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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

         

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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