Second Sunday after Trinity

If you enjoy this, the entire AOC Sunday Report is RIGHT HERE!

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:

… who never failest to help and govern those whom thou dost bring up in thy stedfast fear and love; Keep us, we beseech thee, under the protection of thy good providence, and make us to have a perpetual fear and love of thy holy Name…

We must fully understand and acknowledge God will help and lead us, but only if we will look to Him for that help and leadership.  We need His Help, in the form of the Holy Ghost, to direct our hearts, minds and souls to look to Him for that Help in our time of need.  Thus, we continually ask God, through the offices of the Holy Ghost, to help us understand we actually need help and be open to accepting it.

Speaking of time of need; when do we need God?  Only when we are falling short of perfection.  That would be all the time.

The Epistle is a great illustration of why we need guidance from the Holy Ghost all the time.  The world is not a nice place and at times it gets depressing to be in. However, there is one person that is always there for us, regardless of how dreary and awful it gets. And that is God, and He has a way to comfort us in these times, through His Love and the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost is here to help us spread that love, and to help us figure out what we need to do, to make our corner of the world a better place. But how do we get His Love?  If we want God’s love, we have to love those around us.  That is pretty easy.  It is easy to love people.  The problem is that we actually have to act on that claim of love, not just say we love them.  We have to give of our time and effort to help those around us who have problems. Loving our neighbor as ourselves is harder than it sounds.  John tell us “And this is his commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment. And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us.”

So how far do we have to go to fulfill our obligation to love our fellow beings?  We have a leader, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is not only the Propitiation for our sins[1], but who set the standard for our performance.  As John reminds us, “He laid down his life for us.”  So, too much work or I don’t have time are probably not valid excuses. There is no excuse for not doing as Christ did and loving our fellow beings even unto death. There is no excuse that is adequate to get us out of this job. So we must perform this task with great cheer. For you cannot have true love without cheerfulness and a giving heart. We may be serious at times, but we can still be cheerful in that we have the love of God within our hearts and we can spread that to others.  Don’t forget the little reminder from GK Chesterton:

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.

Speaking of time, many times people put off church for other “more important” things, do you?  Like the certain man who made a great supper, the Lord sets aside a time every week for us to worship with Him.  Actually, His time is pretty flexible.  The Lord’s worship can be done at times other than 1000 on Sunday morning if you really do have to work, you have weekend duty, you are on alert or something you really cannot get out of.  But, where are your priorities?  Is a football game, a fishing trip or just plain sleeping in the “reason” for your failing to show for the great supper?  When you fail to plan ahead, you plan to fail.  So always plan ahead and plan for success, that way you will never fail to show for the great supper.

The Gospel is about more than just going to church, it is about priorities.  We need to put the things that are really important in the list of things to do above the things that are not really important.  We need to think about what is important to us and to God.  Sometimes they are different.  Then, we need the Holy Ghost to get our priorities in order.

People do what is important to them.  When they feel guilty they come up with excuses, but in reality, they please themselves.

So, what we need to do is ask the Holy Ghost for help to make God’s agenda ours; thus when we please God, we please ourselves.  A win – win situation. And it will make us far happier people as a result, which is what God’s plan is for us all along. Whenever He tells us not to do something, it is to make us happy not sad. He never wants us to be sad, to the contrary, He wants us to be happy. But unlike us, He really does know what will make us happy, and that is to follow His Will. But until we get that thought into our hearts, souls and minds, we will never be truly happy.

If we do not make time for God, how do we expect Him to make time for us?  If we will not diligently study the lessons He has left for us, how can we expect to know what He wants us to do?

Do you recall more sage words from GK Chesterton?

Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.

We need to come to church and read the Bible so we can find out what God wants.  But, the idea is not to find out what He wants so we can work around it or live with it, but rather live in it.  Or rather, to live it. Once we find out what God wants for us, we need to live that reality that He has planned for us, not the one that we want for ourselves. Think about the 613 Mosaic laws and the Pharisees who made a good living telling people how to comply with them to the letter and still do just what they wanted to do. 

If we find out what God wants and decide to actually do it instead of avoid it, we are still faced with an often huge problem of where do we get the strength to accomplish this task.  The answer is circular, from God, the Holy Ghost.  He never asks us to do anything we cannot do good enough for Him if we rely on Him.  Never. 

