When Christ Comes
by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse
Advent 2007
I. He Makes People Think
The people were expecting the Messiah to come, so when John came they began to think and question whether he was the Messiah or not.
True religion has made a great step forward in a family or parish when people begin to think. Thoughtlessness about spiritual things is one of the main features of unconverted people. They don’t like or dislike the Gospel because they never think about it.
Prepare for His Coming
St. Matthew 11:1-9
by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse
Advent 2007
“Rejoice in the Lord alway; and again I say, Rejoice. Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand. Be careful for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. Lord, you have been favorable to your land; You have brought back the captivity of Jacob.”
The Lord is at hand! Prepare for His Coming! This is the theme of Advent. We cannot prepare for His First Advent, as this lies in the past. But the commemoration of his birth reminds us that there is a Constant Coming and a Future Coming. For these we are to prepare. At the First Coming, St. John prepared the way. The Lord still has His messengers who are to prepare the faithful for a happy celebration of his First Advent, for his Constant Coming in Word and Sacrament, and for his Coming in Power and Glory. They are the ministers of Christ. The Scripture lessons and Collect for this day direct attention to them and call upon the faithful to examine their attitude toward Christ’s messengers and their message.
The Coming of the Blessed Kingdom
St. Luke 21:25-36
by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse
Advent 2007
Daughter of Zion, behold, your salvation comes. The Lord shall cause his glorious voice to be heard, and you shall have gladness of heart. Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, You that lead Joseph like a flock.
The message of the First Sunday of Advent was “Your King is coming! Prepare!” We spoke of his visible coming to Jerusalem in humility and meekness, on his way to the Cross. This was a picture of his constant coming in his Word and Sacrament, invisible, without his outward glory and power. The message of the Second Sunday of Advent is: “Your King is coming again, visibly and in power and glory, to deliver his own from all evil!” It is a message of encouragement and hope. That is why the Church has always combined the Sundays of Advent with a consideration of the final coming of Christ at the end of the world. So the two comings of Christ, his first coming to Bethlehem and his Second Coming at the end of the world the Church has historically conflated together into the season of Advent.
Stooping to Reign
by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse
Advent 2007
Introduction
We usually think of someone rising to power, being elevated to a position of authority. Jesus said he came to be servant of all, humbled himself, took on the form of a servant, and became obedient to death on the cross. Think of his birth, of his life (no place to lay his head), of his death. It is the same now on Palm Sunday. He was crowned King of Jerusalem on this day and killed a few days later. Celebrate coronation of Christ.
The Mystery of Christmas
St. John 1:1-14
by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse
Christmas 2007
The job of the preacher isn’t to explain everything in the Bible so that you understand it all, but instead to explain to you what the Bible says. Much of what the Bible says doesn’t make sense to us because we aren’t able to understand it. Our minds are small, limited, bound by the limits of creation. The Bible is the revelation of God, One who is immense, unlimited, the unbounded creator.
God Sent Forth His Son
by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse
Christmas 2007
When the world had learned that all human efforts, philosophies, and ideas were to no avail to cure the disease of sin, God sent forth his Son. This day is really not the Sunday after Christmas but the Sunday after Christmas Day, for the great Christmas truth is still before us. We are in the middle of the 12 days of Christmas. We now learn the truth of the Incarnation as it affects our relation to God.
The Blessing of Obedience
St. Luke 2:51-52
by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse
Epiphany 2007
Introduction
We celebrate the baptism of Jesus on the first Sunday after Epiphany. Baptism is the time when receive our Christian name—it means a new heart, a new disposition—it means we live like a Christian, with the character of a Christian.
