Sermon Archive
Homily for 3rd Sunday after Easter, 2022
Homily for Easter 3, 2022
Fr. Tony Melton
The Maternal Life is a Cruciform Life
Watch and listen HERE.
On September 14, 1224, a Saturday, Francis of Assisi—noted ascetic and holy man—was preparing to enter the second month of a retreat with a few close companions on Monte La Verna, overlooking the River Arno in Tuscany. Francis had spent the previous few weeks in prolonged contemplation of the suffering Jesus Christ on the cross, and was very weak from protracted fasting. As he knelt to pray in the first light of dawn (notes the Fioretti—the ‘Little flowers of St Francis of Assisi,’ a collection of stories about him),
he began to contemplate the Passion of Christ… and his fervor grew so strong within him that he became wholly transformed into Jesus through love and compassion…. While he was thus inflamed, he saw a seraph with six shining, fiery wings descend from heaven. This seraph drew near to St Francis in swift flight, so that he could see him clearly and recognize that he had the form of a man crucified… After a long period of secret converse, this mysterious vision faded, leaving in his body a wonderful image and imprint of the Passion of Christ. For in the hands and feet of Saint Francis forthwith began to appear the marks of the nails in the same manner as he had seen them in the body of Jesus crucified.
I have always been interested in a phenomenon in the history of the Church called the Stigmata. A handful of people in the history of the Church have received the wounds of Christ on their hands and feet, sometimes their side, sometimes their head. These bleeding wounds often last years, sometimes their whole lives. The most recent case of the Stigmata was less than 60 years ago in Italy. Padre Pio had constantly fresh wounds on his hands and feet, and this was documented by the Church and those outside the Church. What at first was simply fascination at a miracle has developed for me into a deeper meaning. As you heard in the reading of the Fioretti, Francis’ stigmata came as he dove deep into the Sufferings of Christ. So it has been with all who, as St. Paul says, “bear in their bodies the stigmata of the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Galatians 6:17)
I think this interesting part of the Church’s experience and history is important for us as we exit Christendom. Up till recently, the Church in the West has enjoyed the comfort and respect of being in the majority. Going to Church helped your business, it got votes, it won the affection and trust of neighbors. These are not bad things at all. We should look forward to when it returns to society. But a danger embedded in societal favor is it robs the Church the clear opportunity for Cruciformity. Cruciformity. That way of patterning our life after suffering and death of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the path that the Stigmatists point to. Christ validated their intentional suffering for the life of the world by giving them a sign that they were with Him and He with them in their suffering. If the Church cannot adopt the Cruciform life in this post-Christian society, she will fail.
Our subject today is the Cruciform life and how we as Christians can take up all paths of Cruciformity with sure hope because of the Resurrection.
For our text this morning, we will look first at our Old Testament Lesson, the song of Hannah and see how God has embedded an inversion into the fiber of this fallen world (God brings the low, high) and this inversion points to when Jesus went from the Cross to Resurrection, which we will see in the Gospel. To close, we’ll take a look at how we can take this call to cruciformity, armed with the hope of Resurrection, into our life of mission, specifically the cruciform vocation of Motherhood.
Let’s jump in. Please turn in your booklets to page 6 where you will find 1 Samuel 2, the Song of Hannah. Hannah, you remember, was barren, and despised by those around her for being so. She begged God for a child, and was even despised in her begging. And God looked on this woman and blessed her with a son, whom she named Samuel. After she had received him, she composed a song and sang it. This is the song that the Virgin Mary patterned her song after in Luke 2, the Magnificat. What I want you to notice is how Hannah draws attention to the pattern of God’s working of inverting the station of the poor, despised righteous and the rich, powerful heathen. Verse 4, “The bows of the mighty men are broken, and they that stumbled are girded with strength.” Here Hannah speaks of the inverting of human strength. You might hear in this the words of Jesus, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Verse 5, “They that were full have hired out themselves for bread; and they that were hungry ceased: so that the barren hath born seven; and she that hath many children is waxed feeble.” Here Hannah talks about those who are full of food and children, then will be made empty and those without will have much. Now, we need to keep in mind in reading the end of this verse, that Hannah lived in a saner time when children were still thought of as a blessing. To have many of them was regarded by larger society to be good thing. Ironically, and we will discuss this later, having a house full of children is now a clear opportunity for the lowliness and cruciformity that brings God’s inverting deliverance. So, it is a bit flipped in our time how to read verse 5. Verse 7 and 8 speak also of wealth and power. “The Lord maketh poor, and maketh rich: he bringeth low, and lifteth up. 8 He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes.” These same ideas are also mentioned in our Psalm for today, Psalm 113, which is also patterned after Hannah’s song, “He taketh up the simple out of the dust, * and lifteth the poor out of the mire; 7 That he may set him with the princes, * even with the princes of his people. 8 He maketh the barren woman to keep house, * and to be a joyful mother of children.”
