Third Sunday after Trinity

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:

… hear us; and grant that we, to whom thou hast given an hearty desire to pray, may, by thy mighty aid, be defended and comforted in all dangers and adversities …

The Collect starts as they often do by asking God to hear us.  It seems to me this is rather odd a thing to ask as He hears us all the time; the problem is when we need His Help we so rarely ask, then when He answers, we will not hear Him.  That being said, when we do accept the Holy Ghost’s Help to pray, we can expect to receive spiritual, mental and physical comfort from God.  The key word in this is accept.  In order to receive the comfort from God, we have to first let him into our hearts to begin his renewal of our spirit. If we do not accept the Holy Ghost’s help, then God will not be able to help us.

It would be foolish not to accept the Great Physician’s help to transform our spirits. It would be like having cancer, and there being a cure for cancer and rejecting that cure because we don’t like it.  Without the help of the Holy Ghost into our hearts, we truly cannot follow Christ. We, of ourselves, cannot follow God without His Divine Assistance. We are sheep gone astray from our shepherd and without Jesus, are wolf food. But with Jesus’s protection, we are safe from the wolf/lion known as Satan. 

In order to have  the Holy Ghost’s help into our heart, we must let go of self centered and prideful  ways. Prideful beings cannot be followers of Christ. Peter makes this point when he says that God resists the proud and gives His Grace to the humble. The humble are those who are more likely to accept His Grace and the Holy Ghost’s help to renew their spirit. The proud believe they are self-made people and scoff at the very idea of God sending his only begotten Son that we should not perish but have life everlasting (John 3:16). These people are very resistant to God and the Holy Spirt.

The humble know they cannot make it into heaven on their own; thus they know they need that divine help and are willing to accept it. They know they can achieve nothing great without God’s help. These are the people to whom God gives His Grace, those willingly embrace His Help and utilize it in their lives.

We must strive to be humble in our lives and less prideful. When we let go of our pride, we can see where we are in error.  When we accept help from the Holy Ghost, we can begin to fix the cracks and faults in our spiritual character. He can shine a light into the darkest areas of our hearts. Jesus could do this as well and He knew very well the spiritual character of each person He encountered in His Earthly Ministry. 

With a clear view of the inner most thoughts of their hearts, Jesus tells the Pharisees the story of the shepherd who loses a sheep and searches for it.  When he finds the sheep he carries it back to the flock on his shoulders.  He goes on to tell the story of the woman who loses a piece of silver and turns her house inside out to find it.  That story ends in a very interesting word play in English, “Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece (peace) which I had lost.”  Jesus ends the story with, “there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.” No doubt the Pharisees missed the point of the parable as their hearts were too blackened by pride to hear His Word. 

The moral of the parable is Jesus is all about saving the sinners, not those who are already “righteous.” But for realists, there are none who are already “righteous.” I liken the church as a hospital for sinners. And all of the saints were sinners in their past too.  Having said that, there is also joy when we do not sin, but choose God’s way.  And we enjoy it more also. So, it is preferable if we do not sin in the first place, but if we can’t do that, then God finds joy when we truly repent and turn back to Him and ask for His help and be willing to listen.

Notice Jesus’ actions when He finds a lost sheep, He carries it back to the flock on His shoulders with a smile on His face. He rejoices in each lost soul saved. This is what the Church is about, bringing lost souls to Our Shepherd of Souls, Our Savior, Our Advocate, Jesus Christ, to His Kingdom of Heavenly Joys.

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

Hymns of the Church - Hymn 478 – Eternal Light, Eternal Light – 23 June 2020, Anno Domini (In the Year of our Lord)

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HIS then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 6 If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.  (1 John 1:5)

            This beautiful old hymn was written one evening shortly after sundown on the Isle of Wight in 1798 by Thomas Binney in 1798. The tune to which it is assigned in the Hymnal is Eternal Light by Kenneth E. Runkle in 1941. It is full of descriptive adjectives illustrating that Eternal Light without which no life would be possible. 

            God is Light and without Him all would be smothering darkness. He is the great self-Generator of Light. Such immense light requires a like and infinite energy to produce which result in the “Consuming fire’ which God alone is.

Eternal Light, Eternal Light

Eternal Light! Eternal Light!

What soul can bear Your searching sight?

What heart, so open, pure, and true,

Can live and calmly gaze on You?

The glowing spirits round Your throne

All serve where sin is never known.

Their eyes can bear the burning bliss

Beyond a darkened world like this.

But how can I, a native here,

Before Your blazing eyes appear?

Can I, a creature of the night,

Endure Your uncreated light?

Praise God, You come to us in Christ!

In Him our darkness all is light!

O Fire of all-consuming grace,

In Christ we stand here face to face!

Eternal Light! Eternal Light! What soul can bear Your searching sight? What heart, so open, pure, and true, Can live and calmly gaze on You? Simply expressed, no mortal creature can look upon the face of God and live. We must be transformed into that precise image of God as first conceived in the Garden, and be made spiritual children of God as well as those of flesh and blood. God’s Light is a searching Light which scans the Waters of the Deep in constant search for those to whom His mercy is made profoundly available. The Light not only illumines the outward countenance, but the inner spirit of man as well. Nothing is hidden from the searching eyes of the Lord. Those who are oblivious to the Light of the Lord will remain in uncharted darkness for an eternity future.

The glowing spirits round Your throne All serve where sin is never known. Their eyes can bear the burning bliss Beyond a darkened world like this. All sin is darkness, but that darkness cannot abide the True Light of God. Neither will the Light abide darkness. God will countenance no sin, nor sinner, in His Heaven. The Light will unfailingly expose that uncleanliness of heart and soul. The Church Triumphant are those who die in the Lord and have gone to their reward with Him on High. All fleshly sins have been washed clean as they serve before the Throne without shame or hurt. Now their eyes can comprehend what those same eyes could not when abiding in the flesh below. The world they departed was half darkness and half light in its rotation, but now, all is Light.

