We begin today’s sermon with the words of Richard J. Foster:
 
Recently I experienced a special grace which I believe was from God. It is the gift of tears. I had been considering my sin and the sin of God's people. I had also been meditating on the gospel teaching (and ancient teaching of the Church) on "compunction"--heart sorrow. As I did this, God graciously helped me to enter into a godly mourning in my heart on behalf of the Church, and a deep, tear-filled thanksgiving at God's patience, love, and mercy toward us. As Micah declares, "Who is a God like thee that pardoneth iniquity?" (Micah 7:18).

I saw that the people most to be pitied are those who go through life with dry eyes and cold hearts. But if we, like those at Pentecost, can be "cut to the heart, then we can enter the liberating shocks of contrition and repentance. And the experience will be not just for ourselves, and not just once in a great while, but as a precious gift given daily, a gift that catapults us into the growing edges of life.  Richard J. Foster
 
As Foster suggests, there are many Christians in our world today who are to be pitied because they, go through life with dry eyes and cold hearts. To see oneself truly and accurately is one thing; to see God’s response is another. And without the sight or vision of a responsive God, there can be no tears and no mourning. There are those whose pride prevents the confession of sins. There are those whose pride allows it but deny God’s answer to it. In both cases man is left alone. His eyes are dry. His heart is cold.
        
Tears and mourning comprise the subject-matter of today’s Gospel reading. We read, When Jesus was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! (St. Luke xix 41,42) Christ Jesus approaches the city of God’s presence, a place prepared for His coming, a space from which God would begin to make all things new. But he mourns; He weeps. The love of God is expressed to the people of Jerusalem, to God’s chosen nation. They have been called to prepare for God’s coming through repentance and sorrow. The Son of God is in the midst of them. He is God’s approaching answer to their heartfelt spiritual dilemma. He is the Word that was spoken to prepare them. He is the Word that is spoken into their midst now, in Jesus Christ. The Word spoken is the Word of God’s love, the communication of His mercy and forgiveness. The Word spoken is the way back to God. The Word spoken into human flesh, through Jesus Christ, has come to carry men out of sin and death and back into righteousness and life. If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace. But now are they hid from thine eyes. (Idem) John the Baptist called the people to repentance, to mourning over their own sins as preparation for the deeper communication of God’s Word in Jesus Christ. God speaks in Jesus Christ. But the reality is hid from their eyes. They do not hear with their ears. They have not repented and mourned. They could not possibly understand the need to hear God’s speaking in Jesus Christ. Their eyes are dry and their hearts are cold.
        
Mourning is a virtue. Without mourning there can be no true and ongoing encounter with the living God. What is mourning? We associate it with our reaction to the death of others. We witness it in St. John’s Gospel: Jesus wept. (St. John xi. 35) The occasion was the death of His friend Lazarus; when He was confronted by Mary and other mourners, Jesus wept. (Idem) As the liturgy of the Orthodox Church prays on Lazarus Sunday, Shedding tears by thine own desire, thou hast shown to us thy steadfast love. Jesus takes on the pain of his friends’ loss; Jesus experiences the suffering that endures death. Human life is beautiful, is a gift from God, and any separation which man endures from it is painful. Jesus weeps because He is fully man. Tears can express the love and mercy of God with us and for us. God is with us and for us in Jesus Christ. His eyes are not dry. His heart is not cold.
        
His eyes are not dry. His heart is not cold. He teaches us in Chapter V of St. Matthew’s Gospel, Blessed are they that mourn…. (St. Matthew v. 4) Jesus is a mourner. He mourns over the sufferings of this present life. He mourns over poverty and disease. He mourns over physical suffering and psychological illness. He mourns over sin and the suffering of those who will not know themselves and search for God. He is mourning. He gives His mourning to His followers. We, His followers, are called to mourn over our own sins. The remembrance of them is grievous unto us. The burden of them is intolerable. (BCP, 1928, p.  We are called to mourn over how we have disobeyed God. We are called to mourn over those sins which have hurt and maimed others. We have not loved the Lord our God with all of our hearts, souls, strength and minds. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are called to mourn because holy sorrow is part of repentance. Repentance converts and turns the sinner from his sin. Virtuous action overcomes and conquers sin and yields righteousness, which is the first fruit of infinite and unending joy. Mourning is essential to our spiritual journey. Mourning is an holy habit or virtue. Our eyes must not be dry. Our hearts cannot grow cold.
Jesus weeps over Jerusalem. His immense sadness is expressed over another kind of death. This is not the physical and natural death of his friend Lazarus. This is the spiritual death of a religious people whose eyes are dry and hearts have grown cold. He weeps not over a city full of prodigal sons; the young who have foolishly run away from God to waste their spiritual inheritance. He weeps rather over the religious people, over the good son who is respectable, morally upright, mature and supposedly advanced in piety. He weeps over a city full of men who think that they are religious, chosen, called, and sent. He weeps over those who have deluded themselves into thinking that they are saved because the works of the law have made them good. He weeps over those who speaking to [themselves] thank God that they are not as other men are extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. (St. Luke xviii. 11) They speak to themselves, justify and compliment themselves, and are righteous in their own eyes. Because they talk to themselves, there is no time to speak to God. As they speak to themselves they compare themselves with other men and conclude they are good enough. They promote themselves by condemning, judging, and slandering others. They have no time to confess their sins. They have no time to mourn over their pride and arrogance, their envy, resentment, bitterness, hatred and so on. They think that they mourn over a lost world and a morally corrupt society; they do not. They judge and condemn that world. To mourn over it would require first the vision of their own complicity in it, their own temptations to it, their own shared nature with those whom they have judged. But their eyes are dry and their hearts are cold.
        
