Trinity III
July 6, 2025
 
Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God,
that he may exalt you in due time: 7
casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.
(1 Peter v. 6,7)
 
         The first half of the Christian Year ends with our vision of God the Holy Trinity. The second half begins from the same vision and encourages our moral effort and responsibility. In Trinity Tide, you and I are encouraged to translate our vision of God into virtue. What this means is that our God intends not only to be known but to be loved, as we desire to acclimate our hearts to His nature. And God intends to be loved not for His own need but for ours, for with His love alive in our souls, we hope to reach His Kingdom. On Trinity I and II, we contemplated the love of God that moved our Maker to send His son to save us. Our first two Sundays after Trinity involved remembering that we love God because He first loved us and sent His Son to be a propitiation for our sins. (1 John iv, 10, 19) If we love God, we keep His commandments and love one another (1 John iii. 23, 24). Then, the principles of God’s love are alive in our hearts. Next, starting today, we gain a deeper sense of God’s love as the Grace that seeks us out, finds us, and makes us right with God. Today, we are encouraged to contemplate God’s Grace as the fire of His love, which touches us to inspire not only our adoration but also that humility which will ensure its effectual operation in our souls.
        
Beginning with today’s Gospel, we read, then drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners for to hear him. (St. Luke xv. 1) The love of God as Grace is most appreciated by those who need it most. The publicans and sinners, like you and I, are those who have a natural aversion to the religious elites in every age, the scribes and pharisees in Jesus’ time, and pompous clerics in our own. We flee them mostly because we do not detect that they carry the love of God to our sorry and sinful condition. Like today’s publicans and sinners, let us listen to Jesus. For while the self-righteous and envious clergy fear what Christ may do for us and murmur against Him, we must seek His help.
        
Jesus gives us two parables. In the first, He compares Himself to any good shepherd. What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? (St. Luke xv. 4) Like any good shepherd, Christ loves us so much that He is willing to leave His pious flock to find you and me as individual sinners. Note, our sin is never so great that He does not seek us out to find us in the wilderness of our sin. Each and every one of us is so loved by Jesus Christ, that we must never consider ourselves as outcasts to His Grace. And far from expecting us to find Him, first He sets out to find us, knowing that by reason of our sins, we are weak, confused, lost in darkness, and on the precipice of despair. The Church too often tries to limit God’s Grace, those whom Christ is always in search of for salvation. But the parable gives us hope because in it Jesus reminds us that He is forever searching for each one of us. When He finds us, He layeth us on His shoulders, rejoicing. (ibid, 5) Next, He returns home to the Father and the Spirit, enjoining them to share in His joy. I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance. (ibid, 7) When He finds us, He intends that we should repent because He has found us in our sin and rescued us from it. We need not only His love as Grace, but we need repentance, or to confess our sins and sorrow over them. Our true need is to be found by Jesus Christ. We don’t deserve His Grace, but we desperately need it for the repair and redemption of our lives.
        
Next, Jesus tells another parable, that of the lost coin. He compares Himself to the woman who has ten pieces of silver and loses one. (ibid, 8) Christ is comparing us to something of great worth and value to Him. We are so precious to Him that, like the woman, He will light a candle, and sweep the house of the world, and seek diligently till He finds us. (ibid, 9) In the illuminating light of the Father, through the Spirit, Christ will labor persistently until He finds us. The light is needed to shine in the dark world of sin, where we are lost. His determination to find us reveals the love of His Grace. God’s Grace is not limited by time but reveals His ongoing tenacity. The light of the Father is Christ as God’s Word and Wisdom. The labor of His love sweeps away the dust of sin until He finds us. With the woman, there is rejoicing at having found her lost coin. With Christ, in Heaven, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. (ibid, 10) God’s joy is always shared by the good angels, our fellow creatures. God’s joy is personal, because, as Canon Scott reminds us, it is not we sheep who are lost, but it is God who has lost us. The loss is His, and the joy is His. (M. Scott, Harmony of the Collects, Epistles, and Gospels) Through these parables, we must see the perfect love of God in Christ, who ceaselessly searches for us to save us from our sin. Similarly, we are bidden to rejoice with Christ, to find our joy in His love for us.
        
But there is more. Having been found by Jesus Christ, the good shepherd, and the conscientious woman, we must make good with His Grace. St. Peter reminds us this morning that because of what Christ has done for us we must be clothed with humility, for God resisteth the proud and giveth Grace unto the humble. (1 St. Peter v. 5) We can only be exalted if we are humbled. And we are humbled if we recognize that God’s love as His Grace has found us to habituate us to His nature for the salvation of our lives. As He has cared for us in finding us, so He continues to care for us in giving us His Spirit, the Spirit of rejuvenation, repair, and redemption. We are not once saved, always saved, as some proudly imagine. Rather, we are works in progress, slowly but surely learning to surrender to God in Jesus Christ by heartily praying (Collect Trinity III) for His Grace each and every day of our lives. St. Peter also reminds us that we shall be tempted to sin and distracted by the Devil.

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: whom resist stedfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world. (ibid, 8,9)
 
Humility demands moral effort on our part. We must be prepared to resist the Devil with our steadfast and determined faith. As Christ persisted in finding us, so we must persist in His Grace, ever determined to allow His goodness to mold and shape the new lives that He has won for us with the Father. And lest we become proud and self-pitying, we do well to remember that temptation as affliction is common to all men, and especially to the Saints, whom the Devil detests.
        
In summary, St. Peter reminds us that the God of all Grace…hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus. (ibid, 10) In Christ, we are justified and made right with God the Father. But our justification needs sanctification. Our being made right with God requires us to say yes to the Spirit, who intends to make us better and better, having suffered a while, making us perfect, stablishing us, strengthen us, and settling us. (idem) Without moral effort and cooperation, our having been found will be to no effect.
        
And so today, we pray that by God’s mighty aid, we might be defended and comforted in all dangers and adversities. (idem) Because we have been saved by Jesus Christ does not mean that we must cease to heartily desire to pray and supplicate Christ. A hearty desire to pray is the habit of life that must characterize our spiritual lives. It will seal us until the great and dreadful day of Judgment. It will reveal that, truly, we are always in need of being found by Christ and given ever-increasing value that will move from us to others, who will, we pray, find their need for Him also.

Amen.
©wjsmartin

St. Peter’s Day
June 29, 2025

Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, 
if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: 
that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold 
that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise 
and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ….
(1 St. Peter i. 6,7) 
 

Concerning the Saint whom we celebrate today – St. Peter – we know more than about the other Apostles or even the Mother of our Lord. We don’t know anything about Saint Peter’s wife, except that he had one, and that her mother was once sick and Jesus healed her. Saint Peter’s original name was Simon. He was the son of Jonah, had a brother named Andrew, came from the village of Bethsaida, and had a fishing business along with James and John, the sons of Zebedee. Simon was later called Peter. The word in Latin is Petrus, derived from the Greek Πετροσ and related to the Aramaic word for kepa, which became, again in Greek, Κηφασ, all basically meaning rock. So we read of either Simon Peter or Cephas in the New Testament as the rock upon whom Christ Jesus intended to build his Church. 

The rest of what we know of Simon Peter can be read in the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles of St. Paul, and St. Peter’s own Epistles. Suffice it to say that St. Peter was an eyewitness of the adult life of Jesus Christ, denied the Lord whom he knew, witnessed His Resurrection, received the Holy Ghost at Pentecost, and then went on to contribute in no small way to the conversion of the nations. Tradition has it that he died a martyr at Rome, crucified upside down by the Emperor Nero between 64 and 67 A.D. He was crucified upside down because he did not deem himself worthy to be hung right-side-up like his Lord. 

What is most remarkable about Saint Peter is this. Far beyond the miracles that he performed or any details of his personal life that the Scripture reveals, Saint Peter came to embrace the living Christ fully in his heart after much trial and tribulation. His faith was tried with fire. (idem) We know that Peter was full of impetuous and impulsive energy, whose passions too often overran wisdom.

St. Peter’s faithful zeal and passion for Christ needed to be moderated by prudence before he could become a true disciple and shepherd of the embryonic Church. The Peter who should be the rock on which the Church would be built had to be completely broken and ground to powder before converting truly to Christ. When later, Peter exhorts his friends to come to Christ, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God and precious (1 St. Peter ii. 5), he speaks as a man who had at one time denied Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, that precious stone, the head of the corner, had been to him a stone of stumbling, a rock of offence, because he had stumbled at the Word [of God in Jesus Christ], being disobedient. (Ibid, 8)

St. Peter, chosen by Christ, knew only too acutely and piercingly his own sin against the Master. When Jesus was undergoing interrogation for crucifixion, Peter denied that he knew the Lord three times, and when the cock crowed, Peter went outside and wept bitterly. (Ibid, 62) Jesus prophesied that Peter would deny him, but He said also, Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat.  But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers. (St. Luke xxii. 31) Satan would try Peter’s faith much in the same way that he had tested Job’s.
        
So Peter did, as prophesied, indeed turn back to the Lord; he repented, waited, watched, and finally was converted through Christ’s Resurrection and the descent of the Holy Ghost into his soul. Like the woman who bathed Jesus’ feet with her tears, Simon [whose] sins which [were] many, [were] forgiven; for [he] loved much. (St. Luke vii. 47) But St. Peter’s conversion would be an ongoing process, in constant need of readjustment and reform.
What is most remarkable about Saints Peter’s faith is that it was accompanied by humility. Holding tenaciously onto his old Jewish religion, St. Peter had to learn to humbly cede Jewish tradition to Christ’s Grace. The nature of his eventual mission to the Gentiles came only once his prejudicial bigotry was wholly conquered. That the Gentile Christians were to be treated as equals, fellow sinners in need of Christ’s redemption, equally capable of revealing Christ’s power, came to St. Peter slowly.

What St. Peter learned was in large part due to the conversion of St. Paul. Following his conversion and baptism at the hands of Ananias in Damascus, St. Luke tells us that Paul proved his courageous faith through preaching. He began to preach Christ in the Synagogues, that Christ was the Son of God…increasing in strength and confounding the Jews at Damascus. (Acts, ix. 20, 22) Paul escaped from Damascus by the skin of his teeth. St. Barnabas brought him to Jerusalem and presented him to the Apostles. Peter and his fellow Apostles were skeptical of Paul’s conversion until Barnabas revealed that he had preached fearlessly in the name of Jesus. (ibid, 27) When Paul began to debate with the Hellensistic Jews of Jerusalem, the Apostles saw that his faith in Christ was unwavering since the Jews sought to kill him, requiring the Jerusalem Church to send Paul home to Tarsus for a season. The Church was beginning to realize that Paul’s mission might very well be to the Gentiles.

At the same time, curiously enough, St. Peter’s faith was being tried and tested to align with St. Paul’s wisdom. Peter was called up to the newly established Christian community of Lydda. There he met a Hellenistic Jew named Aeneas, who kept his bed for eight years and was sick of the palsy. (ibid, 33) Peter would engage Christ for Aeneas. He said to Aeneas, Jesus Christ maketh thee whole: arise, and make thy bed. And he arose immediately. (ibid, 34) Aeneas means praiseworthy in ancient pagan Greek and carries our minds to the great Trojan warrior who founded Rome.

Next, the church in Joppa had petitioned Peter to come to them because a Hellenized disciple of Christ named Tabitha, full of good works and alms deeds, (ibid, 36) had died. The church at Joppa had washed her body and laid it in an upper chamber. (ibid, 37) These early Christians had not buried her immediately because they had hoped that Peter might come to work a miracle to bring her back to life.  Peter arrived at Tabitha’s home, where he found the mourning widows. But Peter put them all forth. (ibid, 40) Peter would not seek his own vainglory by performing before the whole congregation. This was a time for prayer and solitude with Christ. Peter kneeled down and prayed, and turning him to the body said, Tabitha, arise. And she opened her eyes: and when she saw Peter, she sat up. (ibid, 40) Tabitha means gracious. Contact with both Aeneas and Tabitha was considered proper by St. Peter. Aeneas was a Jew who was healed for conversion; Tabitha was a Jewish Christian whose service of the Gospel would continue.

But St. Peter’s faith needed further strengthening. Twelve miles north of Joppa a Hellenized pagan or righteous Gentile, a Roman Centurion, a leader of the Italian band was stationed. His name was Cornelius. Cornelius would be the first Gentile on record to have become a Christian. Cornelius received a vision from God because he was a devout pagan, who served God with all his house, gave alms to the poor, and prayed constantly. (ibid, x. 2) An angel of God instructed him to send for Simon Peter, who was at Joppa. The next day, we find Peter going up to pray at noon, overcome with hunger, and falling into a trance. Peter, too, received his own vision. A great sheet descended from heaven with all manner of birds and beasts upon it, both clean and unclean in his Jewish eyes. He heard a voice saying, Peter, rise, kill, and eat. (ibid, 13) But St. Peter’s Jewish blood resisted contamination with anything unclean. Peter said, Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean. (ibid, 14) God responded, what God hath cleansed, that call thou not common. (ibid, 15) In Christ, Peter would be called to see that nothing that God has made is common or unclean, beyond cleansing, be it food to eat or a Gentile to be converted. In Christ, Peter would be called to welcome the Gentile embassy and travel with them to meet the righteous Cornelius and bring him to baptism. St. Peter was called to make contact with what his Jewish sensibilities forbade. He had to see that the Gentiles were neither common nor unclean, but as equally in need of Jesus Christ as any sinful Jew.

From St. Paul, St. Peter would learn about the universality of the Gospel and the need to go forth and teach all nations. Through a trial by fire, the spiritual facts challenged his cherished Jewish prejudices. Cornelius was sent by Christ to Peter that Peter might learn that the Gentiles would also have their share of Christ’s redemption. Peter’s loyalty to Christ’s promises made to the Jews would need to expand beyond racial and cultural boundaries. Peter needed to learn that Christ is the source of greater promises for all men. In the end, since Cornelius was commanded to send for Peter, he would press Peter for his share in the Gospel truth with a desire for Christ that would overcome Peter’s sinful judgment of the Gentiles. Peter learned that what he called common and unclean could be cleansed.
        
As tradition has it, Saints Peter and Paul would be exiled from Israel, their own native Jewish land, where God’s own chosen people persisted in rejecting Christ. Both would learn, too, that not all Gentiles welcomed the Gospel. Christ was as offensive to Caesar and the Jewish Rabbis alike. Gentile and Jew alike could accept or reject Christ. St. Peter, with St. Paul, was tried by fire. St. Peter would learn that if he would be faithful to Christ, he must never deny the benefit of the salvation to any man, be he Jew or Greek. For before his eyes the Holy Ghost descended upon Cornelius and his Italian Band, unloosing tongues that glorified God and desired Baptism, which Peter could not deny but would hereafter offer to all willing.
Today, let us give thanks to God for the life and witness of St. Peter, for his repentance, honesty, and willingness to have his faith increased and perfected for redemption of the Jews and conversion of the Gentiles beginning in Jerusalem and continuing in Rome, for the West and beyond.
 
Amen.
©wjsmartin

 
 
    
 
 
  

Trinity I
June 22, 2025
 
Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst 
thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: 
but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.
(St. Luke xvi. 25)
 
Last week we were invited to contemplate the life of God the Holy Trinity, one God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. We have entered Trinity Tide. Trinity tide is all about belief that grows into God’s Wisdom and Love. Trinity tide is about entering the life of God the Father, through His Wisdom in the Son, and by the Love of the Holy Ghost. Our season of Trinity is the longest in the Church Year because it mirrors our lives, the span of which must be devoted to the constant and habitual return of our hearts and souls to God.
Being born again into the life of God, discerning God’s Wisdom and applying His Love to our lives takes time. In the seasons prior to Trinity, we behold the facts of Christ’s most holy Incarnation. We move from His birth, through childhood, into His adult ministry. We see that He has taken on our human nature to reconcile it with the Father through the Spirit. We discern that nothing, even unjust and unmerited suffering and death would stand int the way of His determination to defeat sin, make death into the seedbed of new life, and put Satan in his place. From Christmas to Pentecost, we study the life of Christ, which begins and ends with God. Christ rose from the dead and remained with His friends for a mere forty days. He ascended to the Father and sent the Holy Ghost into the Church. And this is where we find ourselves today.  

But Trinity Tide cannot begin without a keen sense of God’s goodness and our need for it. In Christ alone we find God’s goodness. In Christ’s enemies, namely the Pharisees, we find its contrary. Prior to today’s Gospel, Jesus has issued a warning: Ye cannot serve God and Mammon. (St. Luke xvi. 13) Mammon means both riches and possessions in both the Hebrew and Greek. It can also mean that in which one trusts. Throughout the New Testament, we learn that while the Pharisees lived austere and puritanical lives, their chief sin was covetousness. They did not value God’s goodness enough. Their hearts were set on this world and their earthly power. Their faith was weak, and they took refuge in their view that the Law brought them closest to God. They jealously coveted their hold on God through the Law, as a result, they enviously resented God’s Wisdom and Love in the life of Jesus Christ.

So, Jesus gives them a parable. There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day….(St. Luke xvi. 19) St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that the worship of Mammon is here illustrated in the prosperity of the wicked by way of temporal success. (St. TA: Hom. Trin. I) The Pharisees were rich with worldly power. They were attired in the fine and costly garment of the Law. They feasted on it as what enabled them to lord God’s power over all other men.

We read also that there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. (Ibid, 20,21) Against the Pharisees, we have the image of Lazarus. His name is mentioned because his name is written in the Book of Life. Lazarus means the one whom God has helped. He is a beggar because every poor Christian soul needs God’s goodness and pleads for His mercy. He was full of sores (Idem) because his life is forever wounded by the Devil. He is laid at the rich man’s gate (Idem) because the rich man’s gate should men the door that leads to Heaven. Lazarus longs to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table since in time and space every Christian soul needs only the fragments that fall from Christ’s table. That only stray dogs came and licked his sores, reveals that the Christian will be rejected by most men.

So, we find a great contrast between the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man, like the Pharisees, has no little acquaintance with God’s goodness. Lazarus, the true Christian, desperately needs it. Lazarus symbolizes the poverty of spirit that is a prerequisite to God’s Grace. Unless fallen man knows his spiritual poverty, he shall never be made rich in soul with God’s goodness. St. Thomas says the life of a Saint is found in contempt of this world. ‘Lazarus was laid at his gate.’ ‘We are made as the filth of the world and are the offscouring of all things unto this day.’ (idem, 1 Cor. iv. 13) If men follow Christ, they will be ignored, abandoned, and left half dead at Heaven’s gate by the world. They will endure bitterness of tribulations and afflictions –‘Full of sores.’  But the Christian remembers also, whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth. (Hebrews xii. 6)

Next, we read, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom. (Ibid, 22) Lazarus is a vision of the Saint who dies and is taken to Paradise. We learn also that the rich man died and found himself in Hell whence he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. (Ibid, 23) St. Thomas reminds us, Lazarus was received with honor and glory by the Angels. The rich man was buried with honor and glory by unnamed earthly men...only to end up in Hell. (Idem) Lazarus’ name is written in Heaven, and we hear no more from him because God’s goodness is now his treasure. The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God and there shall no torment touch them. (Wis. iii. 1) But the Rich Man, like the covetous Pharisees, is left out. His soul and body are tormented because he coveted his share of earthly goodness but neglected to see that all goodness comes from God. To make matters worse, he has a vision into the Paradise he rejected and knows that Lazarus is in a better state, having been relieved of his spiritual suffering and poverty. So, he cries, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. (Idem, 24) The Rich Man cries out for relief because, still, he maintains his earthly importance and believes that Lazarus is now most fit to become his slave.

The parable gives us a vision of the hard truth of God’s goodness. Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. (Ibid, 25) They who settle for earthly goodness end up in Hell. They alone who suffer, struggle, and are poor in spirit can receive God’s goodness for eternal happiness. Men have one life to live, and at death they shall be judged. When a man dies, he is either taken up or cast down. If he is taken up, he cannot descend to help his lost brothers; if he is cast down, he cannot ascend. At the end of life, man’s relation to Christ shall be rewarded with Heaven or Hell. The rich man, realizing his fate, calls to Abraham to rescue his earthly family. Send Lazarus to my brethren that he might serve up the truth to them (Ibid, 29), for if they see Lazarus risen from the dead, they will believe. (Ibid, 30) Abraham assures him that they will not be persuaded though one rose from the dead since they did not hear Moses and the Prophets. (Ibid) Even a vision of Christ’s Resurrection seldom saves covetous ‘good men’. For I say unto you that unless your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. (Matt. V. 20) We have a vision of this in Christ on His Cross where, though He became Lazarus, poor and abandoned, in the poverty of His death, He was already hard at work doing for poor fallen men what they could not do for themselves.

