 Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. (Rev. iii. 20) I think that it is probably the case that, more often than not, we do not think of God coming to us. Rather we see ourselves as coming to God. Earnest Christians in all churches come to the Lord with laundry lists of supplications and intercessions. Christians expect to be heard and heeded. We spend so much time talking to God that one wonders if God can ever get His Word in edgewise. We forget that we are called to love God because He first loved us and sent His Son to be a propitiation for our sins. (1 St. John iv. 19, 10) Jesus says that If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. (St. John xiv.23) Jesus makes it clear that He intends to come to His faithful friends who hear His voice and open the door of their hearts to Him. The point is that the Christian religion is all about God’s nature. His nature involves always desiring us and coming to us. That desire is expressed in our opening quotation: Behold I stand at the door and knock….(Ibid) And yet it requires a response: if any man hear my voice and open the door….(Ibid) If we don’t open the door, then He will not come in to [us], and sup with [us] so that we can sup with Him. (Ibid) So, you might ask, what is this door that Jesus is speaking about? The ancient commentators say that the door is the soul or the human heart. The soul is not only the seat of reason but of the will also. From the ground of the soul, we either say yes or no to God. Paul Claudel reminds us that most men say no, and so refuse to open the door. He says: we are like a bad tenant allowed to remain through charity in a house that does not belong to us, that we have neither built nor paid for, and who barricade ourselves and refuse to receive the rightful owner even for a minute. (I Believe in God, p. 244) The image is brilliant. We have our lives – our souls and bodies -- on loan from God. We have neither made them nor are we able to sustain them. And God intends that we should occupy them usefully and profitably. What we have comes from God, is preserved by Him on good days and bad, and yet is made for Him. Long before we perceive that Jesus is knocking at the door of the human soul, our Heavenly Father has bestowed upon us the precious gifts of creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life. (GT) In and of themselves, these are great gifts which no man can ever repay to his Maker. Through mere existence, nature, and even basic forms of human happiness and joy, God comes to man and lavishes him with spiritual riches that ought to compel all men to deepest thanksgiving. Human life is a gift from God long before Jesus comes knocking at the door. Yet Jesus Christ comes knocking at the door of the human soul because God’s intention for man is about much more than mere existence and temporal happiness. God loves us so much that He wants to save us. He makes this possible through the forgiveness of sins that He brings to us. Without the forgiveness of our sins, we cannot be saved. In His Son Jesus Christ, God incarnates and reveals the forgiveness of sins. Jesus Christ is the forgiveness of sins. And this forgiveness of sins is from a giver who never stops giving. Some believers maintain that Christ died once for all for the sins of the whole world, and that means that He died for my sins and has forgiven me, and so I’ve got a clean slate, and I am saved. Because we believe this to be true, we convince ourselves that we are saved already. But convincing ourselves of something, doesn’t mean that it will necessarily end up being true! Salvation is about more than what Christ did long ago; it really is about whether the effects and merits of Christ’s gift expressed then are alive and working in our souls now! The forgiveness of sins is more like a journey by which Christ infuses his merits and righteousness into our hearts and souls for the whole of our lives. What I mean to say is that God’s moving and coming to us, His knocking at the doors of our souls, doesn’t stop once Christ has died, risen, and ascended back to the Father. Our religion had better not be merely fond memories of a historical pastimes. We said earlier that the Father and the Son intend to make their abode with us, pitch their tent within our souls (Idem, 23) and dwell in us through the Holy Spirit. If that is the case, then we had better realize that God’s love, which is His forgiveness of our sins through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, is coming to us always to lay claim upon our hearts. God’s life is His love. His love is always alive and on the move. It approaches us with the promises of the forgiveness of sins and resurrection into new life. God intends that His forgiveness of our sins should find a permanent home in our hearts. Again, as Claudel says, we are …tenants who live in the homes of our bodies and souls by the gift of charity. The lease is extended to us for as long as we live, and yet the quality of life in these earthen vessels that we inhabit can be made all the better only if we continue to pay our dues to the owner and holder of the lease. As God’s lessees, we are called to make a good and honest return on the life that is loaned to us. We are called to keep the property up to snuff. Our calling began with our Baptisms when we were filled with the Grace of great hopes and earnest expectations. Throughout our lives, we have been called to cultivate the good Grace which promised to make us better. Christ has been coming to us to repair and renovate us by applying His atoning Death to our sin-sick lives. His death is the forgiveness of our sins! So when [He] stands at the door and knocks, we [must] hear [His] voice, and open the door. (Idem) When we open the doors of our souls, [Christ] will come in and sup with [us] and [we] with Him. (Idem) And what is this supping but our feeding? Feeding on what, you ask? Feeding on the forgiveness of sins – which alone can repair and redeem us. This means feeding and even feasting on God’s desire to conquer evil in our souls and to redeem us. Give us this day our daily bread, we pray and, Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. (L.P.) The chief form and substance of our nourishment must be God’s Word. This Word is the forgiveness of our sins. St. Maximus Confessor tells us that when we ask God to forgive us…as we forgive others, [we are summoning] God to be for us, what [we must] be towards our neighbours. (Comm. Lord’s Prayer) His point is that if we would be nourished, strengthened, moved, defined, and informed by the unmerited and undeserved mercy of God, it must be shared with all precisely because it neither begins nor ends with us! God’s nature is to forgive. He shares His nature with us and we must share it with all others. The idea is taken up in this morning’s Gospel. St. Peter asks Jesus, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? (St. Matthew xviii. 21) Jesus responds with, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven. (Ibid, 22) The implication is that St. Peter and all of us should forgive men their trespasses against us an infinite number of times. Jesus goes on to offer a Parable in which one man is forgiven a huge debt that he owes to his master. But then the same man turns around and refuses to cancel a much smaller debt owed to him by another. God forgives us an infinite number of times for sins that are more than the number than the hairs on [our] heads. (Ps. lx. 12) And should we fail to forgive every man his sins against us, we are revealing to the world that God’s forgiveness of sins is dead in us. St. Augustine says: Imagine the vanity of thinking that your enemy can do you more damage than your enmity [and unforgiveness]! Jesus says: If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. (St. Matthew vi. 15) We delude ourselves into thinking that our enemy has done more damage to us than we do to ourselves by not forgiving him! Behold I stand at the door and knock. (Idem) Jesus comes to us always in order to plant God’s love and forgiveness in our hearts. Jesus’ response to St. Peter’s question illustrates what it looks like to need forgiveness. Our enemy might ask for forgiveness or he might be too bashful and shy, too fearful and cowardly, or too ignorant and foolish to do so. Jesus suggests that he looks a lot like you and me in the presence of God. Jesus intimates also that the same person who needs our forgiveness might not have come to that knowledge. Again, he is a lot like you and me. (R. Knox: Sermons, p. 75) God is patient with us as we slowly discover the details of our sinning against Him and others. The need for the forgiveness of our sins might take time for us to realize. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. (Idem) Jesus longs to come into us and reveal to us how we have been the enemies of God. God is kind even to the unthankful. (C.T., p. 206) The rubber meets the road when we truly appreciate that the nature of God is found in Jesus Christ, who is the Forgiveness of Sins. We must embrace the forgiveness of sins and impart it to all others if we hope to be saved. Christ’s patience with us might wake us up. When we begin to wake up, we had better start conquering all insult and ingratitude with a hardy, boisterous, all-embracing love and forgiveness. (Idem) Only then can we all assist one another in the hard work of perfecting His love in a world that has forgotten Him. Amen. ©wjsmartin Comments are closed.
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St. Michael and All Angels Sermons:
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