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Sermon – Reverend Jack Arnold - Time and Action
Church of the Faithful Centurion
- Descanso, California
Today’s
sermon tied the Epistle and Gospel together talked, as is oft the case, of the
need for action, not simply diction, the general content is in forewords above.
Consider the words from the Collect, wherein we ask God to give us … the
spirit to think and do always such things as are right; that we, who cannot do
any thing that is good without thee, may by thee be enabled to live according
to thy will …
This is kind of a follow-on to last week’s Collect. We are asking God to give us direction that
we might know right from wrong and follow the right way. If we listen to our hearts and minds, like
the aviator, mariner or adventurer without a compass, we will soon be
hopelessly lost. With the compass God
gives us, we can find the One True Way, much like the compass always points
North.
The Collect acknowledges that without God’s intervention through the
Holy Spirit in our lives we cannot do anything that is good or right. Indeed,
our own very natures prevent us from doing what is right. Our nature is inclined towards being away
from God, but with the help of the Holy Spirit, we can reset our nature to be towards
God. We just have to ask for His help and not just ask for it, but willingly
receive it. By receiving, I mean that we
have to be willing and ready listeners, ready to listen to what He wants us to
do, and then act upon that. We have to have His will be our will. We have to
put aside what we want to do, and put what God wants us to do in the forefront.
This is a very difficult matter, a concept we have always struggled with.
This is nothing new.
As Paul reminds us we have a common spiritual past, regardless of our
actual lineage. Spiritually, we are
descended from the Jews of the Exodus.
Their God is our God; God directed their actions. He was a Trinity then as He is today. Their reality is our reality, whether we
choose to understand or accept it. Our forefathers drank of “the same spiritual
drink; for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock
was Christ.” We are like them in that we
stubbornly, due to our own nature, resits His will. We murmur and grumble, when
in fact we should be praising Our Father Almighty. We are also like them, in
that if we do not look up to Him who was lifted up on the cross, like Moses
lifted up the snake in the wilderness, we will perish. However, if we will look
up to Him who was crucified on the cross, and believe on Him and his name, we
shall be saved.
Those who have gone before provide examples, both good
and bad. We should aspire to follow the good examples of those who have gone
before and not the bad examples that they have left behind. In this letter Paul
addresses the bad and suggests we should see what their ill behavior gained
them before we set our course and not after.
We should not strive to emulate the murmurings of the people, though we
may feel that way sometimes, as we can learn from their bad examples. We must see their bad examples and do not
emulate those; on the other side, we must see the good examples, and strive to
emulate them.
Following after the Jews, we should strive to not
incorporate those bad examples, but the good examples into our lives. And, lest
we think ourselves ever so special, he reminds us we are subjected to no
special temptations, only those “as is common to man.” Every man on this planet is a sinner who
desperately needs help, every bit as much as the next, albeit likely in differing
ways. In sin, all are equally lost to
death, unless they accept the saving grace of Jesus Christ. Which is to say,
common to everybody within the human race who is not Christ, which is all of
us. This is another example of the adage, “Those who are ignorant of history
are doomed to repeat it.” It is an old
saw, but one as valid today as the first time it was used.
That is a reason the Old Testament should be read and
reviewed and compared to the New Testament, to see where we came from, how we
got here and where we should go next. It works like a process flowchart, from
the beginning from Adam, down through the various figures of the Old Testament,
the flowchart ends at the arrival of Christ and the Holy Ghost, and in our
redemption. Analyzing this flowchart, we can see our temptations and sins are
nothing new, and sins are a waste of our spiritual life. We must practice
continuous improvement, kaizen as the
Japanese called it, and or total quality management of our spiritual life.
Just like total quality management requires each and
every member of the organization work together to achieve quality and serve the
needs of the customer, so too, do the Scriptures require all believers work
together, to serve the needs of those we serve, namely other believers and the
Church. We must continuously improve ourselves in our day to day lives, not
just in the church, but in our businesses and personal lives. This is the
message Paul is conveying to Corinthians, that we must see how our forefathers
acted, emulate their good qualities and dispose of the wasteful, bad, sinful
qualities. We must continually improve
upon ourselves throughout our lives. We must continually work on improving our
bad qualities and making them into good qualities. Only God, the Holy Spirit,
and Christ can really provide us the spiritual guidance we need to do this. We
must trust that they will give us the correct guidance when needed.
Speaking of lessons, when Saint Luke recounts the story of the prodigal
son we oft think ourselves as that prodigal one returning to God so late in
life. Yet there is far more to be
learned than the titular son.
Consider the two sons. The older
is a wonderful young man who strives to please his father in everything he
does. The younger son asks for his
inheritance, now rather than later, and sets off to spend it wastefully in a
far off land. In dire straits, he
decides to go home to his father and beg to be allowed to live as one of his
servants. He decides to tell his father,
“Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy
to be called thy son…” Before he can get
the words out of his mouth, his father welcomes him, gives him new clothing and
calls the servants to prepare a fatted calf for a big party. The elder son is very angry and hurt. He asks his father what he did wrong; he
followed his instructions every day to the best of his ability, worked hard,
and yet his father had never even given a small party for him. The father answered, saying, “Son, thou are
ever with me, and all that I have is thine.”
“It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy
brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost and is found.”
This story, like that of the workers in the vineyard has a number of
meanings. Like the father in the story,
God wants us to be His faithful child, but rejoices when we return to Him. Like the prodigal son, we should be grateful
to live long enough to return to Him. We
should recognize when we have erred and strayed from our ways like lost sheep;
as soon as we recognize that, we should immediately return to Our Lord in
prayer, asking for His forgiveness. Like
the father in the story, our Lord will warmly welcome us back with open arms.
The moral of the younger son’s story is that God is always waiting for
us, and if we are not too late, we can always return to Him. Today preferably rather than tomorrow! He
will always accept us with opening arms, but we must make sure it is not too
late. Don’t wait until you die! If you feel you have erred and strayed, repent
now! Do not put off until tomorrow your repentance. If you are led by the Holy
Spirit to repent, please do it today, you may not live to see tomorrow.
Do not let the sun go down on your sins and wrath, you may not live to
see another day! On the other hand, consider the oldest son, let us learn from
his mistake and be joyful when our brothers and sisters come home to our
family. Let us put aside the anger and jealousy and replace those hurtful
emotions with the emotions of pure love and joy! Let us join in the celebration
and not begrudge the fatted calf. We
should not be jealous or angry when our long lost brethren return to the flock
of Christ! We should be merry and joyful they have returned to us! Do not let
your pride become anger and cloud your emotions like it does so many of us.
But, rather see a sinner coming back into His flock and rejoice in he is no
longer headed towards The Pit!
Action counts. For by their
actions ye shall know them.
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
