Christ Our Hope Reformed Episcopal Church

First Sunday after Trinity, 2010
Readings: Jeremiah 23:23-35; Ps. 73; 1 John 4:7-21; Luke 16:19-31
6 June a.d. 2010

Laying a Foundation in Love
Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be always acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength and my redeemer. AMEN.
Last week I said that Trinity Sunday marks our graduation from learning the Christian life to practicing it. The first two Sundays in Trinity are spent laying the only foundation that can be laid for that life: love. All our work, all our efforts, all our obedience, all our good deeds, will all be worthless without love. (1 Corinthians 13)
Now, contrary to every thing that American culture teaches & portrays, love is not automatic. Love is not spontaneous. Love does not come naturally. Rather, love is the gift of God by the Holy Spirit, and like every other gift from God, it must be cultivated. You are responsible to see that it grows. You must learn love, you must feed and nurture love by the Word, and, most of all, you must practice love. All these readings today speak this same message with one voice.
It is not by accident that both of these first two Trinity Sundays present Gospel readings that show people who love the world more than they love God. We always live under the danger of the world stealing our hearts from God, and must work to guard our hearts.
That is the message of this sermon: Love is the foundation of the Christian life, and your must cultivate it. If you love God, you must love your neighbour, and you must practice loving both.
This love is not the warm fuzzies. This love is not the love of infatuated teenagers, not some undefined, formless emotion. This love is a cause, not an effect. Stop wondering what love is. God clearly defines love for us in 1 John 5:3: “This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.”
Of course, this does not mean that you love God if you only observe his commandments outwardly. Outward obedience without the inward love of God is worthless. Our collect today prays that God would give us grace “that in keeping thy commandments we may please thee both in will and deed.” The deed is not enough; the will, that is, love, must accompany it.
1 JOHN
Both these first Trinity Sundays take their epistle readings from 1 John. Why? Because the other title of 1 John is the “Book Of How You Can Know You Are A Christian.” It tells you how to measure your own life by the standard of Christianity to see if you are one.
In today’s Epistle St. John makes four points:
I. We know God through love.
II. We see God through love
III. Love is made perfect in us
IV Obedience proves our love.
I We Know God Through Love.
St. John begins with a command: “Beloved, let us love one another.” But why? Why should we do that?
Because love is of God, love is the essence of God’s character, and we who are made in his Image must love if we are to reflect that image. Every one that is born of God and loves God loves the brethren also, John says. And yes, the inverse is also true: He who loves not knows not God.
But why? Because God is love. Opposites cannot exist together, fire and ice, west and dry, oil and water. If God’s love lives in you, then love will come out of you. Love is never silent, love is never fruitless. Love will grow and overflow and make itself known.
God’s love makes itself know to us by his sending his only begotten Son into the world so that through him we might live, and that through him our sins might be removed. This is the original of all love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us. The love within the Trinity overflowed into creation, and after man fell, it overflowed into redemption. Love is a gift, not a reward, and our love can only spring from God’s love.
No natural man loves God. That has been true since Adam sinned. That sin makes every one of us hate God by nature. “There is none righteous, no, not one.” (Ps. 14:3; Ps 53:3; Romans 3:10, 12)
St. John draws a conclusion from God’s example: If God loved us so much that he sent his only begotten Son to die for us while we were still his enemies, then we ought to love one another.
II. WE SEE GOD THROUGH LOVE
No man has seen God. God is a spirit and hath not a body like men. (cf. John 6:40; John 14:8-9)
But just as we know the wind is passing because it bends the tree tops, so we can see God by the evidence of his presence. If we know that love originates only from God and we see ourselves loving one another, and then we can be sure that God dwells in us, because his love shows in the love we show one another.
That love proves that God has given us his Spirit, and proves that we dwell in him, and he dwells in us.
But there is a test that even love must pass.
St. John writes, “I, John, have seen and bear witness that God has sent his Son as saviour of the world.” This is the foundation of all truth, and without truth love cannot exist. Therefore, whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, then God abides in him, and he abides in God.
