Sermon for the Sunday after Ascension, 2021

“The Request for the Sending of the Paraclete”

Sunday after Ascension, 2021

Probably the only truly important thing you need to know about my childhood is that I was obsessed with Star Wars. I knew all the lines of the original trilogy of movies, read all the “Expanded Universe” books, and even had my parents take me and a friend to a convention a state away. I had an impressive--most impressive--collection of R2-D2s, and would have gladly traded my Midwestern suburban existence for the sands of Tatooine or the Cloud City of Bespin. And it now brings me great joy to see my son, Asher, want to learn the ways of the Force and become a Jedi like his father. I mention all this because many Christians view the Holy Spirit, who comes into sharp focus in our collect and Gospel reading for this Sunday, kind of like the Force from Star Wars. If you’re not familiar with the Force, Obi-Wan Kenobi defines it as “an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.” It is a common misconception that this is what the Holy Spirit is like; a recent survey found that only 32 percent of American evangelicals either strongly or somewhat disagreed with the statement, “The Holy Spirit is a force but is not a personal being.” What we need, then, is a better understanding of the person and work of this Holy Spirit.

On this Sunday between Ascension and Pentecost, we look back at Christ being taken up into heaven and exalted to the right hand of the Father, and look forward to the coming of the promised Holy Spirit upon Jesus’ followers. These two pivotal events in the life of the church are, in fact, connected, and we will explore the nature of this connection this morning. Our Gospel passage is taken from the Gospel of John’s famous “Farewell Discourse,” in which Jesus talks about his imminent departure from this world and the coming Holy Spirit who would strengthen his disciples in his absence. Earlier in the Discourse, Jesus had already introduced the figure of the Paraclete, which the King James Version renders “Comforter,” as the “Spirit of truth” who would teach Jesus’ disciples all things and would bring to remembrance all that Jesus

had said to them. In our Gospel passage this morning, we learn additionally that this Comforter proceeds from the Father and will bear witness to Christ. If we read a little further on past our passage, we find at John 16:7 that Jesus actually says that it is better for his disciples that he ascend to the Father because only then will the Comforter come to them. In other words, Ascension and Pentecost are two parts of the same movement; it is only when Jesus ascends to the right hand of the Father that the Spirit will come upon his followers. Now, we might find this logic a bit strange: after all, wouldn’t we rather Christ still be present with us on the earth? I think our difficulty in understanding Jesus’ words can be attributed to our lack of clarity about the significance of Jesus’ ascension as well as our often impoverished view of the person and work of the Holy Spirit. We will take each of these points in turn.

First, we need to bring into focus the full significance of Jesus’ ascension. This is not some optional add-on to the story of Jesus’ atoning death on the cross; rather, it completes the story of Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection by putting Jesus in his proper place: enthroned as King at the right hand of God the Father. We cannot simply reduce Jesus to our Savior; though he is most certainly that, he is also reigning, now, as King over all the universe. This has profound implications for how we think about our lives as Christians. Because Jesus is King, we owe him not just mental assent to that proposition (after all, even the demons believe and shudder), but also the loyalty and obedience that a king is due. After all, a king does not tolerate competing loyalties, nor does a king accept a profession of loyalty without a willingness to obey him and his laws. In the same way, when we think about what it means as Christians to have faith in Jesus, the recognition that Jesus is King helps us get beyond an understanding of faith as mere belief to a conception that includes the essential ideas of allegiance and obedience. This is what the Ascension, then, is all about.

How, though, does the Ascension connect to Pentecost, the promise of which is at the heart of our Gospel and collect for this Sunday? Because of the Ascension, it might be tempting to think that Jesus is indeed King, but only in a far-off, distant land, unaccessible to us here in this world. Or, perhaps, we might hear the summons to loyalty and obedience to this King and wonder how we could ever fulfill the demands of such a glorious, almighty, and perfect ruler. This, I suggest, is precisely why Pentecost follows Ascension. As the collect explains, we pray that God would send us the Holy Spirit so that, in Jesus’ absence, we would not be comfortless. Indeed, moreover, we pray that God would send us the Holy Spirit so that we too might be exalted unto the same place where our Savior Christ has gone before us. In other words, both our connection to our King and our ability to follow where he leads is dependent upon the Holy Spirit. I also find it interesting that whereas the resurrected body of Jesus was limited to appearing in only one place at any given time, the Holy Spirit can, mysteriously, be present in the hearts of all believers, and in so doing, the Spirit extends God’s empowering presence into each of our lives, giving us the gifts of which our epistle reading speaks. The epistle reminds us, in fact, that we are given the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit not for our own sake, but rather for the good of others, as we rightfully steward these gifts that God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. And so the epistle again brings us back to this fundamental connection between Christ and the Spirit, between Ascension and Pentecost: the Spirit leads us to Christ, who in turn leads us to the Father.

What--or, better, who--is this Spirit? Maybe we can kind of wrap our minds around this Jesus, who was a real human being who lived and walked around on this very earth, but what are we supposed to make of something called the Holy Ghost? The biblical imagery can be confusing; at times it speaks of the Spirit being “poured out” or “filling” someone like it’s a liquid substance. Most Christian art and iconography is unhelpful as well; we are probably most familiar with depictions of the Holy Spirit as either a dove or as fire; note, for instance, the image printed in your bulletin on p. [ ], which portrays the Father and the Son as personal and relatable to us in a way that the Spirit, here depicted as a dove, simply cannot be. As a result, it can be tempting to imagine that the Spirit is not truly personal in the same way that the Father and the Son are distinct divine persons. However, our Gospel passage this morning points to the conclusion that the early church would ultimately reach regarding the full personhood of the Holy Spirit as one of the three co-equal persons of the Holy Trinity. Jesus here has in view how the Spirit will testify to himself after his ascension, a verb that seems to demand a personal subject. Indeed, throughout the Farewell Discourse, we see Jesus using other words and concepts that indicate that this Paraclete is, in fact, more personal than some of the other language in the New Testament regarding the Spirit might otherwise suggest.