God's Protection
by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse
Lent 2007
The connection between these verses and those which immediately precede them, is striking and instructive. In the preceding verses, our Lord Jesus Christ had been speaking of the power and importance of prayer. He not only gave his disciples the pattern prayer we call the Lord’s Prayer, but he also illustrated it with the parable of the midnight visitor who refuses to leave until his friend gets out of bed and loans him some bread. If you have already embarrassed your wife by knocking on your neighbor’s door in the middle of the night, you might as well stand there and pester him until he gets up and gives you the bread. Now, is God reluctant to give us what we ask for? Not at all, but the point of the parable is that we must be serious in asking—serious enough to keep banging on the door until God gives us what we ask. In these verses before us, he delivers a man from a devil that prevented him from speaking. The miracle is evidently intended to throw fresh light on the lesson. The same Savior who encourages us to pray, is the Savior who destroys Satan’s power over our bodies, and restores our tongues to their proper use.
Prevailing Prayer
I Thessalonians 4:1-8; St. Matthew 15:21-28
by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse
Lent 2007
The prayer of King Solomon at the dedication of the Temple highlighted the kind of prayer that would solicit a favorable response from God. In 1 Kings 8:38 Solomon said: “whatever prayer, whatever supplication is made by anyone, or by all Your people Israel, when each one knows the plague of his own heart, and spreads out his hands toward this temple: then hear in heaven Your dwelling place, and forgive, and act, and give to everyone according to all his ways, whose heart You know (for You alone know the hearts of all the sons of men), that they may fear You all the days that they live in the land which You gave to our fathers.”
The Necessity of Christ's Ascension
St. Luke 24:49
by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse
Ascension 2007
And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.
You may be too young to remember pop beads—the plastic multi-color beads that could be snapped together to make bracelets or necklaces of any length. They could be all one color or completely random depending on your whim. There was no “right way” to connect them. Children’s stacking toys were completely different. The set we had was made up of round cups, each one slightly smaller than the one before so that they could be stacked like a pyramid, or one could be inserted in another to make one box. But to stack or insert them correctly they had to be in the correct order. Our boys just thought the stacking cups were one more thing to set up so it could be kicked down.
Be Merciful
St. Luke 6:36
by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse
Trinity Season 2007
Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.
This portion of the Sermon on the Mount is probably the most difficult in all of Scripture. Being merciful to enemies has never been my strongest attribute, and it is always the point in my life where my sin is most likely to justify itself and say. “Well, they had it coming. They deserved it. They shouldn't have been so mean and nasty if they didn't want to receive that in return.” Notice that Jesus is not talking about simply being passive toward those who do bad things to us—simply not retaliating—but he says we are required to be positively good to them. “Be merciful,” he says. Your enemy is anyone who doesn’t like what you do or think, not somebody that you have a major conflict with. Your enemy may be the person sitting next to you in the chair this morning. It is always natural to want to win. I love winning. I hate losing. Losing is for losers, and I'm not a loser. Marianne couldn't play an innocent card game for years because the very first time we tried to play cards after we got married, she just trounced me royally, and I couldn't stand the idea of playing her because she was such a great card shark. I had to calm down, and it took me years to be able to graciously lose to my wife. She always wins. I can't say “sometimes graciously lose” because I always lose when we play cards. But it is natural to want to defeat the enemy. But the whole point of this passage is that we should be like God, and loving his enemies is exactly what God is like. It sounds ridiculous to love your enemy, but that is exactly what God is like. God doesn’t act in a way that is reasonable to us. He does something entirely stupid, we think. He loves his enemies, and incredibly he tells us to do the same thing. This isn’t the way we tend to relate to each other—children to each other, husbands to their wives, even members of the Church, and maybe I should say especially members of the Church. We are afraid of each other rather than loving each other. So when Jesus says, “Be merciful,” those two words encapsulate everything that is so unreasonable about Christianity and about the Gospel.
Fishing with a Pro
St. Luke 5:1-10
by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse
Trinity Season 2007
Introduction
I never really did any fishing until I was 30 years old after we moved back from Israel and I never owned a rod and reel until then. The father of one of my friends took us fishing one time when I was about 10 years old. He called us elevator fishermen because we kept lifting the pole to see if there was a fish on the hook. We didn’t catch any fish because we didn’t leave the bait in the water long enough for a fish to find it. We just wanted to make sure the fish hadn't stolen our bait.
