Trinity VI 2025

 O God who hast prepared for them that love Thee
such good things as pass man’s understanding…
(Collect: Trinity VI)
 
          
Trinity tide is all about fertility. 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 remind us of spiritual growth as we move from things earthly to things heavenly. Thus, we are to be moved and inspired to grow the fruits of God’s seed, His Word, in our hearts and souls. Yet the end of our spiritual endeavors relates specifically to certain Divine promises – such good things as pass man’s understanding. Today’s Collect tells us that loving God above all things is the key to obtaining His promises, which exceed all that we can desire.
          
Of course, loving God above all things is a high calling indeed. Most of us, if we are honest with ourselves, don’t love God above all things. We love our spouses, our families, and our friends more than we love God. We love our earthly riches and our possessions, with the comfort they bring, more than God. And as noble as these passions might be, they are ends within our understanding and adjusted to our desires. Furthermore, they are bound to disappoint us. Who is not frustrated with unrequited love from spouse or family members? Who is not disappointed that earthly riches don’t bring spiritual happiness? And who is not surprised by joy when he realizes that God loves us with a perfect love, never changing, never diminished, always faithful and always true? Who is not elated when he realizes the extent of God’s love toward us, in that He send His only Son to die for our sins, to open the door to His Kingdom, and to seal us with the ever-present determination of the Spirit to help us to embrace His love? On the one hand, we shall always be disappointed by lesser loves. On the other, we should be overjoyed that God wishes to give us true love, love that can redeem and save us forever. 

So, the point of the Incarnation is to secure us within that true and lasting love which can satisfy our desire to know God and love Him in return. We hope to love God above all things, because He desires for us to obtain His promises. His promises comprise salvation. And as we all know, salvation will free us from all toil and labor, struggle and sacrifice, sadness, disappointment, and despair. Salvation will fill us with peace, fulfillment, joy, and unending love.
But to have God’s promises fulfilled in us, we must work with Jesus Christ to obtain them. In this morning’s Epistle, St. Paul reminds us that if we hope to be saved, the all-saving facts of Jesus Christ’s life must be alive and operative in ours.

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) 
 
Baptism into the death of Christ is necessary for new life that leads to God’s kingdom. Christ died once for all to sin, death, and Satan. He invites us to partake of the merits and blessings of His death. In Christ, we too can be dead indeed unto sin but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans vi. 11) In Christ, we can be freed from sin and its diabolical hold over us. But to be freed, we must desire the effectual operation of Christ’s Grace in our hearts because serving sin is evidence of the lesser loves that bind and disappoint us.
        
Dying to sin thus enables us to live in Christ. But living in Christ is a call to embrace those virtues that always moved and defined Christ in His earthly pilgrimage. The exact nature of them comes out in our Gospel for today. Jesus reminds us this morning 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 means that we must embrace a kind of righteousness that is equal in quality with God’s love. Righteousness for the ancient Jews – of the Scribes and Pharisees – was the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. This was the Law of Moses and was administered by the scribes and pharisees. It was punitive and exacting. But Jesus found something lacking in it. Ancient Jewish Law was obsessed with finding sin and punishing it. The exercise was wholly negative. No thought was given to God’s mercy and love and how they could be applied to the sick soul of a sinner to help him out of his sin and into righteousness. The Temple’s ministers, the Scribes and Pharisees, had become possessed by evil and unrighteousness in other men’s lives. Their control over it ensured their power. Thus, by the time of Jesus, the Jewish religion had lost its way. Her ministers were full of arrogant pride, and poor sinners had little by way of help out of their sinful lives. Judgmentalism reigned supreme. The system was so corrupt that publicans and sinners in Jesus’ day had come to despair of any real hope for redemption or salvation.

But Jesus came into the world to break the chain of sin and unrighteousness through the spirit of love and the forgiveness of sins. Today, He teaches that the problem with the spiritual character of the scribes and pharisees’ righteousness is that it is bound up in judging others with anger.
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 noticed that the religious elders of his own day were angry with their brothers without a cause. The Jewish priests judged the common lot of men, who had done them no wrong. And they certainly showed no love for sinful men by helping them out of their sin. They judged and condemned others. While they might have been angry about sin, they certainly should have loved the sinner. God is merciful and patient with all men. God in Christ showed the same. Furthermore, when Jesus tells us that our righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and pharisees, (Idem) He means that our righteousness should exceed that of those who don’t honor their own teaching, for the scribes and pharisees are hypocrites who tell others to follow the moral law, when they themselves disregard it, as St. Augustine reminds us. (C.A.)

Jesus goes on to reinforce his point. He says that Whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council….(Ibid, 22) Raca is tongue-murder, as Matthew Henry puts it, and cuts down other men as unworthy of God’s Grace. Jesus concludes with, but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. (Idem) When our anger concludes with thou fool!, we have despaired of God’s Power and grieve the Holy Ghost. And it all begins, again, with angrily judging other men as evil, without cause, since we must hate the sin but not the sinner. Jesus insists that righteous anger and indignation against sin must never become unrighteous disgust of others that treats them as incurably damned.  
        
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 we are angry at other sinners, we forget our own sin. 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 bring upon us an exacting sentence beginning here and extending into Hell’s eternal grip.
        
God’s wrath against our sins has been crucified in Jesus Christ. Christ brought God’s wrath against our sins to death on His Cross. When we begin to remember that in Jesus Christ God’s anger against our sin is overcome with His Love for our salvation, we cannot help but die in Him to be freed from our sin. Here is found a very good thing that passeth man’s understanding. Here is the reward of obtaining God’s promises because we have loved Him above all things. Here the limited imagination and desire of fallen human nature can be crucified with Christ and come alive to righteousness in His forgiveness of our sins. Here we will come to know 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 own sins.
        
Agree with thine 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 by faith in His Grace. For God in Jesus Christ wants us, through faith, hope, and love to imagine such good things as pass man’s understanding for ourselves. Loving Him above all things we pray that we might obtain His promises which shall exceed all that we can desire. And this desire for miraculous incorporation into the new life of Jesus Christ makes enemies friends and all of us heirs together of His eternal promises because He transforms our righteousness [to] exceed that of the scribes and pharisees (Idem).    

Amen.
©wjsmartin

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