It would, in fact, be precisely these chapters from John’s Gospel that would motivate the early church fathers to conclude that the Spirit is, like the Father and the Son, a distinct divine person. Reflecting on how these chapters show the Father, Son, and Spirit sharing identity of activity, St. Athanasius argues that this must therefore entail identity of being: “Seeing that there is such an order and unity in the Holy Trinity, who could separate either the Son from the Father, or the Spirit from the Son or from the Father himself? Who could be so audacious as to say that the Trinity is unlike itself and different in nature?” Likewise, St. Basil of Caesarea would reflect on the church’s practice of baptism, in which we are baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, to demonstrate that the Holy Spirit is a co-equal divine person alongside the Father and the Son. Thus, the Scriptures, our liturgy, and the theology handed down by the church all force us to the conclusion Christians that the Holy Spirit is something--or, better, someone--much more personal than the Force from Star Wars. It is precisely because the Holy Spirit is a fully divine person, co-equal with the Father and the Son, that Jesus can say that it is “better” for him to ascend to his Father so that we can receive the Comforter. It is precisely because the Holy Spirit is a fully divine person, co-equal with the Father and the Son, that we can pray that we too might be exalted unto the same place where our Savior Christ has gone before us.

Last week, Father Tony introduced the idea of perichoresis to refer to how the church fathers understood Father, Son, and Spirit as existing in an eternal dance of joy. In particular, Father Tony used the image of Jesus momentarily leaving the dance, coming over, taking us by the hand, and pulling us further up and further in to the perichoretic dance of the Triune God. What this morning’s homily shows us, then, is that God likewise sends the Holy Spirit to us, for the same purpose of pulling us further up and further in to this divine dance, bringing to a completion and perfecting the work that Christ has begun in us. What is required of us, then, is to respond to the Spirit’s invitation to this dance.

 This dynamic is most famously depicted in Andrei Rublev’s fifteenth-century icon “The Hospitality of Abraham,” which is a symbol of the Holy Trinity and is printed on page [ ] of your booklet. In this icon, Father, Son, and Spirit appear as three angels seated around an altar. The three angels are portrayed identically, signaling that the three divine persons of the Trinity share a single substance or essence. Unlike our earlier icon in which the Spirit was depicted as a dove, here there is not even a hint that the Spirit is in any way subordinate to or less personal than the Father or the Son. Reading the icon, we find the Holy Spirit at the right of the image, where he inclines his head and directs his gaze towards the Father. The Son, in the middle of the icon, points to the Spirit, while the Father, at the left of the image, directs both his gaze and his right hand of blessing to the Spirit, suggesting that Rublev’s focal point was not the Son, who is at the physical center of the icon, but the Spirit. For this reason, scholars have concluded that the scene being depicted is precisely where we find ourselves this Sunday: after Christ’s ascension, but before Pentecost. That is to say, the Son is requesting that the Father send the promised Paraclete; the Father, who always hears the Son, fulfills his request by raising to the Spirit his hand of blessing. The Spirit, for his part, bows his head in humble assent, and indeed next Sunday we will celebrate the coming of this Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

Note, too, one other striking feature of this icon: Rublev has left open a space at the front of the altar, inviting us to join the circle, the perichoretic dance of the Trinity. In this one image, Rublev succinctly captures both the fundamental end goal or telos of the Christian life, which is to live in communion with the Triune God, as well as the means by which we reach this end, which is the personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit in us. This icon is, I would argue, the perfect visual representation of our collect this morning, as we remember the ascension of Christ, await the sending of the Holy Spirit, and anticipate taking our place in the eternal dance of Father, Son, and Spirit. This mystery, so much deeper and more profound than the pseudo-mysticism of Star Wars, we will continue to unpack next week as we celebrate Pentecost, and then throughout the season of Trinity, and ultimately, indeed, for all of eternity. Amen.

Sermon for the 5th Sunday after Easter, 2021

Sermon for Easter 5, 2021

Fr. Tony Melton

5/9/21

“Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.” + In the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Today is the 5th Sunday in Easter and is called Rogation Sunday. Rogation comes from the word Rogare, meaning, “to ask,” taken from our Gospel: “Ask, and ye shall receive.” Thus, in this week the Church focuses on Prayer. This is one of the reasons why we’ve introduced the practice of Lectio Divina in our cell groups just prior to Rogation Sunday.

In the centuries of Christians celebrating Rogation Day, a certain emphasis naturally emerged: the flourishing of crops and the safety of the village. If they were to “ask” God for what they needed, these were pretty good starting places for people throughout history. We see this emphasis in our Psalm for this morning on page 5 and 6 in your booklet. “Thou crownest the year with thy goodness; * and thy clouds drop fatness. 13 They shall drop upon the dwellings of the wilderness; * and the little hills shall rejoice on every side. 14 The folds shall be full of sheep; * the valleys also shall stand so thick with corn, that they shall laugh and sing.” You can hear an echo of the Gospel passage there at the end: “that your joy may be full.”

With this psalm in their heads and in their mouths, ancient Christians, especially in England, would have a Rogation Day procession where they would carry long sticks and walk around the town or parish to “beat the bounds”, or boundaries of village. As they walked, they would strike anything that they wished to grow or be strengthened by God’s mysterious blessing, so that striking or beating became an enacted prayer. In Dallas, we did this procession every year, and we beat a lot of things: we beat the fence that God would keep out those who mean to do harm, we beat the Prayer Garden and Prayer Walk that God would make it beautiful and attractive to the neighborhood, we beat the Garden boxes that God would make them plentiful, and we beat the children, O the sweet children, we beat them that they, like the corn, would grow up so strong in the Lord that they will laugh and sing. I was always in charge of finding some huge patch of bamboo in the city of Dallas and would cut about 75 stalks for the procession ranging from 4 to 7 feet. We will have our first procession next year, but because we know that you can’t wait, parents are invited to beat their children as an act of prayer after the Liturgy.

The theme for this Sunday is that Prayer brings Joy: “Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.” In order to make the relationship between Prayer and Joy more solid in your minds, for the next few minutes I’ll give you a brief theology of Prayer. OK?