In this life, Lazarus was poor, but he is now rich in Paradise. The rich man is now poor in Hell, clinging arrogantly to the vision of God that rejects His Wisdom and Love in Jesus Christ. The rich man is destined to live forever in the illusion of his own goodness. He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love. (1 John iv 8) The rich man, the Pharisee, could not see that God is Love. The rich man, the Pharisee, did not realize that God’s goodness is found in Jesus Christ, and
that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 
(ibid, 9,10)
 
Today, by God’s Grace, let us acquire a vision of ourselves in poor Lazarus, reaching out to Christ alone, knowing that we cannot pass through Heaven’s gate unless we obtain Heaven’s mercy, ‘hoping to obtain crumbs that fall from [God’s] table. We detect a deeper symbolism. Lazarus, full of sores, is like Christ on His Cross, longing to make His death into new life. In Lazarus and in Christ, we desire to eat of the crumbs that fall from [God’s] table. Like Lazarus, if I have no strength of will, no nobility of disposition, no excellence of character, Christ says, “Blessed are you”, because it is through this poverty that I enter His Kingdom….I can only enter His Kingdom as a pauper. (O. Chambers, August 21) Lazarus the pauper is a vision of Christ who became poor, that [we] through His poverty, might be rich. (2 Cor. viii. 9) Lazurus is you and I.

Amen.
©wjsmartin
 

After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter. (Rev. iv. 1)
 
            
Today is Trinity Sunday, the beginning of Trinity Tide. Trinity means three, and Trinity Tide is an invitation to enter the threefold life of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. On Trinity Sunday, a door is opened from Heaven to earth, and we are summoned to go up or to move above ourselves into the source of all reality and goodness.
Christianity is a religion founded on the facts of Divine Revelation. Its God is a God who wishes to be known. (The Christian Year, p. 142) Heaven’s door is opened to man in God’s revelation of Himself. Christians believe in one God. The Bible teaches us that one God lives, knows, and wills. The substance and nature of God is one and simple. But the same God who wishes to be known reveals Himself to the minds of men. God is being or life; He is the I Am revealed to Moses. God is Word, Logos, or Truth; I Am informs all life with meaning and purpose. God is Spirit, the lord and giver of life. The life is the Father, who begets His truth – the Son, by the Spirit. The Spirit proceeds from the Father to the Son and from the Son back to the Father. Through the Spirit of love, the Father lives to think, and Son thinks to live. One God is life and thought through love. One God is Father, Word, and Spirit. There are not three gods but one God. The inner relations or operations of the Godhead we call Persons of the Trinity.

No doubt, this doctrine is confusing and difficult to comprehend. God is a mystery. In this life, we can never hope to understand God as He understands Himself. But because we worship a God who intends to be known, we must struggle to understand something about Him. St. Paul says we know in part (1 Cor. xiii. 9) St. John tells us that No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath made Him known. (St. John i. 18) For Christians, the knowledge of God comes through the Father’s revelation of Himself in the life of His Son, His Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. A door is opened from Heaven to earth in the life of Jesus.

In Jesus Christ, we begin to learn that God not only exists or lives as the Father but knows as the Son and loves as the Spirit. In Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, we come to know the Son of the Father by the Spirit. In coming to know the Son, we discover our own place in relation to God the Father, as His potential children. We were made to become the sons and daughters of God the Father. In Jesus, we can come to see and know who and what we must become if we would be God’s offspring once again. In Jesus, the knowledge of God is made man. This knowledge as the way, the truth, and the life enables us to return to God.
 
Christians believe that the God of Scripture intends not only to be known but to be loved. Christians believe that God the Father sends His Son in the flesh to repair, redeem, and return Man to himself through the Spirit of His love. This morning, Jesus reveals to us the way of return. We read that a Pharisee, a ruler of the Jews, named Nicodemus came to Jesus by night. (St. John iii. 1) We all come to Jesus by night, under the darkness of our own fallen human condition, in the quiet of the truth about our sinful selves, neither seeing nor knowing how to be reconciled with God. St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that coming to Jesus at night symbolizes that honest state of obscurity and ignorance in the Christian soul who seeks to know and love God. (TA: Comm. John iii.) In the night, Nicodemus approaches Jesus. Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. (St. John iii. 2) But Jesus, sensing Nicodemus’ ignorance, insists, verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God. (St. John iii. 3) Man must be born again, a second time, from above, and by the Spirit, if he would know the way home to our Father. Nicodemus is confused: How can a man be born again when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb? (Ibid, 4) Nicodemus knows that he exists, knows, and wills in an earthly manner, but cannot fathom how he can be born again and live, know, and will in a spiritual way.

Jesus tries to help Nicodemus to understand what moves and defines His life. Jesus will help Nicodemus move from the flesh to the Spirit. Jesus continues, verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. (St. John iii. 5-7) As Water cleanses the body, the Spirit must cleanse the soul. As water cleanses Christ’s body, Spirit forever keeps him spiritually pure with God. Man is born of the flesh, is a fallen son of Adam, and must be cleansed of his filth by Water. Man is a spiritual creature and so must be made pure inwardly by the Spirit to become a son of the Father once again.

Jesus continues, Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. (St. John iii. 8) Jesus says that the wind comes and goes mysteriously like the air we breathe and can never be traced or captured. The Spirit is invisible also and moves in secret, hidden ways. Jesus says, If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? (St. John iii. 12) Nicodemus is a religious ruler in Israel who should remember that the Father informs the world through His Word and moves it by His Spirit.

We speak of what we know, and bear witness of what we have seen. (Ibid, 11) The Word of God made flesh, the Son, knows all things from the Father by the Spirit. Nicodemus does not yet know that no man hath ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man, which is in heaven. (Ibid, 13) Man has fallen from God; he cannot know or will the good. The Son of Man must come down from Heaven to take on man’s fallen flesh and redeem it with the Spirit’s Love on the Cross. That which is born of flesh is flesh; that which is born of Spirit is Spirit. (Ibid, 6) Man’s flesh can return to the Father only if he is born of the Spirit to embrace Christ’s Death as what alone conquers sin, to be born again, to know and will the good, and to be lifted into Christ’s Resurrection and Ascension for reconciliation with the Father. Behold a door is opened, as God makes all things new.

God, the Holy Trinity, invites us to participate in His life through the very faculties we use daily to exist, know, and will much lesser goods. Behold a door is opened. Cardinal Von Balthasar reminds us that only on the basis of the Divine Trinity can there be something like Grace in our lives. (H.V.B. Sermon on the Trinity) Our God, the Holy Trinity, offers us His Grace to conquer sin through the knowledge of the Son and the quickening of the Spirit to return to the Father. This calls for nothing short of our willingness to born from above. Being born again means that we can exist, know, and will to be redeemed and saved by one God. The Father, who is God, lives to reveal Himself to us in the Son through the Spirit. The Son, who is God, knows us as the Father’s potential children through the Spirit. The Spirit, who is God, desires and wills the Father’s goodness in us in the Son. As such, we shall be saved by the only source, meaning, and activity capable of making something abundantly good out of our fallen natures through the intimate life, light, and love of God the Holy Trinity.   

Amen.   
©wjsmartin
 
 
 

The Sunday after Ascension
June 1, 2025
          
Ascension Tide is one of the shortest of Church’s liturgical seasons, lasting only ten days. On the fortieth day after Easter, Christ ascended to the Father. Ten days later, He sends the Holy Spirit into the Apostolic Church on the feast of the Pentecost, or Whitsunday. So we have but a few days to examine the significance and meaning of the Ascension for us.
         
The Ascension of Jesus Christ restores human nature to God the Father. Then, ten days later, Christ will send the Holy Spirit into the newly formed Church in order to incorporate believers into the life of the Holy Trinity. In the simplest of terms, Christ, the Son of God, fully Glorified as the Son of Man, returns to the Father to establish a permanent home for the Saved or God’s Elect. Every aspect of Human Nature in need of repair and restoration has been Redeemed in Christ and now sits at the Father’s Right Hand. Human life is now returned to the Father’s presence in the heaven that Christians will call home. Christ our Saviour now intercedes for us and prays for our salvation. Christ prays the Father that we might freely will to go where He has gone.
         
But back to the Ascension itself. On Ascension Day, we tried to hint at the sovereignty of Christ that is manifested gloriously in His return to the Father. Christ returns to Heaven as its Lord, having subdued the earth, reclaimed it for God, and redeemed His fellow men. Christ had secured His lordship over the souls of His Apostles, His Mother, and the holy women. Now it was up to his followers to persuade the world to submit to His lordship. His Ascension seals the fate of the universe. Christ, who humbled Himself to redeem mankind and creation, would now assert His rule from Heaven until His coming again, to judge both the quick and the dead. The extent to which His followers could convert the nations would depend upon His continued rule of their hearts and souls. Without the rule of Christ in human hearts, 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)
 
To be sure, all creatures have always felt the magnetic power of Christ, the Logos, the Word, and the Wisdom of God that defines and perfects all creatures in an imperfect world. No apple tree, no farm animal, and even no man escapes the rational power of God in Jesus Christ to bring each respective creature to its appointed end, in imitation of perfection. The apple tree, following laws written upon it by God, grows to produce fruit and then to drop seeds as it imitates God’s power to reproduce and perpetuate the life that it owns. Farm animals, in addition to providing all manner of nutriment to men, reproduce themselves to continue a cycle of provision to the creation that imitates God’s good will for the earth. Even men, as inclined to wickedness as they may be, at a bare minimum reproduce themselves, no doubt subconsciously deriving some satisfaction in the reproduction of the species. All creation follows the Lordship of Christ by laws written on their natures or with some hint of a higher good found in the desire to make themselves in their children.

But beyond this, for man, there is much more to be discovered in the magnetic power of Christ. For men who are searchers, seekers, and explorers, in Christ the magnetic power is offered from God to them for the deeper satisfaction of their restless souls, which long for union with the divine. St. Peter says this morning that the end of all things is at hand. (1 St. Peter, iv. 7) Something has been accomplished and finished in the life of Christ which promises to carry men away from their earthly limitations, their sin, their death, the ongoing assaults of the Devil, into a lasting peace with God forever. For St. Peter and all faithful followers of Christ, man’s alienation from God has been overcome, his sin has been conquered, his death has taken on new meaning, and Satan has been put in his place. For St. Peter and all faithful followers of Christ, repair, redemption, and salvation have now become a real possibility through God’s Grace. The rule and governance of Christ, the Logos of the universe, now has special meaning for man. Now the human life of Christ is offered to all men as the way home to Heaven and the instrument of deliverance. 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. Thus, above and beyond the contours of human existence in time and space, man is now invited to live above and beyond himself, through Christ, in the presence of God the Father.   

But, as St. Peter continues this morning, Ascension for Christians means more than gazing up into the Heavens. Ascension Tide is a call to be born again, that we might live out a life of obedience to Christ. St. Peter insists that if we would follow Christ home to Heaven, we must be sober and watching unto prayer. (idem) And if the magnetic power of the Ascended Christ is understood as God’s charity made flesh for us, then His love must define our lives in the Church, the new body of Christ. We must have fervent charity amongst ourselves, for charity covereth a multitude of sins. (ibid, 8) The gift of charity is fully expressed in Christ’s death on the Cross, where His love has conquered all sin and made death into the seedbed of new life. The gift of charity is God’s love for us men and for our salvation. This gift is given to be shared with one another. What we speak and what we do are to reveal that the Ascended Christ rules and governs our hearts and souls. Christians are called to reveal the Ascended Christ in thoughts, words, and works. In Ascension Tide, Bishop Westcott reminds us, we are encouraged to work beneath the surface of things to that which makes all things, all of us, capable of consecration. [For] Christ is not only present with us as Ascended: He is active for us. (Sermons…) Beneath the surface of life in the body, we Christians are called to find that love that begins to return our hearts and souls to God.

As our Lord Jesus Christ has ascended back to God the Father to prepare a place for us, we must in heart and mind thither ascend, and with [Him] continually dwell. We must set our hearts on things above and not things of the earth. (Col. iii. 2) Again, with Paul Claudel, we must confess that too long in this low place, we have been the slaves of gravity and the law of matter. Too long have we been at the mercy of chance and vanity. The time has come for us to take our flight, body, and soul, toward our Higher Cause. (I Believe, 160.) In Christ, we must ascend back to the Father. Christ now reigns gloriously in the greatness of His power and majesty and desires us to have our conversation with Him in Heaven, to love His appearing, and to be dissolved into His love. (Jenks, 352) We must ask Him to begin to reign and rule as King Supreme from the thrones of our hearts. We must begin to feel the powerful attraction of Christ’s Grace and Holy Spirit, to draw up our minds and desires from the poor perishing enjoyments here below, to those most glorious and everlasting attainments above where Christ sits at the right hand of God. (Idem, Jenks) 

Of course, the Holy Ghost cannot be of much use to us until we have ascended with Christ back to the Father. We must first ascend if a suitable place in our hearts and souls is to be made ready for the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. If we would ascend with Christ to Heaven, we will have placed ourselves in subjection to Him. Christ who was once an earthly lord to the Apostles is now believed and known to be the Lord not only of life and death, but the Lord of Heaven and Hell. Christians believe that Christ is the Judge Eternal, throned in splendor. In time and space, we continue to fight the good fight of faith for eternal judgment.

Today, Christ promises us that from His Ascended Glory, He will send the Comforter to us, the Spirit of Truth. (St. John, xv. 26) The Spirit will testify or give witness to Christ’s salvific purposes for us. The Spirit will establish the truth of the Ascended Christ’s magnetic power in our hearts and souls. And if we would be ruled and governed by the Ascended Christ, we cannot remain faithful without the Holy Ghost. Christ prophesies that the world and men who forget, disregard, or reject the magnetic power of Christ, will persecute us.

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.

If the Ascended Christ rules our hearts and souls, we should expect nothing less than suffering. Christ warns us that the pattern of suffering, sacrifice, and death is normative for those who would follow Him, imitate Him, and be saved.
        
The Ascended Christ pleads our cause at God’s right hand in Heaven. To be acclimated to this eternal resting place, we must allow Christ’s character to rule and govern our lives. Bishop Whichcote said long ago, heaven is first a temper, and then a place. A temper is a disposition. May our tempers, then, secure us as Christ’s servants, living above ourselves and ruled by Heaven’s ways. For when the Holy Ghost comes to us, we pray that He finds our hearts and minds intending to live in conformity to God’s will, ever longing to reveal to others that the Ascended Christ so rules our hearts and wants to rule theirs also.

Amen.
©wjsmartin


        

Ascension Day
May 29, 2025
 
Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that since we do believe
thy only begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Chrsit, 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 back and returning to God the Father. Christians believe that Christ, the eternally begotten Son of God, came from the Father and now goes back to the place of His origin. So, the Word, the Logos, having been made flesh, made man, now unites Himself with the incorruptible, perfect, and simple origin of His meaning and mission for us. 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 will ensure our eventual home with Him in Heaven.
        
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 we believe in the Ascension is that there is a return of man to God, in Jesus Christ. What this means is that man’s nature has been rendered complete in Jesus Christ. Being made complete means that man is once again made whole and one with the Creator. And this healthy restoration means that man once again can live 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 to what signifies perfection, to the grand expanse of the universe above our heads and into vast heavenly galaxies, and then beyond that into Heaven itself.
        
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 returning to the state of His own primordial Goodness alone. Christ calls us to follow Him. The Nature of God is that perfect love that longs eternally for his creatures to be one with Himself, in knowledge through His 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 blessings and 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 Tide’s Resurrection to reveal 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 that He had won for them. At this time, to his Apostles, 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 that 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 coming of the Holy Ghost, that they might share in His risen life. And to ensure that they might partake of the merits and blessings of His Resurrection, Christ would have to leave them. From Heaven, with the Father, 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, 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 demanding 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, rising 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) True faith in Christ was to be perfected not by the outward and visible presence of Christ the God/Man but by His inward and invisible presence in the soul.
        
But lest we mistakenly believe that our belief in the Ascension is solely about Christ in Himself and for Himself, our Collect reminds us that the end of the Ascension is that we should with Him continually dwell. The Ascension reveals to us Christ’s sovereignty over all human life, which he now returns to the Father. He returns it to the Father so that we might embrace His power over sin, death, and Satan in our lives for as long as we live. Redemption and salvation are habits of soul which can be perfected in us, here and now, if we dwell in Christ. Belief in the ascended Christ will be followed by signs and confirmations of our dwelling in Him. In today’s Gospel, Christ promises that

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)
 
If we continually dwell with Christ, His Grace shall enable us to slay all our devils, speak with new tongues in a new language about His wisdom, power, and love alive in us, destroy the attacks of any serpentine generation of vipers, and if we drink any deadly poison, our faith shall remain strong and secure.  
        
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, the love of God who died for us, slayed sin, made death into the seed bed of new life, and put the devil in his place. In Christ we find the love of God as man returned to God to prepare a place for us. In Christ we find the love of God still with us and for us in the coming of the Holy Ghost. If we continually dwell with Christ, He will repair and redeem us for salvation and ultimate union with the Father. 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
        
        

Easter V: Rogation Sunday
May 25, 2025
 
These things have I spoken unto you, that in my ye might
have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation but be of good cheer;
 I have overcome the world.
 (St. John xvi. 33) 
 

Today, we find ourselves on the Fifth and final Sunday of the Easter Season. Today is called Rogation Sunday because our English word is derived from the Latin word rogare, which means to petition, ask, or supplicate. The tradition of Rogation Sunday hails from the 4th century and was standardized in the Latin Church by Pope Gregory in the 6th century. It was originally a Roman festival called Robigalia, which comes from robigo – meaning wheat rust, a grain disease, against which pious pagans petitioned the gods by sacrificing a dog to protect their fields. In England, on Rogation Sunday clergymen and their flocks process around the parish boundaries to bless the crops and pray for a fruitful harvest.

But the original purpose of Rogation Sunday goes back to Jesus’ opening words in today’s Gospel: Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, He will give it you. (St. John xvi.) Jesus’ words follow the prophecy of His eventual Ascension back to the Father, where He says, In that day, ye shall ask me nothing. (Ibid, 23) Jesus was preparing His Disciples for His risen and ascended life that He would share with them. Its blessing and benefit, as we learned last week, would depend upon the coming of the Holy Spirit. Jesus teaches us today that we must ask the Father in the Name of Jesus for the Holy Spirit. This is why we end every prayer with through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Again, Jesus says, Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. (Ibid, 24) Notice that we are encouraged to ask for full joy. (Idem) Eastertide is all about learning to ask for what shall fill our hearts with joy. God forever longs to share this joy with us, and it comes in Eastertide as we embrace resurrection from sin, death, and Satan. To begin to obtain that joy, we must set our sights on those things which are above and not things of the earth. (Col. iii. 2) In heart and mind, we must follow Jesus home to Heaven to find eternal joy.

But what is this joy? Christian joy is found in the life of Jesus Christ, which begins and ends with God the Father. Christian joy comes down from Heaven in Jesus Christ, redeems human nature in Jesus Christ, and returns human life to the Father. True joy is found first in knowledge. In Jesus Christ, we can come to know ourselves truly as creatures who depend upon God and derive the truth about ourselves from God. True joy is found second when we love this truth and will it in our lives. So, what we come to know about true human life in Jesus Christ, we will by imitation of Him. True joy is not found primarily in bodily health, temporal happiness, or earthly success. True joy is found by the perfection of our souls. True joy is found in becoming sons of the Father who are made to do His will. Christ, of course, is the eternally-begotten Word, the Son and offspring of the Father’s will. By His Redemption of our fallen human nature, Jesus invites us once again to become God’s sons through Him.