Jesus responds to the religious people of this time. They have made the House of God, the temple, the church, into a den of thieves. (Ibid, 46) What occurs within a space meant to initiate encounter with God, is false commerce, an exchange not enacted between earth and heaven, but between man and man for the purposes of earthly gain and greed. Those buying and selling are the least guilty offenders. They are an outward and visible sign of an inward spiritual sickness which has abandoned God and failed to prepare for his coming in penitence and mourning. So, they cannot respond to Him; He comes, He speaks what he hears from the Father of light, and men prefer darkness. Their eyes are dry and their hearts are cold.
        
Many so-called Christians have eyes that are dry and hearts that have grown cold. They are little better than the Pharisees for whom Jesus weeps in today’s Gospel. Their eyes are dry and their hearts are cold because they have never discovered their own sin. Not having come to see their own sins, they have nothing over which to mourn. And without that, there is no problem that needs solving- except for other people’s…the sins of bad people. Everyone else is bad and sinful. I thank thee God for making me not as other men…. Such is the sentiment and disposition of good people. Good people do not need God, but they have a funny way of needing the church, in and through which to manipulate, control and talk. –Remember, they talk so much about problems and other people that they have no time to examine themselves, name their sins and mourn!       
Our calling today is, indeed, to mourn over our sins. In the words of the writer Gerald Heard:
We must start without delay on the painful, steep, humiliating path of undoing our busy, deliberately deluded selves. So only will the kingdom come, where it must come fully and where we alone can decide whether it shall come - in ourselves. "The Kingdom of God is within you", Yes, but only if we are prepared to let that powerful germ of eternal life grow. … Indeed we may say that the whole secret of the spiritual life is just this painful struggle to come awake, to become really conscious. And, conversely, the whole process and technique of evil is to do just the reverse to us: to lull us to sleep, to distract us from what is creeping up within us, to tell us that we are busy-workers for the Kingdom when we are absent-mindedly spreading death, not life.
 
Have we made the House of God into a den of thieves? Are we stealing other peoples' hearts and souls, interrupting their pursuit of God, distracting them from their goal and end which is Jesus Christ and the journey to His kingdom? Or perhaps we are robbing God of our thoughtful concentration, our love and desire, our hope and expectations? We must repent and start anew-each of us, every day. Let us spread life, Christ's life. Let our eyes be opened and our hearts softened, that in mourning over sin, we might continue our journey to the Kingdom. May our eyes be wet and our hearts grow warm. Amen.
©wjsmartin

                                                             


Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail,
they may receive you into everlasting habitations.
(St. Luke xvi. 9)        
In last week’s Gospel we prayed that God’s never failing providence that ruleth all things both in heaven and in earth [might] put away from us all hurtful things and [might] give to us those things which are profitable (Collect: Trin. VIII) for our salvation. And this week Jesus illustrates how we might apply what we know of God’s providence to our present lives. He does this through The Parable of the Unjust Steward. In it He commends the virtue of prudence for our consideration.
         
In The Parable of the Unjust Steward, we read about a steward of a rich man’s treasure who has been accused of wasting his master’s goods. The steward has been careless as the manager of the rich man’s business. The rich man summons his employee to call him to account. How is it that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward. (St. Luke xvi. 2) The rich man is surprised but departs to give his worker time to give account of his stewardship. The employee is struck dumb with fear and trepidation over his fate and future. Because he can make no excuse for his sin, he says to himself, What shall I do? For my lord taketh away from me the stewardship: I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed. (Ibid, 3) He is proud of his education and ability and so is not about to resort to manual labor to repay his master. He is too proud to dig ditches or to be reduced to begging. He has a good mind and is determined to use it to make good out of a bad situation. So read about what he decides to do:

I am resolved what to do, that, when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses. So he called every one of his lord’s debtors unto him, and said unto the first, How much owest thou unto my lord? And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty. Then said he to another, And how much owest thou? And he said, An hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and write fourscore.
                                                                                                   (Ibid, 4-7)
 
Though he has failed to manage the rich man’s business properly in the past, he will nevertheless use his practical perspicacity and prudence to begin to call in his master’s debts. So, he makes a deal with other men who have taken out loans with his employer. He asks them what they owe that he may return at least a portion of their debt to his boss. He ends up collecting fifty percent of what one man owed, and eighty percent from another, and returns to give to the master what he has collected. So, the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely. For the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light. (Ibid, 8) He has used unrighteous mammon and made friends through it. Jesus tells his listeners that in earthly and worldly terms, here we find a man who used his prudence and worldly wisdom to make the best of a bad situation. He has made friends through the mammon of unrighteousness. (Ibid, 9) Having realized his careless imprudence now he uses prudence call in some of his master’s credit.
          
