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Sermon Reverend Jack Arnold –
Time and Action
Church of the Faithful Centurion - Descanso, California
Today’s
sermon tied the Collect, Epistle and Gospel together.
Consider
the words from the Collect, wherein we ask God to make us … be open to the
prayers of thy humble servants; and, that they may obtain their petitions, make
them to ask such things as shall please thee …
Once again,
this Collect is kind of a follow-on to last week’s Collect. First, we ask God to hear our prayers, funny
in that He always listens intently to us when we pray and we very seldom listen
to Him when He answers. It is an odd
paradox, He listens; we never seem to listen.
It seems as if at times we should pray that we should listen; not Him,
as He always listens! Nonetheless, we ask His help to ask for those things we
need, not those things we want and are bad for us. We need to be humble when we ask.
What does
that word mean?
According
to the dictionary, to be HUMBLE means to be:
· - Modest
· · - Respectful
· · - Lowly
Modest - unassuming in attitude
and behavior
Respectful - feeling or showing
respect and deference toward other people
Lowly - relatively low in rank
and without pretensions
These are
three characteristics we cannot possess in our natural, sinful state. We
otherwise might be like the Pharisees who would make a show of praying in
public to appear pious when they were anything but. We however can obtain these
characteristics by asking the Holy Ghost to bring these attitudes into our
hearts, souls and minds. And not just
asking, but we have to be willing to listen to what He says we should change
within our lives. We have to be willing to adapt these different
characteristics in our varying situations. We cannot change our station in
life, but we can change our attitude towards God. He is God, we are not. We are His creatures, imperfect with free
will. We must recognize that when we ask
for His Help. We badly need the guidance
from the Holy Ghost so we can ask for what we need, instead of what we
want. NEED and WANT are two four letter
words used too oft interchangeably which do not mean the same thing.
People often use these four letter words erroneously, thinking they mean the
same thing. They do not and cannot. Needs are vital for our spiritual health as
well as physical health. Wants are nice things to have, but they are not vital
for us to survive. When we think we “NEED” something, we have to ask if it fits
the above definition “Is this vital for our ministry/life here on earth, or is
it something just nice to have, but not a critical item?” We have to see if
what we need is something we truly need, or just a want. Too many people do not
perform this need analysis and as a result suffer for it physically and
spiritually.
While our
needs must be fulfilled, there is nothing wrong with wanting, just so long as
you want things that are good for you. And as long as your want does not turn
into coveting or wanting people’s stuff without being willing to work for it.
We have to carefully monitor our wants and make sure they are good for us and
we are wanting to work for whatever it is we want. We have to make sure we are willing to
acquire the things we are wanting honestly and those things we are wanting
should be good for us and not bad for our spiritual health. Once again, we are
asking God to help us to want the right things that will be good for us and
help us develop in our Christian lives. Paul reminds us though each believer is
different, throughout all the believing peoples of the Church the same God, the
same Spirit, the same Christ works all in all and through all His work is done
and accomplished. When we are setting off to do work for the church, we have to
keep in mind those believers we serve and help believe in the same God we do,
and they are filled with the same spirit.
Paul
reminds us we each have differing talents, but if we use them to the Glory of
God, without concern for who gets the credit, all will be well. I can think of
no finer example of this than the Marines serving on Peleliu with Eugene
Sledge, in the 3rd Batallion/5th Marines. I was reading his memoir, With the Old
Breed, when I realized in my reading, none of the Marines he served with
cared a bit who got a credit, all they cared about was helping their fellow
Marines accomplish the objective. They didn’t do what they felt like, at least
not the good ones. They did what was right without thought as to who would get
the credit. Their main thoughts were to work as a team to defeat the Japanese.
We must work in the same manner with our fellow Christians, using each of our
talents to further His work and to defeat the forces of Satan. God has given us
all each unique talents to be used to further His Mission. Together, our
talents can help us as the Body of Christ serve and glorify Him on Earth.
Do what you
can, not what you feel like. Ignore what you feel like doing and do what God
wants you to do. This can be pretty hard sometimes, but it is something that
must be done all the same. We will profit from doing what God wants more than
if we did what we just felt like doing. This is hard for us to grasp, but it
will help us in the long term if we do what He asks, instead of doing what we
want. What we feel like doing often does not align with what God wants for us,
which can result in negative consequences for us. However, if we do what He
wants for us, there will be positive results. It is a simple message, yet one
that can be hard to swallow sometimes, but it is a message that must be
swallowed all the same.