Verses 9-10 are very important, because this isn’t at all about class struggle. God is not a Marxist that always takes the side of the poor and powerless because they are poor and powerless. He takes the side of the righteous poor, the righteous weak, the righteous who bear their barrenness in faith that the God who raised up Jesus Christ the from the dead will see their cruciformity, their suffering, and raise them up, too. Take a look at verse 6 of 1 Samuel 2. Go ahead and find it, and you will see that the Resurrection was at the center of even the Old Testament saints’ hope that their Cruciformity would not be for not. “The Lord killeth, and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up.”
Ever since the apple was bitten, God has continually elevated the lowly and righteous, the despised and holy, the poor and faithful, because His plan all along was to demonstrate the Great Inversion of all things with the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The takeaway for us is that in light of all the stories of how God took the despised and lowly and blessed them, and in light of the Cross and Resurrection we should never shrink back from our Cruciformity. We should hear in the story of Hannah a testimony that whatever suffering and sacrifice we are called to make, the resurrected Lord is right there to assure us that we bear His marks and that He will bless us and will raise us up into everlasting joy.
In case you were wondering, I did not pick these passages for this Sunday. They were handed down from of old, predetermined not only by God but by those who created the Lectionary. And yet 3 out of 4 of our Scripture lessons for today explicitly mention motherhood! The only one we haven’t gone over is from our Gospel, John 16, when Jesus likens the joy of the Resurrection to the joy of a mother who gives birth to a child. Given that the authors of the Lectionary didn’t intend these passages to fall on Mother’s Day, we must ask, “Why all these Mama verses during Eastertide?
One of the reasons is that during Easter, we look back on the world with Resurrection eyes, and we see our sufferings and crosses and curses in a new light. For women, the Curse in Genesis pertained to pregnancy and birth. The act of being a mother, though extremely wonderful, is still tied up in pain of the Curse. Therefore, the Maternal Life is a Cruciform Life. The Maternal Life is a Cruciform Life. If you are a Resurrection Mother, then you enter boldly on this path knowing that whatever sacrifices you give, whatever disdain you received from this Culture of Death, whatever scars you bear in your body, are a participation in the stigmata of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is your path of Cruciformity, and our God loves to raise up all those who have bring themselves close to the dust, close to the Curse, close to the Cross.
The Maternal Life is a Cruciform Life. It lives out the vocation of Jesus in a unique way. A mother does not say, “This is my body.” She says, “This is my body…which is given for you…I suffer that you may live. I bear this Curse that you may have blessing. My body is food, and in my bosom is safety and comfort.” So, you see, Motherhood is a unique opportunity to live out the cruciformity of Christ in sharp contrast to the way of the world.
Ok. Hannah’s song gives us the pattern of the Faithful. Suffering to Glory. Christ has fully confirmed this pattern by rising from the dead, so now it is Cruciformity to Resurrection. We take this faith into all forms of our Cruciformity, especially that of Motherhood.
To bring this to a close, I wanted to point this a little more directly to our time and place. If it is was a divine coincidence that these passages should fall on Mother’s Day, then it is definitely providential that these passages would come into our ears on the backs of the leaked draft of Dobbs vs. Jackson, the Supreme Court case poised to overthrow Roe vs. Wade. In a way, Motherhood isn’t just a path of Cruciformity. In this Culture of Death, which so resembles that Satanic dragon in Revelation 12 that seeks to devour the infant, I believe that the Church must rise up like that woman in Revelation 12 to protect and nurture the infant. This will have a threefold effect. It will save lives in this world and the next. It will bring the Church closer to our Cruciform Lord through poverty, suffering, and the disdain of the world. But, third, it will be a testimony to this insane culture that devours its young.
