A Mighty Salvation: Cathedral Sermons

By Paul C. Hewett

Here is a collection of Bishop Paul Hewett's sermons that cover the Sundays and holy days of the Church Year, and were preached in the Cathedral in Columbia, South Carolina, and throughout parishes of the Diocese of the Holy Cross. These sermons endeavor to bring the reader to Christian maturity in the faith and practice of the undivided Church

• Language: English
• Publisher: URLink Print & Media, LLC
• Release date: Feb 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781647536350

Paul C. Hewett

Bishop Paul Hewett was born in Rhode Island in 1948, and attended Temple University and the Philadelphia Divinity School in Pennsylvania, and the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His first parish was in London, England, in the Diocese of Southwark, where was ordained Priest. Upon returning to the United States he served in the Province of Christ the King, and then the Diocese of the Holy Cross, for which he was consecrated Bishop in 2004. The Diocese of the Holy Cross is a member of the Anglican Joint Synods, now in dialogue with the Polish National Catholic Church, in the Union of Scranton.

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A

Mighty

Salvation

Cathedral Sermons

Paul C. Hewett

A Mighty Salvation

Copyright © 2021 by Paul C Hewett. All rights reserved.

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The opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of URLink Print and Media.

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Published in the United States of America

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021900424

ISBN 978-1-64753-634-3 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64753-635-0 (Digital)

20.01.21

DEDICATION

These sermons were preached from the pulpit of the Cathedral Church of the Epiphany in Columbia, South Carolina, and throughout parishes of the Diocese of the Holy Cross, and on various ecumenical occasions, from 1997 to 2021. They are dedicated to the bishops, clergy and laity of our Anglican Joint Synods, the G-4: (i) the Anglican Catholic Church, (ii) the Anglican Church in America, (iii) the Anglican Province in America, and (iv) the Diocese of the Holy Cross, and to all our ecumenical partners, especially the Polish National Catholic Church and the Nordic Catholic Church, together comprising the Union of Scranton, and to the Mission Province in Sweden, and to the Anglican Union for the Propagation of the Gospel, and to the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople, and the Greek and Romanian Orthodox throughout the world.

The reader may note that in many sermons there is background material and even quotes from Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Evangelical Protestant theologians, sometimes with all three in one sermon. A single sermon may reference Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Father Alexander Schmemann and Billy Graham. Where then is the Anglican source material? Such does appear in good measure, from the likes of Austin Farrer and C. S. Lewis, but even when it does not, it is quintessentially Anglican to be the synthesis and the interpreter of the three sources of Roman, Orthodox and Evangelical. Anglicans are uniquely the Christians who have a foot solidly planted in all three camps, who can interpret one to the other, and thus have a dynamic role to play in revealing the essential unity of the Body of Christ, and the mighty salvation He has wrought for us. (Luke 1:69 in the Benedictus in Morning Prayer)

The King James Version of the Bible is used throughout.

CONTENTS

The Church Year

Holy Days

Special Occasions

Bibliography

THE CHURCH YEAR

The First Sunday in Advent

at the Cathedral Church of the Epiphany, Columbia, South Carolina, December 1, 2019

Romans 13: 12, The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.

Secular man sees himself as a letter with no address, as an airplane with no runway, as a page torn from a book, disconnected from anything that went before or that will come after. (Fr. Coniaris) Secular man says that the NIGHT is at hand, so eat, drink and be merry, for NIGHT is at hand. The day is far spent, the night is at hand.

The Jew knows differently. The Christian knows differently. The DAY is at hand. The Jewish Sabbath begins the evening before, Friday evening at sundown, so that we begin in the darkness and move toward the LIGHT, from the first pale light of dawn to the full blaze of noon-day. We observe the great feasts the same way as the Jews: the feast begins as a vigil, the evening before, so that we begin in the darkness and move toward the LIGHT. We are always moving toward the Light of Christ.

He has a way of meeting us in our darkest hour, in our extremities, in the discontinuities of our lives: changing jobs, moving from one place to another, illness, loss, grief or catastrophe. He has a way of meeting us in these dark places, shining a ray of light into them, and one step at a time, redeeming our plight. He shows Himself to be our Redeemer in every part of our lives; He is redeeming everything, and we can say with the Psalmist, my trust is in thy mercy, and my heart is joyful in thy salvation. (Ps. 13:5)

The timing of the Season of Advent teaches us about turning to Christ, the Light, the way plants turn to the light…heliotropism. Right now, as we approach December 25, the days are getting darker. The world is plunged into greater darkness. And during Advent we are struck by the remembrance of millennia of aching and longing for God, of the long deep groaning in anguish of the entire creation, yearning for the Saviour; we are struck during Advent by the travail and desolation of long centuries of preparation, the long preparation of Israel for her Bridegroom.

