​                   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. i. 6)
            

In the lections appointed for this morning’s service, we are presented with an excerpt from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Philippi is in modern-day Macedonia, north of Greece and east of Italy. The church in Philippi was the first to be established on European soil, with which Paul maintained very good relations throughout his missionary career. The passage that we read is upbeat, which is curious for those who know when and under what circumstances it was written.
Tradition tells us that this letter was written at the end of Paul’s life, when he was imprisoned in Rome, awaiting trial during the reign of the notorious Emperor Nero. Paul was under house arrest and wrote a letter full of hope, thanksgiving, and love. Paul is consumed with Jesus Christ, whom he receives continually through the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. Paul is determined to pass on the presence of Christ Jesus to his followers, with the minor distraction of his imminent execution!

No matter: St. Paul is uplifted by his church plant at Philippi. He is filled with thanksgiving for Lydia, the maker of purple, and Christ’s first European convert. Lydia haled from Thyatira but had relocated to Philippi for business purposes. Thyatira was famous for having been a chief center in the Roman Empire for the indigo trade. Indigo is the plant that provides purple ink for coloring clothing and paint for all artisans. The color produced from indigo was costly and thus became the symbol of kingly power and prestige in the Ancient World. Archeologists have found remnants of inscriptions telling us of the Dyers’ Guilds of Thyatira. Lydia was, to our knowledge, wealthy from her trade in indigo. She first met St. Paul on his Second Missionary Journey to convert the Gentiles. St. Luke tells us in his Acts of the Apostles that when he, St. Paul, and their company of fellow Evangelists arrived in Philippi:

…On the sabbath we went out of the city by a riverside, where prayer was wont to be made; and we sat down, and spake unto the women which resorted thither. And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God, heard us: whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul. And when she was baptized, and her household, she besought us, saying, If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house, and abide there. And she constrained us. (Acts xvi. 13-16)
 
Lydia constrained the Apostles, and we believe that the itinerant Evangelists were more than slightly embarrassed that a woman of such means and nobility would invite them to lodge in her lordly Roman manor. That Lydia was a worshipper of God means that she was probably a Righteous Gentile. Lydia is a Greek name meaning noble one. So, they took up her offer and began to establish the Church at Philippi in her opulent home. This was perhaps the first Church-House outside of Jerusalem. Lydiawas ready and willing to receive Jesus as the Messiah, was baptized with her whole house, and the rest is history. The Church of Lydia’s House went on not only to expand and grow, but it also opened its collective heart and coffers to Paul when he was preaching in Thessalonica and when he was imprisoned at Rome. St. Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians is a letter of hope, love, and thanksgiving for the Church at Philippi in Lydia’s home. 

Still, we are astounded at St. Paul’s spiritual centeredness with a ball and chain around his ankle, awaiting his impending execution at the hands of the Romans. His love of God with a grateful heart is truly a powerful treasure. His spiritual riches consist of zeal, courage, faith, hope, and love. Paul is under house arrest, and his trusted friend St. Timothy is by his side. Addressing the Philippians, he writes, I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you, making my prayer with all joy. (Idem, 3) St. Paul’s letter reflects a life of conversion, sanctification, and salvation and his treasure is given to others. He thanks God, because God had shared his faith, hope, and love with those who opened their hearts and souls to the reality of God with us, Jesus Christ. He thanks God because his new family is an extension of his own redeemed life. He is filled with all joy because his brethren at Philippi continue to tradition or hand over the faith once delivered to the Saints, (Jude i. 3) even as he suffers unjustly at the hands of Nero. He reminds them that God has begun the good work of his Holy Spirit in them. He encourages them to cultivate the good work begun in them, the new life as the riches of God’s salvation in Jesus Christ. The work that God has begun at Philippi, Paul insists, will be perfected, and brought to completion if his friends remain faithful to the Lord Jesus and hope in His promises. St. Paul is overcoming Lydia’s earthly wealth with God’s spiritual treasure.
            
St. Paul then introduces a concept that invites his friends to take on his burden. Paul, in his suffering, takes in with joy the presence of Jesus Christ in the church at Philippi. He says, I have you in my heart; inasmuch as both in my bonds, and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, ye are all partakers of Grace. For God is my witness how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. (Phil. i. 7) Paul asks his friends to take on the burden of his love, which conquers all suffering.In other words, he asks those who are not facing imminent death to identify with his struggle, to hold him up in prayer, to put his weakness into their hearts, that their faith might give him grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews iv. 16) Paul insists that burden-bearing strengthens the faith of those who bear it and the one who suffers. Burden-bearing will become the norm for Christian in centuries to come, as those whose faith is perfected in the unjust suffering of others.

St. Paul imitates his Master and Lord. Jesus Christ hangs on the Cross at Calvary and holds his friends and even His enemies in the center of His heart. Jesus takes on the burdens of sin, suffering, and death, with no just cause in earthly terms. He takes on the joy and sadness, weaknesses, and strengths of those who trust in Him. He says Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you…my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Though painful and hard, Christ takes on the burden as His joy, His honor, and His privilege for us. Christ Jesus has taken on the burden of all mankind. The Lord takes on St. Paul’s weakness and fear. In turn, St. Paul takes on the burdens of others. Against his suffering, in Christ, he invites the Church at Philippi, rich in earthly things, to discover spiritual treasure. Hold me in your hearts; pray for me; ask the Lord to strengthen and help me. St. Paul asks his flocks to lift him up in prayer.
            
Burden-bearing is possible only because men realize that Christ has first born our burden of all sin. From the Cross He holds men in His heart, He forgives them their sins, and invites them onto the road that leads to salvation. Jesus Christ is the Forgiveness of Sins made flesh. He brings our sin to death. He rises from death and is ready to come alive in as many as will receive Him. Because St. Paul has been forgiven much, he can pass on Jesus Christ to others. Once, he persecuted the Church. Now he will give his life for it. St. Paul reckons himself to be dead indeed unto sin but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Rom. vi. 11) Now, he prays for the salvation of his sheep at Philippi because, though in bonds, he has them in his heart. (Idem)
            
In today’s Gospel, we read of the forgiveness of sins and our need to forgive always. If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 St. John i. 8, 9) If we repent us of our sins and forgive all others, our Heavenly Father will forgive us. St. Paul embraces the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ, in a dramatic volte face or reversal of attitude that converted and saved him from his journey into Hell. The forgiveness of sins, Jesus Christ, is now resurrected in Paul; he extends it to his oppressors with mercy, compassion, and long-suffering. In today’s Gospel, Peter asks Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven. (St. Matthew xviii, 21) In Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, Portia has this to say about mercy and forgiveness.
                              The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
                              It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
                              Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
                              It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
                                             (The Merchant of Venice, Act-IV, Scene-I, Lines 173-195)
 
God’s mercy and love are made flesh as the Forgiveness of Sins in Jesus Christ. It blesses those who give it and those who receive it. It is of God’s nature to give it for as long as anyone lives. It falls from God’s heart as naturally as the gentle rains fall from the skies. It falls into humble and lowly hearts which will receive it, emptied of pride and vanity, resentment, envy, and fear. It blessed St. Paul. His flock at Philippi returns it to his oppressors in joyful hope from grateful hearts for his ministry. Its quality overcomes all attempts by vengeful unbelievers to kill Christ’s Apostles. 
            
Today, we ask God to help us receive His forgiveness. We pray that the forgiveness of sins might be resurrected in us as it was in Lydia and the Philippian Church. We long to embrace the new life in Jesus Christ. As Charles Williams reminds us,

The new knowledge [in Jesus Christ] is to lose all recollection of past sin; it will be remembered neither in Heaven nor on earth; the Kingdom of the Lord is free from it. The new knowledge…is to be instinctive and natural, a lovely habit, a practice of joy…it is to be in the flesh of man and in his heart.
 
Amen.
 

But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in 
the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, 
looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. (St. Jude 20)

Today we celebrate the Feast of Saint Simon and Saint Jude. Both are of the original Twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ. Of each, we know scarcely anything. Saint Simon is mentioned four times in the New Testament and then only in a list of the other Apostles. Saint Jude is mentioned six times – one of the twelve three times, as the half-brother of Jesus twice, and as the author of his own Epistle once. Unfortunately, we have very little history upon which to establish a foundation for a theme. Our 1928 Book of Common Prayer revisers make it even more difficult since they replace the Epistle Lesson from St. Jude with that of Ephesians ii.
        
Of course, the reason that the revisers changed the Epistle in 1928 was that St. Jude had to change his intended theme of our common salvation to address the more pressing matters of Christian Morality. So perhaps this might be today’s theme! As many of you know, St. Jude’s Epistle speaks of the wrath to come for those who are willfully living in notorious sin. St. Jude writes in earnest to a community of Christians who are surrounded by pervasive immorality that threatens to carry them away from the faith once delivered to the saints. (St. Jude 3) He exhorts them to contend earnestly for [this] faith to make place for the common salvation which they must embrace. (Idem) The common salvation is the work of Christ – the activity by which Christians embrace Christ’s work through the Holy Spirit in their daily lives. Again, perhaps we might join St. Jude today in studying the wrath to come for wicked sinners and the lukewarm saints who enable them!

What is worrisome to St. Jude is that his flock of Christians is very much in danger of being swept up into the surrounding sins of a culture that is bent on its own idolatry. He even suggests that his brood has been negligent, distracted, unfocused, and not centered on the all-sufficient work of the dying Saviour! Why else would he say that there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ? (Ibid, 4) His congregation has been asleep at the spiritual wheel. Its members have not thought sufficiently on the nature of Christ’s sacrifice and the victory that His death has won for all men in all time. His flock is not vigilant against the kinds of sins that lead to perdition and everlasting fire. They may not be committing the sins themselves, but they are enabling others who acquiesce in them by not calling their brothers and sisters to account at the Judgment seat of Christ. Who am I to judge? They might just as well have said. And in so doing, they miss the point of Gospel Truth. We are Christians is the answer. And we are to judge and detect and recognize sin for what it is.

Furthermore, we are to love our fellow brethren enough to pray for them and then find a way to communicate our spiritual concern over their spiritual negligence. It is not only Christian duty to call out sin for what it is but also to love and care for others enough that we earnestly attempt to help them out of it! If we do nothing for those about us who are living in notorious sin, we shall be called to account on the Great Day of Judgment for not having told the truth to our brethren.
Belief or faith for St. Jude calls Christians into the spiritual character of living that must never rest comfortably close to excessive and perverse sin. By way of contrast, St. Jude warns his flock about flirting with might very well be eternally contagious.

I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not. And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities. Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee. (Ibid, 5-9)
 
Those who do not believe in deliverance from slavery to sin and sinners will be destroyed. Those who take their eyes off God their Saviour, who are distracted and detained by sinners and their sin have in all truth left their own habitation (Idem) or their true spiritual home and the source of their nurture. They will be rewarded with the chains of slavery, that will find no final liberation from darkness. If they dally and flirt with fornicators and those who go after strange flesh (Idem) in adultery, homosexuality, lesbianism, in transsexuality, and transgenderism, and join those who mock, deride, ridicule, and despise moral virtue that conquers all vice in human life, their reward will be the vengeance of eternal fire. (Idem) And thus, to effectively disarm the enemy, St. Jude exhorts us to follow the example of St. Michael in rebuking Satan. The implication is that we must have the courage and determination to follow St. Paul’s advice in relation to all sin:

Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth…above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God: praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit….(Ephesians vi. 13-18)

St. Jude tells us that the sinners we should avoid speak evil of those things which they know not: but what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves. (Ibid, 10) He says that they have no fear of God before their eyes, are full of hot air that can neither fertilize, grow, nor nourish virtue. Their sexual sin can bear no fruit and cannot fulfill the purposes of God’s intention for their bodies. Their sin is sterile, lifeless, and barren. Their bodies have forsaken the Natural Law as their souls retreat to the law of despair that forever derides God’s good loving power to heal. These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts; and their mouth speaketh great swelling words, having men’s persons in admiration because of advantage. (Ibid, 16) They are full of gossip, bellyaching, and bewailing their lot in life, flattering as they desperately attempt to secure a safe-space from what they conceive as spiritual oppression. We should be wholly disturbed by such sinners and their sins. My zeal hath even consumed me; because mine enemies have forgotten thy words. (Ps. cxix. 18, 139) 

St. Jude exhorts us, in these last days, to separate ourselves from these mockers of Jesus Christ who walk after their own ungodly lusts. (Ibid, 18) He insists that we must do so since they have not the Spirit of God. (Ibid, 19) They have rejected the hope for conversion and have and have sinned against the Holy Ghost. (1 John v. 6) We must pray that in some great way God might slay them in the Spirit and, in His time, to offer some tangible help. St. Jude continues:
But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And of some have compassion, making a difference: and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh. (Ibid, 20-23) 
        
St. Jude exhorts us to have courage and zeal. The zeal brings us back to St. Simon. Simon was called The Zealot. The Zealots stood wholly against Jews who worked for the Romans. Yet Simon was called to love them still and desire their conversion. St. Jude gives him the principles of courage and charity with which to proceed.

Today we praise God for the loving courage of St. Jude and the zeal of St. Simon. St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that zeal is a derivative of ‘delos’ –to boil or ‘to throb with heat’. With St. Thomas Aquinas, this is ‘a necessary effect of love’ and ‘the vehement movement of one who loves to secure the object of his love’. (S.T.A.: Summa Theoligica, i. ii, 28. Iv) Zeal arises from an intensity of love. (Idem) So, St. Jude doesn’t hate God’s enemies. He desires their salvation. We must tread carefully in association with them. Over-familiarity is of the Devil and threatens our commitment to Christ’s moral goodness. Still, we must pray for those who seem hell-bent on Satan’s possession. St. Thomas says also that it is evident that the more intensely a power tends to anything, the more vigorously it withstands opposition or resistance. Since therefore love is "a movement towards the object loved," as St. Augustine says (QQ. 83, qu. 35), an intense love seeks to remove everything that opposes it. (Idem) We must vigorously withstand the opposition of all sin. Our intense love for sinners’ salvation will be more likely to remove their opposition to God’s Desire in us if they see that we love them superficially. St. Jude and St. Simon spent their lives conquering the world courageously with the zeal of God’s love. In the end, both were martyred for the faith. Both were zealous for sinful man’s wholeness, the full activity of his moral and spiritual powers, gaining salvation here and now, looking to a future in a perfected supernatural life. (The Christian Year in the Times, p. 281) Let us join with them come what may. With John Henry Newman,

Let us seek this praise which cometh of God. Let us seek it, for it is to be obtained; it is given to those worthy of it. The poorest, the oldest, and the most infirm amoung us, but are despised and forgotten, who seem to answer no good purpose by living on, and whose death will not be felt even by their neighbors as a loss, these even may obtain our Saviour’s approving look, and receive the future greeting, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’ 

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. St. Paul is urging his Greek audience to look around before walking. Of course, St. Paul uses the word walk in a spiritual manner. By walking, Paul means moving through wisdom and prudence so that Almighty God…through [His] bountiful goodness…may 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. Foolish men do not embrace the Divine Providence for their lives. They are swift to speak and slow to hear. (St. James i. 19) Consumed with the things of this world, they hang upon what is impermanent and uncertain. Fools do not see the world in and for God.  
         
We are not called to be fools, but wise men. Wise men know that the world around us is full of temptations to gluttony and greed. Wise men see that the world is not theirs but 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. Wisdom bids us to use our time in this creation chiefly for Heaven’s interest in us. Wise men can come to believe that the eternally begotten Son of God, who creates and informs all things, is the same Jesus Christ who longs to reconcile all men to God’s Providence. Wise men see that creation is God’s, man is God’s, and that both can be perfected through Christ’s redemption of the time.     

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 describes it this way:

It is the Holy Spirit –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, and also of his unworthiness and the inadequacy of everything around him. Through man the world inhales God, and through him God inhales the world….and continually renews his knowledge of it.
 
The wisdom of God is Jesus Christ made present to us through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit enables us to remember ourselves in Jesus Christ. We come to understand our need for Christ and His Sacrificial Death, and for the ongoing work of His Resurrected Life. Yet the Holy Spirit desires to give us more than just wisdom or knowledge. Through the Holy Spirit, we can inhale God and begin to find ourselves in the habit and activity of God the Father’s Word, Jesus Christ, who possesses all meaning and definition for our human nature.
         
But how can we be inhaled by God and then inhale Him? It sounds strange to our ears. Claudel is using an image to illustrate how God’s Wisdom and Love can forever define our redemption of time.You see, the Holy Spirit desires that such wisdom should indwell our hearts and change our lives. God’s Providence reveals to us how He sees us and how He intends to redeem us.

We see another picture of the process in this morning’s Gospel Parable. In it, Jesus illustrates our end as a marriage feast that we should prepare to attend. 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) The king is God the Father who always prepares us, if we are willing, for the marriage feast of His Son, Jesus Christ, in the end times. The Son is the Holy Bridegroom, and He desires the Church to become His Bride. God, through the Holy Spirit invites all human beings to feast on His wisdom and His love. Through the Holy Spirit, God sends out invitations through His servants. Yet we read that they would not come. (Ibid) A second invitation is sent out. God never ceases in His determination to inhale us. 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 be inhaled by God’s Holy Spirit. It speaks also about those whose resentment leads them to violently reject it by slaying those who bring God’s gracious invitation. In response to their foolish obstinacy, we read that in the end times, God the Father will send forth his armies of angels to destroy [the] murderers and burn up their city. (Ibid, 7) The real fools are those who 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 His creation as their only true Redeemer, 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. At any rate, not wanting to be inhaled by God, their desire will be rewarded, and they shall be exhaled forever. 

But before we get too excited about what this means for us –since, presumably, we come to church to inhale God, we had better read the rest of the Parable. What do we find? God’s wisdom and love are still alive in the hearts of His friends through the Holy Spirit. So, 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) Down through the ages, the friends whom God has inhaled are always carrying His desire to the nations. To the marriage feast, they bring in men and women who are both bad and good. They are sinners submitting to God’s Grace, attempting to redeem the time, as they allow Him to work the bad out and work the good into their lives.  They are not yet perfect but are daily dying to sin and coming alive to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans vi. 11) These are honest men and women who come to Church so that Christ can wash away their sins and fill them with His righteousness. 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, there must be a judgment between the bad and the good, those who have redeemed the time and those who have not. God always inhales the bad and the good but the bad had not reciprocated God’s love. St. Gregory the Great tells us that this wedding garment is charity, or the love of Christ offered to the Bride. Many come to church with faith but have not exhaled by putting on Christ with faith in His charity. (Hom. xxxviii) They have not the adornment of the new and spiritual man, as Archbishop Trench insists. (R. C. Trench, The Parables, The Marriage of the King’s Son.) Again, with Trench, they are despisers, counting themselves good enough in themselves, in the flesh and not the Spirit, to appear before God. (Idem)Because they have not exhaled God’s loving Providence in Jesus Christ, they have despised His Spirit, who alone can redeem the time in them. The wedding garment is that charity of God which adorns the soul with God’s Grace. Those who have faith but have not reciprocated God’s love are not clothed with wise circumspection and have not redeemed the time. Perhaps they have grumbled with discontent and ingratitude. Perhaps they expected special favors from the Divine Providence, always to be to His liking, saved from everything that brings hardship. (The Church Year in the Times, p. 200)

We are called today to inhale and exhale God. Receiving the Holy Spirit means surrendering all rights to ourselves (Oswald Chambers) with that capacity, that receptivity which no longer offers any obstacles to the will of its Creator. (Claudel, 179). The “I” must die; we must lose all self-importancethat stands between us and God. Walk in love, the Apostle says, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour. (Ibid, 1) Christ, the Bridegroom, has loved us; we are inhaled by God. If we inhale Christ by the Spirit, God’s wisdom will overcome our foolishness. In psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, we exhale God’s love for us in Jesus Christ with gratitude. In Jesus Christ, we are invited to suffer, die, and rise. Walking circumspectly, we conquer all sin and redeem the time through Jesus Christ. If we put on the wedding garment, we shall be given moral strength, with all that makes life honorable in service and worthy of character, ready to bear adversity cheerfully, suffering for duty’s sake gladly, giving us moral vigour and the truest self-respect. (The Church Year, p. 200) God intends to clothe us with it. If we are not clothed, we shall be 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 we are invited to the marriage of the King’s Son. If we reciprocate the King’s love for us, in Christ, and by the Spirit, 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, redeeming the time with exhaled reciprocal love. We pray with the poet:

Love, lift me up upon thy golden wings
From this base world unto thy heavens hight,
Where I may see those admirable things
Which there thou workest by thy soveraine might,
Farre above feeble reach of earthly sight,
That I thereof an heavenly hymne may sing
Unto the God of Love, high heavens king. 

Amen.
©wjsmartin

 What is easier to say, ‘Thy sins be forgiven thee’ or ‘Arise, take up thy bed and walk’?
(St. Matthew ix. 4)

Simon Tugwell reminds us that the one and only comment on prayer that Christ gave to His Church is that if we do not forgive, we shall not be forgiven. (Matt. vi. 14, Prayer: Living with God, p. 80) We have not received the forgiveness of sins from Our Heavenly Father through Jesus Christ by the Holy Ghost if we fail to forgive others. When we do not forgive others, the forgiveness of sins does not govern us from the throne of our hearts. Then, we take it for granted that Our Heavenly Father will forgive us repeatedly and treat forgiveness of sins like some kind of entitlement benefit that we deserve for being card-carrying Christians. But this reveals that we do not treat sin, confession, forgiveness, or Christ’s command to Go and sin no more with much seriousness. Rather than seeing ourselves as those who need forgiveness and must work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Phil. ii. 12), we are filled with pride over whatever supposed goodness we possess and are threatened by genuine goodnessfound in others.  
          
