Media vita in morte sumus.
(In the midst of life, we are in death.)
 
Our opening quotation comes from a Medieval Gregorian Chant. It is an antiphon for sinners who habituate themselves to spiritual death. 10th century Swiss soldiers used it as a battle cry until nervous bishops banned it. Today it forms our introduction to the penitential season of Advent. Advent means coming. In Advent, we prepare for Christ’s coming at Christmas. The Sundays of Advent are all about Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell, or The Four Last Things. On this First Sunday of Advent, we focus on spiritual death.
        
Living as we do in a world that is materially minded, spiritual death strikes us as an odd and alien concept. The only kind of death that we post-moderns tend to think about is the extinction of the body. Because our god is chiefly creaturely comfort, death to us is its cessation. Because we fear only earthly death, we are addicted to doctors, drugs, and diets, hoping to postpone its inevitable arrival. But no matter how hard we try to delay and avoid it, sooner or later, earthly death will get the better of us. And for as long as we are consumed with trying to beat it, another truth emerges. Carelessly, we have neglected the condition of our souls. What if the Bible is correct and life goes on? What if we shall be judged for our choices, good for Heaven and evil for Hell? Then, shouldn’t we be more concerned about the character of our souls, in relation to God at best, or at least in relation to other men? And if we aim to be good in relation to God and man, shouldn’t we be more focused on dying to sin and vice and coming alive to virtue and goodness?
          
We cannot presume upon God’s Grace and take it for granted. Superficial faith presumes that we have no role in our salvation. Superficial faith never even begins to work out sin and work in righteousness. Superficial faith assumes that because God in Jesus Christ has done all the dirty work, bloodied His hands, and laid down His life for us, there is nothing for us to do. But the problem with this view of salvation is that it doesn’t involve us in any way, doesn’t redeem our fallen natures, and seems to save us magically despite ourselves. It makes a mockery of our created integrity. It would seem to suggest that we are so far gone, so sinful, that we can only be saved like mad dogs being pulled from the fire, in which case we are dogs and not men.

Of course, this lets us off too easily. It undermines our calling to discover the good and to love it. It misunderstands our fallen natures and the nature of sin. Sin is a choice for division from God and confusion, in place of unity and understanding.  Christ Himself says to us,
Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. (St. Matthew vii. 21)
 
And St. Paul reminds us that we must work out our salvation with fear and trembling. (Phil. ii. 12) And in his vision of the Second Coming, St. John the Divine hears the words of Christ again.
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. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne. (Rev. iii. 20,21)
 
Christ and His spokesman, St. Paul, hold us up to a standard. Christ implies that having found God, we will be saved only by doing the will of the Father. St. Paul insists also that having discovered God in Jesus Christ, we must work with Him. Again, Christ says that if we open the door of our hearts to Him for spiritual strength, we shall overcome evil. In each case, we have a role to play in our relationship with Christ. Christians believe that salvation has been won for us by the death of God’s own Son, Jesus Christ, and that we are invited to embrace Him through the Spirit. The work of salvation that is offered to man involves willingness, obedience, fear of the Lord, and labor that overcomes vice with virtue through suffering and spiritual death.

Death for the Christian is not essentially the termination of life in the body. Death for the Christian has been made new by Jesus Christ. Because Christ has conquered sin, death now has a new meaning. O death where is thy sting? O grave where is thy victory? (1 Cor. xv. 55) Christ went to the Cross for us to wage the final battle against sin, death, and Satan, and He conquered them all. For the Christian, death now becomes a spiritual work to be undertaken for salvation. The Christian is called to die to sin and come alive to righteousness. As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. (1 Cor. xv. 22) Adam willed death to God. Christ willed death to sin. We can choose either Adam or Christ. In Christ, we can obey God once again, willingly embrace His Grace, fear Him, and labor daily to die to sin.
             
In today’s Gospel, we study Christ’s labor for us as He enters into Jerusalem to embrace His death upon the Cross. Advent begins as a journey with Jesus up to death. Today, we are encouraged to find in Christ’s death a pattern for our own spiritual deaths. We read that Christ travels up to His death, meek and sitting upon an ass. (St. Matthew xxi. 5) Christ’s meekness, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, moderates anger. Meekness is a virtue that calms us in the face of evil and gives us courage to battle with sin spiritually. We must face spiritual death with meekness and courage. Too easily we become exasperated, resentful, and angry with our calling die a spiritual death. But Christ gives us a pattern for victory. If we would remember that He has conquered death and forbidden it to keep Him down, we might begin to see spiritual death as that virtue that is key to new life and salvation.
             
