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Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice and open the door,
I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
(Rev. iii. 20)
       
I think that it is probably the case that, more often than not, we do not think of God coming to us. Rather we see ourselves as coming to God. Earnest Christians in all churches come to the Lord with laundry lists of supplications and intercessions. Christians expect to be heard and heeded. We spend so much time talking to God that one wonders if God can ever get His Word in edgewise. We forget that we are called to love God because He first loved us and sent His Son to be a propitiation for our sins. (1 St. John iv. 19, 10) Jesus says that If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. (St. John xiv.23) Jesus makes it clear that He intends to come to His faithful friends who hear His voice and open the door of their hearts to Him.
         
The point is that the Christian religion is all about God’s nature. His nature involves always desiring us and coming to us. That desire is expressed in our opening quotation: Behold I stand at the door and knock….(Ibid) And yet it requires a response: if any man hear my voice and open the door….(Ibid) If we don’t open the door, then He will not come in to [us], and sup with [us] so that we can sup with Him. (Ibid) So, you might ask, what is this door that Jesus is speaking about? The ancient commentators say that the door is the soul or the human heart. The soul is not only the seat of reason but of the will also. From the ground of the soul, we either say yes or no to God. Paul Claudel reminds us that most men say no, and so refuse to open the door. He says: we are like a bad tenant allowed to remain through charity in a house that does not belong to us, that we have neither built nor paid for, and who barricade ourselves and refuse to receive the rightful owner even for a minute. (I Believe in God, p. 244) The image is brilliant. We have our lives – our souls and bodies -- on loan from God. We have neither made them nor are we able to sustain them. And God intends that we should occupy them usefully and profitably. What we have comes from God, is preserved by Him on good days and bad, and yet is made for Him. Long before we perceive that Jesus is knocking at the door of the human soul, our Heavenly Father has bestowed upon us the precious gifts of creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life. (GT) In and of themselves, these are great gifts which no man can ever repay to his Maker. Through mere existence, nature, and even basic forms of human happiness and joy, God comes to man and lavishes him with spiritual riches that ought to compel all men to deepest thanksgiving.
         
Human life is a gift from God long before Jesus comes knocking at the door. Yet Jesus Christ comes knocking at the door of the human soul because God’s intention for man is about much more than mere existence and temporal happiness. God loves us so much that He wants to save us. He makes this possible through the forgiveness of sins that He brings to us. Without the forgiveness of our sins, we cannot be saved. In His Son Jesus Christ, God incarnates and reveals the forgiveness of sins. Jesus Christ is the forgiveness of sins. And this forgiveness of sins is from a giver who never stops giving. Some believers maintain that Christ died once for all for the sins of the whole world, and that means that He died for my sins and has forgiven me, and so I’ve got a clean slate, and I am saved. Because we believe this to be true, we convince ourselves that we are saved already. But convincing ourselves of something, doesn’t mean that it will necessarily end up being true! Salvation is about more than what Christ did long ago; it really is about whether the effects and merits of Christ’s gift expressed then are alive and working in our souls now! The forgiveness of sins is more like a journey by which Christ infuses his merits and righteousness into our hearts and souls for the whole of our lives.
         
What I mean to say is that God’s moving and coming to us, His knocking at the doors of our souls, doesn’t stop once Christ has died, risen, and ascended back to the Father. Our religion had better not be merely fond memories of a historical pastimes. We said earlier that the Father and the Son intend to make their abode with us, pitch their tent within our souls (Idem, 23) and dwell in us through the Holy Spirit. If that is the case, then we had better realize that God’s love, which is His forgiveness of our sins through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, is coming to us always to lay claim upon our hearts. God’s life is His love. His love is always alive and on the move. It approaches us with the promises of the forgiveness of sins and resurrection into new life. God intends that His forgiveness of our sins should find a permanent home in our hearts. Again, as Claudel says, we are …tenants who live in the homes of our bodies and souls by the gift of charity. The lease is extended to us for as long as we live, and yet the quality of life in these earthen vessels that we inhabit can be made all the better only if we continue to pay our dues to the owner and holder of the lease. As God’s lessees, we are called to make a good and honest return on the life that is loaned to us. We are called to keep the property up to snuff. Our calling began with our Baptisms when we were filled with the Grace of great hopes and earnest expectations. Throughout our lives, we have been called to cultivate the good Grace which promised to make us better. Christ has been coming to us to repair and renovate us by applying His atoning Death to our sin-sick lives. His death is the forgiveness of our sins! So when [He] stands at the door and knocks, we [must] hear [His] voice, and open the door. (Idem)
         