To find true joy, we must follow Christ in spirit and in truth as He returns to the Father. To get into right relation with the Father, we must ascend with Him that where He is, there we might be also. (St. John xiv. 3) If we shall ascend, we must ask the Father to help us live through Jesus Christ under the rule of the Spirit they share. Herein alone, we shall find true joy. For this to happen, we must make time and space for silent contemplation. Stillness and quiet are necessary to first situate us in right relation to God. In stillness and quiet, we must study the life of Christ to discern what moved Him. Christ was always moved by the Father. I came forth from the Father. (Ibid, 28) St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that He says this for three reasons: (1) That He might manifest the Father in the world: ‘No man hath seen God at any time; the Only Begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.’ (St. John i. 18) The Word and Son of God came into the world to reveal the Father to fallen man. (2) To declare His Father's will to us: ‘All things that I have heard of My Father I have made known unto you.’ (St. John xv. 15) The Word of God came into the world to reveal what He has heard of the Father concerning our salvation. (3) That He might show the Father's love towards us: ‘God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him….’ (St. John iii. 16) [Easter Homilies: XII] The Word of God came into the world to reveal the Father’s love for us in the death of His Son. This is the Father’s joy. In stillness and quiet, if we contemplate the life of Christ, we shall find that His joy was His love for us, even in death, death upon the Cross.

But because everything that Christ said and did for us in time and place came from the Father, Christ must leave us because by His leaving He gives us an example. ‘Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.’ (1 St. John ii. 15) ‘Ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.’ (St. John xv. 19) According to Aquinas, Jesus ascends back to the Father to establish our final union with the Father in Heaven. (1) That he might intercede with Him for us: ‘I will pray the Father.’ (St. John xiv. 16) (2) That He might give to us the Holy Spirit: ‘If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you.’ (St. John xvi. 7) (3) That He might prepare for us a place with the Father: ‘I go to prepare a place for you.’ (St. John xiv. 2) To which place may He lead us. (Idem) Jesus is our Lord and pleads our cause with the Father. Jesus leaves us to send the Spirit so that we might embrace His Death and Resurrection inwardly and spiritually as the pattern of our death to sin and coming alive to righteousness. Jesus leaves us to prepare our future home in Heaven with the Father. In this, our hearts should be filled with all gratitude and joy.  

God’s Word has been spoken to us in Jesus Christ so that we might be saved. We must not only hear [God’s Word] but be doers of it (St. James i. 22), as St. James says this morning. For only by becoming doers of God’s Word, above ourselves, can we hope to find that unending joy that Christ experiences from the Father. Being a hearer of God’s Word and not a doer – the man who looks in the mirror and forgets what manner of man he is, is like someone who forgets that He was made by the Father to be like God, by obeying His Word through the help of His Spirit. Contemplating Christ, the Word made flesh, reveals to us who and what we were made to become in deed and in truth forever. (1 John iii. 18)

Christ, the Word made flesh now glorified, goes to prepare a place for us. (Idem) In Christ, our end, we see the perfect law of liberty that lives in the Father’s presence with perfect joy. Christ’s liberty is perfect joy. True liberty is found in knowing ourselves as God knows us. God knows us according to the good for which He has made us. We must seek to think those things that be good, and by God’s merciful guiding may perform the same. (Collect: Rogation Sunday) The human good has been redeemed and restored for us in Jesus Christ. As we contemplate the glorified Christ, we find God’s goodness for man, and ask the Father to harvest in us the salvation that Christ has won. Christ has won salvation for us by being wholly consumed with doing the Father’s will and perfecting human goodness. The Father’s will is that Christ’s goodness might enable us to die to sin, come alive to righteousness, and to be unspotted by the world. (St. James, i, 27) For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? (1 John 5:4-6) By believing in Christ through the Holy Spirit, we can become overcomers. In Christ, we can overcome the world, through faith, not asking for temporal rewards but, rather, asking for the strength and perseverance that will defeat our sin and idolatry, so that we may find the joy which we were made to enjoy forever.
A
men.
©wjsmartin
 

Easter IV
May 18, 2025
 
Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way,
that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: 
because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way,
which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
St. Matthew vii. 13, 14
 
         Our opening quotation, taken from St. Matthew’s Gospel, gives us a useful segue into our study of the meaning of Resurrection in this Eastertide. In it, Jesus Christ tells us that most people go to Hell and few go to Heaven. Pardon my candor, but these are Jesus’ words, and He knows most about our fallen human condition. Of course, Jesus wants all men to be saved, but Truth is truth. Far from being a condemnation or sentencing of His own people to Hell, these words should be taken as a warning for us all when we think irresponsibly that Cheap Grace will save us. None of this is good theology and it certainly isn’t Biblical. Most men go to Hell because they choose the broad way over and against the strait gate and narrow way that alone leads to salvation.
        
Of course, none of this is pleasant news to Christians who think that God wouldn’t damn anyone. Many Christians don’t think. Of course, God damns people. If He didn’t, He wouldn’t give them the respect they deserve as being free willing creatures that can defy reason and reject Him. God creates man with reason and free will to discover their respective perfections. So, our Good God loves us so much that he allows us not to want, find, love, or put Him first so that we can go to Heaven. Our God is Good and so never compels anyone to love Him enough to be saved. God gives to every man his due or will render to every man according to his deeds. (Romans ii. 6) So, we might want to wake up to the fact that man’s deeds come from man’s choices. Man’s choices are the result of his free will. What moves and defines us most determines the character, state, and condition of our souls forever. This is God’s loving justice. He respects us enough to allow us to love Him above all things or not.
        
So, if we hope to be saved, we must want it. To want it, we must find it. To find it, we must discover our need for it. We cannot really search for and find it unless we need it. Coming to discover that we need it is the hard part. To need it comes only when we have taken a long, hard look at ourselves and found ourselves to be bereft of the knowledge and happiness that it offers.
        
I have said that needing what Jesus brings is the hard part. Most of us, wouldn’t you say, think that we are alright, are good enough, and shall, more than likely, just scrape by to enter the Kingdom? Such is wishful thinking on our part. Jesus says that we must find the strait gate and enter the narrow way if we hope to be saved. And needing to find the strait gate and narrow way is no easy business. The old adages no pain, no gain, no suffering, no salvation, and no Cross, no Crown should strike us as necessary for any good we hope to find, but chiefly the spiritual good that alone leads to salvation.
        
We can only realize what Christ has done for us when we come to know ourselves as sinners. In these dark and dangerous days, where the idolaters of our world convince us that God loves us just the way we are, this is challenging. Even the words of St. James, written long ago, Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.  Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you, (St. James iv. 7,8) fall flat in a world where men have lost any sense of the moral conscience and the awareness of their sin.

The words of Christ might be helpful in a more elemental way. Christ was always and everywhere determined to reveal truth and righteousness to the world. What He revealed, He found in the Father. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. (St. James i. 17) We shall only need God if we find God. And we can’t find God until we search for God. And we won’t search for God until we admit that we don’t possess the truth and happiness we desire. The first step towards needing God by finding God is searching. Aristotle says that all men by nature desire to know (Met. I. i) Admitting that we do not know the truth is a first step. Socrates, Aristotle’s mentor via Plato, insisted that I know that I know nothing. (Apology 22d) This is the first step in the acquisition of knowledge through learning. In the basic trades, like baking, weaving, and candlestick making, little girls used to begin in ignorance and learn form their mothers. In trades like masonry and carpentry, fathers taught their sons what they did not know but learned. The end in both was knowledge. But knowledge was not the only reward. Aristotle says also that all men seek happiness. Happiness is a spiritual state in which the soul finds satisfaction. And as civilization developed, men came to know that greater forms of happiness depended upon labor, toil, self-sacrifice, and cooperation. For the little boy to become a great carpenter, he would have to sacrifice many other desires in the service of his trade. In addition, he would come to know that not all men were called to be carpenters since otherwise the world would be full of too many tables and chairs and no food. Someone else had to be as sacrificial in a life devoted to farming so that whilst sitting on their chairs, men could eat. In sum, knowledge that yields happiness would require a hard-working society with many talents. And, in the end, the provision of the necessities of life, would not bring lasting happiness. Men are not animals and thus they would seek to know more, by way of learning techniques and crafts that could secure happiness more efficiently, so that man might search for and find the deeper truth that had given him the potential intellect to find goodness in the first place. Ancient man was forever restless. He was a searcher and seeker, he wanted knowledge in ways that transcended his own life for spiritual happiness. He searched to find where he came from and for what reason he was made. With all his knowing, ancient man knew that he knew nothing with regard to the deeper questions, whose answers would bring happiness to his soul.

Given what we have said, we must acknowledge that our proposition suggests that we must become more like ancient man. Ancient man conquers nature and then opens his soul to search for, find, and need the gods and God. For thousands of years, ancient man sought knowledge for spiritual happiness. But where does that situate us? We have reaped that whereon we bestowed no labour: other men laboured, and we are entered into their labours. (St. John iv. 38) Materially and spiritually, contemporary man is a taker and not a worker. He has lost all sense of the labor that is essential to searching for, finding, and needing truth. Postmodern man, enslaved to this world as an entitled recipient of the labors of a civilization, has lost his mind. He knows nothing but is miserable and not happy.

Christ utters words that are telling to a braindead civilization.
 
If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you….The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. But all these things will they do unto you for my name’s sake because they know not him that sent me. (St. John xv. 18-21)
 
Christ speaks of our discipleship. But we might also discern that He speaks of everyman who has searched to find, and needed to know what can only come from God for happiness. Christ’s words rang as true for Socrates as for us. Socrates died for the truth because his quest threatened Athens’ limited power over the souls her citizens. Socrates’ freedom, found in saying I know that I know nothing, was the only spiritual state that seeks to know to find spiritual happiness. And it is threatening to all who think that their lesser gods comprise the truth.

This morning, St. James writes Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath. For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. (St. James i. 19.20) These words also describe the character of Socrates’ soul. Those who search for the truth, hope to find it, and need it must be concerned with calm determination.  Even when St. James writes, My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience, (St. James i. 2) Socrates quest for truth is acknowledged. If we seek knowledge for happiness, our faith will be tempted to throw in the towel and abandon the quest. Patient dialogue with the world is needed, with the hope that some may join us in our spiritual pilgrimage.
No doubt, we live in a world full of dogmatisms. The earthly state controls us with its own dogmas of supposed truth without feeling any compulsion to prove them in a scientific and Socratic manner. The churches are obsessed with dogmas that she refuses to teach and explain. The postmodern world, relying on the labors of so many laborers, has rendered itself idiotically entitled to drivel. But Christ calls us to be like Socrates.

Today the Resurrected Christ tells us that He will send us the Comforter, the Holy Ghost…who will lead us into all truth. (St. John xvi. 13) All truth cannot be found unless and until Socrates helps us to learn that we live in sin because we know that we know nothing, God alone, from above, can bring righteousness for happiness, and that judgment is the wonderful God-given potential for us to know ourselves and our deepest spiritual need for God, perfected in Jesus Christ.
 
Amen.
©wjsmartin
 

Easter III
May 11, 2025
 
But praised be the LORD, who hath not given us over
for a prey unto their teeth. Our soul is escaped even as a bird out of the
snare of the fowler; the snare is broken, and we are delivered.
(Ps. cxxiv. 5,6)
 
Eastertide is all about avoiding those things that are contrary to our profession and following such things as are agreeable to the same. (Collect Easter III) We do this, of course, because if we have been admitted into the fellowship of Christ’s religion, the habit of life that will ensure that our pilgrimage is sanctified and that we shall be saved. In Eastertide, we undertake the hard labor of dying to our old selves and coming alive to the new life that we find in the Resurrected Christ. We die to ourselves as we petition God to show [us] that are in error the light of [His] truth. (Idem) Satan’s power must be banished. And all of this must come to us by the Grace of the Holy Spirit. Christ desires for us to partake of His Resurrection and participate in the New Life that He has won for us. But the power of hope and belief in His Resurrection involve a transition from one state to another – from sin to righteousness and from death to life, in rejecting Satan and embracing our Heavenly Father’s will.
         
The Resurrected Christ invites us into a relationship that will deliver us to His Kingdom. This is difficult. We are so at home in this world, in the realm of immediate gratification. The discomforts that threaten us would have been unimaginable to our ancestors, whose comforts were scarce. St. Peter’s exhortation this morning to become strangers and pilgrims (I St. Peter ii. 11) is now considered a tall order indeed. His insistence that we must abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul; having [our] conversation honest among the Gentiles (ibid, 11,12) strikes us as the ludicrous last gasp of late Victorian piety. Christian morality has suffered a severe setback. Lust, fornication, and adultery are never mentioned. St. Peter is no match for postmodern hedonism. Now, our old selves have not merely forgotten the secret things that belong to the Lord our God (Deut. xxix. 29), but we carelessly ignore them.

Of course, St. Peter lived in the then civilized world where both Jew and Greek, slave and free, submitted not only to Roman Law but to moral agreement about marriage, the family, and Natural Law. The old Romans were intrigued by Jewish morality. Roman thinkers were surprised to find that what they concluded from Natural Law was substantiated by the Jews through revelation in their Sacred Scriptures. The success with which the Apostles converted the Greeks and Romans to Christ was a testimony to a universal need for a common cure for man’s sin and alienation from God. Along with the Jews, both the Greeks and Romans were ready to embrace Christ, the way, the truth, and life. (St. John xiv. 6)

Needless to say, we do not find ourselves living in a world with the blessing of ancient man’s moral conscience. We blame the youth of today for perverse immorality, and yet its source is found in their grandparents, whose fornication and adultery are now normalized. Even the churches have surrendered to the amorality of the present age. Secular nations, at least in the West, have regularized what to an ancient Greek, Roman, or Jew would have been forbidden as unnatural, perverse, and immoral. The words of the Psalmist discern the character of soul found in today’s world.

THE foolish body hath said in his heart: There is no God.
Corrupt are they and become abominable in their wickedness: there is none that doeth good.
God looked down from heaven upon the children of men: to see if there were any that would understand and seek after God.
But they are all gone out of the way, they are altogether become abominable: there is also none that doeth good, no not one. (Ps. liii. 1-4)
 
The root of sin is found is practical Atheism. We live in a world of fools who have forgotten that every measure of goodness is God Himself. Fools trust their own judgment for what is right and what is wrong. He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool (Prov. xxviii. 26) and despiseth wisdom and understanding. (Prov. i. 7) The fool willfully ignores God as judge of all human choices. Because he is at home in this world, he exults only in the false gods’ provision of fleeting happiness. Possessed by idolatrous passions, he guesses dangerously that God isn’t much bothered by his sin. He has forgotten the wisdom that God is omnipresent and omniscient.

Whither shall I go from thy spirit?
or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there:
if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning,
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
even there shall thy hand lead me,
and thy right hand shall hold me.
                           (Ps. cxxxix. 7-100
        

What haunts the fool is known by the wise man. The wise man knows that we ignore the Invisible God at our own peril. The wise man knows that here we are strangers and pilgrims, not to be at home in this world, and made by God to be one with Him. The wise man knows that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. (Romans iii. 23) The wise man has searched out and found that God’s Invisible Wisdom, Power, and Love have been present to the ancient Greek and Roman through nature and reason. He knows that God has been present to the ancient Jews by revelation. The wise man has also discovered that God came to save sinful man in Jesus Christ, the Judge who will reward us with either eternal happiness or eternal misery. The wise man knows that all men will be called to give an account for the lives they have lived.

In Eastertide, Jesus says ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. (St. John xvi. 20) For the wise man, mourning and lamentation are part and parcel of the redemptive process. Labor, toil, suffering, and even sadness constitute an essential part of the conversion from sin to righteousness, and death to new life. St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that the wise man will be sad for three reasons. First, by sadness of evil, man is corrected. (Easter III: TA) In relationship with Christ, the wise man mourns over his sins, which were the cause of Christ’s passion, because he wants to be made better. The wise man can desire and find virtue only through mourning. Second, by temporal sadness, man escapes eternal torment. (Idem) Temporal sadness is worth suffering because it delivers us from Hell. Third, by a mean measure of justice, we acquire eternal joys. (Idem) Punishment as just punishment for our sins now acclimates us to the virtue that leads to eternal joys. Temporal sadness alone reaps the blessing of the exceeding and eternal weight of God’s glory.
         
Jesus teaches us, with St. Peter, that for as long as we live in these earthen vessels, we must become strangers and pilgrims in this world. If we acknowledge and respond to His abiding Invisible Presence, not at home in this world, we shall discover that every moral choice we make will determine our destiny. Jesus insists,

I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. (St. John xv. 5) 
 
If Christ lives in us now Invisibly and we practice His presence, we must come to terms with the truth about ourselves. The wise man must mourn before he is comforted. Jesus compares our labor to an expectant mother. St. Augustine writes:
At present, the Church is in travail with the longing for this fruit of all her labor…now she travails in birth with groaning, then shall she bring forth in joy; now she travails in birth through her prayers, then shall she bring forth in her praises. (John xvi)

Our end is the consolation of the Divine Presence. So, over and against our ungodliness, St. Peter urges us to embrace well doing, [that we] may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men, and not using [our] liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of God. (Ibid, 13) Christ tells us today, I will see you again, and you will rejoice. (St. John xvi. 22) If we believe in Him, He will take us into all joy, but not before we have become strangers and pilgrims in this world, allowing the love of the Invisible God to redeem and change us, a love that no man shall take away from us, (Idem) that saves us from sin and its eternal punishment.

Amen.
©wjsmartin
 

Easter II
May 4, 2025
 
For ye were as sheep going astray, but are now returned
unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.
(1 St. Peter ii. 25)
 
In Eastertide, we are called to become members of Jesus Christ’s Resurrected Body by remembering that we were lost sheep or sheep going astray who have been found. Of course, Christians believe that they have been found by Jesus Christ, the Shepherd and Bishop of [our] souls. In Baptism, we believe that Christ has found us and begun the process of our redemption and salvation. But Jesus Christ, our Good Shepherd, always longs to find us in our sins and to forgive us. Redemption that leads to salvation is a process. Original sin is wiped out in Baptism, but still we contract actual sins. The forgiveness of sins is what we need from the Good Shepherd as a habit of human life. As the Good Shepherd comes to us, we remember that we have erred and strayed from God’s ways like lost sheep. (General Confession, BCP 1662) When he applies the forgiveness of sins to our souls, we learn what life with and in Him will entail.
         
Today we learn what it means to be lost and found by Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd. What the sheep of Christ look like and what the Good Shepherd expects are illustrated in this morning’s First Epistle of St. Peter. St. Peter addresses the newly formed Church in Asia Minor, full of the lost and found. Most of its members are servants or slaves. Christian slaves have welcomed Jesus Christ as the Good Shepherd who has found them. But they are having a hard time with the spiritual liberation that He brings. Not surprisingly, they are trying to allow Christ to be a more powerful master than their earthly owners. St. Peter is keen to identify with their pain and suffering and encourage them to remember how Christ the Good Shepherd not only finds them but intends to heal their souls for heaven.
         
St. Peter’s advice seems irrational and unjust. Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. (1 St. Peter ii. 18) If he were writing to fallen men whose only hope is finding earthly justice, we should judge him to be hard-hearted and cruel. But St. Peter is not writing to unbelievers and pagans but to those who have been found by God’s Good Shepherd for greater justice that affords true freedom that redeems and saves. He writes, for even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps. (1 St. Peter ii. 21) St. Peter insists that the Good Shepherd, God’s own Son, calls the Christians slaves to follow Him remembering that He suffered as a slave to man’s sin. Monsignor Knox reminds us St. Peter remembers, too, how he followed in his Master’s footsteps, when Christ was led away to be crucified. (R.K.: The Epistles and Gospels, p. 125) Peter, like the Christian slaves, tried to follow the Good Shepherd. When Christ was being sentenced to crucifixion, Peter remembers sitting by the fire in the cellar of the High Priest’s palace, surrounded by slaves, whose suffering was unjust. The slaves lived in fear of sinful slave masters. Peter too was shackled and enslaved to his own fear, cowardice, and impotence. But Peter was a slave to sin who responded to evil by retreating into his own sin. Because he was guilty of denying Jesus before the cock had crowed, he feared judgment and punishment. Both the earthly slaves and Peter were lost sheep without any hope in this world.
         