So, what does Jesus mean when he says that in this instance the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light? And why does He say that we are to make us friends with the mammon of unrighteousness? It seems to contradict what He commands elsewhere – i.e. that we cannot serve God and Mammon. (St. Matthew vi. 24) We might learn more about it in the verses that follow today’s Gospel lesson. There Jesus says that, He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. If, therefore, ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own? (Ibid, 10-12) Unrighteous mammon is a term used to describe money or material possessions. If a man has been dishonest when another has entrusted him with his earthly fortune, how can such a man be trusted to increase the worth of his spiritual treasure? The unjust steward was irresponsible and unfaithful with his master’s fortune. But he repented of his error and was determined to use prudence to find favor in his master’s eyes once again. In the Parable Jesus seems to suggest that the prudence of the unjust steward is a virtue to be imitated. Of course, it is not the unjust steward’s concern with the tenure of his earthly occupation that interests Jesus, but rather the prudence or practical wisdom that moves the man to recover from the mistakes he had made. Making friends with the mammon of unrighteousness involves acquiring the habit of prudence. Through it, the unjust steward discovers how the unrighteous mammon can be used to redeem him. Nevertheless, the mammon of unrighteousness is false mammon, ‘the meat that perishes’, the riches of this world, perishing things that disappoint those who raise their expectations from them. (M. Henry. Comm. Luke xvi.) So, is Jesus encouraging us to make use of it to advance spiritually and progress with God? This doesn’t seem to Jesus’ intention. Rather, he is using the parable as an illustration of humans that have sinned and must now make a renewed attempt to overcome it with determined wisdom and prudence.

The prudence in the parable restores the unjust steward to his lord or master. Jesus encourages us to translate the unjust steward’s prudence first into practical prudence. St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that prudence is the application of right reason to action. Prudence is a virtue that makes its possessor good and his work good also. Similarly, St. Bonaventure tells us that Prudence rules and rectifies the powers of the soul for the good of the self and one’s neighbor. (Bonaventure: C. M. Cullen, p. 98) He tells us also that prudence helps us to remain close to the spiritual center. (Idem) The center for the Christian must include the practical knowledge of man’s temptations in relation to the mammon of unrighteousness. A prudent man then applies right reason to action in relation to unrighteous mammon. A prudent man is on intimate terms with the mammon of unrighteousness, knowing its dangerous potential and power. Prudence encourages us also to see in our neighbor another self, and to love our neighbor as ourself. So, when we are practically wise or prudent in relation to the mammon of unrighteousness, we enable our neighbor to see that the perishable wealth of this world is disposable and thus not what we set our hearts upon. Jesus says that he that is faithful in that which is least, is also faithful also in much. (Ibid, 10) He means that we with others must use prudence to become faithful and honest with these lesser and least of things because only then can we reveal what truly moves and defines us. If we can dispose of unrighteous mammon effortlessly and easily then we show others that we are far more intent upon serving one Master and looking for one reward. We shall also make friends for Christ. Charity, generosity, liberality, and kindness should be virtues that overcome earthly hunger in others so that they might join us laboring [spiritually] not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life. (St. John vi. 27)    
        
Christ makes it very clear in using this parable that most men are rather more prudent in preparing for their worldly futures than His followers are prudent in readying themselves for their spiritual destiny. If spiritual men would take as much time, care, and caution in preparing for salvation, as earthly men take in preparing for their financial future, the world might become quite a different place. Thus, the parable has a more spiritual meaning. Spiritual men need to be prudent about their spiritual future, converting the prudence and foresight that wise men use in relation to mammon to higher ends.  Making friends with mammon of unrighteousness, (Ibid, 9) must involve cultivating the Cardinal Virtue of prudence that is on the way to being perfected through God’s Grace. First, the prudent spiritual man imitates the unjust steward who acknowledged his sin and was thus assiduously and conscientiously determined to make right with his Master. We should intend to make ourselves right with God. Second, the prudent spiritual man knows that he is always an unjust [spiritual] steward of God’s gifts because of his fallen nature, and thus can never repay what he owes to Him. So, he must live under God’s Grace praying always that God, like the rich man in today’s parable, might be merciful. And, third, the prudent spiritual man is determined to help others with what he has been given, thus loving him spiritually as a fellow pilgrim on the journey to God’s Kingdom who will receive him into everlasting habitations (Ibid, 9) if he himself has been merciful like his Lord. Luther tells us that those whom we have helped and who have gone before us will say to the Lord: ‘My God, this he has done unto me as thy child!’ The Lord will say: ‘Because ye have done it to the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.’ Therefore, these poor people will…be…our witnesses so that God shall receive us. (Luther: Trinity IX)

Today my friends let us begin to study the virtue of prudence. Prudence looks with foresight and vision into a Christian future that is meant for all men. As Isidore of Seville says (Etym. x): A prudent man is one who sees as it were from afar, for his sight is keen, and he foresees the event of uncertainties. (STA: Summa, II, ii, 47, i.) Prudence discovers those moral principles that God’s Grace will birth in us so that our future salvation might be secured. Prudence is the spirit to think and do always such things that are right and what enables us to live according to [God’s] will by His Grace. (Collect: Trinity IX) Christian prudence concludes wisely that God’s mercy is an utter necessity in the journey to the Kingdom. Christian prudence concludes also that God has called us to make to ourselves friends from the mammon of unrighteousness so that from the low plain of ministering to Christ in others, they might receive us into everlasting habitations from on high when our time we have finished our course. Amen.