Earlier, in 1 John 4:2-3, St. John has already given this test for all spirits, including all men. It is a very simple test:
“By this we know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God. And Every Spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. This is the spirit of Antichrist.”
John says, “I pass this test. I know and have believed the love that God has for us in Jesus Christ and bear witness to him.”
God is love. So whoever abides in love, abides in God, and God in him. Over and over John identifies God as love, and draws this conclusion: that love in a person furnishes sufficient evidence that God himself dwells in him.
III. LOVE MADE PERFECT IN US
Here is where our love is grown up, mature, “made perfect”, and why: “so that we may have boldness in the day of judgment.”
But that raises a question: which day of judgment? The Last Day? Or the day we must face judgment in this world? Every day?
Certainly we will be bold in the Last Day, covered in the blood of Christ, all our sins forgiven, but John adds something. He says we have this boldness because “as God is in this world, so are we.”
We are Christ in the world, and to the world. Christ had to face judgment and persecution in this world to show his faithful love for God.
So we as little Christs in this world show our faithful love for God in every tribulation and persecution. Yes, every one.
Perfect love casts out fear. Think of what this means, that we can walk through our whole lives confident that our Father’s love is so great that we need fear nothing in this world. NOTHING. Not our own sin, not our own failures (past or future), not any man or what any man can do to us, not any deadly catastrophe, no earthquake or fire or flood or tornado or hurricane or financial collapse. Perfect love casts out fear, and not fear of persecution only, but all fear.
All fear arises from doubting God’s love. There can be no fear in perfect love because fear denies love. All fear involves torment, and there cannot be torment in love. If God loves us, would he leave us in the torment of fear? No. The very idea contradicts love’s nature.
But wait! I’m a Christian. I love God. I love my neighbour. What if I still have fears?
If you still fear, then you haven’t yet been made perfect in love. You haven’t entered fully, in full trust, into God’s love. Period.
This is not my conclusion, this is God’s, by the Holy Spirit in the mouth of the Apostle John. But that is not the hopeless end of the matter, because John’s epistle does not describe the perfect Christian only, but all Christians. Freedom from fear is the maturity of love, not its infancy. It is the goal every Christian is working toward, so you may not be fearlessly perfect in love yet, but you will be. And you must keep training yourself in that direction.
IV. OBEDIENCE PROVES OUR LOVE
What proves your love for God? Your confession? Your donations? Your talk? No, only your obedience.
John says, If someone says he loves God and hates his brother, he is a liar. No middle ground or half-way house. Love God, love your brother; don’t love your brother, can’t love God.
Why is that? John explains: If you don’t love the brother you have seen, how can you love the God whom you have not seen? Your love for the unseen God can only be seen by your love for your seen brother. Period. God commands this: if you love me you must love your brother, too.
But wait! This is not new with Jesus and the New Testament. This is “the law and the prophets.”
In today’s Gospel, Abraham says that the law and the prophets are enough to teach anyone love. Just the mere words.
Every Sunday we hear Christ’s summary of the law: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul and all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matt. 22:37-40)
If the love of God is working in you, and the Spirit of God is living in you, then inevitably that will produce love for your brother.
And that’s why it is so alarming, so terrifying, if that love does not appear in you, because that means that no matter how nice, no matter how well-behaved, no matter how religious you are, God’s Spirit is not in you.
The Holy Spirit inevitably brings forth love working obedience in every Christian, and if you cannot find some trace of that in you, however slight and weak and immature it might be, then you are not a Christian.
So we who by nature lack both love and obedience, pray in today’s collect that God would graciously help us. Even as we look at our own lack of love, we still ask him to help us keep his commandments both in deed and will, i.e., love. Give us, O Father, the love we need!
And because he loves us, and has planted his love in us, we don’t have to fear. He will answer that prayer. ?
Glory be to the Father,
And to the Son,
And to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning,
Is now and ever shall be,
World without end, Amen.