But now in today’s Epistle, St. Peter speaks as a lost sheep who was now found by Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd had forgiven him, who once was a lost sheep and slave to sin and was now called into the new liberty of the Resurrection by God’s justice. Peter identifies with the slaves and exhorts them to welcome the Good Shepherd, who died to make all men right and just with God once again. Christ suffered for our sakes…who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: who when reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously: who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed. (Ibid, 22- 25) St. Peter became a sinful slave to evil voluntarily. The slaves he addresses are the hapless victims of other men’s wickedness, like Christ. But now, they too, like Peter, are tempted to allow their earthly slavery to kill Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, the forgiveness of sins, in their hearts. Peter reminds the slaves that they are now invited into true spiritual liberation through Christ, who is the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection, and the life. The slaves too must confess that they once were lost but now are found. Peter must forgive the Jews and Romans for killing Christ. The slaves must forgive their masters. Both Peter and the slaves must remember that they were once like sheep like without a shepherd. (St. Matthew ix. 36) With Peter, they can become evangelists of the forgiveness of sins and Christ’s Resurrection. Peter’s sin against Christ might be mirrored in the slaves’ sin in failing to forgive their masters. Now, both are the free sons and daughters of the living God – whose forgiveness in them can conquer all evil because while their sins were many, His mercy is more. Christ, the Good Shepherd, frees all men from the author of evil in this world and his malicious friends.
           
All of Christ’s lost sheep who are now found must endure grief, suffering wrongfully…take it patiently…[because] this is acceptable with God. (Ibid, 19, 20) St. Peter is inviting the slaves to see that the Saviour has suffered unjustly and has borne the burden of all men’s slavery to sin on the Cross of His Love. With St. Peter, they must remember Christ’s words, I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. (St. John x. 11) Like Christ, they must give their lives to God and forgive those who are the cause of their suffering. For Christ is interested in all sinners – both slaves and free! The Good Shepherd saves and frees all men from all evil. If He – the perfect model and example of the unjustly tortured, punished, and crucified Slave, can forgive, then so too must all they who would be carried on His shoulders home to God. In fact, Jesus said, If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you…if they have persecuted me, they will persecute you…. (St. John xv. 18, 20) For Christ bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness. (Ibid, 24) Again, with Monsignor Knox, Christ’s wounds are healing stripes, and His death produces, of its own efficacy, a new death and the beginning of new life in us. (Idem) So the slaves and the slaveholders are invited into the new life of the Resurrection, as sheep who have been found, rescued, and saved by Jesus Christ. For ye were as sheep, going astray, but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls. (Ibid, 25 Christ the Good Shepherd’s transformative forgiveness is greater than all sin.
          
St. Peter shows us that all men are sinners who were lost and need to be found by Jesus Christ, God’s Good Shepherd. He shows the slaves and us that Christ is the Shepherd and Bishop of [our] souls (idem) was also a slave. He giveth His life for the sheep. (St. John x. 11) So the Good Shepherd was the volunatary Slave who worked freely and completely for the good of two Masters – His Father and His sheep! He even lays down His life for His sheep because He knows that only then can His Father’s Love become a true Slave to their condition, bear its burden fully, and then break its chains through the power of the forgiveness of their sins. 

But even beyond this, Christ the Good Shepherd, risen from the dead, and ascended back to the Father, longs to become our servant even now. If we do not allow Him to be our servant, we have no part in Him. (St. John xiii. 8) He who is freely subservient, obedient, and docile to the Father’s will longs to be our servant who shepherds us into the Father’s embrace. The Good Shepherd cares only for our welfare and good. The Good Shepherd is God’s servant who can help us to overcome our sin. He alone is the servant who must become our Master. He will master our sin and bring it to death if we embrace the Spirit of His love.
        
Christ, the Good Shepherd comes to find His lost sheep. Will we allow Him to be our servant and Master? Like all lost sheep enslaved to sin, we cannot pay this servant for mastering our sin and bringing it to death. But we can allow Him to continue His good work in us and minister His mercy to our sin-sick souls. We can allow Him to help us to follow the blessed steps of His most holy life. (Collect, Easter II) And the first step must be that we must love our enemies, forgive those who hurt us, do well…and suffer for it, taking it patiently, not reviling with guile or threatening others, and living to righteousness. Christ’s stripes will begin to heal us when He shepherds us into that character of soul that conquers all sin with the forgiveness and love that liberates us from all slavery.   

Amen.
©wjsmartin
 
           

Easter I
April 27, 2025
 
For God created man to be immortal, and made him to be an image of his own
eternity. Nevertheless through envy of the devil came death into the world:
and that do hold of his side do find it.
                                                      (Wisdom ii. 23-24)
 
         
Has it ever occurred to you that Jesus’ Resurrection from the dead was not some immediate and clearly self-evident reality that exploded on to the pages of world history? In your reading of the Resurrection narratives, has one very important thing jumped out at you and grabbed your attention? That thing being that the Resurrection was neither expected nor anticipated by those nearest and dearest to Jesus – His Apostles and Disciples? We do not, after all, read that the followers of Jesus, following His crucifixion, spent their time waiting by His tomb for His much-anticipated Resurrection from the dead. Nor do we read that they were running about wondering with excitement if anyone had happened to bump into Him. Rather, we read that they were huddled together, behind closed doors, fearing further vengeance at the hands of the Romans or the Jews on the one hand, and sorrowing bitterly over their own cowardice or betrayal of Jesus on the other. And this, even after Saints Peter, John, and Mary Magdalene had found that Jesus’ tomb was empty! No, they did not expect a Resurrection at all, nor even that such a thing could ever take place, though the burial tomb of their Master was empty. The Magdalene had run to the Apostles, and cried, they have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid Him. (St. John xx. 2) Saints Peter and John then ran to the tomb and found it empty. But St. John tells us also that as yet they did not know the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead…and so they went away again to their own homes. [(Ibid, 9) As Fulton Sheen has written, they had the facts and evidence of the Resurrection; but they did not yet understand its full meaning. (Life of Christ, p. 406) 

Further ignorance and skepticism are found once again when the Magdalene returns to the empty tomb. Supposing Christ to be the gardener, she asks him where they have laid the body. Realizing who He was and attempting to embrace Him, Christ responded, Touch me not for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God. (St. John xx. 17) Mary, clearly, understood neither the nature nor meaning of Jesus’ Resurrection. Some days later, Doubting Thomas would be invited by Jesus to Reach hither [his] finger, and behold  [His] hands; and reach hither [his] hand, and thrust it into [Jesus] side: and be not faithless, but believing, (Ibid, 27) A Resurrected Jesus is one thing; what it means is quite another. So, it will take some time, just about forty days to be exact, before the Apostles’ faith will come to understand the meaning of Jesus’ Resurrection. 

Within that period, Christ will reveal that He is both body and soul, flesh and spirit, transformed and transfigured to simultaneously eat bread with them on the one hand and walk through locked doors on the other. He will also, more importantly, reveal that as God’s Word Made Flesh, he will leave behind and breathe new life into His Body on earth, the Church. Through this Body, He will be with and in His friends through the Holy Ghost.

I tell you all of this for a few different reasons. First, we should notice that every account of the Resurrection of Christ is honestly recorded and passed on to us just as it happened. We do not find that Christ rose from the dead and that, suddenly, the Apostles and friends of Jesus were miraculously enabled to understand what had transpired. There was nothing in it of the miraculous draught of fishes or the feeding of the five thousand. We read rather of ordinary human beings, in every way like you and me, full of confusion, doubt, wonder, fear, and uncertainty. And as the authors of the story do not sugarcoat or romanticize men’s response to Christ’s death, so too they will not spare us their reaction to His rising. From beginning to end we read of an honest account of His friends’ response to His reappearance. In St. Mark’s Gospel, we read that [Jesus] appeared to the eleven themselves as they sat at table; and he upraided them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen. (St. Mark xvi. 14) 

Second, the authors of the New Testament record something that happened to them, something that they could never have imagined, desired, or deserved. If they had been left to their own understanding, they would have treated Christ as dead and gone. We read in this morning’s Gospel, however, that, Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst... (St. John xx. 19) The Apostles were hiding in fear. The doors were locked, and Christ appears. He says to his friends, Peace be unto you. (Ibid, 19) What is this that He is saying? He speaks to those who abandoned Him, denied Him, foreswore Him, shrunk from Him, forsook Him, to those who huddled cowardly together ‘fearing the Jews’ and not His God and Our God? (Easter Sermon 1609: Lancelot Andrewes) What is happening? It is certainly nothing that the Apostles could have imagined or invented. In fact, it confounds all their expectations. Certainly, something is happening to [them]. Something should happen to us also. But what is it? Peace be unto you, Jesus says. And when he had so said, he shewed unto them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord. (Ibid, 20) As Bishop Andrewes remarks, with no hint of revenge, no verbal reproof, not even an unkind word, Jesus says to his Mother and Apostles, You and I are friends at peace. Peace be unto you. (Ibid) Jesus calls them friends. Peace be unto you. He repeats it twice!  He has forgiven them and brings them His Peace. As my Father has sent me, even so send I you. (Ibid, 21) Jesus Christ is the forgiveness of sins. The forgiveness of sins has risen from the grave and is moving out and abroad. The Apostles are forgiven and are called to spread the Good News of Man’s peace with God to all nations.

The forgiveness of sin reconciles men to God. Christ has made peace between man and God. The Peace I possess, I give to you. Now go and give it to others. There is no Resurrection without the forgiveness of sins. Offer it always; if it is accepted it will grow. If it is rejected, still, you must grow. Forgiveness is the law of love and mercy to be made flesh in all men.

The forgiveness of sins, specifically here the forgiveness of the Apostles’ sins, is the first key that unlocks the door to the mystery of the Resurrection. We said before that God created man to be immortal and made him to be an image of his own eternity. (Wisdom ii. 23, iii. 1) The forgiveness of sins is God’s eternal attribute now made flesh and imparted to all men, made in the image of God for eternity. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? (1 St. John v. 4,5) For, He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. (Ibid, 11,12) The Resurrected Christ, God’s forgiveness of our sins, is offered to us as the key that opens the door to new life and peace with God.
         
What has happened to the Apostles? They realize that Jesus Christ is the forgiveness of sins, who is necessary for all men’s salvation. We shall all go to Hell unless we discover that our sins were the cause of Christ’s passion. We shall all go to Hell unless we discover that we need to be forgiven by Jesus Christ, God’s forgiveness of our sins. The forgiveness of sins is the revelation and reality of the key to eternal life. In today’s Epistle, St. John reminds us that this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.  He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. (1 John v. 11,12) Eternal life, if we would receive it, demands the forgiveness of our sins. It is offered by Jesus from the Cross and beyond into His resurrection.

The hard part for all men in all ages is to discover the key that opens the door to Christ’s Resurrection. The key is our need to be forgiven, and our willingness to be forgiven by Jesus Christ. Pride, after all, tempts us to think that we were not the cause of Christ’s passion, or that we were, and that our sins are too great for even God to forgive. Humility acknowledges, with the Apostles, that our sins were the cause of Christ’s passion and that we have more often than not abandoned Christ. Humility repents and opens our souls to Jesus Christ, the forgiveness of sins, the first moment in that liberation that leads from sin to righteousness and from death to new life in Him.

Amen. 
©wjsmartin

Easter Day
April 20, 2025

Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.  For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. (Col. iii. 2)

Our journey through the Lenten Season to Good Friday will have been of no use if it has not been characterized by affection. Set your affections on things above and not on things of the earth, proclaims St. Paul this morning. (idem) Affection is an appetite that draws us, attracts us, and captures our attention. Throughout the Holy Season of Lent, we have prayed that the Holy Spirit might purify the thoughts of our hearts so that we can follow Jesus up to the  Jerusalem of His Cross and beyond. Our affections have been set…on the things above [and] not things of the earth, things which have come down to us in the passionate heart of Jesus Christ to lift us up higher. Out of the unquenchable love of His heart, Christ desired that our affections should rise up to embrace Him in the Death He died for you and me on Good Friday. From there to here, on this Easter Morn, Christ now longs that our affections might rise higher still into His Resurrection Love.  
But setting [our] affections on things that are above and not on the things of the earth is no easy business.

And it is not that affection is evil. God made it for a reason. But affection is fickle, unreliable, and uncertain. Affection, like all good things, must be ordered and disciplined lest it meander into the realm of evil. God’s affection and desire for us is pure and perfect. From the Divine Depths, articulated and expressed in the incessant, loving Passion of Jesus on the Cross, the uninterrupted longing of God for our salvation has persisted. The Word has gone out. God’s desire and affection have never swerved from His Great Unseen Eternal Design. The Word of God came down from heaven to live in man’s heart. His Good Friday is but one moment in the unfolding drama of our Redemption and Salvation.

Our affection, as a response to Jesus Christ, was tried and tested on Good Friday. The mighty engine of Caesar’s Rome tried to bind our affection to an expeditious peace, the Pax Romana, a peace that demanded the death of Jesus Christ. Even God’s chosen people, the Jews, tried to tether our affection to a tradition of cheap Grace and earthly morality. The fear and cowardice of Jesus’ Apostles then lured us into a superficial affection that fails in the hour of trial. Human affection carries with it a kind-of loss of self-composure and meekness. Solomon, in Proverbs, tells us A fool giveth full vent to his affection, but the wise man quietly holdeth it back. (Prov. Xxix. 11) Affection threatens us with losing something or all of ourselves in order to know the good and love it with our whole heart.

And yet, God’s affection for all men persisted on Good Friday with a Passion that longs always to call forth and redeem the affection of men in all ages. The affection of God for us in Jesus Christ proclaimed from His Cross, Father forgive them for they know not what they do. (St. Luke xxiii. 34) From the Cross, Christ’s affection reached the Good Thief. Come follow me. Today, thou shalt be with me in paradise. (St. Luke xxiii. 43) From His Cross His affection reached out to His Mother and the blessed disciple. Come follow me. Women, behold thy son…son, behold thy mother. (St. John xix. 26, 27) His affection even identified with our weakness, desperation, and dereliction. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me. (St. Matthew xxvii. 46) With ongoing affection for us in His heart, Christ said, I thirst. (St. John xix. 28) From the Cross, He concluded, with unbounded affection, It is finished. (St. John xix. 30) Father into thy hands, I commend my spirit. (St. Luke xxviii. 46) Come follow me even into my death, as my death that shall become yours also. On Good Friday, God’s uninterrupted affection for us men took suffering and death up into the abyss of Holy Saturday.
And through it all, our affection was, no doubt, hesitant and halting. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. (Genesis i. 2) Sin and death seemed to have swallowed up our affection for the life, light, and love of God in Jesus Christ. As in Adam all die (1 Cor. xv. 22) seemed to have consumed our affection for Jesus Christ.

As we move from Good Friday to this Easter Sunday, this first day of the week, something strange begins to happen. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. (Genesis i. 4) In the beginning, God divided the light from the darkness. The same Light now has conquered the darkness of sin and death. The pure Affection and eternal desire of the Father of lights have moved the Son from death into New Life. The old Man is Dead, and the new Man has come alive.

At first only angels and nature sense the strangeness of this Light. The elements stirred, the air was parted, the fire blazed, and the earth shook and fell before the rising Light that dispels all darkness. The Father’s immortal, immutable, and immovable course of affection for man’s redemption is on course and thus is still at work in the heart of Jesus. Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. (Romans vi. 9, 10) The words spoken to Isaiah the prophet are remembered. Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine. (Isaiah xliii. 1) Christ is the dfulfillment of the Father’s unceasing affection for us.

And yet, in this morning’s Gospel, we learn that man’s affection for God in Jesus Christ, now risen from the dead, will take time to perfect. Christ’s death had seemed like a victory of darkness over light. We read that The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre. (St. John, xx 1,2)

At first, Mary Magdalene was moved still by her limited affection and love for Jesus, to anoint his dead body. She finds the stone rolled away. Her affection remains in darkness. She runs to Saints Peter and John exclaiming they have taken away the Lord out of the sepulcher, and we know not where they have laid him. (St. John xx. 2) Her affection for Jesus can sense only the darkness of His enemies. But she remembers the words of the prophet: And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I have…brought you up out of your graves, And I shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live. (Ezekiel. xxxvii. 12-14) Her stirring affection for things above begins to run to find John and Peter. Their affection and love run to the empty tomb. As Eriugena says, John outruns Peter because contemplation completely cleansed penetrates the inner secrets of the divine workings more rapidly than action still to be purified. John’s affection already begins to rest in contemplation and hope. Peter’s affection outruns it with action and faith. The affection of Peter must enter the tomb of darkness first to test John’s contemplative affection. (Hom. Gospel of St. John, 283, 285)         

God’s uninterrupted affection and desire for all men’s salvation is always at work in Jesus Christ. Stirring within the hearts of Mary Magdalene, Peter, and John are the affection for the one who said, I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also. (St. John xiv. 18, 19) Soon the Apostles will see God’s unfading Light in Him, find God’s Life in Him, and discover His incessant Love. Christ is risen from the dead. The Son of God made flesh, made man is Risen from the dead.

In the Resurrected Light that shines through the transfigured flesh of His new life, we must remember that we are dead and our life is hid with God in Christ. (Colossians iii. 2,3) In the Resurrected Light, as our faith seeks to understand what has transpired, let us reckon [ourselves] to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans vi. 11) In the Resurrected Life, let us allow our affection for Jesus Christ to be purified and cleansed, increasingly confident in His affection for us, now seemingly transparent, obedient to His Holy Spirit…as an apt and natural instrument of His will and way. (The Meaning of Man, Mouroux, p.89) If we set out affection, the thoughts of our hearts, on things above, not things of the earth, (idem) we shall begin to remember that we come from God, and now, by God’s Grace in the Resurrected Christ, can return to God, through Him, where our affection will be made perfect forever.

Amen.
©wjsmartin
  

Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, 
that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: 
because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, 
which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
St. Matthew vii. 13, 14
     
Our opening words from St. Matthew’s Gospel give us a segue into our study of the meaning of Resurrection in this Eastertide. Here our Lord Jesus Christ, curt and candid as usual, tells us that most people go to Hell, and few go to Heaven. Pardon me for cutting to the quick, but these are Jesus’ words. And contrary to the wishful thinking of puerile Popes, Christ means what He says. Christ intends that His words be taken as a stark warning to all who bank on Cheap Grace or think that their religion and all their good works are going to save them. None of this is good theology, and it certainly isn’t Biblical. Most men go to Hell because they choose the broad way over and against the strait gate and the narrow way that alone leads to salvation. This certainly qualifies the good news and the peace that most men artificially conflate with the musings of jolly old Buddha, earnest Confucius, the fraudulent Gandhi, and other religious armchair amateurs whose philosophies never graduated to high table at a covered-dish supper. Comparative Religion isn’t intellectually compelling. The ease with which postmodern Christians neglect the harder sayings of our Lord is troubling, to say the least. And while we might engage in a slothful wishful thinking about how all men go to Heaven, such jejune feeling neither squares with the Gospel nor leads to the Kingdom. 
        
No, I fear that the Christian religion is much more about the hard truth and our ongoing struggle to apply it to our lives.  Christians have every reason to rejoice in the knowledge and love of God found only in Jesus Christ and to believe that the Good News or Gospel alone leads us to salvation. But there is more. Jesus also says, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. (St. John xiv. 6) Salvation means the return of man to God through the Redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by participating in His Atonement of our sins. Jesus died and rose for us, and yet it is up to us to respond. Jesus has won our salvation, and we cannot have it except we will it by and through Him. This means that Christ expects us to have a relationship with Him. Unless we find the strait gate and enter by the narrow way that He establishes for us, we cannot reach Heaven. Entering the strait gate requires our moral effort and decision. This means that the life that He lived, the unearned, unmerited, and undeserved suffering and death that He endured, and the Resurrection He commenced must all become our own that we participate in willingly, sacrificially, and joyfully. This is the message of Eastertide.
         
To find the strait gate and to enter the narrow way is difficult. The old adages no pain, no gain, no suffering, no salvation, and no Cross, no Crown are all consecrated by the earthly life our Lord lived and intends for us to live. Christ will sanctify us by the Father’s Grace in a patient progress that leads us out of sin and death and into righteousness and new life. The pattern He consecrates and blesses will involve sacrifice, suffering, and death before we find new life. Christ never promised us immediate and paranormal perfection. This is a gift to be bestowed upon us as we find the strait gate and enter the narrow way that leadeth unto life. (Idem) 
         
Therefore, what we have before us is the promise of an eternal reward to them that embrace Jesus Christ. Again, embracing Jesus Christ in our hearts and souls is the hard part. In Eastertide, we learn that no sooner has Christ risen from the dead than He tells His Apostles, Now I go my way to Him that sent me; and none of you asketh me, Whither goest thou? (St. John xvi. 5) Like men in all ages, we want God with us and for us, tangibly present in the flesh. We want the immediate gratification of Christ with us in the way closest to us, through our senses. We believe, immaturely, that His absence from us in the fleshwill breed catastrophic sadness and sorrow. Yet we, with the Apostles, must learn that Christ cannot save us until His suffering, death, and victory over our sin is something that we embrace inwardly, spiritually, and rationally. His fleshly Incarnation is only the beginning. We must find the strait gate and narrow way that leadeth unto life inwardly and spiritually through the indwelling of Christ the Word through the Holy Spirit. Christ intends to come alive in our souls by working His redemption into us. Christ desires to dwell in us spiritually and intellectually. If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. (St. John xiv. 23)
         
With the Father, Christ intends to come to us and pitch their tent on the soil of our souls. But for this to happen, we must expect the same temptation and troublemaking that the Devil brought to Jesus. Christ’s Redemption, accomplished once for all, must be tried and tested from the ground of our souls through persistent faith.
 