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] Book of Common Prayer, the Comfortable Words, Page 76

First Sunday after Trinity

If you enjoy this, the entire AOC Sunday Report is RIGHT HERE!

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:

… the strength of all those who put their trust in thee; … through the weakness of our mortal nature, we can do no good thing without thee, grant us the help of thy grace, that in keeping thy commandments we may please thee, both in will and deed…

This is a little longer Collect than usual, but in it we acknowledge that God is the source of our strength, as we are weak and cannot do any true good without His Help; thus, we ask His help or grace to do His Will in both in our thoughts and actions. This is a very consistent theme through all the collects, because it is based on the simple truth we cannot help ourselves and we need true Divine Guidance in order to make it into heaven.  We need His Guidance to perform the actions we need to follow the course that Jesus has set for us.

And, what is the first action we are to take?  To love one another.  Saint John pointed out if we do not love our fellow creatures here on earth whom we have seen and touched, how then can we claim to have love for God, whom not one of us have seen?  We then cannot love God if we cannot love our fellow humans, no matter how far they have strayed from His path, we are still to love them and offer them help and help others. Jesus came to serve, as the ultimate Servant, so must we be also.  Even though He is the King, He has chosen to be a humble King, one who puts His Flock before His Own live. He embodies the model we must truly follow if we are to call ourselves Christians. We cannot truly be Christians if we are not following in His Example of selflessness.

We must to truly love individuals.  For many of us, the first step is to stop hating them, for if love is the epitome of good, hate is the nadir of evil.   Hate is a truly bad thing for us, it is all consuming and all destroying.  First, stop hating, hate no person.  No one is evil enough to justify your hating them.  There are many people whose removal from this world would be a benefit to the world, that does not mean you should hate them.  Hating does not produce any positive effects to help God’s cause here on Earth. It rather detracts from His Cause. It is like a slow acting poison consuming your mind until you are no longer following Him.  You can feel sad for them, depending on circumstances you may be justified in sending them out of this world.  Do not hate.  Do not condemn to Hell.  That is God’s job, not yours.

Loving does not mean approval of acts which are sinful and harmful to one’s health, spiritual or physical. That is something many individuals are confused about with love in the world today. We cannot condone smoking or homosexual acts or abortion. Though we may know individuals who do these things, we must despise the sin, but realize these people, no matter how truly fallen they may be (remember, some are worse than others, but none are better. As St. Paul says, all fall short.), are people created in the express image of God by God. It is our duty to attempt to shine the light of Christ for them, so they might see their inner darkness and return to Him. 

However, if they are not receptive, then we must not force it upon them, as do not cast your pearls before swine, but merely shake your feet off and walk way. You never know what seeds you plant in your interactions with unbelievers or lapsed Christians which in the end may serve to guide them on or back to the path leading upward and inward to God’s country. 

“Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.”  

God loved us so much He sent His only Son to die for our sins.  That is true love.  Not that we love Him, but that first He loved us!  God is the source of true love and He is the reason true love has so many wonderful qualities and so strong and enduring. It has come from a Divine Source more special than any jewel on this planet and He gives true love its remarkable resilience and strength. So, if God first loved us, ought we also not love each other?  No one has seen God at any time.  Yet, He loves us and we say we love Him.  If we do love one another, then God is in us, the Holy Ghost, and we are in Him.  Be bold, the world will end sometime; for each of us this world ends when we leave here.  Fear not, trust in God and dread naught. 

Do not be afraid to love one another, regardless of what any man says. Do not fear man, only fear God, the great Judge, and Jesus the Advocate, and the Spirit, the Purifier, Guiding Light. Man can do nothing worse to us than what God can do. And yet, God still loves us despite all our faults and having been condemned to death since the beginning of creation with the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden.  God and His love will keep fear and the damage it does at bay.  Love each other and act on that love.

To love one another and ACT on that love.  To consider the ways we might help others and then ACTually help them.  It is not a question of giving, but helping.  The rich man could have helped Lazarus, but it never entered his head. The rich man, like many of us sadly, only thought of himself. Jesus illustrates perfectly in this parable what happens when we only think of ourselves and do not help or even think of others. The rich man could have thought of poor Lazarus and given him a place to stay and food to eat and paid for it, like the Good Samaritan. Instead, he just let him die, figuring that that was the end of him. It turns out he was wrong and soon the tables would be reversed.  Lazarus was a rather disgusting feature of his world and when he died, the rich man was pleased not to have to pass by him.  Yet, it never entered into his head to help.  

