Easter Sermon of St. John Chrysostom

Whoever you are, come, celebrate this shining happening, this festival of light.
You, the devout, God’s unshakable lover, and you the servant brimming with thanks.
Come, walk into the joy of your Lord.

You who began before sunrise, come for your stipend.
You who waited till nine in the morning: the feast is for you. And you, the not-till-noonday starter, do not hesitate; you shall not lose a thing.
You who began at only three in the afternoon, have no scruples, come!
And you who arrived just before sunset, forget you were late. Do not be bashful.
Our Master is magnanimous and welcome the very latest with the first.
He will not entertain you less, you of the eleventh hour,than you the dawn toiler. No, not at all.
To this one he gives, and on that one he showers rewards.
Whether you were a success or whether you only tried, he will greet you, make much of your effort, extol your intention.

Let everybody, therefore, crowd into the exhilaration of our Savior.
You the first and you the last: equally heaped with blessings.
You the rich and you the poor: celebrate together.
You the careful and you the careless: enjoy this day of days.
You that have kept the fast, and you that have broken it: be happy today!
The table is loaded. Feast on it like princes.
The milkfed veal is fat. Let no one go hungry.

 And drink, all of you: drink the cup. The vintage is faith.
Feed sumptuously all: feed on his goodness, his sheer abundance.
No one need think he is poor, for the universal empire is emblazoned, wide open for all.

No one need mourn uncountable falls, be they over and over.
For forgiveness itself has reared from the tomb.
No one need fear death; for our Saviour himself has died and set us free.
He confronted death in his own person, and blasted it to nothing.
He made it defunct by the very taste of his flesh.
This is exactly what Isaiah foretold when he declared:
   “Hell is harrowed by encounter with him.”

Of course it is harrowed.
For now hell is a joke, finished, done with.
Harrowed because now taken prisoner.
It snatched at a body and – incredible – lit upon God.
It gulped down the earth, and gagged on heaven.
It seized what it saw, and was crushed by what it failed to see.

Poor death, where is your sting? Poor hell, where is your triumph?
Christ steps out of the tomb and you are reduced to nothing.
Christ rises and the angels are wild with delight.
Christ rises and life is set free.
Christ rises and the graves are emptied of dead.
Oh yes, for he broke from the tomb like a flower, a beautiful fruit:  the first fruit of those already gone.
All glory be his, all success and power…for ever and ever!

Translation by Paul Roche.

Our High Priest

Thus, we are comforted each and every moment that our high priest ministers for us in the Holy of Holies. The prosecuting attorney is ejected from the courtroom. The case against us is dismissed because our sentence was executed on our high priest himself. But we are not only exonerated, we are actually declared "righteous," as if we had lived perfectly before God. And so we have only a defense attorney before the throne of God. He pleads our case, and the Father accepts his meritorious intercession as sufficient for our right to enjoy his eternal presence forever. "Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess (Heb. 4:14 NIV).

There are no candles to light, no buttons to push, no aisles to walk, no rededications or resolutions to do better. Nothing will suffice but the intercession of the high priest whose ministry is far superior to that of Moses. For Moses brought us to Mount Sinai where God appeared in terror, clad in lightning and surrounded by peals of thunder. "But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the first born, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel" (Heb. 12:22-24 NIV).

"We Believe: Recovering the Essentials of the Apostles Creed", Michael Horton, (Word Publishing, 1998), pages 143-144

Of This and That...

I just deleted one of the posts from this blog that was originally published back on December 12, 2013. It was somewhat of a popular and a bit controversial post, but I came to the conclusion it really no longer served any positive useful purpose. Yes, I know some thought it never served any positive useful purpose to begin with, but I respectfully disagree with that assessment, and would cite their own protests as proof to the contrary.

My wife and I got back home yesterday after a three week visit to our daughter and family who moved to Alaska back at the end of June. They live in a small town in the interior where "going to town" means a 2 1/2 to 3 hour trip to the Palmer/Wasilla/Anchorage area. Words and pictures are inadequate to describe Alaska. I fell like I just got back from another world; another country. At this point in my life I could not and would not live there year around, but am thankful for the opportunities we have had to visit there. Our last visit before this trip was 16 years ago. It is a beautiful wild wilderness of a country, and I love being there and seeing it.

I have said very little about politics. I have no favor for either of the major party candidates, nor will I allow my conscience to be bound by the specious and mathematically flawed argument that a vote for a third party candidate is a vote for Hillary Clinton and her goosestepping minions. The electoral college diminishes greatly the influence of any one individual vote, especially in those states where the electoral college vote is allocated on the "winner takes all" basis which the vast majority of the states use. Whoever "wins" God still rules over the affairs of mankind and part of His judgement on a wicked secular materialistic nation wrapped up in its own hubris will be to give that nation the rulers such a nation thinks it wants and let us as a nation bear the consequence thereof.

Current Reading: "We Believe: Recovering the Essentials of the Apostles' Creed"; Michael Horton; (Word Publishing, 1998). Good stuff so far. I would encourage you to read it if you have not already.