God exists in three distinct persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These three persons have existed in perfect Joy and Harmony for all eternity, before the world ever was. Their existence together was not static or still. The Fathers described the union of the Godhead as a dance. The term used was called perichoresis. Say that with me. [Perichoresis.] Peri means “around”, like with the word perimeter. Choresis means dance like in the word choreography. Perichoresis means a “dancing around.” The three Persons of the Godhead are in an Eternal Dance of Joy. I’d like to believe that this is part of the reason why Ezekiel saw God as a wheel within a wheel. Perhaps he was seeing the Dance of the Godhead.

Perhaps you remember your first school dance. Pray for me, CTK, that God does not strike me dead for relating the eternal, joyful, mysterious, perichoretical dance of the Triune God to a Middle School Snowball. As St. Timothy’s we would have English Country Dances, which the students loved. But the newer students or the guests or the shy boys would often stand on the side, awkwardly excluding themselves from the dance. What it would take is for someone from within the dance to momentarily leave the dance, come over, take them by the hand, and pull them into the dance. This is what Jesus did for us. He is in the Dance, and has been for all eternity. God created Man for the Dance, but Adam and Eve chose to stay on the side. Jesus came and took us further up and further in to the perichoretical dance of the Triune God. This is what Prayer is. It is entering into the Dance.

A few Sundays ago I preached on the Joy that we have because Jesus has been born from the grave, a Joy that no man can take from us. Resurrection Joy is real. Resurrection Joy is yours. But how is Resurrection Joy accessed and from where does it radiate? “Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.” We have Resurrection Joy when we Pray, for in Prayer we are with God. Even more, we are in God. In His Joyful Dance because of Jesus. This is why we offer our Prayers in Jesus Name, because He is the One who gave us access to the Joyful Dance of Heaven. Do you understand why Prayer leads to Joy? It is about Communion. Man is made for Communion, for Prayer, for the Dance. This is the end of all things.

OK. So we now have connected Prayer with Joy, but as we look at the passages appointed for this Sunday, which by the way are the same passages used by Church since the 5th century, we have yet to connect Prayer and Joy with Crops. Our Old Testament Lesson from Ezekiel 34 and Psalm 65 both emphasize God’s blessing of the land with increase at the righteousness and prayers of His people. At a basic level, it is correct to say that the Church prays, we ask; God hears and answers our prayer; He gives us rain, crops, safety. And we, in turn, have Joy. So, is true that Prayer leads directly to Joy because we have direct access to the Dance. It is also true that Prayer leads to Crops which lead to Joy.

In fact, a fascinating study will show that, generally speaking, wherever the Gospel has gone and taken deep root, that country has flourished agriculturally. We take for granted that Muslim countries are mainly desert, but this was not always the case. Some of those lands have become wastelands since losing the Gospel. On the other side, countries that have accepted Jesus Christ have been the breadbasket of the world. There is a direct and simple relationship between Christian Prayer and plentiful crops.

But the relationship between Prayer, Joy, and Crops goes deeper than that. Turn to page 6 with me. Our lesson is from Ezekiel 34. Here God promises a covenant of peace with His people that will result in many things. The evil beasts will turn into a blessing. God will send rain to turn the wilderness into an orchard. He will guard the people from their enemies. And then God says, “And I will raise up for them a plant of renown, and they shall be no more consumed with hunger in the land, neither bear the shame of the heathen any more.” You could read these verses and the verses from our Psalm as an example of Christian prosperity. This would not be untrue. Christian nations generally do prosper. But what is really going on here is God in His covenant of peace is remaking the Garden. Can’t you hear it in Ezekiel 34? Rain, fruit trees, safety, docile animals, and a tree of renown in the middle?

This adds an important element in how we understand Prayer. Not only are we to Pray as if we are walking with God in the cool of the day like Adam and Eve did in the Garden. We are to understand that our lives, our families, our church, the area surrounding our church is, by God’s grace and by our prayers, being changed into the New Garden. Our Christian hope is not for some disembodied, ghostly eternity reserved only for the future so that our lives now are really just a shell. Churches that believe that are usually very ugly. Families that believe that are often contentious and empty. Their homes reflect the disjunct between Gospel and Garden, Prayer and Joy, Joy and Crops. There is nothing disjointed about the Christian Gospel. God is making Himself a People redeemed, invited to the Dance by the Host, the eternal Father, included in the Joyful Dance of the Godhead through union with Jesus Christ, sanctified and trained for the Dance by the Holy Spirit. This Dance of Prayer is the Source of Joy, and wherever God’s people join that Dance, you can expect that their homes, their workplaces, their churches, their private lives will be changed, bit by bit, into a little Garden. God is redeeming the Earth through His Church!

You will hear this idea a lot in the coming months. The theme of our Family Camp in early June is “The Christian Home: A Nursery for Heaven.” It will focus on how to make our homes into places of Prayer, nurseries or greenhouses for Heaven, the eternal Garden. When we move into the sanctuary, one of our first goals will be to train lay readers to help keep the Daily Office at church and to create a Garden for those who come to prayer to sit and contemplate the readings for that morning at their church. Only when we commune with God through Prayer will be radiate the Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of King Jesus.

So, beloved, let us give thanks that we have been invited to the Dance. Let us be grateful for the first buds of fruit in our lives, homes, and church because of God’s presence with us. Don’t sit on the side of the Dance, glum. Don’t stay in the desert, hungry. Let us devote ourselves to Prayer, that our Joy may be full. Amen.

Sermon for 4th Sunday after Easter, 2021

Easter IV

Our Epistle reading for today is James chapter 1, verses 17 through 21. You may want to turn there in your booklet. We will first walk through each of these 5 verses. Well, make that 6 verses. The preceding verse, verse 16, states “Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren.” James is urging us not to miss the importance of what he is about to say.  

Verse 17 begins, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above.” James is restating what our Lord said in the Sermon on the Mount: “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?” Out of the abundance of His mercy, God has blessed us with many gifts. All His gifts are good and perfect, because He is good and perfect. What do you have that you value most? He has given that to you. Immense gratitude is the natural response. This is the reason this passage on God’s good and perfect gifts is also read on Thanksgiving Day. When we are given a gift, our appreciation for it is sometimes too easily swayed by how much it costs. The real value of a gift is not its dollar value, but who the giver is. Whatever you receive from God will always be what is best for you. He has no other way of giving. 