How is that possible? 

Simple, his eye was not on the donut, but on the hole.  The rich man cared about all the things that don’t count and never considered those that do. Which is, as said earlier, a problem at all of us face at one time or another due to our very nature of being sinful beings.  We tend to get caught up in school, work or pleasure and everything in between and forget to tend to our spiritual health and as you neglect a plant by not watering it and nurturing it, if you so neglect your soul, you will have a horrible death. And as a consequence, we also forget how important it is to love one another and do our best to help our fellow men out. This is exactly what happened to the rich man. He lost sight that we are to love our fellow men as ourselves and that doing so would give him far more happiness than if he continued on his self-centered, unloving course of action that ultimately brought him to the pit. We can learn from the rich man’s example and strive not to be like him.  Everyone on this planet has a purpose, even if it is to serve as a bad example. However, if you nurture and water your soul by the Scriptures and allow yourself to be guided by the Holy Ghost, you will have an absolutely wonderful life from now to eternity, after all if you have eternal life it starts NOW, not tomorrow.  For indeed, tomorrow never comes.

It must be understood between heaven and hell there is a great gulf fixed.  It is equally important to grasp the gulf is not of God’s making but ours.  It is us who keeps us from the heaven He offers freely, yet at a great price. 

Put your trust in God and dread naught.  Love those around you and ACT on that love.  It does not matter if they are the same religion as you, but you still must love and act towards them all the same.  That does not mean baring your throat to the Koran following Muslims; but it does mean treating them with kindness and charity until you must act to defend you and your way of life from them.  They deserve pity, for as they follow Allah, that is the Devil, as Christ said “They know not what they do.” Think how you can help, not how you can “enjoy” life.  Helping does not mean simply giving money to those who don’t have it, no strings attached, although it might at times.  It never means supporting those who do not feel like supporting themselves.  For dependency breeds slothfulness and contempt.  Dependency destroys the soul.  What is does mean is facilitating a way for those who do not have what they need to earn what they need; to bring them the means of acquiring those things which they need.  Those things are spiritual as well as physical.  A hand up; not a hand out.  You will find out the more you help, the more you enjoy real life.  Whether it is helping somebody at the office, around the neighborhood or a friend, there is immense pleasure from the result of helping people, so much more than feathering your own nest, so to speak.  It is not only more blessed to give than to receive, but it brings a lot more happiness into your life.

This is hard to do.  We want to concentrate on what makes us feel good about ourselves right here and right now.  We have to be coerced into staying on the narrow path upward and inward.  But that is where our home is.

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

Trinity Sunday

If you enjoy this, the entire AOC Sunday Report is RIGHT HERE!

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. 

Today’s sermon was on the basic concept of the Triune God, that is the Father, Son and Holy Ghost and how they were introduced to us through time and the Bible in particular. Today’s sermon brought the Collect, Epistle and Gospel together and is partly contained in the forewords above. 

Consider these words from the Collect:

… acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of the Divine Majesty to worship the Unity …

In the Collect, we acknowledge there is a Triune God, that is to say there are three aspects of God; God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost.  A Triune God, that means Three in One, not three separate Gods or godlets, but a single being with three aspects.  How does this work?

The honest answer is – WE DON’T KNOW.  We have not been told of how this Being operates. We just have been told that there are three and They are ONE.  We have some knowledge and scriptural guidance on how parts of the thing work, but not all.  Saint Paul told the people of Corinth, 12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. (1 Corinthians 13:12) One of the basic principles of classified information is that it is only to be revealed to those who have an actual NEED TO KNOW, not just the curious.  Like many secrets, we don’t really have a need to know, so we have not been told.  We know:

·      God is I AM;

·      God the Father sent The Son to be our Savior, He was there at the beginning of this world;

·      The Holy Ghost breathed life into the world, and brings understanding, comfort, strength, perseverance, courage, inspiration, patience;

·      They all have always been and always will be.

That is what we know; it leaves a lot we don’t know, but we can certainly be kept busy with what we do know.  That must be enough for the here and now. It is enough for us to operate on His Word with our simple and limited understanding of the Trinity. We must be content with what we read in Scripture, all the other stuff we wonder about Him is just extraneous details, like how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?  So much theological discussion is captured in that term.  So, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?  Whatever the number, the answer from our standpoint is so very simple, As many as God determines the circumstances require.  Note, as God requires!  Not you, not me.  God.  Trying to think about those detailed details that we do not know or understand only serves as a distraction from following God and doing what He asks. He does not want us to speculate on how the Three in One concept works, but rather just understand it is and go forth and follow Him to the best of our abilities.