When we open the doors of our souls, [Christ] will come in and sup with [us] and [we] with Him. (Idem) And what is this supping but our feeding? Feeding on what, you ask? Feeding on the forgiveness of sins – which alone can repair and redeem us. This means feeding and even feasting on God’s desire to conquer evil in our souls and to redeem us. Give us this day our daily bread, we pray and, Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. (L.P.) The chief form and substance of our nourishment must be God’s Word. This Word is the forgiveness of our sins. St. Maximus Confessor tells us that when we ask God to forgive us…as we forgive others, [we are summoning] God to be for us, what [we must] be towards our neighbours. (Comm. Lord’s Prayer) His point is that if we would be nourished, strengthened, moved, defined, and informed by the unmerited and undeserved mercy of God, it must be shared with all precisely because it neither begins nor ends with us! God’s nature is to forgive. He shares His nature with us and we must share it with all others. 

The idea is taken up in this morning’s Gospel. St. Peter asks Jesus, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? (St. Matthew xviii. 21) Jesus responds with, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven. (Ibid, 22) The implication is that St. Peter and all of us should forgive men their trespasses against us an infinite number of times. Jesus goes on to offer a Parable in which one man is forgiven a huge debt that he owes to his master. But then the same man turns around and refuses to cancel a much smaller debt owed to him by another. God forgives us an infinite number of times for sins that are more than the number than the hairs on [our] heads. (Ps. lx. 12) And should we fail to forgive every man his sins against us, we are revealing to the world that God’s forgiveness of sins is dead in us. St. Augustine says: Imagine the vanity of thinking that your enemy can do you more damage than your enmity [and unforgiveness]! Jesus says: If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. (St. Matthew vi. 15) We delude ourselves into thinking that our enemy has done more damage to us than we do to ourselves by not forgiving him!
          
Behold I stand at the door and knock. (Idem) Jesus comes to us always in order to plant God’s love and forgiveness in our hearts. Jesus’ response to St. Peter’s question illustrates what it looks like to need forgiveness. Our enemy might ask for forgiveness or he might be too bashful and shy, too fearful and cowardly, or too ignorant and foolish to do so. Jesus suggests that he looks a lot like you and me in the presence of God. Jesus intimates also that the same person who needs our forgiveness might not have come to that knowledge. Again, he is a lot like you and me. (R. Knox: Sermons, p. 75) God is patient with us as we slowly discover the details of our sinning against Him and others. The need for the forgiveness of our sins might take time for us to realize. 
         
Behold, I stand at the door and knock. (Idem) Jesus longs to come into us and reveal to us how we have been the enemies of God. God is kind even to the unthankful. (C.T., p. 206) The rubber meets the road when we truly appreciate that the nature of God is found in Jesus Christ, who is the Forgiveness of Sins. We must embrace the forgiveness of sins and impart it to all others if we hope to be saved. Christ’s patience with us might wake us up. When we begin to wake up, we had better start conquering all insult and ingratitude with a hardy, boisterous, all-embracing love and forgiveness. (Idem) Only then can we all assist one another in the hard work of perfecting His love in a world that has forgotten Him. 

Amen.
 
