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 

 
   
           Ascension Tide is one of the briefest liturgical seasons that the Church follows. In fact, it lasts only ten days. We believe that on the fortieth day after Easter, Christ ascended to the Father. Ten days later, the Holy Spirit is sent into the womb of the nascent Church on the feast of Pentecost or Whitsunday. So we have but a few days to examine the significance and meaning of the Ascension for us.
          The Ascension of Jesus Christ restores human nature back to the center of all reality and meaning, so that the Holy Spirit might come forth and begin to incorporate us into the life of the Holy Trinity. In the simplest of terms, Christ, the Son of God fully Glorified, as the Son of Man, returns to the Father to establish a permanent place or home for the Saved and God’s Elect. Every aspect of Human Nature in need of repair and restoration has been Redeemed in Christ and now sits at the Father’s Right Hand, interceding for us and pleading that we may join Him there forever. Jesus prays the Father that we might participate in His royal redemption, salvation, and glorification forever.
         Christ Jesus had been preparing men of faith with hope for His coming love long before His Incarnation. In this morning’s Old Testament reading, we find that faith in Isaiah, who yearned and longed after a fuller manifestation of God’s real presence and power in a world that did not know Him. For, there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee: for thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities. (Is. lxiv. 7) But the prophet’s faith was solid and certain. He abandoned himself to God’s Ghostly Strength. But now, O Lord, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand. Be not wroth very sore, O Lord, neither remember iniquity forever: behold, see, we beseech thee, we are all thy people. (Ibid, 8,9) So having acknowledged his sin and the wickedness of God’s people, the prophet faithfully cried to God for deliverance and salvation.   
         We see this same faith and hope in the Psalmist this morning. He has no faith that his friends will aid him when confronting the assaults of his worst enemies. He confesses in all meekness and humility, O help us against the enemy, for vain is the help of man. (Ps. lxiv. 12) And so the fire of his heart is stirred passionately within, as he reaches out to sing the song of faith. O GOD, my heart is ready, my heart is ready; I will sing, and give praise with the best member that I have. Awake, thou lute and harp; I myself will awake right early. I will give thanks unto thee, O LORD, among the peoples; I will sing praises unto thee among the nations. (Ps. cviii. 1-3) From the ground of his soul, the fire of faith envelops, informs, and consumes his heart. He is swept up out of himself by the music of heavenly delight. He thanks God antecedently for what he believes, and hopes shall shortly come to pass. For thy mercy is greater than the heavens, and thy truth reacheth unto the clouds. Set up thyself, O God, above the heavens, and thy glory above all the earth; That thy beloved may be delivered: let thy right hand save them, and hear thou me. (Ibid, 4-6)
          And if this faith and hope were alive in Isaiah and the Psalmist, think about the power of their presence in the souls of the Apostles on the Day of Christ’s Ascension. Very few human beings have ever come as close to God’s Word as those who experienced the Word made flesh in Jesus Christ as the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Apostles, and His first followers. Few have experienced their sinful poverty of spirit more self-consciously in the presence of God with us and for us. Few have suffered and embraced the gift of the forgiveness of sins from the hands of the Giver more poignantly and acutely than the Apostolic band. Few have then been stirred with the same fiery faith and love to embrace the hope of Resurrection and new life that the Ascended Christ longs to impart to all men in all ages.
          But this fiery trial and victory of faith and hope were never meant to be special gifts reserved only for holy men and Saints of long ago. This is the fiery faith that we too must recover and regain if we hope to be saved. Jesus Christ’s Ascension is the crowning moment in an ongoing history of the faith of men who fervently desired Him long before He came, and joyfully embraced His presence long after He had gone. You see, the Ascension is that moment when the burning bush and fire of man’s deepest desire for God are perfected and consummated, and then expanded and enlarged as Christ calls and summons all men into the wake and trail of His love’s upward blaze. As Paul Claudel writes,

Jesus Christ, the Man-God, highest expression of creation, rises from the depths of matter where the Word was born by uniting with woman’s obedience, toward that throne which was predestined for Him at the right hand of the Father. From this place, He continues to exercise his magnetic power on all creatures; all feel deep within them that summons, that injunction, to ascend. (I Believe…159)
 
What the Son of God made flesh offered to the Father in the fiery passion of pure Sacrifice, Death, Resurrection, magnetically draws our hearts up and away from the earth. Christ has conquered sin and death and lifts us up into the presence of the Father. Jesus says, And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. (St. John xiv. 3)
Jesus will come again to us next week at Pentecost, through the Descent of our Lord the Holy Ghost. But before Christ’s descending fiery love begins to penetrate our hearts for our ongoing earthly pilgrimage, we must contemplate His Ascent to the Father. We must diligently pursue the Divine flame of fiery love that lifts Christ’s living death and dying life back to God. In His Ascension, with Bishop Westcott, we are encouraged to work beneath the surface of things to that which makes all things, all of us, capable of consecration. Then it is, that the last element in our confession as to Christ’s work speaks to our hearts. He is not only present with us as Ascended: He is active for us. (Sermons…) Beneath the surface of His flesh, within His Sacred Heart, He holds us. This Love has always moved Christ, as He stooped down from Heaven to wash, heal, teach, and forgive us. This is the Love that suffered our rejection, torture, and crucifixion of Him. This is the Love that rose from death, and now in the Ascension cries Come follow me into Resurrection and beyond. Austin Farrer says this: 

WE are told in [the] Old Testament how an angel of God having appeared to man disappeared again by going up in the flame from the altar…In the same way Elijah, when he could no more be found, was believed to have gone up on the crests of flaming horses.  The flame which carried Christ to heaven was the flame of his own sacrifice.  Flame tends always upwards.  All his life long, Christ's love burnt towards the heart of heaven in a bright fire, until he was wholly consumed in it, and went up in that fire to God.  The fire is kindled on our altars, here Christ ascends in fire; the fire is kindled in the Christian heart, and we ascend.  He says to us, Lift up your hearts; and we reply, We lift them up unto the Lord.

Like the flame, our desire must tend upwards and burn towards the heart of heaven in a bright fire. We pray that this flame will kindle the fire of Christ’s Love for the Father in us. We lift our hearts up unto the Lord and begin to sense the fire of His Love. We come into the presence of our heavenly Father through Christ and realize that the end of all things is at hand. (1 St. Peter iv. 7) In Heaven’s bright light, we see Christ, who has by himself purged our sins [and] sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high. ( Hebrews i. 3) Christ has redeemed us and welcomes us to sit with Him in Heavenly Places. Our old sinful lives have died in Christ on His Cross of Love. His fiery Love has instructed us in forty days of Resurrection. The same intensity of Love pleads our cause at God’s Right Hand.
          St. Peter tells us this morning that to ascend through Jesus back to God the Father we must live wisely, and keep our senses awake to greet the hours of prayer. (Knox: 1. St. Peter iv. 7) Too long in this low place we have been the slaves of gravity and the law of matter. Too long have we been at the mercy of chance and vanity. The time has come for us to take our flight, body and soul, toward our Higher Cause. (I Believe, 160.) Our spiritual senses must rise into the fire of Love’s journey to our end. Christ now reigns gloriously in the greatness of His power and majesty and desires us to have our conversation with Him in Heaven, to love His appearing, and to be dissolved into His love. (Jenks, 352) We must ask Him to begin to reign and rule as King Supreme from the thrones of our hearts, enflaming us with constant charity among ourselves that covers a multitude of sins (1 St. Peter iv.8) Let us pray today that we may feel the powerful attraction of Christ’s Grace and Holy Spirit, to draw up our minds and desires from the poor perishing enjoyments here below, to those most glorious and everlasting attainments above where Christ sits at the right hand of God. (Idem, Jenks)  And may our deepest faith and love find words most fit, in this:

Lord, when the sense of thy sweet grace
Sends up my soul to seek thy face.
Thy blessed eyes breed such desire,
I die in love's delicious Fire.
O love, I am thy Sacrifice.
Be still triumphant, blessed eyes.
Still shine on me, fair suns! that I
Still may behold, though still I die.

Though still I die, I live again;
Still longing so to be still slain,
So gainfull is such losse of breath.
I die even in desire of death.
Still live in me this loving strife
Of living Death and dying Life.
For while thou sweetly slayest me
Dead to my selfe, I live in Thee.
                  (A Song: Richard Crashaw)
Amen.

 These things have I spoken unto you, that in my ye might 
have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation but be of good cheer;
 I have overcome the world.
 (St. John xvi. 33) 

     Today, we find ourselves on the Fifth and final Sunday of the Easter Season. Today is called Rogation Sunday because our English word is derived from the Latin word rogare, which means to petition, ask, or supplicate. The tradition of Rogation Sunday hails from the 4th century and was standardized in the Latin Church by Pope Gregory in the 6th century. It was originally a Roman festival called Robigalia, which comes from robigo – meaning wheat rust, a grain disease, against which pious pagans petitioned the gods by sacrificing a dog to protect their fields. In England, on Rogation Sunday clergymen and their flocks process around the parish boundaries to bless the crops and pray for a fruitful harvest. 

But the original purpose of Rogation Sunday goes back to Jesus’ opening words in today’s Gospel: Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, He will give it you. (St. John xvi.) Jesus’ words follow the prophecy of His eventual Ascension back to the Father, where He says, In that day, ye shall ask me nothing. (Ibid, 23) Jesus was preparing His Disciples for His risen and ascended life that He would share with them. Its blessing and benefit, as we learned last week, would depend upon the coming of the Holy Spirit. Jesus teaches us today that we must ask the Father in or through His Name for the Holy Spirit. Jesus is the Word made flesh through whom we pray and supplicate the Father. This is why we end every prayer with through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Again, Jesus says, Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. (Ibid, 24) Notice that we are encouraged to ask so that our joy may be full. (Idem) Eastertide is all about learning to ask for what shall fulfill our heart’s deepest desire – the fullness of joy. God forever longs to share this joy with us, and it comes in Eastertide as we embrace resurrection from sin, death, and Satan. To begin to obtain that joy, we must set our sights on those things which are above and not things of the earth. (Col. iii. 2) In heart and mind, we must follow Jesus home to Heaven to find eternal joy.

But what is this joy? Christian joy is found in Jesus’ eternal nature as God’s only-begotten Son or Word, who always desires to do the Father’s will. True joy is found by entering that eternal delectation and delight. It is not found first and foremost in bodily health, through earthly ambition and success, by securing temporal riches and treasures, or even in gaining converts and seeing God’s work succeed! True joy is found by returning to the Father, through Jesus Christ’s Spirit so that we might delight to do God’s will. True joy is found in becoming sons of the Father who are made to do His will. Christ, of course, is the eternally-begotten Word, the Son and Offspring of the Father’s will. By His Redemption of our fallen human nature, Jesus invites us once again to become God’s sons through Him. 

To do so, we must leave behind the cares of this world, which choke God’s Word. We must follow Christ in spirit and in truth as He returns to the Father. To get into right relation with the Father, we must ascend with Him that where He is, there we might be also. (St. John xiv. 3) If we shall ascend, we must ask the Father to help us live through Jesus Christ under the rule and governance of the Spirit they share. Herein alone, we shall find true joy. For this to happen, we must make time and space for contemplation. Bishop K.E. Kirk has this to say about it:

Contemplation, or the Prayer of Simplicity or Quiet, is the highest interior activity of the spiritual life - indeed, it aims not at being an activity at all, but at reducing the soul to a         purely passive condition in which it may listen, unimpeded by thoughts of self or the cares of the world, to the voice God alone.'As rest is the end of motion so contemplation is
the end of all other…internal and external exercises; for to this end, by long discourse and much practice of affection, the soul inquires and tends to a worthy object that she may         quietly contemplate it and...repose with contentment in it.'
(Some Principles of Moral Theology, p. 163)
 

Stillness and quiet are necessary to first situate us in the right spiritual space with God. In stillness and quiet, our souls must be reduced to a purely passive condition, open to the Father’s presence -to His Wisdom, Power, and Love. Jesus says today, The time is coming when I shall no longer speak to you in parables, but I will tell you plainly of the Father. (Ibid, 25) In stillness and quiet, in the simplest way, Christ will reveal to us His true nature. His true nature is that He came forth from the Father. (Ibid, 28) St. Thomas tells us that he says this for three reasons: (1) That He might manifest the Father in the world: ‘No man hath seen God at any time; the Only Begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.’ (St. John i. 18) The Word and Son of God came into the world to reveal the Father’s presence to us. (2) To declare His Father's will to us: ‘All things that I have heard of My Father I have made known unto you.’ (St. John xv. 15) The Word of God came into the world to reveal what He has heard of the Father concerning our salvation. (3) That He might show the Father's love towards us: ‘God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him….’ (St. John iii. 16) [Easter Homilies: XII] The Word of God came into the world to reveal the Father’s love for us in the death of His Son. This is the Father’s joy. In stillness and quiet, if we contemplate the life of the Word made flesh, we shall find the omnipotent power of God with us in Jesus Christ. This is His joy.

But because everything that Christ said and did for us in time and place came from the Father, Christ must leave us because by His leaving He gives us an example. ‘Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.’ (1 St. John ii. 15) ‘Ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.’ (St. John xv. 19) Jesus ascends to the Father for Aquinas that: (1) That he might intercede with Him for us: ‘I will pray the Father.’ (St. John xiv. 16)    (2) That He might give to us the Holy Spirit: ‘If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you.’ (St. John xvi. 7) (3) That He might prepare for us a place with the Father: ‘I go to prepare a place for you.’ (St. John xiv. 2) To which place may He lead us. (Idem) Jesus is our Lord and pleads our cause with the Father. Jesus leaves us to send the Spirit to incorporate us into His Death and Resurrection inwardly and spiritually. Jesus leaves us to prepare our future home in Heaven with the Father. In this, our hearts should be filled with all gratitude and joy.    

God’s Word has been spoken through Jesus Christ in order that we might be redeemed. To be redeemed and saved, we must not only hear it, but desire to obey it (St. James i. 22), as St. James says this morning. St. James insists that we must be willing to obey God’s Word, Jesus Christ, above ourselves, so that in still and silent contemplation we might live in Him. We shall obey Him because this alone leads us to unending joy. Monsignor Knox tells us that being a hearer of God’s Word and not a doer – the man who looks in the mirror and forgets what manner of man he is, is like someone who listens carefully to a reading of Thomas a Kempis’ ‘Imitation of Christ’. He understands it and thinks that the book is really about Christians like himself – he finds a reflection of himself in it. [But] it is only if he will give a good long look at our Lord’s teaching that this self-satisfied person will see the real picture which it conveys, very different indeed from the ‘self-portrait’ that he first found in it! (Epistles and Gospels: Know, p. 138) Contemplating Christ the Word made flesh reveals our own self-portraitsstanding in sharp contrast to whom and what God would have us become in deed and in truth forever. (1 John iii. 18)

The Word made flesh now glorified, pleads our cause and sends His Comforter to recast us in His image and likeness as He prepares a place for us. (Idem) In Christ, our end, we see the perfect law of liberty that moves in and out of the Father’s presence with renewed ease. Christ has perfect liberty and joy. Now, we can ask the Father to reap the harvest of His victory over sin, death, and Satan in us. If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain. (St. James i. 26) Spiritual silence enables us to think those things that be good, and by God’s merciful guiding may perform the same. (Collect: Rogation Sunday) 
Mother Teresa writes this:
I
n the silence of the heart God speaks. If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you. Then you will know that you are nothing. It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself (–with His Holy Spirit.) Souls of prayer are souls of great silence. 
                  (Mother Teresa, In the Heart of the World…)

As we contemplate the glorified Christ, we confess that we are empty and nothing, asking the Father to harvest in us the salvation that Christ has won.  For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? (1 John 5:4-6) By believing in Christ through the Holy Spirit, we can become overcomers. In Him, let us ask for true religion…in silence, visiting the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and keepingourselves unspotted from the world. (Ibid, 27) Then, in the Spirit of Jesus Christ, we shall be of good cheer because He has overcome the world. (St. John xvi. 33)

Amen.
©wjsmartin
 

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Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, 
that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: 
because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, 
which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
St. Matthew vii. 13, 14
      
Our opening quotation, taken from St. Matthew’s Gospel, gives us a useful segue into our study of the meaning of Resurrection in this Eastertide. In it, Jesus Christ tells us that most people go to Hell and few go to Heaven. Pardon me for cutting to the quick, but these are Jesus’ words, and this is Jesus’ analysis of the fallen human condition. I am quite sure that He always wants it to be otherwise, but Truth is truth. Far from being a condemnation or sentencing of His own people to Hell, these words should be taken as a warning for us all when we think irresponsibly that we are already saved and bank on Cheap Grace or think that our religion and good works are going to save us. None of this is good theology and it certainly isn’t Biblical. Most men go to Hell because they choose the broad way over and against the strait gate, the narrow way that alone leads to salvation. 
        
Of course, none of this is pleasant news and too many Christians threaten their salvation by believing untruths like my God wouldn’t damn anyone. Many Christians don’t think. Of course, God damns people. If He didn’t, He wouldn’t give them the respect they deserve as being free willing creatures that can choose irrationally to reject Him. God creates man with reason and free will and to discover their respective perfections. So, our Good God loves us so much that he allows us not to want, find, love, or put Him above all things so that we can go to Heaven. Our God is Good and so never compels anyone to love Him enough to be saved. God gives to every man his due or will render to every man according to his deeds. (Romans ii. 6) So, we might want to wake up to the fact that man’s deeds come from man’s choices. Man’s choices are the result of his free will. What moves and defines us mostly means that we have used reason to will freely and to determine the character, state, and condition of our souls, forever. This is God’s loving justice. He respects us enough to allow us to fall in love with Him, or not.
        
So, if we hope to be saved, we must want it. To want it, we must find it. To find it, we need look no further than God’s revelation of it in His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. (St. John xiv. 6) Christians believe that salvation comes to fallen man through Jesus Christ by participating in the Redemption He has worked out for us, fulfilling Divine Reason and freely willing it. Jesus died and rose for us. Now, it is up to us to want, find, and love it more than all other things. Of course, we cannot really want, find, and love it more than all other things, unless we need it. Coming to discover that we need it is the hard part. To need it comes only when we have taken a long, hard look at ourselves and found ourselves to be, on the best of days, destitute of that joy and happiness that God’s Reason and Will alone generate for us in Jesus Christ.
         
I have said that needing what Jesus brings is the hard part. Most of us, wouldn’t you say, think that we are alright, are good enough, and shall, more than likely, just scrape by to enter the Kingdom? Such wishful thinking on our part. Jesus says that we must find the strait gate and enter the narrow way if we hope to be saved. And the strait gate and narrow way reveal no easy business. The old adages no pain, no gain, no suffering, no salvation, and no Cross, no Crown take in Jesus Christ’s pattern of suffering and death. What we need is the strait gate and narrow way of Jesus’ Passion for us. We can only come to need it if we realize what Christ has done for us. 
         
We can only realize what Christ has done for us when we come to know ourselves as sinners. In these dark, dark days, where the idolaters of our world convince us that God loves us just the way we are, this is challenging. But surely, we don’t really believe that we are pure and righteous. St. James, long ago, knew that Man never is, and so exhorts us to Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.  Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you. (St. James iv. 7,8) Jesus Christ came into the world to help us to need God when He promised to send the Comforter unto us, [who] will reprove the world of sin. (St. John xvi. 8) The Comforter, Christ’s Holy Spirit, longs to awaken us to our sins,born of self-reliance and self-righteousness, which kill the Word of God, Jesus Christ, in our souls. God’s Word is the expression of His Reason and Will for us in Jesus Christ. St. Thomas Aquinas says 
he will convince, rebuke, the world, as the one who will invisibly enter into their hearts and pour his charity into them so that their fear is conquered and they have the strength to rebuke. (Aquinas: John’s Gospel) 
 
What we come to need is the Comforter, or the Holy Spirit, who fills our hearts with the charity of God, which has conquered all our fear with the strength to rebuke all sin on Jesus’ Cross. Next, Jesus say that the Comforter will reprove…the world of righteousness. (Ibid, 10) Aquinas, with St. Paul, the greatest of convicted Christians, proclaims that we are sold under sin… There is none righteous, no, not one. (Romans iii. 10, Ibid) and that the world must be convicted always by the righteousness that [we] have ignored or neglected. (Idem) Through the Spirit, the Father lovingly shows us that we have rejected and neglected God’s Crucified Son. The Father 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). Finally, the Comforter will rebuke…the world of judgment because the prince of this world is judged. (Idem) Aquinas insists that the devil has received his due. Thus, the world is reproved by this judgment because being unwilling to resist, it is overcome by the devil, who although expelled is brought back by their consent to sin: "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies" (Rom 6:12, Idem) In Christ’s death, we discover that we need and can find, want, and love the strength to know that Satan has been judged. (Idem)

When we come to need Jesus, we begin to find and want and love God’s Reason and Will for us. In Christ, our faith must be tried and tested by His Crucifixion. This is where the rubber meets the road.
 If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you….The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. But all these things will they do unto you for my name’s sake, because they know not him that sent me. (St. John xv. 18-21)
 
If we are made one with the Cross of Jesus, we shall be hated by the world. Christ’s Victory over sin, death, and Satan in the Crucifixion enables us to order [our] unruly wills and affections [as] sinful men. (Collect Easter IV) The Holy Spirit strengthens us to become servants of Christ’s righteousness as we endure this world’s hatred. The Holy Spirit will enable us to love the thing that the Father commandeth and love the thing He doth promise. (Collect…) Nevertheless, I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. (St. John xvi. 7) 

Christ longs for more in us. He persuades us to need, want, find, and love Him inwardly and spiritually. This is why He must depart from us in the flesh. St. James writes Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath. For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. (St. James i. 19.20) Christ desires to dwell in our hearts by faith. With Christ living in us, through the Holy Spirit, if we are swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath, (Idem) we must resist all vengeance. Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. (Romans xii. 19) To journey from Christ’s Crucifixion into Resurrection is difficult but filled with the belief that God is the judge and will give every man his due, what he wants, with neither force nor compulsion. So, St. James concludes:

My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience… Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.
(St. James i. 2-4)  
 
Christ is with us truly in spirit and in truth. Our temptations now can become good and useful ways to help us to need, want, find, and love the way that overcomes all our sins. Jesus, the Word of Truth, will soften our old hardened, sinful hearts, convict us through the Holy Spirt and give us new hearts of love, leading us through the straight gate and narrow way that lead to salvation.
For,

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Of his own will begat he us with the Word of 
Truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. (St. James i. 17, 18)
 

The gift of the Father is Jesus Christ, His only-begotten Word, who cometh down from the Father of Lights, whose Reason and Free Will with neither shadow of turning always long to beget us anew, whose Good News is the strait gate and narrow way that enable us to need, want, find, and love Him and the salvation He has won for us forever. 