The Christians of the 2nd century were known for adopting the children left out to die and raising them as Christians. They were maligned for their good deeds, even accused of cannibalism of infants, yet they continued to live out the Motherly vocation of the Church. Over time, this was a testimony to the pagan society. This is what Peter talks about in our Epistle for this morning. “whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation…For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men.”
Church, we are at a moment of Truth. If the wicked, dark cloud of Roe v. Wade is lifted from over our nation, then we will have a twofold responsibility. The Church must live out our Cruciform vocation as Mother to protect and nurture. To protect, we must insist on righteous laws based on biblical Truth—that life starts from Conception and that a baby in the womb is a person, in every case, no matter what, and should insist on the value and protection, both medically and judicially, that any other person would receive outside the womb. To speak clearly and insist on righteous laws is the Church living out its Motherly vocation to protect.
But the second part of the Church living out her Motherly vocation is to nurture, to adopt. If the Supreme Court goes through with this, and you want to celebrate, then take first steps to adopt a child. If you can’t, support someone who can. This is a moment of Truth. The Church cannot take a victory lap. This is what Peter says in our Epistle about “using our liberty for a cloke of maliciousness”. The time is now. Life often just comes upon you. Our timing is not God’s timing, especially when it comes to the vocation of Motherhood. I’m learning that a lot right now. But the time is now.
If you lay down your life for the sake of another, God will raise you up again.
If you give your body for the life of another, God will raise you up again.
If you become poor because of your commitment to the vocation of Motherhood, God will bring you out of the dust.
If you incur the stigma of the world, Jesus will draw near to you and remind you that the Stigmata belongs to Him.
Mothers, bless you. You are an icon of our Lord Jesus Christ. Church, you are a Mother to the world. Let us rise up and step into the Cruciformity of sacrifice, poverty, stigma, suffering, knowing that the Resurrected Lord is there to raise us up into Life and Joy. Amen.
Homily for the 2nd Sunday after Easter, 2022
“Christ the Good Shepherd”
The Second Sunday after Easter, 2022
The Rev. Dcn. Kyle Hughes
THE COLLECT.
Almighty God, who hast given thine only Son to be unto us both a sacrifice for sin, and also an example of godly life: Give us grace that we may always most thankfully receive that his inestimable benefit, and also daily endeavour ourselves to follow the blessed steps of his most holy life; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
THE EPISTLE. 1 Peter 2:19-25
THIS is thank-worthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently; this is acceptable with God. 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. For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.
THE GOSPEL. St. John 10:11-16
JESUS said, I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep. The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep. I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep. And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one flock, and one shepherd.
Tags: St. John Chrysostom, Old Testament, John Behr
“As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep.” You may be seated.
* * *
The image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd invariably conjures up warm feelings of our Lord’s care and compassion for each one of us. Intriguingly, though, close attention to the context Christ’s teaching about the Good Shepherd shows that there may, in fact, be more going on in this passage than initially meets the eye. After all, in verse 19, at the conclusion of our Lord’s teaching, we learn the response of those listening to these words of Jesus: “There was again a division among the Jews because of these words. Many of them said, ‘He has a demon, and is insane; why listen to him?’” What, then, was so provocative about what Jesus said that it led some to claim that Jesus was insane and demon-possessed? There are, I suggest, at least three layers of meaning that we are meant to find in this passage that can help us to see just how striking–indeed, shocking–this teaching of our Lord actually is.
