, the work must be a gift received as God’s charity for us. Second, the work must be done in the same spirit of charity and love. Last week our faith learned the wisdom of humility and meekness from a parable. Today, our faith discovers power and love from a miracle. Finding the charity or love that God gives will prove key to our salvation.

We turn to today’s Gospel lesson. Christ has prophesied his betrayal at the hands of the Jews into the hands of the Romans. He foretells how he will be mocked, spitefully entreated, spitted on, scourged, and put to death in anticipation of rising again on the third day. (idem) By His own example, the journey to salvation, the race that we run, requires courage also. That the Apostles understood none of these things: and this saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things which were spoken (Ibid, 34) should not surprise us. They are flummoxed and frozen in fear because of cowardice. T. S. Eliot reminds us, humankind cannot bear very much reality. (Four Quartets, Burnt Norton) In general, we do not like to suffer pain with difficulty. Christ knows this. He will condition His prophecy about the reality of His life with the charity that always nourishes faith.

Our Gospel continues.

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)  
 
Last week the seed of God’s Word in Jesus Christ fell on the obstinate and hardened road of the human heart, the wayside. Today, an eager heart whose heart is soft and ready for the same Word jumps onto the same road. The man’s blindness has nearly undone him. He knows himself. The surrounding world is alien and hidden from his eyes. His problem is quite simple. He desires to see that he might know and understand. He seeks a cure to fulfil his desire or love. He does not stop to imagine that he might be better off without his vision. Unlike the Apostles, he is not afraid of reality or the truth. Sight and knowledge will open a door into reality, no matter what suffering he might be called upon to see and endure. Anything is better than blindness to this man.

The Apostles cannot bear to know that Christ must be delivered unto the Gentiles. 
(Luke 18. 31) The blind man wants desperately to see and know all things. The Apostles not wish to see that their Lord shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on. (Luke 18. 32) The blind man has already endured something of what Christ will suffer. But the Apostles are uninterested in the blind man’s spiritual vision. And they which went before rebuked him, that he should hold his peace. (ibid, 39) They consider the blind man nothing more than a nuisance. The Apostles have no faith in the charity or love that must suffer to see and to know. Calvin says that those who profess the name of Christ often hinder and delay those who cry out to Him in earnest. (J. Calvin: Harmony of the Gospels, xvii) The blind man has been suffering his whole life. The blind man, who wants to see and know for the very first time should be a model for our own faith’s desire to see and obtain the reality of God’s charity in Jesus Christ.

The Apostles are wounded and fearful; their faith is blind, and they fear to see and know the truth. But the blind man has spiritual vision. 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 with the eyes of his soul. His knowledge moves him to secure Christ’s love. He knows his need and would secure the cure that Christ alone brings into the world. This blind man sees the hidden truth in Jesus Christ. He knows God’s Love is in Jesus, and so he cried so much the more, Thou son of David, have mercy on me. (Luke 18. 39) Let the Apostles wallow luxuriously in philosophical fear. This man sees plainly and will obtain the Love of God in Jesus come what may.

Behold we go up to Jerusalem.  Man is fallen, in dire need of healing, and seeks out the cure from God’s own Son. Faith must seek to uncover the hidden truth of our sorry state and God’s response to it. We read on.

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. (ibid, 40-42.) 
 
The courage in Christ will never quench His love for man, even on His way up to the Cross. Love does not cease to love because it must suffer. Love dies to Himself and will come alive to God in the life of the blind man. Jesus rewards the faith that longs to see more of His charity on the Cross of His love. Charity says to the blind man, Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet believe. (John 20. 29)
St. Paul tells us this morning that 

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. (1 Cor. xiii. 4-8) 
 
God is love. (1 John iv. 8) Love suffers for the Good, envies no one, is not proud, and is selfless. God’s Charity for all men endures whatever He must to save us. Charity never ceases to be benevolent and magnanimous. Charity is consumed with God’s goodness and the means to establish it anew in the hearts of sinful men.

Today, let us admit that we have been blind to God’s Goodness. Let us cry out to Jesus for vision. Let us know that we will need courage to go up with Jesus to His Cross and to suffer what His love will require of us. Let us go up to Jerusalem to see what God’s Son must do to save us. We must go up to Jerusalem to see, know, and confess what our sin does to God’s own Son, God’s Word, in Jesus. We must go up to see and know how God’s most excellent gift of charity responds to it.
Amen
©wjsmartin

And his disciples asked him, saying, What might this parable be?
(St. Luke viii. 9)

Last week we learned that the Gesima Season is all about embracing the Cardinal Virtues. For starters, we began to look at the virtue of temperance or moderation. Moderation, we learned, situates the soul in a place of thankful content and reasonable expectations. Jesus’ Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard brought home the point. Moderation in all things is a healthy partner to hard work and its rewards. If we hope to reach God’s kingdom, we must use last week’s moderation and discipline to compel this week’s virtue of prudence.

So today we move from the parable of the laborers in the vineyard to the parable of the sower. St John Chrysostom says that ‘Jesus uses parables to draw men unto him, and to provoke them and to signify that if they would covert, he would heal them” (Idem, cf. Homily on the Gospel of Matthew, 45, 1-2). Parables encourage us to think about virtue, what it is, and how we perfect it. Parables stir intellectual curiosity. Because the truth they teach is at first hidden, we must take some time to think about them. In the parables, each of us is given the opportunity to discover God’s goodness and to put it into practice.

Last week, it took a bit of time for us to discover how moderation moves us to pursue God’s goodness or justice. If everyone one of us accepted the gracious invitation to work in God’s vineyard, did his job, minded his own business, and worked for one reward, which no sinful human being ever deserves, he would reach the end. Today, we are reminded that the same moderation and self-discipline is no easy business. This morning, St. Paul takes up the point as he addresses a community of new Christians in Corinth who are being swayed by false prophets to believe that no moral effort or self-discipline is needed at all. They were telling St. Paul’s Corinthian converts that he was exaggerating what is required to earn our reward. True Christianity, they insisted, involves a mere assent to the truth without application to human life. True Christianity, they insisted, involves nothing more than what Christ did for us. The human component is missing entirely.  

But St. Paul respectfully disagreed. St. Paul had digested the Parables of Jesus. For Paul, the life of Jesus Christ itself was a Parable intended to be imitated by men. Far from wishing to justify himself, St. Paul even desired to use his life as a kind of model for following Christ. St. Paul’s life is used as a parable to teach his flock what Christian conversion and sanctification entail. He shows us that true discipleship is hard work that must be cherished and cultivated with prudence. St. Paul insists that the work of the Chrisitan will even include much suffering. Criticizing the false teachers who taught otherwise, he asks, 

Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more; in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck…in perils of robbers, in perils of waters, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen…in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness…(2 Cor. 23-27) 
 

St. Paul’s conversion and discipleship involved running the race with temperance in all things to obtain an incorruptible crown. In other words, true conversion and discipleship will demand the prudent submission to hard and difficult labor. Paul knew that the world and its pleasures threaten the presence of Christ within. Who is weak, and I am not weak (Cor. xi. 29), he asks? This business of becoming a Christian requires practical wisdom or prudence, which knows what the work entails. He concludes that the end justifies the means. If we all are to work for one reward, we must labor prudently and with humility. If I must needs glory, I will glory in the things which concern mine infirmities. (2 Cor. xi. 30) Paul’s experience teaches us that our hard work will always be accompanied with suffering and weakness. With prudence and in humility our work will be successful only through Christ’s Grace, an inner power at first hidden but progressively revealed to us.   