Amen.
©wjsmartin
 

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But praised be the LORD, who hath not given us over
for a prey unto their teeth. Our soul is escaped even as a bird out of the
snare of the fowler; the snare is broken, and we are delivered.
(Ps. cxxiv. 5,6)
 
Easter Tide is all about eschewing those things that are contrary to our profession and following all such things as are agreeable to the same. (Collect Easter III) Easter Tide teaches us that we have been admitted into the fellowship of Christ’s religion. (Idem) So, in this holy season, we undertake the hard labor of dying to our old selves to be formed in the new Resurrected life of Christ. We die to ourselves as we petition God to show [us] that are in error the light of [His] truth. (Idem) In Easter Tide, we pray that the Holy Ghost will not give us over as a prey unto the teeth of Satan and that Christ will give us a way to escape out of the snare of the fowler. (Idem) Satan is the fowler who intends to trap us like birds of prey in his net. But Jesus intends to invite us into His Resurrection, as He leads us from sin to righteousness, from death to life, and from Satan’s temptations to His victory over all that might separate us from our foreordained communion with God the Father forever.  
         
Our Resurrected Lord Jesus Christ invites us into a relationship that will ensure our deliverance to the Kingdom He shares with our Heavenly Father. To enter this relationship, with St. Peter, in this morning’s Epistle, we must come to discover ourselves as strangers and pilgrims (I St. Peter ii. 11) in this fallen creation. This means that we must become aliens to this world, to the creation and its spirit-killing sin. St. Peter insists that the starting point is to 
abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul; having [our] conversation honest among the Gentiles: that whereas they speak evil against [us] as evil doers, they may by [our] good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation. (Idem)
 
We must say no to any inordinate lust that is not of God. Isaiah the Prophet says that for the iniquity of [our] covetousness was God wroth…smote [us in times past]…and hid [Himself](Is. xviii. 17) Our sinful selves had forgotten the secret things that belong to the Lord our God (Deut. xxix. 29). But Jesus reveals to us the hidden things of God so that as born-again Christians, by the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ we might become strangers and pilgrims to this fallen world.

St. Peter reminds us that we must be cuttingly candid about the hidden spiritual warfare that threatens to envelop us if we forget God. David, the Psalmist, reminds us If the Lord Himself had not been on our side…when men rose up against us. They had swallowed us up alive, when they were so wrathfully displeased at us…The deep waters of the proud had gone even over our souls. (Ps. 1-4) David claims that the troubled sea…[whose] waters cast up dirt and mire, in which is…no peace, always threatens to devour and drown our souls if we forget God’s Hidden Power. When we struggle to be faithful to God we are hindered and even harassed by those who have no fear of God before their eyes. (Rom. iii. 18) We shall be assaulted by a blasphemous and brutish generation, that set their mouths against Heaven, out of [whose mouths] belch forth impieties and impurities, to dishonor God who made them, to grieve the souls of his servants, and to spread the contagion of their ungodliness. (B. Jenks: P.P., p.240) David knows that Satan and his human friends are his enemies. David flees to God’s strength in all humility. Praised be the LORD, who hath not given us over for a prey unto their teeth. Our soul is escaped even as a bird out of the snare of the fowler; the snare is broken, and we are delivered. Our help standeth in the Name of the LORD, who hath made heaven and earth. (Ibid, 5-7) David believed that the hidden, Invisible God alone had the strength and love to deliver him. David believed that God alone could chase away the birds of prey that would [ensnare and] devour God’s Sacrifice in his heart. David trusted that God alone could drive out the unclean beasts that would trample down the plantation of God’s Grace in his soul. (Jenks, 224) David knew that the Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. (Ps. lxvi. 11)Against the clear and visible threats of his earthly enemies, in the meekness of his heart, David humbled himself before God, for that continual proneness which was in him to sin against His Maker and Redeemer, that made him so unlike to God, and so contrary to what His holy laws required him to be. (Jenks)

David was a stranger and pilgrim in this world. He looked forward to the fulfillment of God’s promises in His Son, Jesus Christ. Christians know that the benefits of Christ’s Resurrection promise to deliver us all from our sin. But for that power to liberate us effectually, we must declare spiritual war on this world and its ship of fools. Fools trust in themselves and their own fallen reason. He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool. (Prov. xxviii. 26) A fool despiseth wisdom and understanding. (Prov. i. 7) Fools rejoice when they should lament and mourn when they should rejoice. Because they are at home in this world and not strangers and pilgrims in it, they trust only in what they see and perceive. Because they are earthly minded, they say to themselves that surely God doesn’t care about this or that. They are like the fool who hath said in his heart there is no God. (Psalm xiv. 1) They have forgotten that God is everywhere and cares about everything since He is the author of it all!

Whither shall I go from thy spirit?
or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there:
if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning,
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
even there shall thy hand lead me,
and thy right hand shall hold me.
                           (Ps. cxxxix. 7-100
        
David mourns when he forgets the Invisible God and that he is truly a stranger and pilgrim to this world. David’s heirs, the Apostles, who witnessed Christ’s Resurrection, must trust in the promises of God’s Invisible Wisdom, Power, and Love.

We are summoned to be moved by faith from death into the fruitfulness of Christ’s Resurrection. We are being moved into goodness. But the journey does not end here. St. Thomas Aquinas writes: 

Now, by His Resurrection Christ entered upon an immortal and incorruptible life. But whereas our dwelling-place is one of generation and corruption, the heavenly place is one of incorruption. And consequently it was not fitting that Christ should remain upon earth after the Resurrection, but it was fitting that He should ascend into Heaven. (Idem) 
 

The Resurrection is all about a transition to from what is good to what is better. (Idem) In the Resurrection, the Apostles and we see the revealed and unhidden glorified state of Man on route home to Heaven. He tells us that the wise Christian will be sad for Jesus’ return to hiddenness. For, by sadness of evil, man is corrected. (Easter III: TA) Christ leaves us in the flesh for us to repent in spirit. Unless we mourn over what our sins have done to God’s Word made flesh, the Resurrected Christ cannot begin to make us better for His Kingdom. Thomas reminds us also that Christ is risen from the dead and become the first fruit of them that slept. (1 Cor. xv. 20) The movement from darkness into light is the first fruits. A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father. (St. John xvi. 16) Jesus Christ, the eternally begotten Son of the Hidden but Living God, must return to God. As the Apostles became strangers and pilgrims to this world, with them we must learn to follow Christ back to the Father, invisibly, in Spirit and in Truth. (St. John iv. 24)  

Being strangers and pilgrims in this world is just the beginning for St. Peter and his friends. Abide in me, and I in you. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. (St. John xv. 4, 5) Christ is preparing to ascend to the Father. If the Hidden Christ begins to be born in the hidden recesses of our believing and hoping souls, He will make us better. We must never be at home or at rest in this world. Our journey is like a woman with child. A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world. And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you. (Ibid, 21, 22) The expectant mother is sorrowful over what is yet hidden, that her newborn babe will be born into the world. If we wisely endure all suffering and sorrow, as strangers and pilgrims in this world, for joy that the hidden Christ is being born in our souls, we shall see Him again in Heaven forever in immortality and with incorruption.
          
The end that we seek is the consolation of the hidden Divine Presence. Being strangers and pilgrims, we hope for what we see not but with patience wait for it. (Romans viii, 24) What is hidden consoles us. I will see you again, and you will rejoice. (St. John xvi. 22) With St. Peter, if we wisely and joyfully embrace the Hidden Christ who ascends to the Father, we shall be occupied with well doing, [that we] may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men, and not using [our] liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of God. (Ibid, 13) Believing in Christ’s Hidden Nature, as strangers and pilgrims, here and now, our weeping and lamenting shall join the hope that our sorrow shall be turned into joy. (Ibid, 20) With well doing, Christ’s hidden victory over all our sin and suffering makes us better.! Then others shall be astonished that the hidden love of the Invisible Godin the Spirit of the Resurrected Christ is carrying us all to Heaven, no longer as strangers and pilgrims, but those who are at rest and made the best for home in His Kingdom.  

Amen.
©wjsmartin
 
 

 For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned
unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.
(1 St. Peter ii. 25)
 
In Eastertide, we are called to become members of Jesus Christ’s Resurrected Body by remembering that we were lost sheep or sheep going astray who have been found. Of course, we have been found by Jesus Christ, the Shepherd and Bishop of [our] souls, because He is the the forgiveness of sins. Our Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, always longs to find us in our sins and to forgive us. The forgiveness of sins is really meant to divide us from both sin against God, others, and even ourselves. First, Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, reveals God to us once again, and we discover that we have erred and strayed from God’s ways like lost sheep. (General Confession, BCP 1662) With regard to the second, we see, outwardly and visibly, how our sins have scattered God’s other sheep away from Him. With regard to the third, we find in the end how we have been lost sheep in need of being found and saved from our sins. In Eastertide we not only rejoice that we have been found by Jesus Christ the Good Shepherd but we find also what it means to live in and through our Resurrected Saviour as the forgiveness of sins takes roots in our souls and rises into love and mercy.
         
​Yet, what is so helpful about the Church’s selection of readings in Easter Tide is that she does not pretend that this new life as the Good Shepherd’s lost and found sheep is no easy business. Of course, for many, this Good Shepherd Sunday will be lost to souls who don’t understand to what lengths the Good Shepherd goes to find, heal, and save us. Most people think that Good Shepherd Sunday ought to be about Jesus the kindly, caring, gentle herdsman and guardian of His flock. Our Prayer Book warns us against any superficial sentimentality regarding the relationship between Christ the Good Shepherd and His sheep.
         
Today we learn what it means to be lost and found by the Good Shepherd. What the sheep of Christ look like and what the Good Shepherd expects are illustrated in this morning’s First Epistle of St. Peter. St. Peter addresses the newly formed Church in Asia Minor, full of the lost and found. Most of its members are servants or slaves. The general impression Peter gives is that Christian slaves are having a hard time with how the the forgiveness of sins works into their spiritual lives. Not surprisingly, they are trying to remember that they were lost and are now found as they serve Masters who are treating them cruelly and disdainfully. St. Peter is keen to identify with their pain and suffering and encourage them to remember how Christ the Good Shepherd not only finds them but continues to carry them home to His Kingdom.
         
St. Peter’s counsel seems irrational and unjust. Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. (1 St. Peter ii. 18) If he were writing to earthly-minded men, whose justice is inevitably unjust, we should judge his advice to be hard-hearted and cruel cold comfort. But St. Peter is not writing to pagans and so his chief interest in not with social and political justice but with Divine justice overcome by Christ the forgiveness of sins. He writes as a member of the Body of Christ, and so he continues, For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps. (1 St. Peter ii. 21) St. Peter insists that the Good Shepherd, God’s own Son, has identified with all of our suffering and pain. Monsignor Knox reminds us, St. Peter remembers, too, how he followed in his Master’s footsteps, when Christ was led away to be crucified. (R.K.: The Epistles and Gospels, p. 125) He is only too conscious of the radical injustice done to God’s Good Shepherd and of his own powerlessness and then fear in the face of it. When he had been sitting by the fire in the cellar of the High Priest’s palace, he was surrounded by slaves, whose suffering was unjust. He too was shackled and enslaved to his own fear, cowardice, and impotence. He responded to evil by retreating into his own sin. Peter was a lost sheep. The slaves who surrounded him were lost sheep without any hope in this world. Peter was afraid of the same evil that bound the slaves. Yet, Peter was a lost sheep enslaved to own unfaithfulness and cowardice. Peter had become a slave to a far more cruel master than any earthly slaveholder. He was enslaved to the fear of imminent death by reason of association with Jesus. And because he was guilty of denying Jesus before the cock had crowed, he feared judgment. He remembered that guile was… found in his mouth, that when reviled, he reviled…again, and that when he suffered the accusation that he was one of Jesus’ friends, he threatened his accusers. (Ibid)
         
But now in today’s Epistle St. Peter speaks as a lost sheep who was now found by Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd who became the forgiveness of sins. The Good Shepherd had forgiven him who once was a lost sheep and slave to sin and was now called into the new liberty of the Resurrection. So, Peter identifies with the slaves and exhorts them to welcome the Good Shepherd, who died as the forgiveness of sins and to forgive their earthly masters. Christ suffered for our sakes…who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: who when reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously: who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed. (Ibid, 22- 25) St. Peter became a sinful slave to the evil of this world voluntarily. The slaves he addresses are the hapless victims of other men’s wickedness, and yet they too are tempted to allow their earthly slavery to kill the forgiveness of sins. Both Peter and his hearers were slaves, but they are now invited into true spiritual liberation through Christ who is the forgiveness of sins and the resurrection and the life. The slaves too must confess that they once were lost but now are found. With Peter, they can remember God, their sinful unforgiveness of their masters, and that they were sheep like without a shepherd. (St. Matthew ix. 36)With Peter, they can become evangelists of the forgiveness of sins and Christ’s Resurrection. What they can reveal is that they are the free sons and daughters of the living God –whose forgiveness in them can conquer all evil because while their sins were many, His mercy is more. Christ, the Good Shepherd, frees all men from the author of evil in this world and his malicious friends.
           
All of Christ’s lost sheep who are now found must endure grief, suffering wrongfully…take it patiently…[because] this is acceptable with God. (Ibid, 19, 20) St. Peter is inviting the slaves to see that the Saviour has suffered unjustly and has borne the burden of all men’s slavery to sin on the Cross of His Love. Like Christ, they must forgive those who are the cause of their suffering. For Christ is interested in all sinners –both slaves and free! The Good Shepherd saves and frees all men from all evil. If He – the perfect model and example of the unjustly tortured, punished, and crucified Slave, can forgive, then so too must all they who would be carried on His shoulders home to God. In fact, Jesus said, If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you…if they have persecuted me, they will persecute you…. (St. John xv. 18, 20) For Christ bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness. (Ibid, 24) Again, with Monsignor Knox, Christ’s wounds are healing stripes, and His death produces, of its own efficacy, a new death and the beginning of new life in us. (Idem) So the slaves and the slaveholders are invited into the new life of the Resurrection, as sheep who have been found, rescued, and saved by Jesus Christ. For ye were as sheep, going astray, but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls. (Ibid, 25 Christ the Good Shepherd’s transformative forgiveness is greater than all sin.
          
St. Peter shows us that all men are sinners who need to be incorporated into the Resurrected Life of the One who has become a Slave for us all. And this Slave is the Shepherd and Bishop of [our] souls. (idem) He calls Himself the Good Shepherd in this morning’s Gospel, for He is the Shepherd of Souls who voluntarily becomes God’s Slave because, as He says, He giveth His life for the sheep. (St. John x. 11) So the Good Shepherd can be identified with the Slave who now works freely and completely for the good of two Masters –His Father and His sheep! He even lays down His life for His sheep because He knows that only then can His Father’s Love become a true Slave to their condition, bear its burden fully, and then break its chains through the power of the forgiveness of their sins. 

fBut even beyond this, Christ the Good Shepherd longs to become our Slave even now. He becomes the Father’s willing and happy Slave. Will He be our Slave also? He who is freely subservient, obedient, and docile to the Father’s longs to be our Slave and shepherd us into the Father’s embrace. The Good Shepherd cares only for our welfare and good. The Good Shepherd is the Slave whose service alone can conquer and overcome our sin. He alone is the Slave who must become our Master. He masters our sin by bringing it to death if we embrace the Spirit of His glorious passion, crucifixion, and resurrection.
         
Christ, the Good Shepherd comes to find His lost sheep. Will we allow Him to be our Slave and Master? Like all lost sheep enslaved to sin, we cannot pay this Slave for mastering our sin in dying for us, and forgiving us freely, without compulsion, without any force. He demands no payment. He asks only that our hearts awaken to the fact that we are lost sheep without His Shepherding Slavery. Today, in all humility and meekness, let us allow God’s Slave to Master and Shepherd us. Then, we too shall follow the blessed steps of His most holy life. (Collect, Easter II) And with St. Peter and all the Saints we shall realize that Christ the Good Shepherd and Slave alone shepherds all lost and found slaves into everlasting freedom.

Amen.
©wjsmartin
 
            

Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.  For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. (Col. iii. 2)

Our journey through the Lenten Season to Good Friday will have been of no use if it has not been characterized by affection. Set your affections on things above, proclaims St. Paul this morning, and not on things of the earth, and if we have been conscientious, this is exactly what we have been doing. Affection is passion, desire, yearning, and longing, and loving. And throughout the Holy Season of Lent, we have prayed that the Holy Spirit might purify the thoughts of our hearts so that we can follow Jesus up to the  Jerusalem of His Cross and beyond. Our affections have been set…on the things above [and] not things of the earth, things which have come down to us in the passionate heart of Jesus Christ to lift us up higher. Out of the unquenchable love of His heart, Christ desired that our affections should rise up to embrace Him in the Death He died for you and me. From there to here, on this Easter Morn, Christ now longs that our affections might rise higher still into His Resurrection Love.  
          
Throughout our journey to Easter, we have learned that setting [our] affections on things that are above and not on the things of the earth is no easy business. And yet our distraction from it comes not from God but from us. God’s affection and desire for us have never ceased. From the Divine Depths, articulated and expressed in the incessant, loving Passion of Jesus on the Cross, the uninterrupted longing of God for our salvation has persisted. The Word has gone out. God’s desire and affection have never swerved from His Great Unseen Eternal Design. The Word of God came down from heaven to live in man’s heart. His Good Friday is but one moment in the unfolding drama of our Redemption and Salvation.

The common lot of men are always too busy for Good Friday. Their affections and desires were otherwise occupied. The mighty engine of Caesar’s Rome could not accommodate the strange Passion of a loving God whose affection was lifted high on the Cross of suffering and dying for us. Even God’s chosen people, the Jews, could not feel such love and affection conquering their Law of sin and death. Even the fear and the cowardice of those with the best of intentions were rendered equally confounded by God’s unfolding affection. Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth. (St. Luke xxi. 26) Human affection for God is fickle, unreliable, inconstant, and ultimately treacherous. Man’s fallenness cannot bear God’s Omnipotent Love found in the death of His own Son.

And yet, God’s Love persisted on the Cross with a Passion that longs always to redeem the affection of men in all ages, even His worst enemies. Father forgive them for they know not what they do. (St. Luke xxiii. 34) From the Cross, Christ said to the Good Thief, Come follow me. Today thou shalt be with me in paradise. (St. Luke xxiii. 43) From His Cross His loved reached out to His Mother and the blessed disciple. Come follow me. Woman behold thy son…behold thy mother. (St. John xix. 26, 27) From His Cross, His love shared the fear of the hopeless and longed to overcome their despair. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me. (St. Matthew xxvii. 46) Come follow me. From the Cross, Christ cried out, I thirst. (St. John xix. 28) because His thirst for God’s love was greater than enduring unjust Death. Come follow me. From the Cross, He cried, It is finished. (St. John xix. 30) Father into thy hands, I commend my spirit. (St. Luke xxviii. 46) Come follow me even into my death, as my death that shall become yours also. On Good Friday, I pray we began to see that something Divine was still at work. Sin would not put Christ down and death could not stop Him! On Good Friday, I pray that we began to see that Christ was conquering sin and death with the Omnipotent Power and Love of His Father. Christ died, and Man died.          

With pure affection, God made all things, and with the same affection He will remake all things. Christ’s love for us invites us into His Death. With sinful affection, we all desired God’s death. God in Christ suffered our sinful affection that sentenced Him to Death. God seemed dead. Christ was interred in the sepulcher, and with Him, it would seem, man’s affection for things above, which He was, was gone. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. (Genesis i. 2) Sin and death seemed to swallow up the Love and extinguish the Light. His Death held hope hostage in the cruel knot of confusion, fear, and despair. But, as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. (1 Cor. xv. 22)  

As we move from the seventh to the first day, something strange begins to happen. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. (Genesis i. 3,4) In the beginning, God lovingly made the Light to inform, define, and enliven all of creation. In the same Light now, incandescent beams of Divine Affection will open the eyes of believers’ hearts to a new creation being illuminated by that true Light that lighteth every man that cometh into world. (St. John i. 9) Darkness flees, sin is dead, death is conquered, and ignorance is overcome as the Divine Affection jumps up from Death in the heart of Jesus. The pure Affection and eternal desire of the Father of lights have transformed the Son as flesh from Death into New Life. The old Man is Dead, and the new Man has come alive. 