But too often we want to find a shortcut to Heaven that ignores Christ’s sacrifice in spiritual death to sin and His expectation of ours also. Notice what we read in our Gospel as Jesus entered Jerusalem.
And the multitudes that went before and that followed cried, Hosanna to the Son of David; Blessed is He that cometh in the Name of the Lord; Hosanna in the Highest. (ibid, 9)
 
We are fine with the Christ who rides meekly upon an ass into Jerusalem. We love to praise Christ and sing hosannas in the highest. But Christ insists that our joy and gladness must be tempered with suffering and death. As a precursor to the kind of death we must die, we read that Christ went into the Temple at Jerusalem and cast out those that bought and sold, overturning the tables of the money changers, and exclaiming, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves. (ibid, 13) Christ, the Son of God, who comes down from Heaven to save us, insists that prayer and not money-making will save us. We must wage war on sin and die to it, be it the false commerce of pseudo-religion in the temples of Jesus’ time or the lukewarm and superficial Christianity of our own. If we would follow Christ, we must be willing to go into battle and to die spiritually to all that stands between us and salvation.
             
In this morning’s Epistle, St. Paul likens the lives we have lived to sleep. Sleep is a state likened to death to God. Thus, he says that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. (Romans xiii. 11) We must awaken or come alive not because we were baptized and saved long ago, but because their worth must be tested for salvation or damnation every day! The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armour of light. (ibid, 12) We are called to the daily, heavy labor of casting off sin!  Let us walk honestly, as in the day, not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. (ibid, 13) Any creature comfort pursued to excess threatens to damn us! But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof. (ibid, 14) We must choose to be clothed with Christ and His goodness now if we hope to be saved, taming the flesh and its passions.
             
Today, you and I are called to move into a season that will be crowned with Christ’s birth at Christmas. To receive it truly, we must embrace His Death as the pattern of true human life. We must cast away the works of darkness and put upon us the armour of light. (Collect, Advent Sunday) Spiritual death is a hard work that must become the habit of our lives if Christ would move us through His goodness to the Kingdom. To welcome the Christ child into our souls at Christmas, we must remember that Christ was born to suffer and die. And we too are born to suffer and die, not in an earthy sense, which is death to God, but in a spiritual sense that is life to Him, beginning now, and forever.

Amen.
©wjsmartin
 
          
 
 

 
Wherby He shall be called, The Lord our Righteousness.
(Jeremiah xxiii. 6)
 
Today is Stir Up Sunday, and on it we prepare for a holy Advent that makes us ready for Christ’s coming to us on Christmas. Stir up we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people. (Collect, Stir Up Sunday) Advent is coming, a purple season, in which we repent and prepare for Christ’s coming to us again at Christmas time. Advent will call us to look within, that the Lord may stir up our self-honesty, confession, contrition, and compunction for our sins. Repentance will then enable us to know our need for the Birth of Jesus Christ in the world once again.

But we cannot be stirred up spiritually until we refresh our memories with a few practical details about the condition of our spiritual lives. We must remember that God has made us for Himself, and that humanity’s chief calling is the good of the soul and its reconciliation with God. Yet, we must acknowledge that our vocation is handicapped by sin. Reason and free will are distracted and discouraged. We are made to be stirred up in mind and heart, to discover, know, love, and obey God. But we tend to be stirred up over earthly and mundane, worldly and profane ends. We know God, we claim to follow Jesus, we want the Holy Spirit, and yet, if truth be told, we keep God in a box. What I mean is that the God we worship is but one small compartment in our lives. We pull Him out on Sunday, for roughly an hour, and then back He goes into the box until next week. Or, if we are pressed with trials or tribulations, we might pull him out occasionally, though this has become far less common than it used to be. God in a box tends to be an occasional occupation at best.
Of course, this is nothing new. Man’s history is replete with the habit of unholiness, being in love with this present world, neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm. And it isn’t helped that today’s churches seem bent on accommodating the world. The Pope of Rome blesses a giant ice cube at the Vatican to endorse Climate Change. The first official statement of the newly chosen female Archbishop of Canterbury insists that we must baptize illegal migrants. The Patriarch of the East gives new meaning to the notion that all is mystery and unknown. Non-denominational Protestants continue to sell the Prosperity Gospel. And the mass of men, if they notice, are not much interested.  