St. Paul’s life and witness are an imitation of Christ. But why were his Corinthian converts so easily swayed by new teachers with a message of comfort and ease? I think that we can find all or part of the answer in this morning’s Gospel Parable of the Sower. Jesus tells us that A sower went out to sow his seed. (St. Luke viii. 5) At first, some fell by the wayside; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. (Idem) Some of the Corinthians had heard God’s Word superficially; the soil of their souls was like the wayside, trodden down by the ongoing traffic and business of this life so that they could not hear the Word. Though they were called to be workers in God’s vineyard, they were so influenced by evil desires that their hearts became hardened like the wayside, or the hard beaten path of this sinful world. Such men are members of the Church, like Paul’s Corinthians, who are Christians in name only but never in deed and in truth.

Next, …some [of the seed] fell upon a rock; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture. (Ibid, 6) Others had hearts like gravely rock. For them, the Word of God in Jesus Christ was first received with joyful expectations because it seemed so full of immediate gratification. They prematurely anticipated its benefits without prudently counting the cost of growing the seed in the soul. They fell away because they would not work out [their] salvation….with fear and trembling. (Phil. ii. 12) Salvation, they soon discovered, will be full of pain and suffering, doubt and confusion, hard labor and effort. Prudence reveals a painful and costly work.

Now, we read that some [of the seed] fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it. (Ibid, 7) Perhaps not a few of the Corinthians honestly received God’s Word but choked and killed it with cares and concerns of this life. Here the Word grew for a season but only alongside inner anxiety and fear over the cares, and riches, and pleasures of this life (St. Luke viii. 14) that killed the growth of the Word within the soul. They were crushed, as the Gospel says, because the old sinful man was not dead in them. It might have seemed dead for a season, but until it was put down with prudence and earnest effort, it would reemerge with a vengeance. Thorns and briars are earthly temptations that promise short-term gain but long-term pain. If they are not banished from the soil of the soul, the Word will not grow. If we do not prudently assess their natures and detect their false promises, we might lose the one reward of our salvation.

Finally, today’s Parable concludes with, And other [seed] fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundredfold. (Ibid, 8) In earthly life, seed can grow up effectually only in deep, dark, rich soil that has been prudently cultivated by a farmer.  Thus, in the soul, the seed of God’s Word can grow in our hearts only with much care, cultivation, and determined effort. Like St. Paul, we must expect both punishment from without and suffering from within if the Word of God in Jesus Christ is to spring up and bear fruit in our souls. With prudence and humility, each one of us can see the temptations that threaten us and work to resist them effectually. With St. Paul, we must proclaim, If I must needs glory, I will glory of the things which concern mine infirmities. (2 Cor. xi. 30) To will the good against all temptations is to find the glory of God in Jesus Christ beginning here and now.

Prudence and humility teach us that we are weak if left to our own power and ability. God has made the soul; God plants His Word in it to save us. If we begin to hear God’s Word, to clear our souls of briars and thorns, to cultivate its soil with sorrow and repentance, to tend the seed with carefulness and devotion, and not superficially and carelessly, by God’s grace we shall bring forth fruit with patience. (St. Luke viii. 15)

In this morning’s Collect, we pray that the soul might be defended against all adversity. (Collect) We are protected against all adversity when our souls, in all humility, embrace the Cardinal Virtue of prudence. St. Thomas Aquinas teaches us that prudence is right reason in relation to action. (ST, II, ii, 47. 8) Prudence first searches out and finds the truth. , it makes a judgment about our human situation: we are fallen and in need of Christ’s aid if we hope to be saved. Prudence learns from counsel what must be done, and commands it, by finally submitting to Christ, knowing that suffering and hardship perfect us for the Kingdom.
Amen. 
©wjsmartin
 

 
Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny? Take that thine is and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good? So, the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.
   
We have just completed our journey from Advent through to Epiphany tide, in which we contemplated Christ’s coming to us and manifesting Himself as the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. (John i. 14) Now we turn to the period spanning between Septuagesima Sunday and Ascension Day. Septuagesima Sunday is the beginning of our short Gesima season; Gesima means days. Septu means seventy. So today is the 70th day before Easter. On these three Sundays, we prepare for Lent, Holy Week, and Easter Sunday. It is a season for self-discipline as we actualize the Four Cardinal Virtues of temperance, prudence, justice, and fortitude.  

The Four Cardinal Virtues come to us from the Latin word cardo, which means hinge. These virtues are the hinge virtues, which lay a foundation for the three Theological Virtues of faith, hope, and charity. Just as the Gesima Sundays form a hinge that opens the door to Lent, the Cardinal Virtues comprise the hinge that opens the door to deeper union with God. The Cardinal Virtues are derived from Plato’s Dialogues. The early Church Fathers named them as Cardinal Virtues and acknowledged their indebtedness to Plato, whose philosophy prepares us for the coming of Christ.
The goodness that they encourage establishes a moral foundation in our lives. 

Today, in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, Chapter IX, St. Paul introduces us to the first Cardinal Virtue for our consideration, that of temperance or moderation. He tells us that our pursuit of the Good or God is like the physical fitness that prepares ancient Greek runners for competition in the Isthmian Games. Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? (1 Cor. 9. 24) Using an example drawn from Greek culture, St. Paul inspires us to run so that we might win a prize. His illustration shows that Greek athletes concentrate on their end or the laurel wreath, the crown of victory. The means to it is running to win. St. Paul knows that all men run to obtain some reward. And no man can run without hope. So, with hope we must run to obtain whatever crown we seek. So run, that ye may obtain. (Ibid, 24) Running to win must be conditioned by discipline. Every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. (Ibid, 25) Temperance or moderation must condition our running in hope towards our end.

But our end is not the corruptible crown of the laurel wreath of the ancient Greek games. Our end is incorruptible and lasting. For the Greeks, the Cardinal virtues led only to corruptible and impermanent goods. For Christians, moderation and temperance are to be used because we hope for a greater reward. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible. (Ibid, 26)

Like the ancient Greek runners, our temperance and moderation must be applied to our souls as well as our bodies. The runners in the Isthmian Games kept to a strict diet and discipline. They refrained from food, drink, and sex to stay focused. How much more, then, should we Christians keep to a strict diet and discipline as we condition our bodies to serve our souls with hope of obtaining the incorruptible crown? Thus, the Apostle warns us against immoderate indulgence of our passions and appetites that is always enmity with God and likely to distract us from running the spiritual race. Just as too much food, drink, and sex would threaten physical fitness for ancient athletes, the same threatens the spiritual race that we run.

I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: but I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a cast-away. (Ibid, 26, 27) 
 

Paul’s spiritual race is not pointless or without meaning. He doesn’t merely beat the air. He runs a spiritual race as an example to those of us who will follow him. His moderation should inspire us. He brings his body into subjection to his soul; he moderates its passions and orders them to a higher end. He does this to give his fellow Christians an example of how we should run and work if we hope to reach the Kingdom.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus invites us to run or to labour, but he uses the illustration of workers in a Vineyard. The kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard.(St. Matthew xx. 1) The offer to work in the Vineyard is like the image of running in a spiritual race. God offers it to all men at all times of life, whether we come in the morning when young, noontide when middle aged, or in the evening of life when old. Those who come first to work in the morning of their lives come early to run the race. They are promised one penny, or one reward. Others are roused or stirred later in the day. No matter when they agree to run or work, God promises one spiritual reward or what is right. Those who wait until the end of their lives are even rebuked for sloth, having spent most of their lives devoted to their flesh. Why stand ye here all the day idle? (Ibid, 6) Nevertheless, God’s desire for man’s running or working in His vineyard never changes. It is never too late to accept God’s invitation, provided we are in possession of our reason and senses.

