Pentecost VIII
Parish of All Saints

+In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Amen.
The four lections appointed for this eighth Sunday in Pentecost give us a virtual tour of several aspects of God's nature.

God our Father being perfect and perfectly simple is not complex, has no variation, does not change. However, we fallible human beings have difficulty seeing God in His perfect fullness. Thus, although God does not have many natures or aspects or dimensions, we can get a fuller appreciation of Him if we look at Him form several perspectives, from several points of view, with several varying objectives.

In the lections today, we see God the Father from four perspectives: first as our loving Father; then He shows Himself as our Teacher - perfect but forgiving of our imperfections; He reaches out to us in our sinful and wicked imperfections as our Judge; and finally He shows His total love for us as our King by allowing us to choose to leave and reject Him.

Let us look first at our loving Father, as the book of Wisdom in the Apocrypha presents Him:

18: Thou who art sovereign in strength dost judge with mildness, and with great forbearance thou dost govern us; for thou hast power to act whenever thou dost choose.

As we sang in the introit hymn this morning,
Praise the everlasting King.
Slow to chide, and swift to bless.
Father-like he tends and spares us
In his hand he gently bears us.

What has the Devil done since the beginning of the twentieth century? The Adversary has attacked, in an insidious way, paternal authority. He has done it very slyly by showing all the defects of such authority. Because of the confusion between authority and power, paternal authority has come to be seen by many as something horrible. It has therefore been rejected; and, in the same pass, all obedience, all discipline, all submission have been challenged. How difficult it is for us to obey nowadays!

So, there is God our loving Father, our authority, our discipliner. Were we to take the behavior of worldly people as our norm, we could not relate to such a Father. We, however, have the model of the perfect Son, of total obedience, of complete submission, in our Lord Jesus Christ.

We note the total cooperation between Jesus and the Father at the Cross: obedience of the Beloved Son, wholly loving obedience. In order that this obedience be complete, there needed to be the offering of his life. Love is always the source of obedience. Each time obedience becomes difficult for us, it is because we do not love enough. Jesus obeys as Beloved Son and, because of this love, his obedience is complete.

Thus, at the Agony and at the Cross, Jesus manifests how much his love for the Father is an absolute. For him, love for the Father is everything and, thanks to this love, he can offer his soul which bears the iniquity of the world. Thanks to this love he can bear the scourging at the pillar and condemnation to death as a slave with no rights. Thanks to this love he can die upon the Cross with all the suffering it entails. So, there is God as our loving Father, and Jesus as our model of filial obedience.

Next in our lections today, in the psalm intoned before the epistle, God shows Himself to be our Teacher, our guide, totally perfect but forgiving of our imperfections:

5: For thou, O Lord, art good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call on thee.
8: There is none like thee among the gods, O Lord, nor are there any works like thine.
10: For thou art great and doest wondrous things, thou alone art God.
13: For great is thy steadfast love toward me; thou hast delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol.
15: But thou, O Lord, art a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

God's love forgives us. How is it possible to overlook wrongs against us? Simply because God's love forgives. God's love in our hearts causes us to let resentment drop, forgiving and forgetting the wrong. God's love forgives unreservedly. Forgiveness is an outflow of God's love. The choir will sing during the communions today,
I come with joy to meet my Lord, forgiven, loved, and free, in awe and wonder to recall his life laid down for me

The one that loves also forgives. You can't say, "I love but I don't forgive!" That's impossible; for where there is love, there is always forgiveness! As the apostle Peter noted in his first epistle: Above all hold unfailing your love for one another, since love covers a multitude of sins. 1 Peter 4:8

We have now seen our Teacher caring for us His fallible students; He continues to give us lessons of His perfection; He continues to remind us of how much further we have to go to reach towards Holiness.

Now, when we move on to Saint Paul's comments in his epistle to the Romans, we are reminded of just how great God's love for us is, in that we certainly don't behave in a way to be deserving of this love. He clearly is our loving Judge and King, giving us so much more than we deserve when He continues to love us:

18: I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
19: For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God;
20: for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope;
21: because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God.

We see an apparent contradiction reflected in the above, a seeming conflict between the Father, - patient, loving, forgiving, and the King - powerful, intimidating, judgmental.

