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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:
… 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
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