The Collect for First Sunday after Trinity
O GOD,
the strength of all those
who put their trust in thee;
Mercifully accept our prayers; and because,
through the weakness of our mortal nature,
we can do no good thing without thee,
grant us the help of thy grace,
that in keeping thy commandments
we may please thee,
both in will and deed;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

First Sunday after Easter, 2010

Readings: Isa. 43:1-12; Ps. 103: 1 John 5:4-12; St. John 20:19-23

11 April a. d. 2010

I CREATED THEE

Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be always acceptable in thy sight, 0 LORD, my strength and my redeemer. AMEN.

(Headnote: This morning I re-read the sermon from last week, and could not but notice that in the providence of God, the message of last Sunday and this Sunday is identical: “Fear not! God has prepared glory for you.”

(Eastertide is the season when the implications of our salvation are openly shown: Christ’s divinity & manhood, Christ’s sacrifice, the Resurrection, the reality of our forgiveness and new life – what all that means in our lives. Now, for this Sunday . . . )

“Thus saith the LORD that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: For I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine.” Isaiah 43:1

Here God makes a startling claim to his chosen people: “I created thee, thou art mine. I know thee by thy name.”

Isaiah is speaking to apostate Israel, after he has just said to them, because you are blind and deaf to God’s words, because you have left serving me, the One True God and served idols made by your own hands, I am punishing you. I am sending nations to overrun you. I will all but destroy you for your sin.

Hard on the heels of that announcement comes this amazing statement of ownership, protection, blessing — and glory.

In the tenderest terms God describes how he will walk with them through the water & fire so they come thru dry, unburnt, and unharmed.

Now these same people had abandoned God. They had left obeying him and run after other gods. They had looked for safety in politics and in alliances, in all their own cleverness and devices. From God they had no right to expect protection or love, only fear and punishment and sure destruction: the wrath of God.

And yet, although they are unfaithful, although they are treacherous, God is still faithful to his covenant. God is still merciful. He will make good his promised lovingkindness toward them. And he begins reclaiming them by reminding them who he is:

“Thus saith the LORD that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: For I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine.” Isaiah 43:1

How had he created them? First, he formed them and all men in Adam from dust of the earth.

Second, he had called their ancestors and made them his own peculiar people in a covenant made spontaneously and voluntarily from his side. That covenant promised their final redemption from the Fall and eternal life with him.

Think: every one whom God has called and named is his own private possession, and he will not lose a single one of them. No one can pluck them out of his hand. (John 10:27-29).

So? What does thie mean to you and me? God’s speech to the Israelites is old news from the seventh century before Christ, 27 centuries old.

But wait: Who is God is addressing? Jacob? Israel? Why, by the time Isaiah is speaking Jacob had been dead hundreds of years, so God is talking about something much bigger than merely bringing a particular people back to a particular land. No, this is a message about his grace and favour towards all his chosen throughout all time. This incident is only one example of his working in history.

CREATED FOR GLORY

Whomever God has called to be his own, he created for his own glory. “I have created him for my glory, I have formed him, yea, I have made him.”

How is God’s glory revealed in them? In their redemption from sin, from death, & from every enemy of God and man. In Isaiah’s prophecies these are the Assyrians to the North, the Edomites to the east, the Chaldeans to the South, and the Canaanites and Egyptians to the west.

But more than in this single time-bound instance of salvation, God’s glory will be revealed in saving all those he loves & in resurrecting them to eternal life with him, just as old Israel was once returned to its home in the promised land.

How is this all possible? Because the eternal Son of God took on a man’s flesh, made under the law as a descendant of Jacob. Jesus Christ the Son of God made himself a creature to reveal his father’s glory in redeeming all the faithful from sin and death. As a man, he fulfilled perfectly all the duties of God’s covenant with Israel, and by his death on the cross offered mankind a new and perfected covenant, a New Testament in his own blood, shed to save the world.

This Jesus, true God and true man, rose again from the dead on the third day as the firstfruits, the first harvest, of all those whom God will raise from the dead to eternal life. He rose again as the new Adam of a new human race, redeemed from sin as the New Israel. He is the head of a new, mystical Body of all the redeemed from every age, a Body that fulfils all the promises that his father made to his human ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, & Jacob, who themselves now live forever in and by him.