So, it is not small wonder that the theme of being stirred up spiritually on this Sunday Next before Advent largely falls on deaf ears. The world is always being stirred up by earthly demons who distract us with false gods to worship. The devices and desires of our own hearts seem to begin and end with earthly riches. Creaturely comfort, financial security, the future of our nation, and so forth, claim too much of our attention. Numbskulls wonder how they will be remembered when they are gone. Salvation is never mentioned because we don’t fear damnation. Heaven isn’t thought of because we’ve forgotten the fact that most men go to Hell.

But it must not be so for us. And we are helped in our determination to be stirred up today by Jeremiah the Prophet, the son of Hilkiah. He lived some six hundred years before the birth of Christ in a nation whose spirit had given way to unbelief, treachery, and despair. As a result of Judah’s spiritual decay and disintegration, the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzars conquered Israel and Judah from the east with little resistance. Israel and Judah’s spiritual corruption had yielded a moral vacuum. Idolatry made both nations vulnerable to foreign conquest from without. Because they loved the world more than God, their spiritual lives were decayed and dead. Because they neglected their first call and vocation, God gave them up both to the Babylonians and Satan.

And yet, Jeremiah the son of Hilkiah had not forgotten his first love. He was moved and stirred up by the ever-present Word of God. The Lord stirred him up to remember that he came from God and was made to return to Him. The Word of the Lord had said to him, Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee, and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. (Jer. i. 5) Jeremiah was stirred up to remember that the God of Judah and Israel, the Creator and Redeemer of the world, knew him and blessed him in the womb, and had called him to remind the Jews of their eternal calling and destiny. God stirred up Jeremiah to remind the Chosen People that they were specially called by God to future redemption and salvation.

BEHOLD, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS. (Jer. 23.5)
 
Jeremiah was stirred up to remind the Jews that God would save His people through the promise of a coming King. Jeremiah would stir up the Jews to believe that God would raise up a righteous branch from His Chosen People. He would prophesy the coming of a Jewish King who would bring judgment and justice to the earth. This King would judge them with mercy and righteousness. This King would enable man once again to know and love God for salvation.

On this Stir Up Sunday, you and I are called to remember that we come from God and were made for God. Like Jeremiah and the people in today’s Gospel, we ought to discover that we can never be made right with God until we feed from His Heavenly Hand. When Jesus then lifted up his eyes, and saw a great company come unto him, he saith unto Philip, Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat? (St. John vi. 5)  Jesus, the Jewish King, prophesied by Jerimiah, has come down from Heaven to reconcile us with God. He knows that as God’s Word made flesh, He alone can satisfy man’s inmost hunger and thirst for that lasting nutriment that strengthens man for God. Earthly and worldly things can never satisfy man’s spiritual hunger for true freedom and deliverance from sin. Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may take a little. (St. John vi. 7)

To be stirred up to hunger and thirst for what is more than the earth can give, we must seek out Heaven’s King and submit to His rule in all our lives. William Law says this.

True Christianity is nothing but the continual dependence upon God through Christ for all life, light, and virtue; and the false religion of Satan is to seek that goodness from any other source.
(William Law, The Power of the Spirit)
 
Our hearts must be stirred up to know that if our goodness comes from any source other than God in Christ, we are destined for Hell. Our life comes from God. Our light, truth, comes from God. Virtue, or goodness, to have any value, comes from God.  With Jeremiah, we must see how our sins have made a barren and desolate wasteland of death, darkness, and vice. Only Jesus Christ, God’s chosen heir, the Image and Likeness of God the Father, born of a woman by the Holy Ghost, can be that King who brings divine goodness and Heaven within our reach once again.

To be stirred up this day, we must, first, with the prophet Jeremiah, prepare for the coming of the Lord our righteousness with repentance. We must be determined to take a moral inventory, to confess our sins, and to admit that we have been stirred up in the pursuit of false gods. We must remember that we are not sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God. (2 Cor. iii. 5) We must remember that if we do not confess our sins, we shall have no excuses when it is too late to change, when time for salvation has run out. Second, we must remember what the Lord our Righteousness, Jesus Christ, has done for us already. The facts of Christ’s most holy life – from the Cratch to the Cross, from Bethlehem to Calvary and beyond – must claim our attention with deepest thanksgiving. Christ has done for us what we could never do for ourselves.

