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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:
… 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 “inner self” 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. I have had the experience of flying our Aztec
for the past couple of weeks. In flying the Aztec had to maintain altitude,
heading and airspeed all at the same time. I looked outside and re-checked my
instruments. Looking back on these experiences, I thought about how these
principles of flying 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. If we are good pilots of our future,
then we shall listen to God and His Holy Word so that we might be on course.
We, of
course, need to rely on God and His Word to keep on course, as noted in the
collect, we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves. If we had a power to
help ourselves from within us, then Jesus would not have needed to come die for
us, we could have just used this magical power to help ourselves. But the
reality is, we do not have any such power and as such, are dependent on God to
help us keep on course. We are dependent on His Guidance to steer us through
life. When we fail to listen to that
guidance, our problems occur.
It should
also be noted that our life here will be a lot more pleasant if we stay on
course. A while back, I read something
which said at the end of our lives, the words will be “Thy will be done.” The question is will it be us saying it or
God? We need to listen to God and do His
Will. His guidance will bring us on a
path to success in our lives, if we listen to His guidance. We have to initiate
the contact/relationship with Him. He does not do it on His own. He waits for
an opening into our hearts. He will not force His way in. He waits until He is
ready to be received willingly.
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 tell 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.
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. This is keeping us within the faith of
Christ, by the help of the Holy Spirit, may we remain in faith of Him in our
hearts, souls and minds. It means we need the help of the Holy Spirit to stay
on track on this life, so we may stay the course and fight the good fight and
make it to see our beloved Lord in heaven.
Living the faith requires us to restrain our bodies and our minds from
doing foolish/evil actions that hinder our walk towards heaven. This is a very
difficult task and 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 actions when you
are able to act is not real. You must
actualize what you claim to believe. One must convert their stated beliefs into
their actions, in order for their belief/faith to have any reasonable meaning.
Without actions, the faith that one believes is not truly real, if it is not
acted upon. If you claim to believe one way and act another, you are by
definition a hypocrite. 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
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. We have to
remain in control of our good sides. We are in a sense like the character
Gollum from Lord of the Rings, who had a good personality and a bad one.
Unfortunately for him, he let his evil side possess him and it won out. Unlike
him, we need to make sure our good side is winning.
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. It requires
believers to support each other to help spread the Word and also to help fellow
believers stay within the guidelines that God has set for us. To do that we
must turn to God and the Holy Ghost and Christ for help. All of them will help
us win our battles, but we first have to listen to what They say. We must truly
be guided by the faith in our Lord.
Matthew
gives us a fine example of faith that demonstrates how we must be guided by our
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 we do not act for Him, then we do not truly believe in Him.
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!
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
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