Verse 17 continues. These good and perfect gifts “Cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” The “Father of lights” refers to God as the Creator of the stars. Ps. 136:7 states that it was God who “Made the great lights” – the sun, the moon, and the stars. But unlike the sun and the moon, which vary from day to night, and whose turning create shadows, God does not change. As massive and dominant as the heavenly bodies are, they are inferior to their Creator, whose light and gifts change not. 

Verse 18 has 3 parts – a what, a how, and a why. The “what” is our new birth - “Of his own will begat he us.” James is using the metaphor of birth to describe God’s regenerative act in the human soul. Of course our minds go to John chapter 3, where Jesus tells Nicodemus “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” The “how” of this new birth follows - “With the word of truth.”  This “word of truth” is the Gospel. In 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, the Apostle Paul refers to those who are perishing “because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.” Verse 18 ends with the “why”. Why has God granted us a new birth by His word of truth? “That we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.” “Firstfruits” is an agricultural term. In Exodus 23, we learn that the best of the first harvest each year was to be offered to God as a sacrifice of thanksgiving. James says that God has brought us forth in a new birth to be such firstfruits. We are to offer ourselves to Him, therefore, in thanksgiving and service.

Verse 19 begins with “wherefore.” James signals that he is about to draw one practical application for those who recognize their firstfruits status. “Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.” The anger that can result from how we speak is a special concern of James, and he will devote 12 full verses in chapter 3 to this subject in the famous “taming the tongue” passage. 

In verse 20, James gives us the reason we must control our speech and our anger: “For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.” The phrase “the righteousness of God” is context-dependent. It can mean the righteousness that comes from God. In this sense, it is closely related to justification. “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” Here, though, James is using “the righteousness of God” in the sense of the rightness of God, that is, His character and will. We can understand this better if we reverse the behaviors of verse 19. Being slow to hear, quick to speak, and quick to anger do not conform to God’s rightness. They do not show loving obedience to God. They do not demonstrate a willingness to be conformed to the image of His Son. 

We now come to the last verse – something to avoid, and something to embrace. “Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness.” We are to avoid all immoral conduct and overflowing malice. The “lay apart” language evokes the image of stripping off dirty clothes and throwing them aside. Once we have put these away from us, we are to receive something - “Receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.” This is the second time James has referred to the “word.” In verse 18, we saw that God has granted us new life by “the word of truth” – the Gospel. Here, we learn that this “word” is implanted in us when received with meekness. The truths of the Gospel must be allowed to take root in our lives, and we must actively promote their growth. This is the continual walking in the way of salvation. 

These 5 verses could be summarized as follows. God, the giver of every good and perfect gift, whose nature is unchanging, has brought us forth into a new life. We are to shed everything that does not conform to His character and will, and receive with meekness the Gospel truths by which we are saved. 

Having looked at these verses, we now naturally ask: How do I know if I am living this way? Today’s Epistle has a built-in test, and so we return to verse 19: “Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.”

You could find these same three ideas in many self-help books. Steven Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People emphasizes the value of empathic listening. Habit number five is “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” Isn’t this just “Be quick to hear, slow to speak” in modern language? The authors of Crucial Conversations tell us we need to master our own emotions, especially anger, to have effective dialogue with others. Isn’t this just, “[be] slow to wrath”? “Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath” may sound like self-help, until we remind ourselves that James begins the passage with God as the source of every good and perfect gift, and he ends with God as the one who implants His word of truth in us which is able to save us. This isn’t self-help. It’s help from another. And this other is God. 

Today’s Collect begins, “O Almighty God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men.” Is there any shortage of evidence today of the unruly wills and affections of sinful men? The social media rage machine and the professionally furious clamor for our constant attention. Their visibility and business model depend on us being as angry and aggrieved as they are. It’s working. A June 2020 Gallup Poll found that 27% of respondents reported feeling angry a lot of the day. 

Later this month, we celebrate Ascension Day then Pentecost, which are hinted at in today’s Gospel. “…It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.” When Christ ascends, He will send the Holy Ghost, who will come in new power into the lives of the disciples. This transformed everything about them, not just their speech and their moods. This will fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah: “…After those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” 

The giver of every good and perfect gift, the Creator of all light, did not bring us forth in a new birth just so that we would be merely less angry and more temperate in speech. He wants to put His law within our hearts; He wants to engraft the Gospel in our lives. We are to be firstfruits – the best of the human harvest. “They shall be my people.” You will recall Fr. Tony’s description last week of Resurrection joy. This is a unique Christian experience. After all, we’re the only ones with a Savior willing to die and be resurrected for us. Wanting to live in Resurrection joy is the reason we prayed earlier today that we would “love the thing which thou dost command, and desire that which thou dost promise.” What if we were a people who didn’t merely obey God’s command to control our speech and anger better, but loved doing so? What if we didn’t merely know about God’s promises, but truly desired them? If we did so, we would find, as the Collect says, our hearts would be fixed where true joys are found. 

Sermon for 3rd Sunday after Easter, 2021

Sermon for Easter 3, 2021

Fr. Tony Melton

April 25, 2021 @ Christ the King Anglican

Can you recall a moment in your life when you felt perfect joy and contentment? When it felt like everything you ever wanted was yours right then? […] With Vandi away this week in Dallas for a wedding, I had the privilege of spending the week only with my boys. I remembered when they were born. Those are the moments that come to mind for me. I thought, “What more could I possibly desire than what God has granted me right now? How could I ever be sad again?” As I recall, there is no quieter time than the days after a birth. No one expects anything of you after a birth. In fact, they are there to help. Lots of time is spent quietly enjoying the gift of a new child. As long as that baby is okay, there is hardly anything that could possibly cause anxiety. There is a quiet and imperturbable joy.

Our Gospel for this morning speaks of the Church’s Resurrection Joy and relates it to the joy that comes at the birth of a baby. This is our topic: Resurrection Joy—quiet and unshakeable. 

