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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 and is partly contained in the forewords above.
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, just the
goodness of God in it; this is the love that God gives to us to give to others.
As the collect points out it is the very bond of peace and of all virtues. In
other words, love is the bond that holds peace and is behind all virtious
qualities that can be found in people though the help of the Holy Ghost. Love
is one of the prime driving forces of the Christian Faith, through the Holy
Spirit’s guidance, that causes God’s cause to be advanced here on earth. It is
a purely unselfish emotion, in its purest form it is an emotion that does not
cause evil or bad things to happen, but to cause wonderful and good things to
happen. It stems forth from God the Father, spreads through Jesus and the Holy
Ghost and when we open our hearts to it, we can do some really amazing things,
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; 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 effect positive change on the
world around us?
In
connection with the Collect, the Collect talks about one who is brought before
God without love in his heart is a dead person. Paul makes this very point in
his Epistle, saying that no matter what talents we have, without the Love of
God in our hearts, it is all for naught.
He is the reason 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, while here we will never 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 Plan,
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.
Having
Love in our hearts is a must if we are to perform actions for Him here on this
world. In order to have love in our hearts, we must be open to the Holy Spirit.
Only then can we truly receive His Love to spread around. And do not fret,
there is an unlimited supply of love for everyone. 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. This is the key and it applies to us as well. 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. Knowing what we want, we
should not let others in this life rebuff us and hinder us from following Him.
This is one of many lessons we can take from the blind man.
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 he acted on and gained what he lacked. Will we have the faith to act?
True love
is Faith, Hope, Charity[2].
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
[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 all three
persisted and of the three, Charity
never failed.
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