If you will
but read the Bible, what God wants you to do will be clear. If you do your best to do His Will all will
be well with you. Death is a pretty
hollow threat if you do your duty. If you have done your best, that is at the
end of the day, you have done your best to follow Him, then truly you have
nothing to fear. The people of Jerusalem would not have been in the pickle they
got in when 70AD came along, had they only done what God wanted. But, it was too hard for them. These
were, of course, the descendants of the people who defied God in the wilderness
for 40 years, they were a stubborn and stiff-necked people, blinded by their
stubbornness to the need to change. They could not see what God wanted for them
or now for us. In 70AD, what had been so
hard earlier seemed pretty easy compared to the fix they were in, but by then
it was too late. By then they were left
with only “There are none so poor as cannot purchase a noble death.” But, for most of them by that time they had
no will. It left when they failed to
follow God’s Will.
It is an
object lesson for us, to do what we can in the here and now and not worry about
tomorrow. We shouldn’t complain if it is
too hard for us, because being on
God’s side, nothing is too hard for us. We should ignore these thoughts and
turn our attention to what God wants for us. We must learn from the past
mistakes of our spiritual forebears and resolve not to repeat those same
mistakes. If we are ignorant of our spiritual past, we are doomed to make those
very same mistakes. Ignoring or whitewashing history does not profit us as a
people, but rather it leads us down the path that started those whole mistakes
in the first place. History is history, it is in the past. It cannot be
changed, but what can be changed is the future. And that can only be changed by
learning from the past and doing our best to learn from the mistakes in the
past, as well as the good examples from the past and pressing onward.
When
Luke wrote of the sales in the temple, he had a point. The point was not to preclude jumble sales at
church. He was not abhorring the sales,
but the cheating in the name of God. This Gospel does literally preclude cheating
people at those jumble sales! You must
understand the temple hawkers were selling perfect defective “sacrificial
lambs” which would be recycled over and over[1]. In their very successful effort to make money
they were defrauding the people and insulting God in His own House. It should also be pointed out that a church
should be a place of worship. It may be
a Prophet Center, but not a Profit Center[2]. Similar sounding words, but a totally
different meaning for the church. If the
building needs constant commercial enterprise, then perhaps the emphasis is on
the wrong center. All of these churches that emphasize quantity over quality
should be suspect. It does not matter the quantity, as long as you have a base
of quality believers who serve the One Triune God. We need to be concerned more
about the spreading of His Word, the constant truth, then focusing on how many
people we can attract, and how the message can be changed to suit them. These
are both problems with the modern churches today. A church should be funded for
its needs by its members and its wants should come much later, if not in fact
unheeded. A church is about Him, not
about IT. It should not be a self-licking ice cream cone, but a center to help
the believers walk in Christ, not focusing on physical and material plant on
earth, but on helping us on our own “Pilgrim’s Progress” towards heaven. If it
focuses on anything but that, it is a stumbling block to believers. We are not called to be a stumbling block,
but to be guides, to be lanterns shining in the darkness, to be as a light
cloud amidst the darkness of this world.
Do what you
are supposed to do when you are supposed to do it. That is duty.
It does not matter how you “feel” about black or white. Black is black; White is white. Do your duty. Work as hard as you can, do the
best you can, trust in the Lord. By the
way, cheat no one. If you follow that,
you won’t need to be told, “Particularly in God’s House.”
Action
counts. For by their actions ye shall
know them.
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]
The concept of being
truthful in the efforts we make to spread The Word is not a separate subject by
any means, but would take more time to talk about than we have time for
here. Suffice it to say that we must
take every care to spread The Truth and not what our audience, whoever that may
be, would like to hear. When we bring
our “sacrifice” to the “temple” we need make certain it is in fact as perfect
as we can make it. This is so hard that
one of the recurring themes of the Collects is asking for guidance to ask for
the right things.
[2]
A term I first heard
from Bishop Dennis Campbell in 2011. It
was a great thought then and a great thought now!
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