The Enemy loves nothing more than to steal us away from this Joy. We speak often here at Christ the King of habitual recollection, the habit of living in the presence of God. This can be understood as abiding in Resurrection Joy. But just think of all the things that steal you away from that every day. 

Our central text is from the Gospel. John 16, “I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.” We will see how Resurrection Joy answers every Crisis of Faith. But we will also spend some time in the Epistle from 1 Peter 2, seeing how Resurrection Joy enables us to withstand all worldly turmoil.

First, Resurrection Joy answers every Crisis of Faith. John 16 is from Jesus’ last words to his disciples before He was crucified. He says, “A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father.” This saying obviously disturbs the disciples. They didn’t understand. In questioning what Jesus means, the statement is repeated another three times. “A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me: and, Because I go to the Father? They said therefore, What is this that he saith, A little while? we cannot tell what he saith.” By documenting this frenetic exchange, St. John is giving us a clue into the anxiety that the disciples will feel when Jesus is taken away from them and killed. The time in the grave will be a crisis of faith indeed. In fact, the crisis of faith that the Apostles will experience is the archetype of all crises of faith. All other crises of faith are attached back to theirs because in every crisis there is a choice to believe in Jesus and His Resurrection, or not. 

Jesus confirms that they will go through this crisis of faith. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy.” Then He likens their crisis of faith to a woman in labor. “A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come.”

Birth is a scary thing, especially in ancient times. Infant mortality was at 30% for much of ancient history. Maternal mortality was somewhere around 2-6% depending on the region. In birth, you have the greatest of earthly fears and pain placed directly beside the greatest of earthly joys. “My wife and my child might die today…” “I’m going to be a father…” The fear can blot out the joy. This is why Jesus uses it as a metaphor for the disciples crisis of faith. The disciples were about to lose their Messiah, their Friend. This would be the death of everything for them. The solidity of having their Rabbi. The comfort of walking with the Son of God. All their hopes for the Messianic Kingdom and of salvation. Dead. You can see why Jesus calls it sorrow. But not the sorrow of a death, but the sorrow of labor, which is temporary. 

“But as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.” Jesus is speaking of His Resurrection. His Resurrection is the end of their crisis of faith, and so it is the answer to all crises of faith. He says, “And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.”

Many of us are going through difficult things right now. Caring for aging parents, financial stress, joblessness, wayward children. You might be going through grief, marital strife, conflict with a neighbor, or the fallout from personal sin. In as much as these impinge upon the constancy of Resurrection Joy, they are crises of faith. As we walk through these things, the nagging thought in our mind is the same as the disciples on Holy Saturday. “Are my hopes shattered? Is all lost?” In these moments, it seems like everything that is important to you is dead, or on the verge of death. These are crises of faith. Hear the words of Jesus to his disciples: “And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.” No matter what you are going through, Jesus has been raised from the dead! Just like the joy of a newborn baby can blot out every anxiety, so can the Resurrection of Jesus Christ answer every crises of faith. Why? Because we have Jesus. And we have the answer. People outside the Church don’t have this answer. To them, every crisis might be the end; it might sully their very existence. Not so for us. We know that on the other side of Death is Resurrection. The worst that this world can throw at us cannot shake the Hope that we have in Jesus and the power of His resurrection. So we go through each Crisis of Faith with Resurrection Joy that no man can take from us. 

Second, Resurrection Joy enables us to withstand all worldly turmoil. Peter writes to the Church in the midst of worldly turmoil. He says, “whereas they speak against you as evildoers.” The Romans accused the early Christians of terrible things. Cannibalism and Infanticide because they spoke of eating the Body and Blood of the Infant Christ. Since husbands and wives spoke to each other as “brother” and “sister in Christ”, the Romans accused them of immorality. Due to political distrust, they were often the scapegoat for Roman rulers. This Epistle was written during the reign of Nero, who in addition to having Christians slain by beasts for public spectacle, would use them as human candles to light his Garden. Resurrection Joy enables us to withstand all worldly turmoil and even oppression. 

Listen to what Peter says, “Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well. For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men: as free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God. Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king.” What? Honor Nero? It is almost as if Christians are to be unaffected by the turmoil and oppression from the government. It is almost as if they are to have an unexplainable solidity that can only come from God. That is Resurrection Joy which no man can take from you. It enables you to withstand all things because you already have the best thing. 

This is why Jesus likens Resurrection Joy to the days just after the birth of a baby. What mother or father cares one lick about politics or reputation when their beautiful baby is alive and well? They are quiet, joyful, serene. Beloved, we have this Joy perpetually, for the man that is born into the world is Jesus Christ, the resurrected Son of God. No man can take away the joy of this birth because no man can take away our Jesus. He is always there. As we go through our day, we carry Him with us. Whatever crisis we face is an opportunity to cling closer to Him and to see through the crisis into the promise of Resurrection. If we face oppression or turmoil, what is that to us? We are strangers and pilgrims here. We have Jesus and the promise of the Resurrection. What can steal our Joy? Nothing. Don’t let anything steal your Joy. Abide in Resurrection Joy. Make it a habit. And, if your heart needs reminding of how near Jesus is to you, and it does, then take this Holy Sacrament to your comfort and let it nourish in you a Resurrection Joy that no man taketh from you. Amen.

Sermon for 2nd Sunday after Easter, 2021

Homily for the 2nd Sunday after Easter

Fr. Tony Melton

4/18/21 @ Christ the King Anglican

One of the great transitions between childhood and adulthood is the realization that life is not fair. This is not usually a pretty process. It wasn’t for me. Children generally learn this when they finally confront real evil, either in the world or in themselves, or real tragedy. This knowledge of Good and Evil is a real loss of innocence. The child who has come to this the realization no longer expects justice. It is an important step, but a terrible one. For me, I was badly bullied early in life. A California kid in small-town Missouri. From grades 4-6, I learned quickly that there is evil in the world, evil in school children. And this was soon coupled with the scarier realization that I, too, had evil inside of me, and that they deserved punishment, and so did I. I had my first taste of the paradox of “Life is unfair. And thank God, for my sake, that it is so.”

