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