First, Jesus’ claim to be the Good Shepherd placed him in stark opposition to the Pharisees, who claimed to be authority figures in Jesus’ day. Here the preceding context is critical. Jesus’ teaching about himself as the Good Shepherd follows the account in John chapter 9 of his healing of a man born blind. Because this healing took place on the Sabbath, it generates conflict with the Pharisees, whom Jesus castigates as themselves being spiritually blind for not understanding the true purpose and meaning of the Sabbath. Chapter 10, then, continues Jesus’ polemic against the Pharisees. Thus, when Jesus, at the start of chapter 10, contrasts the figure of a shepherd with that of a thief or a robber, he has in mind the Pharisees as the thieves and robbers who are leading the sheep of Israel astray. In contrast, the sheep, like the man born blind whom Jesus has just healed, know the voice of their shepherd, who calls them by name and leads them out into green pastures. As Jesus explains in verse 10, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” This brings us to our Gospel lesson in verses 11 through 16, in which Jesus identifies himself as the Good Shepherd, who lays down his life for the sheep. Again, Jesus drives home the difference between himself and the Pharisees; as we read in verses 12 and 13, the hired hands flee at the first sight of a wolf, because he cares nothing for the sheep. Unlike the aforementioned thieves and robbers, these hired hands don’t appear to have ill motives; rather, they simply treat their care of the sheep as a job, a way of putting food on the table, and as such they are not prepared to risk their lives for these sheep who don’t even belong to them.
Historically, then, the church has read this passage as an example for how pastors, those under-shepherds serving under the Great Shepherd, should care for their flocks. As St. John Chrysostom once preached, “A great matter, beloved, a great matter it is to preside over a Church: a matter needing wisdom and courage as great as that of which Christ speaketh, that a man should lay down his life for the sheep, and never leave them deserted or naked; that he should stand against the wolf nobly.” This charge to pastors feels particularly appropriate on this bittersweet Sunday, when we send off our curate, Fr. Jesse, to return back to his church plant in Colorado Springs. Fr. Jesse, thank you for your selfless care of our flock here at Christ the King, and we pray that the Lord would strengthen you and equip you to “stand nobly” and “lay down your life” for the sheep in that city. Your humility in taking on even the most mundane tasks, cheerfulness in serving the members of our parish, and your sweet family will all be sorely missed. We are excited to see what the Lord does through you and the Oratory in Colorado Springs in the years to come.
Returning to our passage, we should not be surprised, then, that the Pharisees would react negatively to this thinly veiled criticism of their attempts at care for God’s people. It does not, though, seem to justify the charge of insanity and demon-possession. We press on, then, to a second layer of meaning at work in this text. Thus, our second layer of significance in this passage is Jesus’ striking claim that as the Good Shepherd, his death would be substitutionary. When Jesus in this passage speaks about the shepherd laying down his life for the sheep, in verses 11 and 15, he clearly has the cross, his own substitutionary death, in view. Our Epistle this morning, from 1 Peter 2, helps us understand this theme in more detail. According to verse 24, Christ “bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.” Peter immediately follows this in verse 25 with a reference to Christ’s own teaching on the Good Shepherd: “For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.” There is, therefore, a fundamental, inextricable link between Jesus being the Good Shepherd and his atoning, substitutionary sacrifice on behalf of the sheep on the cross, which we see in both our Gospel and Epistle readings. Moreover, Peter also commends Christ’s patient endurance through unjust suffering as an example, not just to pastors, but to all believers; as he writes in verse 21, speaking of suffering, “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.” In this way, our Collect for this morning accurately summarizes the teaching of both these passages: Christ is “both a sacrifice for sin, and also an example of godly life.” Therefore, the Collect has us pray, we should “most thankfully receive” the benefits of Christ’s atoning death, and “daily endeavour ourselves to follow the blessed steps of his most holy life.”