So, let us ask ourselves if what stops us from receiving and extending the forgiveness of sins is our own pride? Do pride and hubris erect a barrier to the self-realization that the forgiveness of sins alone leads to new life? Is there an element of immature insecurity that quashes all hope for inner transformation? Does what others think about us fill us with despair over the truth of sin in our lives? Perhaps an impenetrable wall surrounds our past interior trauma to shield us from ourselves? Perhaps we spend our days trying to show the world that we are sane, sound, and successful. But inwardly and spiritually, we are broken, suffering, and enslaved to sin. Pride commands us to put on a good face; so, we move on appearing to be one thing while we are not. Pride tells us that we can hold it all together, fend for ourselves, and do perfectly well without anyone’s help. Yet, when we encounter goodness in others that we do not possess, our pride weakens, security teeters, and self-reliance collapses as we envy that goodness in others that we reckon is beyond our greatest effort to secure. Pride turns into envy. Dorothy Sayers, in her commentary on Dante’s Purgatorio, says this:

The sin of envy always contains an element of fear. The proud man is self-sufficient, rejecting with contempt the notion that anybody can be his equal or superior. The envious man is afraid of losing something by the admission of superiority in others, and therefore looks with grudging hatred upon other men’s gifts and good fortune, taking every opportunity to run them down or deprive them of their happiness. (D.C.: Purg. p. 170)
 
Envy fears the excellence in other men that threatens and devalues his own. Envy’s thoughts, words, and works aim to destroy his privileged neighbor, depriving him of any goodness. Envy thinks falsely that he can never secure the goodness he lacks, and he is determined that no other man should find it either.        

Pride turns into envy and then the anger or wrath that kills the forgiveness of our sins and our forgiveness of others. This is a temptation for us all. Receiving God’s forgiveness of our sins is not easy, especially since our world defines good and evil by the changing and unreliable relative standards of feeling and emotion. Most of us, when left to the devices and desires of our own hearts, measure out forgiveness in so far as it enhances our narcissistic pride. Sometimes, from the perch of moral superiority, we assert with pride that we have forgiven others when they have not wronged us in any way. Their goodness unnerves us, and so we ascribe imagined evil to them. At other times, we claim that forgiveness costs too much because the sin was so great, and so we withhold it, twisting with envy and now even anger that our enemy doesn’t repent! Envy that cannot bear others’ goodness is enraged. If our unforgiveness has hurt another, we bask in pride’s power to enslave. His suffering is therapeutic. But in all three cases, pride and envy combined with anger hurt others because we have never truly discovered the Divine Mercy expressed in the forgiveness of our sins through detachment. 
         
Those who are immersed in the world’s affairs must also learn how to withdraw from it if they would grasp the significance of what they are doing. (The Christian Year in The Times, p. 197) This is spiritual detachment. Detachment enables us to realize that pride, envy, and wrath must be destroyed by Christ’s virtues in this morning’s Gospel lesson. 

Behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy; Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee. 
(St. Matthew ix. 2) 
 
Jesus is determined to extend the forgiveness of sins to fallen man, rewarding humble faith with true healing. Forgiveness is always the primary end of Christ’s mission to men of humble heart. Humility and meekness are the virtues that stand against all pride, envy, and wrath. Christ comes into the world first to heal the sickness of the soul. As Archbishop Trench remarks 

‘Son, be of good cheer’, are words addressed to one evidently burdened with a more intolerable weight than that of his bodily infirmities. Some utterance on his part of a penitent and contrite heart called out these gracious words which follow, ‘Thy sins be forgiven thee.’ (Miracles, p. 157) 
 
The man sick of the palsy is more diseased in soul than body. Perhaps he is consumed with pride and enviously begrudges other men’s wholeness. Anger at God would not be surprising. He is so spiritually and physically paralyzed that he cannot ask. Thus, Jesus declares, Thy sins be forgiven thee. (Idem) 

The Scribes become unhinged. Behold, certain of the Scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth. (Ibid, 3) Sin offends only God; God alone can forgive sin. What they did not see was that God was in Christ, reconciling, the world unto Himself. (2 Cor. v. 19) The Scribes were right if Christ as a mere man imparted forgiveness to another. But they had another problem. Christ’s glory stirred pride, envy, and anger in them as something they thought He could not and did not have because they did not. Again, with Archbishop Trench

Their sins were in that self-chosen blindness of theirs which would not allow them to recognize any glory in Him higher than man’s…and closed their eyes to all in their Scriptures which set Him forth as other than they themselves had resolved He should be. (Miracles: Ch. 9) 
 
Jesus responds, Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts? For whether is easier to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk? (Ibid, 5) Jesus knows there can be no tangible proof for the forgiveness of sins since it is inward, invisible, and spiritual. To be sure, it is easier to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee, than to say, Take up thy bed and walk. But because the Scribes have never known the forgiveness of sins as the gift of God’s love, Jesus heals the man’s body to reveal that forgiveness is Heaven’s power as love. But that ye may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith He to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house. And he arose and departed to his house. (Ibid, 4-7) 

Today we learn of the healing power of the love that Christ brings to the man sick of the palsy. Through detachment, we see how Jesus conquers the sin and sickness of the soul. Now we turn to ourselves. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins….(1 St. John i. 9) Repentance is needed since our sinful flesh is always too ready to side with the cruel enemy of our souls. The things of this world press hard upon us, either to terrify us out of our duty, or humor us into our ruin. (Jenks, 221) The Great Physician bids us to search our hearts for our sins and confess them. We must not walk in the vanity of [our] mind[s], having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through…ignorance…because of the blindness of [our] hearts. (Eph. iv. 17, 18) The understanding is darkened when pride, envy, and wrath enslave us. Our Collect for Purityreads Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit….(Collect for Purity) We ask the Holy Spirit to purify not only our words and works, but the thoughts of our hearts. Withdetachment, with humility and meekness, we must see how our pride, envy, and wrath have killed the spirit of God’s goodness and separated us from our neighbors’ hearts. God’s Spirit must cleanse our motivations and intentions. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (ibid, 9)
         
With detachment, we take a long, hard look at ourselves in relation to God. We must remember that detachment is not necessarily found in the monk or mystic’s cell, cultivating a fugitive and cloistered virtue, potentially absorbing vanity. Vanity is the danger of asceticism. Detachment must give us the mastery of ourselves. (Ibid, p. 198) Detachment is found in the time and space that lead us from God to Jesus Christ. Detachment studies Christ’s parables, miracles, and his unjust and unmerited suffering in death on the Cross. Detachment stops here to find the height, depth, length, and breadth which God’s own Son and Word made flesh endures to save us. Detachment sees that Forgiveness is Divine forth-givingness, the free gift of a life which in the perfection of its spiritual power cleanses a man’s soul from the taint of evil and requickens it with new spiritual energies by which he is freed from sin. This forgiveness is offered to mankind through the Cross. (Ibid, Good Friday, p. 91) With detachment we become forever thankful for the redemption of the world by Our Lord Jesus Christ, for the means of Grace, and the hope of Glory. (G.T. BCP, p. 19) Detachment then leads to our being renewed in the spirit of [our]mind[s] as we put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. (Eph. iv. 23, 24) Detachment will give us true liberty in Jesus Christ, the freedom of soul found in the body of the man sick of the palsy, who jumped up, carried his bed, and marched before the gathered Biblical Critics. Because Jesus Christ alone had power on earth to be forgive sins, you and I can be freed from sin and not only forgive but also love all others in Him. 

Amen.
©wjsmartin

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Friend, go up higher: then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them
that sit at meat with thee. For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased;
and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.
                                        (St. Luke xiv. 11)
 
We open our sermon today with the host at a dinner party guiding his guest to go up higher, to sit at high table, and to be more honored. An invited guest always defers to the host for guidance as to where and with whom he should sit. Guidance is our theme for this 17th Sunday after Trinity. For Christians, guidance is sought out through the virtues of meekness and humility. Guidance then leads Meekness and humility to wisdom and justice. Wisdom and Justice are perfected only with gratitude for God’s Grace.  

Of course, guidance is not much talked about these days. Our society thrives on self-will run riot. The situation is so bad that prerational children’s appetites are deemed more valid than parental supervision. But, as the author of the Christian Year in the Times writes, self-will run riot is inimical to that self-respect that is perfected when the true self acts with all its powers responsive to the will in the service of righteousness. (Christian Year, p. 187) Self-respect demands that meekness and humility search out guidance rationally to find the road that leads to Truth. Homer, the greatest of the Greek epic poets, called upon the heavenly muses for guidance. Virgil did the same. The Jewish prophets appealed for guidance from Yahweh Himself. Dante secured guidance from Virgil. Bunyan’s Good Will provided guidance to his Pilgrim. For Ancient and Medieval Man, the journey into Truth could never be found without humility and meekness’ surrender to rational guidance.  

St. Thomas Aquinas writes that humility is a virtue that tempers and restrains the mind, lest it tend to high things immoderately…and strengthens the mind against despair [to] urge it on to the pursuit of great things according to right reason. (S.T. II, ii, 161, i.) For Saint Thomas, meekness mitigates the passions of anger and envy. Meekness combined with humility temper a man to pursue what he can as he can through reason and free will. The two virtues inspire the soul to seek God’s Goodness with due measure and in proportion to human life. If a man strives excessively and immoderately after high things in ways beyond his capacity and ability, he will fall flat on his face. Beware of the ancient Greek Daedalus, who constructed the Labyrinth for King Minos of Crete to imprison the Minotaur. Daedalus’ clever craftsmanship got the better of him when he used it to help Theseus, the King’s enemy, escape the Labyrinth. The King imprisoned Daedalus in the Labyrinth. Pasiphae, the Queen, released Daedalus who then made wings for himself and his son Icarus so that they could fly from Crete. Daedalus, with newfound humility and meekness, warned his son to fly midway between the sea and the sky. Should he fly too close to the water, the sea would engulf him. Should he fly too close to the sun, his wings would melt. In the end, Icarus became so enamored of the sun’s beauty that he forgot himself, ignoring his father’s guidance. He was doubly damned. His wings melted and he fell into the depths of the sea. Man is made to acknowledge that heights and depths are revealed to human nature to find the humble and meek mean between two extremes. If man pursues things beyond his nature, he will fall into the depths of misery and death. Humility is…a disposition to man’s untrammeled access to spiritual and divine goods. (Idem) Humility yields meekness. Meekness submits to God’s goodness as guidance.

Icarus was overcome by his own pride and daring. Pride attempts to exceed the limitations of human nature ignoring the wisdom of guidance. Pride defies the guidance of teachers, laws, and God. Pride ignores history. Pride flees justice and reaps the reward of self-destruction.

St. Anthony Abbott, the Founder of Monasticism, whose guidance helped to form the soul of the early Church, had his own version of Icarus’ fate. He writes that because of 

pride of heart, the heavens were bowed down, the foundations of the earth were shaken…angels were cast down from glory and became demons because of their pride of heart…Because of this, the Almighty was angered, and caused fire to come forth from the abyss…made Hell, and its torments…. (On Humility and Deceit, Anthony Abbott) 
 
In Scripture’s account, pride is an intellectual vice that finds its origin in Lucifer’s first rebellion against God. Prior to God’s creation of any other thing, angels were made to exist alongside God and to bask in the glory of His guidance. There was nothing to tempt or distract them away from God! They had God’s guidance. Of course, God’s guidance is His Power, Wisdom, and Love. Angels were made to submit thankfully to God’s guidance. The proud angels envied God’s nature and were angrythat He alone had it. Thus, they rejected God’s Grace-filled guidance that ensures everlasting felicity. So, they fell.

The humble man knows that he is not the creator of his own being and meaning. The humble and meek knows that he is lost in the dark wood of this life. Without help or guidance, he is lost. With St. Anthony, he knows that the deceitful man deceives only his own soul; for [as the Psalmist says]: His sorrow shall be turned on his own head: and his iniquity shall come down upon his own pate. (Ps. vii. 17; Idem) The humble and meek reject self-deception and self-will run riot knowing that these vices lead only to Hell.

The humble and meek seek guidance. They feel within themselves no small sense of powerlessness, futility, and failure in the face of sin. They are like the man with the dropsy in this morning’s Gospel reading. Dropsy is edema, a swelling caused by fluid in the body’s tissues. It renders a man incapable of movement. The humble and meek man identifies with the dropsical man and translate his fleshly powerlessness into the spiritual inability to move out of sin and into righteousness. He needs merciful guidance every day. The humble and meek finds little solace in the Pharisees’ stricture that Jesus shouldn’t be guiding men out of sickness and into health on the Sabbath. If they saved their own asses and oxen on the Sabbath Day, why shouldn’t Jesus stoop down to heal the dropsical sufferer? The humble and meek have taken the lowest seat. Jesus alone is the guide that invites us to come up higher, (St. Luke xiv. 10) The humble and meek humbles himself under the mighty hand of God. (1 Peter v. 6)

Today we pray for humility. G.K. Chesterton tells us that the problem with contemporary man is that he has become humble about truth and not humble about himself. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert–himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt – the Divine Reason [or Wisdom]. (Orthodoxy) Full of false pride, envy, anger, and sloth contemporary man desires no guidance. He is full of himself and nothing more. The humble and meek is like St. Paul in this morning’s Epistle, a prisoner of the Lord embracing alllowliness and meekness, with long suffering, forbearing one another in love endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. (Eph. iv. 1) His humility and meekness situate his soul to receive the wisdom and justice of God found on Christ’s Cross. Restraining impetuosity, humility and meekness go down to the Cross to submit to the guidance of Christ’s Sacrificial love, which alone can conquer sin and death. He is prepared to accept God’s gracious invitation to come up higher.

Taking the lowest seat is essential for those who hope to find God in Jesus Christ and the salvation He brings. We must identify with all lowly sinners who wait to be asked to come up higher onto the Cross of Jesus into His liberating death. 

For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again.(2 Cor. v. 14, 15) God’s humility and meekness in Jesus Christ will strengthen our minds against despair, and urge us on to the pursuit of great things…. (St. Thomas, Idem) 

God’s humility and meekness in His Son Jesus Christ should overwhelm us. Therefore, is my spirit vexed within me, and my heart within me is desolate. (Ps. cxliii. 4). That Christ took the lowest seat of unjust suffering and shame should destroy our pride.…I remember the time past; I muse upon all thy works; yea, I exercise myself in the works of thy hands. (Psalm cxliii, 5) God’s work is the humility and meekness of Jesus Christ who stretches out His arms on the Cross to invites us to come up higher. God’s omnipotent power found in the weakness of His Son’s death will make us strong. St. Augustine asks, He who throws a stone at heaven, does it fall on heaven or on himself? (Meditation on the Humility of Christ) The proud throw stones up at God’s Son, hanging on the Tree, though in humility and meekness He comes down from Heaven to save us. The stones fall back upon us! Because Jesus guides us to the lowest seat of the Cross, the first step of ascent to God, we can become His friends and be asked [to] come up higher. (Idem)

Let us follow the guidance of Christ’s humility and meekness today as we confess our true nature and need. In patience, let us possess our souls. (Luke xxi. 19) Through it, we can accept God’s wisdom and justice with deepest gratitude. God’s wisdom is His justice – that one man should die for the people. (John xi. 50) Through it, we leave behind the exaggerated ego’s soaring pride to embrace what we need most. With the poet, we can be touched by Grace. Then,   

That fair lamp, which useth to inflame
The hearts of men with self-consuming fire
Thenceforth seems foul, and full of sinful blame;
And all that pomp to which proud minds aspire
By name of honour, and so much desire,
Seems to them baseness, and all riches dross,
And all mirth sadness, and all lucre loss.
 
So full their eyes are of that glorious sight,
And senses fraught with such satiety,
That in naught else on earth they can delight,
But in th' aspect of that felicity,
Which they have written in their inward eye;
On which they feed, and in their fastened mind
All happy joy and full contentment find. 
(Hymn to Heavenly Beauty, E. Spenser)
 
Amen.
 
©wjsmartin
 

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O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see               
not; which have ears, and hear not; fear ye not me? Will ye not
Tremble at my presence? 
                              (Jeremiah v. 20-22)
 
       
There is a truth about life nowadays that seems to escape most people. This is a truth about themselves. They lack all self-respect. Of course, this is because we have abandoned Christian morality. Proud and arrogant man rejects the call of the highest moral ideal as the law of his life. Proud and arrogant man no longer measures the worth of his life by it. This is because we do not fear God. Self-respect comes to men and women who know themselves, their limitations, and the contours and boundaries of human existence. Self-respect is a gift bestowed on those whose meekness knows that they must lose their lives to find them. Contemporary man fears earthly death. Today, Christ will perform a miracle that brings a young man back from earthly death so that we might awaken from spiritual death. We cannot be roused from the slumber of spiritual death for Christ to enliven and ennoble the finer elements of our self-respecting characters until we face our mortality.
       
Of course, the problem of mortality is as old as creation. Both the ancient Jews and Greeks were consumed with the good of the soul and its frustration from sin and death. By the time Christ came down from Heaven, the world was in a strangle knot of tension, confusion, and exasperation. Both the Jew and the Greek had enough self-respect to know human nature’s limitations in order to discover God and then struggle to overcome sin and death with His Wisdom. Mortality gnawed at man’s soul as he longed for union with his Maker. For the self-respecting Jews, there was hope in the prophesied promise of deliverance through Messiah. For the self-respecting Greeks, there was divine Wisdom and hope of imagined union with it after death. 
       
Socrates taught that the unexamined life is not worth living. (Apol. 38a) Socrates understood his own mortality and had enough self-respect to search for the truth of it throughout his life. He understood that his soul indwelled a body and often acted against it without knowledge. Our souls in bodies are mostly ignorant of the truth that should move them to find happiness through knowledge. Only then can the soul move above the body to discover the reason for, the cause of, and the Good of human existence. Socrates knew that man’s perfection does not consist in the pursuit of the body’s changing, fickle, uncertain, and unreliable passions. Rather, Socrates believed that man’s perfection consists in the soul’s use of the body for communion with the Good or God. Socrates had enough self-respect to pursue the Good beyond himself, knowing that he knew nothing and, thus, intent upon finding what he did not have. Long before he began his teaching career, knowing the limitations of his own mortality, with self-respect, he began to sacrifice himself for moral ideals above and beyond his selfish and sinful nature. His bravery in the Peloponnesian War from 431-434 B.C., when he fought to defend Athens’ integrity, was a testimony to how the common good moved him.  That Socrates believed in deeper transcendent truth can also be seen in his pursuit of the domestic good of his marriage. Xanthippi, Socrates’ wife, was famous in Athens for her disagreeable and nagging ways. In Xenephon’s Symposium, Antisthenes asks Socrates how he can endure his wife. Socrates says having a wife is like choosing a horse. Choose one who is high-mettled, fiery, hard to tame. Once you have tamed her, you have conquered nature. (Xen. Symp. ii. 10) Whatever struggles mortality brings, be they political or domestic, for Socrates, self-respecting man was made to tame his mortality and conquer his lesser passions for the sake of discovering the Moral Ideal, which promises to ennoble and purify his soul. The Good that man is made to know is the cause of all life, the source of all goods – the reasons for which things were made and the source of his true happiness and joy. 
       
Socrates’ philosophical method, like Jeremiah’s prophetic call, was on the way back to God. What both exhort us to pursue is the kind of thinking that tames mortality and sacrifices the lesser goods and gods of this earthly life for the discovery of God’s Goodness. With self-respect, this thinking begins in inquisitive wonder rather than in making. Socrates began his quest by saying I know that I know nothing. (Apol. 21d) Jeremiah realized his impotence before the all-living God. Do you not fear me? Do you not tremble before me? I placed the sand as the bound for the sea, a perpetual barrier which it cannot pass; though the waves toss, they cannot prevail, though they roar, they cannot pass over it. (Jer. v. 22) Both men had enough self-respect for the fear of the Lord and awesome wonder before God’s Thinking Goodness which they did not yet possess but desired. The self-respecting man does not yet know God’s Goodness, the Moral Ideal, for which he was made. Creation is made, moved, and defined not by us but by God’s Thinking Goodness, on which every creature depends for being and wellbeing. The whole of the universe is God’s thinking of it, and we are made to discover it! We neither create nor perpetuate our own thinking. We use our souls without any thought of where our thinking comes from or to whom it is made to be returned. God patiently awaits our discovery of His Goodness. 
       
Socrates and Jeremiah believed that God is calling us forth to find Him. He intends that we come to our senses and gain enough self-respect to acknowledge humbly that we know nothing. That we have souls should be evident in the very fact that we are thinking. That our souls persist beyond death can be seen in this morning’s Gospel. The young son of a widowed mother was dead in body. His decomposing corpse was carried from the walls of Nain to its burial outside the city’s gates. His soul lives on. Christ addresses the living soul that no longer inhabits the body. Christ intends that his body should be brought back to life in order to house his soul for its extended spiritual journey. Jesus wants us to see that mortality has no meaning or definition without God or the soul. If man were merely a soul or a body, Christ would not have bothered to reconcile the two. But Christ shows us today that He intends to give life to the whole person, the embodied soul, forever.
              
I know that I know nothing. Christ addresses the dead man’s soul, the Widow of Nain’s soul, and our souls. This is a portent of what every soul will do on Judgment Day when, with self-respect, it gives an account of the life it has lived, soul in body, or spirited mortality. The real evidence for God’s power and promise is found in the dead boy’s soul, who knows Christ and obeys His call.
       