©wjsmartin  
 


 

 
 
 
 

 
We begin today’s sermon with the words of Richard J. Foster:
 
Recently I experienced a special grace which I believe was from God. It is the gift of tears. I had been considering my sin and the sin of God's people. I had also been meditating on the gospel teaching (and ancient teaching of the Church) on "compunction"--heart sorrow. As I did this, God graciously helped me to enter into a godly mourning in my heart on behalf of the Church, and a deep, tear-filled thanksgiving at God's patience, love, and mercy toward us. As Micah declares, "Who is a God like thee that pardoneth iniquity?" (Micah 7:18).

I saw that the people most to be pitied are those who go through life with dry eyes and cold hearts. But if we, like those at Pentecost, can be "cut to the heart, then we can enter the liberating shocks of contrition and repentance. And the experience will be not just for ourselves, and not just once in a great while, but as a precious gift given daily, a gift that catapults us into the growing edges of life.  Richard J. Foster
 
As Foster suggests, there are many Christians in our world today who are to be pitied because they, go through life with dry eyes and cold hearts. To see oneself truly and accurately is one thing; to see God’s response is another. And without the sight or vision of a responsive God, there can be no tears and no mourning. There are those whose pride prevents the confession of sins. There are those whose pride allows it but deny God’s answer to it. In both cases man is left alone. His eyes are dry. His heart is cold.
        
Tears and mourning comprise the subject-matter of today’s Gospel reading. We read, When Jesus was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! (St. Luke xix 41,42) Christ Jesus approaches the city of God’s presence, a place prepared for His coming, a space from which God would begin to make all things new. But he mourns; He weeps. The love of God is expressed to the people of Jerusalem, to God’s chosen nation. They have been called to prepare for God’s coming through repentance and sorrow. The Son of God is in the midst of them. He is God’s approaching answer to their heartfelt spiritual dilemma. He is the Word that was spoken to prepare them. He is the Word that is spoken into their midst now, in Jesus Christ. The Word spoken is the Word of God’s love, the communication of His mercy and forgiveness. The Word spoken is the way back to God. The Word spoken into human flesh, through Jesus Christ, has come to carry men out of sin and death and back into righteousness and life. If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace. But now are they hid from thine eyes. (Idem) John the Baptist called the people to repentance, to mourning over their own sins as preparation for the deeper communication of God’s Word in Jesus Christ. God speaks in Jesus Christ. But the reality is hid from their eyes. They do not hear with their ears. They have not repented and mourned. They could not possibly understand the need to hear God’s speaking in Jesus Christ. Their eyes are dry and their hearts are cold.
        
Mourning is a virtue. Without mourning there can be no true and ongoing encounter with the living God. What is mourning? We associate it with our reaction to the death of others. We witness it in St. John’s Gospel: Jesus wept. (St. John xi. 35) The occasion was the death of His friend Lazarus; when He was confronted by Mary and other mourners, Jesus wept. (Idem) As the liturgy of the Orthodox Church prays on Lazarus Sunday, Shedding tears by thine own desire, thou hast shown to us thy steadfast love. Jesus takes on the pain of his friends’ loss; Jesus experiences the suffering that endures death. Human life is beautiful, is a gift from God, and any separation which man endures from it is painful. Jesus weeps because He is fully man. Tears can express the love and mercy of God with us and for us. God is with us and for us in Jesus Christ. His eyes are not dry. His heart is not cold.
        
His eyes are not dry. His heart is not cold. He teaches us in Chapter V of St. Matthew’s Gospel, Blessed are they that mourn…. (St. Matthew v. 4) Jesus is a mourner. He mourns over the sufferings of this present life. He mourns over poverty and disease. He mourns over physical suffering and psychological illness. He mourns over sin and the suffering of those who will not know themselves and search for God. He is mourning. He gives His mourning to His followers. We, His followers, are called to mourn over our own sins. The remembrance of them is grievous unto us. The burden of them is intolerable. (BCP, 1928, p.  We are called to mourn over how we have disobeyed God. We are called to mourn over those sins which have hurt and maimed others. We have not loved the Lord our God with all of our hearts, souls, strength and minds. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are called to mourn because holy sorrow is part of repentance. Repentance converts and turns the sinner from his sin. Virtuous action overcomes and conquers sin and yields righteousness, which is the first fruit of infinite and unending joy. Mourning is essential to our spiritual journey. Mourning is an holy habit or virtue. Our eyes must not be dry. Our hearts cannot grow cold.
Jesus weeps over Jerusalem. His immense sadness is expressed over another kind of death. This is not the physical and natural death of his friend Lazarus. This is the spiritual death of a religious people whose eyes are dry and hearts have grown cold. He weeps not over a city full of prodigal sons; the young who have foolishly run away from God to waste their spiritual inheritance. He weeps rather over the religious people, over the good son who is respectable, morally upright, mature and supposedly advanced in piety. He weeps over a city full of men who think that they are religious, chosen, called, and sent. He weeps over those who have deluded themselves into thinking that they are saved because the works of the law have made them good. He weeps over those who speaking to [themselves] thank God that they are not as other men are extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. (St. Luke xviii. 11) They speak to themselves, justify and compliment themselves, and are righteous in their own eyes. Because they talk to themselves, there is no time to speak to God. As they speak to themselves they compare themselves with other men and conclude they are good enough. They promote themselves by condemning, judging, and slandering others. They have no time to confess their sins. They have no time to mourn over their pride and arrogance, their envy, resentment, bitterness, hatred and so on. They think that they mourn over a lost world and a morally corrupt society; they do not. They judge and condemn that world. To mourn over it would require first the vision of their own complicity in it, their own temptations to it, their own shared nature with those whom they have judged. But their eyes are dry and their hearts are cold.
        