Love's Lament
St. Luke 19:41-48, 1 Corinthians 12:1-11
by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse
Trinity Season 2007
In his moving book, To End All Wars, Captain Ernest Gordon, a survivor of the Japanese Prisoner of War death camps in Thailand, told a story of how the Gospel command to love one’s enemies became a reality to him and his men near the end of the war. They had come across some wounded Japanese soldiers abandoned by their own and left without medical care. He wrote: “Without a word, most of the officers in my section unbuckled their packs, took out part of their ration and a rag or two, and, with water canteens in their hands went over to the Japanese train to help them.”
The Law of Praying
St. Luke 18:9-14, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11
by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse
Trinity Season 2007
The Anglican maxim Lex Orandi Lex Credendi (the Law of Praying is the Law of Believing) teaches us that our true beliefs are reflected most clearly in the manner in which we pray. Take for instance the story of a young boy saying his bedtime prayers with his mother. “Lord, bless Mommy and Daddy, and God, GIVE ME A NEW BICYCLE!!!” His mother gently reminded him that God was not deaf, to which he replied, “I know, Mom, but Grandma’s in the next room, and she’s hard of hearing!” The little boy’s prayer revealed exactly where his faith lay.
More Than You Can Ask or Imagine
by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse
Trinity Season 2007
St. Paul ends his discussion of the greatness of God’s grace in the Gospel with this ascription of praise: “Now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.” (Eph. 3:20). In the Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican we learned that we are not sufficient of ourselves. Today we learn that God is more than sufficient to give us more than we could ask or imagine. The Epistle declares: “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our sufficiency is from God.” The Gospel tells us that the crumbs he gave to the Gentile woman were better than the steak we provide for ourselves. “He has done all things well, He even makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak.”
A Parable of the Gospel
St. Luke 10:23-37
by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse
Trinity Season 2007
Someone once said that your life is the first Bible non-Christians will ever read—unfortunately, it may also be the last. Throughout the Gospels, our Lord called people to active and obedient faith. His message declared that if we are to know God at all, and especially if we are to grow in that knowledge, we must do what He has told us in His Word—we must put into habitual practice that which we learn in the Scriptures.
A Sick Woman Healed
by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse
Trinity Season 2007
The main subject of these verses is the miraculous healing of a sick woman. Great is our Lord’s experience in cases of disease! Great is his sympathy with his sick and ailing members! The gods of the heathen are generally represented as terrible and mighty in battle, delighting in bloodshed, the strong man’s patrons, and the warrior’s friends. The Savior of the Christian is always set before us as gentle, and easy to be entreated, the healer of the broken hearted, the refuge of the weak and helpless, the comforter of the distressed, the sick man’s best friend. And is not this just the Savior that human nature needs? The world is full of pain and trouble. The weak on earth are far more numerous than the strong.
We . . . You Also
Ephesians 1:11-14
by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse
2006
In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who works all things after the counsel of his own will: that we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ. In whom you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after you believed, you were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory. Ephesians 1:11-14
Clearly one cannot deal with the entire statement in these verses on one occasion; but before we consider the separate statements it is good to deal with the statement as a whole. It is only as we are clear about the general theme, and grasp it, that we can truly appreciate and enjoy the particulars. Here we are looking at the end of the sentence which, as we have seen, starts at the beginning of verse 3 and runs on to the end of verse 14. Obviously it does not finish at verse 10, because the Apostle goes on to say “In whom also.” The “whom” refers to someone already mentioned and the “also” tells us of something additional.
The Earnest of Our Inheritance
Ephesians 1:14
by The Rt. Rev. Daniel R. Morse
2006
Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory. Ephesians 1:14
We are studying Ephesians because God gives us specific information about what the Church is, and for us that means what our new church ought to be. This statement is obviously a continuation of what the Apostle has been saying in verse 13 and especially concerning the sealing with the Holy Spirit of promise. It is not only a continuation of, but also an addition to that statement and to the entire statement which the Apostle has been making from the beginning of this Epistle.