This is the kind of soul that Jesus finds in the Widow of Nain. That the widow woman bereft of her only son is more than merely a body or a soul is clear. The loss of her son’s mortality pierces through her body to her soul. Her soul is so present to her that her body translates the cessation of her son’s life into anguish and sadness. The pain and heartache of her only son’s death consume her soul. She is not running away from mortality, but she has enough self-respect to honor the dead and mourn her loss. She is precisely where Jesus wants to find all of us. What Socrates felt as his brothers in combat fell by his side in the Peloponnesian War and what Jeremiah felt as Jewish Brethren died at the hands of the Babylonians, the Widow of Nain expressed. Because of her self-respect and spiritual sensitivity for human mortality, she is ripe for Christ’s visitation. She has no words or pleas for Jesus. She weeps silently because words cannot conquer the cruelty of mortality when she can do nothing. She is Rachel, weeping for her children who are no more…. (Jer. xxxi. 15) She is Jesus’ own Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, who will mourn at His Cross. She is Mother Church, who weeps for her wayward children until they are found by Christ. Her mourning is sincere because she respectfullyknows herself. She will fulfill the beatitude. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. (St. Matthew v. 4) 
       
The Widow of Nain’s soul is open to the Lord’s command Weep not. (Ibid, 13) She obeys, for she knows her mortality with self-respect and knows her Lord. Her soul is wholly open to the Lord’s Word. Jesus came and touched the bier: and they that bare the dead man stood still. (Ibid, 14) Her soul is alive with much people who accompanied her and her son. She was self-respecting enough to face mortality without shame. God’s compassion in Christ will bring life out of death and hope out of despair. And he that was dead sat up and began to speak. (Ibid, 15) We do not know what he said. That he spake is sufficient evidence that his soul inhabits a body quickened by Christ once again. All are filled with awesome wonder. New life in the dead man now brings his mother and the crowd out of mortality’s end into self-respecting new spiritual life.
Self-respect calls us to know ourselves, and the limitations of human mortality.
 
Self-respect implies the free exercise of our spiritual faculties in the sphere of the supernatural and a living communion with Him, Who is supremely the Holy Spirit. We may have to acknowledge that our powers in all these elements of the self are small, but we shall be saved from self-contempt if we recognize that, however weak they may be, we have the capacity of infinite development so long as we are loyal to the highest we perceive. (The Church Year in the Sunday Times, p. 188)
 
With the Apostle Paul, we must come 
to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge. (Eph. iii. 16-19)
 
With self-respect for our mortality, we must pray that our embodied souls will find new life in Jesus Christ. With the Widow of Nain, we must mourn until we find it. Only Socrates’ learned ignorance, I know that I know nothing, and Jeremiah’s fear of the Lord can make us ripe for the visitation of God’s love in Jesus Christ with encouragement for that self-respect which, founded on reverence towards God, knows that our highest dignity is to serve Him with all our powers. (idem, p. 189)
Amen.
 
©wjsmartin

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The Good which we have forsaken must come to us from without
before we can rediscover it within. Thus, the Good comes to us through
the humanity of Jesus Christ, that then leads us to the Eternal Word,
through which, in turn, we are reconciled to the Father. The Good that
we discover is the original Word of God, by which alone we were once obedient to God 
and can be made obedient again.
William Law: The Spirit of Love, Address XVIII
 
         
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is all about how the Good must come to us from without before we can discover it within. Trinity Tide is all about virtue in the soul as it recovers its lost Good. If we are to grow in virtue, we must rediscover the Good in the Sacred Humanity of Jesus Christ. In Him, we must rediscover that state that Adam once had but had lost by reason of his pride. Today Jesus says Ye cannot serve God and Mammon (St. Matthew vi. 25) But we are fallen and, thus, constantly torn between the two. Jesus will teach us to know the difference. Then, He will teach us that to love or will the Good requires inward and spiritual suffering. The real battle comes as the soul struggles to love the one and hate the other (idem, 24) as Jesus Christ welcomes us into His death.

Of course, postmodern man has been conditioned to fear and shrink from love and hate. Such passions might elicit courage and zeal to fight and even die for an ideal or principle. But Christians are called to love and hate. To eschew evil and do good (1 Peter iii. 11) require knowledge of the good and the power to will it. Jesus exhorts us to hate the sin and love the sinner. This means loving both ourselves and others in God. It means that we must hate sin which separates us from God. Jesus means business, and in the end times if we haven’t taken our one shot at salvation seriously enough, we shall be rewarded with the Hell that we have chosen. Irrational cowardice will be no excuse at the Great and Dreadful Day of Judgment.
      
Coming to love the sinner, again, means ourselves and others in the Good. This will be, of course, be a consequence of knowledge. Goodness must be found first on the outside of ourselvesbefore it can be willed inwardly and spiritually. That we are torn between good and evil in Adam, is clear to any man who knows himself. Anyone who denies this is mad or insane. But even fallen man has always been left with a remnant of God’s Goodness. Fallen man has forever discovered God’s Goodness in his study of nature with the ancient Greeks. Fallen man has forever discovered God’s Goodness through revelation to the ancient Jews. When Christ comes into the world, externally and visibly, as Man, with body, soul, and spirit, He invites all men to partake of the reconciliation between Man and God’s Goodness realized and perfected in Himself. 

St. Thomas Aquinas says that God rules Man by three rights. First, by the right of creation. For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture. (Ps. xcv. 7) Second, by the right of purchase. Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. (1 Peter i. 18.19) Third, by right of the support of life. Who giveth food to all flesh, for His mercy endureth forever. (T.A. Trinity XV Gospel Commentary) By the right of creation, we know that we owe our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life to God. By the right of purchase, we know that God in Jesus Christ has purchased us and paid the ransom for our sin. By the right of support of life, we know that God gives us that well-being that will ensure our salvation by way of the indwelling of Our Lord the Holy Ghost. Knowing that we come from God the Father, are made right through God the Son, and are sanctified by God the Holy Ghost are three essential forms of knowledge presented to faith, hope, and love. Reason teaches us to know our origin and destiny. We come from God and are made to return to God. Nothing – neither sin nor death, needs stand in the way of God’s rational purpose and loving desire to save and reconcile us with Himself. 
         
But our failure to hate sin distracts us from willing what we believe and know to be God’s Good.Sin is found in the flesh and our anxiety over it. Today St. Paul writes to the Galatian Church, which is being tempted to indulge the flesh. Jewish Christians are tempting Gentile converts to believe that the precepts of the Jewish Law pertaining to the flesh, like circumcision, are needed for salvation. St. Paul rejects this.

Though I might also have confidence in the flesh. If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more: circumcised the eighth day of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. (Phil. iii. 4-7)
 
Once he believed that the Law was as close as Man could come to God. Soon he learned that neither the Law of Nature nor the Law of the Jews could enable man to will God’s Goodness. Then he encountered Jesus Christ, and came to know that the Law of the flesh is sin and death. St. Paul began to connect the dots. His faith was rational. The Law condemned man to death and alienation from God the Father. For St. Paul, man’s division from God has been overcome in Jesus Christ. Jewish Christians are demanding circumcision in the Gentiles to glory in their flesh. (Gal. vi. 13) St. Thomas says that ‘they may glory’ for making so many proselytes. (Comm. Gal. vi.) For Jewish Christians, circumcision was fleshly proof of winning converts. St. Paul counters with, But God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. (ibid, 14) St. Thomas continues:

Notice that where the worldly philosopher felt shame, the Apostle found his treasure: what the former regarded as foolish became for the Apostle wisdom and glory, as Augustine says. For each person glories in that through which he is considered great…For one who regards himself to be great in nothing but Christ glories in Christ alone. Hence the Apostle says: ‘[I have been crucified with Christ;] I live; but not I. Christ liveth in me.’ (Gal. ii. 20, idem)
 
Faith, hope, and love are rational. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. (1 Cor. i. 25) God comes to Man, saves him, and reconciles him to Himself. Faith in who Jesus Christ is and what he does make sense. But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. (Gal. iv. 4,5) God intends that Man know and love Him. His plan has unfolded without interruption. God sent His Son into the world, taking on our nature, to conquer the Law of sin and death. For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. (2 Cor. v. 21) Christ consumed all sin in Himself and defeated it. God’s Word submits to His own Law of sin and death rationally for us to win our salvation.
         
Still, knowing the Good and loving or willing are different. St. Thomas writes For in the Cross is the perfection of all law and the whole art of living well. (ibid, Gal, vi.) Loving God in Jesus Christ by the Spirit, we enter His victory over sin and death as we love the sinner – in ourselves and hate the sin. To love is to will the good, ‘knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.’ (Rom. vi. 6) Christ predicts our anxiety. 

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith. Therefore, take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?... For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. (Matt. vi. 28-34)
 
Hating the sin and loving the sinner is embracing God’s Goodness. We must seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. St. Augustine writes 
 
But the Lord admonishes us that we should remember that when God made us…body and soul, He gave us much more than food and clothing, through care for which he would not have our heart double [over the necessities of life.](Aug. Book II, ‘Sermon on the Mount’)
 
With St. Paul and St. Thomas, we return to the Cross. ‘For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.’ Indeed, he glories mainly in that which helps in joining him to Christ; for this the Apostle desires…to be with Christ. (idem) Undo care and anxiety over the flesh is sin. Hating our sin to embrace God’s Goodness in Jesus Christ from the Spirit to the flesh is virtue. Loving Christ’s death opens us to His promise to make us new creatures in His Resurrection. Heaven’s secret is that, with love, He will feed and clothe us inwardly and spiritually. He invites us to eat His Body and drink His Blood. As secretly as God feeds the birds of the field and clothes the lilies of the field, His love will feed and clothe us if we have faith. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon, (idem) foolishness to worldly men, but to them that love Him, the authority to become the Sons of God. (John 1:12) 
Amen.
©wjsmartin

We open our mouths wide till God opens his hand, but after, as if
the filling of our mouth were the stopping of our throats, so
we are speechless and heartless.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux
 
        
Have you ever found yourself in a form of suffering that bound you together with other people because of a common predicament? Our world is full of communities that meet because of a shared grief that seeks a common cure. You’ve heard about or have even been a part of those grieving groups – cancer survivors’ networks, Veterans organizations, Al-Anon, and Alcoholics Anonymous, and so on. If you haven’t participated in any of them, you know that these communities meet to solve common problems that emerge from some kind of disease, addiction, or trauma. In each group, there is hope for mutual and reciprocal help. In each group, too, there is always the danger of potential breakdown because of collective spiritual ingratitude. Then there might be the danger that one might find spiritual ostracization because he doesn’t fit in and seems rather alien to the copacetic coziness of the group dynamic. Yet, if the group is seriously committed to its desired end and is patient, the outsider might very well reveal some spiritual truth to the community. 
        
In this morning’s Gospel, we find the case of one such alien or Samaritan, who otherwise might not have been welcomed by the group but for the overwhelmingly desperate nature of their common disease. That the man was tolerated reveals how fatal illness and disease break down all division. For the men who clung so acutely together in this morning’s Gospel Lesson shared the disease of leprosy. Leprosy in the ancient world was viewed as a spiritual malady, earning its carriers exile from the City of Man. The physical manifestations were deemed so hideous by healthy men that it they were judged to be a punishment for sins, both by the God of the Jews and the deities of the ancient Gentiles. In any case, the leprous were unwelcome in both communities and so lived on the borders of both as aliens to all. And it is one such group that we encounter this morning. We meet them because Jesus chose not to take the common and safer route for Jews making pilgrimage up to Jerusalem but to go through the dangerous border that the Jewish people shared with their Samaritan neighbors.  
         
And as he entered into a certain village, there met him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off: and they lifted up their voices, and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. (St. Luke xvii 12, 13) The lepers stand on the outskirts of the village, and they cry out for help from one whom they trust will hear their plea. Their bodies are wasting away and decomposing, and yet their souls are alive to the need for love. They have not despaired. The prayer of their hearts is that Jesus will be friend and neighbor to them all. The who is my neighbor? of last week’s Gospel takes on a compelling and urgent nature. These men are in a ditch of a predicament and do not merely need help but want it. Their companionship in misery and suffering moves them to seek out the one neighbor whose mercy can heal their pain. The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth. (Ps. cxlv. 18) Archbishop Trench reminds us, they do have hope that a healer is at hand, and so in earnest they seek to extort the benefit. (Parables, 262) So they cry, Jesus, Master, have mercy upon us. (St. Luke xvii 13)

And when He saw them, He said unto them, Go show yourselves unto the priests. And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed. (St. Luke xvii 14) In last week’s Gospel we remember that Jesus likened Himself unto the Good Samaritan and not the Good Jew. Today, this same Samaritan continues His work, but this time without need for bandages, oil, or wine. Physical deterioration has yielded to spiritual desire; to the inner hearts of wounded outcasts, the spoken Word of the Good Samaritan is all that is needed for the healing that will soon follow. Those who are spiritually conscious of their sorry and sinful state always cut to the quick and cry Jesus, Master, have mercy upon us. (Idem) When He says, Go…, they obey and trust in the power of His love. Matthew Henry writes that Those that expect Christ's favours must take them in his way and method. (Comm: St. Luke, xviii) Obedience and trust must become the instinctive response of the supplicant to the all-merciful God. What sinful men must seek is His power to heal and whatever means He deems fit for it. 

Here we see that an external and visible disease reveals far more painful inward and spiritual suffering. Because the lepers’ disease is so hideous, they dare not touch him with their infectious bodies. Their inner agony longs to touch His heart with the cry of anguish. He hears their words and responds with the Word. Go shew yourselves unto the priests. (Idem) His all-commanding Word moves into their hearts so that they trust it inwardly as it heals them outwardly. We read that as they went, they were cleansed. (Ibid, 14) Notice that nothing more was needed for this kind of healing. The men were physically healed of their leprosy instantly as they moved on to the priests.
But this is not the end of the matter. This miracle is not only about healing the physical disease of leprosy. What is clear from today’s miracle is that Jesus heals always to inaugurate an inner and spiritual transformation. The Jews alienate the Samaritans because of their ethnicity and race. That the Samaritan would dare to show himself to the [Jewish] priests is uncertain. Though no longer leprous, still his soul felt alienation and separation from all other men, filled with fear and confusion. His motives might have been mixed. Coleridge says no man, either hero or saint, ever acted from an unmixed motive, for let him do what he will rightly; Conscience whispers "it is your duty.” The Samaritan does what he thinks is right and best by his conscience. The Samaritan, alone, is spiritually awakened by his healing and so returns to offer God thanks. Feeling the newly emerging healing of his body, he senses the birth of a spiritual awakening in his heart to the Power of God in Jesus Christ. In the depths of his spirit, he had longed for a friend, and so in this place that he feels the presence of the newfound love in God’s Good Samaritan. Here he finds that love that will touch and transform his life. And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks: and he was a Samaritan. (St. Luke xvii 15,16)

This outsider, this alien to Israel’s promises, turns back. Unlike the Nine Jews, this man serves the Power of God’s love in the heart of Jesus and not the Law and the Commandments. No doubt the priests in the temple would have judged him alien and undeserving of their blessing in any case. But more importantly, he turns back first to the source and cause of all healing and health. He not only turns back, but he glorifies God; he not only praises God but with all the strength of his body’s newfound health, he runs, and he falls down at the feet of God’s powerful presence in Jesus Christ in Spirit. His body was healed, but now his soul has been set free, and he serves his liberated soul, giving thanks to God in Jesus Christ. 

And Jesus answering said, Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine? There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger. (St. Luke xvii 17,18) This Samaritan is a stranger to God and his promises. But it is this stranger who perceives and knows Jesus’ love most truly. This Samaritan alone gives God the Glory. His faith is startling and profound. The others were healed by faith as well. But as George Macdonald reminds us, this man had enough faith left over to bring him back, for his cure had been swallowed up in gratitude. (Miracles of Healing…) Jesus says to him, Arise, go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole. (St. Luke xvii 19)

This morning we each must ask: Where do I find myself in this morning’s miracle? Are we one with grateful Samaritan? Are we here for worship in community alone to seek healing through Common Prayer and the Sacraments? Or will these outward and visible signs bring inward and spiritual healing to our souls? For that to happen, once we leave this place, we have two options. You have come to God’s priest to receive His blessing. Will we turn back, giving God thanks throughout the week for what we have received through Jesus Christ? Again, with George Macdonald, All communities are for the sake of individual life, for the sake of the love and the truth that is in each heart, and is not cumulative. But all that is precious in the individual heart depends for existence on the relation the individual bears to other individuals. – how can he love? (idem) Jesus gives Himself to the community of ten lepers but one turns back because his faith has moved him to gratitude in love. Jesus gives Himself to us today in His Body and Blood. Will we turn back and offer him thanks for incorporating us into His death on the Cross and His Resurrection? Are we being healed in deed and in truth so that nothing presses us with more urgency than the ongoing need to be grateful for the good work already begun in our souls? St. Paul tells us to walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary the one to the other. (Gal. v. 16, 17) The Venerable Bede asks, with the Samaritan, acutely aware of my own unworthiness, humbling myself before God, shall I hear the Divine Word to rise, put my hand to strong things, and go on my way to more perfect things? (P.L. 92, Expos. In Lucam) Today’s Samaritan perfects his flesh with the Spirit of gratitude. Soon he shall bear the fruit of the Spirit…which is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against which there is no law.Let us not be speechless and heartless like the nine other healed lepers. Jesus Christ the Good Samaritan’s has cured us. Let Jesus us allow Jesus to respond to our thanksgiving with:  
Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole. (St. Luke xvii 19) 
©wjsmartin
 
 
 
 

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Blessed are the eyes which see the things that ye see: For I tell you,
that many prophets and kings have desired to see those things which ye see and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear and have not heard them.
(St. Luke 10. 23, 24)
                
Before Jesus proclaims the blessing in Gospel lesson, He offered thanksgiving to His Father for beginning to generate a new kind of seeing and hearing in the eyes and ears of His Apostles, which were opened, like new-born babes, into the new world of His mission and meaning. Yet no sooner had Jesus praised His Father for bringing new vision and meaning to His friends than one man, a lawyer, stood up to test his religious view against what he saw as an exhortation to the impossible. For those with eyes to see and ears to hear, Jesus will correct the lawyer’s senses with His own. The lawyer may turn out to be both blind and deaf, but Jesus will open the eyes and ears of others to the limitless love that He brings into the world.  
         
Behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted [Jesus], saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? (St. Luke 10. 25) Archbishop Trench reminds us from the get-go that the lawyer is not tempting Jesus with pride or envy; he merely meant to test and try Jesus’ teaching. He knows that God ‘tempts’ man, putting him to wholesome proof, revealing to him the secrets of his heart, to which he might have remained a stranger. (Trench, Parables) So, Jesus responds, What is written in the Law? How readest thou? (St. Luke 10. 26) The lawyer replies, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbour as thyself. (Ibid, 27) Jesus answers, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live. (Ibid, 28) Jesus implies, You know the Law. If you can obey it, you shall find eternal life. That the lawyer cannot fulfill the Law becomes clear because he wants to put a limit on his love. (Trench, idem) The lawyer, willing to justify himself (–or prove himself blameless) said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour? (St. Luke 10. 29) The lawyer, wanting a healthy boundary to his love, means whom shall I love and whom should I refrain from loving? Archbishop Trench writes that the essence of Love has no limit except its own ability to proceed further. (idem) This man wants to know who my neighbour is to guard against nolimit and a virtue that might extend into infinity. His mistake is that he is looking at the recipient of his love and not at himself. His Love for others is limited! St. Cyril suggests that in asking, ‘Who is my neighbor’, he reveals to us that he is empty of love for his neighbor since he does not consider anyoneas his neighbor; and consequently, he is also empty of the Love of God. (C.A. Pent. xii) 

Jesus answers him with a parable. A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. (St. Luke 10. 30) Here, Jesus tells the story of Man’s Fall, and how God, in Jesus, will respond to it. Because of sin, fallen man has freely willed to travel down from the Love of God’s Jerusalem into the sinful love of earthly Jericho. As a result, he has fallen in with the devil and his angels, who have stripped him of his original righteousness and wounded him with the sting of death, or sin. (1 Cor. xv. 56) Fallen man is wounded and abandoned, left half dead in relation to God. Throughout the course of man’s fallen history, great men, educated in the Law –like today’s lawyer, have forever gone up to Jerusalem to receive the discipline and correction of the Law and the Prophets but have also always come down and fallen into the ditch.

The parable continues. By chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And likewise, a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side. (St. Luke 10. 31, 32) Origen reminds us that the Priest and the Levite represent the law and the prophets in all ages, (Origen, “What shall I do for Eternal Life?”)who might very well have had the wisdom to describe man’s indenture to the Law of Sin, even with hope in the prophesied promises but cannot offer Grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews iv. 16) This is because they cannot identify with Sinful Man, in themselves, fallen from God and wounded by sin. They do not see that in the ditch is the condition of another self in desperate need of God’s Grace. They have forgotten the weightier matters of the Law, judgment, mercy, and faith, (Trench, idem) and, thus, have placed a limit on their Love, justifying [themselves].
                  
Jesus continues. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, and went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. (St. Luke 10. 33, 34) Man who knows that he has fallen from Divine Grace in earthly life lies helpless in the ditch. Along comes a Samaritan- literally an alien and exile to the Law and Prophets of Israel. Yet, Samaritan means one who observes the Law, and this Good Samaritan will turn out to be the only one who can fulfill the Law. For this Samaritan is one who is so full of compassion and mercy that he alone can impart the Love that he receives from God to others. He is the love of God and the love of neighbor in the flesh. He alone can heal Fallen Man and remedy his spiritual alienation from God. As Origen reminds us, Providence was keeping the half-dead man for One who was stronger than the Law and the Prophets. (Idem) Thou art a Samaritan and hast a devil, the Priest and Levite exclaim to Jesus. Nevertheless, the Samaritan, which also means guardian, comes down with a medicine bag full of spiritual remedies. He carries with him bandages, oil, and wine, for He expects to find all self-consciously half dead fallen men, who know that this limitless love alone can break the sway of sin over their lives. This Samaritan sets fallen man upon his own beast ­­–his back, and because loving his neighbor becomes the labor of his lifetime, he carries him into spiritual health that knows no limit. 
         