Then comes the first faint light of a clear, sweet dawn – Mary, and her fiat with God. She becomes the Bridal Chamber of the Word, the Womb of God. In her, the marriage of heaven and earth, of time and eternity, begins. In her, the Daystar dawns, to appear before all men. The Morning Star, Christ, can now rise in our hearts.

Just after the point of greatest darkness, our Saviour comes – in the fullness of time – not just at any old time, but in the fullness of time, when God has got the stage all set, with the full flowering of Greek philosophy, Roman law and Jewish religion. And in the fullness of time, the Baptist’s cry rings out the one word that sums up Advent: REPENT! Wake up! Turn back to God! You are like a letter that has an address! You are like an airplane that has a runway! You are like a page connected with a book! Your destiny is in God. His Kingdom is at hand. Thy King cometh unto thee. The Day of the Lord has dawned!

The world says the day is far spent, the night is at hand. St. Paul says, the night is far spent, the day is at hand. We may wonder sometimes if we’re going to make it to the Day without end. Here’s a vignette to give you some assurance. After two months in the hospital, a priest was near death. His Day of Visitation had come. His wife held his hand and said to him, Honey, plead the Blood, and walk toward the Light. Plead the Blood, and walk toward the Light. Christ is at hand. Our destiny is in God. Our life is hid with Christ in God. As long as we plead the Blood and walk toward the Light, our life in Christ is indestructible.

When Jesus visited Jerusalem, that city, His city, did not know its Day of Visitation. The people there did not know the things pertaining to their peace, except for one brief moment on Palm Sunday. Let us recognize our Day of Visitation, the Day when God visits to save us, to heal us, to bless and renew us, and yes, the Day when He visits to chastise His own cause, and finally, our heavenly birthday, when He calls us home.

Despite setbacks and obstacles in our life together, we can say, on this first day of the new Church Year, what St. Francis of Assisi used to say, over and over, Let us begin. Let us begin. We can offer ourselves to our Lord, not for a life of mediocrity, not for a casual brush with God, but for a life of heroic virtue – virtue which He is eager to build in our lives. Let us attempt great things for God, and let us expect great things from God. Our Day of Visitation in our Parish is, as it was with St. Francis, to build this community. In our spiritual warfare let us, like Francis, venture everything: put everything on the line. By the world’s standards we may be small and hidden. But as St. Paul said, over and over, God delights in using what is small and hidden and least likely, because He is jealous for His own glory. He delights to use what He can put through the fire, to test and to humble and purify for His purposes.

A great layman once gave us encouragement by telling the story of the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. That was the year the magnificent Olympic Torch was lit by a paraplegic in a wheel chair with a bow and a flaming arrow, to shoot, and hit the Torch, and set it ablaze. It did not matter how small the arrow, or the flame was, to set all ablaze.

The Day is at hand. Let our Advent prayer be Come quickly, Lord Jesus. When the midnight cry goes out, Behold, the Bridegroom cometh! we can be like the ten wise virgins with oil in their lamps, who go forth to meet the Bridegroom, and gladsome join the marriage throng.

The Day is at hand. Jesus visits us today in Holy Communion. He is our Life, not an optional added extra. Christ is our very Life. There no other life. There is no other way to the Father. There is no other resurrection. Everything we and all the human race hunger for, thirst for, yearn for, groan for, is in Christ. For Him we want to prepare, that at His coming He may find in us a mansion, a home, a ready and willing heart.

The Second Sunday in Advent

at Hopeful Anglican Church, Hopeful, Georgia, on December 9, 2018. Text: Rom. 15: 13, Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.