In the Parable, at the end of the day, all are paid. The last to come are paid first, and the first to come are paid last. The newfound moderation or temperance that conditions the running and working of the Johnny-come-latelies is of equal value and worth to the first in the heart of the householder. Every man receives a penny. All are called to work for one reward. 
        
But what do we read next?

But when the first came, they supposed that they should have received more; and they likewise received every man a penny. And when they had received it, they murmured against the goodman of the house, saying, These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day. (Ibid, 10-12)


Unlike the race run by Greek athletes, here everyone who runs or works receives the same reward. By running or working, everyone wins no matter when they started and how hard they have worked. The reward is based on accepting the offer to run, which is a gift with a promise. No one is disqualified because they are not spiritually unathletic. Everyone can be spiritually athletic; everyone can run in this race. This is an unusual kind of race that welcomes all men to run. The runners are called to focus on the generosity of God, who would reward all men who start the race and have their eye on finishing for one reward. Each runner must work out his salvation with fear and trembling. (Phil. ii. 12) Because each runner is running to finish, he will not begrudge others of their reward or resent them because they started later in the day.
                           
Listen to how the owner of the vineyard responds to those who murmur against him and think that their reward should be greater.
Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny? Take that thine is and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?  So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen. (Ibid, 13-16)
        
The runners and workers in the parable are called to remember that God does us no wrong. We must remember that God has promised us one penny and that God gives to us what he gives to those who came last. We must be so thankful for the ability to run and work. Because we didn’t deserve it, we must count ourselves last and least. The gift of being asked to run and finish for one reward must always be accepted as greater than anything we have desired or deserved. The soul must never be greedy for more than what God offers. The soul must finish in a good spirit. No matter how long we have been running and working, we should be overjoyed when others join us to finish and receive what is God’s own to give. The work itself must be so cherished and treasured that we then wait on God to reward us with what belongs to Him and is His only to reward! That the last should receive their reward first will surprise them with joy, a joy we share because the gift of God’s Grace wants many for salvation if we are generous.
    
Dear friends, let us be willing today to accept God’s gracious invitation to run and work in the vineyard, or God’s church. Let us gratefully acknowledge that the one penny, or one reward, is God’s own to give. By reason of our sin, we don’t deserve it at all. But God’s Grace in Jesus Christ is greater than our sin. As we run and work, let us pray that many more will join us in the Church as we journey for salvation. For, if we begrudge late-comers their share in the reward, we might have been called, but won’t be chosen.
Amen.
©wjsmartin

 
Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. (St. Matthew viii. 2)
 
        
Epiphanytide is all about the manifestation, showing forth, and revelation of God’s power, wisdom, and love in the life of Jesus Christ. What we read in our Gospel lessons for this season not only reveals historical facts but gives us food for thought in our relationship with the Lord. Christ performed miracles long ago to establish his intention to continue His work with us even now. Of course, His intention has always been the healing, redemption, and salvation of our souls. If the soul is not repaired, we shall not be saved. The repair of the soul makes is right with God for salvation.
        
But the mercy that Christ brings into the world is never to be mistaken as some free heavenly handout. Christ’s mercy comes with conditions precisely because He has made us and respects what He has made. This means that His mercy will only be effective in us if we respond to it and grow it. A mercy that is simply bestowed freely without any expectations is certainly not Divine Mercy but foolish disrespect. Were God in Jesus Christ simply to hand out mercy, the implication would be that God is dealing with irrational children incapable of growing up and into the perfection of their human nature. Rather, Christ treats us as those who are redeemable. To be redeemable means that there is something in us that can be involved in our repair. And for this reason, He invites us to obtain mercy by way of seeking it out, by knocking at the door of His heart, and asking for its healing power.

Prior to today’s healing, Jesus had been preaching on a mountain. The mountain symbolizes the spiritual and heavenly world elevated above the natural and earthly. On the mountain, Jesus had exhorted his listeners to judge not, lest ye be judged. (St. Matthew vii. 1) The Father’s business, revealed to us by His Son, Jesus Christ, is about the repair of the soul that could begin only with self-judgment, with the sinful soul subjecting itself to the high and heavenly judgment, whilst leaving the judgment of others to God. Christ’s point was that we cannot possibly help others out of their sin until God’s Grace heals and repairs our souls. Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye. (ibid, 5) God’s judgment is necessary for our soul’s repair and we must seek it out.

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. (ibid, 7,8)
 
Christ calls us into a relationship with God where we are responsible for searching for God’s mercy. Like the Three Wise Men, we must follow the Star. Like Mary and Joseph who have lost Jesus, we must seek Him out. Like Mary, the servants, and Governor of the wedding feast at Cana in Galilee, we must taste the difference between the wine that brings earthly happiness and the nectar of heaven that heals.
        
But Christ’s healing power is meant for those who are sick and need a physician, those who are sinners in need of a Saviour. So, today we read that behold, a leper came and worshiped Him. (ibid, 2) The leper had heard of Jesus’ power to heal. He says, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. (ibid, 3) The leper is sick and needs help. But notice that He respects the will of God in Jesus Christ. If you will it Lord, you can heal me. The leper is sick, desires healing, but knows that it all hinges upon the will of God. Oftentimes those who are sick know that their sickness is sent from God for a deeper dependence upon His mercy. Sickness in body can encourage closeness in spirit with God.
But we do tread that Jesus willed to heal the leper. And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. (ibid, 4) Christ desires to relieve the sinner of his earthly illness. To the leper’s if thou wilt, Christ respectfully responds, it is my will. The leper’s faithful desire is rewarded with Christ’s generosity. The leper’s respect for Christ’s needful consent is rewarded. A spiritual relationship begins, and God’s mercy is obtained. The leper has played his part in ongoing redemption at Christ’s hands.
        
We would not be wrong to discern that Christ’s healing of the leper came with the fulfillment of some real expectation. The leper, having heard Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, must seek, ask, and knock. The leper has a role to play in his redemption and salvation. He does not find himself the beneficiary of free and cheap Grace. It comes at a cost. He must express his need and desire, knowing that even the healing of his leprosy is no guarantee of his salvation. See thou tell no man. (ibid, 4) Christ did not come chiefly to heal earthly sickness, eradicate poverty, eliminate hunger, or set up an earthly kingdom. Christ came to heal and save man’s soul. Sometimes Christ relieves earthly suffering and sometimes he permits it; in either case, the believer must seek out deeper the soul’s deeper spiritual healing.
        