Many never come to either realization, certainly the non-religious, but even the religious. The acceptance of personal injustice and suffering is the central question in every religion and philosophy. The Stoics offer no answer except, “Grin and bear it.” The Hindus and Buddhists, in different ways, say that suffering is an illusion. Judaism, like Stoicism, stops at moral platitudes. Only the Gospel of the Cross and the Tomb has an answer.

Our topic today is Personal Injustice. The unfairness and suffering of life. And our task is to explore what this has to do with the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is such an important topic for our time. As a society, many of our actions, both political and otherwise, are motivated by an acute awareness of injustice committed against the individual, both real and imaginary. We have a culture of Victimhood, and this is lightyears away from the culture of the Gospel and the message of our Epistle this morning from 1 Peter 2.

First, I will walk us through 1 Peter 2:19-25, which exhorts the Christian to suffer indignity with patience, looking at the example of Christ. Then, we will look at how the Resurrected Christ beckons us through the gate of personal injustice along the path of faith.

Please turn to page 9 in your liturgy booklet. Our Epistle reading this morning is from 1 Peter 2. There is a typo. My apologies. The Epistle is from 1 Peter, not 2 Peter. “THIS is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully.” Don’t miss the shockingness of this initial statement. If a man suffers wrongfully, he ought to give thanks for that. With a conscience toward God, meaning mindful of the providence of God over His life, he can “consider it joy” when bad things happen to him or people mistreat him for no good reason.

Peter continues, “For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently?” There are three ways of relating to our sufferings. There is the way of the perpetual Victim. This one, when he is punished for his own faults, does not take it patiently, but turns and accuses the one giving the punishment. The second way is Normal Man of Virtue. This one, when he is buffeted for his faults, takes it patiently. Peter asks, “What glory is in that?” Perhaps if St. Peter was to see the throngs of modern people who, armed with a victimhood mentality, constantly transfer blame onto whatever and whomever they can, then he would comment that there is, at least, something commendable in a man or woman who can accepts with patience being punished for his or her faults.

Yet, Peter chooses to contrast this Normal Man of Virtue, not with the Perpetual Victim, but with a Christian Saint. “….but if, when ye do. well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.” This is a return to the opening sentence. Christians have a different way of relating to unfairness in life. How a Christian looks at personal suffering is vastly different from how a Normal Virtuous Man sees suffering. For while both are able to accept just suffering, the Christian is able to accept unjust suffering, unfair pain, unfounded embarrassment, unmerited scorn. And because Life is unfair, and it is, we have a completely different way of relating to Life.

Where does this Way of Accepting Unjust Suffering come from? Peter continues, “For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps: who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not: but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously: who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.” The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ opened up the Way of Accepting Unjust Suffering. We can accept personal injustice not only because we see Jesus doing it, but because we know, by the testimony of His resurrection, that all personal injustices will be made whole and then some, when we, too, are raised to everlasting life! This means that we are free to live lives of no expectation. I don’t have to “get mine” through trickery or deceit. Children, when a bully makes fun of you, you don’t fight back, either with your fists or your words. Did Jesus fight back when they were calling Him names on the Cross? And how did things end? "And the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures: And ascended into heaven, And sitteth on the right hand of the Father.” The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ opens up the Way of Accepting Unjust Suffering.

Then Peter closes this portion of the Epistle with an interesting statement. “For ye were as sheep going astray: but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.”

Close your eyes for a moment.  Imagine a round green pasture about 200 yards in diameter, surrounded by trees. In this pasture are many sheep. It’s a bit crowded. Not enough grass to go around. This is the Pasture of this World. Directly across from you, at the edge of this pasture, in the middle of the hedge of trees, is a thicket, very dark, ominous, full of thorns. All the sheep are scared of it. If fact, they are so afraid of it that they stand back, further crowding the pasture. One day, the Shepherd comes and starts cutting through the thicket. The thorns tear open his skins. The sheep look upon their Shepherd covered in blood, going where they would never dare. Finally, he cuts through the thicket and walks through the trees. All the sheep lower their heads and can see, just barely, what looks like rich, lush grass that goes on for miles. The Shepherd calls them, but even though a path has been cleared, most of the sheep are too afraid to walk through it. A few do, however, and some of the thorns surrounding the thicket cut into their skin, also. The sheep in the Pasture of this World see the blood and hear the screams of the Sheep who trusted their Shepherd, and this confirms for them that they will never go through the thicket. Yet, what they don’t see is that those who followed the Shepherd through the gate of Unjust Suffering come out on the other side into a field of infinite consolation. “For ye were as sheep going astray: but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.”

If we can follow Jesus through the scary gate of Unfairness into the pasture of His Grace and Reward, then what can possibly steal our joy in this life? All the sheep in the pasture of this world are fighting over this or that blade of grass. “It’s my promotion, my recognition, my acquittal. I deserve this. Or, I didn’t do anything wrong, I worked harder, I’m righteous! I don’t deserve this. And also, “They did this, they said that. They deserve this. They don’t deserve that!” If they only knew that the pasture of the Resurrected Life supplies so much consolation, vindication, glory, and righteousness, that the little unfairnesses of life will barely be seen or remembered! All that is required to enter into  that life if for a sheep to trust the Shepherd enough to walk through the thorny thicket of Personal Injustice.

Today, the 2nd Sunday after Easter, is called Good Shepherd Sunday. Jesus as Shepherd is in every Scripture passage. Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd.” Isaiah 40, “Behold, the Lord God will come with strong hand…He shall feed his flock like a shepherd.” 1 Peter 2, “For ye were as sheep going astray: but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.” And the Gospel from John 10, “I am the good shepherd.” Our Collect begins, “ALMIGHTY God, who hast given thine only Son to be unto us both a sacrifice for sin, and also an ensample of godly life.” A sacrifice and an example. In the same act, His crucifixion, He clears the path that none of us could ever have cleared. He is the sacrifice. He is our Life. And He also shows us the Way. An example. “I am the Way. Follow me. This is the path. Don’t be afraid.” Jesus is the Good Shepherd.

