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Sermon – Reverend
Jack Arnold - Time and Action
Church
of the Faithful Centurion - Descanso, California
Today’s sermon brought the Collect, Epistle and Gospel
together because as is always the case
there is a unifying message in the Scripture for this Sunday.
The First Sunday in Advent
The Collect.
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LMIGHTY God, give us grace that we may
cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in
the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in
great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious
majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal,
through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever.
Amen.
¶ This Collect
is to be repeated every day, after the other Collects in Advent, until
Christmas Day.
Today’s
Collect, like almost all of them, starts out asking God’s Grace, His Help, His
intervention to allow us to turn our backs on evil and our own desires that we
might make His Desire our desire.
If you will understand how much we fall short in our “natural” desire,
you will understand that to cast off the works of darkness and don the armour
of light, we must turn to Christ, who came to visit us, born in a simple and
humble inn in Bethlehem. As His
manner of birth, we must be humble as well, not boastful and proud like the rich[1],
but meek and lowly, to embrace light and cast off the works of darkness. Though He came in a rather humble
manner, He shall return in a glorious and majestic manner, a rather stark
contrast to His original incarnation, leaving no doubt who has come to lead us.
We
must embrace the lightness and reject the darkness. We do this by allowing the
Holy Ghost into our hearts, to shine the light in our hearts and expel the
darkness. Only then can we truly don the armor of light. We need to train our
brains and minds and souls in this way, so that we can act for Christ. We have
been called to do these things, as sons and daughters of God, but only with a
conscious effort on our part to accept Him and more importantly to listen to
Him, can we do these things. To do these things we have to live it.
This
point brings us straight to the Epistle. Paul tells us that we need to live the
life we aspire to. He cautions us
to not borrow for what we do not need that we might owe others nothing but our
love. That way we will not have a
worldly obligation to any who might hold that over us to influence our path
away from that Christ set out for us. We ideally owe no man anything but that
of our love. Paul asks us to love
our neighbors, by love he means to take care for them as we would for ourselves
or our own close relations. Not
necessarily to “give” them money, but to help them in self-sufficiency that
they might prosper both in soul and body.
This
takes us right into the Gospel according to Saint Matthew. We must not be for God in speech only,
but in deed. When Jesus came into
this world, He came knowing the true purpose of His coming, He came knowing how
He would leave, He came knowing the cost at which our souls would be accounted
at perfect. The story of Palm
Sunday is the same as that of the Nativity. For on Palm Sunday, there was joy in the crowd at the
arrival of the Savior, much as there was in the stable at the arrival of the
Child Jesus. Yet, many in the very
same crowd who cried “Hosanna” on Palm Sunday were there early on Good
Friday. For what did they cry
then?
“Crucify
Him, Crucify Him!”
Pilate
asked for them to cry for mercy, they cried for vengeance on their Lord and
Savior!
A
swift 180° turn from “Hosanna to the Son of David.” How quick are men to turn upon that of a
good thing. As Charles Spurgeon said "It is an astounding thing and a
proof of human depravity that men do not themselves seek salvation. They even
deny the necessity of it and would sooner run away than be partakers of
it." This is due to our
natural inclination to choose the fruit of death rather than the bread of life,
which comes from the Baker of Life, Jesus Christ.
I was reading Genesis 40 a while back with my parents and
it struck me how the tale of the baker and the butler of the Pharaoh, with each
with three days to their eventual fates, was a parallel to Christ. Why the two had differing fates is not
clear in Scripture, but for certain Christ is the Baker of Life, and who in
three days arose from the dead to have conquered death. The Bread of Life is
Christ’s sacrifice for us, and every time we partake of it in Holy Communion
and listening to the Gospel and the Epistle, we must always remember the cost
of our freedom from death. Also with the cost comes conditions, namely that we
profess Christ as Our Saviour and to put Him first in our lives, love God with
all our heart, soul and mind, and love our neighbors as ourselves. We have
heard this before in the Summary of the Law. This is what the Law of God
condenses down to, and this is what all our laws that we set forth must be
based upon, for there is no other rational or foundational base so great and
solid as Christ. He must be the Chief Cornerstone in our lives, if our lives
are to have any meaning. There are those who He is not chief in, and they are
those who may vainly profess His name with their lips, but not in their
actions. This is a great sorrow for them. They have not kept the Word of God in
their hearts, though they may shallowly profess it with their lips. It is
action and not diction that counts!
We
must not be like them. We must put
on the great Armour of Light and to reject our former lives of sin and vanity. We must switch from our old selfish lives to a new
unselfish, Christ filled life. It
is something we always struggle with, but God never gives up on us. We can be
comforted by the assurance He will never give up on us. We just have to never
give up on Him and do our very best to follow what He says. As long as we
repent from our sin and turn back to God in our private prayers and devotion,
he will wipe our slate clean. I know I have a hard time keeping on the straight
and narrow path, so I am glad He left the Scriptures to guide us.
Through
following His Word and Instructions, we shall be given a greater reward than
anything existent on the Earth; past, present or future, that gift of immortal
life, life for all eternity, that will outlast this physical world. To don the
armour of light is not merely putting it on, you have to utilize it, and
utilize the helmet, the buckler and sword (Scriptures and Christ’s
teachings). You need the whole
complement of weaponry to go into combat with the Prince of Darkness in this
fallen world. And you not only need the complement of weaponry, but we need to
train with these weapons. The best way is to be reading Scriptures regularly
and discussing the meaning of it with your fellow believers. This way you can
ingrain the Scriptures in your heart and be ready to do battle with those who
follow the Prince of this World.
Make
no mistake, we are engaged in a World War with the Prince of Air, the Prince of
this world for the souls of men, starting with our own, a World War which has
been going on since the beginning of time. But we
know the ending is in our favor for certain, for the Book of Revelations tells
us so.
As
individuals we may not experience victory here on earth. We may struggle with problems in this world and our own,
our whole lifespan on this planet. We may not see and savor that victory
here on earth; but we know in the end He will be victorious as we know the
Savior. We will win, for we are on
His Side.
Cast
off the dull worn robes of darkness, which lack luster, give no warmth, protect
not from the heat, and put on the shining glorious armour of light. So kitted up, we walk in light, not in
darkness where we may stumble and fall. Unlike moths, for us light is life, not the
destruction of darkness.
Come,
put on the Armor of Light and go forth to destroy that last enemy, death!
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]
It is not that worldly
wealth is, in and of itself, bad, but rather the attitude it can bring, one of
self-worth beyond that which is correct.
Wealth often brings to us a “better than thou” attitude, which soon
turns to “Holier than thou.” The
kind of thing that was referred to when Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel
to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the
kingdom of God.” Mark 10.25