Of course, mercy is given by God through Jesus Christ and has expectations. See thou tell not man. (idem) The leper has been given an opportunity to work out his salvation with fear and trembling, not with boasting and vain glory. St. Paul says this morning, be not wise in your own conceits. (Romans xii. 16) God’s wisdom alone suffices for our healing and redemption. The leper is cleansed of his disease but must not take this as a free pass to settle old scores. He might have had a great deal of resentment, bitterness, and anger at all those who refused to come near him to help him in time of need. Recompense to no man evil for evil. (ibid, 17) God’s mercy comes with the expectation that it should grow in the human soul as an unmerited gift of goodness and love. The leper has much work to do. Having been healed of his leprosy, he now must begin the hard work of seeking out God in Jesus Christ for his soul’s repair. The body is healed but the soul is still sinful and in need of that medicine that comes down from above. Epiphany reveals to the leper his problem, Christ’s initial solution, and then the greater need for spiritual healing and redemption. Our souls must continue to supplicate mercy to repair the sickened soul. So we pray:
Almighty and everlasting God, mercifully look upon our infirmities, and in all our dangers and necessities stretch forth they right hand to help and defend us, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Amen.
©wjsmartin
 
 
        
                                                                                         
                                   
        
 
  

 
You can only apprehend the Infinite by a faculty that is superior
to reason, by entering into a state in which the Divine Essence
is communicated unto you."
(Enneads: Plotinus)
         
Illumination and enlightenment are the themes of Epiphanytide. Επιϕανια is the Greek word for Epiphany, and it means manifestation, revelation, showing, or shining forth. For Christians, Epiphany reveals God’s love, wisdom, and power in the life of Jesus Christ – the Divine Life alive in the humanity of Jesus and calling us Home to our Heavenly Father. It is like the sun that enables the eyes to see and to understand. Epiphany’s illumination enables our eyes to move from Christ’s humanity to His Divinity.  This illumination or enlightenment gives us knowledge but then also the desire for its power to repair and redeem us. The vision of God in Jesus Christ has power that rewards our desire with what is superior to reason.

Yet the light through which Christ reveals God’s life to us is not easily apprehended. If it could be, reason would understand it perhaps as swiftly as it assents to the proposition that two plus two makes four. But, as Plotinus reminds us, a faculty greater than reason is needed to apprehend God, discover His presence in Jesus the Man, and embrace His will. That faculty is called faith. Faith alone believes what it cannot prove and does not yet know. Take the example of the first moments of attraction to another. When a man is first drawn to a woman who arrests his attention, he is drawn to her both externally and visibly. He is intrigued with wonder. We might say that he has faith in something mysterious waiting to be discovered and known in his further pursuit of the woman. His faith believes that there is something worth finding out, knowing, and loving. His faith seeks to know and have what is above and beyond his reason.

God works in the same way. He calls us forward to search Him out with faith. Our faith believes there is someone to know and love. What is waiting to be discovered is the mysterious nature of God that is greater than our reason. We can find Him only if our faith believes in and trusts what can reward our curiosity and interest. If all that there is to know about Him were revealed externally, visibly, and instantaneously to the human mind, there would be no place for a faith that follows and a love that grows.   

In Epiphanytide, our faith believes that God is at work in Jesus Christ. We seek to know and love Him. Yet on the first three Sundays in Epiphany, we feel a degree of confusion. In our Epiphany readings, our faith follows but often misses the mark. We have not yet reached understanding. The Wise Men ask Where is He that is born king of the Jews? We have seen His star in the east and have come to worship Him, (St. Matthew 2. 2) They believe that they should find their king clothed in lace, lying on soft pillows, surrounded by gold in a palace at Jerusalem. Their faith must be corrected and adjusted to God’s wisdom if they are to find where He is because of wbo He is.
 Last Sunday we found that Joseph and Mary’s faith had failed also. Their weak and earthly faith believed one thing when they should have known another. And so, they lost their son. They hurried back to Jerusalem because they believed that He was lost, no doubt in some dark alley having been beaten by thugs. They sought Him out with more fear than faith and then were sore amazed with where they found Him and with what He was doing. Their faith was so weak that it took them three days to find Him. When they found Him, their fallen natures did all the talking. Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us, behold thy father and I have sought Thee sorrowing. (St. Luke 2. 48) Negligence and incompetence are forever justifying themselves. His answer: Why is it that ye sought Me? Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’s business? (Ibid, 49) Mary and Joseph understood not the saying which He spake unto them. (Ibid, 50) Mary’s weak and foolish faith was rebuked. In response, She kept all these sayings in her heart. (Ibid, 51). 

Jesus is the Wisdom of God that is not self-evidently known or understood immediately. Jesus is also the Power of God who comes to transform the world. In today’s Gospel, some years later, Mary, having kept Jesus’ sayings in her heart, believes that, finally, she knows Her Son. Today she is with Him at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. The wedding party has run out of wine. She remembers the prophecy of the Angel Gabriel concerning Jesus. She knows and remembers the Divine wisdom in her twelve-year-old son when he rebuked her for her unbelief and ignorance. Now she believes that she knows Him. She will enlist His Divine power to furnish a marriage with added bliss. She tugs at his toga and says, Son, they have no wine. (St. John, ii. 3)She is a good Jewish mother and will not be embarrassed by her Son’s lack of response to an urgent need.  The Mother believes that Her Son can overcome every earthly need. She thinks that He should do so. Surely, He can use His Divine Power to forestall looming embarrassment for the bridegroom, his family, and herself.

But Jesus rebukes Mary. Woman what have I to do with thee, or Woman, what does this have to do with Me and thee? (Ibid, 3) The rebuke is needed because her faith is, as George MacDonald writes, unripe and unfeatured. This faith, working with her ignorance and her fancy, led her to expect the great things of the world from him. (George MacDonald, The Miracles of our Lord.)  Jesus rebuked his mother in the temple and will do likewise here. Mine hour has not yet come. (Ibid, 4) Jesus is calling Mary to consider a faculty far greater than reason. (Idem) He wants her to believe that He has not come into the world to turn water into wine in order to save men from earthly shame. Rather, He will turn water into wine as a sign that He alone can make what is common into something extraordinary and something earthly into something heavenly. He will turn water into wine as He turns sin into righteousness and death into new life. 

Mary believes that Jesus is the Son of the most high God. His rebuke is just and good. She steps back into heavenly formation: Whatsoever He says, do it. (Ibid, 5) Mary must trust in Jesus’ knowledge, initiative, and timing. Jesus commands the wedding staff to fill the waterpots with water. (Ibid, 7) Jesus continues:

Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast. And they bare it. When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew;) the governor of the feast called the bridegroom, and saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now. (Ibid, 8-10) 
 
Jesus’ nature and mission must be discovered by men who can taste the difference. God and His Son never enforce virtue. Most men will drink the wine and get more drunk, not knowing what has transpired. The governor of the feast, however, is situated spiritually to sense what has happened. The governor of the feast, responsible as ever for both the encouragement of happiness and its potential spoilation, was in command of his senses. It is for the governor’s benefit that the miracle is performed. The ground of his soul is ripe for conversion.

Of course, today’s miracle is a sign and symbol of what Christ always intends to do with us. If we are in search of miraculous earthly solutions to earthly deficiencies, we are far too drunk on earthly things to see how Christ the Light longs to bring new spiritual wine into our fallen lives in this holy season of Epiphany. Christ Jesus is the power of God and the wisdom of God. (1 Cor. i. 24) He comes to put new wine into new bottles. (St. Mark ii. 22) The Blessed Virgin Mary had to learn not to provoke her Son to action until His hour had come. The Governor, too, we will notice, did not send the servants out to purchase more wine. As far as we know, he might have thought that the guests had already had quite enough and needed no more. The Governor’s earthly prudence was ripe for discovering who Jesus was and where He dwelt.