The Good Samaritan is, of course, Jesus Christ, who alone bears and carries the weight of all self-consciously half-dead sinners on to their healing redemption. He carries man to an inn and cares for him. The inn symbolizes that hospital for sinners, the Church, who are passing through this vale of tears to God’s Kingdom. The Church’s innkeepers will be the Apostles and then their successors.  Jesus, the Good Samaritan, spends a night in the inn, on His Cross, and then throughout His Resurrection, as He cares for fallen man and then teaches the innkeepers how to continue the work that His love has limitlessly begun. And on the morrow, when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee. (St. Luke 10. 35) The Good Samaritan gives two pence to the innkeepers, the price He pays for the salvation of their souls with His Body and Blood. The Church receives these gifts as the means of ongoing spiritual convalescence in the Holy Sacrament. He has paid the price of their salvation with His Body and Blood, and because of what Jesus Christ, the Good Samaritan, has done, the salvation journey has limitless Love to draw upon. When the Good Samaritan returns, He will repay to the spiritual caregiver, the Church, what He owes them –the salvation He has gifted to them as the Love that keeps on giving. 
At the conclusion of the parable, Jesus asks the lawyer and us, Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighour unto him that fell among the thieves? (ibid, 36) The lawyer answers, He that showed mercy on him. (Ibid, 37) Jesus said, Go and do thou likewise. (Ibid, 38)
         
Thus, we must ponder the significance of the parable for our own lives. Who is my neighbor, we ask with the lawyer? We learn that our neighbor is not, first and foremost, the man left half-dead in the ditch, but the Good Samaritan, or Jesus Christ Himself. Our neighbor, then, is not, first, the man upon whom we are called to show mercy. Rather, our neighbor is the One whose Love for us knows no limit. For, truly, we are the man in the ditch in need of redemption and salvation. Until we realize that Christ Jesus is the Good Samaritan who comes to bind up our wounds, heal our bodies and souls, take us into the inn of the Church, to convalesce by the Grace of God through the power of His Holy Spirit, we shall never sufficiently receive with thanksgiving that Saving Love which is born to be shared. The Priests and Levites are not alone in passing by the real problem. The Scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. (Gal. iii. 22)Whenever we forget that this inn is a hospital, and that we are here because we are sick and need of the Good Samaritan’s limitless loving cure, we perish. Receiving the limitless Love that Jesus Christ, God’s Good Samaritan, brings to our fallen condition, we shall be sore amazed as His eternal desire and omnipotent might save us through the Holy Spirit. We shall not only see, hear, and obey God’s Love for ourselves, but we shall also love our neighbors as ourselves because God’s Love in our hearts touches all others, like the Sun, which does not inquire on which it shall shine. (Trench, idem) We shall receive from God, of whose only gift it cometh that [His] faithful people do unto [Him] true and laudable service. (Collect Trinity XIII) Such service loves God wholly and our neighbors as ourselves. With Archbishop Trench, let us see that Love is a debt we are forever paying and are contented to owe (idem) to God and all men, through Jesus Christ, by the Holy Ghost. Let us see how Christ loves us with no limit as we hear His command to minister to Him in all others. (idem)

Amen.
©wjsmartin
  
 

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ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who art always more ready to hear than
we to pray, and art wont to give more than either we desire or deserve…
(Collect Trinity XII)
 
The Collect for the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity expresses a truth that is rehearsed habitually but rarely remembered. The truth it reveals is that it is God’s nature to be more ready to hear than we to pray because our condition is often otherwise occupied and, thus, slothful in relation to our spiritual well-being. God hears in order to give, and what He gives is, as the Collect continues, more than either we desire or deserve. (Idem) The failure of zeal, alacrity, and dispatch is on our side. In desiring Him more, we shall receive the abundance of His mercy and the intensity of its Power.  

The deaf and dumb man described in today's Gospel is an image of that spiritual condition that neither desires nor deserves what God longs to give. The man can neither hear nor speak. But prior to this morning’s Gospel, we meet a Syrophoenician woman who had no problem speaking up and begging Jesus to heal her daughter, who had an unclean spirit (St. Mark vii. 25). She may not have felt that she deserved anything, but that didn’t stop her from desiring fragments of Jesus’ healing power that she knew could cure her demonized child. She was not a Jewish petitioner but a Gentile seeker, and so was provoked by Jesus, who reminded her that [God’s] children should first be filled; for it is not meet to take the children’s bread, and cast it to dogs. (Ibid, 27) The response that Jesus anticipated and desired to elicit from her was brilliant. She said, Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs. (Ibid, 28) Jesus told the woman that because of her faith and desire for fragments of the holiness that He has brought into the world, the devil would be expelled from her tormented daughter. The faith of this Gentile realizes that she is rewarded with a gift that she desired but did not deserve. Her desire was born from a deep sense of God’s presence in Jesus, which His own fellow Jews missed. Desire follows love. This woman loved her daughter and so was led to the light and power of God in Jesus Christ.

Now, this morning, we encounter a Jewish man who cannot so much as express his desire and has no idea about what he might or might not deserve. His friends, however, express his desire for him and seek the power that Jesus brings. We read: And they bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech; and they beseech him to put his hand upon him. (Ibid, 32) Jesus is back in the land of the faithless Pharisees, the land of His own Jewish people, amongst men with pretensions to religion. Yet here we find a man who images the Jews’ deaf and dumb relation to God. What ensues is not a conversation at all. Jesus had spoken to the Syrophoenician woman because she spoke to him. But here He finds silence in a man who is deaf and mute, and so a silent prayer is offered from Jesus to His Father. We read: And Jesus took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue; and looking up to heaven, he sighed….(Ibid, 33, 34)
Jesus took him aside from the multitude. Noise and commerce drown out the silence that Jesus draws from to impart God’s Grace to us. The silence of the wilderness should have been remembered by the Jews, who heard God’s Word and experienced His Power only when they had been put to silence. Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. (Psalm lxvi. 10) Jesus took him aside so that in solitude and silence, he might be more receptive of deep and lasting impressions, even as the same Lord does now oftentimes lead a soul apart, or takes away from its earthly companions and friends, when He would speak with it, and heal it, as Archbishop Trench reminds us. (Trench, The Miracles) This man needed to find God in Jesus Christ for the very first time. His healing can come about only from a deep and lasting impression of the Word heard for the first time and, thus, alone capable of unloosing his tongue.

With St. Paul, the deaf mute man would come to realize that we are not sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves; [for] our sufficiency [comes] from God. (2 Cor. iii. 4)  We, with the deaf and mute man have a long journey ahead of us. But if we desire and seek God, knowing that we have been deaf to His Word and are thus dumb, we can learn to hear Christ the Word and speak His truth to the world. We read that Jesus put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue…. (St. Mark vii. 33,34) Almost all other avenues of communication, save those of sight and feeling, were of necessity closed (Idem, Trench) to this man. Jesus must use the man’s seeing and feeling to stir his faith. The fingers are put into the ears as to bore them, to pierce through the obstacles which hindered sounds from reaching the seat of hearing. (Idem) First, we hear. Second, we speak. The tongue must be touched and pried from the roof of the mouth into motion to repeat what it has heard. Like a newborn babe, this handicap sees and feels before he can hear and speak. Thus, with wonder and awe, this man sees and feels as the approaching God opens his ears and unlooses his tongue. Pseudo-Chrysostom tells us that, 

Because of the sin of Adam, human nature had suffered much and had been wounded in its senses and in its members. But Christ coming into the world revealed to us, in Himself, the perfection of human nature; and for this reason he opened the ears with His fingers, and gave speech by the moisture of his tongue. (Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers, iv. 2)
 
The man is new to hearing and speaking. The Lord must link his physical actions to the power that He instills from on High for the man to understand.
Through His human nature, Jesus will identify Himself with the fallen condition of man. As He cures the deaf mute man, looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. (ibid, 34) The power to heal comes from Christ’s unity with the Father in Heaven. Christ sighs in response to the wreck that sin had brought about, of the malice of the devil in deforming the fair features of God’s…creation, wringing a groan from his heart. (idem, Trench) With St. Paul, we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body… [For] we hope for [what] we [do not yet] see…[and so] we with patience wait for it. (Romans viii. 23) So, as the Venerable Bede teaches us, [Jesus] looks up to Heaven to teach us that it is from there that the dumb must seek speech, the deaf hearing, and all who suffer healing. He [sighed or] groaned, not because he needed to seek with groaning anything from the Father…but that he might give us an example of groaning, when we must call upon the assistance of the heavenly mercy…. (Ibid, 2). Jesus sighs to show us that we must with deepest inward groaning desire to ask the Lord to give us spiritual hearing and speaking because we obstinately refuse to hear and speak of the truth that He brings. Jesus sighs or groans because He desires us more than we Him, and longs to give us more than we desire or deserve. (Collect) 

The words of other men have started this miracle on course to fruition. But to become conscious of the power of God’s Word, we must ask it for ourselves. Our Collect reveals the kind of miracle that we need. Pour down upon us the abundance of thy mercy; forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask, but through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord. (Collect) Our souls fear past sins; the remembrance of them is grievous unto us, and the burden of them is intolerable. (General Confession: HC Service, BCP 1928) When we are given spiritual ears with which to hear the truth about ourselves, we become conscious of the horror and shame of the past lives we have lived. Our consciences are afraid; they tremble before the presence of Almighty God. We approach our primordial and primitivenothingness. In the presence of God’s Word, Jesus Christ, we pray for those good things which we are not worthy to ask. (Collect) We do not deserve to hear, and yet God desires to open our spiritual ears. We are ashamed to speak, and yet His Word slowly but surely gives us those words that can praise His Visitation.

Jesus says Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. And straightway, his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain. (St. Mark vii. 35) Jesus hears the Word of the Father and speaks His Word. The man now can both hear and speak simply of the wonderful works of God. The deep impression of God’s heartfelt desire for his salvation now opens his heart to thank Jesus.  
And he charged them that they should tell no man….(Ibid, 36, 37) The new miracle will take time to perfect. Without any fanfare or boasting, we must patiently allow God’s Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, to give us the words to plead the merits of His visitation. Perhaps, we are deaf to God’s Word and cannot speak His truth. As Pope Benedict writes, There is an inner closure that affects the person’s inmost self, which the Bible calls the “heart”. It is this that Jesus came to “open”, to liberate…to enable us to live to the full our relationship with God and with others. (Benedict XVI: September 9, 2012) Ephphatha, Be Opened, Jesus says. Jesus longs to open the ears of our hearts so that we might have what we neither desire nor deserve through His merits and mediation. (Idem) Christ calls us to follow Him quietly to His Cross. There, we shall see and hear how He offers Himself completely to us. There, we must plead the merits of His all-sufficient Sacrifice and Death. There, we must plead His mediation that begins from the Cross and extends into Resurrection and Ascension’s Eternity. From Heaven, He is our only Mediator and Advocate. Then, we shall exclaim, He hath done all things well; he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak. (Ibid, 37)

Amen.
©wjsmartin

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​I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. (Luke 5.32)  
           
Trinity Tide invites us on to the road that leads to salvation, through the name and blood of Jesus Christ, who alone reconciles us to God. No human being is denied this offer of redemption and reconciliation with Almighty God, the Father of lights, the Maker of all things. Every human being is invited to arrive at the end that God has always intended. Every human being can become a pilgrim on the way to the fulfillment and enjoyment of everlasting life with God.  Every human being can find the way that will leads to this end. Know thyself, the ancient oracle at Delphi commands. Know thyself, O Christian man and woman, and if thou can see who thou art, and what God is, then thou shalt find the way and the means that lead all to eternal life.
           
Every human being can come to know the way that leads to death and destruction on the one hand, and the way that leads to life and redemption on the other. The road that a man walks is, of course, his spiritual path. In this morning’s Gospel parable, our Lord illustrates the two ways. Two men went up into the temple to pray: the one a Pharisee, and the other a Publican. (St. Luke, xviii. 10) 
The first man is our Pharisee, a privileged and honored member of the established church of his day. This man was religious, he gave a tenth of his tithes to the Temple; he followed Jewish ritual and dietary law to the tee; he gave alms to the poor. He was the Eminent Victorian Christian of his own age. In addition, he was a religious expert on the dos and don’ts of the moral code. He was, more than likely, a good man, admired and talked of…toasted at public dinners and spoken of with conventional absurdity as a perfect divine. (A. Trollope, Conclusion, Barchester Towers) From him, we should expect to find the way to real religion and true piety.

The other man who went up to pray was a Publican – a Jew who was despised and hated by his own people for being a traitor because he collected taxes for the Roman Empire. From him, we might expect to find only the wrong way to pray since his conscience was seared with treachery. Day by day he was forced to live with a soul torn between the religion of the one true God and his greed.
            
So, we read that the Pharisee stood by himself and prayed thus. (Ibid. 11)) Long before we hear anything from the Pharisee, we see him. He is standing off by himself, segregated and divided from all others, perhaps intending that others should notice his piety (Notes on the Parables, Ch. 29),as Archbishop Trench suggests. This sight should disturb us. It appears that he is talking with himself.He is removed safely from all others, and next we hear why. God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. (Idem) The Pharisee has a very high opinion of himself. His prayer is relative and comparative. He considers himself uniquely virtuous, unlike all other men and, thus, superior to them. From the difference between all other men and himself, he takes a greater occasion for pride, as St. Augustine says. (Aug. Serm. LXV.) Looking over at the Publican he says I am alone, he is of the rest…. not… as he is, through my righteous deeds, whereby I have no unrighteousness. (Idem) As righteous, he divides himself from the unrighteous. He judges and dismisses them all as what he is not. With them, he shares no common ground. Because he is not an extortioner, adulterer, or even as this publican (Idem), he rejoices in his own goodness. He justifies himself, or thinks that he is better, by convincing himself that he is not a sinner, outwardly and visibly, in this world, and in relation to other men. He insists, in other words, that he is good by the standards and appearances of this world. The outside of the cup, his exterior and visible self, is pristine! For our admiration, he sets forth a list of his virtues. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. (Ibid, 12) He went up to pray to praise himself. His list is short, for he has done all that he needs to do in the eyes of God. To be religious, as John Henry Newman points out, was for him, 

to keep peace towards others, to take his share in the burdens of the poor, to abstain from gross vice, and to set a good example. His alms and fastings were done not in penance, but because the world asked for them; penance would have implied consciousness of sin; whereas it was only the Publican’s, and such as they, who had anything to be forgiven. 
(J.H. Newman, 10th Sunday after Pentecost, 1856) 
 
He knows that he is neither a traitor nor a sinner and, thus, thanks God for his well-behaved, decorous, consistent, and respectable life. (R.C. Trench: Parables) Again, he thanks God for himself. Our Pharisee thanks God that he was not as that Publican. Never does he ask God for what He wants him to be. What we see and hear is a man who does all the talking in his prayer. He cannot hear God. Furthermore, he cannot see or hear one man who had found the way that alone leads back to the Almighty. 

But see and hear what the Pharisee missed. The Publican, standing, afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. (Ibid, 13) This man, despised by his own people for his compromised and divided loyalties, is standing afar off. He does not think that he is worthy to come close to the wall of prayer or the holy Pharisee.He stands afar off, no doubt knowing most cuttingly that he is the last and least of those whom God should save. His conscience is seared. He knows that he is an unworthy sinner. He is poor in spirit and fearful of approaching God Almighty. He smites his breast, and what we see and hear is a man whose soul is wrenched with desperation over impotence against his division from God and his fellow men. God alone can save his soul. In all humility, without any doubt, he pleads, God be merciful to me a sinner. (Idem) This man knows himself. He knows, too, that avoiding God would be far worse than approaching Him to beg for mercy and healing. O Lord, correct me, but with judgment; not in thine anger, lest thou bring me to nothing. (Jer. x. 24.) He sees the Pharisee but thinks himself unworthy of his company. He knows only one truth. God stands before Him as the One who knows him, can help him, and can save him from himself and his sins. Before God, he sees himself as nothing. With the prophet Isaiah, he exclaims, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips. (Isaiah vi. 5)
            
This man stands by, but not near, the Pharisee. He stands afar off. (Ibid, 13) Little does he know that he stands far closer to the heart-searching God than most. He does not see by his own light but stands out against the all-seeing God. He sees God’s light and what it reveals to him of himself. He prays that God will hear his humble prayer. Unlike the Pharisee, he is not his own teacher, pacing round and round in the small circle of his own thoughts and judgments, careless to know what God says to him, fearless of being condemned by Him, standing approved in his own sight. (Idem, Trench) Rather, he hears the words of the Lord, Be still and know that I am God. (Psalm 46.10) He sees and fears God and is ripe and ready to hear the words of Jesus Christ: I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. (Luke 5.32) He has seen himself in the light of God’s truth and mercy. He knows that he needs God, and that God alone can save him from his spiritual wretchedness, misery, and poverty. He sees God and longs to hear the Word of His Forgiveness. He seeks pardon for wrong done, and the power to do better. Thus, he says, God be merciful to me a sinner. (Idem)
            
The Publican and his prayer, which the Pharisee can neither see nor hear, are a model for our own piety. The Publican does not justify himself with God whom he sees and hears. Eventually, he sees himself, with all other men, as one in sin and separation from God. With St. Paul, he insists I am the least of the Apostles, that am not meet to be called an Apostle…but by the Grace of God, I am what I am: and His Grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain. (1 Cor. xv. 10) He knows that he is helpless before God’s Majesty and Might. Unbeknownst to himself, he is one with all fallen men. John Henry Newman reminds us, 

this is because created natures, high and low, are all on a level and one in the sight and comparison of the Creator, and so all of them have one speech, and one only, whether it be the thief on the cross, Magdalen at the feast, of St. Paul before martyrdom. One and all have nothing but what comes from Him, and are as nothing before Him, who is all in all. (Newman, Idem) 

The Publican’s prayer is the true prayer of all men. In his heart, we find that unselfconscious holiness about to be born because of the weight of his own sin. From him we learn to humble [ourselves]… under the mighty hand of God…casting all [our] anxieties upon Him (1 Peter v. 6,7)
Let us this day, my brethren, see ourselves in the Light of Almighty God radiating from Jesus Christ. Let us see too that, if left to our own devices, we judge in relation to all others, convincing ourselves that we are good enough and better than notorious sinners. Let us see that God, our Heavenly Father, calls us to hear Him in Jesus. Let us pray that He might mercifully grant unto us such a measure of [His] grace, that we, running the way of [His] commandments, may obtain [His] gracious promises, and be made partakers of [His] heavenly treasure. (Collect Trinity XI) Let us seethat He alone, unlike any other, can and will save us from the Cross of Christ’s Love. He will hear us if we pray with the Publican, God be merciful to me a sinner…for everyone that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. (Ibid, 14) 

Amen.
©wjsmartin

​Concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant.
(1 Corinthians xii. 1)
 
In the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel for the Tenth Sunday after Trinity, the subject matter is struggle. As always, in the Trinity season, we are exhorted to so turn to God through Jesus Christ, that we might struggle to receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit, becoming visible and audible agents – revealers – of God’s presence in the world. And today we are reminded of a few key elements that rightly position our souls before God who longs to struggle with us and bring His gifts alive in our hearts and souls.
       
First, we learn what is not meant by struggling in relation to God. I would not have you ignorant…carried away by dumb idols, (1 Cor. xii. 1,2) St. Paul tells the young Corinthian Church. Jesus witnesses the worship of dumb idols when He visits the Temple at Jerusalem and finds His own people wholly ignorant of the gifts that God’s own people should have struggled to obtain as they prepared for His coming. Our Gospel lesson tells us this morning that Christ Jesus entered the Holy City, whose Temple symbolized the Church that Christ would grow from the foundation of Solomon’s beginning. The Temple was meant to be a place of encounter between God and man in this world, but Jesus finds it rather the site of sinful commerce between man and man. And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou…the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. (St. Luke xix. 41, 42) Instead of finding faith, hope, and love, there Jesus finds man’s obsession with mammon and money. In the Temple, Jesus finds that God’s Word which proclaimed His coming is unheard by the Jews, who have been blinded and deafened by their worship of dumb idols. Jesus finds men who were too busy for faith in the gifts of God’s Word and Spirit, now to be summed up and perfected in His mission to fallen men. They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course. (Ps. lxxxii. 5) They worship mammon and money and don’t reveal even an inkling of the struggle involved in putting God first and worshiping Him alone. 
       
Second, in Jesus’ weeping over the sins of His own people, we have a picture of that struggle and pain that must characterize our own mourning over our sins and the need to repent. The Church is the new Temple of God, and in it we too must grieve and lament over our ignorant worship of dumb idols. Origen of Alexandria, commenting upon these first few verses, says that 
Jesus weeps over Jerusalem first to confirm and establish those virtues which He desired should come alive in us. He writes, All of the Beatitudes of which Jesus spoke in the Gospel He confirms by his own example. Just as He had said “blessed are the meek”, He confirms this where He says “learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart. And just as He said “blessed are ye that weep”, He also wept over the city. (Origen: Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers: iii, p. 341) 
 
We must struggle to embrace meekness, which is that virtue of knowing our place and the limitations of our human nature. We must then struggle to mourn and weep over our frailty and failure to be faithful to God. We also struggle to remember that Christ’s weeping is a sign of His compassion for us. St. Cyril of Jerusalem writes that Christ, who wishes that all men should be saved, had compassion on these. And this would not have been evident to us unless made so by some very human gesture. Tears, however, are a sign of sorrow. (Ibid)  St. Gregory the Great writes that the compassionate Saviour weeps over the ruin of the faithless city, which the city itself did not know was to come. (Ibid) And so three of the great Church Fathers remind us that Christ uses His human nature to reveal to us the great urgency to struggle to practice meekness and mourning so that our souls might unite with Him and thus be rightly related to a sinful world and our part in it.
       