Jesus responds to the religious people of this time. They have made the House of God, the temple, the church, into a den of thieves. (Ibid, 46) What occurs within a space meant to initiate encounter with God, is false commerce, an exchange not enacted between earth and heaven, but between man and man for the purposes of earthly gain and greed. Those buying and selling are the least guilty offenders. They are an outward and visible sign of an inward spiritual sickness which has abandoned God and failed to prepare for his coming in penitence and mourning. So, they cannot respond to Him; He comes, He speaks what he hears from the Father of light, and men prefer darkness. Their eyes are dry and their hearts are cold.
        
Many so-called Christians have eyes that are dry and hearts that have grown cold. They are little better than the Pharisees for whom Jesus weeps in today’s Gospel. Their eyes are dry and their hearts are cold because they have never discovered their own sin. Not having come to see their own sins, they have nothing over which to mourn. And without that, there is no problem that needs solving- except for other people’s…the sins of bad people. Everyone else is bad and sinful. I thank thee God for making me not as other men…. Such is the sentiment and disposition of good people. Good people do not need God, but they have a funny way of needing the church, in and through which to manipulate, control and talk. –Remember, they talk so much about problems and other people that they have no time to examine themselves, name their sins and mourn!       

Our calling today is, indeed, to mourn over our sins. In the words of the writer Gerald Heard:
We must start without delay on the painful, steep, humiliating path of undoing our busy, deliberately deluded selves. So only will the kingdom come, where it must come fully and where we alone can decide whether it shall come - in ourselves. "The Kingdom of God is within you", Yes, but only if we are prepared to let that powerful germ of eternal life grow. … Indeed we may say that the whole secret of the spiritual life is just this painful struggle to come awake, to become really conscious. And, conversely, the whole process and technique of evil is to do just the reverse to us: to lull us to sleep, to distract us from what is creeping up within us, to tell us that we are busy-workers for the Kingdom when we are absent-mindedly spreading death, not life.
 
Have we made the House of God into a den of thieves? Are we stealing other peoples' hearts and souls, interrupting their pursuit of God, distracting them from their goal and end which is Jesus Christ and the journey to His kingdom? Or perhaps we are robbing God of our thoughtful concentration, our love and desire, our hope and expectations? We must repent and start anew-each of us, every day. Let us spread life, Christ's life. Let our eyes be opened and our hearts softened, that in mourning over sin, we might continue our journey to the Kingdom. May our eyes be wet and our hearts grow warm. Amen.
©wjsmartin

[Love-2.1-11] Why are Love, Knowledge, Wisdom, and Goodness said to be infinite and eternal in God, capable of no Increase or Decrease, but always in the same highest State of Existence? Why is his Power eternal and omnipotent, his Presence not here, or there, but everywhere the same? No Reason can be assigned, but because nothing that is temporary, limited, or bounded, can be in God. It is his Nature to be that which He is, and all that He is, in an infinite, unchangeable Degree, admitting neither higher, nor lower, neither here nor there, but always, and everywhere, in the same unalterable State of Infinity. If therefore Wrath, Rage, and Resentment could be in the Deity itself, it must be an unbeginning, boundless, never-ceasing Wrath, capable of no more, or less, no up or down, but always existing, always working, and breaking forth in the same Strength, and everywhere equally burning in the Height and Depth of the abyssal Deity. There is no medium here; there must be either all or none, either no Possibility of Wrath, or no Possibility of its having any Bounds. And therefore, if you would not say, that every Thing that has proceeded, or can, or ever shall proceed from God, are and can be only so many Effects of his eternal and omnipotent Wrath, which can never cease, or be less than infinite; if you will not hold this monstrous Blasphemy, you must stick close to the absolute Impossibility of Wrath having any Existence in God. For nothing can have any Existence in God, but in the Way and Manner as his Eternity, Infinity, and Omnipotence have their Existence in him. Have you any Thing to object to this?