Following the assertion, “I am the Good Shepherd,” Jesus spends the rest of this pericope contrasting good shepherds with “hirelings”,  men who do not actually care for the sheep, and who flee at the first sign of danger, leaving the sheep to the wolves. There is the Good Shepherd, there are good shepherds, and there are hirelings. On this Good Shepherd Sunday, our focus is primarily on THE Good Shepherd, but it is also appropriate to think briefly on the shepherds that God provides his flock.

You may have wondered by bishops carry a staff with them. Every bishop carries what is called a crozier, a hooked staff carried in the past by shepherds. These tall sturdy sticks had two purposes. First, they could beat the snot out of any predator that attacked the sheep. Second, the hook could be used to gently pull a sheep back into the fold. A bishop is to be a faithful under-shepherd. So much of the mess of Protestantism can be attributed because they’ve lacked the shepherds, the bishops, that Jesus gives His flock. For many of us here, we are not used to having a bishop. We will likely have both Bishop Sutton and Bishop White here on June 20th. We must learn to follow and trust them, as they follow Jesus the Good Shepherd.

Then there is shepherd language assigned to simple clergymen like myself, and Fr. Josh, and Dcn. Kyle, and Dcn. Bill. We are “pastors” to you. Pastor is related to the word “pasture”. A “pastor” is the one who is tasked to lead a flock to green pastures. I can assure you that your pastors always feel inadequate for this task. In a very real sense, we are sheep, too. We trust that by the sacramental grace poured out in the sacrament of Ordination, we have been supernaturally and ontologically empowered to do what we in our natural sheepishness would never do, which is to press through the thicket and to take a group of sheep with us.

I don’t know what this life will hold for us, for me and for you. Perhaps there are tough times ahead. Perhaps Jesus will call us through the thorny thicket of personal injustice again and again. Maybe there is difficulty in store. But there are a few things that I know.  I know that we will suffer them together. I know that I, for one, feel an awesome privilege and weight to walk with you through field and thicket. And I know that the Good Shepherd went through the thicket, and He still bears the scars in His body, and that we, too, will bear the marks of suffering, both just and unjust. But I also know that Jesus will feed you in a green pasture, and lead you forth beside the waters of comfort. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; * for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff comfort me. Thou shalt prepare a table before me in the presence of them that trouble me; thou hast anointed my head with oil, and my cup shall be full.”

It is an Easter truth that from the other side of the grave comes our vindication. We walk through this life knowing that the economy of this life is not all there is. The Resurrection of our Good Shepherd proves that there is life beyond Death and the thorns of personal injustice. So, now, let us eat from the table that He has prepare in the presence of them that trouble us, that in honor, or dishonor, life or death, justice or injustice, our cup shall always be full. Amen.

Sermon for Easter Sunday, 2021

Homily for Easter, 2021

Colossians 3:1-4

Fr. Tony H. Melton

Christ is risen! [He is risen indeed!] Some of you sound like you’ve been up all night! Let’s try that again. Christ is risen! [He is risen indeed!] You are risen with Him! Say, “Indeed!” [Indeed!] This is the foundation of the new world, and the pillar of the Christian Faith. Easter is the center of the year, and everything in the Scriptures, and in Creation, point to it, and flow from this: that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, laid down His life willingly, and took it up again. In this act He procured the forgiveness of sins, He unleashed the Spirit upon the earth, He became mankind’s cure for the contagion of death, He burst open the gates of larger life, He reversed the curse set on man, and woman, and the dust, and left the Serpent dead, with a crushed head. All this happened on Easter.

So, for most of my life, I knew that Easter was a big deal, but I didn’t know how it was a big deal for me right now. Good Friday, I get it. Right? Just died for my sins, which I committed today. Pentecost. I get it. The Spirit lives inside of me right now. Amazing! Easter means that someday, a long time from now, after I die, I will be raised from the dead. Which is fantastic, but its significance for my life in the here and now didn’t come as easily. Yet, the theologians I was reading frequently point back to the Resurrection as the center, not only for Christian hope, but for Christian life.

St. Paul, in our Epistle for this morning, carefully applies these great sweeping truths to us, and He answers the question, “What does the Resurrection of Jesus Christ do to us and for us right now?” So please open your booklets to page 10 and follow along as we walk through Colossians 3, verses 1-4.

(3:1) “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.

First off, what does it mean to be “risen with Christ”? Though we know that we will, in the future, obtain a bodily resurrection, I don’t know of anyone who has an immortal body. So what does it mean to be “risen with Christ?” Paul is obviously referencing what has been described as a “spiritual resurrection” which precedes our physical resurrection. Others have described this as an “internal resurrection” because its result is a new man, or new nature, that changes our heart in anticipation of the change in our bodies. You are risen with Christ because in baptism your soul is united with His so that what is true of Him is true of you, and where He is, so you will be, too. And where is Jesus now? He is sitting on the right hand of God. Follow the logic here: because you are united with Him, you are in Him there, and He is in you, so that your internal resurrection means that within the inner recesses of your soul, perhaps undiscovered or covered over by the clutter of the world, is a portal which leads to the highest realms of heaven. It is through this inner pathway that the Christian saints found their joy and peace and life and boundless love. The Resurrection vaults all those who are united with Jesus by Baptism into Heaven, though we are still on Earth.

It is with this fact in mind that Paul applies it to our lives. Because we are risen with Christ, St. Paul instructs that we are to “seek those things which are above, where Christ sits on the right hand of God.” He continues, (3:2) “Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.” The Greek word for “affection” is phroneite meaning "the thoughts that come from the heart.” It is not simply our feelings of love, though it is certainly that. This refers to your inner self that either clings to  the clutter of the world or to seek, find, and cling to the presence of Jesus in your resurrected soul, like Jacob wrestling the angel, until you receive a blessing, too. The Resurrection vaults us in our hearts into Heaven, with Jesus. And, it points our affections towards Heaven, toward Jesus.

