But praised be the LORD, who hath not given us over for a prey unto their teeth. Our soul is escaped even as a bird out of the snare of the fowler; the snare is broken, and we are delivered. (Ps. cxxiv. 5,6) Easter Tide is all about avoiding those things that are contrary to our profession and follow such things as are agreeable to the same. (Collect EasterIII) We do this, of course, because if we have been admitted into the fellowship of Christ’s religion, this habit of life will ensure that our pilgrimage is sanctified and that we shall be saved. In Easter Tide, we undertake the hard labor of dying to our old selves and coming alive to the new life that we find in the Resurrected Christ. We die to ourselves as we petition God to show [us] that are in error the light of [His] truth. (Idem) Satan’s power must be banished. And all of this must come to us by the Grace of the Holy Spirit. Christ desires for us to partake of His Resurrection and participate in the New Life that He has won for us. But the power of hope and belief in His Resurrection involve a transition from one state to another – from sin to righteousness and from death to life, in rejecting Satan and embracing our Heavenly Father’s will. Thus, the Resurrected Christ invites us into a relationship that will deliver us to His Kingdom. But this is difficult. We are so at home in this world, in the realm of immediate gratification or its denial. The discomforts that threaten us would have been unimaginable to our ancestors, whose comforts were scarce. St. Peter’s exhortation this morning to become strangers and pilgrims (I St. Peter ii. 11) is now considered a tall order indeed. His insistence that we must abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul; having [our] conversation honest among the Gentiles (ibid, 11,12) strikes us more like the ludicrous last gasp of late Victorian piety. What is St. Peter talking about? Evidently, with lust now a virtue and with what was always considered unnatural and profane now in vogue, he must have been out of his mind. Poor, primitive St. Peter is no match for postmodern hedonism. Now, our old selves have not merely forgotten the secret things that belong to the Lord our God (Deut. xxix. 29), but we hold them in contempt. Of course, St. Peter lived in the then civilized world. Both Jew and Greek slave and free, lived in a world ruled and governed not only by Roman Law but a great deal of moral agreement about marriage, the family, and Natural Law. The best upright Roman would have found little wrong with the Jewish morality. More advanced Roman thinkers were intrigued to find that what they discovered about God through the study of nature, the Jews had by revelation as recording in their Sacred Scriptures. The success with which the Apostles converted the Greeks and Romans to Christ must be a testimony to a common need for a common cure for the ills of man in this world. Demonizing the ancient Greeks and Romans seems a fool’s errand. Both the Greeks and Romans were situated intellectually and spiritually to embrace Christ, the way, the truth, and life. (St. John xiv. 6) Needless to say, we do not find ourselves living in a world with the luxury of either Greco-Roman philosophy or Jewish revelation. Our world has surrendered to the worship of untamed and disordered appetites. The sanest of men can find rest in neither culture nor religion. The culture of the modern state is wholly corrupted by the protection of the irrational and unseemly. The churches have surrendered to the perverse and profane with an eye to profit. The words of the Psalmist ring truer than ever. THE foolish body hath said in his heart: There is no God. Corrupt are they and become abominable in their wickedness: there is none that doeth good. God looked down from heaven upon the children of men: to see if there were any that would understand and seek after God. But they are all gone out of the way, they are altogether become abominable: there is also none that doeth good, no not one. (Ps. liii. 1-4) For the power of God to liberate us effectually, we must declare spiritual war on this world and its ship of fools, who say there is no God. Fools trust in their wits and the stirrings of their hearts. He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool. (Prov. xxviii. 26) A fool despiseth wisdom and understanding. (Prov. i. 7) The fool rejects both the knowledge of God that comes from the study of nature and the faith that comes from revelation. Because he is at home in this world, he exults only in a temporary possession of happiness. Because it is convenient to his fleeting, idolatrous passions, he is glad to think that God, who moves all things and informs all things, remains unmoved by his sin. He has forgotten the wisdom in the wise man’s understanding: Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. (Ps. cxxxix. 7-100 The wise man warns us that we ignore the Invisible God because we have forgotten that we are strangers and pilgrims, not to be at home in this world but passing through to return to the God who is the source of all life and truth. The wise man knows that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. (Romans iii. 23) The wise man has believed and understood that God’s Invisible Wisdom, Power, and Love have come into the world to save sinful man in Jesus Christ. He has come, and He has gone. We come, and we too shall go. The wise man knows too that human life is made to be judged and measured by God’s life, light, and love in Jesus Christ for eternal happiness or eternal misery. In this Easter Tide, today Jesus says to us, ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. (St. John xv.20) Mourning and lamentation for the wise man do not disappear with the Incarnation. Rather, they comprise an essential moment in that spiritual movement whereby Christ carries us from the death to sin into new and Redeemed Human Life. St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that the wise Christian will be sad for three reasons. First, by sadness of evil, man is corrected. (Easter III: TA) When Christ promises to depart from us in the flesh, He will correct us inwardly and spiritually. Unless we mourn our sinful rejection of Him, the Resurrection virtue that Christ longs to infuse into our bodies and souls will remain dormant. Sorrow for our abandonment of His ever-present sacrificial love renews our passion for finding it anew. Second, by temporal sadness, man escapes eternal torment. (Idem) Temporal sadness is worth suffering when the reward is deliverance from Hell. Third, by a mean measure of justice, we acquire eternal joys. (Idem) Punishment through the just punishment for our sins now acclimates us to the virtue that leads to eternal joys. Then we begin to treasure the meaning of Christ’s lasting victory over our sins in this body of death. Temporary suffering will be converted into soaring desire for the exceeding and eternal weight of God’s glory. Jesus is teaching us that for so long as we are in these earthen vessels, with St. Peter, we must become strangers and pilgrims in this world. If we seek Him out amidst it all, His Invisible Presence will enable us to persist. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. (St. John xv. 4, 5) If Christ lives in us now Invisibly, our sorrows shall be transformed into the permanence of His joy in our hearts. He likens it to a woman who is pregnant or with child. A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world. And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you. (Ibid, 21, 22) The expectant mother endures all manner of suffering and sorrow in joyful expectation of her child’s birth. So too the wise man must endure the suffering and sorrow that accompany the conception of the Word of God in the womb of his soul before he is born again from above and by the Invisible God. John Calvin tells us that Christ means that the sorrow which we shall endure for the sake of the Gospel will be profitable. (J. Calvin: Comm.) St. Augustine reminds us that, At present, the Church is in travail with the longing for this fruit of all her labor…now she travails in birth with groaning, then shall she bring forth in joy; now she travails in birth through her prayers, then shall she bring forth in her praises. (John xvi) The end that we seek is the consolation of the Divine Presence. So, over and against ungodliness, St. Peter tells us that our incipient joy should be caught up with well doing, [that we] may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men, and not using [our] liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of God. (Ibid, 13) Christ tells us today, I will see you again, and you will rejoice. (St. John xvi. 22) If we believe in Him, He will take our bodies and souls into all joy, and others shall join us as strangers and pilgrims, visibly and truly embracing the love of the Invisible God, that no man shall take away from us. (Idem) Amen. ©wjsmartin Comments are closed.
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St. Michael and All Angels Sermons:
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