If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you….The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. But all these things will they do unto you for my name’s sake, because they know not him that sent me. (St. John xv. 18-21)
 
Salvation is a process of becoming little Christs. (C.S. Lewis) The world might very well hate us and persecute us because it knows not the Father who sent the Son. (idem) Christ was made flesh to order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men. (Collect Easter IV) The comfort and strength of the same Holy Spirit will enable us to love the thing that [the Father] commandeth and desire the thing that [He doth] promise (Collect…) in His Son. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. (St. John xvi. 7) 
        
Christ will come to us from the Father, inwardly and spiritually, through the Spirit. St. James exhorts us to Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.  Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. (St. James iv. 7,8) Jesus tells us that when He sends the Comforter unto us, He will reprove the world of sin. (St. John xvi. 8) The Comforter is the Holy Spirit, who must come to convict us of our sins, which were the cause of Christ’s passion. St. Thomas Aquinas says that he will convince, rebuke, the world, as the one who will invisibly enter into their hearts and pour his charity into them so that their fear is conquered, and they have the strength to rebuke. (Aquinas: John’s Gospel) We must not only repent but rebuke all sin with courage in the Name of Jesus. Next, the Comforter will reprove…the world of righteousness. (Ibid, 10) Aquinas reminds us that St. Paul, the greatest of convicted Christians, proclaimed that we are sold under sin… There is none righteous, no, not one. (Romans iii. 10, Ibid) and that the world must be convicted always of the righteousness that [we] have ignored or neglected. (Idem) Through the Spirit, the Father will reveal to us how we have rejected the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Finally, the Comforter will rebuke…the world of judgment because the prince of this world is judged. (Idem) Aquinas warns us that the Devil and an unbelieving world will be judged. Thus, the world is reproved by this judgment because being unwilling to resist, it is overcome by the devil, who, although expelled, is brought back by their consent to sin: "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies" (Rom 6:12, Idem) In Christ’s death, the Devil was robbed of any power he had over us. In the end, through the Spirit, we must not only rebuke sin, acknowledge our own unrighteousness but also hold the Devil in contempt by ongoing surrender to the Father and His Word, Jesus Christ, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
        
Christians should never seek an easier, softer way. The journey into Christ’s Resurrection is a pilgrimage whose suffering, sacrifice, and death must be measured and tempered with all faith, hope, and love. St. James exhorts us:

My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience… Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.
(St. James i. 2-4) 
 
Patience enables us to suffer the Devil’s divers temptations with joy and blessedness. We must cleave to the Good, come what may. St. James continues:
 
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Of his own will begat he us with the Word of 
Truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. (St. James i. 17, 18)
 
The gift of the Father is Jesus Christ, His only begotten Word. Jesus, the Word of God’s Truth, will prune away the dead wood of our old hardened sinful selves to implant the new life, the beauty of holiness, the first fruits, from the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes to bring alive every good gift that God intends for us to use in His service, leading us through the straight gate and narrow way. Every good and perfect gift should overcome our spiritual exhaustion and fear. So, with John Henry Newman, let us beg of Christ Grace wherewith to enter into the depths of our privileges, to believe, to use, to improve, to glory in our present gifts as members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven. (Sermon xvii, J.H.N.)

Amen.
©wjsmartin

But praised be the LORD, who hath not given us over
for a prey unto their teeth. Our soul is escaped even as a bird out of the
snare of the fowler; the snare is broken, and we are delivered.
(Ps. cxxiv. 5,6)
 
Easter Tide is all about avoiding those things that are contrary to our profession and follow such things as are agreeable to the same. (Collect EasterIII) We do this, of course, because if we have been admitted into the fellowship of Christ’s religion, this habit of life will ensure that our pilgrimage is sanctified and that we shall be saved. In Easter Tide, we undertake the hard labor of dying to our old selves and coming alive to the new life that we find in the Resurrected Christ. We die to ourselves as we petition God to show [us] that are in error the light of [His] truth. (Idem) Satan’s power must be banished. And all of this must come to us by the Grace of the Holy Spirit. Christ desires for us to partake of His Resurrection and participate in the New Life that He has won for us. But the power of hope and belief in His Resurrection involve a transition from one state to another – from sin to righteousness and from death to life, in rejecting Satan and embracing our Heavenly Father’s will. 
         
Thus, the Resurrected Christ invites us into a relationship that will deliver us to His Kingdom. But this is difficult. We are so at home in this world, in the realm of immediate gratification or its denial. The discomforts that threaten us would have been unimaginable to our ancestors, whose comforts were scarce. St. Peter’s exhortation this morning to become strangers and pilgrims (I St. Peter ii. 11) is now considered a tall order indeed. His insistence that we must abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul; having [our] conversation honest among the Gentiles (ibid, 11,12) strikes us more like the ludicrous last gasp of late Victorian piety. What is St. Peter talking about? Evidently, with lust now a virtue and with what was always considered unnatural and profane now in vogue, he must have been out of his mind. Poor, primitive St. Peter is no match for postmodern hedonism. Now, our old selves have not merely forgotten the secret things that belong to the Lord our God (Deut. xxix. 29), but we hold them in contempt.

Of course, St. Peter lived in the then civilized world. Both Jew and Greek slave and free, lived in a world ruled and governed not only by Roman Law but a great deal of moral agreement about marriage, the family, and Natural Law. The best upright Roman would have found little wrong with the Jewish morality. More advanced Roman thinkers were intrigued to find that what they discovered about God through the study of nature, the Jews had by revelation as recording in their Sacred Scriptures. The success with which the Apostles converted the Greeks and Romans to Christ must be a testimony to a common need for a common cure for the ills of man in this world. Demonizing the ancient Greeks and Romans seems a fool’s errand. Both the Greeks and Romans were situated intellectually and spiritually to embrace Christ, the way, the truth, and life. (St. John xiv. 6) 

Needless to say, we do not find ourselves living in a world with the luxury of either Greco-Roman philosophy or Jewish revelation. Our world has surrendered to the worship of untamed and disordered appetites. The sanest of men can find rest in neither culture nor religion. The culture of the modern state is wholly corrupted by the protection of the irrational and unseemly. The churches have surrendered to the perverse and profane with an eye to profit.  The words of the Psalmist ring truer than ever.

THE foolish body hath said in his heart: There is no God.
Corrupt are they and become abominable in their wickedness: there is none that doeth good.
God looked down from heaven upon the children of men: to see if there were any that would understand and seek after God.
But they are all gone out of the way, they are altogether become abominable: there is also none that doeth good, no not one. (Ps. liii. 1-4)
 
For the power of God to liberate us effectually, we must declare spiritual war on this world and its ship of fools, who say there is no God. Fools trust in their wits and the stirrings of their hearts. He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool. (Prov. xxviii. 26) A fool despiseth wisdom and understanding. (Prov. i. 7) The fool rejects both the knowledge of God that comes from the study of nature and the faith that comes from revelation. Because he is at home in this world, he exults only in a temporary possession of happiness. Because it is convenient to his fleeting, idolatrous passions, he is glad to think that God, who moves all things and informs all things, remains unmoved by his sin. He has forgotten the wisdom in the wise man’s understanding: 

Whither shall I go from thy spirit?
or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there:
if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning,
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
even there shall thy hand lead me,
and thy right hand shall hold me.
                           (Ps. cxxxix. 7-100
        
The wise man warns us that we ignore the Invisible God because we have forgotten that we are strangers and pilgrims, not to be at home in this world but passing through to return to the God who is the source of all life and truth. The wise man knows that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. (Romans iii. 23) The wise man has believed and understood that God’s Invisible Wisdom, Power, and Love have come into the world to save sinful man in Jesus Christ. He has come, and He has gone. We come, and we too shall go. The wise man knows too that human life is made to be judged and measured by God’s life, light, and love in Jesus Christ for eternal happiness or eternal misery. 

In this Easter Tide, today Jesus says to us, ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. (St. John xv.20)  Mourning and lamentation for the wise man do not disappear with the Incarnation. Rather, they comprise an essential moment in that spiritual movement whereby Christ carries us from the death to sin into new and Redeemed Human Life. St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that the wise Christian will be sad for three reasons. First, by sadness of evil, man is corrected. (Easter III: TA) When Christ promises to depart from us in the flesh, He will correct us inwardly and spiritually. Unless we mourn our sinful rejection of Him, the Resurrection virtue that Christ longs to infuse into our bodies and souls will remain dormant. Sorrow for our abandonment of His ever-present sacrificial love renews our passion for finding it anew. Second, by temporal sadness, man escapes eternal torment. (Idem) Temporal sadness is worth suffering when the reward is deliverance from Hell. Third, by a mean measure of justice, we acquire eternal joys. (Idem) Punishment through the just punishment for our sins now acclimates us to the virtue that leads to eternal joys. Then we begin to treasure the meaning of Christ’s lasting victory over our sins in this body of death. Temporary suffering will be converted into soaring desire for the exceeding and eternal weight of God’s glory.
          
Jesus is teaching us that for so long as we are in these earthen vessels, with St. Peter, we must become strangers and pilgrims in this world. If we seek Him out amidst it all, His Invisible Presence will enable us to persist. 

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. (St. John xv. 4, 5) 
 
If Christ lives in us now Invisibly, our sorrows shall be transformed into the permanence of His joy in our hearts. He likens it to a woman who is pregnant or with child. A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world. And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you. (Ibid, 21, 22) The expectant mother endures all manner of suffering and sorrow in joyful expectation of her child’s birth. So too the wise man must endure the suffering and sorrow that accompany the conception of the Word of God in the womb of his soul before he is born again from above and by the Invisible God. John Calvin tells us that Christ means that the sorrow which we shall endure for the sake of the Gospel will be profitable. (J. Calvin: Comm.)
       
St. Augustine reminds us that, 

At present, the Church is in travail with the longing for this fruit of all her labor…now she travails in birth with groaning, then shall she bring forth in joy; now she travails in birth through her prayers, then shall she bring forth in her praises. (John xvi)
 
The end that we seek is the consolation of the Divine Presence. So, over and against ungodliness, St. Peter tells us that our incipient joy should be caught up with well doing, [that we] may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men, and not using [our] liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of God. (Ibid, 13) Christ tells us today, I will see you again, and you will rejoice. (St. John xvi. 22) If we believe in Him, He will take our bodies and souls into all joy, and others shall join us as strangers and pilgrims, visibly and truly embracing the love of the Invisible God, that no man shall take away from us. (Idem)

Amen.
©wjsmartin

This is thankworthy, that if a man for conscience endure grief,
Suffering wrongfully.
(1 St. Peter ii. 19 )
 
Our Epistle reading for The Second Sunday after Easter taken from St. Peter’s First Epistle speaks of suffering. This might seem strange. After all, we are in Easter Tide. Suffering was studied at length on Good Friday. Easter Tide should be about joy – the surging relief and rising happiness that come to us when we meditate upon Christ’s victory over sin, death, and Satan. But dear old Saint Pope Gregory the Great, who is mostly responsible for our Church Lectionary, wants us to remember that our Resurrected life in Christ is a treasured gift to be received and perfected in willing hearts through constant suffering and warfare. As joyously focused on Christ’s Resurrection as we should be, the Church Fathers knew only too well that the prudent and cautious pilgrim who seeks to enter God’s Kingdom must fight a daily battle of suffering and dying in order to rise and be joyful.
         
Easter Tide teaches us that suffering is a necessary component in the process of our sanctification and redemption. Last week, we learned that Christ’s Peace comes to us to infuse the forgiveness of sins and the New Life into our hearts. Today, we learn that the assurance of its rule in our lives demands a kind of spiritual struggle that tends to be threatened by the devices and desires of our own hearts. (General Confession, BCP p. 6) And what better teacher have we than St. Peter himself, to teach us about the taming of premature zeal as we embrace the reality of the Risen Christ? He writes: For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God. (1 St. Peter ii. 19,20) Peter believes and knows what Christ has done for us already. Peter, too, knows how his own character had to suffer the consequences of a faith that had not been tried by fire. Peter had to die to his own sinful betrayal of Christ before the Holy Spirit could rise in him. Peter knew too that for as long as he lived, he would suffer the temptation to betray Christ or to become soft on his own past weakness. The union of Christ’s Suffering, Death, and Resurrection had to become for him the pattern of New Life. The Peace and Forgiveness of Sins which Christ had established would become his own prized possession only by way of dying and rising. For I have given you an example, that ye should do [to one another] as I have done to you. (St. John xiii. 15)
         
For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. (Ibid, 15) The message is clear. By embracing the forgiveness of sins, Christians are called to suffer and die as they are habituated to the forgiveness of sins. Christ is the forgiveness of sins that rises in man’s heart only by way of suffering for the Truth. A man suffers to die to malice and ill will and come alive to the well doing. God’s well doing has overcome sin in Jesus Christ. Christ’s mercy tempers judgment, His generosity destroys selfishness, and His forgiveness breathes love and hope into new lives. St. Peter is quick to admit that this process is difficult. He writes his Epistle to a community that is struggling to allow Christ’s Resurrected goodness to overcome the instinctive urge to repay others with an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. St. Peter acknowledges that most men, including Christians, must struggle to die to the old man and come alive to the new. Most men’s souls are tempted not to forgive. Evil’s assault upon men from the outside in other people is of secondary importance to him. It is only when men begin to suffer inwardly and spiritually that the forgiveness of sins is received as what we neither desire nor deserve but desperately need if we would be Risen with Christ. This will put to silence the ignorance of foolish men since God’s love is rationally consistent with His being and offered always through Jesus Christ and by the Holy Ghost.

St. Peter reminds his flock today that Christ Jesus was the only Person in history who endured and overcame evil through goodness because the loving forgiveness of sins was perfectly alive in His heart. St. Peter reminds us that Christ embraced the forgiveness of sins as what was natural to Him, as God’s Son. He did not 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 St. Peter ii. 22,23) Yet Christ, in a sense, had more reason not to forgive, since He did not wrong and committed no sin. So, He responded to man’s sin against Him with God’s love or the forgiveness of sins. God forever intends that man should repent and believe so that he can live and not die in his sins. God’s goodness saturated Christ’s heart. In turn, Christ intends to love His enemies into friendship with God. In His suffering death, Christ was made sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Cor. v. 21) St. Peter agrees.

Who in His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes you were healed; For ye were as sheep, going astray, but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls. (Ibid, 24,25)  
 

What the Apostles realized long ago was that the Crucified Jesus, who rose up from death on Easter Day, was God’s Good Shepherd. But what became clearer and clearer was that the Good Shepherd, in laying down His life for them, was still seeking out His lost sheep from the hard wood, the rod, of the Cross. Christ’s own struggle to conquer sin through suffering is the model for Man’s victory over sin. Christ pursues His end, our salvation, come what may. As God’s forgiveness of sins made flesh, Christ loves the sinner much more than his sin. Today, Jesus likens himself to both the Good Shepherd and the door through which He will carry us back to the Father. We can become His sheep if we begin to confess that we were lost sheep needing to be found by Christ the Good Shepherd.  Dr. Farrer explains Jesus’ words in this way:

What does Jesus say?  A man cares naturally for his own things.  He does not have to make himself care.  The shepherd who has bought the ground and fenced the fold and tended the lambs, whose own the sheep are to keep or to sell, cares for them.  He would run some risk, rather than see them mauled; if he had only a heavy stick in his hand, he would beat off the wolf…He says that he cares for us as no one else can, because we are his.  We do not belong to any other man; we belong to him.  His dying for us in this world is the natural effect of his unique care.  It is the act of our Creator. (Weekly Paragraphs for the Holy Sacrament: Easter II)
 
Christ would run some risk rather than lose His lost sheep. Belonging to Christ comes when we confess that we are lost sheep now being found by the Lord who is our Shepherd, the rod and staff of whose Cross comfort us. (Psalm xxiii. 4)

But we protest: All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every man to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah liii. 6) Our false pride, masquerading as humility, exclaims that the Good Shepherd is too good to heal us. But though we are lost in sin and death, we must remember that He is greater than our sins, or His forgiveness is greater than our sins. I am the Good Shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known by them. (St. John x. 11, 14) Jesus implies that He knows us better than we know ourselves. His knowledge penetrates the secrets of our hearts. He knows how sin has enslaved us. He understands that He must struggle and suffer, as He alone can, to conquer our sin. The Rod that comforts us is His Cross, from which He becomes the forgiveness of sins for us. The Staff that comforts us is His Resurrected love that can extend the forgiveness of sins to others. The Rod of the Cross awakens us to how much He loves us. The Staff of the Resurrection herds us into the comfort of hope in His New Life. From His Cross, Jesus the Good Shepherd invites us to participate in His Good Death. Jesus the Good Shepherd now desires to lift us onto His shoulders in the New Risen Life where sin, death, and Satan can harm us no more.

Because we belong to Jesus, we can reciprocate His desire for us. We can begin to know Him as the Good Shepherd, who prepares a table before us in the presence of [our] enemies; [who will] anoint [our] head with oil; [so that our] cup runneth over. (Ps. xxiii. 5) His forgiveness of our sins can lead us into sin’s death. His Resurrection can mean that we can forgive all men their sins against us. Suffering the assaults of malicious men can become the occasion for overcoming evil with good.

Today, my friends, as we continue to wend our way through Easter tide, let us remember always, with St. Peter, that we have erred and strayed from [Christ’s ways] like lost sheep. Jesus insists we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture. (Ps. c. 3) We belong to Him and He longs to have us forever. And, always, with Cardinal Von Balthasar, we shall remember that

Without Easter, Good Friday would have no meaning. Without Easter, there would be no hope that suffering and abandonment might be tolerable. But with Easter, a way out becomes visible for human sorrow [and suffering], an absolute future: more than a hope, a divine expectation.
 
Amen.
©wjsmartin
 
 
 
 

 As my Father has sent me, so send I you. (St. John xx. 21)

Through Holy Week to Easter Day, when we tried to walk with Jesus Christ through his Passion and into His Resurrection. In it, if we were conscientious, we were moving from death into new life. First, we meditated upon the external and visible events that comprised the last days of our Lord Jesus Christ. Second, we allowed the facts to affect our souls, as His death became our death, and His Resurrection the seedbed of that new life through Him that leads us to Heaven. Our souls began to open to Christ as the forgiveness of sins and the promise of new life. I pray that we have begun to receive God’s Wisdom, Power, and Love made flesh, which alone can make us very members incorporate of His Body. I hope that who and what He was becomes who and what He is for us. Christ is not dead, but lives for us.

The danger that confronts us is that we tend to treat Jesus as not alive but dead, not risen from the dead, but long gone. G.K. Chesterton noted the tendency, even within the churches, when he said, Plato has told you a truth; but Plato is dead. Shakespeare has startled you with an image; but Shakespeare will not startle you anymore. (The Everlasting Man) Though their works live on and can perfect us to a degree, the authors are dead. Chesterton continues: Imagine what it would be to live with such men still living, to know that Plato might break out with an original lecture tomorrow, or that at any moment Shakespeare might shatter everything with a single song. (Ibid) Think about what it would be like to have some great thinker or artist back from the dead to help you to interpret and respond to the mad, mad world we inhabit.

Perhaps this is not unlike what the Apostles were thinking, when they began to mourn Jesus’ death after the Crucifixion. Why, if only He were here? they must have thought. And yet when He was here, men were determined to ruin Him. Would it be any different? So, they mused on the might-have-beens. But they remembered, too, that they had abandoned, forsaken, denied, and betrayed Him. So now they were assembled behind the doors for fear of the Jews. (St. John xx. 19) They recalled their cowardice, treachery, and unfaithfulness. But against this, they feared more what guilt by association might mean for them. The followers of Jesus of Nazareth feared for their own lives.