It is difficult to know what exactly Jesus’ opponents would have made of this particular claim, that he would die for his people. After all, contemporary Jewish messianic expectation did not envision a suffering Savior. If anything, Jesus’ words would have called to mind the suffering and martyrdom of the servant of Isaiah 53 or of those pious Jews, such as those in the times of the Maccabees, whose deaths were believed to be somehow a propitiation on behalf of the people. Such comparisons would, no doubt, arouse the anger of the Pharisees who had set themselves against Jesus. But to fully understand the enormity of their anger and outrage at Jesus’ teaching about himself as the Good Shepherd, we must consider a third and final layer of meaning within this text: when Jesus described himself as the Good Shepherd, he was making not just a potentially messianic claim but a claim to divinity, to be doing that which was only for Yahweh, Israel’s God, to do. For Jews steeped in the Old Testament Scriptures, Jesus’ imagery in this passage would have most clearly called to mind the famous prophecy of Ezekiel 34. In this portion of the book of the prophet Ezekiel, the word of the LORD comes to Ezekiel, telling him to prophesy against the false shepherds of Israel, who have failed to take care of the flock of God’s people, such that they have been scattered across the whole earth. Then, in a most remarkable passage of Scripture, Ezekiel records the following words, beginning in verse 11: “For this is what the Sovereign LORD [Lord here standing in for the divine name, Yahweh] says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness. I will bring them out from the nations and gather them from the countries, and I will bring them into their own land. I will pasture them on the mountains of Israel, in the ravines and in all the settlements in the land. I will tend them in a good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel will be their grazing land. There they will lie down in good grazing land, and there they will feed in a rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the Sovereign Lord. I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice.” When Jesus, then, claims to be the Good Shepherd, he is taking on himself a vocation reserved only for Yahweh himself. His claim to be the Good Shepherd, therefore, would not have been received as a nice, comforting word, but rather as a shocking, even blasphemous claim to divinity. And this is precisely how the Pharisees heard it, explaining the extent of their outrage.
Do you experience the same level of shock when you hear Jesus describe himself as the Good Shepherd? While we, on this side of the cross, won’t be shocked by Jesus’ announcement that he will suffer on behalf of God’s people, or even his implicit claim to be God, we should be shocked by this: that the very Son of God–the one by whom all things were made, the Word made flesh, who is now ascended at the right hand of the Father and is reigning as Lord and King–this One intimately knows each of us, his sheep, and allows us to know Him, to trust Him, and to be led by Him. The King of the whole universe and the Lord of all the world laid down His life for His sheep–for you, and for me. The implications of this for our lives, especially in this age of anxiety, aimlessness, and apostasy, are huge. Because the Lord is our shepherd, we can trust that we shall not want. Because the Lord is our shepherd, we can have confidence that He will make us lie down in green pastures and lead us beside still waters. Because the Lord is our shepherd, we can cling to the truth that even when it is dark and we seem to have lost our way, when we find ourselves plunged into what feels like the valley of death, that His rod and His staff will comfort us and lead us through. Brothers and sisters, let not our hearts and our minds be numb to these shocking, wonderful, seemingly impossible truths by which we can catch a glimpse of the intimate relationship between ourselves and our Savior.
To return to the Collect one last time, though, it is not enough that we should “most thankfully receive” the benefits of the Good Shepherd laying down His life for us, His flock, for we are also challenged to “daily endeavour ourselves to follow the blessed steps of his most holy life.” Not for nothing does Jesus say in John 15 that, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” As we go through this Easter season, even as we carry in our hearts the joy of the resurrection, let us recall the truth that we are most like Christ when we give ourselves to others in love and service. As the Orthodox scholar and theologian John Behr writes, “It is in laying down his life that Christ shows us what it is to be God and what it is to be human.” We all will have opportunities this week–no doubt, this very day– to practice laying down our lives for one another: for our spouses, for our children, for our roommates, for our parents, for our bosses, employees, and co-workers, for the people who live next door. Let it be said of us, Christ the King Anglican Church, that we, like our Good Shepherd, laid down our lives for others. Amen.
Homily for the 1st Sunday after Easter, 2022
Our Epistle this morning is from 1 John 5 and the Apostle John is writing about what it means to be alive in God. “WHATSOEVER is born of God overcometh the world.” It is very appropriate that this passage is appointed for this Sunday because we have three baptisms when we celebrate that someone is reborn in God. 1 John 5 is incredibly sacramental, and it gives us a window into just how sacramental the early Church was. John says there are three witnesses that bear record of Jesus here on earth: Water which refers to Baptism, Blood which refers to the Eucharist, and the Spirit which refers to Ordination and/or Confirmation. The one who is born of God has the witness of the Spirit living in him, and John concludes this section by saying that whoever has the Spirit of Jesus living in him has Life. “He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son hath not life.” This is given on the Octave of Easter, meaning the 8th day of the Easter season, because the Resurrection of Jesus gives us a second layer of Life. We not only have life by virtue of our birth in Adam, we also have the eternal life that Jesus gives because He was raised from the grave that Adam dug. So, in summary, we have life because we Jesus and His Spirit live inside us, and this means that we will “overcome the world.”