Through His most holy Incarnation, Christ has won our salvation. Third, and finally, in earnest, we must prepare to welcome Christ once again in our hearts and souls. The Christ of history intends to come alive in all ages, but most especially in our hearts and souls now for our salvation. Christ doesn’t want us to keep God in a box. Christ wants all of us for God. If our souls are stirred up to welcome Him, we shall remember that all of life is like Advent leading to Christmas, a coming that leads to Christ’s holy birth. Christ has come into history. Christ comes to us now. And Christ will come in the end times to judge both the quick and the dead. Let us pray to have faith in His Grace that our wills being stirred up to plenteously bring forth the fruit of good works, we might be plenteously rewarded not for the time being but forever because Christ has been born in us.   

Amen.
©wjsmartin
 

I thank my God…being confident of this very thing, that he who hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." - Phil. 1,3 - 6
 
Today we come together to examine the way that forgiveness received becomes love and hope that shape and mold our Christian lives. In today’s Epistle, St. Paul writes to the Church at Philippi. The Epistle was written during Paul’s final days of house arrest at Rome. In today’s reading he speaks of being in bonds. He has received a gift from the Christian Church at Philippi through Epaphroditus, who brought news of the state of the church in that place; Paul’s letter is a thank you note for the gift and a response to the news. It is full of good will and recollections of fond memories of times spent together. All this he writes, despite the fact he is in bonds and awaiting execution.
        
Philippi was a city in eastern Macedonia, founded by Philip, father of Alexander the Great, in the 4th century – some three hundred years before the birth of Christ. Later it was a Roman colony and was the scene of a great battle, in which Octavian (later Augustus) and Mark Anthony defeated Brutus and Cassius – the murderers of Octavian’s uncle Julius Caesar. Philippi was an important city because it stood at a break in the mountains where travelers would pass from Asia Minor and into Europe. In the Sixteenth Chapter of Acts, Paul had a vision telling him to pass into Macedonia. He and Barnabas set out, and the end-product was the conversion of Europe.
        
So, as we said, Paul writes from his imprisonment in Rome, where later he will be executed. And yet, in the midst of his suffering, with the executioner’s axe dangling over his head, he is writing a letter of friendship and spiritual comfort. And yet we wonder how he could be writing in such a spirit when his time on earth was about to come to an end. How can he give consolation to others when his own situation is so dire? How can he thank God for for their fellowship in the Gospel from the first day until now (Phil. i. 5) when violent death, no doubt, awaits him?
Paul persists in something greater. He prays that he who has begun a good work in them will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ? (Phil. i. 6) His attention is on his flock. His heart in on fire for their sanctification and salvation. It is meet for me to think this of you all. (Phil. i. 7) It is fitting that their sanctification and salvation are more significant than the suffering he was called to endure.
        
It seems so strange to us. It appears that Paul has embraced a far more meaningful reality, a deeper truth which moves his heart. Paul has experienced the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ from the same Lord who knocked him off his high horse years before when, as a devout Jewish Pharisee, he was on his way to Damascus to round up and persecute Christians. The Lord had need of Paul in the missionary conversion of the world. He had forgiven Paul much and was determined to use him for the conversion of the nations. And Paul, ever conscious of his own past, full of wicked malice, envy, and fraud, was now as determined as ever to serve his Lord until his life should end. The healing redemption that Christ had worked into his heart was the fuel and substance of his desire to save others from certain Hellfire and damnation.  The mercy and forgiveness of God was a gift he knew he never deserved, and with such great treasure he was intent upon sharing it with the world. Like his Lord, suffering and dying on the Cross and forgiving all his enemies, Paul would do the same. From the inward security of His soul, held captive by Jesus, he will die doing the Lord’s work. I have you in my heart, he says, inasmuch as both in my bonds, and in the defense and confirmation of the Gospel, ye are all partakers of my grace. (Phil. i. 7) Paul is made to receive and impart the unmerited Grace of God to others; this must quash any sense of narcissistic selfishness. Paul prays always, with the author of this morning’s Collect, that he may be freed from all adversities, and devoutly given to serve God in good works. (Collect Trinity xxii) Of utmost importance to Paul is the Grace that must take root in other men’s souls so that they too might go out to convert the nations.
        
We too are called to look back and ask ourselves if Jesus Christ has called us out of sin and into redemption. Of course, Christ always offers forgiveness to those who repent, turn, believe, and follow. And not everyone will experience St. Paul’s dramatic conversion. But we must ask ourselves if we have a real relationship with Christ that is redeeming us now for salvation later. Of course, this question is urgent since our eternal destiny depends upon it.
        