Their faith was feeble, their hopes confused, and their love for Him uncertain. They were selfish.
Next, we read that 

Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. (St. John xx. 19)
 
Their master and teacher had returned. The first day of the week is now the first day of the new creation. Christ mysteriously but silently comes through the door. Christ had already appeared to individuals – to Mary Magdalen, Peter, the two men on the road to Emmaus. But, appearing to individuals is far less convincing than the combined effect of a community. He comes to His flock, uniquely defined by their collective faith, as fragile as it might be. He shows them His hands and His side to confirm their faith in Him, that they might not have it by hearsay only, but might themselves be eyewitnesses of His being alive. (M. Henry) He does not reveal Himself to His enemies yet and does not reveal Himself to those who had no interest in God or the salvation He has promised to bring. As St. Peter will recall a bit later, Him God raised up the third day, and showed Him openly; not to all of the people, but unto witnesses chosen before God, even to us who did eat and drink with Him after He rose from the dead. (Acts x. 40,41) An event of supernatural making presents itself to them. The Apostles are baffled, bewildered, perplexed, puzzled, and flummoxed. Those who fled the Cross wondered: Did He truly die? Perhaps, in the end, He was spared; we did not see with our own eyes. Others might have thought: This is an optical illusion. Perhaps He was never a true man and that even now He is nothing but a Spirit. And if it will take time to cultivate the faith of His Apostles, there is no small wonder that He did not appear to the chief priests and people.

For forty days Jesus comes to His flock with the eternal love of God that He has always revealed. He will teach His friends about the great mystery of the new life. He will teach them about how His coming was prefigured in the Old Testament and that He is its fulfillment in the New. He will teach them about the forgiveness of sins that He is. He will show them that without His suffering and death there could be no new life. For the new life that He brings into the world is perfect forgiveness that alone can overcome the grip of evil through love. His love will draw the new life out of them as His Holy Spirit emboldens them to be forgiven and to forgive. He will teach them that His suffering and death are a pattern for their own in the soul’s journey back to God. 

If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you….If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you…. (St. John xv. 18-20)
 
Peace be unto you: as my Father has sent me, even so send I you; and He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive the Holy Ghost.(St. John xx. 21-23) The Word made flesh is with them, and He calls them into His service again. He breathes His Word into them, and they begin to become living members of His Resurrected Body. He has laid down His life for them, and now He gives it back to them renewed, rekindled, and roused. These He restores, comforts, warns, and inspires. (Newman, Witenesses of Resurrection, 184) The onslaught of fear and the cloud of confusion recede into the past as He forms them into Himself slowly and methodically, as their faith grows that that they might show forth His praise. (Idem)

So the Apostles begin to live the new life. Christ is the vine and they the branches; Christ is the root and they are the shoots. As Chesterton says, What the Apostles were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener, God walked again in the garden, not in the cool of the evening, but at dawn. (The Everlasting Man) The Apostles’ mental unrest and uncertainty flee. The Master has returned as He had promised and is now teaching them how to live the new life in the garden of a new creation. Their faith in Him is being grown into new life with new meaning, where God the Gardener and man the new life reveal to the world the great possibilities in creation’s redemption.

In this joyful Eastertide Jesus Christ calls us into the new life. St. John tells us this morning, Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is He that overcometh the world, but He that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?(1 John v. 4,5) What the Apostles begin to see is that faith in Jesus Christ is the victory that overcomes the world. They see that this [Jesus is He] that came by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness because the Spirit is truth. For there are three that bear witness, the Spirit, and the water and the blood. (1 John v. 6) The Spirit has raised up the One who has poured out water and blood to make man just with God. The Spirit has raised up the One who has died one death for the sins of the whole world. The Spirit has raised up the One who calls all from death into His new life. The Spirit enlivens the One who will be the Gardner that tills and tends the Garden of the new life in the hearts of all who believe and follow. Through the waters of Baptism, His Spirit will cleanse and purge the spiritual seedlings of all pestilence. The Spirit will cultivate and grow God’s Word in the soul so that obedience to the Father might flower and blossom. The Blood of the Eucharist will drown sin in death and flood the heart with a longing for all goodness. Spirit, water, and blood will raise man up from the ground of his death into the breath of that Love that leads into the new life. His Spirit will animate a new Body- the Church, that fertile Garden that will bloom with beauty and blush with delight.

And yet none of this will come to pass unless we lost souls, who are promised redemption, face the Resurrected Jesus Christ. Solomon tells us that this process will be strange and painful. In the sight of the unwise [we shall] seem to die: and [our] departure [will be] taken for misery; and [our] going from [them] utter destruction….(Wisdom ii 2) But once they see what is happening to us, they will conclude that we are in peace. For though [we] be punished in the sight of men, [our] hope is full of immortality. And having been a little chastised, [we] shall be greatly rewarded: for God [will prove us], [to find us] worthy for himself…And…[we] shall shine, and run to and fro like sparks among the stubble. [We] shall judge the nations, and have dominion over the people, and [our] Lord shall reign for ever. (Wisdom ii. 5-8)

Then we shall find Blessed Gueric of Igny’s words surprisingly true:

The man who enters Christ’s garden becomes a garden himself, his soul is like a watered garden, so that the Bridegroom says in praise of him: ‘My sister, My spouse is a garden enclosed’ (Cant 4, 12). Yield the fragrance of incense. Blossom like the lily, and smell sweet, and put forth leaves for your adornment. (The Garden of Delight)

Indeed, yield fragrance, blossom, shoot forth, and reveal the beauty and love of the Risen Christ to the world!
 
Amen.
©wjsmartin

Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.  For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. (Col. iii. 2)

Our journey through the Lenten Season to Good Friday will have been of no use if it has not been characterized by affection. Set your affections on things above and not on things of the earth, proclaims St. Paul this morning, and not on things of the earth. (idem) Affection is an appetite that draws us, attracts us, and captures our attention. Throughout the Holy Season of Lent, we have prayed that the Holy Spirit might purify the thoughts of our hearts so that we can follow Jesus up to the Jerusalem of His Cross and beyond. Our affections have been set…on the things above [and] not things of the earth, things that have come down to us in the passionate heart of Jesus Christ to lift us up higher. Out of the unquenchable love of His heart, Christ desired that our affections should rise up to embrace Him in the Death He died for you and me on Good Friday. From there to here, on this Easter Morn, Christ now longs that our affections might rise higher still into His Resurrection Love.  

But setting [our] affections on things that are above and not on the things of the earth is no easy business. And it is not that affection is evil. God made it for a reason. But affection is fickle, unreliable, and uncertain. Affection, like all good things, must be tried and tested, lest it meander into the realm of evil. God’s affection and desire for us is pure and perfect. From the Divine Depths, articulated and expressed in the incessant, loving Passion of Jesus on the Cross, the uninterrupted longing of God for our salvation has persisted. The Word has gone out. God’s desire and affection have never swerved from His Great Unseen Eternal Design. The Word of God came down from heaven to live in man’s heart. His Good Friday is but one moment in the unfolding drama of our Redemption and Salvation.

Our affection, as a response to Jesus Christ, was tried and tested on Good Friday. The mighty engine of Caesar’s Rome tried to capture our attention and affection with an offer of expeditious peace, the Pax Romana, a peace that would conveniently rid us of Jesus Christ’s messy and menacing death. Even God’s chosen people, the Jews, tried to claim our affection with a tradition that offered cheap Grace and inexpensive discipleship. The fear and even cowardice of Jesus’ Apostles then lured us into a broken and killed affection that we, surely, would somehow get over. Human affection carries with it a kind-of loss of self-composure and meekness. Solomon, in Proverbs, tells us A fool giveth full vent to his affection, but the wise man quietly holdeth it back. (Prov. Xxix. 11) Affection threatens us with losing something or all of ourselves in order to know the good and love it with our whole heart.

And yet, God’s affection for all men persisted on Good Friday with a Passion that longs always to call forth and redeem the affection of men in all ages. The affection of God for us in Jesus Christ said to us from His Cross, Father forgive them for they know not what they do. (St. Luke xxiii. 34) From the Cross, Christ’s affection reached the Good Thief. Come follow me. Today, thou shalt be with me in paradise. (St. Luke xxiii. 43) From His Cross His affection reached out to His Mother and the blessed disciple. Come follow me. Women, behold thy son…son, behold thy mother. (St. John xix. 26, 27) From His Cross, His affection began to move us all out of fear and despair into new life. His affection even took on our desperation and dereliction. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me. (St. Matthew xxvii. 46) With ongoing affection He mustered up enough desire for our salvation to cry, I thirst. (St. John xix. 28) From the Cross, He concluded, with unbounded affection, It is finished. (St. John xix. 30) Father into thy hands, I commend my spirit. (St. Luke xxviii. 46) Come follow me even into my death, as my death that shall become yours also. On Good Friday, God’s uninterrupted affection for us men took suffering and death up into the abyss of Holy Saturday.

And through it all, our affection was, no doubt, hesitant and halting. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. (Genesis i. 2) Sin and death seemed to have swallowed up our affection for the life, light, and love of God in Jesus Christ. As in Adam all die (1 Cor. xv. 22) seemed to have consumed our life, light, and love.

As we move from Good Friday to this Easter Sunday, to this first day of the week, something strange begins to happen. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. (Genesis i. 3,4) In the beginning, God affectionately made the Light to inform, define, and enliven all of creation. In the same Light now, incandescent beams of Divine Affection will open the eyes of believers’ hearts to a new creation being illuminated by that true Light that lighteth every man that cometh into world. (St. John i. 9) Darkness begins to flee, sin begins to be felt as dead, death begins to be conquered, and ignorance yields to Wisdom, as the Divine Affection jumps up from Death in the heart of Jesus. The pure Affection and eternal desire of the Father of lights have transformed the Son as flesh from Death into New Life. The old Man is Dead, and the new Man has come to life with glory.

At first, only angels and nature sensed the strangeness of this Light. The elements stirred, the air was parted, the fire blazed, and the earth shook and fell before the rising Light that follows the passion and affection of its Mover and Maker. The Father’s immortal, immutable, and immovable course of affection for man’s redemption is on course and thus is still at work in the heart of Jesus. Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. (Romans vi. 9, 10) The words spoken to Isaiah the prophet are remembered

But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob,
and he that formed thee, O Israel,
Fear not: for I have redeemed thee,
I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine.
(Isaiah xliii. 1)

Christ is the fulfillment of the Father’s unceasing affection for us. And yet, in this morning’s Gospel, we learn that man’s affection for God in Jesus Christ, now risen from the dead, will take time to perfect. Christ’s death seemed like an end. We read that The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre. (St. John, xx 1,2)

Jesus had said, And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me. (St. John xii. 32) At first, the affection of both the Apostles and the women for who Christ is and what He can do, was confused, uncertain, and halting. Mary Magdalene was moved still by her affection and love for Jesus, to anoint his dead body. She finds the stone rolled away. Her affection for the Light is not yet redeemed. She ran to Saints Peter and John and exclaimed, They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulcher, and we know not where they have laid him. (St. John xx. 2) Her affection remains in darkness, believing that Christ’s enemies have stolen the body. But she remembers the words of the prophet: And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I have…brought you up out of your graves, And I shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live. (Ezekiel. xxxvii. 12-14) Her stirring affection for things above begins to run to find John and Peter. Their affection and love run to the empty tomb. As Eriugena says, John outruns Peter because contemplation completely cleansed penetrates the inner secrets of the divine workings more rapidly than action still to be purified. John’s affection already begins to rest in contemplation and hope. Peter’s affection outruns it with action and faith. The affection of Peter must enter the tomb of darkness first to then understand with John’s affection. (Hom. Gospel of St. John, 283, 285)         

God’s uninterrupted affection and desire for all men’s salvation is still at work in Jesus Christ. Stirring within the hearts of Mary Magdalene, Peter, and John are the affection for, faith and understanding in the Light that said, I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also. (St. John xiv. 18, 19) Soon the Apostles will see God’s unfading Light in Christ, begin to receive His Life in Him, and return His Love through Him. Christ is risen from the dead. The Son of God made flesh, made man is Risen from the dead. In the Resurrected Light that shines through the transfigured flesh of His new life, we must remember that we are dead and our life is hid with Christ in God. (Colossians iii. 2,3) In the Resurrected Light, let us reckon [ourselves] to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans vi. 11) In the Resurrected Life, Light, and Love – let us embrace unabated affection of Jesus Christ with our own affection –that affection and desire for becoming very members incorporate in His Risen spiritual and mystical Body, transparent, obedient to His Holy Spirit…apt and natural instruments of His will and way, (The Meaning of Man, Mouroux, p.89) reflecting His Life, Light, and Love into the hearts of all others. And with the poet let us so begin to set the whole of our affection, the thoughts of our hearts, on Christ, who has redeemed and restored our human nature for greater things than these, rising up even to things above, not things of the earth. (idem)

Then shalt thou feele thy spirit so possest,
And ravisht with devouring great desire
Of his dear selfe, that shall thy feeble brest
Inflame with love, and set thee all on fire
With burning zeale, through every part entire,
That in no earthly thing thou shalt delight,
But in his sweet and amiable sight.
(E. Spenser: Hymn to Heavenly Love)

Amen.
©wjsmartin
  

Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a spunge with vinegar, 
and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth. When Jesus therefore had 
received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, 
and gave up the ghost.
(St. John xix. 29,30)
 
Jesus the crucified, Jesus the suffering Servant and dying Lord of Good Friday, is betrayed by one, and then denied and abandoned by the others, including all of us. Sinful man betrays and forsakes God, denies His rule and governance in human life, and abandons Him for the temporary and fleeting pleasures of this world, as important as they might seem. So, as we look back on this Good Friday, as Christians, it is our duty to identify with any sin that reveals no acquaintance or familiarity with Jesus Christ. We do this because we desire to repent. We desire to repent because we believe that Jesus Christ is God’s forgiveness of sins made flesh. And we believe that this forgiveness of sins is truly and perfectly offered to us through the death of God’s own Son on the Tree of Calvary. We believe also that this forgiveness of sins calls us into death, first, the death of Jesus Christ, and then our own deaths. If we will not die to sin by embracing the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ, beginning here and now, we will never come alive to God the Father through the Risen Christ on Easter Day.

Before we repent, we must look into the nature of what Jesus Christ is doing for us when He dies on the Cross of Calvary. St. Paul tells us that by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. (Romans v. 12) By one man’s disobedience to God, sin and death entered the world of human nature. Thus, from the time of Adam to Christ all men were oppressed with, enslaved to, and overcome by that sin which prevents them from obeying God purely and perfectly. St. Paul continues:

For if through the offense of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification. (Ibid, 15,16)
 
Jesus Christ becomes the forgiveness of all sins. He allows Himself to be brought to death by all sin. He allows Himself to feel the effects and nature of all sin. He becomes both the cause and the effect. He feels the malice of the sinful perpetrator of His death. He feels the effect of it all as the victim. Jesus [humbles] himself and is obedient [to God the Father] unto death, even death upon the Cross. (Phil. ii. 8) Thus, through His sacred humanity He brings man’s addiction to sin to death. Through His most holy Passion, He will overcome Original Sin. Through His enduring obedience to God the Father, He will suffer the worst and the best that man’s sin can do to God, and out of it make something much better and new. Sin and death will taunt, tempt, mock, deride, torture, and kill God’s Word made flesh. They will bring Jesus Christ to death. But what sin and death cannot kill is the Word of God’s Love in the heart of Jesus that persists through suffering into death and then up into new life. For even while dying unjustly, the Son of God’s forgiveness will begin to make new life, a new manhood, a new Adam whose nature will be shared as Humanity’s new life for all who believe and follow Him.

Today, we come to the vision of Christ crucified. We come to see what our sin has done to God in the flesh. To our sore amazement, we find in Jesus Christ not some obscure theological concept but the living the forgiveness of our sins made flesh. For this forgiveness of sins is God’s uninterrupted desire for our salvation. This desire is still at work in the heart of the suffering and dying Christ. What do we hear emerging from the lips of the dying Jesus? Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. (St. Luke xxiii. 34) Father, today they kill me through ignorance, confusion, weakness, and pain, but I desire them still. Father forgive them, for tomorrow they may repent and believe and become our friends. Next, we hear. Today, shalt thou be with me in Paradise. (St. Luke xxiii. 43) Look Father, this convicted thief dying alongside me has confessed his sin and desires to come and follow me. Father, I desire him. This is our first death-bed conversion! And then what? Father, my Mother and dear John are here watching and waiting, dying to become a part my death and new life. Father, I desire them. Woman, behold thy son!...Disciple, Behold thy mother! (St. John xix. 26, 27) Father, already we have our first two missionaries, members of the new humanity that I am making. My Mother is ready to become the mother of your new spiritual children. My friend, my spiritual brother, is ready to become a new spiritual son to the Mother of my redemption and salvation. Jesus still desires to make all things new, to bring good out of evil and life out of death, though He is in extreme pain and agony.

Jesus continues. Father, I am suffering and dying. The pain is acute. Strengthen them spiritually now, as I grow weaker and weaker, and my pains grow stronger and stronger. For, Father, the devil is once again on my back. My wounded and lacerated head, hands, and feet are overwhelming me and crushing my sense of the outside world that looks and gazes upon me. I am becoming blind, deaf, dumb, withered, and palsied like those I came to heal. I feel the pain of Job, and I hear the words of his wife: Curse God and die. (Job ii. 9) I feel the darkness. The silence is deafening. The nothingness envelops me. Lord I am spent; is there any more for me to do? Father, thou seemest to be absent from me. The deep and mysterious power of sin is attacking me. I sense and feel the nothingness not as that pure potential “about to be” that you and I once made real. I endure man’s rejection of thee my God. I sense the distance between thee and me. ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ (St. Matthew xxvii. 46) Why…art thou so far from my health, and from the voice of my complaint? I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not: and in [this] night season also I take no rest.’ (Ps. xxii. 1,2)

But, I know that ‘thou shalt make me hear of joy and gladness: that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.’ (Ps. li. 8) I gasp for that spiritual drink that will satisfy my soul. ‘I thirst.’ (St. John xix. 28) There is one more thing for me to do before ‘It is finished’ (Ibid, 30), before ‘I commend my spirit into thy hands.’ (St. Luke xxiii. 46) There is Roman soldier over there, I cannot see him clearly, but he has not moved throughout this my suffering death. He has not taken his eyes off me. He is not vengeful or malicious. He has been looking into my eyes from the beginning. By his own judgment, he knows that something is terribly wrong. And yet he also sees that something is coming to pass that will be wonderfully right. The seed of faith is growing in his heart. ‘Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a spunge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.’(Idem, 29, 30) This Roman soldier, perhaps with another, gave Jesus his last sip of wine. Father, I thank you for giving me this drink through him. I thank you for moving him to provide me with the drink that is becoming his own offering of himself through you. Keep him near, my Mother and disciple will need his help in taking me down from this tree and burying me. And through them, let us welcome him into the Body of my Death, which is already becoming the Body of our new Life.

Today, we come to the Cross to repent. While we are crucifying Jesus Christ, He desires us. Neither suffering nor death, neither pain nor torture will stop Jesus from desiring our salvation. Hans Urs Von Balthasar sums up what has happened for us.

Jesus, the Crucified, endures our inner darkness and estrangement from God, and he does so in our place. It is all the more painful for Him, the less He has merited it. There is nothing familiar about it to Him: it is utterly alien and full of horror. Indeed, He suffers more deeply than an ordinary man is capable of suffering, even were he condemned and rejected by God, because only the incarnate Son knows who the Father really is and what it means to be deprived of Him, to have lost Him (to all appearances) forever. It is meaningless to call this suffering “hell”, for there is no hatred of God in Jesus, only a pain that is deeper and more timeless than the ordinary man could endure either in his lifetime or after His death. (Sermon for Good Friday)

The desire for our salvation is alive in the heart of Jesus Christ as He takes on our darkness and estrangement from God. Love that is the Light and Life feels the pain more acutely than any man can because He has not earned or merited this condition. The pain is perfectly present because the Son of God must endure what is contrary to His own nature in the fiber of all His being. Because He is the Love that is the Light and Life that knows God perfectly and loves Him absolutely, His brokenness for us will be all the more pure and complete. He will lovingly endure the pain of a broken heart until He can overcome sin and open to man the gates of everlasting life once again. St. Paul tells us that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death (Romans vi. 4) because the light hath shined in darkness, and the darkness overcame it not. (St. John i. 5) 

Amen.
©wjsmartin
 
 

He riseth up from supper, and laid aside his garments, and took a towel and girded himself.