At first only angels and nature sense the strangeness of this Light. The elements stirred, the air was parted, the fire blazed, and the earth shook and fell before the rising Light that follows the passion and affection of its Mover and Maker. The Father’s immortal, immutable, and immovable course of affection for man’s redemption is on course and thus is still at work in the heart of Jesus. Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. (Romans vi. 9, 10) The question and answer of the prophet Ezekiel are fulfilled.

Son of man, can these bones live? …And there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone. And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them. Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, Son of Man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them…(Ezekiel xxxvii. 1-10)

Christ fulfills Ezekiel’s prophesy. Yes, these bones can and will live.  In Him the Light of God blends with rising Love in the transfigured flesh of Man. The pure affection of Man for God brings Light out of Darkness and Life out of Death. God’s Word rises, informing still the now transfigured flesh of Jesus. Christ’s uninterrupted affection for God and Man is one Light whose Love makes Death into something new. Christ is Risen from the dead…Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us, therefore let us keep the feast…as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. (1 Cor. xv. 20, 22; 1 Cor. v. 7) 

But there is more. And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me. (St. John xii. 32) At first, the affection of both the Apostles and the women is confused. On this first day of the week, Mary Magdalene is moved still by her affection and love for Jesus, to anoint the dead. She finds the stone rolled away. Her affection for the Light is not yet redeemed. They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulcher, and we know not where they have laid him. (St. John xx. 2) In darkness, she believes that Christ’s enemies have stolen the body. But she remembers the words of the prophet: And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I have…brought you up out of your graves, And I shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live. (Ezekiel. xxxvii. 12-14) Her stirring affection for things above runs to find John and Peter. Their affection and love run to the empty tomb. As Eriugena says, John outruns Peter because contemplation completely cleansed penetrates the inner secrets of the divine workings more rapidly than action still to be purified. John represents contemplation and hope. Peter represents action and faith. The faith of Peter must enter the tomb of darkness first to then understand with John. (Hom. Gospel of St. John, 283, 285)         

God’s uninterrupted affection and desire for all men’s salvation is still at work in Jesus Christ. Stirring within the hearts of Mary Magdalene, Peter, and John are the affection for, faith and understanding in the Light that said, I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also. (St. John xiv. 18, 19) Christ is risen. Soon the Apostles will see Him and begin to Live in Him. Christ is risen. In the Resurrected Light that shines through His transfigured flesh, we must remember that we are dead and our life is hid with God in Christ. (Colossians iii. 2,3) In the Resurrected Light, let us reckon [ourselves] to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans vi. 11) In the Resurrected Light let us embrace Christ’s affection with our own –that affection and desire for becoming very members incorporate in His Risen spiritual and mystical Body, transparent, obedient to His Holy Spirit…apt and natural instruments of His will and way, (The Meaning of Man, Mouroux, p.89) reflecting His Light and Love into the hearts of all others. And with the poet let us rejoice and sing:

Then comes He!
Whose mighty Light
Made His clothes be
Like Heav’n, all bright;
         The Fuller, whose pure blood did flow
         To make stained man more white than snow.
 He alone
And none else can
Bring bone to bone,
And rebuild man,
         And by His all subduing might
         Make clay ascend more quick than Light.
                           (Ascension Hymn: H. Vaughn)

 Amen.
©wjsmartin
  

He that is of God heareth God’s words…
 
Last week you and I were meditating upon the freedom or liberation that comes to us in Lent through the life of Jesus Christ. You will remember that our Gospel lection for the day presented the miracle of the five thousand. Five thousand men with their wives and children had been following Jesus- behold we go up to Jerusalem, listening to His words and observing the miracles that He performed on many- blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it. (St. Luke xi. 28) In Jesus, they came to see God’s power at work in the world, and so were arrested with curiosity. But they were seekers. Only the restless and unsatisfied are seekers, searchers, knockers, and askers. A woman cannot cure her daughter of a vexing demon, and so she searches for the cure. The people in last week’s Gospel are hungry for the Word of God that Jesus proclaims. They follow Jesus and once their souls are fed so too are their bodies. They are fed doubly- in the body and the soul as we plead in today’s Collect.
           
The five thousand-plus people who followed Jesus showed us that true freedom comes when the soul seeks out spiritual and heavenly things first. True freedom is found when the soul searches for spiritual joy and happiness. True liberation is found when man can be united to that which does not perish and is not corrupted. St. Paul likens true freedom to the generation or birth of God’s promises in the world. True liberation is found when we are born again in the spirit. After that, the body’s needs can be met. But only after that. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. (Matt. vi. 33)
           
Lent is about freedom. Freedom is found when we walk with Jesus, follow Him, hear His words, and allow them to sink into the depths of our souls. To live in the freedom that Christ brings, we must be searching for God as what is other than anything that we find in the creation. If we have all the answers and have figured it all out, this is not the journey for us. If we spend our time in cynicism, suspecting all others of sinful motives, and judging them, mostly to protect us from facing ourselves, this is no journey for us. If we live well and are unthankful, this is not the journey for us. To embark on this journey, to find Christ’s freedom, we must open to God’s Grace- that power, wisdom, and love that we neither desire nor deserve. To find Christ and His freedom you and I must be open to the power of God that is not constrained by and limited to the conditions that we place upon Him. For if we subject God to our own constrictive rules for what, where, and when of His presence, we become like Christ’s enemies in today’s Gospel.

We follow Christ to find our freedom. Today we learn that Christ’s enemies accuse Him of being a sinner. Christ tells them and us that he that is of God hears God’s words. (St. John viii. 48) Blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it. (Idem) One who hears the Word of God is not only searching but finding what is other than himself. Christ longs for us to hear and embrace what He receives from the Father. In His openness, He embraces Absolute Goodness and Truth. If I tell you the truth, why do you not believe me? (Ibid, 46) Jesus hears the Father and keeps His Word. Jesus keeps it and shares it. But His enemies say are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon? (Ibid, 48) Jesus’ enemies accuse Him of being a Samaritan- an outsider, a product of mixed racial parentage, an alien. And they are correct. Jesus is an alien and an outsider. He is, in a way, of mixed parentage; His Father is Divine and His mother is Human. But it does not follow that He has a demon. For Jesus is what He hears, what he keeps, and what he tells. He receives and imparts God’s Word. His enemies cannot abide this because they fear His intimacy with God. They cannot bear Him because they believe that God’s Word is theirs by right and appointment through the priestly ministration of their religion. 

Jesus tells us this morning that He does not have a demon but has God. He receives God so completely that God’s will is His life. He honors what is coming to Him as the Other, the Only Other who alone creates and redeems human life. Jesus Himself seeks, in His humanity, the Divinity of God. He seeks not His own glory but rather what His Father’s Wisdom and Love can show of the Father’s glory through Him. Jesus hears God’s Word and imparts it to all. Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death. (Ibid, 51) He who keeps the word that I receive and AM will not see death because God’s ever-approaching and present Word is not death but life, it is not sin but goodness, it is not error but truth.

Do we, with Christ, search out and seek after what the Only Other, God, offers to us? Have we even begun this journey? Have we admitted that there is something to find, something to encounter outside of our sinful and sorry selves? Perhaps we are content with Christ’s enemies to cynically judge and condemn, to question motives, and find demons. Our God is a distant God, we claim. Our God is a curious concept or idea. For us to find true freedom in Christ, we must see that the Father expresses Himself to us in His Son. Christ comes into the world to present to us Who He always is. Before Abraham was, I am. (Ibid, 58) The everlasting Son, the Word without beginning, articulates in Himself the Father’s will and way. But we must give ourselves to Him. It is of no use to rely upon ourselves any longer. It is futile for us to think that our earthly offerings---the blood of goats and calves in olden times, money and status in our own, can save us and help us. It is only the life of Christ, a life perfectly open to the Father, that can save us. Christ The Son of God in the flesh perfectly translates the Word of God into human life and becomes the tabernacle in which we can begin to hear the Word of God and keep it. (Idem)
           
CHRIST being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. (Hebrews, ix. 11)

The journey into freedom that we make in the tabernacle of Christ is neither easy nor always pleasant. Being open to God means dying to the self. The Son of God made flesh dies to all -the world, the flesh, the devil. God’s Word is always embraced by Jesus and now will be expressed in suffering and passion. We go up to endure the Word of God communicated to us through passion and crucifixion. Passion means to suffer, to endure, to take on, and to withstand. Because Christ insists upon hearing the Word of God and keeping it, He will be rejected and killed. He is determined to fight God’s battle against sin, death, and Satan, come what may! He fights it even in death. Death will take on new meaning in Jesus. We go up to Jerusalem and the bloody sacrifice and death of Jesus will express God’s Word of love to our hearts and souls from His Cross.

Under the tabernacle of Christ’s Passion, we shall begin to experience the fact that somehow in Christ all false gods and our delusional pleasures will die a hard death. In Christ, their powerlessness will be revealed, and their hold on us will be demolished. They will be silenced. For they are, in the end, meaningless. He is not open to them but to God. They will try to stop Him, and Christ-as-man will die. But He will turn the tables on them that resist His Omnipotent Love; they will perish. In Christ, under His tabernacle, we will be put to death also, not forcibly, but as we open our hearts freely to Him.  In us, our sins must be put to death also so that the Word heard might be kept and articulated in our lives. Richard Hooker says this about the effect of Christ’s unbreakable bond with the Father even in death:

The Creator of the World…the Wisdom of God [has] become such a Spectacle, as neither Men nor Angels can behold without a kind of Heavenly astonishment, we may hereby perceive there is cause sufficient, why Divine Nature should assume Human, that so God might be in Christ, reconciling to himself the World. (Hooker’s Laws, Book V…)
 
 
We travel with Christ, under his tabernacle up to the Cross. This spectacle of the dying Son of God in the flesh fills us with heavenly astonishment. It seems all wrong, but Christ insists it must be Right. It appears utterly evil, but Christ insists it must be Good. It strikes us as an unclean oblation and Christ says that it is pure and spotless. This heavenly spectacle is the doorway to God’s Kingdom. We enter through Christ’s death. We begin to die in and through Him. Behold, I make all things new. (Rev. xxi. 5) Our selfish objections will be felt as nothing compared with the Love of God made flesh. Our religious pretensions will seem vain and fruitless. The life of man without God is over. The horizon of new freedom is opening before us in the death of our Saviour.

Before Abraham was, I am. Therefore, took they up stones to cast at Him: But Jesus hid Himself, and went out of the Temple. (St. John viii. 59 We discover that the Creator of the Universe is unmasked as the Redeemer. St. Augustine says, But Jesus acts as a man, as one in the form of a servant, as lowly, as about to suffer, about to die, about to redeem us with His Blood; as He who is the Word in the beginning, and the Word with God. (St. Augustine: Tractates xlii, xliii) The Spectacle of God’s Omnipotent Love in death will undo us. God’s love persists. Love never dies. (1 Cor. Xiii. 10) God in Jesus embraces patience against earthly power. Patience is revealed as God’s Power of Passion. With patience Christ exhibits God’s Passion for us -the Heavenly Spectacle of irresistible freedom that reconciles the world to Himself.

Amen.
©wjsmartin
 
 

 
But praised be the LORD, who hath not given us over
for a prey unto their teeth. Our soul is escaped even as a bird out of the
snare of the fowler; the snare is broken, and we are delivered.
(Ps. cxxiv. 5,6)
 
Easter Tide is all about eschewing those things that are contrary to our profession and following all such things as are agreeable to the same. (Collect Easter III) Easter Tide teaches us that we have been admitted into the fellowship of Christ’s religion. (Idem) So, in this holy season, we undertake the hard labor of dying to our old selves to be formed in the new Resurrected life of Christ. We die to ourselves as we petition God to show [us] that are in error the light of [His] truth. (Idem) In Easter Tide, we pray that the Holy Ghost will not give us over as a prey unto the teeth of Satan and that Christ will give us a way to escape out of the snare of the fowler. (Idem) Satan is the fowler who intends to trap us like birds of prey in his net. But Jesus intends to invite us into His Resurrection, as He leads us from sin to righteousness, from death to life, and from Satan’s temptations to His victory over all that might separate us from our foreordained communion with God the Father forever.  
         
Our Resurrected Lord Jesus Christ invites us into a relationship that will ensure our deliverance to the Kingdom He shares with our Heavenly Father. To enter this relationship, with St. Peter, in this morning’s Epistle, we must come to discover ourselves as strangers and pilgrims (I St. Peter ii. 11) in this fallen creation. This means that we must become aliens to this world, to the creation and its spirit-killing sin. St. Peter insists that the starting point is to 
abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul; having [our] conversation honest among the Gentiles: that whereas they speak evil against [us] as evil doers, they may by [our] good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation. (Idem)
 
We must say no to any inordinate lust that is not of God. Isaiah the Prophet says that for the iniquity of [our] covetousness was God wroth…smote [us in times past]…and hid [Himself](Is. xviii. 17) Our sinful selves had forgotten the secret things that belong to the Lord our God (Deut. xxix. 29). But Jesus reveals to us the hidden things of God so that as born-again Christians, by the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ we might become strangers and pilgrims to this fallen world.

St. Peter reminds us that we must be cuttingly candid about the hidden spiritual warfare that threatens to envelop us if we forget God. David, the Psalmist, reminds us If the Lord Himself had not been on our side…when men rose up against us. They had swallowed us up alive, when they were so wrathfully displeased at us…The deep waters of the proud had gone even over our souls. (Ps. 1-4) David claims that the troubled sea…[whose] waters cast up dirt and mire, in which is…no peace, always threatens to devour and drown our souls if we forget God’s Hidden Power. When we struggle to be faithful to God we are hindered and even harassed by those who have no fear of God before their eyes. (Rom. iii. 18) We shall be assaulted by a blasphemous and brutish generation, that set their mouths against Heaven, out of [whose mouths] belch forth impieties and impurities, to dishonor God who made them, to grieve the souls of his servants, and to spread the contagion of their ungodliness. (B. Jenks: P.P., p.240) David knows that Satan and his human friends are his enemies. David flees to God’s strength in all humility. Praised be the LORD, who hath not given us over for a prey unto their teeth. Our soul is escaped even as a bird out of the snare of the fowler; the snare is broken, and we are delivered. Our help standeth in the Name of the LORD, who hath made heaven and earth. (Ibid, 5-7) David believed that the hidden, Invisible God alone had the strength and love to deliver him. David believed that God alone could chase away the birds of prey that would [ensnare and] devour God’s Sacrifice in his heart. David trusted that God alone could drive out the unclean beasts that would trample down the plantation of God’s Grace in his soul. (Jenks, 224) David knew that the Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. (Ps. lxvi. 11)Against the clear and visible threats of his earthly enemies, in the meekness of his heart, David humbled himself before God, for that continual proneness which was in him to sin against His Maker and Redeemer, that made him so unlike to God, and so contrary to what His holy laws required him to be. (Jenks)

David was a stranger and pilgrim in this world. He looked forward to the fulfillment of God’s promises in His Son, Jesus Christ. Christians know that the benefits of Christ’s Resurrection promise to deliver us all from our sin. But for that power to liberate us effectually, we must declare spiritual war on this world and its ship of fools. Fools trust in themselves and their own fallen reason. He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool. (Prov. xxviii. 26) A fool despiseth wisdom and understanding. (Prov. i. 7) Fools rejoice when they should lament and mourn when they should rejoice. Because they are at home in this world and not strangers and pilgrims in it, they trust only in what they see and perceive. Because they are earthly minded, they say to themselves that surely God doesn’t care about this or that. They are like the fool who hath said in his heart there is no God. (Psalm xiv. 1) They have forgotten that God is everywhere and cares about everything since He is the author of it all!

​Whither shall I go from thy spirit?
or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there:
if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning,
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
even there shall thy hand lead me,
and thy right hand shall hold me.
                           (Ps. cxxxix. 7-100
        
David mourns when he forgets the Invisible God and that he is truly a stranger and pilgrim to this world. David’s heirs, the Apostles, who witnessed Christ’s Resurrection, must trust in the promises of God’s Invisible Wisdom, Power, and Love.

We are summoned to be moved by faith from death into the fruitfulness of Christ’s Resurrection. We are being moved into goodness. But the journey does not end here. St. Thomas Aquinas writes: 

Now, by His Resurrection Christ entered upon an immortal and incorruptible life. But whereas our dwelling-place is one of generation and corruption, the heavenly place is one of incorruption. And consequently it was not fitting that Christ should remain upon earth after the Resurrection, but it was fitting that He should ascend into Heaven. (Idem) 

The Resurrection is all about a transition to from what is good to what is better. (Idem) In the Resurrection, the Apostles and we see the revealed and unhidden glorified state of Man on route home to Heaven. He tells us that the wise Christian will be sad for Jesus’ return to hiddenness. For, by sadness of evil, man is corrected. (Easter III: TA) Christ leaves us in the flesh for us to repent in spirit. Unless we mourn over what our sins have done to God’s Word made flesh, the Resurrected Christ cannot begin to make us better for His Kingdom. Thomas reminds us also that Christ is risen from the dead and become the first fruit of them that slept. (1 Cor. xv. 20) The movement from darkness into light is the first fruits. A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father. (St. John xvi. 16) Jesus Christ, the eternally begotten Son of the Hidden but Living God, must return to God. As the Apostles became strangers and pilgrims to this world, with them we must learn to follow Christ back to the Father, invisibly, in Spirit and in Truth. (St. John iv. 24)  
​
Being strangers and pilgrims in this world is just the beginning for St. Peter and his friends. Abide in me, and I in you. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. (St. John xv. 4, 5) Christ is preparing to ascend to the Father. If the Hidden Christ begins to be born in the hidden recesses of our believing and hoping souls, He will make us better. We must never be at home or at rest in this world. Our journey is like a woman with child. A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world. And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you. (Ibid, 21, 22) The expectant mother is sorrowful over what is yet hidden, that her newborn babe will be born into the world. If we wisely endure all suffering and sorrow, as strangers and pilgrims in this world, for joy that the hidden Christ is being born in our souls, we shall see Him again in Heaven forever in immortality and with incorruption.
          
The end that we seek is the consolation of the hidden Divine Presence. Being strangers and pilgrims, we hope for what we see not but with patience wait for it. (Romans viii, 24) What is hidden consoles us. I will see you again, and you will rejoice. (St. John xvi. 22) With St. Peter, if we wisely and joyfully embrace the Hidden Christ who ascends to the Father, we shall be occupied with well doing, [that we] may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men, and not using [our] liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of God. (Ibid, 13) Believing in Christ’s Hidden Nature, as strangers and pilgrims, here and now, our weeping and lamenting shall join the hope that our sorrow shall be turned into joy. (Ibid, 20) With well doing, Christ’s hidden victory over all our sin and suffering makes us better.! Then others shall be astonished that the hidden love of the Invisible Godin the Spirit of the Resurrected Christ is carrying us all to Heaven, no longer as strangers and pilgrims, but those who are at rest and made the best for home in His Kingdom.  

Amen.
©wjsmartin
 

So then, brethren, we are not the children of the bondwoman, but of the free.
(Gal. iv. 21)

The theme for the Fourth Sunday in Lent is liberation and freedom from the slavery of sin. Our lections for the past three Sundays have been leading us up to this point. On the First Sunday in Lent, we learned that Jesus Christ was tempted like as we are, yet without sin. (Hebr. iv. 15) What we found, I hope, was that the first step on the road to freedom was Christ’s willingness to be tried and tested by Satan as we are. He resisted the temptations to sin through an act of free will that rejected slavery to all false gods. On the Second Sunday of Lent, we reduced ourselves to becoming loyal dogs which eat of the crumbs that fall from Jesus’ table because our freedom is found in faithful submission to God alone. And last Sunday, we learned that eating and digesting the fragments from Christ’s table means establishing the habit of hearing and keeping God’s Word which alone can free us from bondage to all demons. In sum, then, we are undertaking a difficult and daunting labor of liberation from all that separates us from the knowledge and love of God. The problem is that we become obsessed with our own good works and not with faith in God’s Grace. We are tempted to forget that believing in God’s promises alone liberates us to walk on the road to true freedom. 
         
St. Paul is very much aware of this pernicious proclivity in the human heart, and he addresses it head-on in this morning’s Epistle. In his case, what he finds is that Judaizing Christians are threatening the spiritual freedom of his flock. Judaizing Christians were early believers who taught that strict adherence to the Jewish Law was essential to salvation. For these Christianized Jews, following the Law seemed more important than faith in Christ, God’s own sacrificed Lamb and our Redeemer. They believed that circumcision, dietary regulations, and the ceremonial Jewish Law were necessary for salvation freedom. So, in effect, the ritual traditions of Judaism competed in their hearts with faith in Christ and the work of His Grace. The result was that Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit were subject to the Law. But St. Paul knew that devotion to the tradition of the Law could neither free nor save a man. If the Jewish Law had been able to save a man, there would have been no need for Christ’s dying on the Cross to save us all!