God’s nature is To Be for Eternity. He has neither beginning nor end. His attributes are as eternal as His Being. This means that God does not change. His love, knowledge, wisdom, and goodness are forever the same as perfectly active expressions of His Being. If God’s attributes were contrary to the virtues that we describe, then, for example, He would be perfectly wrathful, rage-riddled, and resentful. But God is no such thing. This is not to say, however, that God is not experienced through these attributes when fallen men choose alienation from His love, knowledge, wisdom, and goodness. Fallen and Damned man will experience love as wrath when he rejects Divine love. He will experience knowledge as ignorance when he rejects Divine knowledge, and so forth. The Way and Manner of God’s Eternity, Infinity, and Omnipotence is only virtuous. One might say that God’s love rejected, felt as wrath, is nevertheless the love that gives to sinners what they desire. Love respects man’s rejection of Him and thus lovingly allows man to go to Hell. Only love can respect the created integrity of human free will. Is this an expression of pure love? Of course. Pure love never forces Himself on anyone. Pure love allows the sinner to endure his sin forever if he so chooses. Pure love still loves absolutely. The problem for the Hell-bound sinner is that he does not want to be loved in God’s love. In so far as the sinner’s lost love is poured into other loves, he will enjoy the degree to which he loved others more than God in Hell. Those in Hell are loved in God’s love to the degree that they desires it, which is to say, in competition with other loves and thus not as Pure Love at all.

[Love-2.1-12] Theogenes. Indeed, Theophilus, both Eusebius and myself have been from the first fully satisfied with what has been said of this Matter in the Book of Regeneration, the Appeal, and the Spirit of Prayer, &c. We find it impossible to think of God as subject to Wrath, or capable of being inflamed by the Weakness, and Folly, and Irregularity of the Creature. We find ourselves incapable of thinking any otherwise of God, than as the one only Good, or, as you express it, an eternal immutable Will to all Goodness, which can will Nothing else to all Eternity, but to communicate Good, and Blessing, and Happiness, and Perfection to every Life, according to its Capacity to receive it.

God only and ever wills the Good. He communicates Good, Blessing, Happiness, and Perfection to all life. He offers it to man as what man must choose and will into his own life. To say that His goodness is necessarily present to all is true only in a limited sense. His goodness is present to all as the animating principle of preserved existence. However, the man who retains this goodness is only partially in possession of the Goodness that God wills for him. A greater goodness is found in the Grace that informs the moral life and will carry a man to the Kingdom. This Grace can be had only by an act of will. Once a man wills it, he is in possession of a greater portion of God’s goodness than the man who ignore the offer of it. The portion of God’s goodness increases when it is received with gratitude, applied with diligence, and enjoyed with satisfaction in the God-fearing soul.
 

Have you ever noticed that the Christian Church spends lots of time worshiping a Jesus Christ that is external to it? What I mean is that the Christ, who is the Saviour of the world, is kept outside of the church’s walls, and even outside of the people’s hearts. He is appealed to in public prayer and He is allowed to be involved in the life of the church to an extent but not wholly and completely.
This is probably the case because the churches are full of lukewarm and tepid believers. Such religious types tend to be far more consumed with themselves than the Lord and so their commitment to the Father, through Jesus the Son, and by the Holy Spirit is half-baked and partial at best. And this must be the case because so many Christians do not want Jesus Christ to indwell their souls. They don’t want Him in because they do not pay the price of having Him as the ruler and governor of their lives. For most older people, this is probably caused by fear. For the young, it would seem to be driven by a complete indifference and insouciance towards all things spiritual.

This shouldn’t come to us as much of a surprise. We live at the end of a long history of sinful rebellion against God and the unfolding of its consequences. The transaction with God that accompanied man’s creation was the original intention for man’s pursuit and possession of excellence. This transaction was offered to man at the dawn of creation. Then Adam was invited to discover truth, beauty, and goodness through a complete reliance upon God’s Word, Logos, or Wisdom. Adam was told that if he obeyed the Logos, and in so doing would come to understand the difference between himself the creature and God the creator, he would not have suffered any resistance to his pursuit of happiness and joy. Knowledge and love were waiting to be discovered by Adam. Adam could discover them only if he relied wholly upon God’s goodness.
Unfortunately for all of us, Adam fell out of the spiritual transaction with God. As a result, the Word, Logos, or Wisdom that longed to be made flesh in him was experienced in competition with its absence. Man chose to experience not goodness alone but goodness and its absence –evil. Therefore, man would be forever torn between a present and an absent God. One might say that Adam expelled God’s Word from his soul and that the Word, Logos, or Wisdom of God would henceforth be experienced as a reality that was external to the soul. Man’s willed determination to be his own god ensured that the Word would not be made flesh again for a good long time.

Of course, we Christians believe that God responded to man’s sinful choosing by sending His Son –the Word, Logos, or Wisdom of God, to become flesh and recapitulate and redeem human nature from its sin. The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. In Christ, the Logos of God has reconciled Man to God once again. In Christ we find the new Adam. In Christ, we can be right with God and can journey home to the Father’s Heaven once again.

But here is where we might run into trouble. From a traditional Christian standpoint, the price that we must pay to have the Saviour of the World indwelling us is nothing less than everything. Should we invite Him to dwell in us, He expects us to dwell in Him. He desires to give Himself to us completely and thus we must give ourselves to Him completely. The transaction is the recapitulation of the original exchange between Adam and God. It has always been understood as a spiritual exchange. Christ the Logos of God will live in us, rule and govern us, only if we give ourselves to Him to be lived in, ruled and governed. For man to be redeemed and reconciled to God, God’s Word, Logos, or Wisdom must indwell him. It is the Word of God made flesh that must now be made flesh in us if we are to be saved.