In the mid-70’s something happened that fired people up with hope – Christian hope – and it had to do with the Bible. The actor Alec McCowen packed out theatres, reciting from memory the entire text of St. Mark’s Gospel. Alec McCowen, one of England’s finest classical actors, committed the entire text to memory. It took sixteen months. He went on stage with casual sports clothes – a stage that was bare, except for three chairs, a table, a drinking glass and a pitcher of water. For the next two years he held audiences spellbound as he unfolded the story of Jesus. There were vast audiences, month after month, attributed to some extent by McCowen’s masterful job, but mostly because of Jesus’ life, releasing hope into people’s lives, who could look on in amazement as blind men see and the dead are raised to life, as 7 loaves of bread and a few fish feed 4,000 men who haven’t eaten in 3 days, seeing Jesus sit down to tell stories about farmers and poor widows, feeling the tension mount as Jesus moves toward Jerusalem, being swept up in the high drama of those days of pain and anguish, feeling a surge of joy when Jesus rises from the dead. For two hours the audience listens, caught up in this story that ends quietly when He was received up into heaven and sat on the right hand of God. And they went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the Word with signs following. Amen.

Vast audiences are charged with hope with Mark’s words, great words that have been moving and changing us for 2,000 years, from the Book that is the love story between God and His people, the Bridegroom and the Bride, the Bridegroom who shows His character and His purpose to His people, and who burns to fill them with His new life. He is our hope because He faithfully fulfills all His promises. Our faith in Him is like the roots of a plant. Our hope is the stem, and love is the blossom.

One of our great theologians says that God will forgive everything except lack of joy; when we forget that God created the world and saved it. Joy is not one of the components" of Christianity, it’s the tonality of Christianity that penetrates everything—faith and vision. Where there is no joy, Christianity becomes fear and therefore torture. We know about the fallen state of the world only because we know about its glorious creation and salvation by Christ. This world is having fun; nevertheless it’s joyless because joy (different from what is called fun) can be only from God, only from on high—not only joy of salvation, but salvation as joy. To think—every Sunday we have a banquet with Christ, at His table, in His Kingdom; then we sink into our problems, into fear and suffering. God saved the world through joy: …you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy… (A. Schmemann)

McCowan’s performance comes at a time when there is an terrible undercurrent of despair and cynicism. The assumption is so often that man is like a letter with no address, a ship with no harbor, a plane with no runway, a page torn out of a book. History has no goal, no consummation, no ultimate hope. The Stoics in ancient Greece didn’t do much better. They believed that history was cyclical. Every 3,000 years the world was consumed by a great conflagration and then started all over again, history repeating itself. We are on a treadmill, going nowhere.

History does have a goal. We are in a race, not on a treadmill. God’s hidden rule will be completely unveiled so that all shall see His glory. God will rip apart and fling aside all wickedness and rebellion. This is the final appearing of our Lord, Jesus Christ, in power and great glory, to judge the living and the dead.

What is our response to our Lord’s second coming? Are we to fear this, or live in dread or anxiety of the future? How does the Gospel answer this? The world answers this dread of the ultimate by saying we won’t be victims of the ultimate. We’ll take the law into our own hands. The cultist, the gnostic, the totalitarian, the ideologue have all been seduced into trying to be master of the law. We’ll redefine human nature, we’ll correct the mistakes God made in creation, we’ll make the rules up as we go along, we will live on our own terms. For God’s enemies the second coming is a dreadful prospect, because all wickedness will be ripped apart.

How does the Gospel answer any dread of judgment we may have? He who is our judge is also our brother. His wrath is the flip side of His love. Whenever He finds hardness of heart, coldness and indifference, His love smashes these up and melts them down. God’s wrath is His love, breaking through. The only real news in the universe is God saying I love you, and when love is spurned on a global level then massive upheaval and wrath are sure to follow, with tribulation and distress of nations.

If we choose not to accept God as love in this life we will have to face His wrath hereafter. We will be left to the consequences of our sins. God will leave us with the illusions we have deliberately lived. Dante described hell as the deliberately willed illusion. The damned are really un-men and un-women, in an un-place, an un-creation, an endless, hideous un-raveling of God’s order. It is up to us – we decide – whether we will burn with or be burned by the love of God.

Someday, Jesus is coming again, the sooner the better. When He comes there will be no more income tax, bureaucracy, red tape or Christmas rush. Our Advent prayer could be Come quickly, Lord Jesus. He is coming again to unveil all of the Father’s rule that is now hidden.