St. Paul uses an allegory drawn from the life of Abraham to show that these Jewish Christians were behaving more like slaves than the free children of God. He uses the illustration of  Hagar and her son Ishmael. You will remember that Hagar was the slave of Abraham’s wife Sarah. She produced the bastard-heir Ishmael for Abram. Prior to the conception of his children, when Abram was old, God promised him that he would sire an heir, and that he would be the Father of children more numerous than the stars in the sky. (Gen. xv. 5) And so, Abram and Sarai his wife got to thinking.
They were old, childless, and beyond the age of conceiving a child. It was not that they had no faith, but their faith was not strong enough to trust in what seemed naturally improbable, if not impossible. They were too earthly-minded and in bondage to this world. They thought that the only way for Abram to sire a son would be to mate with Sarai’s slave girl Hagar. Abram did so and Ishmael the son of the bondwoman was born. But Abram and Sarai’s premature jumpstart on fulfilling God’s promise was wrong-headed. Abram and Sarai were enslaved to their own human ingenuity and the good work they thought they could conceive. They had not found the freedom that is the fruit of faith in God’s Word. But God had other plans for them and would elicit from them a faith in His promises that would make them the spiritual father and mother of many nations. Because of their increased faith in God’s Grace, they would eventually sire Isaac in their old age. They learned that faith and not human ingenuity is the virtue that trusts in God’s power to fulfill His promises.

So, St. Paul tells us that the early Jewish Christians were behaving more like Ishmael the son of the slave woman than Isaac the son of promise. Because they were more consumed with reason and human wisdom and not with God’s supernatural power in Jesus Christ, they were enslaved to the flesh. But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now. (Ibid, 29) The early Jewish Christians were allowing their flesh to enslave the Spirit. For St. Paul, these Jewish Christians saw Jesus as the apex, apogee, and acme of their own obedience to God through the [Law of] the flesh. They were in bondage to Abraham’s obedience to God as the father of the Law and did not see their slavery. They could not see that the Law given to Abraham’s descendent Moses was the Law of Sin and Death. They could not see that the Grace of God in Christ alone could hear the Law, endure its Sin and Death, and conquer both.

But St. Paul is not content to leave it at that. He takes another turn in his allegory that he hopes will eradicate Jewish bondage to the flesh. He tells them that though Hagar was the slave mother of the slave child Ishmael –and thus of all the Arabic people, she is no different from the earthly children of Israel. A better translation than our Authorized Version reads that Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. (Gal. iv. 25) For those who desire to be under the [old Jewish] law (Ibid, 21), there is no distinction between being a Gentile or Jew who is still enslaved to the Law of Sin and Death. St. Paul has added insult to injury. He tells the Jewish Christians that though they are by birthright the children of promise and the New Jerusalem to come, they look much more like the earthly children of Arabia, and that their cherished Mount Sinai is no better than an Arabic hill! As Monsignor Knox says, Mount Sinai, in Arabia, has the same meaning in the allegory as Jerusalem; the Jerusalem which exists here and now; an enslaved city, whose children are slaves. (The Epistles and Gospels, p. 100) Both Jews and Gentiles live in bondage to the elements of nature and her laws. They do so because all men are born slaves to sin.

They can become Christians only through the freely willed act of faith in God’s promises. Historic Jerusalem is in bondage and can only find freedom in the spiritual Jerusalem of God’s kingdom. For, Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband. (Ibid, 26, 27) Sarah, well-stricken in years and barren by reason of nature’s laws, through Abraham’s faith, became the mother of promise and freedom. Mary, young and innocent, who was barren in the sense that she knew not a man, became the mother of the promise’s fulfillment in Jesus Christ. The faith of both looks forward to promises that are to be enjoyed in the liberation and freedom that are found in God’s own Kingdom.

My friends, this Sunday in Lent is called Mothering Sunday, Refreshment Sunday, or in Latin, Laetare Sunday. The Latin is from the ancient introit to the Mass is Laetare Jerusalem: O be joyful, Jerusalem. Today we are called to remember that our salvation comes to us only through faith in God’s promises. So, as we continue our Lenten journey up to the Cross of Christ’s love, Mother Church desires to bring us out of slavery and into the freedom of faith. When we live as children of the bondwoman…born after the flesh…and in bondage, (Gal. iv. 23,24) under the elements of the world (Gal. iv. 3) doing service unto them which by nature are no gods (Gal. iv. 8), we are enslaved like Hagar and Ishmael. When this world’s natural attachments, human expectations, and earthly hopes consume us, we imperil and threaten the free operation of faith in God’s Grace. The problem is not with the world but with Christians who are too enslaved to it and thus are not being made free through faith from above.

This problem is not new. And, so, as St. Paul rebuked the ancient Galatian church long ago, he admonishes and reproaches us today. My little children, I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you….(Gal. iv. 19 Jerusalem which is above…is free…the mother of us all. (Gal. iv. 26) For Christ to be formed in us, we must allow Him to work His redemption into our hearts. To allow that work to begin, we must freely desire that God’s Grace in Christ might become the Law of our lives. We should go up with Christ to die on His Cross. As Oswald Chambers writes: Some of us are trying to offer up spiritual sacrifices to God before we have sacrificed the natural. (M.U….Dec.10) The Law of Nature enslaves us to the old Law of sin. For this reason, we must pray that Christ may be formed in us. (Idem) As we follow Him up to the Jerusalem of His Cross, we must abandon ourselves to faith in His desire to conquer the Law of Sin, Death, and Satan. Abraham believed God and it was counted unto him for righteousness. (Rom. iv. 3) Jesus believed that only by the pure sacrifice of His whole life to God, in enduring Sin and Death, could He conquer them both and turn Sin to Righteousness and make Death the seedbed of the New Life. Jesus’ victory over Sin and Death alone opens the way to New Life and freedom with God our Heavenly Father.

Cast out the bondwoman and her son. (Gal. iv. 29) Will we journey from earth to heaven, from Mount Sinai to Jerusalem in Jesus? Will we faithfully follow Him up to His Cross to find that as He pours out His Blood for us, Sin and Death have no power over Him? Will we approach the Gateway to Heaven, to Jerusalem which is above…free…[and] the mother of us all, and which earnestly longs to free us by Law of God’s Love in the Heart of the Crucified Wounded Healer? In Christ on His Cross, we believe that our bondage to Sin and Death is conquered. Sin could not stop Him, Death would not keep Him down, and Satan was rendered powerless. His Cross alone leads us to freedom.

Amen.
©wjsmartin

WE beseech thee, Almighty God, look upon the hearty desires of thy humble servants,
and stretch forth the right hand of thy Majesty, to be our defence against all our enemies;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.
 
The point of our journey up to Jerusalem in this holy season of Lent is not only to see with spiritual eyes what the love of the Word [that] was made flesh and dwelt among us (St. John i. 14) does but also to hear the same Word. We go to Jerusalem to hear what the Word of God in the flesh has to say to spiritual sickness and disorder and then also to spiritual hardness of heart, obduracy, and ill will. What Jesus says is all-important for a true understanding of the salvation into which He is drawing all who will desire it. For when the ears of sinful men are opened to the Word of God, not only can they learn of His will but, also, they can embrace the power of His love. The Word of God in the flesh is not only educational but spiritually transformative.

Our theme for this Sunday is spiritual hearing. Our understanding of it is found in this morning’s Miracle of the Dumb or Mute Man. Prior to reading this passage from St. Luke 's Gospel, the Apostles had been hearing Jesus’ discourse on petitioning God the Father in prayer. Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. (St. Luke xi. 9,10) Jesus insists that the Father longs to hear from us. Earthly fathers hear their children and care for them. If [they], being evil, know how to give good gifts unto [their] children: how much more shall [the] heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him? (Ibid, 13) Then on the heels of this, Jesus comes upon a dumb or mute man. Here is a man who can neither hear, nor speak, nor ask. The dumb cannot speak in any rationally coherent way but can only laugh, cry, holler, and groan. If he had been suffering from this physical disability alone, his chief handicap would have been that physical deafness that prevents a man from uniting rationally with the world around him through speech.
But what we find is that there is a more insidious reason or cause for this man’s inability to hear and to speak. He was possessed of a demon. Jesus was casting out a demon and it was dumb. (Ibid, 14) The real sickness that afflicted the deaf and dumb man was demonic possession. Otherwise, Jesus would have performed a bodily miracle only. But this man’s sickness was psychic and spiritual. Thus, Jesus expels a demon. He does this, no doubt, to teach His Apostles and us something about the nature of that evil which threatens both to possess and to overcome any man in this life. Jesus never treats the symptoms of spiritual disease and sickness alone but will rather attack and overcome the source and origin of the evil. This man can neither hear nor speak because the devil has possessed him. The devil’s one aim is to divide men from God and men from other men. His spiritual aims are as present to our world as to that of the New Testament. Thus, what we must desire from Jesus is that Divine mercy which alone can overcome and banish those demons, which threaten to ruin our spiritual lives by leading us to despair of communion with God and our neighbors. And it came to pass, when the devil was gone out, the dumb spake. (Ibid, 14)

Yet, receiving the healing of one demon is never enough. We read that when the deaf mutant was healed, He spake. (Idem) And yet what did he say? Praise God! No sooner has one demon been banished from the life of the healed man who desires to speak –to thank Jesus and to ask questions about how he should now live the new life that had been given to him, than other demons worse than the first drown out his questions with a barrage of verbal attacks on Jesus. Where are they, you might ask? They are in the hearts and souls of those who attack Jesus for the miracle He performed on the deaf man. But unlike the demon that possessed the deaf and mute man, these demons are concealed. They are so hidden within the souls of the malevolent attackers that they don’t even know what they are saying. The demons have so effectively inured and acclimated these men to sin that they don't even recognize that they are possessed! These men believe that they are religiously related to the world around them through their piety and good works. Yet, while they might lead moral and upright lives externally and visibly, their hearts are far from God.

So, once Jesus has healed the demon-possessed deaf and dumb, the people wondered. But some of them said, He casteth out devils through Beelzebub the chief of the devils. And others, tempting him, sought of him a sign from heaven. (Ibid, 14-16) See how far wickedness has advanced in the lives of these men! One miracle is not enough. They need proof that he is not demon-driven. Jesus responds to them: Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and a house divided against a house falleth. If Satan also be divided against himself, how shall his kingdom stand? (Ibid, 17,18) Jesus makes it clear that the devil has no interest in healing the deaf and the dumb. His design is to divide all men from God in Jesus. The devil is determined to bring men to despair of all spiritual healing, sanctification, and salvation. Satan cannot endure the man’s entry into the world of words through the Word of God made flesh. Satan’s singular intention is to overcome the love that moves Jesus the Word. Jesus’ love brings men to the good healing that God intends, and Satan is enraged.
Jesus continues. If I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them out? therefore shall they be your judges. But if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you. (Ibid, 19, 20) Romano Guardini tells us that Jesus replies: Don’t you see how I war against Satan? How can you say that he works through me, which is the same as saying that we join forces to found one kingdom? (The Lord, Regnery, p. 119) Those who attack God’s healing power are Satan’s demonic friends who frantically attempt to set up a kingdom of appearances and disorder. (Ibid, 117) 

[Jesus’ enemies] have blashphemed against the Holy Ghost [by turning] against the heart of God; Jesus is saturated with the essence of God. To accuse Him of working through the power of Satan, is to touch the absolute in ill will. (The Lord, Regnery, 120) 
 
These men reveal the absolute in ill will and dare to disrupt the operation of Mercy in Jesus. Their malice, jealousy, and hatred cannot endure the spiritual goodwill, generosity, and love that Jesus the Word brings into the world. Jesus proclaims that He that is not with me is against me: and he that gathereth not with me scattereth. (Ibid, 23) 

The deaf and mute who is now able to speak is silent and, no doubt, curious about what his healing has provoked. He wants to receive the miracle humbly as an expression of God’s love but is tempted to suspect Satan’s mischief. The deaf-mute man has entered the dangerous world of words. Look and listen to what he sees and hears! He does not hear men who are awe-inspired in the presence of God’s goodness. He does not hear the silence of men made mute because God’s strong man is lovingly speaking healing on earth. Rather, he hears men who are threatened by God’s love in the heart of Jesus Christ. Jesus anticipates their feverish malice. 

When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out. And when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter in, and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. (Ibid, 24-26) 
 
Many men may be liberated from unclean spirits but forget that God’s Grace alone brings mercy. Because they have been overcome by God's Strong Man and deprived of the armour [of their own good works] in which they trusted, their souls are in danger of greater demonic possession. St. Cyril reminds us that
The devil finds their hearts empty, and void of all concern for the things of God, and wholly taken up with the flesh, and so he takes up his abode in them…[So their] last state is worse than the first. (Cyril: PG 72, col. 699.) 
 
Jesus reminds us that He that is not with me is against me. (Ibid, 23) Healing is spiritual and if we ask for it, it shall fill our empty and fleshly hearts to walk as children of the light. (Eph. v, 8)
Jesus calls the healed mutant forth into a promising future with God. Yea, rather, Blessed are they that hear the Word of God and keep it. (Ibid, 28) Hearing the Word of God in Jesus Christ is all about a relationship. Hearing the Word of God means thankfully receiving God’s healing Grace to conquer us who were sometimes darkness but are now light in the Lord. (Eph. v. 8,9) In Jesus, we hear of His intention to take the armour in which we have too often trusted and to scatter the spoils. (Ibid, 22) Jesus is the strong man who will establish His love in us and banish the devil. We need to ask for His ongoing healing. For, as Calvin says, 

Let us not then suppose that the devil has been vanquished by a single combat, because he has once gone out of us. On the contrary, let us remember that…he has knowledge…of all the approaches by which he may reach us; and that, if there be no open and direct entrance, he has dexterity enough to creep in by small holes or winding crevices. (Calvin’s Comm’s; Vol. xvii)
 
Today, let us hear the Word of God in Christ who longs to break the power of those demons whose envy is the tribute that mediocrity pays to excellence. (F. Sheen) We are weak, but Christ is strong. If we pause for long enough to ask the Father for Christ’s healing power, His strong love will vanquish and overcome all our demons. Then, with goodwill and gratitude, we shall welcome Jesus’ healing power in others and ourselves.

Amen.
©wjsmartin

As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool repeats his foolishness.
Proverbs 26:11

The season of Lent is nothing if it does not confuse human wisdom and turn man’s expectations upside down. For what the lections of this Holy Season attempt to show us is that the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He takes the wise in their own craftiness. (1 Cor. iii. 19) And again, as Isaiah records, therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvelous work among this people…for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid. (Isaiah 29. 14) In Lent, we learn that the Wisdom of God revealed in the human life of Jesus Christ often challenges and overturns the wisdom of this world. And I don’t mean to say that human wisdom or reason is destroyed, but rather man’s reason is stretched to the point of meeting and embracing God’s much higher and greater Wisdom.

In last week’s Gospel, we read of a real challenge and trial that Christ underwent to resist the reason of this world and to embrace God’s Wisdom. You will remember that the Spirit led Christ into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. And there we learned that Christ resisted Satan’s temptations and banished him. The Wisdom that we gleaned from that Gospel is that Jesus Christ, God as Man, faced evil, resisted it, and in the end, overcame it. Man’s wisdom walks in step with the devil; it thinks that it can use the Divine Spirit for worldly ends, that it can make God subject to its whims and idle curiosities, and that it can be as absolute as God. (RDC. Lent I) What Jesus Christ reveals to us is that true Wisdom is God’s will and that the new humanity which He longs to offer us involves suffering, struggle, and sacrifice. The devil strives to sever Jesus and us from God’s will and way. He longs to hide us from ourselves, caging us into the world of our own vain imaginations and concealing us from God’s way of liberation and healing. He longs to hide us from the Wisdom of God, from seeing and knowing that the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding. (Job xxviii. 28)
         
Jesus came down from Heaven to reveal God’s Wisdom through His human nature for our benefit. He came down to bring us back to the fear of the Lord so that the Divine Wisdom might be born in our hearts from above. But if we heed the message of today’s Gospel, we learn that there is another dimension still that must be added to our fear of the Lord if God’s Wisdom is to come alive in us. This is the character of desire. From our limited earthly passions and desires, we learn to fear the Lord. What we should desire is the Wisdom that His mercy gives birth to in our hearts and souls.          

In this morning’s Gospel, we see how alien, unfamiliar, and even foreign God’s Wisdom is to most men. Jesus had departed from Jerusalem and from His own people who would not receive the Wisdom that He came down to impart. The ancient Old Testament prophesied of the Jews’ pride. This people draweth unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. (Matthew xv. 8) God’s Wisdom had found no place to germinate and grow in the hearts of the religious Jews of Jesus’ day. 
Even Jesus’ disciples seemed hard-hearted and dimwitted. Jesus said:

Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught? But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: These are the things which defile a man. (St. Matthew xv. 18-20) 
 
God’s Wisdom cannot touch and transform those who do not desire Him from their hearts. Those who come to need it realize that their earthly reason and good works provide no lasting health and happiness. Today, because He did not find any need for what He offered from His own people, Jesus left religious Jerusalem for the frontier territory where Israel bordered the land of the heathen. Perhaps the Wisdom that He carried would find seekers and searchers amongst the Jews’ ancient enemies. 
         
What Jesus finds confounds the reasonable expectations of both the Jewish Scribes and of His own Disciples. God’s Wisdom was first revealed to them. That a pagan woman’s understanding of it should have shown up the Jews’ blindness and resistance to it must have seemed wholly irrational to the Jews. So we read:

Behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil. (St. Matthew xv. 22) Canaan means place of submission, humiliation, and lowliness. 
 
From an alien and barren place, so it seems, Jesus hears the cry for God’s Wisdom and Mercy. At first, Jesus seems deaf and unmoved by the plea. St. John Chrysostom writes that The Word [seems to have] no word; the fountain [seems] sealed; the physician withholds His remedies. Perhaps there is something in this desperate cry that moves Jesus to silent prayer. Wisdom is quick to hear and slow to speak…(St. James i. 19) Jesus is not ignoring the Samaritan woman. Rather, He will allow her to pursue Him with deepest passion and longing. He allows her to pursue her desire with persistence. He did, after all, come to this place for a reason, most Divine in His intention.

The Apostles were irritated. His disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us. (St. Matthew xv. 23) The disciples long selfishly to have Jesus for themselves. Jesus seems to rebuke her. I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. (St. Matthew xv. 24) Jesus proclaims that the Jews first were called by God and were given the promises because they should have known themselves to be His lost sheep. She will insist that the Gentiles too were promised a share in it all! She establishes her claim by showing that she knows and feels deeply that she too is lost. Jesus tries and tests her faith. I will wound and I will heal, saith the Lord. (Deut. xxxii. 39) St. Augustine describes His method in these words: 
He is no unkind physician who opens the swelling, who cuts, or cauterizes the corrupted part. He gives pain, it is true; but he only gives pain, that he may bring the patient on to health. He gives pain; but if he did not, he would do no good. (Aug, Serm. xxvii) 
 
Jesus applies God’s Wisdom and severe Mercy to this serious seeker. She bears the pain of her daughter’s demonic possession. She needs the God’s Great Physician. Her daughter’s disease has become her own. Then she came and worshipped Him, saying, Lord, help me. (St. Mattew xv. 25) Jesus feels her longing for what He has come into the world to give. Jesus is fueling her passion for God’s own cure and remedy. It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs. (St. Matthew xv. 26) He seems to insult her. She takes it as a welcome provocation. Already filled with Divine Wisdom, she responds, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table. (St. Matthew xv. 27) 

She is one tough Gentile woman! She cannot be stopped. Her poverty of her spirit is beautiful. She knows that she is alien to Israel’s promises; she claims neither right nor privilege to God’s Word and Wisdom; she knows herself as a powerless creature in the presence of God’s own Word and Wisdom. She knows that she is one dead dog who can be healed by God’s Mercy alone. She turns to the sole source and origin of all healing. The Wisdom in Jesus is what she will have. Yes Lord, unlike your own lost sheep, I am a dead dog. But, surely, even such a dead dog as I can find in you that Mercy that is great enough to let me eat of the crumbs that fall from your table reserved for your lambs. God’s Wisdom is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. (Ps. xlvi. 1) Jesus honors in this Gentile woman what He could not find in His own people or His disciples. O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. (St. Matthew xv. 28)
         
Take note of this heathen woman’s wisdom. I wound and I will heal. (Idem) This woman finds no help in this world’s medicines. She knows in herself that what she needs comes from Heaven alone. They that are whole need not a physician but they that are sick. (St. Luke v. 31) This dead dog knows Heaven’s Cure and will have it from Jesus. Archbishop Trench reminds us that most people would have turned away in anger and despair from Jesus’ Wisdom. (Notes on the Parables…) But this woman is bereft of any human arrogant resentment. She is self-consciously powerless. She knows the power of Almighty God in Jesus Christ. Many would count this woman a fool in the face of what seems cruel mockery from Jesus. But this woman knows better. Here we find a truly liberated woman, full of wisdom, courage, and persistence! 

Where is the wise person?...Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. (1 Cor. i. 20, 21) 
 
The woman of Canaan was a fool for Christ. She knows that she has no power of herself to help herself. Her faith knows that both outwardly in her body and inwardly in her soul Christ can defend her from all adversities that may happen to the body and all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul (Collect, Lent II). This alien woman, a dog, will humbly and thankfully receive the crumbs that fall from Christ’s table being called not unto uncleanness but unto holiness. (1 Thes. iv. 4) 
Oftentimes, our Savior denies our initial petitions. He seems to say No to us. But Christ longs for us to seize the Wisdom of His Love and Mercy. This woman and we must respond My own strength, Lord, thou knowest…is weakness and…not to be trusted. (B. Jenks) To this woman’s great humility and faith, Jesus says Be it unto thee, even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour. (Idem, 28) We too should persist with humility and faith to find Christ’s healing.

Amen.

©wjsmartin

O Lord, who for our sakes didst fast forty days and forty nights,
Give us Grace to use such abstinence, that, our flesh being subdued to the Spirit,
We may ever obey thy Godly Motions in Righteousness and True Holiness
To thy Honor and Glory, Who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost,
One God, world without end. Amen.
 