But how can I, a native here, Before Your blazing eyes appear? Can I, a creature of the night, Endure Your uncreated light? The Light of God is uncreated because God is Light. He has existed from eternity past to eternity future without beginning or end. The eyes of God are as penetrating fountains of light. No mortal can ascend before God with a single sin to his record. But “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” and “there are none righteous – no, not one.” So, which of us is able to appear guiltless before the searching eyes of God on that Last Day? It is by having the imputed righteousness of Christ who purchased us out of the bondage of sin. We are saved by that unmerited grace of the Lord.

Praise God, You come to us in Christ! In Him our darkness all is light! O Fire of all-consuming grace, In Christ we stand here face to face! “In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” John 1:4-9 Yes, the grace of the Lord to us-ward is all-consuming and irresistible. He is the Light of the World and He permits us the title as well so long as we are lunar reflectors of that great Light of the Sun of Righteousness. The day will come when each of us will stand, just as did the woman taken in adultery and the woman at Jacob’s Well, face-to-face with the Lord. At that moment, we face Him alone. In what manner shall we stand there? Shall it be as the Redeemed of the Lord, or as the condemned of the world?

Second Sunday after Trinity

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.  The spiritually blind (us) cannot lead the blind (also us). We are spiritually blind without God’s help. 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. And we must note that to fear God is not to be scared of Him but to respect Him for who He is, our creator and heavenly Father, and loving Him involves loving the others around us with the Holy Ghost in our hearts.

Speaking of time of need; when do we need God?  Pretty much whenever we are not perfect, which 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. John says we should not be surprised that the world hates us. For the World does not know of God and His Word so they fear that which they do not understand, namely the Word. We should not worry though because even in the times of darkness, we do have an ally. That ally is  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. 

We are to perform this task of loving people around us with great cheer. There is no true love without cheerfulness and a giving heart. In order to have Gods love, we have to love those around us. It is harder to put the actual love into practice. We have actually love those around us and not just say it. 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.

A lot of times people put off church for other “more important” things, do you? They are like the people in the parable.  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. The key element here is prioritization. If you really do believe Christ’s word and He is important to you then you will make that time out of your week to worship Him. 

The Gospel is about more than just going to church, it is about prioritization.  It calls us to put the things that are really important in the list of things to do above the things that are not really important.  It all goes back to the want versus need issue. Two different words, often used interchangeably by people, but this is incorrect. 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 

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 to live it. Once we find out what God wants for us, we need to live that reality He has planned for us, not the one that we want for ourselves.  This means putting into practice in our day to day lives, wherever we may be, the principles of Scriptures. 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 as they wanted.  

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.   However, the answer is simple, it comes 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

First Sunday after Trinity

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 God is the source of our strength, as without Him we are weak and cannot do any true good.  Thus, we ask His help or grace to do His Will in both in our thoughts and actions. This is a 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 Jesus 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 do not love God if we do not love our fellow humans. Even if they have strayed a long ways off the path, we are still called to love them and help them if they want to be helped.. Jesus came to serve as the ultimate Servant, He serves as a perfect example.  Even though He is the King, He has chosen to be a humble King, one who puts His Flock before His Own life. He is the model we must truly follow if we are to call ourselves Christians. We are not Christians if we are not following His example of selflessness to the best of our ability.

We are called to 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.  Hate is not a value Christ displayed and it is not a virtue of God. Hate stems from sin and evil and from Satan. There is no individual on this earth worth hating. Ultimately hate will rot away your heart and soul until you have none left effectively. Hate is not worth the energy that it consumes. Instead of hating people, try to love them; a positive force instead of a negative force.

However loving an individual does not mean that you approve of their acts that are sinful and harmful to one’s health, spiritual or physical. This is concept which confuses many 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 (Some are worse than others, but none are better. As Paul says, all fall short), are people created in the express image of God by God. 

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, so strong and enduring.  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 in comparison to God. God and His love will keep fear and the damage it does at bay.  Love each other and act on that love.

Jesus illustrates perfectly in this parable what happens when we only think of ourselves and do not help or even think of others. He could have taken pity on him and ACTually helped him, like the Good Samaritan. Instead, he just let him die, figuring that that was the end of him.  Lazarus was a rather disgusting feature of his world; 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?  

He was too caught up in the cares and riches of this world to care about another human, that was quite hurting. He was suffocating on the desires of this world and was blinded to the needs of another human. This is how selfishness harms us and our ability to help others around us. It never occurred to him that Lazaraus was anything but an eyesore. He would not see that Lazarus was also just like him in that he had his own issues that he needed help with. Pride, vanity and gluttony all helped blind the rich man to the needs of his fellow humans.

How can we prevent our selves from becoming like the rich man? 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 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

Sermon – Reverend Hap 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 covers 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; it draws 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 means literally 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.  

What we do know is:

·      God is I AM;

·      God the Father sent The Son to be our Savior, He was there at the beginning and created 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.  What we do know is that what we have must be enough for the here and now. It should 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 are 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 intricate 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?  In the epistle John attempts to describe to us what Heaven is like.  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 should serve 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 “there are many paths to God” which seems to be the way of the world today, there is only one way into heaven.  All roads do not lead to heaven. Many lead to the pit, but out of the many roads, there is only one narrow uphill path which will get you to heaven. 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.

One thing is clear, in order to traverse this narrow uphill trail we need help!  Lots of help as a matter of fact.  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 like turning over a new leaf so to speak. There is a way as a matter of fact for us to do this.

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

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