That is the Day when the Lord will bare His holy arm in the sight of all the nations. It is the earth-shaking virtue of Christian hope that on that Day we do not have to crawl under a rock. When a statue is unveiled, we look up. When our Lord comes again, we can look up, lift up our heads, because all that could have made us afraid on that Day has been washed away in His Blood. So we live, not in dread or despair, but in joyful expectation. Our Christian hope is that we are accepted in the Beloved. We are going to heaven just as surely as we are sitting here, if we but put our hand in His. We have boldness of access to the Throne of Grace, and from His Altar-Throne, from the Cross, we hear the life-changing words, I love you, the only real news in the universe. When Alec McCowan began the performances that proclaim this, people couldn’t get enough of it.

Someone once said that Christian hope is fervent expectation. It is not cheap optimism. Christian hope is made of iron. It hates easy morals, self-indulgence, loose theology, intellectual shallowness. Hope fights. It takes its whip in hand until it drives the last bargainer from the Temple. It fights like Jesus. Never hurried, never feverish or panicky. Why should it be? It rests on God’s omnipotence as upon an unmovable rock. (B. Spencer)

God Himself is the ground of our hope. There is no need to be frightened by weakness in ourselves. In fact, God can turn our weaknesses into even greater grounds for hoping in Him. He will finish in us the work He has begun, if we but give Him permission.

Each of us is like a letter that has an address, a ship that has a harbor, a plane that has a runway, a page that has a context in a book. Now we know that every little act has meaning. Our actions need not be wasted, but gathered up and woven into His final Plan. We need never say, oh, what’s the use?

So many of our problems are caused by a weakening of Christian hope. We give up too soon; we restrict what God wants to do in our lives. Our great hope is a great certainty that bears fruit in exuberant love: God is going to get His way! And our hope is like the stem of a plant, with faith as the roots and love as the blossom.

The news of final judgment and consummation is good news, the fulfillment of all the promises of God. All the promises of God have their fulfillment. That is what the Blessed Mother believed with all her heart and soul. All the aching, yearning, longing and anguished groaning of creation will one day be marvellously fulfilled, for all who desire it.

The solemn Advent warning goes out: Wake up! Sleepers, awake! Turn to the God of hope, the way plants turn to face the light. Rejoice that God created the world and saved it! Rejoice that your God reigns! Come quickly, Lord Jesus, to manifest your reign in our hearts, and in all creation. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Third Sunday in Advent

at Christ Church, Southern Pines, North Carolina, December 15, 2019

It is October of the year 2030. In the World Series that year the Phillies are up against the Yankees. Today is the final game, the one the Phillies have to win. The score is tied. The Phillies are up to bat for the last time in the last inning. There are two outs and two strikes against the batter. Imagine the pressure on all the players. But focus on the pressure on the umpire behind the home plate. He has to keep a sharp eye. He is a watchman, and you might say he is the steward of the game, the one who enables the game to be played as it should be. He is a watchman and a steward. He cannot be a vacillator, or have any interest in opinion polls. He cannot be a reed shaken with the wind. His vocation is similar to that of John the Baptist.

Atlanta Airport is said to be the busiest in the world. There are 2,700 departures and arrivals every day, or 112 per hour. The air traffic controllers have to keep each flight on course, with proper assignment of runways and separation of aircraft. They have to be ready for emergencies and alert to wind direction and weather conditions. They have to keep a sharp eye. An air traffic controller is a watchman, and you might say he is a steward of operations, who enables air traffic to flow as it should. He is a watchman and a steward. He cannot be a vacillator, or shaken by pressure. He cannot be a read shaken with the wind. His vocation is similar to that of John the Baptist.

John is a watershed figure in the Bible. He is the crown of the Old Testament prophets, the last of the Old Testament watchmen and the first of the New Testament witnesses, witnesses to Jesus. John fulfills the prophecy of Malachi, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.

John was a man of the desert. He called the shots as he saw them, and called the best men of the day a brood of vipers. He was a trailblazer, a pioneer and the divine herald of the coming Messiah, the ultimate reconnaissance mission. The mighty salvation of the world has a forerunner, sent by God to be (the umpire) (the watchman and steward) of the last phase of the Old Testament. Not surprisingly, John ends up in prison.

In prison John goes through a dark night of the soul. He has doubts about his cousin, Jesus. Is He the Messiah? John sends his disciples to ask Jesus, Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another? Jesus sends back the message, I am fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah, chapter 35. Go and show John again those things which ye do hear and see: the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them. Isaiah prophesied to the Jews as they faced two crises. One crisis was for Israel in the north, and the other was for Judah in the south. Israel and Judah brought these crises on themselves because of their faithlessness. They turned away from God. Assyria would come and take over Israel. Then Babylon would come and take over Judah and Jerusalem. But after 70 years of exile God would restore Zion. The restoration would begin in 536 BC, and it would be completed when the Messiah came to restore the whole world.