©wjsmartin

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If ye break faith…
    
Today we celebrate a service that is designed to remember the fallen men and women who paid the ultimate sacrifice in service to our nation. At 5:45 am, on November 11, 1918 in Compiegne, France an Armistice was signed between the Allied Nations and the Empire of Germany for the cessation of hostilities and warfare on the Western Front. The Peace Treaty was to take effect at the eleventh hour, on the eleventh day, of the eleventh month. In the Allied nations from the time of the final cessation of hostilities with the Treaty of Versailles, November 11 became a Day of national Remembrance. In the British Empire, now the British Commonwealth, the day is called Remembrance Day. On Remembrance Sunday the Monarch and members of the Royal Family attend a service of Remembrance at the Cenotaph in Whitehall. In the United States, Armistice Day has become Veterans Day. As with the British, we Americans remember all of our Veterans on this day. Today is meant to be a day of solemn reflection. Initially, this day was celebrated in thanksgiving for victory. For us now, it is a time of thoughtful challenge to render account for the freedom and liberty that others have won and sustained for us and to wonder if we are using the principles of our freedom in the pursuit of virtue and excellence.
         
We shall end today’s service with two minutes of silence. In that time, I pray that we shall remember our fellowship with those who have fought valiantly to preserve the liberties which we enjoy. Those who died made the greatest sacrifice. They laid down their lives for their friends. Those who fought and survived endured extreme fear, uncertainty, doubt, and terror as they struggled to embrace courage and wisdom on the battlefield or in preparation for the possibility of conflict and war. We remember with gratitude those who have served our country. Also, by extension, today, in the season of All Souls, we remember those near and dear to us and those whom we have not known who have left us, and who now rejoice with us on a distant shore and in a greater light, that multitude which no man can number whose hope was in the Word made flesh and with whom in the Lord we are forever one.
         
The hope of this day is, of course, in the belief that those who have gone before still live, and while we cannot tell the nature of that life or the condition of those who have died, we are united with them in the life that is in God. Our Lord gives us no knowledge of the state of the dead. He reminds us sternly that many are called but few are chosen. He tells us too that the last shall be first and the first shall be last. He reminds us always that this life is given to us for proving and preparing ourselves as His followers, His friends, and the Sons and Daughters of His Father. Again, Christ teaches us that whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. And so, we well might imagine that the fallen heroes of our post-Christian world would encourage us to keep up the fight, to continue the struggle, and to run the race that is set before us. We may not be fighting the Kaiser, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or Ho Chi Min, as they did, but we are nevertheless called to fight those who would destroy human life in the interests of their ideology, who would pervert and twist God’s will and way, and who would deny His Christ in their vicious and vindictive assault on all that is beautiful, good, and true in His creation. We are called to fight the good fight for the unborn, for the children, for the God-given gift of Holy Matrimony, and for those Divine Principles which must move and define any society that hopes to pursue excellence through the great gift of liberty. The fallen soldiers of the Western World died so that we might retain and perfect the spiritual gifts that freedom and liberty afford to all people. Their words to us are:
 
                                             Take up our quarrel with the foe:
                                             To you with failing hands we throw
                                             The torch; be yours to hold it high.
                                             If ye break faith with us who die
                                             We shall not sleep, though Poppies grow
                                             In Flanders fields…the poppies blow
                                             Between the crosses, row on row…
         
Today we face enemies and forces of darkness far worse than Hitler, Stalin, Mao and their kind. They are more powerful because they are more subtle. The Devil has taken our freedom and convinced so many that it is nothing more than a license to do as you please, that if it feels good do it, and all because we are nothing more than brute beasts who have no understanding. The Devil has convinced some that they are entitled to have that for which they have neither labored nor fought. The Devil has convinced others that our history is nothing but a record of A never-ending symphony of villainy and infamy, duplicity, deceit, and subterfuge….The Devil teaches us now that we deserve everything since we are the hapless victims of a bygone age ruled by tyrants who have enslaved us forever. The Devil convinces men to despair, to be cynical, and to judge past history as if we are the giants and the great men of old were barbarian dwarfs. The Devil convinces us that we have rights but no obligations, freedoms but no duties, rewards with no service, and a life bereft of any obligation to give back to a wonderful nation that has given so much freedom with so many blessings. The Devil even now moves arrogant malicious liars to tear down our nation’s foundations because of the will to power.

