Sermon – Reverend Jack Arnold - Time and Action
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 have no power of ourselves to help ourselves; Keep us both outwardly in our bodies, and inwardly in our souls; that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul …
In the Collect, we acknowledge to God that we cannot direct our own lives; if we listen to our own selves we are without guidance. Consider the airplane flying, it orders its movements according to Polaris, the Pole Star of True North. If a pilot flies guided by his “inner self” he soon knows only where he is: at the controls, and little else. Like the pilot who needs to know where the True North is so he can orient himself, we need God’s guidance to move towards our goal of eternal life with Him. While flying my aircraft, I have to maintain altitude, heading and airspeed all at the same time. I look outside and re-checked my instruments against what I am seeing to ensure that I am remaining on course. Looking back on these experiences, I thought about how these principles could be applied to being a Christian. The Holy Scriptures are our instruments and we re-check our progress in the world by the instruments of His Word to make sure we are on the right heading and not stagnating in our progress as pilgrims. God is also our infallible co-pilot, always making sure that we stay on course. He has the charts that lead us towards heaven, the Holy Scriptures. We just have to use them.
In order to keep on course we need to rely on God and His Word. We ourselves cannot help ourselves. If we had a power to help ourselves from within us, then Jesus would not have needed to come to die for us, we could have just used this magical power to help ourselves. We are dependent on God to give us guidance to help us keep on course. We will deviate from our course if we do not have God as our One True Navigator. We will get easily lost and not find our way back if we do not rely on His Navigational Aids of the Scriptures and the Holy Ghost. When we fail to listen to that guidance, our problems occur.
We have to let Him into our hearts in order to let Him guide us. If we do not do this, then how can we expect to have Him guide us, if we are not open and ready to receive Him and His Guidance? We have to be willing and ready in order to receive His Guidance, then we have to act upon the information His Guidance gives us.
Thus, when Paul tells us to keep our bodies under control of our minds and our minds to be guided by God only, He helps move us on course. This ties in very well with the collect’s request for God to keep us outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls. It links the theme of both spiritual and physical moderation extremely well. We are to be true and honest in all our dealings, both physical and fiscal and to live our faith. His Epistle ties in well with the theme of the collect to keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls. To do this, we must live the faith. Living the faith requires us to restrain our bodies and our minds from doing foolish/evil actions which hinder our walk towards heaven. This is a very difficult task, one we will slip up from time to time on, but as long as we repent and return back to the course God has set, all will be well.
Being honest with others and especially ourselves is one of the most important things we can do. If we are not honest with ourselves to start, how can we be honest with others? For only by living our faith can we demonstrate that we in fact have faith. For professed faith with no action when you are able to act is not real. You must actualize what you claim to believe. We are called to be as God wants us to be, not as we would be without His guidance and help. God does this, not that we would miss fun, but rather that we would enjoy true happiness.
Keeping evil thoughts under control can be a difficult task, but we do not have to face it alone, we have the Holy Ghost in our lives and other Christians and friends that support us and guide us, that can help us battle evil thoughts. Of course we need to be willing to talk to our good friends within the Church about our problems and evil thoughts and listen to their advice, and more importantly to the Holy Ghost’s advice to combat these evil thoughts and drive away the temptations of the devil. As we have discussed before, Christianity is not a hermitic religion, but a social one. Christianity did not flourish because its followers were hermits, it flourished because its followers evangelized the religion throughout the known world. It is an active religion and it requires its followers to actively participate in it by spreading the Good news.
Matthew gives us a fine example of faith that demonstrates how we must be guided by faith in our Lord. The woman who cries unto Jesus is a Gentile, just like us. Just like us she longs for His Mercy. In her case, she asks only for the mercy rejected by others, the crumbs of the Master’s Table[1]. This is the essence of our faith, we are not worthy to dine at His Table, no more than dogs are meet to dine at our table. Yet, what is left over is more than enough for us. And we are content with that, knowing what miserable creatures we are. And, even more important, even knowing what miserable creatures we are, Jesus offers to share His Table with us. He is not content for us to grovel for His crumbs. If He offers His love for us, should we not love Him back, by acting upon our faith? If you truly believe, you are compelled to act upon the faith you have. Action is the key principle, the cornerstone of the faith of Christians. Christ set this example for us by doing, that is action. This is seen throughout Scripture, but nowhere is it as clear as His Action of sacrificing Himself for our sins on the Cross. This is the prime example of action not just diction. Action is far more important than diction only. Diction is nice, but it needs to be paired with Action in order for it to have any sort of meaning.
It is also important to understand if one loves God, He still has the exact same amount of love available for any other person or group. His love is infinite, even if it wasn’t, love multiplies in use! We do not have to worry about God running out of love at all. There is more than enough to go around!
Recognize how poorly you do with your own guidance, accept His Guidance, stay on course and accept the fruits of that action.
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.
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