We must put aside the thoughts of who and what God is, and just understand He is I AM, there is God, there is the Son, there is the Holy Ghost and they all work together in their own way to be the one God of our faith. There is a reason for this even though we don’t know it, but it works out, so we do not have to wonder how it works, we just continue believing and acting!

But, what of later?  If we have eternal life, we have it now and later.  What comes later?  Heaven.  What is heaven?  John attempts to tell us.  He attempts to show us the majesty and glory of heaven using words.  The picture he paints is intended to be awe inspiring and seems to meet that goal handily.  The main thing we can be certain of is that we will not be disappointed.  We speculate as to will this or that be in heaven?  When we get there, the answer will manifest itself and you will have no regrets.  John’s description is to tell us heaven will easily surpass all of our expectations. He is trying to convey Heaven is a destination truly worth our earthly toils. In heaven, there is no disappointment.  Heaven is the real world, where things are bright, not dull and dark as though looking through a glass.  Rest assured, we will see for ourselves what it is like one day, all we need to know is that it is a really wonderful place we should be aiming to go to when we die, through our belief and actions here on earth working together!

So, how do we get to the real world from these Shadowlands?  There is but one way, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the Propitiation for our sins.[1]

Do not be fooled by “fair”, there is only one way into heaven.  That door is at the end of a long and narrow trail, steeply inclined upward with many seemingly easy, smooth, beautiful and interesting branches leading downward into the pit.  Doing good is good, so to speak; doing good without God is not good enough.  Only being accounted perfect will get you up the path and in the door.

We need help!  Lots of help.  The first thing we need in our hearts is a new heart, a new and contrite heart.  This is what Jesus was telling Nicodemus in the Gospel. He was explaining how we need a new heart in order to continue to serve God.  The Pharisees could not or would not see that their hearts were not good enough on their own to serve Him, as ours are not if they are not regenerated. That is really hard, in fact, it is so hard it cannot be done by ourselves.  We need something.  A new start.

We must be born of the spirit!  What spirit?  

The Holy Ghost.  We must accept we in and of ourselves will never be perfect.  Our hearts as they are will not lead us towards God, but away from God unless we have the help of the Holy Ghost! No one gets in to heaven unless they are accounted as perfect.  We will never be perfect in and of ourselves.  Should we quit trying?  No!  We are commanded to follow our Christ.  Will we fail?  Without question.  What is the solution?  To believe and follow the Christ.  To open our hearts to the Holy Ghost that we might believe in full and accept the help from the Christ that our imperfection needs to be His followers.

To follow God, we need Christ as our leader and the Holy Ghost as our compass. In short, we need all members of the Trinity’s influence in our lives if we are to arrive in the real world, that of Heaven.

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.

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] 1 St. John ii. 1, 2 and Book of Common Prayer, page 76

Pentecost, commonly called Whitsunday

If you enjoy this, the entire AOC Sunday Report is RIGHT HERE!

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. 

Once again the propers for this week come together very well, their focus is narrow, thus powerful.

Consider these words from the Collect:

… sending to them the light of thy Holy Spirit; Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgment in all things, and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort  …

When Jesus left on Ascension Day, we lost a teacher here on earth.  We still have Him as Redeemer and Savior; but what to do for understanding?  In response to His departure, God sent us the Holy Ghost.

Who is this Holy Ghost and why is he here?

We worship the One True God, a triune God, that is Three in One; Father, Son and Holy Ghost.  Most people have no trouble understanding the concept of God the Father, Christians seem to get God the Son, but many seem to have a bit of difficulty with the Holy Ghost.

The Holy Ghost has been there since the beginning.  He breathed life into the world, yet His actions seemed to be sporadic until Pentecost. 