Jesus insists, Mine hour is not yet come. (Ibid) For now, He might provide earthly wine or not. Whatsoever He says, we must do it. We must believe in order to know. His Hour does not yet come until He acts, and we interpret. God in Jesus Christ never neglects our prayers but answers them as He will and when He will. With St. Paul this morning, we must discover that Christ knows the gifts of each man in relation to His mercy. Mary’s gift of discerning His power must be adjusted to His timing. The servants’ gift of serving must offer what they can in human terms –water or nature’s substance. The governor offers the gift of his sobriety. Jesus responds with His intention to perfect them all.

We believe that Jesus saves the best wine until last. Mary, the servants, and the governor will discern the difference. The marriage feast had run out of wine. Have we run out of wine? Have we been depleted of earthly things that can promise no lasting happiness? Until we have, Jesus’ provision of wine at the wedding in Cana of Galilee will not point to anything more than earthly mirth. With the governor of the feast, may our minds and senses be ready for the Epiphany season’s revelation of the spiritual conversion that Christ intends to bring about in us.
 
Amen. 
©wjsmartin

 
O LORD, we beseech thee mercifully to receive the prayers of thy people 
who call upon thee; and grant that they may both perceive and know what things
 they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
(Collect Ep. I)
 
In Christmas Tide, we directed our mind’s eye to the new birth of Jesus Christ in our hearts and souls. Now in Epiphany Tide, our eyes are opening as Christ the Light enlightens us to the character of the new life which God desires for us. Epiphany comes to us from the Greek word epiphaneia, and it means manifestation, revelation, or shining forth. In the East, Epiphany is called Theophany, meaning the vision of God. So, this season is all about contemplating the Light of God, which is the manifestation or shining forth of His vision for us in Jesus Christ. In Christ the Light, then, we are called to discover the pattern for human life that promises to redeem and save us. 
         
On the feast of Epiphany, the vision of God in Jesus Christ was revealed to Gentile Magi, or Wise Men from the East. Today, we find Him in the Temple at Jerusalem. We know nothing of the period between Jesus’ infancy and His sudden appearance in the Temple at the age of twelve, and then between today’s manifestation and the beginning of His adult ministry. St. Luke, alone, chooses to record a singular event from Jesus’ childhood. Yet, what is revealed and shines forth today is an epiphany that helps us to follow Jesus back to His Father’s Kingdom. Today’s revelation teaches us about the need for a youthful preoccupation with the business of our Heavenly Father.
         
So we read that Jesus’ 

parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover. And when He was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast. And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and his mother knew not of it. (St. Luke ii. 41-43) 
 
St. Luke is in the habit of identifying Joseph by his first name since he was the foster father but not natural father of Jesus. Jesus’ natural Father is God. The Holy Family had traveled up to Jerusalem for the Feast of Passover. When they began to make their journey home, Joseph and Mary did not realize that Jesus was missing. Ancient Jewish families traveled as a tribe and thus the entourage would have been large. The adults often entrusted their young ones to older cousins and friends as they traveled. So, as Mary and Joseph traveled home with the adults, they trusted that Jesus was with the extended family.

Joseph and Mary thought that they knew where Jesus was. But, as we know, it turns out that they did not. They did not know where he was physically. As it turns out, they did not know where he was spiritually either.  Where someone is spiritually is of utmost importance in revealing and shining forth to us the state of Jesus’ soul and the character of His spirit. Joseph and Mary did not yet understand where Jesus Christ must always be inwardly and spiritually.
         
A whole day passed before Mary and Joseph realized Jesus’ absence. We read: But they, supposing Him to have been in the company, went a day’s journey; and they sought Him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance.  And when they found Him not, they turned back again to Jerusalem, seeking Him. (Ibid, 44,45) Jesus’ parents were concerned about His physical whereabouts. Perhaps He had been attacked, beaten, hurt, or wounded. Perhaps He had managed to get Himself lost. Surely if their Son was to be great…called the Son of the Highest…the heir of…the throne of His father David (St. Luke i. 32), they could not afford to lose Him. But then again, if they had had more faith and trust in God, they wouldn’t have worried.
         
As we learn, Jesus, even at the tender age of 12, was not lost. Mary and Joseph returned to Jerusalem and spent three days trying to find their child. Evidently, they were looking in the wrong places. They did not know His whereabouts, because they had not discerned who Jesus is and where He is always spiritually. Finally, after three days they found Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard Him were astonished at His understanding and answers. (Idem, 46, 47) Jesus was where a young Jewish boy who was searching for God’s will would be. But Jesus was far more conscientious than most boys his age would have been. After all, He would be called the Son of the Most High. (Idem)To learn of His great vocation, He humbled Himself before the rabbis and theologians in the temple in order to discover His future mission and ministry. He would listen. But he would also question. They would be astounded at the wisdom and stature that informed His character. In Christ, the Doctors of the Temple began to see where this unknown boy from an obscure family and insignificant village dwelt truly and spiritually.
         
The doctors were fascinated with his questions. Mary and Joseph were amazed to find their son with them, but their astonishment did not quell their frustration. Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. (Ibid, 48) Mary and Joseph did not understand that where He was physically was all-important for where He is always spiritually. He chastises them gently but firmly. How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business? (Ibid, 49) In other words, Why were you seeking me? Did you not know that I must be involved with my Heavenly Father’s business first and foremost? Joseph and Mary understood not the word, which He spake to them. (Ibid, 50: Wycliffe) They who were willing to entrust Him to the care of His cousins could not entrust Him to the care of God. And He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them: but His mother kept all these sayings in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man. (Ibid, 51,52)
         
Who is Jesus? Where is Jesus? And where are we in relation to Him? Jesus is always about His Father's business. Where is He physically? is the wrong question to ask. His question to the Doctors of the Temple and to us is: Where are you spiritually? The same question was implied in His answer to His mother: Why did you seek me? For you should know where I am at all times and for eternity! That His parents did not understand His answer is part and parcel of every man’s need to discover who Jesus is and where we ought to find Him. Wherever He is, Jesus is always with our Heavenly Father. Jesus doesn’t move; we do! He is where He has always been, with the Father and doing the Father’s work. He was with God from before all beginnings, as the Creative Word through whom all things were made. (St. John i. 3) He was with God from the moment of conception until His Ascension to the Father, disclosing the Father’s will as the Redemptive Word made Flesh busily working out our salvation. He is with God today in our Gospel lesson, preferring to entrust His life to our Heavenly Father’s business rather than to hurry back to meet the expectations of His earthly parents. He longs for us to see that where He is reveals who He is. (St. John xiv. 3)
         
So where are we spiritually today? Have we left Jesus behind, or have we lost Him? We cannot have lost Him if we have never found Him! And we can never find Him if we are not seeking and searching for Him, like Mary and Joseph. An acquaintance recently told me that he did not get much out of the Christian religion. I responded: How could you? You have never looked for God, let alone His Son, Jesus Christ! You are too busy with other business! If you seek and search for Truth, you will find it. If you look, you will discover that Jesus Christ is the Epiphany of God, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. In Jesus, you will find an Epiphany of the way back to God, and the truth of who He is by the life He leads. In the human life of God’s own Son, we find an Epiphany of the Man who is caught up in His Father’s business for the salvation of all others!
Oswald Chambers asks: 

Are you so identified with the Lord’s life that you are simply a child of God, continually talking to Him and realizing that all things come from His hands? Is the Eternal Child in you living in the Father’s house? Are the graces of His ministering life working out through you in your home, in your business, in your domestic circle? (My Utmost: Aug. 7) 
 
Christ wants us to search for God to discover that we are His children. Christ wants the Father’s Business to become our business! Christ wants our chief occupation to be taken up with God and His desire to bring us back to Himself forever!
         