The 12th century monk, Bernard of Chartres spent his life resisting the same Devil and all of these knavish tricks. Like many of our fallen war heroes, he was a Christian. So, he reminded his fellow pilgrims or fellow soldiers in Christ that we are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. Our glance can thus take in more things and reach farther than theirs. It is not because our sight is sharper nor our height greater than theirs; it is that we are carried and elevated by the high stature of the giants. Richard Southern reminds us that Bernard was calling his fellow scholars to humility and meekness, to awe and wonder, and to courage and hope through thanksgiving and gratitude for all that their forefathers had fought for to give to them. Bernard taught his friends that we take so much for granted and forget the faith and courage of those who toiled and fought so that we might live in a free world.

In closing, I would like to pay tribute to one of our own who fought the same good fight with courage and persistence and now has left us for that distant shore. I speak of our dear departed sister, Dame Beryl Windsor. As many of you know, for all practical purposes, Beryl and her brother Allen were orphaned at the beginning of World War II. Beryl was born in Houston, Texas on May 14, 1930 to the late Jack and Dorothy Maine Sykes. She lived in England and Scotland until at the age of 10. In 1940, during WWII, Beryl and her brother Allen were evacuated to the United States as child war refugees on board the Duchess of Athol bound for Montreal, Canada. Together they traveled by train to Texas to reside with friends of the family. During her 5-year refuge in America, Beryl was sent to boarding school at the Washington Seminary for Young Ladies in Atlanta, GA, now Westminster School. After the war, she returned with her brother to England. The remainder of her education was at the Selhurst Grammar School for Girls and Clarks College, Croydon, England. Beryl went on to work for Radio Free Europe in New York from 1953-1956. She returned to London in 1956 where she worked in the Office of Special Investigations for The United States Air Force. Beryl eventually moved to Denver, Colorado between 1959-60 where she resided until 2000. She worked at the Federal Communications Commission, a U.S. Government agency in Denver as a Public Relations and Investigations Officer for nearly 30 years. Beryl, as you know, was very English. But Beryl also was a proud American Patriot. I once asked her if she ever wanted to live in England again. She said, No, it is much better here. Besides, I am a proud Patriot of this country. This country saved the lives of me and my brother for all that I know, and I am so thankful for this great country. Beryl was widowed after only one year of marriage. She reared her daughter on her own. She labored hard the whole of her life. She gave back to our nation through volunteering and mission work. She was a true American soldier and she was a soldier of Christ. She was a member of the Sovereign Order of the St. John of Jerusalem, Knights of Malta, and was invested as a Dame of the Order in 1985. The Knights of Malta were known chiefly for their hospice work and Beryl did her share of that. She fought until the end. She lived with cancer for at least a year before that night on which she was meant to move on. Beryl possessed a very strong faith, had high courage and an overwhelming conviction that she was called to do the Lord’s work in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. And so today I thank God for Beryl, who was one of a kind, a devoted member of this church, a dear friend, and a true soldier. Beryl was brave and she overcame all obstacles in her quest for truth and goodness.
         
Today we thank God for all men and women who have taken up the struggle to fight the good fight of life for the highest reasons and causes. We thank God for our veterans and their families. We thank God for the soldiers in the Christ-loving Army who give us reason to hope and inspiration to fight for what is right, good, and true. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin…But thanks be to God that giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. To have courage to fight the good fight is not easy. But we have heroes and saints who inspire us to sit on their shoulders and look ahead. With their help we look forward. For the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear the Son of Man’s voice: and shall come forth, they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life…Let us follow our heroes and saints and sacrifice ourselves to the Goodness that alone can lead us to God’s Kingdom. Amen.