One of the questions, which I hope we shall answer by the end of our forty days of Lent, is this: Who is Jesus Christ? The question is of utmost importance to our respective destinies. That the question has not been asked much in recent years is a sign that begs the question even more. Who is Jesus Christ? This is the question we shall ask throughout Lent. This is the Season in which, I pray, we shall find the answer. Lent reveals Who Jesus is by way of His having been tempted to be Who He is not. He was tempted not to be the Son of God as man. This means that He was tempted not to undertake the painful and necessary road to Gethsemane, Gabbatha, and Golgotha. Put more simply, He was tempted to redeem us by not suffering anything at all for our redemption and salvation.

Now, remember, today’s Gospel temptation narrative follows on the heels of John the Baptist’s baptism of Jesus when Jesus emerged from the river Jordan and
the heavens were opened unto Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon Him: and lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. (St. Matthew iii. 16, 17)
 
Who is Jesus? This answer pleases our senses. The Father has anointed Jesus His Son and the Descent of the Dove confirms our expectations. Mystified mortals are mesmerized by the Divine Immanence. Messiah has come to save us all and will defeat the enemies of our Heavenly Father. So, we think. Thus, we hope. But what we read next confounds our expectations.
THEN was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.  And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an-hungered. when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an-hungered. (Ibid, 1,2)

Who is Jesus? We begin to find the answer to our question by being led up of the Spirit with Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted of the Devil. (St. Matthew iv. 1) The Dove who has descended from Heaven with the Father’s blessing leads Jesus not into Jerusalem for a triumphal coronation but into the desert for struggle, trial, and temptation by Satan. The Son of God begins the mission of our redemption with suffering! For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. (Hebrews iv. 15) Following the Baptism of John, who preached repentance, Jesus’ first order of business is to undergo the temptations that we all endure. Jesus was anointed to suffer as we suffer and to be tempted as we are tempted. Baptism is followed by the manifold assaults of the world, the flesh, and the Devil. We all know and have experienced it and Jesus blesses our suffering by enduring it Himself!
        
We read on. And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. (Ibid, 3) The Son of God has been dignified and honored by the Father. The Spirit leads Jesus into that desert place where He has fasted from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The Son of God made man is not only famished but alone. Satan tempts us hardest when we are hungry and in isolation. Who is Jesus? Jesus is the Son of God who is with us after the fast, when we are alone and most sorely tempted by earthly things, like hunger and thirst, lust and gluttony.
        
Satan begins If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. (Idem) The Son of God, God’s Word, who brought waters out of the stoney rock (Ps. lxxviii. 16) to nourish the ancient Hebrews in the wilderness can surely use His Divine Power to satisfy His earthly hunger by turning the flat rocks in the wilderness into bread. Satan tempts Jesus to prove that He is the Son of God by putting His own earthly needs before His Divine Commission. Who is Jesus? Jesus is the one who will redeem us by hungering and thirsting for [God’s] righteousness. (St. Matthew v. 6) The Son of God was made man so that man might become a son of God once again.  Jesus will insist Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, that….all [other]….things may be added unto you. (St. Matthew vi. 33) 

Who is Jesus? Jesus is the one who knows that we all are tempted to put earthly hunger and thirst, our bodies’ needs and urges before God. We all have been consumed with food, drink, sex, and riches. But Jesus has meat to eat that Satan does not know of. His meat is to do the will of Him that sent…. Him. (St. John iv. 32,34) Jesus knows that Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. (St. Matthew iv. 4) St. Paul, in today’s Epistle, reminds us that only with patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in watchings, and in fastings (2 Cor. vi. 4) -in the flesh, do we discover Satan’s assault. Who is Jesus? Jesus is the Son of God with us in our first temptation when the world is barren and determined to assault and persecute us, and when we are tempted to put our bodies and the flesh before our souls and the spirit. Jesus is the Son of God who proclaims I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. (St. John vi. 35)
        
Who is Jesus? Jesus is determined to become the bread of God’s will. Satan will not be deterred. He will tempt Jesus a second time with pride, envy, and wrath. Fasting in the body often brings anger in the soul and then envy of God’s pure and simple blessedness. Then comes the pride that tempts us to abandon and even harm the body altogether. He has denied the good of the body, Satan thinks, so let Jesus dispense with his body entirely, cleaving as he does to this ‘Word’ of God. He trusts in God, then let Him deliver Him now, if he will have Him: for he said, I am the Son of God. (St. Matthew xxvii. 43)
Then the devil taketh Him up into the holy city, and setteth Him on a pinnacle of the temple, And saith unto Him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou thy foot against a stone. (St. Matthew iv. 5,6)
 
Satan tempts Jesus to prove that He is the Son of God by hurling Himself from on high onto the pavement of the temple with pilgrims gathered to witness the event. Cast yourself down; surely God will not let one perish who places the good of his soul above that of his body. Who is Jesus? Jesus is the Son of God made flesh, with a soul in a body. Grace never destroys but perfects human nature. The Son of God will not command faith from miracles as Satan commanded bread from stones. We are tempted to avoid and flee suffering and sacrifice. Jesus shows us that we must not. Jesus will suffer and sacrifice His life for us all. He will not hurl Himself down but allow Himself to be lifted high on the Cross. Through suffering and sacrifice, Christ conquers all. Who is Jesus? Jesus is the Son of God made flesh whose humility and meekness will defeat sin, death, and Satan from the Cross of His love. Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. (St. Matthew iv. 7)

Who is Jesus? Satan thinks that only one temptation remains. Surely if Jesus is the Son of God as flesh, He can still be tempted by greed and sloth. Jesus has come to save all men, but He wonders if Jesus is enslaved to God’s will. Jesus’ last temptation, brought on by exhaustion and sloth, is to covet with greed His Father’s power and to steal it for His own selfish glory. Like us, Jesus is tempted to become His own god, becoming the master of His own destiny and the definer of right and wrong.

Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. (St. Matthew iv. 8,9) 
 
Satan tempts Jesus to despair of His Father’s Kingdom and to rule over His own. The last temptation is the worst since it lures us into the world of becoming our own gods, calling good evil and evil good. Jesus has Himself wholly to His Father’s kingdom. Finally, He is tempted to give it all up –to do evil that good may come of it. (Idem, Knox, p. 65) Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. (St. Matthew iv. 10) The Son of God has come to reveal the Father’s wisdom and judgment. The Son of God will freely offer Himself as God’s own pure Lamb, to make atonement for our sins and invite us into salvation. Then the devil leaveth Him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto Him. (St. Matthew iv. 11) 
         
Who is Jesus? The Son of God who became the Son of Man. The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. (St. Matthew xx. 28) At the end of our Gospel lesson we read that Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him. (St. Matthew iv. 11) Luther tells us that the angels came down from Heaven to feed Him. Now Jesus’ earthly hunger can be satisfied. The Son of God has come to set first things first. The Son of God will go on to win our salvation on the Cross of Calvary. He is the Broken Body and Poured out Blood. He is our Broken Bread and Poured out Wine. Food for Men Wayfaring.
Amen.
©wjsmartin 
 

 


Today we begin the great season of Lent. Our liturgical season goes back to the earliest days of the Christian Church when the faithful were called into memory the journey up to Jerusalem and the great events of the Passion which came to pass in the life of Jesus Christ. Lent is a journey. Lent is a time of journeying in memory with Christ, so that we may embrace more profoundly the Word of God Ηimself in our souls. Journeying with Christ means being with Him and accepting his offer of friendship in love.
        
“With its duration of 40 days, Lent acquires an undoubted evocative force. It tries to recall some of the events that marked the life and history of ancient Israel, also presenting to us again its paradigmatic value. Let us think, for example, of the 40 days of the universal flood, which ended with the covenant established by God with Noah and thus with humanity, and of the 40 days of Moses' stay on Mount Sinai, which were followed by the gift of the tablets of the Law.” (Benedict XVI, Ash Wednesday, 2006)
        
Our First Sunday in Lent begins with the Jesus being tempted by Satan in the wilderness. But we shall also remember that He was led by the Spirit into this encounter. The Holy Spirit will take us with Jesus into a place where we have no food, no water, and no shelter. There we shall be asked to face both God our Heavenly Father and Satan’s opposition to His Son and Word made Flesh, Jesus Christ. There we must face our temptations and ask Jesus to help us to conquer them. It will help if we keep a journal or notes. We must honestly face our temptations when they arise, jot them down, describe the feelings associated with them, search out their origins, and give them over in our spiritual poverty to the Lord for destruction. This exercise will open us to the righteousness of Jesus Christ, which alone can conquer our sins. Lent should be a time of quiet stillness in the desert. We should know that Jesus is with us and wants to help us to resist temptation and cleave to His powerful goodness.
        
In Lent we spend time in the wilderness with Jesus and we also prepare to go up to Jerusalem with Him. We pray to go up to the Jerusalem of Jesus’ Cross. In Lent, we shall follow Jesus up to the great city of the Jewish Kings to accompany Jesus into His unearned, unmerited, and wholly undeserved rejection, torture, suffering and death. We shall follow Jesus up to that experience that we, as fallen, sinful creatures have caused. Jesus is the Holy Child of God. Jesus is the Son of God made man. As man, He goes up to Jerusalem to do a work for us what we could never sustain. He will take on sin, death, and Satan. He will be tempted again to reject God the Father, to choose the evil over the good, and to abandon His mission and calling to win our salvation. He will be tempted at the point of extreme remove from God to say no to God and yes to Himself. On the Cross, as in the wilderness, Jesus will be with God and Satan alone. He will be attacked by all demons that threaten His relationship to God the Father. He will be tortured and crucified by all of us who, if we are honest with ourselves, want Him dead because that is what sin does. Sin kills the Word of God in the flesh of Jesus and in the flesh of all men. Jesus’ Crucifixion sums up and lifts up the reality of what man’s sin tries to do with God’s Word made flesh.
        
Today we rehearse the age-old custom of The Imposition of Ashes. Ashes will be imposed on our foreheads, and we shall hear the words, Remember O Man, that dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return. (Genesis iii:19). The words, taken from the First Book of Moses Genesis, remind us that our bodies were molded and fashioned from the dust of the earth. These words humble us. They remind us that we are corruptible, that we all shall die, return to the earth, and decompose into what is next to nothing. But in God’s presence, we are reminded that we need another kind of death, a spiritual death, the kind of death that we must die with Jesus on His Cross of Calvary. We shall be reminded that we must die to the world, the flesh, and the devil, in and through Jesus Christ. We must go to Calvary to see the vision of a new death that becomes the seedbed of our new life because Christ loves us more than our sin and Christ forgives us our nailing Him to the Cross.
        
Lent doesn’t end in death. Lent is all about a death that will lead us into new and Resurrected Life. We repent to believe. We believe to follow. We follow to die and then to rise into new life. Lent is part and parcel of our return to God through Jesus Christ’s Cross and beyond. Lent is about becoming partakers of His all-sufficient sacrifice on Calvary’s Cross so that we might ingest and imbibe the food and drink of His Sacred Love, His Body and Blood, that give us the strength to die to sin and come alive to righteousness.
        
Today we pray that we shall begin our journey with Christ to His Cross and beyond. We look forward to Lent as a time of fasting and abstinence. We look forward to Lent as a time of pilgrimage with Jesus to His Cross. We look forward to Lent as a time of journeying into our death to sin and our coming alive to righteousness. We long for the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, to dwell in our hearts so that with His Wisdom, Power, and Love we might die to sin and come alive to righteousness. The old gods and our old sinful ways must be left behind. We must face our temptations. We must confront the stubborn and hard rocks of our old sinful selves. In the stillness, we must ask Jesus to assist us in our spiritual warfare. We must ask Jesus to enable us to sit still even in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation so that, with Him, we may embrace the power and submit to the Wisdom of our Heavenly Father.

Remember the words of T. S. Eliot’s poem “Ash Wednesday.”
“Because I do not hope to turn again…” This is how it begins. He hopes not to turn back and into a world of sin, illusions, lies, and false gods.
Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?
 
He then turns to Mother Church and commits his soul to her rule and governance as he begins his Lenten pilgrimage.
 
Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit
of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.
 
Amen.
©wjsmartin
 

 











Behold, we go up to Jerusalem
(Matthew 20. 18)     

The Gesima season ends with an invitation to take up another beginning. Behold we go up. (Matt. 20. 18) We are invited onto yet another road, a spiritual road that leads to our death and new life with God. The road which we will tread is not an easy one. As we have said, it will require humility, temperance, courage, and concentration. Our self-discipline must be used in the service of a more difficult task. We must learn how to hand over our sin to the Lord for death. It will demand a death to all else but the love of God in Jesus Christ. Progressively our journey will be an invitation onto the Way, the Truth, and the Life. I am the way, the truth, and the life, (John 14. 6) Follow me, Jesus says, for behold we go up to Jerusalem. In other words, behold we must go up if we would follow Jesus to His Kingdom.
         
Our journey will teach us many things about ourselves and about God’s Love. First, of course, we shall learn what happens when sinful man cannot endure the love of God in the heart of Jesus. Every one of us is fallen away from the love of God and the love of neighbor. Fallen man rejects God’s Love. God’s Love never ceases to be itself and this means that it insists upon conditions that most men cannot endure. Love is made flesh for us in the life of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is that perfect Love that never ceases to offer itself to all people in all ages. But fallen man rejects this persistent, insistent, and determined Love of God in Christ. God’s Love ceaselessly reveals the truth in Jesus Christ. That Love is consistent God’s expectations of us all.

Long before the coming of Christ, the prophets foretold of how God’s Love would be received in the heart of sinful man. They foretold of how fallen man would not be able to endure the persistent presence of God’s Love in the world. Fallen man resents it when God’s Love threatens to challenge and disrupt the universe of material and earthly comfort. The prophets knew that most men would be hard pressed to abandon the false gods of this world for the sake of God’s Love. 
Even the Apostles themselves bear witness to how difficult it will be to embrace the love of God in Jesus Christ. They believe that Jesus is the Love of God the Father made flesh. But they cannot see that He must be delivered unto the Gentiles. (Luke 18. 31) Nor can they allow themselves to imagine that He shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on. (Luke 18. 32) That Jesus will be demoralized, derided, and despoiled is beyond what they think is right or appropriate for God’s Son. The problem is that their idea of Love knows no struggle, difficulty, or sacrifice. What they see of Love involves neither suffering nor self-denial. The Apostles desire to go up with Jesus to Jerusalem and yet they have no conception of how God’s Love in the heart of Jesus must suffer at the hands of sinful man in order to save them all. Jesus prophesies that they shall scourge Him and put Him to death. (Ibid, 33) But the Apostles understood none of these things: and this saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things which were spoken.(Ibid, 34) Calvin says that they had formed the expectation for joyful and prosperous advancement and therefore had reckoned it to be in the highest degree absurd that Christ should be ignominiously crucified. (J. Calvin: Harmony of the Gospels, xvii) Their hearts and souls want only to be lifted up and to feel good. They cannot see. They are blind to what true love means and does.

And it came to pass, that as he was come nigh unto Jericho, a certain blind man sat by the wayside begging: And hearing the multitude pass by, he asked what it meant. And they told him, that Jesus of Nazareth passeth by.(Luke 18. 35-37)  
 
The Apostles cannot see or understand what Jesus has said to them. And what do they find? A man who is literally blind in another way stumbles onto their path. They are spiritually blind, but he is physically blind. But this physically blind man sees what the Apostles do not see. And he cried, saying, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me.(Luke 18.38) What he could not see with his eyes, he saw and knew with the eyes of his heart and soul. So, he cries out for God’s love in the heart of Jesus for mercy. In some deep way, he knows that the Jesus who is going up to Jerusalem will come down to minister to him. The Apostles are blind and thus cannot see the point. And they which went before rebuked him, that he should hold his peace. (Luke 18. 39) The Apostles are confused and irritated enough. Why should they allow some pathetic blind man to interrupt a journey already suffused in confusion? Yet, the blind man sees. He sees that he must reach out to God’s Love made flesh. He sees that he cannot let Love made flesh pass him by. With the eyes of faith and the determination of hope, he sees God’s Love and the Power in Jesus, and so he cried so much the more, Thou son of David, have mercy on me. (Luke 18. 39) Let the Apostles luxuriously wallow in philosophical confusion. This man sees plainly and will have some of that Love that condescends to men of low estate! Love is near. The blind man is determined to have it!

Behold we go up to Jerusalem. And as we go up, we find one who was blind and truly sees, who has only heard of this Jesus and yet sees and understands! Love is going up to Jerusalem, and He will take with him those who see His love and desire more of His mercy. The relationship is established. Will we go up to Jerusalem? Will we follow Love, cry out to Love, implore Love’s mercy as we travel into the depth of its meaning and purpose?
And Jesus stood, and commanded him to be brought unto him: and when he was come near, he asked him, Saying, What wilt thou that I shall do unto thee? And he said, Lord, that I may receive my sight. And Jesus said unto him, Receive thy sight: thy faith hath saved thee. (Luke 18. 40-42.) 
 
Yes, behold we go up to Jerusalem, and as we go up, the Love that will be mocked, spitefully entreated, spitted upon, still loves. Love reaches out to all. Here to a new friend who knew more than Jesus’ disciples because he truly saw who Jesus was and understood the power of His Love. The blind man reveals a faith that sees the Love that heals. This is the Love that is going up to His death. Thus, Jesus finds one who can assist Him in beginning the process. This Love cannot help but love. This Love cannot help but die to Himself as He comes alive to God in the life of His brother. Jesus sees faith and hope and responds with God’s Love. His says Receive thy sight: thy faith hath saved thee. (Luke 18. 42) Love says to the blind man, because you see me inwardly and spiritually, you shall see me now outwardly and materially. And, blessed are they who have not seen, and yet believe. (John 20. 29) Behold, we go up to Jerusalem. (Idem)

On the journey up to Jerusalem, Love in the flesh is always Himself. It will never cease to be the Love received from the Father and passed on to all –friend and foe alike. Here a new friend asks for its power and receives it. The new friend has the eyes of faith with which to see. Will we desire this Love with the faith and hope of the blind man? We have been blind, but Love desires for us to see. As St. Paul reminds us this morning, Love or Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.  Charity never faileth. Love or Charity is always Himself. Love made flesh is always Himself. Jesus is Love or Charity made flesh. He suffers all resistance to God’s Love. His Love never ceases to be kind, benevolent, humble, and meek. He is never puffed up or proud, never seeks his own advantage and worldly comfort. In fact, Love always reaches down to lift others up. It stoops down to lift the blind man into the light of day. It will reach down from the Cross to see and know that those who are killing Him on Good Friday might have a change of heart on Holy Saturday to embrace Him wholeheartedly on Easter Sunday. 

Behold we go up to Jerusalem. (Idem) Will we begin to imagine that Love in the flesh must suffer innocently to reveal God’s persistent desire for all men’s salvation? Will we begin to imagine that Love in the flesh must become sin who knew no sin to vanquish sin and death? Will we participate in this death to sin, death, and Satan that we might begin to find new life in Him? Will we embrace the love that forgives the worst of sinners and their sin? Will we cherish the love that calls forth more generosity at the cost of loss to ourselves and sacrifice? Will we treasure that love that must suffer real mental and even physical anguish and loss in order to be made one with the suffering Christ? Will we see, with the blind man, that unless we believe and hope in the invisible work of God’s love in the heart of Jesus, we cannot be saved?

Today, let us forsake all, follow Jesus, and glorify God. (Ibid, 43) With Calvin, those who are healed of their blindness show a grateful mind in presenting themselves to others as mirrors of the Grace of Christ. (Idem) With the blind man, we might even gratefully anticipate the Resurrection that stands behind the Cross.

Most blest believer he!
Who in that land of darkness and blind eyes
Thy long-expected healing wings could see,
             When Thou didst rise!
    And, what can never more be done,
    Did at midnight speak with the Sun!
(Henry Vaughn: The Night)
 
In the midnight of darkness, behold we see! Behold, we go up to Jerusalem. (Idem)
 
Amen.
 
©wjsmartin

And his disciples asked him, saying, What might this parable be?
(St. Luke viii. 9)
 
Have you ever wondered why Jesus speaks in Parables? The New Testament is full of examples of parables; there are actually thirty in total. We encountered one of them last week, the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard. A parable is an illustration or story of something that is meant to lead our minds into a deeper truth. Archbishop Trench tells us that a parable always involves the spiritual realm as it relates to the natural order. It never violates the natural order and natural law but unlike a fable it transcends it but penetrates it with spiritual truth. The fable never moves above the earthly realm and earthly truth. Fables teach human truth through talking trees and animals. Also, the Parable is different from a myth since myth confuses fantasy with reality. A parable, then, involves men and some aspect of their natures that needs correction or reformation. It considers the human condition with earnest seriousness, and sets out to correct what it finds to be wrong from the spiritual perspective. In the case of the parables told by Jesus, he never uses illustrations that contradict the created order but offers examples drawn from it that can compare to the human soul. (Summarized from Notes on the Parables. R.C.Trench)

But notice something else. The Parables of the New Testament are always about the choices that man makes in this life, and how those choices affect his ultimate destiny. Jesus uses parables not only because he wants men to know and understand but also because He wants men to find the source and origin of their choices and decisions. Pope Benedict XVI says that Jesus can speak openly about the Kingdom of God, to others -to all sorts of people. But to those who will follow Him and become His disciples, He speaks in parables, precisely to encourage their decision, their conversion of the heart…. St John Chrysostom says that ‘Jesus uses parables to draw men unto him, and to provoke them and to signify that if they would covert, he would heal them” (cf. Homily on the Gospel of Matthew, 45, 1-2). So parables are used by Jesus in order to convince and convert men’s hearts that they might discover the truth and embrace the spiritual transformation that He longs for them to embrace. Of course, Jesus always respects man’s freedom, and that freedom is all about the ability to learn and understand, and then to choose and decide. In the Parables, each of us is given opportunity to follow Jesus to his Kingdom.