Jesus Christ fulfils every prophecy in the Old Testament. Every word in the Old Testament points to him. To have faith in Jesus means to believe that he fulfils all God’s promises. Remember our Gospel from last week?

“These are the words that I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms concerning me. Then opened he their understanding that they might understand the scriptures, and said unto them, Thus it is written, & thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: and that repentance and remission should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.” (Luke 24:45-47).

The whole Old Testament reveals God’s will, to redeem mankind for his own glory. The New Testament is the record of how Jesus Christ fulfilled that.

Now why did God wait so long? Or, why didn’t he wait longer? We cannot know but we can know this: this was for God “the fullness of time”, this was the time and place that the Father chose to fulfil his purpose and reveal his glory.

Now why wasn’t Jesus born rich? A prince? Roman Emperor. The Father willed otherwise, using the worst of a fallen world and fallen humanity to glorify himself through his Son and to give us life and grace and hope.

YOU WERE CREATED FOR GLORY

Now with Jesus’ life in mind, think about yourself. Why weren’t you born rich? Why weren’t you born a prince? Why did God direct every moment of your life, every event, every circumstance, every coincidence, every gene in your body for thousands of generation to form you just exactly as you are?

Why didn’t God give you one of those lives where the wind is in your sails & you ease from success to success with ne’er a cross word or failure or slip? Why did God give you this cross to bear, this cross of poverty or disease or nearsightedness or persecution? Why did God order all of history so that you would end up exactly who you are and exactly when and where you are?

Why? Not because he wants to destroy you, but because he created you for glory. How? By your bearing your cross through the power of the Holy Spirit & the blood of Christ. That brings him glory and that brings you glory.

Fear not! God the Father created us for his glory, so what greater goal can we have than to live for his glory? If we seek first the glory of the kingdom of God, exactly as our Lord Jesus Christ sought it, then we will be able to bear all our crosses, because he will make us able to, and we will glorify him.

Think of it, imagine it: We will be exactly what God created us to be, what he has formed us to be every minute of our lives, we will fulfil God’s purpose for our creation. Our lives will become one continuous act of praise, and we will share in the glory of our risen Lord, to the endless glory of his Father. W
Glory be to the Father,

And to the Son,

And to the Holy Ghost.

As it was in the beginning,

Is now and ever shall be,

World without end, Amen.

The Collect for the First Sunday after Easter

ALMIGHTY Father,

who hast given thine only Son to die for our sins,

and to rise again for our justification;

Grant us so to put away the leaven

of malice and wickedness,

that we may always serve thee in pureness

of living and truth;

through the merits of the same

thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Easter, 2010

Readings: Is 25:1-9; Ps. 93; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-10.

4 April a. d. 2010

Jesus the Uncontrollable

Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be always acceptable in thy sight, 0 LORD, my strength and my redeemer. AMEN.
Jesus won’t stay put. Just about the time you think you’ve got him fixed in place, he disappears. Or, when you think you have safely escaped him, he pops up in front of you. When you think you’ve got him scoped out and understand him, he baffles you. He simply refuses to play by any rules but his own, or to be satisfied with whatever we are willing to give him. Jesus is utterly inconsiderate of your wants and feelings.

TODAY’S GOSPEL

Just when the disciples thought they understood and knew Jesus, they found out they didn’t know him at all, and had never understood him. They didn’t even understand the Scripture that he quoted. Even though they had spent three years walking with him every day, they still didn’t believe him.

Mary Magdalene had been mourning for Jesus. She had cried all night. Early in the morning, before daylight, she goes to his tomb. At least she can weep closer to his body, to whatever is left of him.

But when she arrives, the tomb has been opened! She peeks in, and sees an angel, who asks her why she is there, looking for the living among the dead.

Jesus won’t stay put. He won’t even stay dead.