Dear friends, today let us see that the business of the young Jesus at the Temple in Jerusalem is His relationship with the Father. Jesus wants us to join Him in a youthful contemplation, study, and interrogation of God. Our Father’s business is our salvation. It requires being transformed by the renewing of our minds to find in Christ what is that good, acceptable, and perfect will of God (Romans, xii. 2) for us. The twelve-year-old Christ, who refused to be conformed to this world (idem), is the model and pattern for the life we are to lead. This Epiphany, let us embrace His youthful disposition and habit, that where He is, we might be also. (St. John xiv. 3)  
Amen.
©wjsmartin

 
That day is called the birthday of the Lord on which the Wisdom of God manifested Himself as a speechless Child and the Word of God wordlessly uttered the sound of a human voice. His divinity, although hidden, was revealed by heavenly witness to the shepherds by angelic voices. With yearly ceremony, therefore, we celebrate this day which saw the fulfillment of the prophecy…(St. Augustine sermon clxxxv)
  
Tonight, we come to the manger in Bethlehem to worship God’s own Word made flesh, beginning with a meditation upon the Incarnation by St. Augustine of Hippo. From the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, we can hear only silence. The Word of God made flesh is as speechless as every newborn babe. The Word of the Eternal Father, His only and everlastingly begotten Son, is made man for us and for our salvation. From conception in the Virgin’s womb, and now in His birth, He has come into the world to redeem fallen man.

But at first, there is the silence of the child himself. From the child, we hear only inarticulate cries. The sound of this infant’s voice must be heard but cannot be understood. We don’t expect to understand the vocation and calling of any baby. We must wait till he grows to discover what He plans to do. So tonight is shrouded in mystery.

But we believe that the birth of this child was foretold to the Blessed Virgin Mary by the Angel Gabriel and accomplished through the agency of the Holy Ghost. We believe that in some mysterious way Christ’s conception and birth are part and parcel of our salvation. Rather than saving us by some paranormal divine blast of divine thunder, God chose to become one of us. His intention is not hard to imagine. Because the whole of fallen man’s existence must be redeemed, God will begin at the beginning, first in the womb and then in the birth to reunite the whole of human life to God, from the manger to the Cross, from birth to death. And so, the Son of God allows Himself to be born of woman, held in her arms, nurtured and nourished in the way common to all men. In so doing, Christ blesses the conception and birth of all men. Christ takes on our human life from the womb to birth and beyond. And while most of the world was spiritually asleep, while most of the world didn’t notice, the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. (St. John. i. 14)

But those who first welcomed God’s Word made flesh were simple men, shepherds abiding in their field by night. They were not philosophers or theologians. Philosophers and theologians always have trouble with the fact that God became a baby. To them, the Truth and Word of God belong to Heaven and the eternal realm. But to shepherds, God is a close friend who in the darkness of a dangerous night protects their flocks from robbers and wolves. They depend upon God for protection and care. There is always something childlike in a shepherd, whose life is simple and close to God’s creation. That God’s angels came to shepherds to announce the birth of the Savior should not surprise us. Shepherds’ lives are uncomplicated and unsophisticated. And unlike earthly kings and princes, they are relatively poor. Simplicity and humility are always ripe for the coming of God’s Word made flesh.    

That the shepherds should be the first to learn of His coming is most suitable. In Him, these simple men can believe that God has visited His people. As the shepherds care for their sheep, why shouldn’t God be made man to shepherd them? A newborn babe is of much greater interest to shepherds than to philosophers or earthy rulers. The shepherds live so close to a world where the barest of necessities of protection and love have meaning. They are used to being content with small things. God’s gift, a small babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger, will be of great value to them.

Jesus Christ is God’s own Son born into the world. As God, He needs nothing. He needs nothing of the philosopher’s complicated rational demands. He has no use for the riches and palaces of the princes of this world. To save man, He needs only become a baby in need of His mother’s milk and loving care. The eternally begotten Word made flesh reveals Himself as content with the bare necessities of life. He needs only the simplest of things to begin His earthly journey. As a babe, He will be protected by his foster father, Joseph the Carpenter. Having all He needs, He will look out with awesome wonder and awe at the world He had made.

There was no room in the inn for the Holy Family. Civilized society rejects this birth. Civilized society treats the shepherds with equal scorn. No matter. The Holy Family and the shepherds can become the friends of God while the rest of the world is asleep, or too busy with their complicated lives to notice. What is hidden from the world is revealed by the Holy Family to those whom the world has rejected. God’s Word is made flesh in simplicity and first comes to simple men. Poverty is no obstacle to God’s revelation in His Son. Shepherds are not too mean and lowly to be made His first worshipers. The uncomplicated nature of the birth, in obscurity and hiddenness, has touched those who have little but their sheep, the fields, the sky and the stars above.
        
God desires nothing from men but a heart moved and touched by the arrival of His love. The shepherds have been vigilant at work, watching over their flocks by night, tired but awake to what might come next. Joseph is worn out having sought refuge for the birth of his foster child. The Blessed Virgin is exhausted having to give birth in a manger, a cratch, an uncomfortable place. Christ will be born and will begin to reveal himself in the brutal reality of hard and incommodious human life. Christ will be born into a world that is not expecting His arrival. God comes to reveal Himself in and through the earth and not on floating above it. There is no golden glow or rich pageantry to accompany Christ’s birth. Here we find a poor baby born on a rag of cloth, in a barn smelling of animals and sweat, on a dirt floor in a dark shed. Here we find the Saviour of the world worshiped by tired and dirty herdsmen.

Can this Word that was made flesh long ago be born for us tonight? Or are we like those who didn’t notice Christ’s birth, spiritually asleep or too busy to be bothered? Will the timeless One, the Word of God enter the brief span of our day and be born for us as He was in Bethlehem? If He will be born for us, as we remember His entry into our fallen world, perhaps we must recall where Christ was born and to whom. We do well to realize that more often than not, our lives are like dirty and smelly old mangers and barns. We are frustrated that our lives are too dysfunctional, ordinary, or complicated. We too are like the shepherds, consumed with our sheep, spending sleepless nights wondering what might become of us and our families. Are these obstacles or opportunities for the Christ Child to be born in our midst? No doubt, we are not as poor and desperate as 1st-century shepherds. But surely, we can identify with the manger and shepherds more than we might like to admit. To admit it, is necessary.

Christ’s birth seems inauspicious and unfortunate. But Christ heralds His coming into our world as one of us, destined to suffer and struggle for our redemption. Mary and Joseph struggled and suffered to find a place for this child’s birth. They must have been confused that God hadn’t provided more suitable accommodation. The birthplace is as solitary, dirty, disappointing, and seemingly ordinary as that of the shepherds’ fields. No sooner is Christ born but the Holy Family must flee into exile to escape the jealousy and wrath of King Herod. Christ’s birth heralds an adult life that will provoke rejection, envy, and rage. Later, far removed from the inconspicuous manger and the simple credulity of the shepherds, He will be attacked, maligned, and rejected by the philosophers, theologians, and princes of this world. Eventually, He will suffer and die at their hands in order to persist in the project of our salvation.