But think about how so very hard this is –I mean to make a decision to follow Jesus, to persevere and to persist in our spiritual journey. Last week we prayed for concentration, courage, and temperance. And this week we are reminded that such an effort is no easy business. St. Paul this morning takes up the point as he addresses a community of new Christians who are being swayed and moved by false prophets and philosophers. No sooner had he established a new church at Corinth, than supposed wise men and teachers had seduced them with ideas and teachings that contradicted his own. They were basically telling the Corinthians that this Paul was blowing up the process of conversion all of out of proportion. True Christianity, they insisted, involves really nothing more than a kind of spirituality that promises a painless and happy existence. True Christianity, they said, shouldn’t involve anything like what St. Paul was teaching, but should be easier, softer, gentler, and without any kind of suffering at all. To which St. Paul responds with his characteristic zeal and passion, flavored with what some scholars have interpreted as self-justifying arrogance.

But St. Paul intends no such thing. Far from wishing to justify himself, he desires only to use his life as a kind of parable of what happens to honest men in real life who make a conscious decision to follow Christ. Remember that a parable presents a real story drawn from earthly reality to carry the listener to a spiritual understanding. So Paul uses his own experience as a parable to teach his flock what Christian conversion entails. He shows us that true conversion and discipleship make a mockery of the false teachers who are seducing his flock. He says, Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more; in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck…in perils of robbers, in perils of waters, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen…in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness…(2 Cor. 23-27) He tells them, in other words, that conversion and discipleship involve much suffering, both physical and mental or bodily and spiritual. He tells them that he suffers not only because the world rejects him and his teaching but because inwardly and spiritually he endures spiritual warfare and torture that threaten the presence of Christ within his soul. Who is weak, and I am not weak (Cor. xi. 29), he asks? This business of becoming a Christian and staying the course are as real as the parable that his own life reveals. In other words, it hurts. Paul claims and confesses his weakness, his vulnerability, and his exposure to the assaults of the world, the flesh, and the devil. And yet he offers up his suffering as a way and means for Christ to work His redemption into his soul more deeply and lastingly. If I must needs glory, I will glory in the things which concern mine infirmities. (2 Cor. xi. 30) For it is precisely in his weakness and suffering, in that real struggle to open his soul to God’s Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, that his life is a Parable for the virtue of humility.

So Paul’s life is a Parable for us all. But what had happened to his Corinthian converts so that they were so easily swayed by their new teachers and gurus? I think that we can find all or part of the answer in this morning’s Gospel Parable. Jesus tells the parable of the sower [who] went out to sow his seed….He tells us that some fell by the way side; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. And some fell upon a rock; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it. (St. Luke viii. 5-7) Some of St. Paul’s flock heard God’s Word superficially; the soil of their souls was trodden down and hardened by the traffic and business of this world, and so they never really heard the Word. They became habituated to this hardness because they have exposed their hearts as a common road to every evil influence of the world, till they have become hard as the pavement, till they have laid waste the very soil in which the Word of God should have taken root…(Parables, Trench, p.60) Some of Paul’s Corinthian sheep became easy prey to the Devil and his friends since they lived in a world full of so many words, that they could not distinguish God’s Word from all others. Others in Paul’s flock at first heard the Word of God with excitement and joy but trusted in the promises’ fulfilment prematurely without counting the cost of its growth in the soul. They fell away because they were not prepared to work out [their] salvation….with fear and trembling. (Phil. ii. 12) Salvation, they discovered, seemed too much like real life, full of pain and suffering, doubt and confusion, hard labor and effort. Like the sun scorching the blade that has no deepness of earth, these men’s hearts [are] failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth….(St. Luke xxi. 26) Finally there were those in Paul’s church who heard God’s Word but were choked and killed by thorns which sprung up with it. (St. Luke viii. 7) In these believers, the heard-Word was growing, but only alongside inner anxiety, fear, worry, and looming despair over mammon and earthly riches. They were crushed, as the Gospel says, by the cares, and riches, and pleasures of this life. (St. Luke viii. 14) As Archbishop Trench remarks, the old man is not dead in them; it may seem dead for a while…but unless mortified in earnest, will presently revive in all its strength anew. (Ibid, p. 65) These thorns and briars always take the form of something enjoyed when possessed but accompanied by fear because they can be lost. One or all of these kinds of hearing God’s Word might explain what happened to St. Paul’s new flock at Corinth and what can happen to us if we are not wise and vigilent.

But today’s Parable does conclude with the seed of God’s Word sown in a good heart, like the heart of St. Paul. Remember that Parables are always about real life. In real life seed can grow up effectually only in deep, dark soil that has been weeded and fertilized. So in real life the seed of God’s Word can grow in our hearts only with much care, cultivation, and determined effort. Like Paul, we must resign ourselves to persecution and suffering for it at the hands of the world’s unbelief and the attacks which we endure inwardly and spiritually. Each and every one of us is subject to the temptations and sin that threaten the hearing and growth of God’s Word in this morning’s Parable.

Thus, for all the more reason we must identify with St. Paul who, again, says, if I must needs glory, I will glory of the things which concern mine infirmities. (2 Cor. xi. 30) For it is precisely in the admission that we are weak, vulnerable, and exposed to Satan’s assaults that God responds to us. God has made the soul; God speaks his Word into it in order to save us. But when we confess our weakness and infirmity, we acknowledge with the Collect that we put not our trust in anything that we do and that power of God’s Grace alone can protect us from any adversity that might uproot us from journeying to Christ’s Kingdom. We claim, too, that we must prepare the soil of our souls with sorrow and repentance to clear the ground so that God’s grace might enable us to bring forth fruit with patience. (St. Luke viii. 15) Then you and I shall become a Parable or illustration that reveals not only the truth of God’s Word, but its secure place in the soil our souls, fertilized by our infirmities.
Amen.
©wjsmartin  
 
 
 

So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.
St. Matthew xx. 16

The Church in her ancient wisdom is nothing if she is not keenly aware of the dangers that man as a fallen creature poses for the process of redemption and salvation. If she were not aware of human nature’s tendency to fall away from the vigilance that is required for embracing and perfecting these gifts, she would not constantly and habitually provide seasonal themes in her lectionary that remind him of the dangers that accompany his spiritual journey. We have just emerged from the season of light -that of Epiphany, in which were called to be illuminated and enlightened by the brilliance and beauty of God’s love and good will in the life of Jesus Christ. Were not the Church not conscious of man’s tendency to treat it more like a deer in headlights than a vision of the glory to come, she would approach the period between Epiphany and Lent innocuously and tenderly. But thank God that the Church in her prudence has established the season before Lent with more caution and concern for our souls. The Church knows that Epiphany Tide spoils us with God’s power and glory in Jesus’ manifestations of His Divinity. She knows that we are easily enamored of the Divine Goodness and might not grasp where Christ leads us. Thus, she gives us the Gesima Sundays, between the season of Epiphany-vision and that of Lenten penance.       

The Gesima Season is comprised of Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima Sundays, named from the Latin words meaning seventy, sixty and fifty days prior to Easter. In this season, the Church reminds us that the Divine Glory of Epiphany calls us forward onto a journey, a spiritual pilgrimage which follows Christ up to His Cross and beyond. Behold we go up to Jerusalem. (St. Luke xviii. 31) In Lent, the Christian is called to see and experience the suffering and death of Jesus Christ in a life-changing way. But first Mother Church calls us to cultivate and nurture those habits of mind and acts of will that ensure that we are sufficiently prepared to encounter our Saviour’s Passion for us. 
          
The Gesima Seasons enjoins our consciences to begin a journey and to make due preparation for the coming Lent. Our lections for this Season will help us to prepare our bodies, souls, and spirits for a closer walk with [Christ] up to His Cross. Today we focus on our bodies and our relation to other men. Our work must begin in the external and visible world before we move to the inward and spiritual. We might find this odd, but we shouldn’t. Adam chose to make a false god out of the creation. What ended up moving and defining him was time, space, and the things in it. This created world became more important to him than God. Adam was first tempted through his senses. This is where that our Gesima-work begins. 
          
St. Paul tells us that our work will be like running a race. In his First Letter to the Corinthians, he compares us to athletes or runners who are in training and will compete to win the prize. Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. (I Cor. ix. 24) St. Paul appeals to the physical and bodily nature of athletics to rouse our souls to spiritual exercise. If we are faithful to our calling, we should be striving to win a prize, the way runners do. For our mind’s eye to be focused on the spiritual journey that lies ahead with Jesus, we must temper and moderate our bodies’ physical passions. Every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. (I Cor. ix. 25) We must remind ourselves that because we seek the spiritual and eternal prize of eternal salvation, our physical natures- appetites, feelings, emotions, wants and needs, and desires and passions must be tamed and subordinated into the service of the soul’s good. What and how much we eat and drink should only be what is absolutely necessary for running the race that is set before us. Thus, the virtue of temperance will be needed for our spiritual race. St. Ambrose says that what we observe and seek most in temperance is tranquility of soul. (De Offic. i. 42) If our passions and appetites are moderated and subdued, our souls will not heavy laden and submerged in sloth. Our souls will be focused on the labor of running the race. St. Paul says that people whose loyalties are divided and who worship other gods do it to obtain a corruptible crown (I Cor. ix. 25) –they seek earthly rewards of impermanent meaning. But we Christians run to obtain an incorruptible crown –a gift and prize of eternal worth and enduring merit. Thus, we are called not to run blindly, erratically, pointlessly, and capriciously. Since we know our end, we should moderate and temper our physical desires and passions in such a way that best enables us to reach our spiritual end.
St. Paul is running to obtain the incorruptible crown. The man who has tempered his appetites and is moderate in all things longs for the free gift of God’s Grace to change his life and move others to share in the same. The effort is directed at all who desire to receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away. (1 Peter v. 4) 
         
The crown on glory that fadeth not away is a gift. It cannot be merited or earned by human effort. This is nicely summarized in today’s Gospel Parable. Here Jesus says:

…The kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard. And when he had agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and said unto them; Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their way. Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise. And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle?  They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive. (St. Matthew xx. 1-7)

Archbishop Trench reminds us that the Parable is a response to the question which St. Peter asks in the preceding chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel. Peter said, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore? (St. Matthew xix. 27) Jesus promised the Apostles…twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. (Ibid, 28) He said also that others who had forsaken all…would receive an hundred fold…and…everlasting life. (Ibid, 29) He concluded his promises with the words of the Gospel parable. But, many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first. (Ibid, 30) St Paul’s race is the journey of a lifetime. Some, like the Apostles, may start running or working like the laborers in the vineyard because they were called first and promised one penny for their labors. Others would be called later because they had stopped running or had never started. The problem is with sloth and idleness. They are promised whatsoever is right [or just]. (Ibid, 4,7) When the workday was over, the Lord of the vineyard would instruct his steward to pay the laborers. But notice this interesting detail. We read that steward was to pay the laborers beginning from the last unto the first. And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny. (Ibid, 8,9) Jesus tells us that the last are called first.  

But when the first came, they supposed that they should have received more; and they likewise received every man a penny. And when they had received it, they murmured against the goodman of the house, saying, These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day. (Ibid, 10-12)
 
It appears that the first have a real problem with the last. Imagine St. Paul’s runner thinking he had won the race, only to discover that the laurel wreath or crown was being placed on the heads of the last to make it to the finish line. Like the laborers who came first, he would be moved with rage and horrified at the injustice of it all. The first were promised one penny. But the Lord rebukes them with these words: 

Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny? Take that thine is and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee.  Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good? (Ibid, 13-15)   
 
Father Crouse reminds us, It matters not when they come into the vineyard- at morning, midday or the eleventh hour; the point is that they are called into the labor and that they work for one reward- the one penny that God’s free Grace provides. (Parochial Sermons) Running St. Paul’s race is an ongoing labor that calls us to labor and run well.
          
Some commentators have said that the reward of one penny is the reward of everlasting salvation. Archbishop Trench thinks this is wrong. If the one penny symbolizes salvation, then the first workers or the men who are full of resentment, bitterness, envy, and a begrudging spirit would be saved, since we read that they received every man a penny. But these vices can never reward a man with Christ’s Kingdom. The one penny symbolizes God’s Grace. How we labor, run, or receive it matters. If it is received humbly and undeservedly, we shall be saved. If it is received cynically and disdainfully, we shall be damned. The last shall be first…. The race that we run is the gift that God gives. He invites us to labor in His vineyard or run in His race. Though we have sinned, He believes still that we can run and work. God’s Grace is given to us first to awaken us to the fact that we are the last and the least always because of our sin. It doesn’t matter how long we’ve been running or working. God’s Grace sustains us. Jesus alone gives us the speed, wisdom, and alacrity to finish the labor and cross the finish line. Gesima Tide reveals that we should be justly punished for our sins but will be mercifully delivered and crowned with a laurel that rewards humility. (Fr. Crouse: Logic of Pre-Lent)  
 
Amen.
©wjsmartin 
 
 

Christmas Eve
December 24, 2022
 
And we beheld His glory, as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of Grace and truth.
(St. John i. 14)
 
         In Holy Advent you and I have been endeavoring to prepare our hearts and souls for the coming of our Saviour Jesus Christ on Christmas night. But in order to truly welcome Him, we must beware of missing His coming Life which St. John tells us is the Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. (Ibid, 9). Tonight, we shall learn that He shall be hidden from us if we continue to live in the darkness of the spiritual night. So on this night we must endeavor to be illuminated and enlightened by Christ the coming Light of God the Father. On this night we must endeavor to embrace the Holy Spirit of this Light, that this Life may not merely irradiate our minds with God’s truth but may enkindle the fire of His Love in our hearts, so that Christ the coming Light may be made flesh in us.  
         But first to the darkness. St. John is one who has heard the call of Jesus in his fellow Apostle Paul: The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. (Rom. xiii. 12) What Christ has told him in darkness, he must now speak in the light. (St. Matt. x. 27) For the people who sat in darkness have seen a great Light, and to them that sat in the region and shadow of death, upon them hath the Light sprung up. (St. Matt. iv. 16) St. John knows that the Light of God has shone into the darkness of man’s fallen world. He knows also that if Christ is to give Light to them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide their feet into the way of peace (St. Luke i. 79) the Light must shine from the heart of God into his own. He sees that those who follow Christ shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the Light of Life. (St. John viii. 12)
         So, St. John reminds us that we are called out of darkness into Christ’s marvelous Light. (1 St. Peter ii. 9) To grasp this vocation, to heed this call, he will take us through the stage of spiritual conception in the first bright beams of the Light to fertility and maturity as the Life and Love of the same Light perfect our lives. But to begin to be touched by the Light, our minds must move out of primordial darkness to the space and place that is before all beginnings, into the source and origin of all that comes to be and passes away. St. John draws our minds up and into what is beyond and before all things. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Same was in the beginning with God. (St. John i. 1) Before the possibility of any birth, old or new, earthly or heavenly, there is the Father, His Word, and the Spirit, one God who exists forever and without any change. With John we are invited to come out of the spiritual darkness to see God’s Word, Christ the Light, whom the Spirit of Love begets eternally from the Father. Before we are spiritually born again, we must see that Christ the Son of God comes from the Father before all beginnings.
But as soon as our minds come into this Light, we begin to see that this is the Life who longs with everlasting Love to make all things other than Himself. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was Life; and the Life was the Light of men. And the Light shineth in darkness; and the darkness overcame it not. (Ibid, 3-5) The Father’s Eternal Word is the Life that not only enlivens and quickens all of creation but gives Light or lends meaning to all that He has made. He with His Word commanded all to be/ and all obeyed Him, for that Word was He! (Davideis: Cowley) This Light shines in the darkness and so calls us forward into the new birth of a knowledge that sees all meaning and purpose as coming from God and made to be returned to Him also. John knows that the minds of the wise are lucid by reason of a participation in that Divine Light and Wisdom. So by the lack of it they are darkness. (T.A. Comm. John, 1)
         Yet there is more to this Living Light of Love. This is that true Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew him not. He came unto His own and His own received Him not. (Ibid, 9-11) The Light intends not only to be known but to be embraced as the brightness of God’s Glory, the express Image of His Person. (Hebr. i. 3) The Word of God, Christ the Light, has never ceased to desire and long for His people. In His Light, we come to see his meaning and purpose for us. In His Light, we come also to see our failure to receive His Love and cradle it in our hearts. The world knew Him not...His own received Him not. (Idem) In His Light we see that while we were made to partake of His Life and to receive His Love, our sin forever frustrates His will. This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. (St. John iii. 19) In the Light of His Life, God is Love. In the darkness of sin’s death, we reject it. We have become wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest; to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever. (2 Peter ii. 17) Still, with John we realize that God has never ceased to desire man’s new birth and new life in the Light of His Love.
         The birth of John’s new knowledge generates within him a deeper gratitude for the longing and yearning that is forever being reborn from this Life. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. (Ibid, 12, 13) He writes with earnest hope: A new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in Him and in you: because the darkness is past, and the true Light now shineth. (1 John ii. 8) In this Light, John sees that for the invisible, incomprehensible, and inconceivable Word of God to be born, man must welcome His Life and Love from the depth of the human heart with faith. For John sees that we cannot do it from passions born from the desires of the flesh, nor even from the will of man’s human heart. The generation of the sons of God will not be carnal but spiritual, because they are born of God. (T.A., idem) John understands that he is born again by the Grace of God alone. So, in the everlastingly-begotten Light of God’s Love, he realizes the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.( Ibid, 14) The reason that compels his conclusion is that we beheld His glory, as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of Grace and Truth. (Idem) John looks back over a very long life and kno nws that the Jesus who first loved us and to whose Love John makes a good return is the same Christ who has been made flesh and dwelt among us. (Idem) John sees too that the same Life whose Light has imparted nothing but God’s Love to him is the same Word of God who, in the flesh, has redeemed our flesh and shall enliven our souls once again.
         John reveals to us his experience of Jesus Christ. This experience endured throughout the earthly life of his Master, the Messiah. This experience persevered through the Lord’s Ascent back to the Father and into Pentecostal rapture and transformation. What John experienced was the Glory of God in Jesus Christ. What John experienced were signs and evidences that this Jesus was not merely another well-intentioned human prophet. Rather, in Jesus he found the wellspring of eternally-begotten new birth that was being imparted to all men as the trigger and catalyst of the Love that would return all men to God. He found in Jesus the desire to share new birth and new life. He found in Jesus one who would make all things new through redemptive passion that would save the whole world. In Jesus, John discovered that the desire to create and redeem are but two names for that one uninterrupted eternal Love of God through which He returns all men to Himself.
         John traces the Light -the Glory of God, from Jesus’ earthly existence back to Heavenly Love.  Through the innocent suffering and death of Jesus who made Atonement for man’s sins in His Crucifixion, in the new Life that His Resurrection and Glorious Ascension establish, and in the coming down of Love again to be born again in the hearts and souls of His newfound friends, John sees nothing but God’s the Light of God’s Glory. He writes:
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life…that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.   
 
The joy he shares with us is in the birth of His Eternal Life and Love because God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all. (1 St. John i. 5) The joy he shares with us, under the light of the North Star, is the birth of the babe of Bethlehem. The joy he shares with us is born of Virgin in a place of little to no significance, in poverty and unknown to most men. In awesome wonder, then, on this Christmas night, with St. John and the poet, let us sing of this Light that even now intends to be born in our hearts as new Life and Love as He was born for us in Bethlehem.
Welcome to our Wondering Sight,
         Eternity shut in a span!
Summer in Winter, Day in Night!
Heaven in earth! And God in man!
Great little one, whose glorious birth,
Lifts earth to Heaven, stoops Heaven to earth!
                           (R. Crashaw)’
Amen.
 
©wjsmartin
 
 
 
 

Hear now this in the House of Jacob, and publish it in Judah, saying, 
Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; 
which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not;
fear ye not me? Saith the Lord….
(Jeremiah v. 20-22)
 
      
There is a truth about life nowadays that seems to escape most people. For whatever reasons and due to whatever causes, people these days seem to live on the surface of existence. Perhaps they are pursuing their carnal appetites; what matters most to them is the fulfillment that comes by way of eating, drinking, and sex. Perhaps they are feverishly pursuing mammon; the acquisition, retention, and multiplication of earthly riches consume them habitually. Perhaps they are determined to perpetuate earthly existence and so spend their every waking moment trying to find the fountain of youth; they are obsessed with dieting, eating just the right foods, and drinking just the right drinks. They fear death. Or perhaps earthly life is just so unbearable that they are caught in the grips of one addiction or the other that deludes them into thinking that they are embracing a solution rather than exacerbating a problem. Whatever the false god people are worshiping, and it is probably a combination of more than one, post-modern man does seem to be in a very precarious and dangerous spiritual place. Jeremiah describes them in today’s first lesson: They are without understanding; which have eyes and see not; which have ears and hear not (Idem), and who do not in any way fear the Lord. These people have forgotten that they have souls, have failed to discover the meaning of human nature, and thus have never pursued the highest form of spiritual perfection.
      