Mary runs as fast as her feet will carry her to the disciples, but they don’t believe her. She doesn’t believe the angel, but tells Peter and John that somebody has stolen Jesus’ body. They run back to the tomb as fast as their feet will carry them.

Looking in, they see the grave clothes, and the napkin they had wrapped around Jesus’ face crumpled up and thrown to the other side of the tomb.

Jesus had not stayed put.

Yet for all this evidence, they were baffled. Jesus had told them many times that he must suffer and die and rise again, but the disciples had never understood, and certainly they had never believed Jesus’, well, crazy story about resurrection. We know for a fact that the disciples did not believe because the Bible tells us so. “Their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not.” Luke 24:11 Even after they looked in and saw the tomb empty, Peter still didn’t believe, only John.

Oh, eventually the disciples would believe, even doubting Thomas. They would believe because Jesus himself would come to them in their fear and unbelief and appear to them, and even shove his wounds in front of them and make them poke their fingers in so they could be 100% sure it wasn’t a trick.

That’s one of the best things about our faithful Saviour. He doesn’t leave us in unbelief. He comes and visits us and shoves his wounds in front of us to prove that he really is who he claims to be.

DEAD WITH CHRIST, RISEN WITH HIM

I know that on Easter we think that we are celebrating Jesus’ Resurrection, but we are not. We are celebrating our own resurrection, and our own crucifixion, and our own death.

That is what Jesus, speaking through his Word, teaches us, but it is so difficult for us to believe, such an all-embracing, penetrating claim of ownership that we are willing to settle for a lot less than everything Jesus desires for us. We bargain with Jesus.

“Jesus, I don’t really want to die with you. I mean, I want to live with you, but I really don’t want to put my flesh to death, not yet. Sure, I’m a Christian, but I’m not a fanatic.

“Jesus, you just don’t get the whole picture of my life. I have a lot of things going on right now, and I’m just too busy to die. I have so many things I love doing right here on this earth, and I just don’t want to give all that up and die, not yet. Later sure, I know we all have to die, but not now. And that cross. I’ll get around to picking that up, but later. Not now”

It won’t wash. The All-powerful Lord of Heaven and Earth won’t bargain with you. He wants all of you. He died to pay for you, and you belong to him, and he will have you.

Besides, you have already died with him, in baptism. “Ye are dead, and your life is hid in Christ.” You do not, cannot, and can never have any life apart from him. You try, and he will come find you and claim you. He may leave you there a while, even a long while, but Jesus will show up to claim his own.

And because you have died with Jesus in baptism, you have risen again with him, to a new life. And all those things you loved, all those sins and vices your flesh couldn’t live without, you have to die to them, too.

How will this ever happen? Knowing how strong the pull of your sin is, how powerful its hold on your life — whatever your particular sin may be, and you certainly know what it is, whether sexual sin, anger, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication, lying, drunkenness, inordinate affection, evil desires, covetousness — how can you ever put your flesh to death?

What Christ commands, he also enables. Listen, Christ is seated at the Father’s right hand and you are seated there with him. Do you think he will let you fail?

He tells you how your death to the world begins: “set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.” You have to change what you love, and love things above.

But what about all those things I love on earth? What about my wife, my husband, my children, my work? Don’t I have a duty to love them? Beloved, Christ is not saying you shouldn’t love those things, only that you must understand and hold them as gifts, as mirrors, as reflections, of that love that originates only from above, not on earth. Jesus is not taking anything away from you, he is giving you more, infinitely more, than you already have.

Beloved, two thousand years after the Resurrection, Jesus still won’t stay put. He won’t stay put in your life, and he won’t stay put in history. Jesus will come back. He refuses to remain conveniently out of sight, and one day he will return.

And when he appears again, you who died with him, you who have risen with him, you whose life is hid with him in God, you who have fixed your minds on thing above, will also appear with him, not with the chains of your flesh, not with earthbound affections, but with the glory of Jesus Christ himself. W

Glory be to the Father,

And to the Son,

And to the Holy Ghost.

As it was in the beginning,

Is now and ever shall be,

World without end, Amen.