Today this scenario would be as though God were using the Muslims and the Chinese as a scourge and chastisement upon our faithlessness. The Muslims take everything up to the Mississippi River, and the Chinese, everything to the west. The fun part, if there is any fun part to this scenario, is that the Muslims and Chinese cannot stand each other, and what happens when they meet at the Mississippi River?

In the day, in every day, when Jesus comes, the wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad. John, in his dark night in prison, his solitary wilderness, is made glad by the news about what Jesus is doing. When Jesus comes to us, our wilderness and solitary place shall be glad. (We will always be shown a good runway to land on). Our desert shall rejoice and blossom like the rose. Find the desert inside you and prophesy to it, you shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing. Find the gray gloom inside you and prophesy to it, all creation shall see God´s glory, and that includes me. Our weak knees are strengthened when Jesus comes. Our fearful hearts are made strong and fearless. When Jesus comes, God comes, with a vengeance, to save us. Are there any shreds of cowardice or hopelessness or resentment inside you? Prophesy to them and say, Jesus is changing me.

When Jesus comes, our blind eyes are opened. Our deaf ears are unstopped. Our lame spirits can leap like deer. Our dumb tongues can sing. Springs of living water erupt in our hard hearts. The parched ground of our hearts becomes a pool. Our thirsty spirits are springs of water. The dragons and monsters and demons of our lives are turned into grass with reeds and rushes. There is an undefiled highway running back to the heart of God, from my heart to God´s heart, and Jesus Himself is the highway. We are getting caught up, as C. S. Lewis said, into that glory of which nature is only the first sketch. Jesus brings everlasting joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing flee away. When Jesus comes He brings all this to everyone who will have it. He wants to make everything new in your life.

Have you been a helpless exile? Have you had feeble knees? Have you been an exhausted prisoner of your vices? Have you been spiritually blind, deaf, dumb? What John the Baptist said to the people was, Line up! Get in line. Turn to Jesus. He wants this prophecy fulfilled in your life. He is the Passover Lamb who sheds His blood for you, so that the angel of death can pass over your life, and get you out of slavery in Egypt, and bring you to the Promised Land! He wants to take the place of greatest hurt in your life, the greatest wound in your life, the greatest deficiency in your life, and bless that place, and anoint it, and make it the strongest place! The place from which others will be blessed! He wants to make every man here, every husband and father, every single man, (a watchman and steward) (an umpire) in the Kingdom, to call the shots right, to pronounce the blessing of the heavenly Father upon all that He is doing in our families and communities. He wants to make every woman here, every wife and mother, every single woman, a stewardess, a Daughter of Zion, a Daughter of Mary, a New Eve, to receive the fullness of blessing, and be the glorious Bride of Christ, without spot or wrinkle.

How can this happen? It sounds far-fetched. Wouldn’t it be like a perfect safety record at Atlanta Airport? Wouldn´t it be like the Phillies beating the Yankees in a world series?

We may ask, as Mary did when the angel Gabriel came to her, How can these things be? Gabriel gave her this assurance: The Holy Ghost will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. The Holy Spirit is changing us, from the inside out. If you gently put fire on a frozen water pipe, it will thaw. And at every Mass we call down the fire.

Give God permission to work on you from the inside out. God, I give you permission to complete in me the good work you have begun. I hear your voice. You are standing at the door and knocking. You said, ´If anyone hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.` Amen.

The Fourth Sunday in Advent

at the Cathedral Church of the Epiphany, Columbia, South Carolina, December 18, 2016. Text: Isaiah 40: 9, Behold, your God.

Behold, your God means that God is here. He has come; He has intervened. God has a plan to intervene in history.

God intervened in Judah’s exile in Babylon. Our Old Testament lesson is a prophecy of comfort to the exiles. The exiles had only the faintest sense of mission or hope. Freedom, or return to their homeland, seemed impossible. There were physical obstacles and political obstacles and psychological obstacles. Yet they were at an enormous turning point in history — the waning power of their captors, the Babylonians, and the ascendency of the Persians. God would use the Persian, Cyrus, to make the return to Jerusalem possible. The return of the people would be a whole new exodus and a foreshadowing of the new creation in Christ, who would reveal the Kingdom of God. Behold, your God. God has a plan to intervene in history. He is Master of the impossible.