What we must focus on is the perfection of our souls by God’s Grace, in that part of our being that no man can threaten or kill. The Apostle Paul can love and hope, yearn and long for his flock’s salvation, in the face of his impending demise, precisely because he has opened his soul to the mercy of God, and given his life to the power of conversion. His soul is aware of a new kind of love that breaks all bounds and surmounts all barriers. Love’s power is perfect, its zeal unabated, and its expanse infinite. It is the Divine Love made flesh that speaks to the soul of St. Paul, forgiving his sins and reforming his life. Christ’s merciful presence, thankfully received, then becomes the love that longs for salvation – not only his own, but that of all others.

But just as his soul was moved and impelled to express Divine love, so too can ours be. For, as Christ offered himself to St. Paul in a habitual manner two-thousand years ago, he does the same for us individually and collectively in fellowship each Sunday. The problem is that so many Christians never get around to receiving him. And they have never received him because they have never meditated long and hard enough upon the need for God’s mercy, its infusion of forgiveness, for the subsequent transformation of human life. They have never been grateful because they have never sought out or received the forgiveness of sins. For erroneously they have thought that they have no sins needing forgiveness. But the man who admits to no sin, needs neither mercy, forgiveness, salvation, nor, evidently, Heaven. The man who admits to no sin will be rewarded for his stupidity. He will enter Hell, where he will know his sin, forever regret his failure to confess it, and be forgiven for salvation.

We come here to seek salvation. We repent of our sins and supplicate God’s forgiveness. In earthly terms we deserve none of it; but God insists upon it. God’s love is more powerful than our sins. The forgiveness of sins is, of course, chiefly found in the suffering and dying Lord Jesus. On His Cross, Christ was tempted most not to forgive. But He both loves and forgives. Unlike any other man who has ever lived, Christ, the innocent Son of God, loves and forgives precisely because this alone, made flesh, can save man.


Of course, if we are thankful and receive Christ’s love and forgiveness, it should be a principle that moves and defines our souls. In today’s Gospel Christ gives a parable of a man who was forgiven much by his earthly master. But no sooner was he forgiven than he refused to forgive another man of his debt to him. He was not thankful for the mercy and forgiveness of his lord. Forgetting it selfishly, no doubt with a sense of entitlement, its power died on the vine. But it must not be so with us. We must remain vigilant. We must confess our sins to receive Christ’s forgiveness. And we must remember that as oft as we confess our sins, Christ forgives us. If there were a limit to Christ’s forgiveness, there might be one for us also. But there isn’t. The point is that it is God’s nature to forgive to perfect His creature. Of course, there will be a time when the benefit of forgiveness ceases. Once we die, we can no longer repent to find the value of forgiveness for salvation.

In this morning’s Collect, we pray that [God’s] protection might free us from all adversities that we might be given to all good works. (Collect, Trinity XXII) The good works which must characterize our lives is found chiefly in forgiving all men their trespasses against us. (St. Matthew xviii. 35) For, with St. Paul, we must be consumed with awesome wonder over God’s eternal forgiveness of our sins. Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. If God’s Grace in Jesus Christ forgives us as many times as we sin, the same love must move us to love and forgive all others. We must work on perfecting our gratitude. Next, we must take every opportunity to share the truth. If we receive healing redemption as a gift, we must see that it is too great a gift to be hoarded. Forgiveness is generous and magnanimous. Without its power for us and all others, we perish.  

Amen.
©wjsmartin

 
Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe.
St. John iv. 48
 
          Have you ever noticed how many people live their lives in search of miracles? MOst men want God to prove that He exists. More than that, they want Him to overturn the normal course of human life with supernatural wonders that benefit them. Most men –including no small number of Christians, await the one miracle that they think will confirm their belief or relieve their so-called earthly suffering. And yet how strange it is that no sooner are the miracles performed than their recipients will fall back into practical atheism and ingratitude. The happiness that miracles bring wears off almost as quickly as a new pair of shoes. And it’s not buyer’s remorse but a sign that those who seeks for signs and wonders are intellectually and spiritually lazy.
         