The Collect for Easter Day

ALMIGHTY God,

who through thine only-begotten Son Jesus Christ

hast overcome death,

and opened unto us the gate of everlasting life;

We humbly beseech thee

that, as by thy special grace preceding us,

thou dost put into our minds good desires,

so by thy continual help we may bring the same to good effect;

through the same Jesus Christ our Lord,

who liveth and reigneth

with thee and the Holy Ghost ever, one God,

world without end. Amen.

Great Vigil of Easter, 2010
3 April a. d. 2010

Readings: Ps 27; 1 Peter 3:17; Matthew 27:57.

Jesus the Inconvenient

Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be always acceptable in thy sight, 0 LORD, my strength and my redeemer. AMEN.

Jesus was a liability. An embarrassment.

First, he wouldn’t keep mouth shut. Criticized Pharisees & Sadducees, his own people. Worse yet, he hung around with sinners and for them had good things to say.

Second, he wouldn’t stay put, & couldn’t be kept out of sensitive areas. First in the desert, then in Galilee, then Jerusalem, & next thing you know, he’s in the Temple driving out established businessmen & creating riot. Always turns up wherever least expected & least wanted.

Third, he was intolerant. He insisted on having everything his own way. No talking to Jesus.

Everything about him was inconsiderate, and just plain inconvenient. You just couldn’t get along with him except on his terms.

And now, even in death he is an embarrassment:

Embarrassment to Pilate – evidence of his lack of control over those whom he ought to rule. Evidence of how the Jews could manipulate him even into condemning a man he knew innocent. Evidence of another defeat at the Jews’ hands.

Embarrassment to his own followers – because there he hung, dead, undeniably room temperature dead, after they had given up everything to follow him. Now they had lost everything, and Jesus he was dead.

Embarrassment to the Jews – reminder of their crime in putting an innocent man to death. Reminder of their inability to answer him while alive. Reminder of all their trouble with him. Now in death still trouble, a body hanging from a cross that must be removed or it would defile all their religious observances for the Passover holiday.

So when Joseph of Arimathea shows up at Pilate’s palace begging for Jesus’ body, Pilate is only too glad to give it to him. “Sure – take it. Get him out of sight and into the ground. Let’s put end his inconvenient career once and for all.

Then Joseph and his friends take the corpse to Josephs’ new tomb, lay it there wrapped in a winding sheet, and then roll the stone over the opening and go home. It’s too late to do anything else, and that puts a period to Jesus’ whole short, disturbing, disappointing, & inconvenient career.

But even in the tomb Jesus is still inconvenient to the Jews. When they hear about his burial, they are furious – and afraid. Jesus dead could be even more inconvenient than Jesus alive.

They hurry to Pilate and whine, “While he was alive that deceiver said that after 3 days he would rise again. You need to seal that tomb and make sure it stays sealed until the third day passes. Otherwise, his disciples will sneak in there and steal the body and tell the people that he is risen from the dead. That will be a mess! Then we’ll be worse off than we were before we crucified him.”

But Pilate is fed up with them and their whining, and not in any mood to cooperate. “You have your own guard—go, seal it best you can and you guard it.”

So the chief priests and Pharisees hustle to the tomb and install seals on it, and leave a guard to watch it.

And that would be the last they ever saw of that inconvenient Jesus.

Glory be to the Father,
And to the Son,
And to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning,
Is now and ever shall be,
World without end, Amen.

The Collects for Easter

Almighty GOD,
who for our redemption didst give
thine only begotten Son to the death of the Cross,
and by his glorious resurrection hast delivered us
from the power of our enemy;
Grant us so to die daily from sin,
that we may evermore live with him
in the joy of his resurrection;
through the same thy Son Christ our Lord. Amen.

O God, who madest this most holy night
to shine with the glory of our LORD’s resurrection:
Stir up in that Church
that Spirit of adoption given to us in Baptism,
that we, being renewed both in body and mind,
may worship thee in sincerity and truth;
through Jesus Christ our LORD,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and evermore. Amen.