Well, today is Pentecost, the time one normally thinks of the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit, the Breath of God, the Comforter.  When people do think of Him, they oft think of the actions described in the words of Saint Luke in the Acts of the Apostles.  The dancing and speaking in tongues.  All that happened so we might understand that with the help of the Holy Ghost we might bring the Word to all mankind.  The Word of God is a universal language.  When the disciples spoke in tongues, the people around them heard the Word in their own language, not an odd combination of sounds that no one understood.  The disciples spoke and were heard by those around them in their own language, not Klingon.  It is not for us to speak in tongues without study; that was a one shot deal.  It was designed to show us we could, with hard work and persistence bring the Gospel to the world in the language of the people. It showed we were in fact to preach the Gospel to all nations, not just the nation of Israel, but to all the nations of the World. The many nations of the fallen race of Adam all comprise those to whom the Good News is to be spread. Which is what the purpose of God sending the Holy Ghost was for, so we would understand it is for us to bring the light of Christ into the world for all to see and believe upon. He is here so we can understand and then act upon His Word. He is here to provide us with the guidance and understanding necessary to preach and spread the Word into the far regions of the Earth. The Holy Ghost allows us to spread His Word amongst all the people in the world and to convince them and let them believe. It opens our eyes to what is good for us and what is not good for us, so that we know what to believe and what not to believe. 

We need the Holy Ghost if we are to follow the Great Commission Christ set forth. He knew we would need the Holy Ghost if we were to have any success in this endeavor. However, He also knew that He needed to leave if the Holy Ghost were to come and stay, so the Holy Ghost’s coming had to wait until after the Ascension. He had it planned out so the disciples would not be without a direct connection to Him for very long. 

The Holy Ghost also helps us to give the “righteous judgment” the Collect speaks of. This judgment is not the same as the final judgment that God judges us on our performance, but it is a judgment based on Scriptural values that with the Holy Ghosts help, we can make on our lives and others lives, based on how we see it through the lens of the Holy Ghost and Scripture. It is not to insult people but to be truthful through the standpoint of Scriptures and be able to say that certain behaviors do not line up with Scripture, i.e. homosexuality and abortion. To say that those behaviors are not Christian is a righteous judgment statement the Holy Ghost helps us determine. 

The Holy Ghost is also our direct connection to God. When Jesus left, the disciples were distant from God. When they were not near Jesus, they did not do as well as when they were with Him. As with the righteous judgement, the Holy Ghost helps us to align our actions and views with that of Scripture. The Holy Ghost helps us to properly understand and apply Scriptural principles in our own lives. See Peter’s actions after the arrest of Jesus for an example, thrice denying His Lord. The Holy Ghost came so that we would have understanding and a direct connection to God, wireless as it were, instead of having to be tethered to Christ. It is how He will always be with us, even though He is not physically with us at the present time. We will never have to fear anything as long as He is with us, for if He is with us, who should we be afraid of, if we are on His side?

If we allow the Holy Ghost into our hearts, we will never be far from Him, and He will never be far from us. We have to consciously let Him into our hearts, He will not come uninvited into our hearts. The Holy Ghost helps us understand Scripture and gives us guidance on our earthly lives, as we work towards staying on the straight and narrow path towards heaven He will be a constant guiding presence in our lives, that will give us peace in times of trouble, and will help us guide and focus our minds in our worship of God.  He will give us inspiration and help us to do what is right for our fellow Christians and friends, while staying true to God. He will light our paths in difficult times and trials and will give us the guidance we need to finish our race for God.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us that He would be leaving, but the Father would send a facilitator; one who whose presence, if we let Him into our hearts, would let us understand His Word with those self-same hearts.  The Comforter would bring the Love of God into our hearts to let us feel His Love.  He will help us understand that we are striving to be one with God, with Jesus and with the Holy Ghost.  Our love can be demonstrated by our actions.  Jesus points out those who do not truly love Him will not keep His Commandments. However, if we truly do love him, He points out we will act for Him and by doing so will keep his commandments. Which are only possible if we allow the Holy Ghost into our hearts and believe and ACT upon our faith! This is a point that is made time and time again in Scriptures. We need to be doers of the world, not just hearers, to paraphrase St. James. For if we love Jesus, we will do as He asked.

If you think about it, you will recall the second half of the Book of Luke is titled The Acts of the Apostles.  It is not the thoughts, the beliefs, the feelings, the meditations, the inner feelings or any other touchy feely thing, it is the ACTS.  If you believe, act on those beliefs. The Holy Ghost is here to help us know how to act, we will just have to let Him into our hearts, and then ACT. 

We need the help of the Holy Ghost to learn what we are to do, how we are to do it and most of all to do it.  Action, not just diction.

Pray for His continual presence in your heart.

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