We find this in today’s Gospel. Jesus has just finished rebuking men for being miracle-seekers. We read that Jesus came again into Cana of Galilee, where he made water wine. And there was a certain nobleman whose son was sick at Capernaum… [who]went unto him, and besought him that he would come down and heal his son, who was at the point of death. (St. John iv. 46, 47) Jesus had just finished teaching the heretical Samaritans, who had been much more interested in what he said than in proving anything to them by way of miracles. But now back in Jewish Galilee, where Jesus made water into wine, He is confronted once again by a miracle-seeker. The Jews seem far more interested in ephemeral signs and wonders than with the Word which He longs to save them. So, Jesus is approached by a nobleman who entreats the Lord to come down to heal his son. Jesus rebukes the nobleman, saying Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe. (Ibid, 48) Jesus is clearly annoyed. Would that one Jew might ask Him to heal a soul. Would that the nobleman were concerned about his son’s spiritual state and future destiny. At any rate, the nobleman exclaims Sir come down, lest my child die. (Ibid, 49) Like the Galilean Jews, his hope hangs on extending earthly life. And, because he has no deeper sense of the transcendent and invisible power that can heal a man either from a distance or in a deeper, inward, and spiritual way, he demands that Jesus come down to his house. The end he seeks and the means to it are wholly caught up in the flesh.
         
In short, the man is rebuked for thinking first and foremost of his son’s physical and earthly healing. Signs and wonders are paranormal events sought out by those weak in faith for the relief of physical disease. Because he is so moved and defined by the earthly good, he takes no thought for his son’s spiritual future. If he knew who Christ was and what He was bringing into the world, he would have asked Jesus to come down to heal his son spiritually, so that he might die a good death in anticipation of a better reward in the future. Nevertheless, having rebuked the man, Jesus will not leave him without any hope.
         
Jesus will take the man in that state that he finds him and make him better. He knows that in the future, wherever and whenever this story would be told, there will be ample opportunity to find spiritual truth in it. To earthly problems, Jesus always brings spiritual remedies. Jesus takes this man’s earthly desire and transforms it to his spiritual advantage. The nobleman is not bereft of good intentions or even virtue. He loves his son and is determined to find whatever means necessary to save him from too early an earthly demise. He believes that Jesus alone has the power to heal where the physicians had failed. But he tries to tell Jesus how to heal his son – by coming down to his house. We ought not to tell Jesus how to do his work.

If his son is anything like him, they are both in need of the true spiritual healing that only Jesus can provide. So Jesus says to him, Go thy way, thy son liveth. (St. John iv. 50) Jesus means for the nobleman to trust in His Word and believe it to discover its power. To his credit, the nobleman does not hesitate with doubt or question Jesus any further. And the man began his journey home, putting his trust in the words Jesus had spoken to him. (Ibid, 50)

What is truly miraculous is not so apparent in our casual reading of the text. Notice how the nobleman is trusting in the Word that Jesus speaks. Jesus would not come down to his house and yet would work a miracle. Archbishop Trench reminds us that His confidence in Christ’s word was so great that he proceeded leisurely homewards. It was not till the next day that he approached his house, though the distance between the two cities was not so great that the journey need have occupied many hours; but ‘he that believeth shall not make haste.’ (Trench, Miracles, p. 93). The man is rebuked. Something has begun to stir in our miracle-seeker’s soul at the gravity of Jesus’ command. Christ’s Word has slowed him down and moved him to wonder. When Jesus speaks, he hears, obeys, and trusts. The spoken Word has conquered and subdued his unbelief, fear, and doubt. This hearer’s belief rests in the spoken Word. The real miracle is the birth of the nobleman’s faith in the Word which had transformed his spiritual character and disposition. The nobleman had forgotten that he needed Jesus to come down to his house. Rather, Christ has come down to his soul, intending to heal his heart. With this, all other things will fall into place. As St. John Chrysostom says, The nobleman’s narrow and poor faith is being enlarged and deepened (Trench, Mir’s. 93) as he hastens home slowly under the protection of Christ’s Word.
         
So, as the nobleman returned home, his servants met him saying, thy son liveth. Then inquired he of them the hour that he began to amend. And they said, yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him. (St. John iv. 51, 52) The nobleman’s question confirms his belief that the healing of his son had been instantaneous. The son did not begin to amend, but rather the fever left him completely the day before when Jesus had said thy son liveth. Jesus’ Word brings about two miracles. That Word had cured his son immediately from a distance. That same Word becomes dearer to the man than his son’s life. Its strength and might have subdued and conquered his fear. That selfsame Word traveled two distances. It healed the flesh of the son in an instant. It converted the soul of the father in the steady progress of a longer journey home.
         