God began His ultimate intervention when He raised up John the Baptist to prepare the way of the Lord, to make straight in the desert a highway for our God. (Isaiah 40)

God intervened in the Battle of Midway in 1942, one of the most stunning victories in the history of naval warfare. God intervened in the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. He intervened in the toppling of the Berlin Wall in 1989. He is intervening in our lives right now.

We inherit from God’s people of the Old Covenant the conviction that history is a moral order. We are not on a treadmill, going around in circles. History is a moral order, that goes from a to b in a line, or perhaps a spiral. But we are going from Alpha to Omega, from Christ who propels everything to Christ who draws them from ahead, and consummates them.

This is good news. If history is a moral order, then it is about decisions and choices that people make, to obey, or disobey, God. These decisions and choices can be good or bad, right or wrong, true or false, or perhaps different shades of gray in between.

When things go wrong, when we disobey God and make a mess of things, we can repent, and turn back to God. We are free to do that. But there is another view of history, that history is a give-and-take, a dialectic, between forces in tension, or forces in conflict. The groups that can be in conflict are nations, races, classes or sexes. The problem with this view is that it is deterministic. Instead of being free moral agents, we are in a nation, or a class, or a race, or a sex, that is bound to be in tension, or conflict. This is not how God sees things. We are free moral agents. We know that the problems of our times are not based on nations, classes, races or sexes. They are based on sin. We can repent of sin, and turn to the One who is always intervening in our history, the One who will intervene once and for all, to undo sin and death by taking them upon Himself on the Cross.

John the Baptist is part of God’s plan to intervene. John gets the people ready. He is like a dentist drilling out a cavity or a snow plow clearing a road. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. (Isaiah 40: 4-5)

Isaiah prophesied that the Saviour would come as a mighty conqueror, as a King inaugurating His Kingdom, as a righteous Judge, adjudicating the errors of the past, and as a caring shepherd gathering His sheep.

God always comes at the moment of crisis. He fills the center of the stage. He has a plan to intervene in our churches and in each of our lives.

The Saviour comes as a warrior and as a shepherd.

As a warrior, coming in might, His goodness is not futile. He comes as one who is able: He is able to help them that are tempted; He is able to keep us from falling; He is able to subdue all things unto Himself.

He also comes as a shepherd, in tenderness. He has an arm which rules, and also gathers and carries us in our frailty, in a destiny beyond what we ask or think.

God’s way of coming is as a warrior and a shepherd. Behold, your God. He is our ground for hope. Isaiah the prophet saw all this, and proclaimed the word that would sustain God’s people in their trial, that God is at work in history. He has a plan to intervene. In your history, God is at work every day, from morning till evening. Each moment is an overflowing source of holiness. Jean Pierre de Caussade calls this the sacrament of the present moment. Everything we act upon and everything that acts upon us can be a new revelation of God’s presence and care for us…even our trials and obstacles.

John the Baptist’s preaching in the wilderness got everybody’s attention. People of all walks of life knew that something was up. God was intervening in their history. His ministry had the effect of an engineer opening up a road block or a surgeon clearing a clogged heart valve or a pioneer hacking a way through the wilderness. The way back to God is being opened up. In Christ all the frustration and despair under which we have staggered and groaned is replaced by the earth-shaking virtue of Christian hope that He gives — the hope that is the oxygen of the soul — the absolute certainty that God is going to have His way — that there is a way forward — a highway.

All the changes in history, small and great, have this basis: God is in charge, directing everything to His purpose. He is present with us, and in us, by the Holy Ghost, to fulfill His Plan.

He is active in each moment of the day, as an ever-present source of holiness. Cling to the duties of the present moment. He will lead us to Himself, along a road which He designs for us. All will be well if we abandon ourselves to Him, who makes everything profitable to us.

Christmas Eve

at the Cathedral Church of the Epiphany, Columbia, South Carolina, December 24, 2017. Text: He came unto his own, and his own received him not.

On the day Jesus was born, Mary and Joseph must have trusted God a lot, because all three of them were dealing with a hostile environment. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. It was winter, and cold, and dark. Mary had been traveling on a donkey for 40 miles. There was no place in the inn. All Joseph can find is a cave, with a feeding trough for animals. The only visitors that night will be rough and humble shepherds. Ironically today one of the hostile environments for Christians is Bethlehem, where Muslims try to make them miserable.