Of course, the problem of the soul is as old as creation. Not only ancient Jewish but also ancient Pagan civilizations were busy with the discovery of the soul’s existence and meaning. For them, this was an exercise in self-examination because the desire to know about the nature of the soul is a pursuit only found among those who have reason. We take our reason for granted and we abuse it. To a greater or lesser extent, even carnally-minded men who are compulsively gorging, drinking, texting, or trading are using their minds to pursue an end. The glutton uses his mind to overindulge his body in eating. The alcoholic uses his mind to drown his fears and sorrows in drink. The text-addict thinks for just long enough to blather on into his cell phone.
      
So it would seem that not a small percentage of human beings have forgotten about the existence and purpose of the soul. They refuse to use their minds to stop, contemplate, and judge what they are doing with their lives. They deliberate poorly and so their choices are poorly made. Many of them, these days, haven’t ever heard of the great ancient pagans, like Socrates who taught that the unexamined life is not worth living. (Apol. 38a) He believed that rational creatures ought to search for the ideas and first principles that move the universe. Only then could man use his reason to discover the permanent things or the unchanging forms that can perfect human nature and carry us up and above the brute beasts without understanding. Socrates knew that man’s perfection does not consist in the pursuit of animal appetites and passions. Man is created to examine the universe, find its truth, and to apply its goodness to the soul. For Socrates, man is made to move from sense perception to imagination and then from imagination to intellect in a journey of discovering the truth. Socrates is sure that there is a transcendental truth whose goodness has meaning for human existence. Man has the capacity to see and understand what promises to ennoble and purify his soul. The good that man is made to come to know is the cause of all life but is also the source of his true happiness and joy.
      
Socrates’ philosophical method was on the way back to God. So too was Jeremiah’s. What both exhort us to pursue is the kind of thinking that searches beneath the surface of reality to discover the Divine truth. This thinking begins in inquisitive wonder rather than in making. Socrates starting point in the quest after knowledge begins with the words, I know that I know nothing. (Apol. 21d) Jeremiah is brought to a parallel sense of futility and impotence in the presence of the living God. Do you not fear me? says the Lord; 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) If we think that we create and make reality, we are sadly mistaken. At most, we perpetuate it. Even our scientific inquiries create nothing; they investigate and discover what is already there. Do we think that if we hadn't found it, it never would have been found?  Foolish man. Creation is made so that truth can be found in it. Don’t we realize that God rules and governs the universe? Cannot we see with the soul’s eye that the rules and principles that nature obeys have nothing to do with us? Creation is made, moved, and defined not by us but by a transcendental logic which every creature depends on in order both to live and to live well. The whole of the universe is packed full of God’s thinking of it. This is what we are made to discover! A denial of this truth is idiotic. We neither create nor perpetuate our own thinking. We use our souls without any thought of where our thinking comes from. God patiently awaits not only our discovery of our souls but also His plan and purpose for them. 
      
Socrates and Jeremiah knew that God is waiting for us to find Him. He intends that we should come to our senses as we learn to acknowledge humbly that we know nothing and that we are neither the creators nor definers of the world or ourselves. 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 is dead in body. His decomposing corpse is being borne from the walls of Nain to its burial ground. 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. Why? Jesus wants us to see that bodily existence has no meaning and definition without the soul. If man were merely a soul or merely a body, Christ would not have bothered to reconcile the two. But Christ shows us today that He intends to give life to the embodied soul forever. The real proof for God’s existence and governance of the universe is found in the soul’s being and knowing. Christ addresses the dead man’s soul. The soul lives on and is called to account by Jesus. This is a portent of what every soul will do on Judgment Day when it will give an account of the quality of life it has lived. The real evidence for God’s power and promise is found in the soul that knows Christ and obeys His call.
      
This is the kind of soul that Jesus finds in the Widow of Nain. Her soul is so present to her because it is filled with anguish and sadness. The pain and heartache of losing her only son consume her soul. She is not running away from reality or attempting to deny the truth. She is overwhelmed by it. She is precisely where Jesus wants to find all of us. Because of her spiritual sensitivity, she is ripe for Christ’s visitation. She has no words, pleas, supplications, or demands for Him. She weeps silently because words cannot conquer creation’s cruelty. She knows the futility and vanity of human wishes. She is Rachel weeping for her children who are no more…. (Jer. xxxi. 15) She is a figure of the Blessed Virgin who will mourn the loss of her only Son, Jesus Christ. She is the figure of Mother Church who weeps until her wayward children are found by Christ. Her mourning is sincere and pure because her soul has found the truth of all things. She will become the fulfillment of 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. Jesus commands her to Weep not. (Ibid, 13) She obeys, for in knowing herself she knows her Maker and Redeemer. The passion of her heart is wholly vulnerable to the Lord’s healing touch. Jesus came and touched the bier: and they that bare the dead man stood still. (Ibid, 14) Her soul, along with those of the mourners, must be still, dead with the young man, so that Christ might breathe new life into all. God’s compassion in Christ will bring life out of death, good out of evil, and hope out of despair. And he that was dead sat up and began to speak. (Ibid, 15) What did he say? We do not know. It is not important. That he speaks at all is a sign that his soul inhabits a body quickened by Christ once again. All are filled with awe and wonder. The wonder that has wrought new life in the dead man now rejuvenates his mother and her fellow mourners. The miracle is contagious.
        
Today we are called to remember that whatever the state of our souls, we must acknowledge not only that we have them but that they depend wholly and completely on Jesus Christ’s love for lasting meaning that leads to salvation. 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) This is the greater miracle of new life that Jesus Christ bestows upon our souls through His everlasting love. The young man in today’s Gospel is an illustration of the body that needs to be brought alive once again. His mother ought to stir us into mourning over it. Only when the soul of the one and the body of the other are brought back together by the love of Jesus Christ can we have any hope of salvation. Only when Socrates’ learned ignorance, I know that I know nothing, and Jeremiah’s fear of the Lord are present can we be made ripe for the visitation of God’s love in Jesus Christ.
Amen.
 
©wjsmartin

 O God who hast prepared for them that love Thee
such good things as pass man’s understanding…
(Collect: Trinity VI)
 
          We have said that the Trinity tide is all about fertility and growth; it is the green season, and in it we focus on God’s spiritual harvesting of virtue in our souls. The green vestments and Altar hangings of this season draw our minds from things earthly to things heavenly, from the green crops and plants of the fields that surround us physically to the idea and image of spiritual produce and yield in our souls. Thus, we are to be moved and inspired to grow the fruits of God’s seed, His Word, in our hearts. And, yet the end of our spiritual endeavors relates specifically to certain Divine promises - such good things as pass man’s understanding, as our Collect reminds us of this morning. The Collect tells us that we love God above all things, (Idem) that we may obtain His promises, which exceed all that we can desire. We shall be blessed with God’s good things permanently only if we love God above and beyond all creatures. Thus, God’s eternal reward is given to who love His Grace.
          
But loving God is a virtue that is not easily attained. Last week St. Peter and his fellow Apostles, having obeyed Jesus by letting down their nets for a draught of fishes and finding themselves the beneficiaries of supernatural power and might, surrendered themselves to the radical otherness of God in Jesus. With a deeper fear of the Lord, their faith and confidence in Jesus were made more sure as they forsook all and followed Him. (St. Luke v. 11) They were being caught up in Christ’s net, and so slowly but surely, they began to die to themselves and come alive to Jesus Christ. The Divine Virtue began to be felt in the presence of God’s Holy One. If we are going to discover how to love God above all things, we had better begin with the fear of the Lord and God’s power in Jesus Christ.
But there is more. Christ says to us today that except [our] righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, [we] shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. (St. Matthew v. 20) He intends that our faith and confidence in His power should be converted into righteousness. Righteousness of the ancient Jews – of the Scribes and Pharisees – was the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. The religious world that Jesus found when He came down from Heaven was one defined by the strict Law of Moses and the Fathers. Its rites were administered by the scribes and pharisees, who were called to make men right with God through the Law. Every evil deed had its onerous form of penance. And in it was much that was correct.

But Jesus found something lacking. Romano Guardini reminds us, so long as we cling to [human] justice, we will never be guiltless of injustice. As long as we are entangled in wrong and revenge, blow and counterblow, aggression and defense, we will be constantly drawn into fresh wrong. (The Lord, p. 81) Ancient Jewish Law was obsessed with sin and its punishment, with finding it and punishing it in a way that could only reveal the loss of its original spirit. The Temple’s ministers, the Scribes and Pharisees, had become possessed by evil and unrighteousness. Thus, the Jewish System, as it had developed, had lost its way as the righteous had become even more judgmentally consumed not with sin but with the unrighteous or sinners. Fallen man is always in danger of confusing the two. Needless to say, the system was so powerful that publicans and sinners in Jesus’ day had come to despair of any real hope for redemption from those whose judgment precluded any love or forgiveness.

But Jesus came into the world to remind us that the cycle of unrighteousness and sin can be broken only through the spirit of love and the forgiveness of sins. So, He proceeds to teach his listeners about the problem with the spiritual character of the scribes and pharisees and, for that matter, of any religious man whose notion of righteousness is bound up with imposing a Law that is robbed of any love.

Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: but I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: (Ibid, 21)
 
Jesus surmises that Religious folk are prone to anger against sinners when they have no just cause. True enough, we all must love righteousness, and we must hate unrighteousness and sin. But to be angry with sinners just because they are sinners isn’t just cause for our anger against them. We might just as well be angry with ourselves since we, with them, are caught in the horrible grip of sin! Of course, there might be rare times when there is just cause for righteous indignation or anger. But the rarer that is for us, the better, since we all are sinners. Jesus comes into the world to teach us to hate the sin and love the sinner. And this was clearly lost on the scribes and pharisees. Our righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and pharisees. (Idem)

Jesus goes on to reinforce his point. Whoever is angry with his brother without cause shall be in danger of the judgment…. (Ibid, 22) Judging sinners in our hearts with anger, without cause, reason, or moderation that desires their salvation and betterment by God’s mercy and forgiveness will judge us by the Father’s Love. Our hearts must desire God’s righteousness for all men. Next Jesus says that Whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council….(Ibid, 22) Allowing our anger to explode into tongue-murder, as Matthew Henry puts it, demeaning other man as worthless will measure our every word according to the council of God’s Wisdom and Word. Raca means thou empty or worthless man! Jesus concludes by saying but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. (Idem) When our anger condemns a man as a fool, we have despaired of God’s Power and grieve the Holy Ghost. And it all proceeds, again, with angrily judging other men without cause. St. Augustine says this means that we are angry at the brother and not the cause (Retr. i. 19). Thus, Jesus reveals that it is not the sin but the sinner who has become the object of our unrighteous anger.
        
Jesus teaches us that the real threat to loving [God] above all things is internal and spiritual. Anger or wrath threatens to damn us all. Its loveless judgment, its malicious council, and its Hellish despair should terrify us all. Anger or wrath kills the soul inwardly and spiritually. When one is angry at sinners, one ceases to identify with all other men. When one is angry at sinners and not with sin, the path to righteousness has been completely abandoned. When one is angry at sinners, one forgets oneself. Jesus insists that we be reconciled with [our offending] brother… [and] agree with our adversary quickly… lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. (Ibid, 24,25) Enslavement to anger and judgment might hold us forever in the prison-house of Hell because we have forgotten that the sin that we find so quickly in others is sin that we know in ourselves but fail to confess.
        
The angry pursuit of earthly justice threatens every religious man. It corrupts his soul with an undue sense of superiority and hubris. The proud man forgets that he needs those good things as pass man’s understanding… and the promises that exceed all that we can desire. In sum, what is lost is the consciousness that we all need the forgiveness of sins that Jesus Christ brings. This forgiveness of sins passes man’s understanding because it is unnatural to our fallen condition, and its effects yield promises that exceed all that we can desire. Christ’s righteousness is the forgiveness of sins. The forgiveness of sins alone overcomes God’s anger and wrath against our sins and makes us right with Him. Loving God above all things is in peril because we fail to allow the forgiveness of our sins in Jesus Christ to then become so alive in us that it crucifies our anger, judgment, and unforgiveness of all others.
        
Our anger, wrath, and unforgiveness of others must be conquered by what Jesus Christ has done to overcome God’s wrath against our sin. St. Paul in this morning’s Epistle asks us, 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. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: 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. For he that is dead is freed from sin. (Romans vi. 3-7) When we begin to remember what God in Jesus Christ has done to reveal God’s Anger against sin as His Love for our salvation, we cannot help but die in Him to be freed from our sin. The anger that we have reserved for all others will die. Our old man will be crucified with Christ and come alive to righteousness in His forgiveness of our sins. We shall discover that the only form of anger and judgment suitable for our spiritual journey is what we direct against ourselves as we persistently seek to conquer our propensity for anger, judgment, and unforgiveness. 
        
Christ tells us to agree with our adversary quickly. (Idem) St. Augustine teaches us that in doing so we are really seeking to be reconciled with the Image and Likeness of God in our neighbor. (Idem) What we ought to love in all men is Christ’s Righteousness waiting to be brought alive by our faith in His Grace. No one except for the Devil should ever be our enemy. For God, in Jesus Christ, wants us, through faithful prayer, loving forgiveness, and hopeful aspirations to imagine such good things as pass man’s understanding. Loving Him above all things we pray that we might obtain His promises which shall exceed all that can desire. And this desire must for our miraculous incorporation into the new life of Jesus Christ that makes enemies friends and all of us heirs together of His eternal promises because our righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and pharisees (Idem).    
Amen.
©wjsmartin
 










O God who hast prepared for them that love Thee
such good things as pass man’s understanding…
(Collect: Trinity VI)
 
          
We have said that the Trinity tide is all about fertility and growth; it is the green season, and in it we focus on God’s spiritual harvesting of virtue in our souls. The green vestments and Altar hangings of this season draw our minds from things earthly to things heavenly, from the green crops and plants of the fields that surround us physically to the idea and image of spiritual produce and yield in our souls. Thus, we are to be moved and inspired to grow the fruits of God’s seed, His Word, in our hearts. And, yet the end of our spiritual endeavors relates specifically to certain Divine promises - such good things as pass man’s understanding, as our Collect reminds us of this morning. The Collect tells us that we love God above all things, (Idem) that we may obtain His promises, which exceed all that we can desire. We shall be blessed with God’s good things permanently only if we love God above and beyond all creatures. Thus, God’s eternal reward is given to who love His Grace.
          
But loving God is a virtue that is not easily attained. Last week St. Peter and his fellow Apostles, having obeyed Jesus by letting down their nets for a draught of fishes and finding themselves the beneficiaries of supernatural power and might, surrendered themselves to the radical otherness of God in Jesus. With a deeper fear of the Lord, their faith and confidence in Jesus were made more sure as they forsook all and followed Him. (St. Luke v. 11) They were being caught up in Christ’s net, and so slowly but surely, they began to die to themselves and come alive to Jesus Christ. The Divine Virtue began to be felt in the presence of God’s Holy One. If we are going to discover how to love God above all things, we had better begin with the fear of the Lord and God’s power in Jesus Christ.
But there is more. Christ says to us today that except [our] righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, [we] shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. (St. Matthew v. 20) He intends that our faith and confidence in His power should be converted into righteousness. Righteousness of the ancient Jews – of the Scribes and Pharisees – was the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. The religious world that Jesus found when He came down from Heaven was one defined by the strict Law of Moses and the Fathers. Its rites were administered by the scribes and pharisees, who were called to make men right with God through the Law. Every evil deed had its onerous form of penance. And in it was much that was correct.

But Jesus found something lacking. Romano Guardini reminds us, so long as we cling to [human] justice, we will never be guiltless of injustice. As long as we are entangled in wrong and revenge, blow and counterblow, aggression and defense, we will be constantly drawn into fresh wrong. (The Lord, p. 81) Ancient Jewish Law was obsessed with sin and its punishment, with finding it and punishing it in a way that could only reveal the loss of its original spirit. The Temple’s ministers, the Scribes and Pharisees, had become possessed by evil and unrighteousness. Thus, the Jewish System, as it had developed, had lost its way as the righteous had become even more judgmentally consumed not with sin but with the unrighteous or sinners. Fallen man is always in danger of confusing the two. Needless to say, the system was so powerful that publicans and sinners in Jesus’ day had come to despair of any real hope for redemption from those whose judgment precluded any love or forgiveness.

But Jesus came into the world to remind us that the cycle of unrighteousness and sin can be broken only through the spirit of love and the forgiveness of sins. So, He proceeds to teach his listeners about the problem with the spiritual character of the scribes and pharisees and, for that matter, of any religious man whose notion of righteousness is bound up with imposing a Law that is robbed of any love.

Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: but I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: (Ibid, 21)
 
Jesus surmises that Religious folk are prone to anger against sinners when they have no just cause. True enough, we all must love righteousness, and we must hate unrighteousness and sin. But to be angry with sinners just because they are sinners isn’t just cause for our anger against them. We might just as well be angry with ourselves since we, with them, are caught in the horrible grip of sin! Of course, there might be rare times when there is just cause for righteous indignation or anger. But the rarer that is for us, the better, since we all are sinners. Jesus comes into the world to teach us to hate the sin and love the sinner. And this was clearly lost on the scribes and pharisees. Our righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and pharisees. (Idem)

Jesus goes on to reinforce his point. Whoever is angry with his brother without cause shall be in danger of the judgment…. (Ibid, 22) Judging sinners in our hearts with anger, without cause, reason, or moderation that desires their salvation and betterment by God’s mercy and forgiveness will judge us by the Father’s Love. Our hearts must desire God’s righteousness for all men. Next Jesus says that Whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council….(Ibid, 22) Allowing our anger to explode into tongue-murder, as Matthew Henry puts it, demeaning other man as worthless will measure our every word according to the council of God’s Wisdom and Word. Raca means thou empty or worthless man! Jesus concludes by saying but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. (Idem) When our anger condemns a man as a fool, we have despaired of God’s Power and grieve the Holy Ghost. And it all proceeds, again, with angrily judging other men without cause. St. Augustine says this means that we are angry at the brother and not the cause (Retr. i. 19). Thus, Jesus reveals that it is not the sin but the sinner who has become the object of our unrighteous anger.
        
Jesus teaches us that the real threat to loving [God] above all things is internal and spiritual. Anger or wrath threatens to damn us all. Its loveless judgment, its malicious council, and its Hellish despair should terrify us all. Anger or wrath kills the soul inwardly and spiritually. When one is angry at sinners, one ceases to identify with all other men. When one is angry at sinners and not with sin, the path to righteousness has been completely abandoned. When one is angry at sinners, one forgets oneself. Jesus insists that we be reconciled with [our offending] brother… [and] agree with our adversary quickly… lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. (Ibid, 24,25) Enslavement to anger and judgment might hold us forever in the prison-house of Hell because we have forgotten that the sin that we find so quickly in others is sin that we know in ourselves but fail to confess.
        
The angry pursuit of earthly justice threatens every religious man. It corrupts his soul with an undue sense of superiority and hubris. The proud man forgets that he needs those good things as pass man’s understanding… and the promises that exceed all that we can desire. In sum, what is lost is the consciousness that we all need the forgiveness of sins that Jesus Christ brings. This forgiveness of sins passes man’s understanding because it is unnatural to our fallen condition, and its effects yield promises that exceed all that we can desire. Christ’s righteousness is the forgiveness of sins. The forgiveness of sins alone overcomes God’s anger and wrath against our sins and makes us right with Him. Loving God above all things is in peril because we fail to allow the forgiveness of our sins in Jesus Christ to then become so alive in us that it crucifies our anger, judgment, and unforgiveness of all others.
        
Our anger, wrath, and unforgiveness of others must be conquered by what Jesus Christ has done to overcome God’s wrath against our sin. St. Paul in this morning’s Epistle asks us, 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. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: 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. For he that is dead is freed from sin. (Romans vi. 3-7) When we begin to remember what God in Jesus Christ has done to reveal God’s Anger against sin as His Love for our salvation, we cannot help but die in Him to be freed from our sin. The anger that we have reserved for all others will die. Our old man will be crucified with Christ and come alive to righteousness in His forgiveness of our sins. We shall discover that the only form of anger and judgment suitable for our spiritual journey is what we direct against ourselves as we persistently seek to conquer our propensity for anger, judgment, and unforgiveness. 
        
Christ tells us to agree with our adversary quickly. (Idem) St. Augustine teaches us that in doing so we are really seeking to be reconciled with the Image and Likeness of God in our neighbor. (Idem) What we ought to love in all men is Christ’s Righteousness waiting to be brought alive by our faith in His Grace. No one except for the Devil should ever be our enemy. For God, in Jesus Christ, wants us, through faithful prayer, loving forgiveness, and hopeful aspirations to imagine such good things as pass man’s understanding. Loving Him above all things we pray that we might obtain His promises which shall exceed all that can desire. And this desire must for our miraculous incorporation into the new life of Jesus Christ that makes enemies friends and all of us heirs together of His eternal promises because our righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and pharisees (Idem).    

Amen.
©wjsmartin

 
 


Fisher of mortal men, them that the saved be,
Ever the holy fish caught up from the depths of the sea,
Out of the world’s tumultuous sea of sin
Enticed into thine embrace, forever to be held therein .
(Clement of Alexandria)
 
        
Post-modern man seems wholly afraid of being caught –caught in an embarrassing situation, caught off guard, caught red-handed, caught asleep at the wheel, or caught out as incompetent. The fear is caused by an absence of spiritual integrity that reacts angrily to a world whose expectations he has been denied but are still being asserted by his neighbors. The post-modern fearful man has told us all that we ought not to have any hope for betterment since we are all genetically pre-determined to be less than mediocre. We are meant to congratulate such a man on his genius as if he had discovered something profound. He is Big Brother and we are all the incurably ignorant plebian masses. When other people’s natural instinct for certain norms of law and order react to his imbecility, they are met with the juvenile gibes of derogatory derision. For the adolescent, judgment moves in one direction –away from the self and onto others.