Which are you God? Are you the Father - with love guiding your reaction to us? Or are you the King - with your commitment to justice guiding your reaction? What do you see when you look at us, O God? Do you see us as a Father would, the child who still is learning the difference between right and wrong, or do you see us as a King would, the citizen, fully aware of the rules, but disdainful of them?

And what do we see when we envision You? Do we see the God who offered us guidance, food, and comfort while we wandered in the desert for forty years, or do we see the angry judge, destroying the whole earth with a flood as punishment for wrongdoing? You are both at once.

We are trembling and afraid, as one would before a great ruler about to decree justice. But we also know our Father to be the God of compassion and love, as we would a parent. And in truth, we need Him to be both, for the compassion and love He shows us make us able to stand before Him in repentance, even though we are trembling and afraid. When we do stand before God, we know that as King, He will decree justice and as Parent, He will temper it with mercy. We need Him to be both Parent and King because one balances the other.

Theologians use kingship language in speaking of God because it was a familiar metaphor and all members of society could relate to it. Today, however, many call God our Friend, Healer, Creator, Conscience, the Eternal. Any name we give God is of course, too limiting for the Ultimate Being. In fact, our limited language probably does not allow us ever to express the true nature of God. Despite the fact that it makes us uncomfortable, we still call God King. Why don't we change the language?

Because imagining God as King can be helpful, especially as we try to face our failings. If God is King then God is the All-powerful Divine Judge. If God our King can forgive us, then we must forgive ourselves. If God our King, who knows all and sees all, can forgive us, who are we to say our sins are too great to forgive? But while we turn ourselves over to God for judgment, while we give God the power to decree our destiny, we can do so only because we know God to be as compassionate as God is just. It is the balance of these two attributes which makes it possible for us to turn to God in repentance.

Again from the opening hymn,
Praise, my soul, the King of heaven; To his feet thy tribute bring;
Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven, Evermore his praises sing...

Today, we hear God calling to us as would a parent, "return to Me," and we may feel that we do not have the strength, for it is incredibly difficult to repent, to face our failings. But God, ever the loving parent, assures us that so long as we go as far as we can, He will meet us there. So we envision God as both our Father and our King. We approach God with both of these aspects in mind, counting on the balance between the two. As we noted earlier, minimizing or overemphasizing any one of God's characteristics limits Him, reduces his stature. We must let God be fully God.

Finally, God's total love for us is revealed ironically in the fact that He allows us to reject Him, to turn from Heaven, to fall into Hell! As Saint Matthew recorded the parable of the good seed:

37: He answered, "He who sows the good seed is the Son of man;
38: the field is the world, and the good seed means the sons of the kingdom; the weeds are the sons of the evil one,
39: and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the close of the age, and the reapers are angels.
40: Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the close of the age.
41: The Son of man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers,
42: and throw them into the furnace of fire; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.
43: Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.

Note that the good seed here are sons of the kingdom; Jesus the sower is both the Son of man and the King, both the saviour of the good seed and the righteous King banishing the weeds to Hell fire.

It might be confusing and troubling that I say God's perfect love for us is shown in the fact that He allows us to reject Him. Which of us, as parents or as lovers can countenance our loved ones' rejecting us? In fact we know that, unless it is possible for us to reject our loving Father, we cannot love Him. If love is forced or necessary rather than willing, it is not love.

The doctrine of the sovereignty of God tells us He is King. He has undisputed supremacy in this universe. He's in control. Nothing is outside His control. I don't see how it could be any other way. Either God is sovereign and all that has ever existed or will exist is within His plan, or God is not sovereign and there are things which exist in the universe over which He has no authority or control. Were the latter true, God could not be God. He is the King of all.

Finally, it is important that we never lose awareness of any aspect of God's perfection: a Teacher without standards and goals would have a classroom of dunces; a Judge without love would have nothing to do with us; a Father without rules to follow would encourage chaos; a King without mercy or compassion would rule over a mechanical wasteland. We must keep all aspects of God's perfection in mind. Even then, as much and fully as we perceive Him, we have to recognize that we are seeing but a hint of a facet of the perfection who is God.

Thus, as we approach the Altar of Godthis morning, as we come before our Father, our Judge, our Teacher, our King, our Lover, we rejoice that in his perfect love for us He continues to nourish us with the Body and Blood of His Son,, +Jesus Christ, to whom, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, be all honor and glory now and forever. Amen.

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