Jesus sprang up like a root in dry ground. He lived among people who wanted to kill Him because He wanted to save them. He was surrounded by thieves, betrayers, religious stiff-necks, and the devil, face-to-face. He was despised by His very own, rejected and finally crucified. He kept one thing in mind: doing His Father’s will. The Father sent His Son to earth so that He could reveal a Kingdom based on obedient sonship. Jesus becomes the gateway for us to enter heaven by dying on a cross with two common criminals. The world was in the grip of the prince of darkness, the perpetrator of all hostile environments. But the rightful King enters a hostile environment by coming undetected and flying under the radar, so that he has the element of surprise.

He came unto his own, and his own received him not. The sentence after that in John’s Gospel is But to as many as received him, to them gave the power to become the sons of God. If we receive Jesus, we become what He is, a son of God. We are sons-in-the-Son. We are little Christs, anointed ones who live in the Anointed One.

Think of the hostile environments you have had to live, or work in. Winston Churchill´s hostile environment in 1935 was his own party, his own Parliament, who would not listen to his warnings about German re-armament. We have all experienced a hostile environment, whether at home, on the job, or on or near a battlefield. There might be a hostile environment in your life right now. You might be living through some severe temptations. Whatever hostile environment we face, whether from circumstances, other people, enemies, or spiritual combat, we are anointed for it. You are anointed for your job or position or state in life.

It is an honor to be chosen by God and sent into a hostile environment. God will be glorified and we will be blessed. God is not as interested in your comfort as He is in your purpose. Real blessings come through focus, warfare and determination. Shift your focus from one of victimization to one of being chosen. God only sends those He can trust into a military zone. Take God to work with you and the enemy will lose ground. If you are in troubled waters, do what Mary and Joseph did on Christmas Eve. Do what their Son would always do: reach out to the Father for the strength that is made perfect in our weakness. You can do this because the anointing of the Holy Spirit forms in you the life of the Anointed One

The Father sees your gifts and talents and launches you into those spots where your talents shine like lasers in the night. You can be the means by which God can get right into the middle of the mess. Tonight we celebrate how the Father sent His Anointed One to live with the Anointing in the middle of all our messes.

So we can replace the gimme spirit with a heart that comes to serve. You are sent to bring in godliness, not get gratification for personal needs. Think not about your problems but what you can achieve in the midst of the problems.

Your anointing is activated by enemy encroachment. As situations get worse, the Father increases the anointing. So you can do what the Father did…you can embrace your current situation. The Father embraced all the wretchedness of this world through His Son, in His Holy Spirit. The embrace will cost the cross. But it will lead to the resurrection, and heaven’s open gates.

So don’t expect to be appreciated. Work behind the scenes, like He did. Your identity is not your job or your hostile environment. The core of who you are is that you are a son of God, a child of God by adoption and grace. One Christian, when asked what she was or did, would beam a bright smile and say, ‘I’m Charlene and I’m full time blessed.’ The fact that she had also worked as a dressmaker, hairstylist, caterer, day care worker, teacher and retailer were not part of her core identity. (T. J. Jakes) Now being a husband, a father, a wife, and a mother, or a son, or a daughter, are much closer to our core identity. But a job usually is not.

With this Gospel perspective, we are free to take risks. We can risk failure because our worth does not depend on external success. A few backward steps now can fuel our forward progress later. What appears to be failure in the eyes of men is often a blessing in the eyes of God.

Here’s how St. Paul applied all this Kingdom thinking to himself, in all the hostile environments in which he labored: as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things. (2 Cor. 6: 9-10)

Saint John, Apostle and Evangelist

at St. John the Baptist, Marshall, Virginia, December 27, 2015. Text: Beloved, let us love one another. (I John 4:7)

The Church has never sentimentalized the Incarnation. The feast of the first martyr, St. Stephen, comes the day after Christmas, to show the world’s resistance to the Incarnation. Today is the Feast of St. John the Evangelist, whose Gospel teaches the glory of the incarnate Word. As Anglicans, we dearly love St. Paul, but much Anglican theology through the centuries delights in St. John the Divine, and has a distinctly Johannine flavour.

John was the disciple whom Jesus loved. He became Jesus’ closest friend, the one to whom Jesus could entrust the innermost realities of who He is as