Fortunately for us, today’s Gospel turns us around and encourages us to move in a better direction, to be self-consciously caught out in our sinful condition so that we might be caught up and into the net of Jesus Christ. For whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth; And scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. (Hebr. xii. 6) Prior to today’s reading, St. Luke tells us that Jesus had been healing those who were sick with divers diseases. (St. Luke iv. 40) Exhausted, He then went into a desert place (Ibid, 42) to pray, only to be interrupted by the multitude who would have kept Him from leaving them because they were caught up with His miracles. He said, ‘I must preach the Kingdom of God to other cities also’. But they nevertheless followed Him. Today we read that As the [same] multitude pressed upon Him to hear the Word of God, He stood by the lake of Genesaret, and saw two ships standing by the lake: but the fishermen were gone out of them, and were washing their nets. (St. Luke v. 1) This crowd pursues Jesus pressing upon Him to hear the Word of God, that He is nearly driven to take refuge in the sea! The sinful world they inhabit can offer no peaceful refuge or shelter from their sin. And so with all zeal, alacrity, and dispatch, caught by the short hairs in the devil’s lair, they are determined to be caught up into the salvation that Jesus brings.

But the zeal and passion with which men press upon Jesus must be tempered and moderated. When we press upon Jesus overzealously or impetuously we run the risk of being caught up in passion and emotion. Zeal must be converted into spiritual love that yields sober detachment, needed to discover Christ apart from our passions. The crowd is quieted, Jesus is silent, the sea is still, and the only activity we discover comes from fishermen who were gone out of their boats and [were] washing their nets. (Ibid, 2) We ought to be caught up in the stillness of this event. These are men whose worldly success and failure depend upon the uncertain moving winds, stirring sea, and elusive fish.

These men are caught up anxiously over the seas of chance and fortune. Isaak Walton says, Blessings upon all who hate contention, and love quietness, and virtue, and angling. (The Compleat Angler) Angling is fishing, but with A. K. Best we must remember that often the fishing [is] good, but the catching [is] bad. And that, They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; these see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep. (Ps. cvii. 23, 24) The rising and falling of the great deep aggravate the fisherman’s art of following and catching his prevaricating prey. Two motions blend to confuse and confound the fisherman’s science of the seas. Walton says that Angling may be said to be so like mathematics that it never can fully be learnt. (Idem) Driven by persistent curiosity and wonder, fishermen aim for a precision they never obtain.

So 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: and He sat down, and taught the people out of the ship. (Ibid, 3) Jesus doesn’t force Himself upon any man. Archbishop Trench reminds us that the work of the fisher is one of art and skill, not of force and violence. (Miracles, p. 106) So He prays or asks Peter to thrust out a little from the land so that spiritual men might be caught up into the net of His preaching. He has no pulpit, and thus, as Matthew Henry reminds us, must ask St. Peter for the loan of his fishing boat. (Comm: Luke V) The multitude –the hoi polloi, must learn of the distance and differentiation between their condition and that of the fishermen. The multitude on the shore had zeal aplenty, but
Peter and his fellow fishers –James and John, were humbled by another night of laborious failure.
Jesus commands Simon Peter: Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draft. (Ibid, 4) Simon responds, Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing….(Ibid, 5) Peter confesses the impotence of the fishermen. Yet, they pressed on, washed their nets, and cleansed theirs boats hoping for a better return the next time round. Oddly enough, now Jesus takes them out in the clear light of day. He will take their craft and trade into the clear light of day. Peter is perplexed. We know that we are fishers, but is Christ a fisher also? Christ presses upon Peter. Peter presses upon Christ. Peter obeys humbly. Nevertheless, at thy Word, I will let down the net. (Idem) Peter the fisherman may doubt his profession’s precision, but he does not doubt his Lord. He and his fellow men have already been caught out and seized by the consciousness of their fallen condition. Now they are caught up and into the commands of their Christ. Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. (Ps. cxxvii.1) Peter’s hope for accomplishing anything on his own has been thrown overboard; but he knows that they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. (Is. xl. 30, 31)

And when they had this done, they enclosed a great multitude of fishes, and their net brake, and they beckoned to their partners in the other ship, that they should come and help them. And they came, and filled both ships, so that they began to sink. (Ibid, 6,7) The word of Jesus is obeyed, and God can catch man up into a new life.

But what is the real miracle? Is it merely the miracle of the draught of fishes? The answer can be found in the response of St. Peter. As Isaac Williams explains, [St. Peter had] no thought of his own profit at such a supply, no sense of relief after having so long toiled in vain occurred to him, but all was lost in the feeling of God’s presence and of his own sinfulness. (I. W. ‘The Peaceable Ordering of the World.’) Peter falls down before Jesus and says, ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.’ For he was astonished, and all that were with them, at the draught of fishes which they had taken. (Ibid, 8,9) Archbishop Trench writes, Peter, while drawing the multitude of fishes into his net, has himself fallen into the net of Christ, taking a prey, he has himself also been taken a prey, and now the same man as ever after, yielding as freely to the impulse of the moment…can no longer, in the deep feeling of his own unholiness, endure a Holy One so near. (Idem)  

St. Peter can do little by his own ingenuity and effort. Man’s craftsmanship and science can produce only unpredictable and impermanent gains in comparison of what God in Jesus Christ can do for us. There is a miracle of fishes. Jesus’ power is manifested. This is the first miracle. Next, the same power of God in Jesus Christ converts Saint Peter. He is drawn and caught up into Christ’s net. His heart sinks, as he discovers the Wisdom and Love that alone can draw the migrating soul back out of the tempestuous depths of human sin into the net of that love that can reconcile all men to God. Peter senses the loss of himself; he is drowned in the sea of spiritual death. This is the second miracle. Peter dies to himself. He is poor in spirit. Peter comes alive to Jesus Christ. Grace abounds. 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 their life in the sea. Peter falls down, surrenders himself, and begins to die in order to embrace Christ, the New Life. Jesus says, Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men. (Ibid, 10) At the conclusion of our Gospel we then read that when the [Apostles] had brought their ships to land, they forsook all, and followed Him. (Ibid, 11)

The Apostles were on their way to becoming fishers of men for Jesus. Their forsaking all is a spirit of self-abnegation. To be caught up in the net of Christ elicits spiritual death to oneself. If we would become Apostles of Christ, in ourselves the contradiction [must be] felt between the holy and the unholy, between God and us sinners. (Trench, 102) For then we shall become spiritual fish out of water, caught up into the net of Christ, so that other men might see that even our postmodern sea of tumultuous sin is not beyond the powerful craft of the Fisher of Men. So let us close by singing along with Mr. Walton, not only caught up by Christ into His net, but also pressing upon Jesus that we too might become fishers of men.

The first men that our Saviour Dear,
Did chuse to wait upon Him here,
Blest fishers were, and fish the last
Food was, that He on earth did taste.
I therefore strive to follow those,
Whom he to follow Him hath chose.
 
                           (The Compleat Angler, Modern Library, p. 112)
 
 
 
Amen.
 

 
If we obey God it is going to cost other people more than it costs us, and that
is where the sting comes in. If we are in love with our Lord, obedience does not cost
us anything, it is a delight, but it costs those who do not love Him a good deal.
Oswald Chambers ‘My Utmost for his Highest’, January 11.
 
Today’s quotation is taken from Oswald Chambers, an English Baptist minister who lived from 1874 until 1917. He died at the ripe young age of 43 when serving as a chaplain to the Royal Army in Egypt, died of appendicitis because he refused to take a bed that was intended, he was sure, for the wounded soldiers of the Battle of Gaza. Before he died, he left us with numerous works, including his famous My Utmost for His Highest. In it, amongst other gems, he reminds us that Christian Discipleship costs those who do not love [Christ] a great deal, and that this is where the pain begins. (Idem)
        
I have opened with these remarks 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) On the one side, we find the publicans and sinners, and on the other the Pharisees and Scribes. So we have those who need what Jesus has to offer and against them the self-righteous religious Jews who judge Him for keeping company with them. Nestled in between the two groups are, as always, the Apostles who are called to glean the truth from what Jesus will have to say to the publicans and sinners. So Jesus, reading the censorious thoughts of the religious and pious Jewish Elders, offers two parables. What is interesting about the parables is that Jesus uses them to address all his listening audience. The teaching to be gleaned from them is to alert the Apostles and us to the dangers that threaten to ruin the religion of good people.

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) An Australian scientific study done in 2012 concludes that sheep are selfish animals which congregate towards a safe center. (Flock and Awe…) When one errs and strays from the sheepfold, the shepherd must set out to find it. Sheep are not only selfish but stupid. They don’t realize when one of their own goes missing. And, presumably, they don’t care. Provided they are together and safe, they are happy enough. The lost sheep is missed only by the shepherd, who rejoices when he finds it.
Jesus teaches us the parable in order to point us to the character of spiritual shepherds and spiritual sheep. The Pharisees and Scribes, presumably well-positioned through moral education and application to be good shepherds, are more like selfishly safe and contented sheep. The limitations of their ministry are revealed throughout the life of Our Lord. Those who were called to be religious pastors and shepherds to bring the sinful into the righteousness of the Law have become a brood of vipers whose chief claim to fame is cherishing the limited moral purity they possess and protecting it against any threat of contamination through contact with publicans and sinners. As Archbishop Trench remarks, they had neither love to hope the recovery of such, nor yet antidotes to preserve 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 a shepherd’s love and care. The shepherd returns home with the lost sheep while the ninety and nine remain in the sheepfold not noticing that anything has happened. Special care and more individual attention are afforded to the lost sheep. The lost sheep is a symbol of fallen man, knowing he is lost and needs to be found, or who knows that he needs a shepherd to rescue and save him. 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 parable that Jesus teaches rebukes the self-righteous Pharisees who think that they are good enough. A true Disciple of Christ will be more like the publicans and sinners, who need what Jesus Christ has to offer. And what He has to offer is something far greater than any limited moral human goodness that sets us apart not only from sin but also from sinners, whose company, we believe, only stands to corrupt us.
        
Jesus elaborates 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) In Jesus’ day silver coins were stamped with the image of Caesar, much like our coins are stamped with the image of various past Presidents. The point is that the image of the king on the coin points to a greater value symbolized in the parable. Men are made in the image and likeness of God, and so the lost coin that the woman recovers in the second parable symbolizes God the Father’s most precious possession, His human children, whom He seeks to find and reconcile to Himself. He does so by the good shepherd, His own Son, Jesus Christ, whom He sends into the world to sweep the house [of the fallen creation], until [He] finds sin-sick souls. 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 realizes not only that he has erred and strayed from the right way of God but is sought out and found precisely because, despite his sin, He remains forever a precious treasure to God.
        
Of course, for the Pharisees and Scribes, the truth contained in Jesus’ parables fell on deaf ears. And this, 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 was that they did not realize that the Law of Moral Goodness can never save a man. Unfortunately, the Law inevitably divides publicans and sinners from good people. The Pharisees and Scribes were self-consciously better than others and remarkably unconscious of their need for a Saviour. What they could not see in the publicans and sinners was their own sin, that they were lost sheep or even a lost coin of great price. Thus, their pride prevented them from seeing that Jesus ate and drank with publicans and sinners precisely because the latter knew that they were lost sheep in need of a Good Shepherd who could find and save them forever.
        
When we discover ourselves to be publicans and sinners who have been lost and found by Jesus Christ, the Pharisees and Scribes of this world will lose us. No longer will they be able look down upon us with their treasure of contempt and ridicule. For, with St. Peter in this morning’s Epistle, we are becoming subject to our fellow men, clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble. (1 St. Peter v. 5) We are humbling [ourselves]…under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt [us] in due time. (Ibid, 6) The humility that allows us to be found by Jesus the Good Shepherd, reveals our utter dependence upon God’s healing Grace. We share the same dreadful disease of sin with publicans and sinners. 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 Christian Disciple must suffer the fact that like a stupid sheep, he will always be tempted to get lost. He suffers too as a potentially lost coin who forgets his value to God and the price that was paid to redeem that value, once for all, by Jesus on the Cross of Calvary. As true Disciples, we must confess that we are the chief, the chief, the greatest of sinners, who are spiritually lost and in need of a shepherd who calls not the righteous, but sinners to repentance. (St. Luke v. 30)
        
Our obedience to Jesus Christ is free and should become our delight. It will cost others a great deal. (Idem) They will lose the power they held over us and will persecute us. Our gain is greater. Let us fervently believe that we were once lost but now are in the process of being found by Jesus Christ. Let us remember that we are no better than our brethren that are in the world and that we are in danger of being much worse should we elevate ourselves above them by reason of our religion or piety. Our Heavenly Father will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. (1 Tim. ii. 4) Our righteousness must exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees. (St. Matthew v. 20) The Good Shepherd or Saviour we need his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes [we] were healed. (1 Peter ii. 24) Salvation is free for us; it cost God the Father a great deal. Oswald Chambers asks the Christian this:
Who of us would dare to stand before God [on Judgment Day] and say, ‘My God, judge me as I have judged my fellow men’? We, [with the Pharisees and Scribes] judge our fellow men as sinners; if God should judge us like that, we should all end up in Hell. (Ibid, June 22) God resisteth the proud, and giveth Grace to the humble. (1 Peter v. 5)
 
With all men, let us find ourselves as Christ’s lost and found. Then, there will be joy in the presence of the angels of God (Luke xv. 10), to whom, as St. Bernard of Clairvaux suggests, the tears of all penitents is angelic wine.
Amen.

 
Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the Kingdom of God.
St. Luke xiv. 15
 
The liturgical season of Trinity tide is all about virtuous and godly living. In this season, we are called to translate and convert our vision of Christ the Way, the Truth, and the Life into habits of holiness and righteousness. We are called to apply what we know to our hearts. With our Collect, we must remember that God…never failest to help and govern those whom [He] dost bring up in [His] steadfast fear and love, through the protection of His good providence, if we ask Him to make us have a perpeptual steadfast fear and love of [His] Holy Name. The good that we are focusing on in this beginning of Trinity Tide is charity or the love of God. On both last Sunday and this we have been called to contemplate God’s charity towards us, the perfecting of it in our hearts, and then its natural outpouring for all others. Last Sunday’s parable warned us of what happens in the hereafter when we do not share God’s charity here. Dives desired charity too late in Hell. This Sunday’s parable warns us of what happens when we trifle with the charity of God. If we do not outright reject the love of God like Dives, perhaps we fritter away and squander our love on lesser things. The end result will be the same.
        
Every claim of God’s charity on our souls requires that with perpetual steadfast fear and love we petition His help and governance. God’s charity is far greater than any other kind of love we find in creation. His love is measureless, mammoth, monumental, and majestic. Jesus likens it to something unique, in and for Himself. God’s charity is unselfish and creative. Jesus compares it to the Bread of Life that we shall eat in His Kingdom. Such bread nourishes us inwardly and spiritually and is nothing other than the Love of God.

So, we read that A certain man made a great supper, and bade many…. (St. Luke, xiv. 16) The certain man is God. His supper is the chief meal of the day for the Ancient Greeks, and thus the essential supper of the Lord in spiritual terms. The supper is comprised of that spiritual satisfaction that will be the reward of those who sit down to eat with God in His Kingdom. God’s Love is forever expansive and so He invites many. Many is the word indicating that God’s Love includes all men. The parable is given to us in the past tense since God’s Love in Christ will be made for all future generations. God’s Love in Christ was established and intended from the Dawn of Creation. Come; for all things are now ready. (Ibid, 17) It begins in Christ’s Church, where the fact that Christ has died for the sins of the whole world, risen with healing in His wings, ascended to plead our cause and returned again in the Holy Ghost to establish His ongoing ministry to us, have all been established through His Love. Beginning here and now, we can begin to be nourished and grown up into those who have accepted the invitation and intend to be accepted forever as guests at God’s Great Supper. If we accept the invitation, we begin to enjoy the things that God hath prepared for them that love Him. (1 Cor. ii. 9)
        
So, men in all ages have been invited by God, through Jesus Christ, to embrace the Spirit that invites them to the great supper of Heaven. Yet, let us see how men in all ages refuse this gracious invitation. Many men throughout history have made excuses as to why they cannot come to God’s Love Feast. The first cannot come because of what he has. (Trench: The Great Supper) Archbishop Trench remarks: Perhaps the first, who pleaded, ‘I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go and see it,’ represents those who are elate of heart through already acquired possessions. (Idem) There are those who are satisfied and jealous of the property they possess, and so love what they have much more than what they stand to gain from God’s Love in Jesus Christ. The second cannot come because ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them.’(Idem) These cannot come because of the care and anxiety of [what they stand to gain] from earthly love of what they seek. (Trench, Idem) The first have and cannot love anything more than what they possess with pride. The second lust and envy for more. Both pray, have me excused. (Ibid, 18, 19) The third is adamant and insistent. I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come. (Ibid, 20) According to the Levitical law, this would have been reason sufficient why he should not go to battle, (Deut. 24. 5;) but it is none why he should not come to the feast, (I Cor. 7:29) He, however, counts it more than sufficient. (Trench, Idem) Archbishop Trench remarks that this man’s cannot is sealed under the I will not, and believes that the marital bond is sufficient to overcome the offer of God’s Love. For all, There is room at the feast but no room in their hearts for the loving intention of the host and his provision. (The Harmony of the Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, M. Scott, 154) And so they forfeit those greater and lasting riches that reveal God’s Divine charity and how it promises to keep us under the protection of God’s good providence. (Collect: Trinity II)
        
Notice, however, that God’s Love persists unabated. We read that the master or God is angry. When rejected, Abused mercy turns into the greatest wrath. (M. Henry, Comm.) Yet, God is pictured here as turning swiftly to share His Love with those who will humbly and gladly receive it. Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind. (Ibid, 21) The great supper of the Lord is intended first for those who need God’s Love more than any other. Literally, the parable is first about the Jews, God’s chosen people, and the apple of His eye. Then, the parable is directed against Christians who neglect God’s Love in the Holy Communion. In either case, those first called prefer other loves to God’s Love in Jesus Christ. It is as simple as all that. They will go to Hell if they reject the invitation.
        
The master in the parable -God, turns His attention to others. The parable takes a turn and twist to picture those who will be brought to the supper. Now, the servant brings to the feast the poor, maimed, halt, and blind. (Idem) Those who should have believed and known the servant, Jesus Christ, the Father’s Ambassador and Emissary, and as their own Saviour and Redeemer, refused Him. They felt no need for Jesus Christ. Now those are brought who know their own frailty, fallenness, and need of God’s Love. With all humility, they allow others to bring them to the supper. They may be poor, maimed, halt, and blind literally or spiritually. It matters not. The parable is for all ages and the temptation comes to all to think themselves too rich, too busy, or too happy to be made better. We cannot taste the supper until we have a taste for it. The penalty of refusal is rejection and our heaviest punishment will be what we shall miss. They, too, who have accepted the invitation, and have taken their seats at God’s board, must have a care that they really partake. (Scott, p. 155)
        
To appreciate God’s loving us, in deed and in truth, we must realize that God is greater than our hearts and knoweth all things. (Idem) We must become spiritually conscious that we are all poor, halt, maimed, and blind in order to discover our real need for God’s healing Love. Yet, there is more. What do we read next?

And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room. (Ibid, 22) There is room for a deeper felt need for what God promises to give us through His charity. And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. (Ibid, 23) Those bidden to come did not. Others who have been brought gladly accepted the invitation through persuasion. Now the servant compels even more still. God’s charity calls His own, persuades others, and now compels another lot! This word compel must reveal God’s passionate and urgent desire to ceaselessly pursue all men to come to the salvation supper. Of course, this compelling must mean that strong and earnest exhortation, which…Christ will address to [His] fellows. (Trench, Parables, Ch. xxi) This is that Love of God that longs, by nature, to save all men by forgiving even those who first rejected or neglected the invitation but see how God’s Love pursues all other men. The invitation must appear more and more compelling through its unstoppable quest to find others for the Great Supper of Heaven. Although we have rejected it, we must see how God in Jesus Christ never changes. Then, we shall understand that loving Him means keeping His Commandments. And this is His commandment, That we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment. (1 John iii. 23)
        
Jesus says to us today:
 
All things are now ready, now is the accepted time; it is now, and has not been long; it is now, and will not be long; it is a season of grace that will be soon over, and therefore come now; do not delay; accept the invitation; believe yourselves welcome; eat, O friends; drink, yea drink abundantly, O beloved. (M. Henry)
 
We have left Christ, but He never leaves us. In fact, Christ who invited us a first, second, or third time might find us still. The Feast has begun, and we should now be compelled to come. (Idem) We must not delay. Christ’s original invitation might be directed at others, but we too can follow as we find ourselves with the last and the least. God’s Love in Jesus Christ is discovered better late than never. Perhaps we have preferred other loves to God’s Love. Now we see the nature and power of God’s Unabated Love in Jesus Christ and we must not delay to accept the invitation to the Great Supper of God. We might have neglected it or not appreciated God’s Love. Now, with the poet, let us discover it anew.

How many unknown WORLDS there are
Of comforts, which Thou hast in keeping!
How many Thousand Mercies there
In Pity’s soft lap lay a sleeping!
Happy He who has the art
To awake them
And to take them
Home, and to lodge them in his heart. (R. Crashaw)
 
Amen.