But it is the habitual tendency of fallen man to refuse the full and complete demands of this relationship. Again, here is where so many Christians and churches run into trouble. Some churches have embraced a redefined and reimaged Jesus. Or they have welcomed only parts of His true nature. He is now outfitted for post-modernity. As such His love has been divorced from His knowledge. The human desire for a mercy that trumps justice has been dogmatized. God’s love in Christ is cast now in the costume of being all-embracing, all-affirming, and even all-loving. He is said to accept everyone without any conditions. The call to spiritual maturity and adulthood has been abandoned. Mercy and charity have been collapsed into a mode of acceptance that does not love another with the hope for salvation. The if you love me, then keep my commandments has been excised from Scripture. The go and sin no more has likewise been removed. In sum, any kind of relationship with Him that is an offer for unity with God based on the real conversion of the heart and a turning of the will away from sin to righteousness has been abandoned. God came down from heaven, on this account, to tell us all that He loves us just the way we are. —In which case He saves us from nothing... and, on this account, might just as well have stayed home in Heaven! Evidently, the new-fangled Christ had no need to die for us since we are already good.

Notice how Christ has been expelled to the external dimension once again. Christ is not welcomed into the soul. Christ has no rule or sway over the will. Christ’s death has no meaning for the conversion of the sinner. Christ need not enter in because there is nothing in need of changing. The nature of sin has been abolished. Man is good. God is dead.

Now I don’t know about you, but if this is Christianity, then count me out. Aside from ignoring the major questions of discovering God’s true nature and then how man is alienated from Him, this form of religion is really rather insulting to human nature. It ignores completely revelation where we learn that God has built into human nature a potential for moral and intellectual greatness because man is made in the image and likeness of God. It completely denies the notion that God expects us to pursue this excellence and greatness. And it makes a mockery of the understanding that this can be pursued, found, and perfected only because Jesus Christ has died and risen from the dead to reconcile all men to God.

For Christ to live in us, we must surrender all rights to ourselves. We must open our hearts and souls to that indwelling that will bring death to us and then new life. Christ desires to live within us. Christ desires to indwell our hearts and souls and from the ground of our being to bring death to our sins and new life to His righteousness. What price must we pay to have Christ come alive in our souls? Eliot says it will cost not less than everything. (Four Quartets: Little Gidding V) It might be a high price to pay. But if we don’t pay it, we will return to nothingness…with the added benefit of knowing what have been saved from nothing and must live forever with the knowledge of love abandoned and all hope forsaken.
 

  


For the very beginning of [wisdom] is the desire of her discipline; and the care
of discipline is love. And love is the keeping of her laws; and the giving heed
unto her laws is the assurance of incorruption. And incorruption
maketh us near to God.
(Wisdom vi. 17-20)
 