St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us that we should prepare our souls through prayer and come to God through our desires. For this is what the [nobleman] did. (Comm. Joh. iv) Prayer is the first movement of the self towards God. Desire is the faculty that seeks out the healing that Christ alone can bring. Of course, our chief prayer should be for spiritual healing. Rather than focusing on earthly miracles, we ought to pray for the spiritual and heavenly purification of our affections. Again, with St. Thomas, as the nobleman desired the healing of his son, so we should desire to be healed from our sins. ‘Heal my soul, for I have sinned against thee.’ (Ps. xl. 5) (Ibid) Next, like the nobleman we ought always to be desperately persistent, since without Christ’s Grace, we cannot help ourselves. The nobleman’s son was close to physical death; we, like his father, are near to spiritual death. So, we must pray to Jesus, Sir, come down, before I die in my sins. We must pray always, and not lose heart. (Idem)
         
Of course, while we must run in haste to find healing from the Lord, with today’s nobleman we must embrace patience as our trust and obedience in Jesus matures. That we desperately need His healing power is one thing. That it takes time is another. Jesus says to the nobleman and us, Go away. Go away, thy son liveth. (Idem) He means for us to go away for our souls still live. We must learn to obey, trust, and believe. If we do, Christ will give us patience. Patience teaches the nobleman that he must put on the whole armour of God to stand against the wiles of the devil because we wrestle [not] against flesh and blood, but against principalities… powers… the rulers of darkness in this world. (Eph. vi. 10,11) What really threatens us is that temptation to evil that would so fill us with fear over earthly  that we forget whether our souls are alive to God for Heaven or dead to God for Hell!
        
Needless to say, Christ will not heal all children on the verge of death. To die young is not a tragedy but part and parcel of a world in which earthly death will get us all. The real tragedy is found in man’s fallen will when he refuses to get right with God. The nobleman’s son might have been saved from earthly death only to die a year later. Or the nobleman himself might have died shortly after his son’s healing. In either case, whatever might have transpired after, we know not. What we do know is that the nobleman believed along with his whole house, (ibid, 54) now prepared to die a good earthly death at whatever time because they were alive to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
©wjsmartin

See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools,
But are wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
(Ephesians v. 15, 16)

In this morning’s Epistle, St. Paul exhorts the Ephesians and us to walk circumspectly. Circumspection comes to us from the Latin word circumspecere. It means to look around, to be cautious and watchful. St. Paul is urging his Greek audience to proceed with caution. Of course, St. Paul uses the word walk in a spiritual manner, and he means proceeding with wisdom and prudence supplicating God…through [His] bountiful goodness…to keep us from all things which may hurt us. (Collect, Trinity XX) We must walk circumspectly, being ready both in body and soul to cheerfully accomplish those things which [God] wouldest have done. (Idem) Otherwise, we turn into fools. Fools do not embrace Divine Providence. They are swift to speak and slow to hear. (St. James i. 19) Fools are consumed with the things of this world, refuse to see the world in and for God, and hang upon what is impermanent and uncertain.
         
Circumspection is fueled by God’s wisdom so that we might not play the part of fools. Wise men know that the world around us is full of temptations to gluttony and greed. Because the world belongs to God, everything in it is to be used in His service for salvation. Utility forbids excess. Excess bespeaks idolatry. Thus, wise men learn how to redeem the time. Redeeming the time is the best use of this world in preparation for the next.

St. Paul tells us this morning that we are called to be not unwise but understanding what the will of Lord is…and to be filled with the Spirit. (Ibid, 18) But what is the nature of this filling? Paul Claudel tells us that

the Holy Spirit is ardent, luminous, and quickening by turns, who fills man and makes him aware of himself, of his filial position, of his weakness, of his discontent in his state of sin, of his dangers, of his duty, his unworthiness and the inadequacy of everything around him.

The Holy Spirit enables us to find ourselves in Jesus Christ. We come to understand our need for Christ because everything around us is inadequate. Neither food, drink, sex, nor money can save and deliver us from sin. Neither can they enable us to embrace the spiritual goodness and virtue that are necessary for our return to God.  
         