The Gospel for this Sunday fits together perfectly with the Epistle. Here we see Jesus freshly alive right after the Resurrection. He walks into the room where His disciples are sitting and breathes on them. He breathes on them. What is going on here? Genesis 2 is going on here. The life that Jesus has within Himself after His Resurrection is so ALIVE that it is as if the disciples are dead. They must be brought to REAL LIFE but an act of New Creation. So, just like God did in Genesis 2 when He knelt down and breathed into the clay nostrils of Adam to make him a “living soul”, so Jesus breathes on His apostles who have a form of Life, but who need the Resurrection Life of Jesus Christ to be truly ALIVE. And this is what brings us back to 1 John 5. “He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son hath not life.”
This Sunday we contemplate what it means to be ALIVE in Jesus. What significance does it have the Son of God, fresh out of the tomb, breathed Resurrection Life into the nostrils of His disciples? If we see this action of breathing on the Apostles in light of Genesis 1 and 2, then the significance the action becomes clearer. First, the Life that Jesus gives has a Vocation, a calling on the life of every believer, a purpose for living, a great task that we must all work to accomplish together. “Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you…whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.” In other words, “Go and tell everyone that in Me their sins can be forgiven and that they can have eternal life. Go!” It should not surprise us that Jesus would give his newly alive disciples their marching orders. What was one of the first things that God did after breathing on Adam and Eve? He sent them, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it.” So part of what it means to be alive in Jesus is to be sent out into the world to share this new life, and this is a vocation and purpose to our living.
In addition to a Vocation given through our new life in Jesus, we also have Victory promised. Vocation and Victory. “WHATSOEVER is born of God overcometh the world.” The Greek word here is for “overcome” is nikao, from where we get the word “Nike”. It means Victory. Whoever is born of God will not only have a vocation to their life, but they will have Victory in that Vocation. It is interesting that this Greek word, nikao, is often translated as subdue. It has a “dominion” idea in it. Whoever is born of God will take dominion over the world, just like Adam was supposed to do, only this time they will overcome the world and the world will not overcome them.
Finally, those who are born of God, breathed on by the Son of God, in addition to having Vocation and Victory, also have…V…v…Peace. When breathing new life into His apostles, Jesus says two times, “Peace be unto you.” Peace. This, too, connects back to Genesis 1-2 because the Hebrew word for Peace is “shalom”. The idea behind it is, “Everything will be alright. God is in control. This is His Garden, His World. We have our orders directly from Him. Our victory is in His hands. Therefore, do not be anxious.”
Vocation, Victory, and Peace. Do you know how wonderful these are? How fortunate are we that we have such a Life? The Bowen children were baptized into this Life this morning, and how different will their life be because of it. How many people wake up every morning with no purpose to their life? How many people have only the certainty of Death hanging over their heads, and perpetual failure in this life. How many people are crippled by anxiety because they have not been awakened by the fresh breathe of God into the New Creation? They only see a world in decay, a creation ruled by entropy and injustice. But not so for the Bowen children, not so for all who are born of God. We have Vocation. We have Victory. We have Peace. Far greater than all of these for it is a mystery beyond our ability to comprehend and articulate, we have LIFE because we have the Son.
So, CTK, what should we do about this new breathe and new life? We should rejoice! We should shout Alleluia! We ought to have wonder. Our hearts ought to be filled with gratitude and joy and peace. And if you feel that the breathe of God has gone out of you and that you have been overcome by the world, there is nothing that our gracious Lord loves to do more than kneeling down again and again to breathe fresh life into our soul. If you feel dead, instead of alive in Christ, you just have to ask. If you feel like nothing matters instead of filled with a purposeful vocation, you just have to pray. If you feel defeated and overcome by the world instead of having nike, victory, you just have to call out. If you are overcome with anxiety instead of having the Peace that Jesus gives, then sit and breathe it in. The moment we pray, fresh wind comes our way. You can do it now. “Lord, fill me with your breath. Renew my purpose. Remove my sin and give me Joy and Peace.”
Beloved, “He that hath the Son hath life.” Let us rejoice and be glad that Katy Jo, Annabelle, and Brennan have Resurrection Life in them, and that we have it in us, and let us go forth from here with Vocation, Victory, and Peace. Amen.