But none of this need present itself as an obstacle to our salvation. His humble birth in simple conditions should not keep us from Him. As the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world (ibid, 9), Christ has come into our darkness, dirt, dilapidation, and difficulty. The light shineth in the darkness and the darkness overcame it not. Christ the Light will shed light on our darkness if we welcome Him. His Light will shine on the hideousness of our sin. It is in our ordinary and sinful condition that Christ expects to find us. This is where He always reveals Himself. Let us pray for the humility and courage to go to Bethlehem this night. Still, He will shine the Light into our darkness. And if we realize that our darkness cannot overcome His light, a sparkle of hope will fill our breasts and our journey in hope will begin.  

Amen.
©wjsmartin
 
 

 
 
Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, Rejoice.
 
On the last Sunday in Advent, you and I are called to come to know the Word made flesh and to Rejoice. Our recognition of Jesus Christ, the Word made Flesh, and our rejoicing are gifts coming to us from the heart of John the Baptist. Today John the Baptist prepares us for Christ’s coming into his Body, the Church, and especially for His first coming, which we remember on Christmas Day. We are called to discover the character that both knows Jesus Christ as the Word and Wisdom of God made flesh and to rejoice in Him.
           
But first, in today’s Gospel, John the Baptist teaches us to know ourselves and our need for Jesus Christ. The Jews sent Priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who art thou? And he confessed, and denied not; but confessed, I am not the Christ. John the Baptist never pretended to be Christ. He confesses that he is not even Elijah the prophet. Malachi had foretold that Elijah would come before the Second Coming of the Lord. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD. (Mal. iv. 5)  But the Angel Gabriel insists that it is John who shall go before [Jesus Christ] in the spirit and power of Elijah (Lk. i. 17). Both are messengers and forerunners who prepare us for Christ’s coming. John prepares for the first coming, and Elijah for the second. John shares with Elijah the vocation of precursor and preparer. John Baptist says, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Isaiah. (St. John i. 23) John has come to prepare the Jewish people for the coming of the Lord. His preparation begins with a confession of who he is truly. He calls us too to know ourselves as those who need always make straight the way of the Lord. (Idem)

John comes and teaches us to repent before welcoming Christ’s coming. Repent ye, for the kingdom of God is at Hand. (Matt. iii. 2) We must repent because we must remember that we are always sinners in need of the Saviour. Because our righteousness is always mixed with sin, we must make repentance an habitual part of our spiritual lives. But repentance is only a beginning. Repentance prepares us for the salvation that Jesus Christ alone can bring into our lives. John tells us: I baptize with water: but there standeth one among you, whom ye know not: he it is who coming after me is preferred before me, whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to unloose. (St. John i. 26) From the depths of John’s heart we come to know that our repentance must empty us of ourselves, making within our souls a spiritual place that welcomes Christ’s coming. John has a baptism with water for repentance, but Christ shall baptize…with the Holy Ghost. (St. Mark i. 8) John’s baptism will cleanse us outwardly, and Christ’s baptism will purify us inwardly.
           
With John the Baptist, you and I must move out of the world and into the soul. We are too much at home in this world. John comes to teach us that this is not our home. Christians ought to know that this world is a place of passage and pilgrimage, from wilderness and exile to the true homeland and City of our God. Like John the Baptist, you and I must come to know ourselves and confess our sins. With the Baptist, we must learn that if left to our own devices, we shall be consumed with ourselves, forget who we are and what we need, and, thus, be ripe for Hell. 

We live in a time when the human heart seems so far removed from any need to seek out and find God. We live in a world whose idolatry hides us from the knowledge of God. John the Baptist, bearing the spirit of Elijah, calls us away from our idolatry. Anything that claims our time, attention, and money more than God is an idol. Anything that consumes, owns, and possesses us more than God is an idol. The idol is a false god. False gods come in many forms. It might be our bodily health. We spend so much time going to doctors but not to our pastors and priests for help with our souls. It might be earthly riches. We are unhinged daily by the stock markets’ irrational insecurity. Why don’t we focus on the riches and treasures of Heaven? To my knowledge, we can’t take earthly riches with us. If we think that we can, we are sure to go to Hell. An idol or false god stands between us and salvation. Our idol worship might even turn others off from God. Why? They will see that our religion is vain and fraudulent. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. (Matthew vi 24)

John Baptist comes to help us abandon our false gods. He proclaims, Bear fruits that befit repentance, for even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. (St. Matthew iii. 8, 10) With John’s contemporaries, we might ask, What then shall we do? John the Baptist tells us not only to repent but to purge. He who has two coats, let him share with him who has none; and he who has food, let him do likewise. (St. Luke iii 11) He tells us to be content with less in earthly terms as we pursue more in spiritual terms. Collect no more than is appointed you. (Ibid, 12) John wants us to focus on Christ’s coming and what it must mean for us if we hope to be saved. He who is coming after me is mightier than me, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. (Ibid, 14-16) This is serious business. We are made to be redeemed by God’s Spirit of fire, a spiritual fire that will slowly but surely burn off our desire for earthly things and our passions that depend so uncertainly on other people and worldly relationships.

The outside world and our dependence on it could land us in Hell. With John, let us prepare for the Lord’s coming with repentance and otherworldly generosity. St. Paul, another messenger, says let your moderation be known unto all men. For the Lord is at hand. (Phil. iv. 5) He warns us to be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. (Phil. iv. 6) The Virgin Mother of our Lord reminds us: The rich he hath sent empty away. (St. Luke i. 53) Moderation is a virtue that tempers our selfish addiction to our own riches and encourages generosity. John and Paul want us to know that Christ’s coming brings bountiful grace and mercy to speedily help and deliver us (Collect, Advent IV) from false gods.
           
John also exhorts us to mourning. We must mourn over our sins and how we have hurt others and ourselves by turning away from Christ. We must pray for the gift of tears. St. John Chrysostom reminds us that our physical tears begin to heal those who grieve. Our spiritual tears begin to cleanse us from sin. The water with which John baptizes penitents symbolizes the tears that purify the soul that awaits the coming of Christ. The tears that unceasing prayer offers…are resurrectional. (Philokalia) Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. (St. Matthew v 4)
We weep so that we might rejoice. Our preparation for the coming of Christ, heralded by St. John the Baptist, intends to make us new and ripe for rejoicing in Christ’s Holy Incarnation. St. Paul says today, Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say Rejoice. (Phil. iv. 4) We must rejoice in Jesus Christ’s coming to the soul. John’s cry for confession, contrition, and compunction prepares us to be filled with the salvation that Christ’s birth brings. Sorrow must yield to joy. When joy defines our lives, we shall have perfect confidence and hope in Christ’s coming. Today, Christ promises to infuse us with His presence to deepen and perfect our belief and hope that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. And, in closing, let us remember with Austin Farrer that
We cannot come to God, He is beyond our reach; but He can come to us, for we are not beneath His mercy.
 
Amen.
 
©wjsmartin

 By turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just…
(Collect, Advent III)
 
We have been saying that in Advent we are preparing to meet Christ, the newborn Savior of the world, on Christmas night. Advent teaches us that we are preparing to meet our God. The urgency of the matter at hand was articulated on Advent Sunday. Last Sunday, we were taught that we must conscientiously study Scripture to understand the necessity for action. Today we are reminded that we need teachers and instructors in the faith so as not to go astray.
        