So, through the gifts of the Holy Spirit, we struggle to confess that we have too often and for too long worshiped dumb idols in ignorance and have failed to confess our sins and mourn over them. But why is this such a struggle? The answer is that we are habituated to this world and our fleshly comforts. Our little worlds, one might say, are far too worldly. We are so immersed in creature comforts that have morphed into needs that we treat God and His Heavenly Treasure as a kind of afterthought of merely occasional compartmentalized interest. The fallen Jerusalem over which Jesus weeps this morning is the fallen Jerusalem of our souls. The soul that is fallen has lost the habit of ongoing submission to God’s Word of Promise for redemption, found only in the saving life of Jesus. The soul that is fallen has forgotten its sin because it is no longer confesses its powerlessness in relation to the God who alone can heal, redeem, and save.

We might recover the soul’s spiritual consciousness by looking at today’s Old Testament lesson. Here we read that Jacob rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two women servants, and his eleven sons, and passed over the ford Jabbok. (Genesis xxxii. 22) Jacob, the son of Isaac, crosses the river Jabbok, which means to struggle, to empty, or to pour out. Unbeknownst to him at the time, Jacob was struggling to leave his old self, the natural man and the soul immersed in earthly and profane commerce, behind. Jacob can be our model for the man who empties himself of the worship of dumb idols, leaves behind corrupted desires for impermanent riches, and struggles to cross the spiritual waters. And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. (Genesis xxxii. 24) Possessions, money, even spouses must be left behind for a season so that true spiritual struggle can begin. Jacob struggles and wrestles. Pope Benedict XVI reminds us that, The Church’s spiritual tradition has seen in this story a symbol of prayer as a faith-filled struggle which takes place at times in darkness, calls for perseverance, and is crowned by interior renewal and God’s blessing. This struggle demands our unremitting effort yet ends by surrender to God’s mercy and gift. (Weekly Catechesis, May 25, 2011) Wrestling is spiritual struggle. Each of us must engage it. God struggles with us against the deceitful promises of the world, the flesh, and the devil. In the Person of His Son, Jesus Christ, we find God’s struggle to purge the temples of our bodies and souls of any evil that pursues false commerce in the world. Of course, God never forces His saving power upon us. He does not wish to prevail against Jacob or us. He touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was put out of joint, as he wrestled with him. (Genesis xxxii. 25)

Wrestling or struggling with God leaves behind a sign of our own imperfection and finitude. The thigh, which means his heart, struggles until it rests in God. God’s touch is the loving reminder that He will be the source of our healing and redemption. Jacob is touched by the love of God that saves him. He struggles or wrestles to obtain a blessing from God. God asks, What is thy name? (Genesis xxxii. 27) Jacob answers. God says, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed. (Genesis xxxii. 28) Israel means he has striven, hunted, aspired with God. And so too must we if we would be saved.

You and I must be prepared for spiritual warfare. Jesus weeps because He knows what we lose if we refuse to struggle and wrestle with God. Blessed are they that mourn. (St. Matthew v. 4) Mourning is grief over how we have neglected God’s will. We mourn over our failure to struggle more earnestly to discover His promises for us. Our spiritual thighs must be felt to be out of joint. We must struggle to grasp that God’s Grace intends that we hobble around this world careful not to be desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope…mourning the vanished power of the usual reign, as T. S. Eliot reminds us. (Ash Wednesday) If we fail to wrestle and struggle with God, to hobble, we shall never feel our condition as sinners in need of a Saviour. If we fail to struggle with God, we shall never be able to go with Jesus to His Cross. If we fail to struggle with God, we shall never see how Son of God has won our salvation in His ultimate struggle to hobble to the Cross to conquer sin, death, and Satan.   

Jesus…wept, and then we read that He went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold therein, and them that bought; saying unto them, It is written, My house is the house of prayer: but ye have made it a den of thieves. (St. Luke xix. 45, 46) In Jesus’ tears, we must struggle to learn that through Him, God expresses His Love as wrath against our sin. For whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth. (Hebr. Xii. 6) Let us receive this wrath as Divine Loving correction. Christ brings us to our own powerlessness. We were made to struggle and hobble. Jacob wrestled with God and found himself. Now God, in Jesus Christ, wrestles and struggles against Satan for us. Satan underestimated the omnipotence of his adversary. Satan tortured and crucified Christ as Man. Christ assumed our weakness. But Satan forgot that as Christ the Man was dying, His death was already becoming the instrument of Son of God’s victory over sin, death, and Satan. In the Crucified Dying Lord, Death took on new meaning as the source and seedbed of the hobbling struggle of new life that never dies.

Jesus wept over the destruction of Jerusalem as He saw the human soul’s failure to struggle to put God first. Jerusalem is fallen, and so are we. But now Christ takes us into His loving death as we struggle and hobble to be born again and walk upright. Walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour. (Eph. V. 2) Our Collect directs, let us ask God for such things as shall please [Him] that the Spirit may enable us to struggle and hobble to thank God for this and rejoice! 
Amen.
©wjsmartin 

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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 the administrator or manager of a rich man’s treasure who has been accused of wasting his master’s goods and being a careless manager of the rich man’s estate. 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 disturbed but gives his worker time to give account of his stewardship. The employee is struck dumb with trepidation over his 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, thus, will not lower himself to menial labor to repay his master. He will not beg by reason of the same shame. He has a good mind and will use it to make good out of the evil that has befallen him. He thus muses:
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 others who have loans with his master. 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 bring good out of evil. He has made friends through the mammon of unrighteousness. (Ibid, 9) Having realized his careless negligence, he calls in prudence to reclaim his master’s debt.

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 – that we cannot serve God and Mammon. (St. Matthew vi. 24) We learn more about it in what follows 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 earthly treasure. If a man has been dishonest when entrusted with earthly riches, how can he 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 making up for his fraud 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. The unjust steward is still unjust, and the unrighteous mammon is always unrighteous. 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? No. This is not Jesus’ intention. Rather, he is using the parable to show that all men should know that they are unjust stewards, by reason of sin, and should, therefore, always make friends with what is always unrighteous mammon, with 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 how to use the mammon of unrighteousness properly. A prudent man then befriends unrighteous mammon. Because a prudent man is on intimate terms with the mammon of unrighteousness, and knows only too well its dangerous potential, first he will use it to assist others. Prudence encourages us also to see in our neighbor another self and to love our neighbors as ourselves. So, when we are practically wise or prudent in relation to the mammon of unrighteousness, we use the perishable and disposable wealth of this world for those in need. Jesus says that he that is faithful in that which is least, is also faithful also in much. (Ibid, 10) He means that we must use prudence to become faithful and honest with these lesser and least of riches 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 overcome other men’s basic needs so that their souls can join ours in 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 they do in worrying about money, the world might become a more Christian place. Thus, the parable has a more spiritual meaning. Spiritual men need to be more prudent about their spiritual future, converting the earthly prudence they use in relation to mammon to higher ends.  Making friends with the 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. 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 in Heaven. 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 sees things from afar and weighs Heaven as far more important than earth and its perishable mammon. As our Collect reminds us 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) Thus, Christian prudence sees that God has called us to make to ourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness so that we might be humbled, not arrogantly thinking that we are standing above those whom we help but taking heed lest we fall. (1 Cor. X. 12) After all, if Jesus stoops down to suffer and die for us on His Cross, from the low plain of doing it to the least of these [His] brethren, we should humbly allow them, then, to receive us into [His]everlasting habitations from Heaven because we have served not Mammon but God through His Life of perfect suffering and service from the Cross of His Love.  

Amen.
©wjsmartin  
 

​
 
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 became so full of God’s Wisdom that the rulers of the world came to sit at his feet in order to learn. 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. It is given to man to instruct him in the ways that lead to eternal life. Instruction is understood as the work of a loving God. When a man allows himself to be instructed in Wisdom’s ways, he realizes that he is being led forward into the reality of incorruption, and so he begins to love Wisdom as a Divine Attribute and virtue which is generated in the human heart. God’s gives his Wisdom to us to reveal His love for us and our own desire for Wisdom increases.

Now you might be saying to yourselves, well this all sounds all well and good, but what does it have to do with my life? The answer is everything because we were made to know, to understand, and to love. For this Man was made and not merely to know and understand the surrounding creation, nor to love our fellow men. All of that is important enough. But the point is that we were made for knowledge, love, and discipline. Solomon knew all of this, and this is why he goes to all the trouble of explaining it to us! Indeed, we were made not only to know but 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 the discipline that leads to incorruption and brings us near to God. (Wisdom vi. 20)
So, we wonder, 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 substances, qualities, quantities, relation, place, time, position, having, acting, and being acted upon. The principles of order and arrangement reveal 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. And what you should come away with is 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’s reason has made the vast universe that surrounds him or painted it with beauty and goodness. No man’s reason has combined minute particulars 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 might wonder next how we do it. We do it through the 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 same soul with which the Bishop reflects upon his own reflecting, then moves out of itself to 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 and study all that we have seen and heard, though not present to it through our remembering and recollection. 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 this man that each of us is! 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?    

And 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 and spirits 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 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, 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 wellbeing. To submit to this Divine labor, the human soul must lovingly receive the instruction that Wisdom enjoins. Wisdom desires to direct the soul to order, 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 man 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) Living by God’s Wisdom, is to live in Christ. This means to accept the loving instruction and discipline that His 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 and daughters of God, whereby we [can] cry, Abba, Father.(Ibid, 15) This opens us to a 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) We find God’s Wisdom in nature and then in the life of Jesus Christ our Lord. In submitting humbly and adjusting our lives to Christ, we can be moved by the Divine Wisdom and reveal it to others. 

In this morning’s Gospel Christ tells us that by [men’s] fruits, ye shall know them. (St. Matthew vii. 20) A man’s spiritual worth are measured by the thoughts, words, and deeds that issue forth through his body from his soul. But Man must beware lest his soul does not embrace Christ’s indwelling presence. False prophets who come to us, appearing as sheep are often ravening wolves, (St. Matt. vii. 15) who desire to confound God’s Wisdom and sever us from eternal happiness. To them, the Cross is foolishness. (1 Cor. i. 18) We must be vigilant against them so that Christ, the Crucified Wounded Healer, can overcome us with His Sacrificial Love. We reach our end only if we pray that God will put away from us all hurtful things and give us those things which be profitable for us. (Collect Trinity VIII) Solomon knew that hurtful things sever us from the sacrificial life that surrenders to God’s Wisdom, as he looks forward to the Cross of Jesus Christ, which is God’s Wisdom made flesh. Christ reminds 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. (Ibid, 21) So, with Bishop Beveridge, [let us] resolve…in the presence of Almighty God, that from this day forward, [we] will make it our whole business…to look after [our] happiness in Heaven, and to walk circumspectly those blessed paths, that God appointed all to walk in, that ever expect to come to Him. (Ibid, 4)

Amen.  
©wjsmartin

 Graft in our hearts the love of Thy Name, increase in us true religion, 
nourish us with all goodness, and keep us in the same…
(Collect Trinity VII)

You must have noticed that in addition to our Scriptural lessons appointed to be read each Sunday, we pray something called a Collect. A Collect is a short general prayer of a particular structure used in Christian liturgy. (Wikip…) In the tradition of Common Prayer, the Collect sums up into one prayer the theme of the day or the focus of any given Sunday’s readings. You will have noticed that our Collects are poetically worded and beautifully crafted expressions of theological truth. Yet there is always a danger in them. One might be so swept up with the form that one forgets the substance. Their melodious meter might sweep up such aesthetic appreciation that we miss the theological truth that they contain. We might liken it to the harmony of a song that stirs us with melody devoid of meaning. Countless numbers of people have enjoyed certain songs or choruses, only to realize that, on closer examination, the ideas they express are evil. We love the music, the sound, the beat, and the combination of notes, and yet, if we examine the meaning, we are appalled to find their meaning!

But our Collects were formulated to do exactly the opposite. Their beautiful forms were crafted to lead a man into the truth. From there, they are meant to lift the soul into the powerful presence of God. Listen, again, to the opening words of this morning’s Collect: Lord of all power and might, who art the author and giver of all good things.... The words flow so beautifully that they are music to our ears. And yet, what are they arranged to do? They lead and guide our minds into the truth about God. God is omnipotent. He is the Creator and Giver of all good things. He is the author of primal goodness and meaning and is the giver of that supplemental goodness that yields salvation. He makes all things and because they are made by Him, they are good. He offers to redeem certain things also, namely the hearts and souls of one part of creation that has rejected His goodness and preferred their own. The goodness He desires to effect for man is the redemption of his fallen nature. Beyond the goodness that He creates, is a goodness that will conquer, subdue, and overcome man’s rejection of it. His added goodness promises to carry us out of bondage to the elements of this world (Gal. iv. 3), which, as St. Paul reminds us, He gives in response to our Fall. His added goodness is offered to us so that we might conquer evil.
         
So, God’s power and might were present in the creation and are present to us now in redemption. His unchanging desire and intention for us is to continue to make all things good. Having claimed and confessed that His power and might alone make all things noble, right, and true, we pray that what God intends for us to receive through love or an act of the joyful will. Graft in our hearts the love of Thy name. God does not force or compel us to love Him. We must desire and long that God’s power and might might enable us to love [His] name. (Idem) Thus, we long to be infused with a love for Him that excels and surpasses all other loves – loves that tempt and distract us from the source and origin of our true and lasting joy. We yearn for that love that opens our hearts and souls to the power and might of God’s Grace.
Acknowledging that this power and might alone can generate goodness in us, we see that its first effect must be love. We know that goodness for man is salvation and reconciliation with the same God. We know too that we cannot have it unless we love and will Him from the ground of our hearts.

Yet, we cannot end here. We know that our love for God must never be a fly-by-night, temporary, occasional, impermanent feeling, or emotion. So, we pray, Increase in us true religion. True religion is the flower and fruit of that instinct, passion, and desire for the rule and governance of God’s goodness in our own lives. Without the Spirit of Divine Love, we shall never become accustomed or habituated to the virtues of truth, which are the only means to our salvation. William Law tells us that the Spirit of Love is not in you till it is the spirit of your life, till you live freely, willingly, and universally according to it. (The Spirit of Love) The Spirit of Love must be translated into the spirit of our lives with the increase of true religion. True religion is a reflection and imitation of God’s holiness and righteousness – of His goodness, truth, and beauty. St. Paul tells us in this morning’s Epistle that when [we] were the servants of sin, [we] were free from righteousness. (Romans vi. 20) What he means is that before we woke up and came to our spiritual senses, we were in bondage, or slavery, to the elements of this world. Because of that, we were headed for trouble, sin’s reward – spiritual death, to be bereft of God’s enduring good things for ever. But now, he says, we are being made freed from sin, [and are becoming] the servants of God. ( Ibid, 22) Our Collect for today echoes Paul’s desire and hope for his flock. Increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness…. If we are defined by true religion we must be fed and nourished with God’s goodness, [having our] fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. (Ibid, 22) Desire for the love of God in our hearts moves us to find that true religion that conforms to the pursuit of salvation. What we are praying for, then, is the love of God that leads to godly discipline. Through discipline, we find liberation from bondage to all that is unclean, unholy, and unrighteous. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Ibid, 23) If the love of God is to be ordered in us as true religion, God’s goodness must nourish our hearts in the victory over evil.
         
At the end of our Collect, we pray that God, of his great mercy might keep us in the same. Perhaps, here, we come finally to the hardest part of the whole Collect for this Seventh Sunday after Trinity. We pray that God’s holiness and righteousness might become permanent habits in our knowing and willing. And this leads us to our Gospel for today. In it, we read of God’s ongoing response to man’s desire for Him. In Jesus Christ, we find the one who is with us and for us every step of the way on this hard journey. Just as Jesus had compassion on the multitude then, so He continues to have compassion on us now. Then He fed a multitude of four thousand men with seven loaves and two small fishes. (St. Mark viii) We read that he had compassion upon them because they had a desire for the kind of life that our Collect encourages. He has mercy always upon those who follow Him first and foremost, for the long haul, and from afar. The multitude has now been with me three days, and if I send them away fasting to their own houses, they will faint by the way; for divers of them came from afar. (St. Mark viii. 2,3) Jesus will meet the needs of those who follow Him faithfully. At that time, He took a little food – seven loaves and two small fishes and multiplied them so that they could feed a multitude of people. Jesus is one with the Father. He is the Lord of all power and might and is the author and giver of all good things. Through His compassionate love, He begins to graft in [the multitude’s] heart the love of [God’s] name. They have put God’s Word in Jesus Christ first. Then, they desire to increase in true religion since they have traveled long distances and have now been with Him for three days. (Idem) Now, He will nourish [them] with all goodness as a reward for their faithfulness and thus keep those who are faithful in the same. (Idem)
         
Jesus will answer our prayers today as well. What we pray for in our Collect, Jesus provides. He knows that we grow weary and faint as we journey after salvation. He knows that we struggle to leave far behind our slavery to sin and the elements of this world. (Idem) He understands that our feeble powerlessness always threatens to overwhelm and possess us. He understands even that the music and beauty of our Collect might not be enough to increase in us true religion. So, He ministers to us. Even today, He takes a few morsels of bread and a small portion of wine and makes them into His Body and His Blood. In receiving the miracle of Christ’s Real Presence with us and for us, we are welcomed into the summation of all good things. In them, because He is the author and giver of all good things, what He says they are, they must become for us.
         
In the Holy Eucharist, we come to believe that Christ offers us all of Himself. In it, He offers to us the substance of His sacrificial love. In our frail souls, we must understand that when we pray, Graft in our hearts the love of thy name, we are praying for the indwelling of Jesus Christ. This indwelling is the Real Presence of Jesus Christ, who desires to heal us with that love that has given Himself to us completely on the Cross of Calvary. Christ is like a Surgeon who grafts His perfect Body onto our frail, sickly flesh and fills us with His Blood so that in Him and through His Spirit we might be able to love God the Father’s holy name once again. T. S. Eliot provides the image:

The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart. (The Four Quartets: East Coker, IV)

Christ grafts in our hearts His love of God’s Holy Name. The wounded surgeon has bled for us in His death and lifts us into the healing balm of His Resurrection. True religion feeds on all manner of His love and goodness. Christ the Surgeon enters our sinful systems with the sharp compassion – the tough love of His Divine cure. The sharp compassion of the healer’s art demands His Cross and ours. Here, God’s Holy Word lovingly invites us to feed on Him and sing the song of salvation, to keep us in the same. (Idem) 
Amen.

©wjsmartin

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance
​without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without
personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the 
cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.
                                    Dietrich Bonhoeffer  The Cost of Discipleship
 

We begin today’s sermon with a quotation from Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the 20th century’s great Christian witnesses and martyrs for the faith. Bonhoeffer, as many of you know, was a Lutheran pastor and theologian, who was a key mover in the German Christian resistance to Hitler during the Second World War. Bonhoeffer was born into a prominent German family, studied at the University of Berlin, and trained for the ministry in Barcelona, Spain, and then at Union Theological Seminary in New York. While in New York, he began to realize the power of God’s Grace in a radical new way. He spent much time at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, where, he would later say, I moved from phraseology to reality. He moved from believing in the words that constitute doctrine to living it out practically. Bonhoeffer’s life was cut short. Accused of being an accomplice in the plot on the Fuhrer’s life, Hitler hanged him. He was 39 years old when he died. But up until his death, he left the world with remarkable reflections on the Gospel and the understanding of God’s truth. He suffered many things, but chiefly he suffered to live in Jesus Christ, and his writings led men to embrace not cheap but costly Grace that comes to man only through the Sacrifice of God’s own Son.
         
Cheap grace, of course, is easy enough to fall into. Fallen man is lazy and cowardly when it comes to suffering. Cheap grace pleases the soul that cannot bear to keep his eyes on the Cross. Cheap grace is found in just persons that have no need of repentance (St. Luke xv. 7) or forgiveness. Cheap grace characterizes those who irrationally presume that man should neither play any part in redemption nor have a relationship with God the Father, through the suffering of the Cross, by the hard discipline of the Holy Ghost. And while cheap grace might make many feel good about themselves, the fact of the matter is that cheap grace can’t save us. Cheap grace makes a mockery of Our Lord’s suffering and crucifixion. Cheap grace is a fraud and a lie that proves costly to those who embrace it.  

Christians believe in costly grace. Costly grace involves serious confrontation with the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Grace, of course, is freely given. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. (1 Tim. ii 3,4) God gives His Grace to save all men, but on His terms. His terms involve the Cross and every man’s relation to it. It is never forced; through his free will man, can either accept or reject it. Man must play a part in his redemption. He does this by using his free will to embrace God’s Grace. Following the decision to embrace it, either it lives on or it dies. God’s costly grace is offered to the soul freely, requiring that constant vigilance that wills to grow spiritually through suffering.  
         
In this morning’s Epistle, we are invited to contemplate costly Grace. Grace, as understood by St. Paul, requires surrender and suffering. The costliness of Grace is first found in the price paid by God to save all human beings. The cost paid by God the Father was the death of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. The cost paid by Christ was His life, freely and lovingly given to us all on the Cross. The cost paid by the Spirit is the incessant loving determination to incorporate us into this life of Grace. The Spirit, alive and well in the heart of Jesus, reveals His Yes to God, and thus a life that suffers perfectly to do the Father’s will. For Christ, to be moved by God’s will through the Spirit meant that it would cost Him His life. Grace is not cheap. It is purchased with the lifeblood of Jesus of Nazareth. 

Christians are called to embrace the costly Grace that flows into human life through the death of Jesus Christ. Christians must enter the death of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is our Yes to God, and Yes to God means death, real death. But how can we enter death before we die? Can we die before our physical natures give up the ghost? On the face of it, it seems implausible. Death is death, and we die when we have breathed our last. So, what does it mean to enter Christ’s death?
Death is a cessation, an ending of life as we know it. Death leaves life behind. Death is an end, which most think is final. Christians must disagree. Death for Christians, in addition to being something that we shall all endure in a physical way, is also a spiritual virtue ­– a habit in time that will ensure our journey into a new kind of life. Christians believe that spiritual death is an inward and spiritual virtue. Of course, man dies to things every day. The cost of pursuing what he loves demands that man must die to whatever threatens his betterment and well-being. In the Christian sense, the cost man pays is dying to his old sinful self. And this is precisely what St. Paul is talking about in today’s Epistle. 

Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore, we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. (Romans vi. 3.4)
 
Grace is costly, not cheap. Grace comes to us through the suffering and death of Jesus Christ. Grace comes to us in Christ’s Yes to God, which Yes demands death – first His, and then ours. Death is needed, spiritual death, our deaths to ourselves, the cost we must pay for Grace to abound. This is the cost of Grace. It is the death of Jesus Christ shared with us. It must mean our spiritual death to sin in Him. Death is linked by St. Paul to baptism. He teaches that we are initiated into the death of Jesus Christ. The death of Jesus Christ is God’s response to our sin. Christ brings sin to death in Himself. The Father gives Himself to us completely in his Son’s Yes. He sends His Holy Spirit to us that we too may say Yes to Him and die. Grace is costly, it requires nothing less than everything. If we desire the Grace of God, we must say Yes to God and die to ourselves in Christ’s death.
         
Imagine it if we took Jesus’ Yes to God seriously. Imagine if in the face of sin’s determination to destroy us, we continued to say Yes to God. Imagine if we found that Grace is not cheap, but costly. What would happen? Again, it will cost us everything. It will cost us our families, our friends, our riches, our possessions, and all else. What is significant, though, is that it will cost us ourselves. Grace is not cheap. It comes at a price. Our Yes to God demands all of ourselves, our souls, and our bodies. Sin’s aim is to kill life, both physical and spiritual, and to convince us that this life’s death is final and conclusive. But if we say Yes to God in the face of sin’s temptations, we shall die to the lie that sin will forever enslave us. We shall die to the lie that we cannot rise up out of death, here and now, by the Spirit of Jesus Christ. When we say Yes to God in the face of sin, we deny sin any power over us at all. When we say Yes to God, the unchanging love of God’s power will surround and envelop us. We become alive, alive to God and all the potential for eternal life with Him. Suddenly, the true, the beautiful, and the good will enter our hearts. The power of God will generate new life out of our old sinful selves. Our Yes to God will become the birth of His life in us, through Christ, and by the Spirit.

The perfect and persistent Yes to God of Jesus is crucified by man – by us. Death is sin’s end, and Jesus embraces it in His Yes to God. Jesus doesn’t respond to sin but only to God. Even His wrongful and unmerited death can become a reality where man says Yes to God. In Jesus’ death, we find the pattern and model that can say Yes to God. Our baptism into Christ’s death calls us to suffer the cost. His death is our Yes to God and is summarized in today’s Collect.
O God, who hast prepared for them that love thee such good things as pass man’s understanding: Pour into our hearts such love toward thee, that we, loving thee above all things, may obtain thy promises, that exceed all that we can desire. 
 
When we say Yes to God in Jesus Christ, our old Adam needs never again be the slave of sin. Our Yes to God in Christ means that we can love Him above all things, dying to ourselves, with a righteousness that exceeds the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees (St. Matthew v. 20). God’s Grace in Jesus Christ is justice and righteousness that exceeds and eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It will cost us everything not to render evil for evil. Grace is costly but God’s justice is Christ’s loving Yes to God and the forgiveness of our sins. It will cost us ourselves if we love Him above all things to obtain His promises, which exceed all that we can desire. (Idem) Costly Grace leads to true and unending life with God because we cooperate with our Master, Jesus Christ, as He works His redemption into our souls. Costly grace is Christ’s work in us. Let us persevere with the aid of Christ’s healing Sacrament, Broken Bread and Poured out wine as Broken Body and Poured out Blood for our suffering souls’ refreshment and encouragement.

Amen.
©wjsmartin

 
 
 

…The people pressed upon him to hear the Word of God…
(St. Luke v. 1)
 

​Trinity Tide, as we have said, is all about growth and fertility. We wear Green Vestments during this season to symbolize harvest, growth, and fruitfulness. In this season we learn how to love and obey our Heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, His Eternally Begotten Word and Logos for us made flesh, through the indwelling of our Lord the Holy Ghost. Our spiritual exercise is illustrated in the Gospel lesson as we see how the people pressed upon Jesus to hear the Word of God. Today, we learn that hearing the Word of God is one thing, and doing something about it is quite another. St. James tells us to be…doers of the Word, and not hearers only. (St. James i. 22) This is where most well-intentioned Christians get caught up. Hearing God’s Word and saying, I agree with that, is one thing, doing it or applying it to human life is quite another. Today, let us see if we might press upon Jesus to hear God’s Word so that, being caught up in the Net of His doing, our lives might begin to be transformed by God the Holy Trinity. 

Prior to this morning’s Gospel lesson from St. Luke, Jesus had been thrown out of His hometown of Nazareth, barely escaping with His life. No prophet finds acceptance in his own country. (St. Luke iv. 24). So He traveled into Capernaum where His teaching was acknowledged as authoritative. Here He cast a demon out of a possessed man, healed St. Peter’s mother-in-law who had been gripped with a fever, and restored others who were diseased physically or spiritually. Finally, He retired to a desert place and prayed. But crowds of people caught up with Him because they wanted more. But the more that Jesus was preparing to give them –God’s Word and Will for man, would require some doing by Jesus.

So, we find Jesus moving down into the fishing village of Gennesaret. We read that Jesus entered into one of the ships, which was Simon’s, and prayed him that he would thrust out a little from the land. (Ibid, 3) If we would press upon [Jesus] to hear God’s Word, we must thrust out a little from the land (Ibid, 3) away from the hustle and bustle, confusion and noise of human life, to free us from those earthly preoccupations that would distract us. Over and against the usual course of human affairs, God’s Word must stand alone with men of prayer to address them from a place of concentration, that they might serve Him in all Godly quietness. (Collect Trinity V)

Notice that in today’s Gospel, some are on shore and some are in the boats with Jesus. Some will hear the Word, and some will experience its Power in human life. Peter, James, and John have accompanied Jesus in the ships.  And while both groups are intended to be caught up in the net of Christ as his spiritual fish, as Archbishop Trench reminds us, the Apostles must be converted first so that they may then become Christ’s doers of the Word and, thus, fishers of men. I think that Saint Peter, in particular, and then Saints James and John, represent in this story the Church and her ministers. The people on the shore represent the fish that will be caught up on land once the Apostles have been caught up in Christ’s Net from the deeper spiritual waters of the sea. There are different levels and stages of faith, trust, and obedience that pass first from Christ to His Apostles, and then from His Apostles to all others who would be saved. Some men are ready to hear but not yet digest. Others will hear the Word and then experience the Power of its Love.

​First, the faith of the Apostles, who have thrust out from land and onto the sea with Jesus, must be tested. We read: Now when He had left speaking, He said unto Simon, launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught.  (Ibid, 4) Simon, like his fellow fishermen, and unlike the crowd, has had a long and unsuccessful night of fishing. Most of the other fishermen are on the shore, exhausted, cleaning their nets, licking their wounds, and perhaps downcast at another night of failing to catch any fish. Matthew Henry tells us that One would have thought this should have excused [the Apostles also] from Christ’s sermon; but it was more refreshing and reviving to them than the softest slumbers. (Comm. Luke V) The fishermen on shore did not see much sense in thrusting off onto the waters again with Jesus. But the Apostles did. While others slept, the Apostles would use their powerlessness, failure, and fatigue as a trigger for turning more faithfully from themselves towards Jesus. The Apostles worked their bodies hard to catch fish, but when they failed, fully spent, they turned to Christ for the reviving of their souls. Christ knows our weakness, and it is when we feel this most truly that He will draw out new and vibrant faith. Simon Peter responds to Jesus: Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless, at thy word I will let down the net. (Ibid 5,6)

Peter faithfully obeys. And when they had this done, they inclosed a great multitude of fishes: and their net brake. And they beckoned unto their partners, which were in the other ship, that they should come and help them. And they came, and filled both the ships, so that they began to sink. (Ibid, 6,7) Peter, James, and John were overwhelmed by the catch. They called on their partners to help to relieve the weight of the treasure trove of fish that was sinking their boats. Where the Apostles had failed, Jesus would succeed. We read that 

when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord. For he was astonished, and all that were with him, at the draught of the fishes which they had taken: and so was also James, and John, the sons of Zebedee, which were partners with Simon. (Ibid, 8-10) 
 
St. Peter is overwhelmed by the Power and Love of God in Christ the Word and nature’s response to it. Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Cor. i. 24) effects what might happen in nature on a favorable day but is accelerated now with supernatural intervention. Human ingenuity is one thing, but to be caught up in the provision that God’s Word yields is quite another. Peter feels his own deep sense of unworthiness as radically other than the Power and Love of God in Jesus. He falls down as one undeserving of such a gift. Archbishop Trench tells us that the deepest thing in a man’s heart…is a sense of God’s holiness as something bringing death and destruction to the unholy creature. (Miracles, 102) Peter’s faith and obedience yield a miracle greater than the draught of the fishes. Peter knows himself as an unholy creature in the presence of an all-loving God. The Love of God in Jesus Christ must always startle us with a Power that confounds all our expectations.

The first step towards a right relationship with God is the fear of the Lord. It is the beginning of wisdom that learns humility in the presence of the all Holy God. Father Mouroux reminds us that man must realize that [he] is dust and ashes before his God; however much he abounds he is always a poverty-stricken thing hanging on the Divine Mercy, and however much he may be purified he is still a sinner face to face with Holiness. (The Meaning of Man, p. 217) The fish which the men have caught are still alive, flailing, thrashing, and thwacking with all their might to return to life in the sea. Peter, on the other hand, rendered dead to himself, is still, and falls down and endures a spiritual undoing that he cannot resist. He finds himself the chief of all sinners in the face of an all Loving and Powerful God who promises him new life.

Christ catches Peter, James, and John in His Net. They find themselves 
 
in a state of Grace, in which all the contradiction is felt, God is still a consuming fire, yet not anymore for the sinner, but for the sin…[for they are in] the presence of God…[whose] glory is veiled, whose nearness…every sinful man may endure, and in that nearness may little by little be prepared for the…open vision of the face of God. (Trench, Idem)  

Jesus says, Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men. (Ibid, 10) Jesus intends that Peter, James, John, and the other Apostles should come alive as fishers of men.
So, what does it mean to be caught up as spiritual fish into Christ’s Net and to become fishers of men? 

Our Gospel concludes: When the [Apostles] had brought their ships to land, they forsook all, and followed Him. (Ibid, 11) The Apostles were called to be fish out of water  –to forsake the world, the flesh, the devil, and themselves. They were called to be all of one mind, having compassion one of another, loving as brethren…pitiful…courteous; not rendering evil for evil…but contrariwise blessing…eschewing evil, ensuing good, seeking peace and ensuing it. (1 Peter iii. 8,9) Forsaking all is a spiritual disposition that zealously puts Christ first, hears, obeys, and follows Him into the New Life that He brings from above. Forsaking all will also mean following Jesus to His Cross. We press upon Jesus to hear the Word of God (Idem) to become doers of [it]. (Idem) We leave our earthly occupations and thrust out a little from the land. (Idem) We launch into the deep with Jesus and cast our nets out for a draught. Trusting with faith in the Word of the Lord, which alone can sink the ship of our sinfulness, we shall be caught up in the catch of Christ’s Net. Faith in God’s Grace can flourish and bloom [only if] it is welcomed; it can act [only if] it is activated, [for] all the infinitude of its power comes from the adoring passivity in which it lies open to God. (Mouroux, p. 217) The Apostles could have returned to fishing for fish. But another miracle is at work here. God’s Power and Love will overcome fallen men and bring them into His dying life on the Cross. 

​The Son of God alone, wholly removed from His natural glory and bliss in Heaven, is the real fish out of water. We can become fish out of water also as Christ catches us up in the Net of His death for our future in Heaven. Being caught up into Christ’s Net, He will enable us to be followers of that which is good…suffering for righteousness’ sake…so that happy we may be (Idem), serving Him in all godly quietness (Collect) and fishing for men.

Amen.
©wjsmartin

​…The people pressed upon him to hear the Word of God…
(St. Luke v. 1)
 
Trinity Tide, as we have said, is all about growth and fertility. We wear Green Vestments during this season to symbolize harvest, growth, and fruitfulness. In this season we learn how to love and obey our Heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, His Eternally Begotten Word and Logos for us made flesh, through the indwelling of our Lord the Holy Ghost. Our spiritual exercise is illustrated in the Gospel lesson as we see how the people pressed upon Jesus to hear the Word of God. Today, we learn that hearing the Word of God is one thing, and doing something about it is quite another. St. James tells us to be…doers of the Word, and not hearers only. (St. James i. 22) This is where most well-intentioned Christians get caught up. Hearing God’s Word and saying, I agree with that, is one thing, doing it or applying it to human life is quite another. Today, let us see if we might press upon Jesus to hear God’s Word so that, being caught up in the Net of His doing, our lives might begin to be transformed by God the Holy Trinity. 

Prior to this morning’s Gospel lesson from St. Luke, Jesus had been thrown out of His hometown of Nazareth, barely escaping with His life. No prophet finds acceptance in his own country. (St. Luke iv. 24). So He traveled into Capernaum where His teaching was acknowledged as authoritative. Here He cast a demon out of a possessed man, healed St. Peter’s mother-in-law who had been gripped with a fever, and restored others who were diseased physically or spiritually. Finally, He retired to a desert place and prayed. But crowds of people caught up with Him because they wanted more. But the more that Jesus was preparing to give them –God’s Word and Will for man, would require some doing by Jesus.

So, we find Jesus moving down into the fishing village of Gennesaret. We read that Jesus entered into one of the ships, which was Simon’s, and prayed him that he would thrust out a little from the land. (Ibid, 3) If we would press upon [Jesus] to hear God’s Word, we must thrust out a little from the land (Ibid, 3) away from the hustle and bustle, confusion and noise of human life, to free us from those earthly preoccupations that would distract us. Over and against the usual course of human affairs, God’s Word must stand alone with men of prayer to address them from a place of concentration, that they might serve Him in all Godly quietness. (Collect Trinity V)

Notice that in today’s Gospel, some are on shore and some are in the boats with Jesus. Some will hear the Word, and some will experience its Power in human life. Peter, James, and John have accompanied Jesus in the ships.  And while both groups are intended to be caught up in the net of Christ as his spiritual fish, as Archbishop Trench reminds us, the Apostles must be converted first so that they may then become Christ’s doers of the Word and, thus, fishers of men. I think that Saint Peter, in particular, and then Saints James and John, represent in this story the Church and her ministers. The people on the shore represent the fish that will be caught up on land once the Apostles have been caught up in Christ’s Net from the deeper spiritual waters of the sea. There are different levels and stages of faith, trust, and obedience that pass first from Christ to His Apostles, and then from His Apostles to all others who would be saved. Some men are ready to hear but not yet digest. Others will hear the Word and then experience the Power of its Love.

First, the faith of the Apostles, who have thrust out from land and onto the sea with Jesus, must be tested. We read: Now when He had left speaking, He said unto Simon, launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught.  (Ibid, 4) Simon, like his fellow fishermen, and unlike the crowd, has had a long and unsuccessful night of fishing. Most of the other fishermen are on the shore, exhausted, cleaning their nets, licking their wounds, and perhaps downcast at another night of failing to catch any fish. Matthew Henry tells us that One would have thought this should have excused [the Apostles also] from Christ’s sermon; but it was more refreshing and reviving to them than the softest slumbers. (Comm. Luke V) The fishermen on shore did not see much sense in thrusting off onto the waters again with Jesus. But the Apostles did. While others slept, the Apostles would use their powerlessness, failure, and fatigue as a trigger for turning more faithfully from themselves towards Jesus. The Apostles worked their bodies hard to catch fish, but when they failed, fully spent, they turned to Christ for the reviving of their souls. Christ knows our weakness, and it is when we feel this most truly that He will draw out new and vibrant faith. Simon Peter responds to Jesus: Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless, at thy word I will let down the net. (Ibid 5,6)

Peter faithfully obeys. And when they had this done, they inclosed a great multitude of fishes: and their net brake. And they beckoned unto their partners, which were in the other ship, that they should come and help them. And they came, and filled both the ships, so that they began to sink. (Ibid, 6,7) Peter, James, and John were overwhelmed by the catch. They called on their partners to help to relieve the weight of the treasure trove of fish that was sinking their boats. Where the Apostles had failed, Jesus would succeed. We read that 
when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord. For he was astonished, and all that were with him, at the draught of the fishes which they had taken: and so was also James, and John, the sons of Zebedee, which were partners with Simon. (Ibid, 8-10) 
 
St. Peter is overwhelmed by the Power and Love of God in Christ the Word and nature’s response to it. Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Cor. i. 24) effects what might happen in nature on a favorable day but is accelerated now with supernatural intervention. Human ingenuity is one thing, but to be caught up in the provision that God’s Word yields is quite another. Peter feels his own deep sense of unworthiness as radically other than the Power and Love of God in Jesus. He falls down as one undeserving of such a gift. Archbishop Trench tells us that the deepest thing in a man’s heart…is a sense of God’s holiness as something bringing death and destruction to the unholy creature. (Miracles, 102) Peter’s faith and obedience yield a miracle greater than the draught of the fishes. Peter knows himself as an unholy creature in the presence of an all-loving God. The Love of God in Jesus Christ must always startle us with a Power that confounds all our expectations.

The first step towards a right relationship with God is the fear of the Lord. It is the beginning of wisdom that learns humility in the presence of the all Holy God. Father Mouroux reminds us that man must realize that [he] is dust and ashes before his God; however much he abounds he is always a poverty-stricken thing hanging on the Divine Mercy, and however much he may be purified he is still a sinner face to face with Holiness. (The Meaning of Man, p. 217) The fish which the men have caught are still alive, flailing, thrashing, and thwacking with all their might to return to life in the sea. Peter, on the other hand, rendered dead to himself, is still, and falls down and endures a spiritual undoing that he cannot resist. He finds himself the chief of all sinners in the face of an all Loving and Powerful God who promises him new life.

​Christ catches Peter, James, and John in His Net. They find themselves 
 
in a state of Grace, in which all the contradiction is felt, God is still a consuming fire, yet not anymore for the sinner, but for the sin…[for they are in] the presence of God…[whose] glory is veiled, whose nearness…every sinful man may endure, and in that nearness may little by little be prepared for the…open vision of the face of God. (Trench, Idem) 
 
Jesus says, Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men. (Ibid, 10) Jesus intends that Peter, James, John, and the other Apostles should come alive as fishers of men.

So, what does it mean to be caught up as spiritual fish into Christ’s Net and to become fishers of men? 
Our Gospel concludes: When the [Apostles] had brought their ships to land, they forsook all, and followed Him. (Ibid, 11) The Apostles were called to be fish out of water  –to forsake the world, the flesh, the devil, and themselves. They were called to be all of one mind, having compassion one of another, loving as brethren…pitiful…courteous; not rendering evil for evil…but contrariwise blessing…eschewing evil, ensuing good, seeking peace and ensuing it. (1 Peter iii. 8,9) Forsaking all is a spiritual disposition that zealously puts Christ first, hears, obeys, and follows Him into the New Life that He brings from above. Forsaking all will also mean following Jesus to His Cross. We press upon Jesus to hear the Word of God (Idem) to become doers of [it]. (Idem) We leave our earthly occupations and thrust out a little from the land. (Idem) We launch into the deep with Jesus and cast our nets out for a draught. Trusting with faith in the Word of the Lord, which alone can sink the ship of our sinfulness, we shall be caught up in the catch of Christ’s Net. Faith in God’s Grace can flourish and bloom [only if] it is welcomed; it can act [only if] it is activated, [for] all the infinitude of its power comes from the adoring passivity in which it lies open to God. (Mouroux, p. 217) The Apostles could have returned to fishing for fish. But another miracle is at work here. God’s Power and Love will overcome fallen men and bring them into His dying life on the Cross. 

The Son of God alone, wholly removed from His natural glory and bliss in Heaven, is the real fish out of water. We can become fish out of water also as Christ catches us up in the Net of His death for our future in Heaven. Being caught up into Christ’s Net, He will enable us to be followers of that which is good…suffering for righteousness’ sake…so that happy we may be (Idem), serving Him in all godly quietness (Collect) and fishing for men.

Amen.
©wjsmartin
 

​
To be a Disciple is to be a devoted love-slave of the Lord Jesus. Many of us who call ourselves Christians are not devoted to Jesus Christ. (Oswald Chambers)

I have opened this morning’s sermon with these words of Oswald Chambers because I believe that the dangers of false Discipleship are everywhere present in this morning’s Gospel lesson. In it, we read that Then drew near unto [Jesus] all the publicans and sinners for to hear him. And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them. (St. Luke xv. 1,2) What we have, it would seem, are the publicans and sinners huddled around Jesus, eager to hear His Word, and the Pharisees and Scribes standing off at a distance, murmuring and judging Him. First, we find those who are interested in and desperately needing what Jesus has to offer, and then the self-righteous Jews judging both Jesus and the company He is keeping. Nestled in between the two groups are, as always, the Apostles. Now, Jesus knows exactly what the religious and pious Jewish Elders are thinking, and so He offers two parables. The truth of these parables is not specifically addressed to the publicans and sinners but to the Scribes and Pharisees and even to the Apostles. But, of course, what Jesus teaches is always meant for all, that whosoever hears His words might become a true Disciple.
          