Moving on to verse 3. (3:3-4) “For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” I started with the question, “What does it mean to be ‘Risen with Christ?’” Now we ask what it means to be “dead”? Just like “risen with Christ” referred to an “internal resurrection”, “ye are dead” refers to an “internal execution.” What kind of death? We get our clue from the preceding verse: dead to the things of the earth, which include sin and distraction, anything that would steal our affection from things above. This is what we are dead to. In other words, We are dead to the World and the Flesh, and they are dead to us. The Resurrection of Jesus deals a mortal blow to our flesh, that malignant inner power that constantly attaches to the things of the earth and His resurrection causes a new life to live in us. This glory in us is hidden, Paul says—hidden with Christ in God. And it will not be revealed until Jesus returns. Therefore, ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.

Three summers ago, I have been able to spend some time with a Franciscan community on the Big Island of Hawaii. The three monastics, one priest and two nuns, are the type of people that you love immediately, and I still love and miss them deeply. I spent some time with Sister Annie, who is in her late-70’s, I believe. And in preparing for this sermon, it struck me that she is the greatest living example that I know of what this passage is referring to, and I thought that you would want to hear about her. She joined the Fransiscans as a teenager, and has worked in hospitals and ministries of mercy for over 50 years, most of those years being in Haiti. Her hair is cut very short, like so many Fransiscan nuns. Her clothes are simple. She is content to be silent, though she has a deep understanding of Scripture and life. She spends her latter days growing and picking fruit on the farm for the poor, and praying with Fr. Columba and Sr. Marty. She wears a close-lipped half-smile, which suggest that she has a wonderful secret that she will not tell a soul, but that is on her mind that very moment, like a divine romance.

She has put to death not only the members which are upon the earth, which Paul lists in verse 5, “fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry”, but she has denied herself those things that are not sinful in themselves, but do tend to cover over the the sacred passageway within the soul, things like possessions, outward adornment, status, influence. “For ye are dead.”

Yet when you see her, “death” is not the word that would ever come to mind, though she is advanced in years and possesses nothing. “For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” Sr. Annie’s life is hid in God, and God’s life is hid in her, and it shoots out of her piercing eyes and the corners of her modest smile. What does it mean to be dead to the world, and to have one’s life hid in God? What glory does she possess in the world’s eyes? She is an enigma to the dying world, just like Jesus was, and just like it is for all who live a resurrected life. The Resurrection vaults us into heaven. But this is hidden from the world. The Resurrection points our affections towards Heaven. But these things are hidden, too. The glory of Christ inside us is hidden under the veil of your flesh. All things will be revealed when Jesus returns again. Then that blinding light which was hidden on the inside will be manifest for all to see, and so will it be for any and all who are risen with Christ and dead to the World.

So that’s Colossians 3:1-4. Baptism creates a union with Christ, so that His Death brings about an “interior execution” of your flesh, and an “interior resurrection” of a heavenly and hidden life within you. This is what the theologians call ontology. This is how the Resurrection of Jesus changes your being. We live in the middle of two points in time: Jesus’ resurrection and our future resurrection. Nevertheless, it is clear from the Scriptures that your Easter, today still involves a dying and a rising. For you, and for all the Church Militant, Easter is for the putting to death again that which was killed in baptism, and the rejuvenating to live that which was resurrected in baptism. Or, more simply, Easter for us is a dying to the world and a rising to heaven. So now let’s move from ontology to application. In other words, having answered the question, “What does the Resurrection of Jesus do to us?” let us ask, “What does the Resurrection of Jesus mean for us to do?” And the answer is simple, “Die and be risen.” And there are two ways each that the Scriptures direct us toward.

First, die again to sin. What does it mean to die to sin? In verse 5, the word in Greek, nekrosate, which is translated “mortify”, means to cut off anything that energizes a thing to life, to make no allowances for it to continue. Imagine your inner attachment to the sins of the World as an invasive weed; the world has many ways to nourish that hearty plant. Yet it is amazing how often Christians allow and even invest in the things that fertilize sin. For example, many loathe themselves for gossiping, yet go faithfully to the same gatherings for years without a single moment of honesty, “I would really like to protect that person’s honor. Can we talk about something else?” Starve out the things that bind you to the world. You are risen with Christ, which means you are dead to sin, and sin is dead to you, so, this Easter, die again to sin.

Second, die again to the world. Here, by world,  I mean things that are not sinful, (like fame, possessions, or relaxation) but often lead us away from seeking heavenly things and attach to earthly things. This is a huge problem in the Church, and not just in the heretical parts of the Health and Wealth movement. It affects us all. Worldly ambitions and the unchecked pursuit of all forms of earthly goods have become far too acceptable in the Church, and have no doubt caused many to revert back to the life that they had been raised from. Instead of seeking earthly goals, Christ died. This sets up a simple hierarchy for all earthly goals whether that is our careers, fitness, education, travel, status. Remember, in the resurrected life, your glory is hidden. It is okay if the world doesn’t get it, or when they look at you, they think, “Well, that’s one way to live your life.” We wear a tool of execution around our necks. The resurrected life is not supposed to make sense to the world! Life is a zero-sum game. Are you going to invest in earth, or in heaven? This Easter, die again to the world.

Third, be risen to heaven in your heart. The Fathers said that this internal resurrection was given “that we might have the pleasure of our redemption before the benefit.” It is not enough to simply kill something, if you forget to live. God does not call us to a starvation diet! You are united with Christ, and with Him comes Heaven, the very source of all joy and satisfaction. The saints testify to a sweetness in prayer that can satisfy all of our desires, and drive away all their earthly counterparts and counterfeits. But so few eat at that heavenly banquet; we are too addicted to the cheap, syrup-filled snacks of worldly distraction to engage in real prayer. Be risen to heaven in your hearts through prayer.

And finally, be risen to Faith, which is to say confidence. Jesus rolled away every stone from every grave in His resurrection, so what have you to fear of death. He has conquered the grave, and if you need not fear the worst thing, why worry about the smaller things. Rise to Faith, and Hope, and Holiness, and Joy, and Fellowship, and Communion. Leave no provision for the flesh, be pure before God, let no leaven in the new loaf of your resurrected life, that you might have a false worldly rising, but let your new loaf be flat, unleavened, dead to the world, glory hidden from world, so that when Christ, who is your life, shall appear, then shall you be risen by His power and appear with him in glory. Amen.