God’s Providence reveals to us how He sees us and how He intends to redeem us. Providence means seeing into things and grasping their meaning. Circumspection leads us to learn how God sees us and intends to help us to reach him. Jesus illustrates it in this morning’s Gospel. The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son, and sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding….(St. Matthew xxii. 2) God sees us as those in need of an invitation and considers us important and worthy enough to ask us to a great occasion. He invites us to the nuptials of his son. Through the Holy Spirit, God sends out invitations through His servants. Yet we read that those invited would not come. (Ibid) A second invitation is sent out because God knows our weaknesses, and He thinks that this might stir us to the urgency of the event. But we read that those who were invited, made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise, and the remnant took his servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them. (Ibid, 5, 6)

The Parable really speaks first about those who are too busy to make any time for God and His gracious invitations. It reveals also how sinful we human beings are since, with those in the parable, we violently reject Him by slaying His messengers. When we violently put ourselves before God and his generosity, God the Father will sends forth his armies of angels to destroy us and burn up [our] city. (Ibid, 7) Fools always bring on their own destruction. Those who cannot be bothered with God, who have better things to do, or who resent the presence of God in life, will be rewarded for their foolishness. They may be fair-weather Christians who are neither hot nor cold, lazy pagans who are spiritual but not religious, or they may be card-carrying Atheists who, for whatever reason, hate God for His love. In either case, those who have no time for God will be rewarded with destruction, or Hell.

But before we get too excited about what this means for us churchgoers, we must read the rest of the Parable. God’s wisdom and love are still alive in the hearts of His friends through the Holy Spirit. He sends them out again. 

Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage. So those servants went out into the highways, and gathered together all as many as they found, both bad and good: and the wedding was furnished with guests. (Ibid, 9, 10) 

Remember, with those first invited, some have refused to come and some have become violent with the messengers. Now the invitation is extended to new guests who will be found in the highways, no doubt a reference to workers, the poor, the uneducated, strangers and foreigners, outcasts, and even notorious sinners like us. The new guests are all those who live in the world, both bad and good, whom God wants for Himself. 
But what do we read next?

And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment:  and he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless. (Ibid, 11-14) 
 
What is this business about the wedding garment? It seems that in the end, both the bad and the good, not playing the fool, but walking into the wedding with circumspection, must be clothed with a spiritual disposition that seeks God’s Grace. St. Gregory the Great tells us that this wedding garment is charity, or the love of Christ offered to the Bride. 

The wedding garment is that charity of God which adorns the soul with God’s Grace. Those who have charity have been clothed with love and are thankful for it. They are more thankful because they know themselves to be unworthy of the invitation. After all, they might have been left in the highways, trudging along as those who might never have received such an invitation, and never to know the gifts of the king.

So, the man not wearing the wedding garment had not put on the adornment of the new and spiritual man. (R. C. Trench, The Parables, The Marriage of the King’s Son.) He thought himself good enough to have been invited, and he rested in his own goodness. He was a taker and not a giver. Because he did not walk circumspectly, surveying the landscape, he forgot the generosity of the giver, and did not imagine what the king might have in store for his future. He had learned too late that the king called him friend for a reason.
 
St. Paul insists that those of us who have been invited to the wedding of God’s Son must walk circumspectly, redeeming the time. This is St. Paul’s way of saying that we must be clothed with a wedding garment. The wedding garment is an inward and spiritual state of gratitude, prudence, and moral effort. To be clothed in the wedding garment means to participate in the wedding and learn what it means. That the king does not rebuke his messengers for bringing this man to the wedding tells us that the wedding garment is not physical clothing. Rather, the king is concerned with the clothing of the soul. He sees the thoughts of this man’s heart, whether he was circumspect or not, prepared to redeem the time or not, inwardly intending to be clothed with gratitude to the king or not. If we are not clothed in the wedding garment, we are left speechless. Then said the king to the servants, bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Ibid, 13)

Today, if we are circumspect, we shall begin to redeem the time. Many are called but few are chosen. (Ibid, 14) They are chosen who are clothed with righteous zeal for God, consecrating the time and returning His love. If we put on the wedding garment, we shall be given moral strength, our characters will be redeemed, and we shall be ready to bear all adversities and suffer gladly, with renewed vigor as we discover our new lives with and for Jesus Christ, the bridegroom. God intends for us to clothe ourselves with His love. Of course, the wedding feast is an image of our communion with Jesus. This communion will reveal Christ’s faithfulness to us, His bride. We will even go with our beloved to His Cross where we will learn of His love for us to the point of an unjust death. If we remain faithful to Him in love, He will keep us fast at His side and lead us through death and into resurrection and return to God. Then, rather than playing the part of fools, by His Grace we shall have been wise for salvation.

Amen.
©wjsmartin