     The Book of Wisdom is traditionally ascribed to Solomon, son of David and King of Israel. He lived some nine hundred years before the birth of Jesus Christ, and he is known for his wisdom. The First Book of the Kings tells us that he prayed for wisdom so that he might have an understanding heart to judge [his] people…[to] discern between good and evil. (1 Kings 9) Solomon was granted his wish and petition and became so wise that the rulers of the world came to sit at his feet in order to learn of the wisdom that God had given to him. Solomon was not wise in his own conceits; rather he knew that true Wisdom is a gift from God. And he reminds us also that without God’s Wisdom we cannot hope to be saved. So, he exhorts his readers and listeners to pursue the instruction and discipline of Holy Wisdom. Holy Wisdom in Greek is Sophia and in Latin is Sapientia. It is given by God to man to instruct him in the ways that lead to eternal life. When a man allows himself to be instructed in her ways, she will lead him forward into the possession of what is true, beautiful, and good.
     Now you might be saying to yourselves, well, this all sounds fine, but what does it have to do with my life? Everything, Solomon, the King and preacher, insists. Why, you ask? Because man is made to explore, to understand, and to love. And not merely to explore and understand the world around us or to love our fellow men. All of that is important enough. But the point is that we were made to know, understand, and love God. Solomon knew all of this, and this is why he goes to all the trouble of explaining it to us! He knew that we were made to know and to love God because He is the source, origin, and cause of all knowledge and love. And His knowledge and love are given to us that we might find that incorruption that brings us near to God. (Wisdom vi. 20)
     So, you say, all right, but how do I find this knowledge and love? Well, if you are an inquisitive and conscientious student of the natural world, you can find a lot of God’s knowledge and love at work there. In nature, you will find the principles of order, arrangement, relation, truth, beauty, and even goodness that you neither create nor control. If you take the time to be quiet and still enough, you will find God’s mind and heart at work constantly in all of creation. Then, you shall be inspired by a deep sense of awe and wonder at the marvels of the created universe. Such an endeavor starts a man on the journey after wisdom. The wisdom that is found is clearly Divine. No man has made the vast universe that surrounds him, painted it with beauty, and elicited the great goods that ensure his comfort; nor has he informed it with that truth that combines minute complexities into one harmonious and majestic whole. Nature itself, if we would only contemplate it, leads our minds to the fount and wellspring of God’s Divine Wisdom.
     And yet there is more. While we are contemplating nature, and discovering the principles of truth, beauty, and goodness in it, we do this through a particular operation and activity of the soul. The 17th century Anglican Bishop William Beveridge tells us that we ought to marvel at this fact also. He says that he comes to know that he has a soul because he can reason and reflect. (W. Beveridge: Thoughts on Religion, 1) Other creatures have souls but don’t know it. They act, and know it not; it being not possible for them to look within themselves, or to reflect upon their own existence and actions. But this is not so with me, the good Bishop says. I not only know that I have a soul, but that I have such a soul which can consider, and deliberate on every particular action that issues from it. Nay, I can now consider that I am considering my own actions, and can reflect upon [my own] reflecting. (Ibid, 2) The Bishop continues and says that the same soul, through which he reflects upon his own reflecting, can move out of itself and examine and study the whole of the universe, mounting from earth to heaven, from pole to pole, and view all the courses and motions of the celestial bodies, the Sun, the Moon, the Stars; and then the next moment returning to myself again, I can consider where I have been, what glorious objects have been presented to my view, and wonder at the nimbleness and activity of my soul. (Ibid, 2,3) The good Bishop reminds us that we can move out of ourselves to consider the whole of the universe with our souls, and then return into our souls, and still reflect upon all that we have seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and touched through recollected contemplation. What a marvel! Have you ever considered it? And more than all this, the same soul can move the body and all its parts, and even understand, consider, argue, and conclude; to will and nil; hope and despair, desire and abhor, joy and grieve; love and hate; to be angry now, love and appease.(Ibid, 3) What a miracle is man! And what does all of this mean if not that we are made to know and to love and to discover finally that God’s Wisdom is the source and cause of it all?    
     Yet there is this difficulty. Bishop Beveridge reminds us that we are not merely souls or spirits like angels, but are souls who inhabit bodies. And our bodies always tend towards corruption, disintegration, and death. Our souls are spiritual and incorruptible. But they are joined to flesh which decays, fades, and passes away. The place of the soul’s trial and testing, in the here and now, is with the body. The way and manner through which the soul and body cooperate will determine the eternal and incorruptible state of the whole human person, body and soul, in eternity. Should the soul seek God’s Wisdom and apply it to the whole person, then in the end times man will be saved. Should he refuse the rule and governance of God’s Wisdom in this life, he will be damned.
      This brings us back to the Wisdom of Solomon. In our opening quotation, we read that the application of Wisdom to the soul and body demands our submission to instruction and education. God’s instruction and education reveal the love and care of Wisdom for every human being’s ultimate welfare and well-being. To submit to this Divine labor, the human soul must lovingly receive the instruction and discipline that Wisdom enjoins. Wisdom desires to direct the soul to order, govern, tame, and discipline the body. St. Paul says in this morning’s Epistle reading that we must not be debtors…to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if [we] live after the flesh, [we] shall die. But if [we] through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, [we] shall live. (Romans viii. 12, 13) When Wisdom is applied to the body, the whole person is right with God, for he is then moved and defined by the Spiritual Truth that God intends for the body and the soul. If Wisdom is not applied, then man faces spiritual death in which both soul and body shall live alienated and separated from God forever. St. Paul says that They that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. (Ibid, 8-10) He says in another place that Christ [is] the wisdom of God, and the power of God. (1 Cor. i. 24) So to live according to God’s Wisdom is to live in Christ. To live in Christ means to accept the loving punishment, correction, instruction, and discipline that Christ’s Spirit brings to man’s life. As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. (Romans viii. 14) Life in Christ is an invitation to become the sons of God, whereby we [can] cry, Abba, Father. (Ibid, 15) To call God Abba means that through Christ we can call the Father Daddy. This opens us to an intimate relationship with God whose Wisdom will enable us to love to keep [His] laws…bringing us near to incorruption…[with a] desire for [the] wisdom [which] brings us near to [His] kingdom. (Wisdom vi. 18-20)  
     In submitting our lives to Jesus Christ’s pattern and discipline, we can begin to be moved by the Divine Wisdom. The way to it is summarized in today’s Collect. We pray:

O God, whose never failing providence ordereth all things both in    
heaven and earth; we humbly beseech thee to put away from us all
hurtful things, and to give us those things which are profitable for us….
 
God’s all seeing eye, God’s Holy Sapientia or Wisdom, Jesus Christ, orders our created universe. Now, we pray that His Wisdom might order us. First, through His Wisdom we ask to locate and identify our temptations. Christ has gone this way before us and thus He alone sees into our hearts and knows what is most hurtful and harmful to our salvation. He alone has a penetrating knowledge of our temptations. Second, we ought to pray that His Grace might put away from us all hurtful things. The Light of His Wisdom has the Power that alone can overcome our vices and replace them with those things which are profitable for our salvation.
     Christ, the Wisdom of God and the Power of God, is also the Love of God. This Love of God in Jesus Christ desires to lift us out of bondage to sin so that we might become the Sons of God. A sure and lasting sign of this love is found in the work of His all sufficient sacrifice for us on Calvary’s Tree. The ongoing impartation of this salvific love is found in the offering of Christ’s Body and Blood today. The Power to embrace its Wisdom is found through the Love of the Spirit who will make us the children of God…[and]… then joint heirs with Christ if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. (Romans viii 17)
Amen.
©wjsmartin