Of course, the need for teachers and an institution to help us to salvation runs against the grain of postmodern man’s obsession with his own self-importance and intelligence. Individual will run riot characterizes postmodern man’s footloose and fancy-free attitude to life. Men place themselves first and are leery of submitting to any form of authority lest their intellectually flimsy opinions be exposed.
But, on the other hand, who can blame them? The institutions of higher learning and even the churches are now run by men are obsessed with themselves and the pursuit of money and mammon against truth through wisdom.
        
So, what is the earnest Christian to do at a time when the representatives of church and state, science and religion have sold their birthrights for a mess of porridge at the booth of Vanity Fair? Some years back, Russell Kirk, the Sage of Mecosta, founder of the modern conservative movement, and no stranger to worldly censure, exile, and adversity, shared his solution to the failures of both church and state with his friend William F. Buckley, Jr., who was visiting Kirk’s stump country home, Piety Hill, from cosmopolitan New York. Buckley and Kirk were in the library. Buckley, clearly at a far remove from the Big Apple, a long way from what he judged, barely, as civilization, and sensing the loneliness of the conscientious scholar, asked, What do you do for companionship? Kirk, in his own inimitably defiant way, raised his hand and pointed to the books lining the walls. There, Mr. Buckley, you will find my friends! Russell Kirk’s friends and companions were always sure to be found and ready for engagement in the great poets, historians, philosophers, statesmen, prophets, and saints of Western Civilization. Kirk never despaired. He could not, for most of his friends had known suffering and sacrifice of a higher order than his own. From them, he culled the truth and summoned courage. His friends were his teachers, and because they imbued him with the permanent things, the first principles that make for goodness on earth and hope for Heaven, he felt the urgency to pass it all on.
        
Kirk was an orthodox Christian, and his intellectual position derived from the great moral teachers of Western Civilization, both pagan and Christian. He knew that he was responsible to an enterprise far greater than himself and more profound than his words could express. He liked to quote Fulbert of Chartres, a 12th-century scholar, who said, while we moderns might be able to see a little farther than our ancestors in certain ways, regarding greater truth, still, we are dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. Kirk always insisted that without the great minds of Western Civilization as our teachers and guides, without our ancestors, we are in danger of forgetting the past and falling into errors far greater than they ever could have imagined. Kirk, quoting G. K. Chesterton, went on to say that in deciding any moral or political question, we have the obligation to consult the considered opinions of the wise men who have preceded us in time. (Kirk, The Enemies of the Permanent Things, p. 27)   
        
Of course, Kirk and Chesterton, along with the sane men of all ages, derived their positions from Christendom. Long before the varied sciences of philosophy, sociology, and ethics severed themselves from the sacred tutelage of the Christian Saints, the Church had established itself as the Schoolhouse for civilization. To justify her claims, the Church was responsible for interpreting the history of mankind and God’s response to it through Jesus Christ by the working of the Holy Spirit. The Church and her teachers were called to serve truth. When at her best, the Church knew that she was a dwarf, standing on the shoulders of giants, first the priests, prophets, and kings of Israel, and later upon Christ Himself, and then His Apostles. The summary of the Church’s history was first Israel, and then Israel’s spiritual journey as understood with the help of Greek wisdom. The history of the Church’s Bible, Creeds, and Councils reveals an indebtedness to truth concerning Man and God for goodness in the world and righteousness for Heaven.
        
The posture is one of humility. When the Church was faithful, she humbled herself before history and its giants. In the course of time, she produced her own giants, the great wise men who explained truth. And the Church’s greatest exponent of the method to be pursued was the Apostle Paul. He gives us a view into his method in this morning’s Epistle. Paul considers himself to be no giant. He is rather the servant of both history and revelation, indebted to the past. Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God. (1 Cor. iv. 1) Paul is no ruler or governor. He is a servant and minister for the truth. Paul takes it further. He reminds his listeners that he will not be judged by them, nor will he even judge himself! (ibid, 3) Paul will not be scrutinized by others or by himself. Paul must be judged by a higher standard, by history and history’s God. Paul the evangelist, apostle, and teacher must be a servant of Christ, with Christ within judging him and guiding Him into all truth. The Permanent Things, which Christ came down from heaven to put into man’s grasp once again, ruled and governed Paul. The ministers of the Church were called to be about God’s business. They were called to minister the Gospel truth to the flock of Christ. Christ the way, the truth, and the light would bring to light what is hidden in darkness, reveal the secrets of all men’s hearts, and reward them accordingly. (ibid, 5)
        
Paul knew that the servant is not above his Master. (St. Matthew x. 24) But Paul had learned his lesson the hard way. He thought that he knew more than history’s giants. Dare we say that he thought he knew more than God Himself? Christ had to throw Paul down off the high horse of his pride to recall his mind to God’s wisdom for the kingdom. Paul had to learn humility before history and history’s God. Paul had to become like John Baptist, whom we read about in today’s Gospel. John the Baptist is imprisoned, awaiting death for telling the truth to King Herod about his adulterous marriage. John was a true minister of Jesus Christ. He was preparing the way for Christ’s coming. He was so faithful to Christ that he suffered for it. His knowledge of the ancient Law of Israel and his service of the permanent things put him at odds with the rulers of his own age. With caution, with prudence, he wanted to ensure that Christ was the Son of God. Art thou He that should come, or do we look for another? (St. Matthew xi. 3) John, like so many ministers of the Church, like so many in history who have sought the truth in loneliness with the rejection of men, would know the truth.
        
John is reminded that history will record what Christ has done.
 
Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see:  the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. (ibid, 4,5)
 
Christ has come to open eyes to the wisdom of God, to make lame limbs move to the Kingdom, to cure men of spiritual disease, that they might hear the truth and come into new life. Christ will begin with physical healing that leads to spiritual health. Christ the possessor of the permanent things will apply truth to man’s fallen condition. John’s faith must not stumble at the pride of the Pharisees or the corruption of men. Future generations must not falter at the wickedness of the clergy or statesman in any contemporary society. Christ is greater than all. And if John and his disciples would follow Christ to the end, Christ would live in them and carry them home to the Kingdom. Blessed are they who shall not be offended in me. (Ibid, 6)
        
John the Baptist is a symbol of what future ministers of Christ in church and state were called to become. When John’s followers departed, Jesus asked his listeners what they thought of John Baptist.
 
What went ye out in the wilderness to see? A reed shaken in the wind? A man clothed in soft raiment? They that wear soft clothing are in king’s houses. What went ye out to see? A prophet? Yea more than a prophet. (ibid, 7,8,9) yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet.  For this is he, of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.  Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. (ibid, 7-11)
 
What did they expect? A prophet shaken into disbelief? A princely bishop or worldly elite? Surely, a prophet. Here is one who has suffered for the truth. Here is one who sets the standard for ministry and learning in the future Church and beyond by believing that Christ redeems all history for Heaven. And while he may falter briefly, He merely needs Christ’s help to stay the course and remember the permanent things. Christ is least in the kingdom of Heaven, and He alone is greater than John Baptist for he enables John and us to make sense of history for posterity.
        
On this Third Sunday of Advent, the individual members of Church and State are recalled to the permanent things. The temptation for clerics and scholars today is to despair. But with the giants of history, we must heed the wisdom and warning of our friends from the past. Christ is always coming to us, and as Russell Kirk said, we must be concerned with our spirit and character – with the perennial problem of the inner order of the soul, the restoration of the ethical understanding, and the religious sanction upon which any life worth living is founded. For this reason, we may count the Sage of Mecosta among the giants whom we dwarves should heed.
 
Amen.
©wjsmartin