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.
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Consider these words from the Collect:
… that all our doings without charity are nothing worth; Send thy Holy Ghost, and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity …
In the Collect, we acknowledge to God that if we have not charity, nothing we do is worth anything; we then ask Him to send the Holy Ghost into our hearts with the precious gift of charity. Webster tells us that Charity is love; universal benevolence; good will; the word which properly denotes love. What it really means is Love in Action! Like many areas of our Christian development, we will never fully get there. But we shall make progress so long as we do not give up! As Winston Churchhill once said “Never, never, never, never EVER GIVE UP”. So should we never give up in our Christian development. We may stumble and fall at times, but if we get up and keep going and return to our Lord, then all will be well in time.[1] Properly understood charity is the Love of God, that perfect love, to which man should aspire. Charity is not giving oodles of money away to an organization, hoping to make yourself look better, like many modern “philanthropists.” Charity is the purest form of love there is, with no self-seeking motivations, but just the goodness of God in it, and this is the love that God gives to us to give to others. It is to help people with the love in your heart that Christ and God has given us, to enable us to act on His behalf here on this Earth. Love is not selfish or wasteful, but kind and abundant. We are to be agents of good change, not that of bad, and with Charity, we will act with love towards one another. If we do not have love in our hearts towards one another, how can we expect to be able to have any positive change on the world around us?
Paul tells us no matter our gifts, talents and so called accomplishments, without the Love of God, we are nothing and have done nothing. He is the reason that we are here in this life and He is the one we must act for. It must be clear to us that our understanding here on earth is limited, we will never here see the fullness of God’s plan, yet the part most clear is the love we are to have one for another, to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, for no reason other than we know that is right so to do. It does not matter to us we will never see the fullness of His plans, each of us are a small piece of a much bigger plan. And all of us small pieces work together to fulfill the bigger plan. We only need to find our part in the plan and act upon that, again with Charity in our hearts. Charity is vital to our Christian life. We need to have it within us to perform good works for Our Lord. For if we do not have true love or Charity within our hearts, we cannot act for God. When Paul talks about God’s great plans, he uses the phraseology “through a glass, darkly”, which is very interesting inasmuch as CS Lewis uses a variation to describe earth as compared to heaven. He calls the earth The Shadowlands and says in heaven all is clear and bright, not dark and muddled as here on earth. So, here our understanding is limited, it will not always be so. That will be fulfilled when we pass the Pearly Gates into heaven, and in order to do that, we have to have faith, and have good works acted upon with charity. If one of these ingredients are missing, we are not acting according to what He wants for us. So, we have to believe with all our heart in God and Christ, and act upon that belief with great Charity.
As they were coming in to Jericho, Jesus told the disciples of what was to come, yet they could not grasp their leader would submit to such treatment on their behalf. He was the Conqueror; in a sense they were right, He came to conquer death for us, not the Roman Empire. As they went along, they encountered the blind man who was, like many of us are, blind. His blindness was of the eye, not the heart, he knew the power of God, and of love. The blind man who wanted his sight and knew Jesus had The Power. He cried unto the Lord and was rebuffed by His People. Did he give up? No, he cried the more. As we should not let others discourage us from following the Lord, indeed we should increase our prayers and serving fervently. When Jesus heard him, he turned and asked what the man wanted. MY SIGHT! No generalizations, no beating about. The blind man asked of Him what he truly wanted. Ask and it shall be given unto you. He lacked sight, not vision. Nor, it might be added did he lack faith. We should ask God to have to sight and hearing that we might see, hear and act upon the Word. To some, the faith he had might seem a blind faith, but it was one that he acted on and gained what he lacked. Will we have the faith to act?
True love is Faith, Hope, Charity[2].
Be of God - Live of God - Act of God
What is Quinquagesima?
Quinquagesima, or, in full, Quinquagesima Sunday, is the name for the Sunday next before Ash Wednesday in the Catholic (Universal or Whole) Church Calendar.
The name Quinquagesima originates from Latin quinquagesimus (fiftieth), referring to the fifty days before Easter Sunday using inclusive counting, which counts both Sundays (normal counting would count only one of these).
Since the forty days of the Lenten fast included only weekdays, the first day of Lent, Ash Wednesday, succeeds Quinquagesima Sunday by only three days. The earliest Quinquagesima Sunday can occur is February 1 and the latest is March 7. The Roman Church no longer observes much of the Christian Year, including Quinquagesima and the two immediately before it — Sexagesima and Septuagesima Sundays.
The contemporary service books of many claiming to be Anglican provinces do not use the term but it remains in the Book of Common Prayer.
The 17-day period beginning on Septuagesima Sunday spanning Sexuagesima and Quinquagesima Sundays was intended to be observed as a preparation for the season of Lent, which is itself a period of spiritual preparation for Easter. In many countries, however, Septuagesima Sunday marks the start of the carnival season, culminating on Shrove Tuesday, more commonly known as Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday.
[1] To quote Winston Churchill, “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.” (29 October 1941)
[2] The three Gloster Gladiator fighters Faith, Hope and Charity defended Malta against the Italian Air Force during the early part of the siege of Malta in World War II. Legend has it that all three persisted and of the three, Charity never failed.