So Jesus asks, 

What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbours, saying unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost. (Ibid, 4-6) 
 
Zoologists tell us that sheep are selfish animals which congregate towards a safe center. (Flock and Awe….) Occasionally, one errs and strays from the way of the sheepfold, and so the shepherd must set out to find it. There is no indication that the ninety and nine detect that one of their members is missing. Provided they are safely fenced in by the sheepfold, they are content and satisfied. The one who does miss the lost sheep is the shepherd, who then rejoices when he finds it. Jesus suggests that the Pharisees and Scribes are more like the ninety and nine safe and contented sheep than like the shepherd. The untold dangers associated with forsaking their communal safety and seeking out the lost sheep are paralleled with the Pharisees’ fear of ritual pollution through contact with publicans and sinners -spiritually lost sheep. For, as Archbishop Trench remarks, they had neither love to hope for the recovery of such men, nor yet antidotes to preserve and protect themselves while making the attempt. (N.O.P’s. p.286) The publicans and sinners are clearly more like the lost sheep in need of being found by the loving shepherd. The shepherd values the lost sheep so much that he leaves the ninety and nine because, for him, every sheep is of great value, like a repentant sinner who needs to be rescued and saved by God. Jesus says, I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance. (St. Luke, Ibid, 7) Clearly, then, the truth found in Jesus’ parable rebukes the self-righteous, selfish contentedness of the Pharisees, who cannot be true shepherds because they were never lost sheep who became true disciples. A true Disciple of Christ will not be self-righteously satisfied but, like the lost sheep, like the publicans and sinners, whose lost state elicits repentance and the saving Grace of the Good Shepherd.

Jesus continues with another parable. 

Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it? And when she hath found it, she calleth her friends and her neighbours together, saying, Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost. (Ibid, 8,9) 
 
The light symbolizes Christ and the woman images Mother Church. By the light of Christ, the woman, -the Church, sweeps her house, -the world, and seeks diligently until she finds the lost coin –souls who are lost in sin. As with the first parable, the woman rejoices when she finds what she has lost, just as there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. (Ibid, 10) The true Disciple of Christ will learn that he is like the lost coin. As such, he is like the publican or sinner who is lost in his sin but is afforded neither value nor worth by the Pharisees and Scribes of his own day, –or the religious authorities in any age, who have judged him to be lost in sin, unlike themselves. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, comes into the world to find His sheep lost in sin to give them new meaning and worth. As a lost coin, the true Disciple finds his worth and value in the One who persistently seeks him out, mercifully rescues him, and lends him new virtue as He redeems him. 
         
Of course, for the Pharisees and Scribes, the truth contained in Jesus’ parables fell on deaf ears. And it wasn’t that they were wholly devoid of holiness or goodness. In so far as they followed the Law, they were obedient to God. But the problem for them, and the threatening danger for the Apostles and Disciples of Christ, is their indifference to the cost of discipleship – for Christ tells them that they weren’t good shepherds because they had never known themselves to be lost sheep or lost coins. Jesus tried to show the Scribes and Pharisees that they were not paying the price or cost of discipleship. The cost or price of discipleship is the admission of being lost in sin. They truly refused to move beyond the confines of their law and tradition to see that what it taught was that all men are lost in sin. The Scribes and Pharisees could not see that the Law was meant to teach all men to repent because they were lost in sin and in need of God’s Grace to save them from it.

The cost of discipleship is identification with the publicans and sinners. What Jesus suggests is that before anyone can become a shepherd, he must first have been a lost sheep. This doesn’t mean that Jesus, the Good Shepherd, was ever lost. But His followers must know themselves to be lost sheep and lost coins because, unlike Him, they cannot save man from sin. A man cannot try to get lost, for then he is not lost but just hiding and concealing himself. What Jesus means is that every man, and especially priests, must realize that he is lost because he is a sinner who has erred and strayed from God’s ways like a lost sheep. (General Confession)

Jesus says, Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven. (St. Matthew v. 20) Now, clearly, what the Pharisees and Scribes missed and what every true Apostle and Disciple of Christ should embrace are the virtues of humility and meekness. Pride, humility’s opposite, puffs a man up with a sense of his own self-important religiosity. The proud man measures his own goodness against other men’s sins. He has no need of redemption or salvation because he does not realize that he is lost in sin and must repent. But the publicans and sinners flocked to Jesus because they were lost in sin and painfully sensed that they had no value. Until Jesus’ coming, they had no one to bear the cross of their lost and worthless spiritual state. In Jesus, they find one who lovingly finds them and promises them new worth and value by stirring them to repentance and hope for salvation. Jesus sees in them the makings of true disciples; in them he finds those who know that they are lost and are now being found. You can’t be found until you feel the pain of being a lost sheep and a lost coin.

The true Disciple of Christ will be a man who once was lost but is now found. With St. Peter in this morning’s Epistle, he will be subject to his fellow men, and clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble. (1 St. Peter v. 5) The true Disciple of Christ will humble [himself]…under the mighty hand of God, that God may exalt [him] in due time. (Ibid, 6) True humility expresses man’s utter need for God’s caring love and healing power in Jesus Christ alone. The truly humble man subjects himself to his fellow men because he shares the same dreadful disease of being lost in sin, in equal need of redemption from the One who can carry his cross. St. Peter says, Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: Whom resist steadfast in the faith, seeing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world. (Ibid, 8,9) The true Disciple of Christ sees the same afflictions…in our brethren in the world, living under the pain of despair and the death of sin. The afflictions of all men belong to our common condition that finds worth and value in Christ and His Cross.

My friends, let us study the cost of discipleship that Christ teaches in his parables. We shall not grow spiritually if we look with arrogant pride upon the world full of lost sheep whose condition we do not share. We shall grow spiritually if, with the publicans and sinners of old, we draw near to Jesus, who comes to find us and carry us on His shoulders to the Cross of His Love. God resisteth the proud, and giveth Grace to the humble. (1 Peter v. 5) We shall advance, knowing we were as sheep going astray but have now returned unto the Shepherd and [Bishop] of [our] souls. (1 St. Peter ii. 25) We shall mature spiritually, realizing that Christ, like the woman in today’s Gospel, has searched the world diligently for His lost coins of great value and found His hidden treasures in our broken hearts, made to find worth on His Cross. There will be joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth…than over ninety and nine just persons who have no need of repentance. (St. Luke xv. 10,7) The sinner’s humility is greater than the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees. He repents to be lifted with Jesus up onto His Cross. On the Cross of His Love, Jesus suffers and dies that we who were lost in sin can be found and redeemed. 

​Amen.
©wjsmartin

 The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness,
Prepare ye the way of the Lord,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God…
The voice said, Cry.
And he said, What shall I cry?
All flesh is grass,
and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field:
the grass withereth, the flower fadeth:
because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it:
surely the people is grass.
The grass withereth, the flower fadeth:
but the word of our God shall stand for ever.
                                                      (Isaiah xl. 3, 6-8)
 
         
Today we celebrate the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. John the Baptist was six months older than Jesus and was born to prepare the way for Christ’s birth. Of course, technically, being in June, we are six months away from Christmas, so the Church in her wisdom has got it chronologically set his Feast Day for June the Twenty-Fourth. 

Every year, we celebrate John Baptist’s birth in Trinity Tide, our season of continual acclimation to the life of God the Holy Trinity. In this season, we are called to be as the Father is, and to know through the Son’s Wisdom and Word by the operation of the Holy Ghost’s Will and Love. True life is found in our confession of the true faith, acknowledging the glory of the eternal Trinity in the power of the Divine Majesty to worship the unity. (Collect, Trinity Sunday) True life for redeemed Christians is found in steadfast faith and defended from all adversities that threaten our union with God the Holy Trinity. In Trinity Tide, you and I are called to die to our old sinful selves and to come alive to the Father, through Jesus the Son by the Holy Ghost.
         
Thus, it is fitting that the Feast of John Baptist should fall in this sacred season. For John Baptist’s difficult and short life gives us a good introduction to our habituation to the life of the Trinity. John was not unlike you or me. His understanding of himself is a perfect paradigm for our approach to God the Holy Trinity. John Baptist is the precursor and forerunner of all men who would know themselves as needing God the Father’s Son and Word through the Holy Ghost. Let us therefore see if we can prepare ourselves to welcome the Father’s Word of Love into our souls. 
         
John’s conception and birth were unusual, to say the least. So too is the conception and birth of God’s Word in any man’s soul! His father was 
a priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abia, and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. And they had no child, because that Elisabeth was barren, and they both were now well stricken in years. (St. Luke i. 5-7) 
 

John’s parents were unable to conceive a child. Those who prepare to welcome Christ the Word’s coming into the world cannot conceive it either. Grace is essential. John’s conception was miraculous. So we read that Zacharias was visited by the Angel of the Lord, as he was ministering [alone] in the temple, and he was and when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him. (Ibid, 12) The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prov. ix. 10) and the wisdom to be born in John Baptist is sired by those who fear God with awesome wonder and reverence. The Angel informed the aged Zacharias that he and Elizabeth would give birth to a son in their old age. For with God nothing shall be impossible. (St. Luke i. 37) Zacharias doubted, And Zacharias said unto the angel, Whereby shall I know this? for I am an old man, and my wife well stricken in years. (Ibid, 18) Because of his doubt, he was struck dumb until the birth of the child. He was told that the child’s name would be John. John means Graced by God in the Hebrew.
         
John’s conception and birth were unusual and his life would be even more so. He was called to be a Nazarite, of the sect of Jews whose lives were given to total abstinence, mortification, and fasting.

For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb. And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God. And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. (Ibid, 15-17)
 
John was called to take up the mantle of Elijah the Prophet in order to prepare the Jewish People for the coming of Christ. The extreme conditions of his calling were necessary to focus solely and whole-heartedly on the Advent of his cousin, Jesus. 
         
John began his mission by quoting Isaiah. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight. (Is. xl. 3) John was gifted by God’s Grace to know that he lived in a wasteland and wilderness, barren of all goodness, full of evil, ridden with pride, envy, malice, and deceit. He is alone like so many who pray and wait for the coming of the Lord. He is a faithful Jew as you and I are trying to be faithful Christians. Yet, at the same time, like all of us, he believed that places bereft of God’s goodness are always ripe and ready for the coming of the Lord. All earthly comforts were inimical to John, all vanity and vexation of spirit were dangerous. John knew that the world must be stripped of mammon’s niceties if man would prepare for the coming of Christ into his soul. Nothing in this world can match John’s hunger and thirst for righteousness. Every valley shall be filled and every mountain shall be made low. (Idem) The valley of humility, unselfing, lowliness, and spiritual poverty is a necessary spiritual home for the coming of Christ. The high mountain of pride, envy, wrath, and covetousness must be crushed. All self-absorption and narcissism amounted to nothing for John. He believed that the One for whom he prepared was the Saviour and Redeemer of the world. He lives for Christ’s coming and this alone. All else is reduced to the meaningless nothing in comparison to what he awaited. So, John was clothed in camel’s hair and ate locusts and wild honey. (St. Matthew iii. 4-6)
         
From his position of austerity and self-denial, John Baptist cried Repent ye for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. (St. Matthew iii. 2) The way of repentance leads us to abhor that which is evil and cleave to that which is good. (Romans xii. 9) John’s cried out to the men of every age that they might know their sin and what it ruination it brings. Repentance is a self-conscious admission of sin and sorrow over it. It requires that humbling of the self that knows that sin has offended God who is all good and deserving of all our love. Repentance is spiritual cleansing that moves us to admit, claim, and confess how our sins have run clean contrary to God’s will for us and others. In John Baptist, you and I can identify with one who is clearing the human slate of all that stands in the way of Christ’s coming into the world and our souls. Clinging to ourselves is the chief obstacle to Christ’s Incarnation and Mission of Salvation for us.
         
No doubt, it is difficult for us to imagine being as John Baptist was. We are so encumbered by a world of senseless noise, beastly ways, no fear of God, and not so much as any acknowledgment that we have souls, let alone bodies, that need Christ and His coming! John Baptist knew better. We might not be able to embrace the austerity of his life and complete possession with the coming of his Lord. But here a little and there a little, we might be able to make those changes that secure our hearts for Christ and His coming to us in this Trinity Tide. Perhaps, we need that consciousness of our sin that leads us into deeper prayer for God’s mercy in His Son through the Holy Ghost. With John, we ought to make time for prayer, beginning with repentance, to begin to become unselfed as he was. When we repent, we pray for the death of our old sinful selves and a deeper longing for what Christ longs to become in us. 
         
John Baptist ended his days in prison, awaiting execution by beheading in King Herod’s prison. He had no rights under the Romans and was an alien to Caesar’s privileges. He was left alone, unable to follow his cousin Jesus and to witness what wonders He was working in the world. Perhaps John Baptist’s last state is mirrored in our own. With John, we find that our abstinence and self-mortification seem senseless and meaningless in a world that has abandoned Christ’s coming from the Father through the love of the Holy Ghost. 

John’s life was cut short, but perhaps our spirits can identify with his. Our spirits have been beaten down by forces of evil that John never imagined possible. John would lose his earthly life prematurely, but our spiritual lives too have been cut down by Satan with what feels like death. All around us we find sadness, self-loathing, and self-hatred that amount to death. But in John’s death, you and I can find hope. In his darkest hour, John remembered his father Zacharias’ prophesy. 
And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways; to give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the day-spring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. 
(St. Luke, i. 76-79)
 
As John Baptist was about to die, Christ was being made alive. As we die to sin, Christ longs to live in us. Christ too would be executed on His Cross, without any just cause or reason. But Christ would die, to make all men alive. This is our hope. John Baptist’s death was taken up into the Day-spring on high that visited [him], to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. (Idem) John said, Christ must increase, and I must decrease. (St. John iii. 30) The evil of this world is no excuse for despair.

Amen.
©wjsmartin

To be a Disciple is to be a devoted love-slave of the Lord Jesus. Many of us who call ourselves Christians are not devoted to Jesus Christ. (Oswald Chambers)

I have opened this morning’s sermon with these words of Oswald Chambers because I believe that the dangers of false Discipleship are everywhere present in this morning’s Gospel lesson. In it, we read that Then drew near unto [Jesus] all the publicans and sinners for to hear him. And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them. (St. Luke xv. 1,2) What we have, it would seem, are the publicans and sinners huddled around Jesus eager to hear His Word and the Pharisees and Scribes standing off at a distance murmuring and judging Him. So, we have those who are interested in and even need what Jesus has to offer, and then the self-righteous Jews judging both Jesus and the company He is keeping. Nestled in between the two groups are, as always, the Apostles. Now, Jesus knows exactly what the religious and pious Jewish Elders are thinking, and so He offers two parables. The truth of these parables is not specifically addressed to the publicans and sinners but to the Scribes and Pharisees and even to the Apostles. But, of course, what Jesus teaches is always meant for all, that whosoever hears His words might become a true Disciple.
 
So Jesus asks, 

What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbours, saying unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost. (Ibid, 4-6) 
 
Zoologists tell us that sheep are selfish animals which congregate towards a safe center. (Flock and Awe….) Occasionally, one errs and strays from the way of the sheepfold, and so the shepherd must set out to find it. There is no indication that the ninety and nine detect that one of their members is missing. Provided they are safely fenced in by the sheepfold, they are content and satisfied. The one who does miss the lost sheep is the shepherd, who then rejoices when he finds it. Jesus suggests that the Pharisees and Scribes are more like the ninety and nine safe and contented sheep than like the shepherd. The untold dangers associated with forsaking their communal safety and seeking out the lost sheep are paralleled with the Pharisees’ fear of ritual pollution through contact with publicans and sinners -spiritually lost sheep. For, as Archbishop Trench remarks, they had neither love to hope for the recovery of such men, nor yet antidotes to preserve and protect themselves while making the attempt. (N.O.P’s. p.286) The publicans and sinners are clearly more like the lost sheep in need of being found by the loving shepherd. The shepherd values the lost sheep so much that he leaves the ninety and nine. Why? Because to the shepherd every sheep is of great value, like a repentant sinner who needs to be rescued and saved. Jesus says, I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance. (St. Luke, Ibid, 7) Clearly then, the truth found in Jesus’ parable rebukes the self-righteous, selfish contentedness of the Pharisees, who are neither true shepherds nor potential disciples but self-interested sheep. A true Disciple of Christ will not be a selfish sheep but like the lost sheep or like the publicans and sinners, whose straying and wandering wait to be found by their shepherd.
Jesus continues with another parable. 

Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it? And when she hath found it, she calleth her friends and her neighbours together, saying, Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost. (Ibid, 8,9) 
 
The light symbolizes Christ and the woman images Mother Church. By the light of Christ, the woman sweeps the house – the Church, and seeks diligently until she finds the lost coin – sin-sick souls whom she has negligently lost. Again, as with the first parable, the woman rejoices when she finds what she has lost, and so there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. (Ibid, 10) The true Disciple of Christ will learn that he is like the lost coin. As such, he is like the publican or sinner who knows his sin but has felt to be of no value or worth to the Pharisees and Scribes of their own day– or the religious authorities in any age, who have judged him to be beyond redemption. But if he follows Jesus, he knows that the Good Shepherd will find him and redeem his value. As a lost coin, the true Disciple finds his worth and value in the One who persistently seeks him out, mercifully rescues him, and lends him new dignity and virtue as He redeems and restores him. 
          
Of course, for the Pharisees and Scribes, the truth contained in Jesus’ parables fell on deaf ears, and not because they were wholly devoid and destitute of holiness and goodness. In so far as they followed the Law, they were obedient unto God. But the problem for them, and the threatening danger for the Apostles and Disciples of Christ, is their indifference to the cost of discipleship – for Christ tells them that they ought to be like the Good Shepherd who searched for the lost sheep or the woman who swept the house in search of the coin she had misplaced. Jesus tried to point out that the Scribes and Pharisees were not paying the price or cost of discipleship. For they refused to move beyond the confines of their law and tradition, beyond of the security of the treasure they thought they possessed, in order to risk it all for the riches to be found in the conversion of one sinner. The Scribes and Pharisees could not be good shepherds, precisely because they had never known themselves as lost sheep or the lost coin, or like the publicans and sinners.

The cost of discipleship is identification with the publicans and sinners. What Jesus suggests is that before anyone can become a shepherd, he must first have been a lost sheep. This doesn’t mean that Jesus the Good Shepherd was ever lost. But his followers must know themselves to be lost sheep and lost coins before they can become His fellow shepherds. A man cannot try to get lost, for then he is not lost but just hiding and concealing himself. What Jesus means is that a man must realize that in relation to God he is very much like a lost sheep or lost coin because he is spiritually lost with lost value to God and His Kingdom.

Jesus says, Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven. (St. Matthew v. 20) Now, clearly, what the Pharisees and Scribes missed, and what every true Apostle and Disciple of Christ should embrace are the virtues of humility and meekness. Pride, humility’s opposite, puffs a man up with a sense of his own importance and worth. Pride measures its own goodness against other men’s sins. It has no need of redemption or salvation because it does not embrace with meekness its utter dependence upon God to secure any worth or value. But the publicans and sinners flocked to Jesus because were lost without any value claim. Until Jesus’ coming, they had found no merciful friend who cared enough for their spiritual wellbeing to find and rescue them. In Jesus they find one who lovingly finds them and promises them new worth and value by stirring them to repentance and hope for salvation. Jesus sees in them the makings of true disciples; in them he finds those who know that they are lost and are now being found. One can’t be found until he knows that he is a lost sheep and a lost coin.

The true Disciple of Christ will be a man who once was lost, but is now being found. With St. Peter in this morning’s Epistle, he will be subject to his fellow men, and clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble. (1 St. Peter v. 5) The true Disciple of Christ will humble [himself]…under the mighty hand of God, that God may exalt [him] in due time. (Ibid, 6) True humility reveals man’s utter need for God’s caring love and healing power in Jesus Christ alone.

The truly humble man subjects himself to his fellow men because he shares their same dreadful disease of sin and knows himself to be in equal need of redemption. St. Peter says, Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: Whom resist steadfast in the faith, seeing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world. (Ibid, 8,9) The true Disciple of Christ sees the same afflictions…in our brethren in the world, assaulted by confusion, madness, and sin. The true Disciple of Christ knows that their afflictions belong to our common condition that finds worth and value in Christ alone. 

My friends, let us study closely the cost of discipleship that Christ teaches in his parables. We will not grow spiritually if we look with pride and arrogance upon the world full of lost sheep whom we judge to be beyond the pale of salvation. We will grow spiritually if, with the publicans and sinners of old, we draw near to Jesus humbly. We will be infused with Christ’s righteousness if we remember that God resisteth the proud, and giveth Grace to the humble. (1 Peter v. 5) We will grow when we realize that we were as sheep going astray but have now returned unto the Shepherd and [Bishop] of [our] souls. (1 St. Peter ii. 25) We will grow like the woman in today’s Gospel, searching the world diligently for the lost coins of great value, Christ’s hidden treasures, our future brethren, who are made to be our equals in the gift of repentance and redemption. Let us remember that there will be joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth…than over ninety and nine just persons who have no need of repentance. (St. Luke xv. 10,7) Righteousness, greater than the Scribes and Pharisees is the Love of Christ in our hearts that bleeds to Death on the Cross until He finds the lost sheep and lost coins in us and for others. 

Amen.
©wjsmartin

Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst 
thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: 
but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.
(St. Luke xvi. 25)
 

Last week we were invited to participate in the life of God the Holy Trinity, one God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. We have entered Trinity Tide. Trinity tide is all about belief that grows into God’s Wisdom and Love. Trinity tide is about submitting to the Being of God the Father, embracing His Wisdom and Word in the Son by the Love and Will of the Holy Ghost. Our season of Trinity is the longest in the Church Year because it takes time to allow God to penetrate our being, knowing, and loving. 