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. In a sense there was so much to be thankful for, so many wonders and miracles, so many beautiful teachings and sayings, so much that man could endure and even enjoy. But tonight, we sense the impending doom of suffering, and death. Tonight, we feel fear and sense the approaching darkness of suffering and death.

But despite what is coming, tonight, we witness more of the Goodness of God in Jesus Christ. Come what may, no matter what might threaten His earthly mission to us, Jesus Christ came into the world to offer God’s goodness to us. Jesus has been tempted to reject His Father’s will and way. He has refused it resolutely by embracing God’s goodness. The Father desires the Son, and the Son desires the Father. Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee. (St. John xvii. 1) The two move together as One for us men and for our salvation. Jesus Christ always embraces the will of the Father. Jesus has never denied God’s light and love. Tonight, before He bids us follow Him into darkness, He offers more goodness from the Father.

Tonight, the goodness that Jesus offers to us comes in the Last Supper that He shares with His friends. 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 the Jews passing over from Egypt to the Promised Land. Tonight, Christ prepares us for God the Father’s passing over of our sins. Tonight, Christ prepares us to accept that He alone will not be passed over, but must bear the burden of our sins, defeat them, and put them to death on the Cross of His Love, tomorrow.

In tonight’s Epistle, 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, Christ imparts goodness in the face of impending betrayal. His promise to be with His friends will not be passed over because of Fallen Man’s sin. His promise will be stronger than all Man’s efforts to impede the salvation that He brings into the world. So, as St. Paul reminds us, 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 malice, suffering, and death. But tonight, Christ gives us strength to fight our many betrayals of Him, to be with Him in suffering and death tomorrow. The New Passover is being established by Christ. A New Testament or covenant is inaugurated through Christ’s body and 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. We have been given us an example that Christians will forever follow in Imitation of Christ.

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) Bread is broken and wine is outpoured. Tomorrow a Body will be broken, and Blood will flow. The two acts will not be divided in the end. Just as Christ’s human nature was joined to His Divine Being, so bread and wine will be joined to His Body and Blood, the essence of Himself as the Word of the Father.

Tonight, the Body and Blood –soon to be broken and pierced, offers Himself to the memory and will of His followers. Tonight, also, the Body and Blood stoops down to wash and to cleanse the dirty feet of His disciples. Jesus always serves His friends. He promises that He will feed them by stooping down to wash them. The Body and Blood, present to the Church until the end of all time, will nourish and serve. 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. We are washed through water and blood. Tonight is tender and tame. Tomorrow will be callous and cruel.
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) He will give us bread and wine so that His Body and Blood, His nature, might be assimilated to us. He will wash the dirty feet of our souls so that we too might become humble servants giving 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 see how God in Jesus Christ must humble himself to save us. Proud as we are, we prefer a distant and unapproachable God: a God easier to endure. We prefer a God who does not muddy His garments with the filth and corruption of earthly existence. Our sense is that the Holy Word of God should never stoop down from Heaven to suffer the effects of our sin. God is high, we are low; the Master should never condescend to become a slave. Depart from me Lord, for I am a sinful man. (St. Luke v. 8) Jesus answers, If I do not wash thee, thou hast no part with me. (Ibid) 

Tonight, with Jean Mouroux, we must begin to realize that, 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) Christ chose His destiny as suffering and dying servant for you and for me. At the source of this choice, there lay a measureless love, a love that never hesitated, never drew back, never murmured; a love on the contrary that accepted, desired, and bore with everything. (Ibid, 89)

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 offered for us, and His Blood outpoured for us. Servanthood will only and ever be an earthly virtue unless we allow Christ the servant to nourish and heal us from the Cross of His love. 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) Man was made for Communion with God. Man is remade for Communion with the Father, through the death of His own Son. We are called to partake of nothing short of God’s Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, to be made flesh in us. As easily as faith submits to Christ’s death for us, so shall bread and wine become Body and Blood, fitting us to serve God and one another.

Amen.
©wjsmartin
 
 
 

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 in silence. 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. His Apostles will abandon Him in fear and cowardice. 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 would willingly accept their unjust sentencing in order to save us. The envious malice of the Jewish Establishment will not stop Jesus from doing what He must do for us. The political expedience of the Pax Romana, the Roman Peace, will not deter Him. The fearful, cowardly, and weak affection of His closest friends and His Mother will not shake Him. The mysterious energy, wisdom, and will of God the Father in the human flesh of Jesus Christ must persist to the end. Christ has come down from Heaven to do the Father’s will for us men and for our salvation. (Nicene Creed) His Mission for us would be seen through to the end. Christ was intent on fulfilling what would be fraught with supreme significance for mankind until the end of time. His Cross would be the place of His sacrifice for us.  

In the face of what leads to Jesus Christ’s Cross and sacrifice for us, we find the Master’s silence. To it, Pilate marveled greatly. (St. Matthew xxvii. 14) Pilate’s wife sent word to her husband, 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 there is no just cause for Jesus’ trial or punishment. His conscience is stirred, for he finds no evil or crime in the defendant. Why, what evil hath he done? (Ibid, 23) Let Him be crucified, the crowd demands. Pilate, who was want to release a prisoner unto the people at the feast, acquiesced. In response to the passionate envy that threatens further anarchy, we read that, he took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see you to it. (Ibid, 24) The Jews will confess: His blood be on us, and on our children. (Ibid, 25)

Jesus Christ accepts Man’s judgment on Him. He is rejected by virtuous pagans, righteous Jews, and His own Disciples. Jesus Christ will surrender to the unjust, unearned, and undeserved justice 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, which is to say the Divine way, truth, and life made flesh, must continue to be Himself. Christ has a work to do, come what may. He embraces Divine Permission to do what He must to save us all. His sacrifice will be conditioned and caused by Man’s arrogance, enmity, envy, and bitterness. So be it. He will do what He must to save us. In all humility, with courage, and through faith, hope, and love, Christ will suffer and die. His sacrifice and suffering, as painful as they will be, will be well worth His good work for us.

Today, in silence, as we contemplate the trial of Jesus Christ, we cannot help but be sore amazed at what His suffering and sacrifice will mean for us. The aid of all creatures has been denied Him. He is alone with the Father. He and the Father, through the Spirit, will effect our salvation. His agony in the Garden of Gethsemane commences His final work for us. There, He comes to know the nature of evil as the source of ongoing suffering and sorrow. There, He comes to know how evil, freely willed by friend and foe alike, forever divides Man from God and Man from Man. There, evil has one last go at Him, and He feels the sense of its looming nothingness and darkness. He does not fear death. Rather, He must bear and endure the nothingness and darkness of sin, and the desolation of all men who have been and will be destroyed by it. Jesus Christ, God’s Word and Will made flesh, must be emptied, made poor in spirit, to save us by God’s Grace alone. O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt. (St. Matthew xxvi. 39)

This morning, with St. Paul, we remember that though He 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) Jesus Christ empties Himself of all Divinity, in order that pure human powerlessness might be placed back in the hands of God the Father, the Creator and Redeemer of Mankind. He will not desperately grasp onto, clutch, or seize His Divine Power in the hour of His human impotence. Rather, He will obey, fear, and follow the Father as Man, found in the form of a servant, in human form, humbled, for us men and for our salvation. (idem) He will become the New Man, the Second Adam, who will be the servant of the Father because God’s will and Word alone suffice to save us.

This week, I pray, that each of us shall discover that Jesus Christ brings us into His suffering and sacrifice in order to 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 sacrificed flesh. Christ is a servant of God alone. Curiously enough, I believe that we shall begin to see how suffering, sacrifice, and death are being made into something new and good. For, as we approach Christ and His Cross, we do well to remember that 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 who can make it so. And while we can never say that He did not suffer pain and utter humiliation at the hands of sinful men, we must also say that He endured it all in perfect compliance and purposeful acceptance with the Father’s will for our salvation. Jesus Christ has accepted the truth of the age-old maxim, no pain, no gain, no Cross, no Crown.

On this Palm Sunday, we sing Hosanna to the Son of David; Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord. And without a beat, we find our joy turned to malice, as we, with the Ancient Jews, cry Crucify Him. Crucify Him. Let him be crucified. Fallen Man is a mess. We are a schizophrenic mess. Once again, in this Holy Week, we can be silent and still to learn how to see and know what God in Jesus Christ does for us.

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53. 4,5)
 
This Holy Week, let us listen to the silent Word of God’s Wisdom and Love that reveals power and life in the heart of our dying Lord. Let us listen as God’s Word of Wisdom and Love makes innocent sacrifice and suffering the occasion for His persistent pursuit of our salvation. Let us listen to the God’s Word of Wisdom and Love that calls us into sacrifice and suffering. Let us be determined to be embraced by that Wisdom and Love which offers Himself to God and to us in that simultaneous knot of fire that purges away all sin, pride, envy, and cruelty. Let us be determined to find the forgiveness of sins in the One who gave Himself for us absolutely and completely as Man to God and God to Man.

The Cross is the center of the world’s redemption. The Cross is the new Tree of Life, which blossomed first on Calvary, whose fruit has strength to induce all men to partake of God’s Glory. (The Christian Year in the Times, 1930) On the Cross, the pure and perfect Son of God made flesh, Jesus Christ, makes us right with God the Father once again. There alone, through the good work of Jesus Christ for us, on Good Friday, in His sacrifice, suffering, and death, we should begin to find the forgiveness of our sins. The forgiveness of sins is Christ’s chief end and purpose. Sacrifice, suffering, and death are Christ’s means to obtain it for us. For no other reason than love for us and our salvation, Jesus Christ becomes the forgiveness of sins. In becoming the forgiveness of sins, Jesus Christ crowns a life of giving Himself back to the Father, to do His will, come what may, against all opposition to it. In becoming the forgiveness of sins, Jesus Christ becomes the fruit of the new Tree of Life, food for our glorious immortality.

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 are called to learn about the doctrine of the Cross. The death of Jesus Christ must call us into far more than syrupy sentimentality and the short-lived pangs of a guilty conscience on Good Friday. Christ’s sacrifice and death must command such attention and 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 sprinkled the blood on the mercy seat, the place signifying God’s encounter with man, Moses. Then, he dredged 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) Neither food nor drink, bodily or fleshly cleansing, could make the conscience clean. Jeremiah had asked rhetorically; Shall the holy flesh take away from your crimes?’ (Jer. 11:15)
        
Canon Scott reminds us that Jewish promises are Christian realities, their hopes our certainties, their future our present. (idem) What the Jews did to make atonement for sin was a forerunner and precursor to what Christ would do for us. 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, He passed through the tabernacle of His body, His external and visible nature, beyond the veil of His flesh (idem) to God. When he finished His earthly mission to us, He ascended, to enter into the holy place of Heaven, to plead our cause and the merits of 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 spirit. Christ’s atonement for our sins was made in time and space but was eternally perfect. 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 tabernacle of His own body, not made with hands. The Jewish high priest offered the blood of goats and calves, a life less and inferior to his own. 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 barrier to life but the means of embracing a better and more perfect life with the Father.

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 offers the first completely to purify and perfect the second. He sacrifices His body completely in order to achieve union with Father, for us. 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’ (Ac. 15:9), inasmuch as it makes one believe that all who adhere to Christ are cleansed by His blood. (Comm. Hebrews, ix…)
And for this cause he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance. (ibid, 15)
 
Christ carries us from the Old Testament to the New. He makes death not something final as an end but a means, an instrument, a facilitator for new life with God the Father. Christ makes the Old Testament New because He gives us the promise of eternal inheritance. From Christ’s death to sin and Satan, our faith and hope through love of Jesus Christ 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) And, we are baptized into His death (Romans, vi. 4). His Atonement is all effectual for those who believe.
        
Today, Christ Himself calls us to believe in what He did because of who He was. He alone is well-suited to save us. With the Pharisees, on the best of days, we tend to judge Christ. Our instinct is to be cynical about Him. We are not of God because we do not hear God’s words. (St. John viii. 47) We launch back at Him and say, Say we not well that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil? (ibid, 48) Christ comes from God and knows God. He seeks not [His] own glory for His Father seeks and judges. (ibid, 50) The Pharisees, you, and I judge ourselves and seek our own glory. If we keep the Word of God, in Jesus Christ, we shall never see death. (ibid, 51) All we see in Jesus Christ is another man, perhaps, at best, another Abraham. How can Christ claim to offer life after death if he is but a mere man? Christ seems to make Himself out to be more than a man. Of course, in the Gospel, He prepares us for the more than a man that He is. We forget that God made us for Himself, for eternity. Christ intends to reestablish the possibility of our eternal inheritance. Thus, He does not honor himself. The Man apart from God who honors himself, dies. Christ knows God and keeps His saying, His Word. The Word that Christ is and keeps will see Him through death, for all of us, into new life. We claim that God is our God. We glorify ourselves, but Christ glorifies God. The One Christ knows surely and certainly, He glorifies. He knows, while we can only come to know.  For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. (St. John vi. 38)
        
Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it, and was glad. (ibid, 56) Inwardly and spiritually, long before Christ’s coming, with faith and hope, Abraham saw Christ’s coming. The Pharisees, you, and I cannot see spiritually and inwardly. Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. (ibid, 58) Christ binds the past and the future to the present. As St. Thomas reminds us, For eternal existence knows neither past nor future time, but embraces all time in one indivisible [instant]. (Comm. John…) Christ’s source and origin come to us from the Eternally Now of God, I am. Christ is the future hope of all the ancient Jews of the past, like Abraham, in the present. He is our hope now, soon to become history, in the future. Christ derives His meaning and definition from Eternity for you and me. God revealed Himself to Moses in history as I am. Christ is God’s great I am in our history.
        
The history of God’s great I am must find relevance for us today. Christ doesn’t say it, but He is holy, harmless, and undefiled, separate from sinners, ‘made higher than the heavens’, in His unique Sonship, knowledge, and being. (idem, Scott) However, I am will elaborate for the purposes of our faith, hope and love, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto to the Father, but by me. (St. John xiv. 6) He says this so that we might find in Him the way home to Heaven, by the Truth that He is, through His life, now for the future. I am the bread of life, (St. John vi. 35) that we might feed on Him as God’s Word, nourishing us inwardly and spiritually for the Kingdom. I am the light of the world, (St. John viii. 12), that we might walk to Heaven through the light that He is. I am the door (St. John x. 7) through whom we might walk, at present. I am the good shepherd (St. John x. 110 that He might herd us home, now. I am the true vine (St. John xv. 1) that here we might begin to bud as His branches. And, finally, I am the resurrection and the life (St. John xi. 25) that He who holds the keys of death and the grave might make it into the seedbed of faith, hope, and love that leads us now, on this Passion Sunday, this Atonement Sunday, to His glory, even forever.
Amen.
©wjsmartin

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

At the very beginning of Lent, our Lord insists, Behold we go up to Jerusalem. (St. Luke xviii. 31) We began our journey at Christ's command. Long journeys are hard work, and this Lenten journey is no exception. For nearly seven weeks, Christians are invited to walk with Jesus towards Jerusalem.
Walking up to Jerusalem is what our lives are all about. We walk with Jesus to see how, in the wilderness and desert of the human soul, He conquers the temptations of Satan and triumphs over sin for us. We walk with Jesus to discover that, like the woman of Cana, we are exiles, strangers, aliens to God’s promises, and even dogs who must humbly eat of the crumbs that fall from the Master’s table. (St. Matthew xv. 27) We walk with Jesus also to learn that we have been mostly deaf to the Word of God and, thus, incapable of speaking the truth. And today, we must learn that Jesus Christ comes to us to feed us miraculously with the Bread of Heaven.
         
But you will have noticed that our Lenten pilgrimage with Jesus up to Jerusalem will not be easy. Lenten learning about ourselves – who we are and what we need, is spiritually exhausting. Lenten fasting and abstinence make us haggard and hungry. At times, we become distracted and even lose our way. The sins that so easily beset us may well have been overcome, but seven other demons worse than ourselves threaten to consume us. (St. Matthew xii. 45) 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 good intentions but find ourselves much like the children of the proverbial Hagar, Abraham’s mistress, and bond woman –giving birth to the earthly bastard offspring of vice. We want freedom as the children of promise, and followers of Jesus, who go up to Jerusalem which is above… and is free. (Galatians iv. 26) Yet it seems that the more we try, the further back we fall.
         
Today Jesus Christ and His Bride, the Church, provide us with what we need. Today is Dominica Refectionis –Refreshment or Mothering Sunday, when Mother Church asks us to sit down and rest awhile, to find some spiritual refreshment so that our pursuit of Jesus Christ will not be in vain. Today, we are asked to stop, breathe, and contemplate the end and meaning of all our labors. So, we read that Jesus went up into a mountain, and there He sat with His disciples. (St. John vi. 3) Jesus bids us come with Him to the mountain of His holiness so that He might give us a foretaste of our heavenly future. He knows that we are in danger of spiritual languor and listlessness. He intends to provide us with that spiritual food that will give us the dogged and dauntless determination to press on. Jesus commands, Make the men sit down. Now there was much grass in the place. 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. And often doth He go up alone into a mountain, and spend the night there, and pray, to teach us that the man who will come most near to God must be free from all disturbance and must seek times and places clear of confusion. (St. John Chrysostom: Homily xlii) 


We must sit, listen, and hear. Yet it is Lent. We are worn out, and Jesus asks us, Whence shall we buy bread that [we all] may eat? (St. John vi. 5). Our minds are bent on earthly things. Jesus intends to test us with Philip, for he Himself knew what he would do. (St. John vi. 6) Philip has seen the finger of God at work in Jesus’ miracles. Will we, with him, believe that Jesus can provide food that no man can afford and for so many? What measure of faith does Philip have? What measure do we have? Are we the children of Hagar, born after the flesh or are we the children of promise? (Gal. iv. 23) Philip answers as one in bondage to the elements of this world. On our best of days, we do the same. He responds that even two-hundred penny worth is not enough for this crowd. (St. John vi. 7) An earthly-minded Philip is calculating the cost of feeding five thousand. Too many people, too little money, he reckons. Jesus intends to reveal the spiritual poverty of Philip’s faith. At the beginning of St. John’s Gospel, Philip found Nathaniel and said We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. (St. John i. 45) Philip is bold with words to predict who Jesus is. Now will his words be matched by true faith in what Jesus can do? As Archbishop Trench remarks,

As yet, he knows not that the Lord whom he serves upon earth is even the same who ‘openeth his hand and filleth all things living with plenteousness,’ who feeds and nourishes all creatures, who has fed them and nourished them from the creation of the world…and can feed a few thousand now.
 
Andrew will substantiate Philip’s doubt. There is a young lad who hath five barley loaves and two fishes, but what are they among so many? (St. John vi. 9) As Philip’s faith was overcome by too much doubt, Andrew’s faith was overcome by too little evidence. To offer to fill so many when the resources were few would have been crushing and embarrassing.
         
True faith can often be destroyed when natural demands and natural provision are wanting. To Philip and Andrew, the Lord’s hand seems to be waxen short. (Numbers xi. 23) Normally, when ordinary and natural means fail us, we neglect to remember the power of the Lord. Jesus tells us to sit down, listen, and trust. 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), and that we must not only hear the Word of God but keep it. (St. Luke xi. 28) 

Jesus said, Make the men sit down. Now there was much grass in the place. So, the men sat down, in number about five thousand. (St. John vi. 10) Jesus as much as said, You have nothing to set down before the men, but God provides you with a plush green dining area. 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) Our Lord thanks the Father in advance. All we have comes from the Father. What God gives to us from the hands of Jesus Christ will be more than sufficient to satisfy our hunger. Five loaves and two fishes will feed five thousand. In the normal course of life, food and drink are already multiplied into the larger gift of spiritual thanksgiving.

