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Bishop
Ogles’ Sermon
Bishop Jerry is on travel
today. He was preaching at a
Korean Presbyterian Church in Atlanta today, meeting with them and conducting a
service in English for the non-Korean speaking young people.
Sermon - Rev Jack Arnold
Church of the Faithful Centurion -
Descanso, California
Today’s sermon brought
the Collect, Epistle and Gospel together and is partly contained in the
forewords above.
Consider these words from the
Collect:
… we, who are justly punished for
our offences, may be mercifully delivered by thy goodness …
In the Collect, we ask God who knows we should be “…justly
punished for our offences, may be mercifully delivered by thy goodness, for the
glory of thy Name; through Jesus Christ our Saviour …” To get into heaven we need to be
accounted as perfect. Yet, we
cannot be “cured” of sin nor “improved” to perfection. So how do we solve this
irregularity? We are imperfect creatures with free will, the most confounding
combination ever created for salvation.
We know we ourselves cannot solve our dilemma, Who can? There is a solution for us! Consider the words of John Newton near
the end of his life, “Although my memory's fading, I remember two things very
clearly: I am a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior!” The answer lies in
the latter part of Newton’s quote. Our sins are justly punished by eternal
damnation, yet there is hope in our Lord.
For eternal salvation is the delivery promised to each of us by
Jesus. This is the reward of the
race we run here on earth. Our
race is for that eternal prize, not just, as they say, filthy lucre. It is the complete opposite of filthy
lucre and an extremely pure one. It is for the promise of an eternal, unending
life, to be spent with our Lord and Savior Jesus. It is for the promise of a
world unaffected by the tarnish of sin, unblackened by the sinful deeds of
imperfect beings. It is an unshadowed world. It shall be true happiness at last, to meet with our beloved
family, our Christian heavenly family, friends and beloved pets.
Eternal salvation is a far more valuable prize than
anything we could possibly acquire here on Earth. It is in fact a priceless treasure, truly priceless, except
for the death of our Saviour and resurrection. That is the only price involved
with our eternal freedom. We have to keep this foremost in our thoughts as we
continue to run the race set before us!
Keep the eyes on the prize, as it were! As my grandfather was fond of saying, “Keep your eye on the
doughnut, not the hole.” That
means keeping the important things in sight at all times, excluding the
unimportant.
Particularly when things get hard, we must keep our
end goal fixed firmly in our mind’s eye in order to stay on the path. In order
to stay focused on the path, we must always remember that the end, the arrival
in Heaven will outweigh all of the sacrifices, blood, sweat and tears we shed
in this life. Paul assures us our efforts will give us a reward greater than
even our pitiful minds can imagine, if we but stay the course.
Our eyes should be focused on the finish line, not
our “competition.” The only thing
which counts is that we each cross the finish line.
So how do we run the race?
With our eyes focused tightly on the finish line, not
on those around us, wondering are they doing better than we are? That is not a useful question. The useful question is, “Am I doing the
best I can?” And, remember this is a Team Effort. We have to want to win, and
in order to win the race set before us; we have to perform actions. We need to
act upon the Word of Scripture, the message, which is to promote the Gospel of
Jesus Christ and preach it to all nations, as in the Great Commandment. But we
must first start with our neighbors and work our way outward. It must be a team
effort, we cannot all do it alone. We need support along the way, especially
when things get tough, we need our Christian buddies to give us moral support
and encouragement from the Word.
We want the Christian Team to win.
If an outsider joins, they join the team fully from then on. We need to give each team member all
the help we can. A deathbed[1]
conversion gains the same prize in the end as a life long Christian. The life long Christian will have had
the more rewarding life here on earth, but eternity is a long time after that.
So, with that in mind, we must DO our best and not just say it, and we do that
by acting upon the Word and not just reading it, but acting.
We are all so far from perfect that Holier than Thou
is pretty damning praise. Don’t
even go there. The best you can
really do is not to be as evil as another, even that is pretty doubtful. But,
we can do our best for our Lord and that is what really matters.
The Gospel for today, the very important parable of
the vineyard, also gives us very good advice on the conduct of our daily lives
and contains a crucial key to happiness.
There is the lesson that the deathbed conversion gains the same prize of
eternal life as the lifelong follower, but there is a lot more in it for every
day life.
It is a fine lesson in “buyer’s remorse” or coveting
of jobs or similar concepts. If
you got a good deal, it does not change because someone else got a “better”
deal. Take what you got, go forth
and be happy. Don’t complain
because somebody else got the same deal as you did sooner. Other meanings
abound. For a very direct application,
what this means is “cradle” Christians are no more likely to go to heaven than
this morning’s convert. They just
get to enjoy the Christian experience longer. So let us not begrudge those who are newly converted, but let
us rejoice that they have been saved! As Christ said, we should rejoice that
one sinner has repented of his ways! One note, if you wait until the last minute to join the gang,
your time here might end before you get around to it. So don’t wait
until tomorrow to act, do it today while you still have time!
Sometimes people act like being a Christian is an
unpleasant experience that they will do when they get a round TUIT. It is not. Christians aren’t perfect, they just have more fun being
imperfect and imperfectly trying to improve!
Christ gave us eternal life. But, we have to accept it. Once you accept it, start living as if
you will live forever. You will
and you will have to live with your actions for ever! So Act early and Act
often!
There is but one way to heaven.
That easy to find, easy to
follow, easy to hike path does not lead to the summit where eternal life in the
real world awaits. Open your heart
to the Holy Ghost, use His Power to follow our Lord to God who awaits in
heaven.
Heaven is at the end of an uphill
trail. The easy downhill trail
does not lead to the summit.
The time is now, not tomorrow. The time has come, indeed. How will you ACT?
It is by our actions we are known.
Be of God - Live of God - Act of God
[1]
Of course, you must
consider that overshooting a deathbed conversion will result in no conversion,
thus no eternal life. Convert
earlier than needed rather than later than needed. My dad talks of a bombing range in England, Cowden, on the
edge of a cliff. If you dropped
short, you got a score. If you
dropped long, you missed the whole country. Same idea here.