Now, as we all know, learning to love God’s Wisdom and Love is difficult. In fact, we really do need to have a vision or knowledge of His Goodness if we hope to apply it to our lives. In the New Testament, we are constantly reminded of what this vision is and is not. Today, we learn from the Pharisees what it is not and from our Lord Jesus Christ the true vision of it. Prior to today’s Gospel, Jesus had just warned His hearers that Ye cannot serve God and Mammon. (St. Luke xvi. 13) Mammon means both riches and possessions in both the Hebrew and Greek. It can also mean that in which one trusts. Archbishop Trench reminds us that while the Pharisees’ way of life was sparing and austere –many of them were ascetics…. their sins were in the main spiritual, (Par., 343) their real sin was covetousness. For they did not trust in God’s provision, were all rooted in unbelief, in a heart set on this world, refusing to give credence to that invisible world, here known only to faith. (Idem) Their theological vision extended only as far as the Ancient Law, and they believed that this was as close as man got to God. As a result, they enviously resented the vision of God’s Wisdom and Love in the life of Jesus Christ. They coveted their own vision and power.

So, Jesus gives them a parable. There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day….(St. Luke xvi. 19) St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that the worship of Mammon is here illustrated in the prosperity of the wicked by way of temporal success. (St. TA: Hom. Trin. I) First, we read that the man was rich in earthly things. Second, he was clothed in purple –the costliest of colors in the ancient world, which adorned princes and kings. Third, in fine linen –secured only at a high price from the looms of Egypt. So, the rich man would have had a robe of princely purple and an inner tunic of the softest linen. We know that this was his customary attire since he wore it as he fared sumptuously every day.  That he has no name is, according to the Archbishop Trench, indicative of the fact that he is everyman, or most men who live forever for this world and seldom give any thought for the next.

We read also that there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. (Ibid, 20,21) Those who are destined for the Kingdom have their names written in the Book of Life. The poor man’s name is Lazarus. His name is also translated as Eleazar, and it means the one whom God has helped. That he is a beggar is clear. But because he was full of sores (Idem), in earthly life he was unable to walk and so was carried and laid him at the rich man’s gate (Idem) by those who, no doubt, prayed the rich man would have mercy upon him. That there was no relief for this man’s hunger is seen in his desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table. That stray dogs came and licked his sores, reveals that he was ignored by his fellow man. The brute beasts had compassion and mercy upon Lazarus clothed in sores while the rich man and his associates clothed in purple and fine linen fared sumptuously. One had hosts of attendants to wait upon his every caprice; only stray dogs tended to the sores of the other. (Trench, 349)

So, we find a great contrast between the rich man and Lazarus. Lazarus’ sickness and poverty provide us with a vision of the external and visible signs of man’s true state without the Grace of God. St. Thomas tells us that Lazarus reveals to us that adversity in this present life, though short-lived, characterizes the life of the saint in three ways.  First, there is poverty of possessions –a beggar named Lazarus is a vision of spiritual indigence and that poverty of spirit that needs God more than anyone else. And fear not, my son, that we are made poor: for thou hast much wealth if thou fear God and depart from all sin and do that which is pleasing in His sight. (Tobit iv, 21) The vision of true riches is found when we fear God and depend upon Him for any and all manner of goodness that He might bestow upon us. Second, St. Thomas says, the life of a Saint is found in contempt of this world. ‘Lazarus was laid at his gate.’ ‘We are made as the filth of the world and are the offscouring of all things unto this day.’ (1 Cor. iv. 13) If men follow Jesus, the vision of God, they will be ignored and abandoned at rich men’s gates, who ignore them. Third, the saints will endure bitterness of tribulations and afflictions –‘Full of sores.’ Discipline and correction provide a vision of the means that our Heavenly Father uses to refine our faith, perfect our hope, and deepen our love for Him in Jesus Christ by the Holy Ghost. For whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth. (Hebrews xii. 6)

Next, we read, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom. (Ibid, 22) Lazarus is a vision of the Saint who is taken to Paradise at the time of his death. We learn also that the rich man died and found himself in Hell whence he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. (Ibid, 23) St. Thomas reminds us, Lazarus was received with honor and glory by the Angels. The rich man was buried with honor and glory by unnamed earthly men...only to end up in Hell. (Idem) Lazarus is relieved of his suffering and pain and we hear no more from him because Heaven’s Mercy is now his treasure. The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God and there shall no torment touch them. (Wis. iii. 1) But the Rich Man, like the covetous Pharisees, is left out. His soul and body are tormented because he coveted his vision of God in the religious duties of his own day and did not love his poor neighbour. To make matters worse, he has a vision of Paradise and knows that Lazarus is in a better state, having been relieved of his earthly suffering and poverty. So, he cries, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. (Idem, 24) The Rich Man cries out for relief from his earthly body’s torture because, like the Pharisees, he is still covets the vision of his former position. Send Lazarus to me; surely he is now fit enough to wait upon me! 

The parable gives us a vision of the hard truth of God’s Justice. Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. (Ibid, 25) O thou who trusted not in God but in earthly mammon, who trusted in perishable commodities and relied upon them solely to ensure your impermanent happiness, see what you have forsaken! Because you did not believe and trust in me, saith the Lord, you shall live with what you desired most forever in eternity! Men have one life to live, and at death they shall be judged. When a man dies, he is either taken up or cast down. If he is taken up, he cannot descend to help his lost brothers; if he is cast down, he cannot ascend. At the end of life, the vision of God or gods shall be rewarded with Heaven or Hell. The rich man, with his eyes still centered on earth, asks Abraham to rescue his earthly family. Send Lazarus to my brethren that he might serve up the truth to them (Ibid, 29), for if they see Lazarus risen from the dead, they will believe. (Ibid, 30) Abraham assures him that they will not be persuaded though one rose from the dead since they did not hear Moses and the Prophets. (Ibid) 
Even a vision of Resurrection seldom saves covetous ‘good men’. For I say unto you that unless your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. (Matt. V. 20) We have a vision of this in Christ on His Cross where, though He became Lazarus, poor and abandoned, in the poverty of His death, He was already hard at work doing for poor fallen men what they could not do for themselves.

In this life, Lazarus was poor, but he is now rich in Paradise. The rich man is now poor in Hell, clinging arrogantly to the vision of God that rejects His Wisdom and Love in Jesus Christ. The rich man is destined to live forever in the illusion of his own worth. He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love. (1 John iv 8)

Today, by God’s Grace, let us acquire a vision of ourselves in poor Lazarus, reaching out to Christ alone, knowing that we cannot pass through Heaven’s gate unless we obtain Heaven’s mercy, ‘hoping to obtain crumbs that fall from [God’s] table’. Lazarus, full of sores, is like Christ on His Cross, longing to make His death into new life. In Lazarus and in Christ, we desire to eat of the crumbs that fall from [God’s] table. Like Lazarus, if I have no strength of will, no nobility of disposition, no excellence of character, Christ says, “Blessed are you”, because it is through this poverty that I enter His Kingdom….I can only enter His Kingdom as a pauper. (O. Chambers, August 21) Lazarus the pauper is a vision of Christ who became poor, that [we] through His poverty, might be rich. (2 Cor. viii. 9)

Amen.

©wjsmartin
 

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After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter. (Rev. iv. 1)
            
Today is Trinity Sunday. So, following the traditional Western lectionary, we enter the season not of Pentecost but of Trinity Tide, not disrespecting the Holy Ghost or the importance of Pentecost, but acknowledging that our life in God’s Spirit must come from the Father and the Son. Trinity means three, and Trinity Tide is an invitation into the threefold life of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. Should we make the mistake that many do in abandoning the Trinity for some ungrounded season of the Spirit, we might find ourselves moved far more by our own spirits and fanciful feelings rather than by the Holy Spirit’s mission to establish Jesus Christ in us, as the express image of the Father’s Person. (Hebrews i. 3)

Christianity is a religion founded on the facts of Divine Revelation. Its God is a God who wishes to be known. (The Christian Year, p. 142) Christians believe that God the Father created all things through His Word or Son by the efficacy of the Holy Spirit they exchange. Christians believe that the Father has never ceased to illuminate His people through His Word by the strength of the Spirit they share. In His Incarnation, Christ Himself reveals the same Trinity when He obeys the Father through the Spirit, even unto death upon the Cross. (Phil. ii. 8) And following His Ascension, Christ invites all men into new life which He has won for them, promising to send…the Holy Ghost (St. John xvi. 26) whom the Father will send in [His] name that they may persevere in their journey to the Kingdom. So, God the Holy Trinity reveals Himself to His people, a door is opened, and man learns the way that leads him higher and higher.

A door is opened in this morning’s appointed Psalm. 
It is the Lord that ruleth the sea; the voice of the Lord is mighty in operation: the voice of the Lord is a glorious voice…. The voice of the Lord divideth the flames of fire; the voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness…the voice of the Lord maketh the hinds to bring forth young…in His temple doth every man speak of His honor…the Lord remaineth a King forever. (Psalm xxix. 4,7,8,9) 
 
David the Psalmist is overwhelmed by the Father’s Word, who rules, creates, moves, informs, and rules the whole of creation through the Holy Spirit’s Ghostly Strength. Isaiah the Prophet is likewise undone as a door is opened to his soul also. 

He saw the Lord upon the throne, high and lifted up, [whose] train filled the temple…that above it stood the seraphims…. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. (Is. vi. 1-3) 
 
The Thrice-Holy Trinity humbles the prophet with awe and wonder. Woe is me! For I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. (Ibid.5) The Father sends one of the seraphim to purify the prophet’s tongue of all evil, that the Spirit might inspire him to articulate God’s Word and Wisdom to his fellow men. And in this morning’s Epistle we learn that the same door in opened in Heaven to the Apostle and Evangelist, St. John, who is called to come up higher. 

Of course, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is difficult to understand. St. Augustine of Hippo, that great 4th century North-African Doctor of the Church, finds an image of it in the human soul: 
The human soul is – it exists; the human soul knows –it understands; and the human soul wills – it loves. So also God is, He knows, and He wills. God is pure being -He exists always; God is pure knowing – He begets His Word or His Son eternally; and God is pure loving –His will and love proceed as Spirit always. God is one substance who expresses His spiritual life through three Persons. (De Trinitate. Aug., Dr. Robert Crouse summary) 
 
Man is one substance who exists, thinks, and wills. Man is alive, he thinks and speaks, and he wills and loves. God is one as well. The Father exists eternally. He speaks His Word and expresses His Thought eternally in His Son. He wills through His Spirit of Love and the Son returns the compliment through the same Spirit.  

But God is more than just Himself. He creates and makes through His Word by the Spirit of Love that they share. God intends to be known and loved. He persists in His intention even after Man’s Fall. He sends His Son in the flesh to repair, redeem and return Man to Himself. This morning’s Gospel illustrates the Way nicely. For here we read that a Pharisee, a ruler of the Jews, named Nicodemus came to Jesus by night. (St. John iii. 1) Matthew Henry tells us that 

coming to Jesus by night is an act of prudence and discretion. For we should all come to be with Christ ‘when the busy world is hushed’ that we might then better learn from Him. Coming to Him by night shows [also] a greater zeal for truth since we are willing to forsake the evening’s pleasures for the sake of the truth. (Comm: John iii) 
 
St. Thomas Aquinas tells us coming to Jesus at night symbolizes also that honest state of obscurity and ignorance that seeks to find God once again. (TA: Comm. John iii.) In the night, Nicodemus approaches Jesus in the calm of night, with zeal seeking to know. Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. (St. John iii. 2) Nicodemus knows that Jesus’ teaching is divinely inspired. He asserts boldly that God is with Him because of the miracles Jesus performed. Moved by Christ’s wisdom and goodness, Nicodemus is nevertheless blind to the meaning and nature of Christ’s Person. Jesus says: Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God. (St. John iii. 3) He means that the mysteries of eternal salvation can be seen only through the cleansing of regeneration in the Holy Spirit, (Tit. iii. 5) in the righteousness of faith. (TA, Idem) Nicodemus is confused: How can a man be born again when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb? (Ibid, 4) Nicodemus knows that he exists, knows, and wills but cannot fathom how he can be born again.

Jesus helps Nicodemus to understand. Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.(St. John iii. 5-7) If fallen man does not come to know that he needs rebirth through water and the Spirit, he cannot be saved. The washing of the body with water is an external and visible sign of how the Holy Spirit is sent by the Father to cleanse man of sin by the Wisdom of the Son. Man is born of the flesh, and so neither his body nor soul can save him. Jesus says, Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. (St. John iii. 8) Jesus says that the wind comes and goes, and we can never master its mysterious movements. We inhale and exhale and never think about where our breath came from and wither it goes. Jesus says, If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? (St. John iii. 12) Nicodemus is a religious ruler in Israel who should remember that the Father’s Word gives life and meaning to all creation through the undetectable breath of His loving Spirit. Nicodemus, if you do not humbly believe and remember that the invisible Spirit gives you life and meaning, how will you see the Wisdom that will birth you again inwardly and spiritually through my Death and Resurrection for a better heavenly future with my Father?

We speak of what we know, and bear witness of what we have seen. (Ibid, 11) The Word of God made flesh, the Son, reveals what He knows from the Father through the Spirit. Nicodemus does not yet know that no man hath ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man, which is in heaven. (Ibid, 13) Man has fallen from God; he cannot know or will the good that reconciles him with God. The Son of Man came down from Heaven in the likeness of fallen flesh to redeem it with the Spirit’s Love on the Cross. That which is born of flesh is flesh; that which is born of Spirit is Spirit. (Ibid, 6) And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life. (Ibid, 13-15) Only if he believes and knows that Christ’s Death alone conquers his sin, can man die to it and be born again through the Spirit, lifted into Resurrection and Ascension for reconciliation with the Father. Behold a door is opened, as God makes all things new.

God the Holy Trinity desires for us to participate in His life that we might reveal it to others. We do not worship a distant and unreachable God. Behold a door is opened. Jesus reveals the Father’s Wisdom by the Holy Spirit as He descends to work His redemption into our souls and bodies. Obeying the Father, in the Love of the Spirit, Christ the Wisdom of God dies for us that we might live. Our Father desires that we should be born again each new day as the Holy Ghost brings the Word of God to life in us. Our One God longs that we should surrender to His Grace, to be as the Father is, to know as the Son knows, and to love as the Spirit loves. And then as born again as sons and daughters of the Father, we shall sing out the Son’s Word of salvation with the Spirit’s Love that makes Heaven and Earth one, through Jesus Christ our Lord –both flesh and Spirit in obedience to the Father, perfectly blended to save you, me, and all others. 

Amen.   

©wjsmartin
 
 
 
 

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He dwelleth with you and shall be in you.
(St. John xiv. 17)

Today we celebrate the feast of the Pentecost. In the Church of England, it is called Whitsunday - White Sunday, because of the white garments worn by those who are traditionally baptized on this day. Pentecost derives from both the Latin and Greek word pentecoste that means the fiftieth day. For the ancient Jews, it marked the day on which God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, fifty days after Exodus from Egypt. It was also a day of thanksgiving for harvest, falling often in May when, given the temperate climate, the Israelites ingathered wheat, oats, peas, vetch, lentils, and barley. The early Jewish-Christians translated this thanksgiving feast into the Holy Ghost’s harvesting of souls for Christ’s Kingdom. On the first Pentecost, the Holy Ghost descended with the fiery Love of the Ascended Christ into the hearts of the Apostles, vesting and mantling them with the spiritual gifts that would generate new communion with God the Father. 

So, today we are bidden to contemplate this new movement of the Holy Ghost at the time of the Church’s first Pentecost. Yet, we should not think that the Holy Ghost had been dormant prior to the coming of Christ. The Old Testament is full of references to the Holy Ghost’s mission to fill the Ancient Jews with the fire of the Father’s Love and hope for salvation. In the Creed, we say I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son…. We believe that Love shared between the Father and the Son is the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost is the Third Person of the Holy Trinity, the Lord and Giver of [all] life. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. (Gen. i. 2) We must remember that the Holy Ghost gives life to all creation. And mortal man must remember that He inspired into him an active soul, and breathed in a living spirit. (Wisdom xv. 11) In the Old Testament, the Holy Ghost is the Spirit who comes upon priests, prophets, and kings to fortify them with Ghostly Strength to defeat God’s enemies. King David says that The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and His word was in my tongue. (2 Sam. Xxiii. 2) He spake by the prophets. (idem) We know also that the Spirit brought punishment and correction to the Ancient Jews through men like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, and others. Monsignor Knox tells us that by the Holy Spirit 

men were moved to say various things, much of which it is difficult to understand, and some of which they probably didn’t understand themselves. They were carried away by the impetus of the Holy Spirit, and the great point is that many of the things which they said, or rather which He said through them, were prophecies about the coming of Jesus Christ. (The Creed in Slow Motion: p. 143) 
 
The Holy Ghost was always descending from above to prepare the Jewish people for the complete revelation of Father’s promised salvation in His Son Jesus Christ. He prepared them for the day when the Word would be made flesh and then for the day when the Word would incorporate them into Christ’s dying life and a living death. Jesus Christ had established the pattern of Heaven’s fiery Love made flesh. The Holy Spirit would invite eager hearts to welcome the same Word into their flesh.

What is of uttermost importance to the Spirit, or the Holy Ghost, is that the Father’s Word might once again live in all of us. The Holy Ghost brings us into relationship with God the Father through Jesus Christ. Christ has ascended to the Father, and from there He desires to indwell all men with the fire of their Love, redeeming the raw materials of human life to forsake all and follow Him. For Christians, Pentecost is the moment where earthly life begins to blend with Heaven’s Desire. For Christians, Pentecost is that moment when the fire of God’s Love begins to burn away our sins and infuse us with all righteousness. It is the fulfillment of the promise offered by Jesus to those who would become His friends and the Sons of the Father forever. 

If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him: but ye know Him; for He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. (St. John xiv. 15-17) 
 
But the Holy Ghost comes with neither force nor compulsion. If ye love me, is conditional. Christ honors man’s free will. If…then.... The Holy Ghost comes only to those who desire Christ’s fiery Love. The ongoing work of salvation depends upon man’s assent to Christ’s offer.
The first instance of it is found in today’s Epistle, taken from Acts. 
And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. (Acts ii. 1-4) 
 
The first witnesses of the Pentecost were in doubt, or, mocking said, these men are full of new wine. (Ibid, 12, 13) We tend then to think that what happened to the Apostles long ago was wholly paranormal and even irrational. But we forget that the recipients of Heaven’s Love were neither irrational nor out of their minds. They were common fishermen and observant Jews. They were pious, hard working men who believed genuinely in Jesus Christ and awaited His next move. Their last days with Him were spent in sadness, fear, and shame. Later they were surprised by Joy and filled with justifiable wonder and astonishment. But they were open and obedient to the Spirit’s stirring, and in some deep way it all began to make sense and fell into place.

Their transformation in relation to Jesus all happened, mostly, in one place –the upper room or cenacle. This is where we first find them today. In it, they had learned of an impending betrayal that Christ foretold. To its safety, they had fled in fear and cowardice when He was dying on the Cross. Into it again came the Risen Christ to invite them into the fellowship of new life. In the same cenacle today, we find that He has sent to them the Holy Ghost. And while these men and women are not any different from you or me, one thing is significant: as before, in the same place, they were watching and waiting for what would come next. They were gathered together in unity of purpose. (Ibid, AV, Knox, ii. 1) Jesus had said, Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high. (St. Luke xxiv. 49) Because they believed Him and trusted His promise, the Holy Ghost came upon them, and they began to spread the Good News of the salvation He had won for all men from the Cross, the Empty Tomb, the Ascension, and beyond. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. (Ibid, 3)
          
This was all long ago. What does it mean for us today? The cloven tongues like as of fire will be given to us also if only, we believe. We may not be given the gift of speaking and spreading the Good News of Salvation in Jesus Christ with other tongues or in foreign languages. But the Holy Ghost intends to come to us so that we share the Good News of Jesus Christ and the salvation He has won for us. So, we must ask ourselves Do we love Jesus enough to keep His commandments? If not, or, if we hesitate [to obey Jesus], it is because we love something else in competition with Him, i.e. ourselves. (My Utmost…, p. 307) If Pentecost will have any meaning for us, we cannot speak or reveal this Love to the world unless the Holy Ghost, the Holy Trinity’s Spirit of Love, brings us to Christ’s Cross, into His death to sin, and to His Resurrection, His life of righteousness. The Holy Ghost’s Love both destructive and constructive (Claudel, I believe, 177) Christ says I will not leave you comfortless. (St. John xiv. 18) The Holy Ghost comfort us by bringing our sin to destruction and by constructing us into new Sons and Daughters of God the Father in Jesus Christ. Our Collect prays that by the same Spirit [we might] have a right judgment in all things…evermore to rejoice in His holy comfort. (Collect, Whitsunday)
Thus, we pray that 

The infinite and eternal Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who workest all in all…will pardon all our resistance to His motions…and will fan the flames which He ever enkindles in our breasts. We pray that He may…enlighten our minds and purify our hearts that we may be fit to receive and entertain Him, as the Guide and Comforter of our souls, working mightily upon our hearts, fitting and suiting our souls to that glory which is unspeakable and everlasting. (B. Jenks, 354) 
 
At the first Pentecost, the irresistible force [of the Holy Spirit]…was compressed into a single narrow compass; and the result was a kind of flood, a kind of explosion. (Sermons, Knox, Ign. Press, p. 477) That flood or that explosion is the rushing mighty wind of Christ’s Spirit of fiery Love that longs forever to carry us into His Kingdom. With the poet let us pray that the work of His fiery Love will ravish us.

With all thy Heart, with all thy Soul and Mind,
Thou must him love, and his Beheasts embrace:
All other Loves, with which the World doth blind
Weak Fancies, and stir up Affections base,
Thou must renownce, and utterly displace;
And give thyself unto him full and free,
That full and freely gave himself for thee.
 
Then shalt thou feel thy Spirit so possest,
And ravisht with devouring great Desire
Of his dear self, that shall thy feeble Breast
Inflame with Love and set thee all on fire
With burning Zeal, through every part entire;
That in no earthly things thou shalt delight,
But in his sweet and amiable Sight.
 
Amen.
 
©wjsmartin