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) Jesus says, gather up the fragments that remain that nothing be lost. (St. John vi. 12) Those who are in bondage to the elements of this world (Gal. iv. 3) seldom have a thought for others who must share in our feast. With all that we are given, there must remain more for those who cannot yet feast with us. Food has been multiplied and shared with us. We must do the same. Are we the children of Hagar or Sarah? If we are the children of Sarah, with the Apostles, Matthew Henry suggests that we must

See how large the divine bounty is; it not only fills the cup, but makes it run over; bread enough, and to spare, in our Father's house. The fragments filled twelve baskets, one for each disciple; they were thus repaid with interest for their willingness to part with what they had for public service.
                                                                        (Matthew Henry, Commentary) 
 
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) And as Archbishop Trench says, so we have here a visible symbol of that love which exhausts not itself by loving, but after all its outgoings upon others, multiplies in an ongoing multiplying which is always found in true giving.... (Par’s. p. 213) Christ is thankful and feeds the hungry five thousand. We must do the same. Christ intends that we should imitate His generosity.
          
Therefore, the Apostles gathered the fragments together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above unto them that had eaten. (St. John vi. 13) St. Augustine tells us that the fragments that remained were the parts that the people could not yet eat. (Tr. xxiv. 6) What remains over and above is the spiritual food that faith must learn to feed on. In the fragments that remain are hidden gifts of mystic meaning. Herein is that Divine potential for those who begin to hunger and thirst after righteousness. (St. Matthew v. 6) Jesus always provides more food to the spirit for those who follow Him in faith. Faith sees that the more than the multitude can eat is Spirit and is Truth. Within fragments and crumbs of earthly food, lie food for thought, food for the soul. Are we being called to feed only on earthly manna? Or are we called to digest spiritual truth? There is more to be needed and ingested from this Giver and His gifts, but not until the eyes of faith are opened and the believer’s heart is softened. Our eyes are opened, and our hearts are softened as we partake of the superabundant nature of God’s love in the Holy Sacrament today. Even here, let us then gather up the fragments that nothing be lost. (St. John vi. 12) We will need them. Behold we go up to Jerusalem to the Jerusalem of the Cross. Mere earthly fare will never sustain a faith that seeks to behold and plumb the depths of that love that never stops giving…even in death., Christ’s death and ours.

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 meekness that generate faith in freedom from the Devil. There, a Syrophoenician woman, a Greek inhabitant of Cana, besought the Lord Jesus 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 finds freedom and liberty in Jesus Christ. She confessed herself to be a dog in relation to Christ and the salvation that He brings into the world. Her humility and meekness moved her into that faith that hangs desperately on God and His Grace. Today, our faith becomes situated more soundly in God’s Grace. Today, we learn that liberation is God’s work and that we shall not be free until we allow God in Jesus Christ to cast out 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 healing is instantaneous and follows Jesus’ response to one of disciples, who had asked Him to teach us all how to pray. Jesus had furnished him with what we know as the Lord’s Prayer. To emphasize the inward and spiritual nature of prayer, Jesus heals a deaf-mute man, whose prayer is known to God the Father alone. Yet no sooner had Jesus healed the dumb-mute man, than an equally instantaneous reaction comes from the crowd of bystanders exclaiming that Jesus had cast out the demon or devil 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. Thus, we read, that others demanded a sign from heaven to prove that Jesus was working with God.
        
The problem is that men in general, and religious men in particular, 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 for themselves or the state and condition of their own 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. 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 Gracious benevolence. So, in today’s Gospel, and as absurd as it might seem, they demand a sign from heaven, or another miracle, to prove that goodness comes from God alone.
          
On a basic level, in this morning’s Gospel, religious men in all ages are given a wakeup call and our need for the Lord’s Prayer. The Lord’s Prayer teaches us of our absolute dependence on God for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life. (General Thanksgiving) Today, Jesus reinforces the fact that we hang on God for all good things and that God alone can cast out [our] demons.
        
The Syrophoenician Woman of last week’s Gospel becomes the deaf-mute man. Prior to his healing, he can neither hear nor speak. His impediment separates him from the world around him. He is helpless and hopeless. Unlike last week’s Syrophoenician Woman, he can neither reveal to all 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 whose chief delight is found in being able to connect with the created order and all other men.

The deaf-mute man’s prayer is heard by God. God responds to him in Jesus Christ. He is no sooner healed than he hears that his healing must have come from Beelzebub, the prince of the devils. (idem)
Next, he heard 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) Our liberated man now possessed a good heretofore denied to him. Jesus implies that he 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 man stood fast in his kingdom, for a time. Along the lines of his life, this man both felt and knew himself to be separated from God and his fellow men. 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 had freed him. Satan’s one aim is to divide a man from God’s creation, from God’s truth, and from truth’s healing and salvation has been overcome. His prayer to the Father had been answered.

With the miracle, our sufferer might have wondered about the stranger nature of the world he had entered. Would that the bystanders had praised God for such a wonderful miracle as this! But we read that Jesus knew their thoughts. (ibid, xi. 17) Jesus confronted the malice and envy of the crowd, who seemed to see no illustration for their own needs and wants in the condition of deaf-mute man’s healing.  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 or Satan had cast out the demonic spirit, Satan would have been divided against himself. If some demons had brought about this good, then Satan and his friends must have been divided. As St. Bruno says, if the spirits of evil were waging war against each other, they would have little or no power against man. (St. Bruno, The Kingdom of Evil) But if Christ had brought about this evident good, by whom and for what reason did the Sons of Israel cast them out?

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 is sufficient to cast out any demons that plague the restless and sorrowful hearts of sinful men. The devils were united in keeping the deaf and mute man separated from God and his fellow men. The devils unite to distract and prevent us from asking God to heal and deliver us from our spiritually deaf and mute fallen natures.
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 had their permissive power since the fall of man. The Devil and his friends had kept the deaf and mute man without hearing or speech, for a season. But a stronger than he has come down from Heaven and upon him. Satan was a strong man who kept his palace and his slaves – his goods, like the deaf-mute man, in peace. Satan’s goods were at peace since his power over him had gone unchallenged. But a stronger than he, Jesus Christ, has conquered him, broken his armour, and freed the deaf-mute man from his apparently permanent grip.

The deaf-mute man has been healed by Jesus Christ. But what of the malicious mockers and envious naysayers? 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 Jewish bystanders have believed that they were more righteous than the healed deaf-mute man, who prayed for deliverance from an unclean spirit. The bystanders lacked the vigilant and humble faith to confess that they needed God’s strong man. They rested upon their own good works. They saw unclean spirits come and go. They walked through dry, empty places, sought rest, found none, and returned to their own houses. They were now vulnerable to seven other spirits more wicked than [themselves], who tempted and harangued them. The deaf-mute man’s demon had been cast out. The bystander’s unclean spirit had merely gone out – Satan disguised as an angel of light. He would, no doubt, return. The danger for them is much worse since without any need and thankful reception of the Grace that Christ brings into the world, 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) True healing comes to us from God the Father, through Jesus the Son, and by the Holy Spirit. With the deaf-mute man, the miracle of our faith must be the answer to our secret, vigilant, humble, and faithful prayer for Christ to cast out all our demons. The wonderful mystery of salvation that Jesus brings into the world, should move us to ask that we might receive. Something as simple as being able to hear the Word of God in Jesus Christ and speak words in giving of thanks should move and define us with the healed deaf-mute man. With the dumb-mute man of today’s Gospel, let us be determined to hear the Word of God and keep it because we can speak the truth that has set us free to walk as children of the light so that all other men may realize that the Kingdom of God has come upon us. (Ibid, 20)

Amen.
©wjsmartin    

He is no unkind physician who opens the swelling, who cuts,
who cauterizes the corrupted part. He gives pain, it is true, but
he only gives pain, that he might bring the patient on to health. He
gives pain, but if he did not, he would do no good.
(St. Augustine: Sermon xxvii)
        
Last week, we studied Satan’s temptations of Jesus Christ, and Christ’s response to them. You will remember that we were interested in answering our Lenten question, Who is Jesus Christ. 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 from within its nature. This week we shall come to see the nature of sin and our powerlessness over it. The way of man’s life involves manifold temptations. The same way is complicated by the seriousness of our fallen condition. 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 never went into non-Jewish territory. He would leave that for His Apostles once He had returned to the Father. Jesus’ motives should intrigue us. Jesus intends that all men should be saved. He must offer salvation to God’s chosen people first. Yet isn’t it interesting that He even finds Himself drawn to the borders of heathen nations? Today, He had just preached to His own 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 to the borders of Canaan. 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, will approach Jesus. From outside of Israel, she had learned 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 it also. Jesus was led by the Spirit, and she wasted no time. 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 illness in her spirit. Her daughter’s misery is her misery. She will supplicate Jesus to condescend to heal her daughter. She cries out for His mercy, but we read that He 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, however, is keen to elicit from this woman a confession of faith.

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 does rather than with His intention and meaning. So, they exclaimed, Send her away, for she crieth after us. (St. Matthew 15, 23) The woman has interrupted the Apostles’ experience of Jesus. They want only to be rid of this pest. Theirs is that heartless granting of a request, whereof most of us are conscious; when it is granted out of no love to the suppliant, but to leave undisturbed his selfish ease from whom at length it is exhorted. (Trench: Gospel) They will admit no impediment to their selfish ease. Jesus, however, will engage the woman, though at first, He tries and tests her with His silence. Christ is silent that the woman must be more earnest in her prayer.

Jesus finally responds. He says, 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 His mission is first to the Jews because they should be the Children of Promise. Yet Jesus, the Great Physician, nevertheless begins to open this heathen woman’s spiritual swelling. The Apostles are silent. She is neither daunted, disheartened, nor disturbed. It appears that she needs Jesus with a more determined fervor and faith than the Apostles do. As audacious and brazen as she appeared to the Jewish Apostles, her faith moves closer to Jesus. The more acute the disease, the more urgent is the need for the physician’s immediate attention. Then came she and worshipped Him, saying, Lord, help me. (St. Matthew 15.25) She will insist that Jesus is her Lord and will submit to His rule. As Calvin writes, We see then that the design of Christ’s silence was not to extinguish the woman’s faith, but rather to whet her zeal and inflame her ardor. (Calvin’s Comm’s. xvii) She will not be thwarted in her entreaty.

Jesus is first silent and then discouraging. He 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. He hurls at her the ancient Jews’ prejudice of the Gentiles. Yet, if we look more closely, Jesus is trying to tease out of this woman not only faith but humility and meekness. Is he mocking this woman or the Jews? He knows that this woman, no matter what her race or cultural origin, possesses a faith that will put His faithful Jewish followers to shame. 
         
This Gentile is going up to Jerusalem with us, this Lent. She needs Jesus completely. She hangs upon His every word and refuses to let Him out of her grip. She will follow Him come what may. She believes that Jesus the Man comes from God. Jesus calls her a dog, and she responds. Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table. (St. Matthew 15. 27) Humility comes to her with ease. She will endure Jesus’ severe mercy and hard love. She may be a dog and not a lost sheep. But she knows herself to be dog who needs the Master’s medicine. Jesus can become her Master. I am a stray dog who, when found, will sit at my master’s feet. A dog belongs to its master. I sit at his feet but will not be cast out -under but not forsaken. I belong to thee, O Lord. She insists, Very well, let me be a dog. If you are the master, I shall eat of the crumbs that fall from the table, whose feast is meant for your chosen people. The crumbs shall be more than sufficient for my daughter’s healing. As St. Augustine says, It is but a moderate and a small blessing I desire; I do not press to the table, I only seek for the crumbs. (Serm. xxvii, vol. vi. NPNF) Her daughter is sick. If she must needs be a dog, so be it. She believes that Jesus hast the words of eternal life.’ (St. John 6. 68) Lord, evermore give [me] this bread. (St. John 6. 34) 
         
With her words, this woman storms the gates of Heaven in Jesus’ heart. 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) Jesus cauterizes her wound, and her faith ensures that her daughter is healed. In the end, it is her faith that secures the healing she seeks. Faith in Jesus Christ, the Wisdom of God, and the Power of God, always obtains Jesus’ healing. This woman’s faith answers our Lenten question. Who is Jesus Christ? This woman believes in the Son of God made Man. 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) 
         
With our opening, 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. He
gives pain, but if He did not, He would do no good. (Idem) So, we must be willing to confess the truth about ourselves if the Son of God made Man is to humble Himself, come down to us, and redeem and save us. Christ comes down from Heaven to diagnose our condition and provide the cure. He intends for us to know and confess who we are –Yes, Lord, I am a dog. 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 all evil thoughts that may assault and hurt the soul. (Idem) With her, let us abandon the lust of concupiscence in Gentiles who know not God. (1 Thes. i. 3) Jesus longs to find a faith that will open to His humility, His coming down to us, from Heaven to earth, from God to us as Man. 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) Jesus is always overcome by the faith of dogs who feed on His crumbs to conquer the Devil and break His hold over us. Jesus may resist us at times, but only to tease out that faith that will have Him, and Him alone as the Son of God made Man, whose humility rewards that of today’s Syrophoenician woman.  
Amen.
©wjsmartin
 

Give us Grace to use such abstinence, that, our flesh being subdued to the Spirit,
We may ever obey thy Godly Motions in Righteousness and True Holiness
To thy Honor and Glory, Who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost,
One God, world without end. Amen. 
(Collect Lent I)
 
         
One of the most important questions facing any human being who strives to know and love God is Who is Jesus Christ? The answer to the question very much reveals to us if and how God and Man can be reconciled. We seek to answer the question as our faith seeks understanding for the very practical purpose of our salvation. Who is Jesus Christ? Throughout Lent, we shall ask this question. Lent reveals Who Jesus Christ is by way of His having been tempted to be Who He is not. He was tempted not to be the Son of God as man. This means that Jesus Christ was tempted never to become the Son of God made man. Put more simply, He was tempted to redeem and save us not as Man.
 
And today’s temptation narrative by St. Matthew follows on the heels of John’s baptism of Jesus in the river Jordan when 

the heavens were opened unto Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon Him: and lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. (St. Matthew iii. 16, 17)
 
Who is Jesus Christ? Jesus Christ is the Son of the Father and anointed in the descent of the dove. Mystified mortals are mesmerized by Messiah, who has come to save us all and will defeat the enemies of our Heavenly Father. This is our hope. But what we read next confuses us. Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. (Ibid, 1) Who is Jesus Christ? Our faith seeks understanding in these words. The Spirit – the Holy Ghost, who has descended from Heaven with the Father’s blessing leads Jesus not into Jerusalem for a triumphal coronation but into the desert and wilderness for struggle, trial, and temptation by Satan. The Son of God begins the mission of our redemption with suffering! For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. (Hebrews iv. 15) 
John’s Baptism demands another Baptism, a Baptism by Fire and the Spirit. Jesus’ first order of business is to undergo the temptations that we all endure. Jesus was anointed to suffer and to be tempted, as we are called into suffering and temptation. Baptism is followed by the manifold assaults of the world, the flesh, and the Devil. Who is Jesus Christ? He is the Son of God made man. If He is to save and redeem us, as Man, He will redeem, repair, and reconstitute human nature.
         
Who is Jesus Christ? We read that when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an-hungered. The Spirit has led Jesus the Man into the isolated wilderness of the desert where He fasted successfully for forty days and forty nights. Thus, the Son of God made man, like us, is hungry. As Man, the Son of God knew real and extreme hunger. Satan tempts Man hardest when we are hungry and alone in a place of deprivation. 
         
Satan takes his cue. If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. (Idem) The Son of God, God’s Word, who brought waters out of the stoney rock (Ps. lxxviii. 16) nourishing the ancient Hebrews in the wilderness, can surely use His Divine Power to satisfy His earthly hunger by turning the flat rocks into bread. Satan tempts Jesus to prove that He is the Son of God by putting Man’s bodily needs before Divine nutriment. Who is Jesus Christ? Jesus will redeem us first by hungering and thirsting for [God’s] righteousness. (St. Matthew v. 6) The Son of God was made Man so that man might become a son of God once again.  Later, Jesus will insist Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, that….all things may be added unto you. (St. Matthew vi. 33) Submitting bodily need to the desire and love for God is the first order of business in Christ’s redemption of Man.

Who is Jesus Christ? He is the one who knows for certain that Man is tempted to prioritize earthly hunger and thirst before his need for God. But Jesus’ meat is to do the will of Him that sent Him. (St. John iv. 32,34) Jesus Christ responds to Satan, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. (St. Matthew iv. 4) With St. Paul, in today’s Epistle, Christ knows that in patience, afflictions, necessities, distresses, stripes, imprisonments, tumults, labors, watchings, and in fastings (2 Cor. vi. 4) – in the flesh, Man is forever tempted to make a false god out of earthly sustenance. Who is Jesus Christ? Jesus is the Son of God made Man, whose example calls us into a new way of life that places spiritual nourishment before bodily fulfillment. Stones are stones. Bread is bread. Yes, Man’s body needs bread, but it can never be satisfied truly until first we allow ourselves to feed on the bread of God’s Will.
         
Who is Jesus Christ? Jesus is determined to become the bread of God’s will. Satan persists and will tempt Jesus a second time to imperil His calling. Satan’s temptations prolong the hunger of the Son of God made Man. The body is deprived of food; so the soul is tempted to provoke God.  The Man is famished. Perhaps Jesus should tempt the Father to prove that He is the bread of God’s will. He trusts in God, then let Him deliver Him now, if he will have Him: for he said, I am the Son of God. (St. Matthew xxvii. 43)

Then the devil taketh Him up into the holy city, and setteth Him on a pinnacle of the temple, And saith unto Him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou thy foot against a stone. (St. Matthew iv. 5,6)
 
Satan tempts Jesus to prove His true nature as the Bread of God’s will by throwing Himself down from the pinnacle of the temple. Pious men are gathered in the court of the Gentiles, always waiting for heaven’s signs. Who is Jesus Christ? Jesus is the Son of God made Man. Grace does not destroy but perfects human nature. The Son of God made Man will not command faith from miracles, as Satan commanded bread from stones. Christ is tempted to avoid and flee His call to become the bread of God’s will for man. Man was not made to be redeemed by threatening to risk His own life with death, banking on Divine intervention. Man is a rational creature. Man’s reason and free will, the most divine attributes of his nature, have alienated him from God. The Whole Man must be redeemed as the Bread of God’s Will.  Christ must redeem man from sin. The Bread of God’s Will must suffer the effects of fallen man’s reason and free will – his sin, to make him good, true, noble, and acceptable to God once again. Who is Jesus Christ? Jesus Christ will redeem reason and free will by suffering at the hands of sinful men. Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. (St. Matthew iv. 7) The Bread of God’s Will made Man never provokes and tempts God irrationally and arrogantly for Divine approval or intervention. Faith does not seek to turn stones to bread or death into life. Faith seeks to understand sin and conquer it through suffering and sacrifice.
Who is Jesus Christ? Satan has one last temptation. Surely if Jesus is the Son of God made Man, He can still be tempted by the will to power. The Son of God made man is tempted to covet with greed the Divine Nature. The Bread of God’s Will is tempted lastly to be as God before He has endured all that He must as Man and for Man. Jesus’ last temptation is secure His own power and glory over the world. Jesus the Man is tempted to become His own god as the master of his own destiny.

Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. (St. Matthew iv. 8,9) 
 
Satan tempts Jesus to become the Bread of God’s Will as God and not as Man. The Bread of God’s Will is tempted to redeem all men as God and not as Man. The last temptation is the worst. It tempts Jesus to become not earthly bread as Man becoming not earthly but the Devil’s bread. Jesus is tempted to become one with the Devil and separated from God. Jesus is tempted to give it all up –to do evil that good may come of it. (Idem, Knox, p. 65) Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. (St. Matthew iv. 10) The Son of God has come to reveal the Father’s wisdom and truth as Man and for Man. The Bread of God’s Will must become broken bread and poured out wine, or broken body and poured out blood. Then the devil leaveth Him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto Him. (St. Matthew iv. 11) 
         
Who is Jesus Christ? The Bread of God’s Will made Man. The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. (St. Matthew xx. 28) At the end of our Gospel lesson, we read that Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him. (St. Matthew iv. 11) Luther tells us that the good angels came down from Heaven to feed Him. The Bread of God’s Will, Jesus Christ, the Man, can now be fed in body. The Bread of God’s Will can now be ministered to by angels charge concerning [Him]. The Bread of God’s Will made Man can now become the suffering and sacrifice that identifies with fallen Man’s nature to repair and redeem it. Now Christ can become our broken bread and poured out wine, our broken Body and poured out Blood. The Bread of God’s Will made Man. Food for Men Wayfaring, ever obeying [God’s] Motions in Righteousness and True Holiness (Collect), as Man for all men and their salvation.

Amen.
©wjsmartin