A Sermon for the Fourth
Sunday after Easter
May 17, 1981
St. Peter’s Cathedral, Charlottetown
by Robert Crouse
“Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow
to wrath;
for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of
God.”
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Our text comes from today’s Epistle lesson, from the
Epistle of St. James; and in that lesson, St. James seems, perhaps, at
first, to be dealing in clichés or platitudes; points which seem perfectly
obvious, and to be taken for granted. “Every good gift and every perfect
gift is from above,” he tells us; surely there is nothing very novel in that
thought. Surely, that is a truth which wise men and women, at all times,
and in all places, have always recognized. There is nothing novel, and
certainly nothing peculiarly Christian about that idea. God is the source
of life and every blessing. St. Paul, in Acts 17, was able to quote the
pagan Greek poets on the subject: “In God we live, and move, and have our
being; as some of your own writers have said, ‘we are all his children’”.
Or, as one of our well-known hymns expresses it:
To all life thou givest, to both great and
small.
In all life thou livest, the true life of
all.
God is “the Father of lights,” says St. James, “with whom
is no variableness, neither shadow of turning”. God is the source of life
and every blessing. Behind all the changes and vicissitudes of nature and
human history, his purpose abides, sure and steadfast, eternally just,
eternally good.
Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light,
Nor wanting, nor wasting, thou rulest in might;
Thy justice like mountains high soaring above,
Thy clouds, which are fountains of goodness and
love.
“Every good gift is from above.” All that seems,
perhaps, a platitude. At any rate, it is something which the poets and
philosophers, and the wise men and women of all times and places have always
known. There is nothing very novel about it, and nothing peculiarly
Christian; but it is, nevertheless, a universal truth which Christians in
our own time would do well to keep firmly in mind. God’s justice is eternal
and unchanging and unswayed by our passing whims and fancies, steadfast
through all of our perversities and aberrations. And in the end, God’s will
is done. That truth of God’s eternal providence is fundamental truth, and we
forget it at our peril.
But St. James has something more specific than that in
mind, and so he continues: “Of his own will he brought us to birth by the
word of truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of all creation.”
The “good and perfect gift” of God includes, more specifically, God’s saving
work in Christ, the Incarnate Word, “the implanted word, which is able to
save your souls”. And the Gospel lesson for today speaks of our receiving
that “good and perfect gift” – “the implanted word” – in the power of the
Spirit, “the Comforter”, “the Spirit of Truth” – the gift of the Risen and
Ascended Lord.
By the “perfect gift” of the divine Spirit, we are “a
kind of first-fruits of all creation”. God’s creation has a spiritual
purpose, and a spiritual end, of which we are “a kind of first-fruits”, a
beginning of God’s spiritual harvest. As we are born anew by the gift of
God’s Spirit, as we share consciously and lovingly in God’s eternal purpose,
his will for his creation becomes manifest in us. In us, dumb nature finds
the voice of praise; in and through the worship of Almighty God, the whole
creations begins to find its destiny. In that sense, we who are born of
the Spirit are “the first-fruits of all his creation”.
“Ye know this, my beloved brethren,” says St. James, “and
so let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the
wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.” Such virtues as
humility, patience, meekness, are perhaps not the most popular virtues in
the modern Christian’s armoury. We are perhaps rather swift to speak and
swift to wrath. There is so much that seems to obviously wrong; so much to
be done: how can we afford patience and meekness? Jesus said that the meek
would inherit the earth; but do we really trust in that promise?
“Be swift to hear,” says St. James, and his point is
well taken: “Receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save
your souls.” God’s eternal will, and the salvation of mankind, will not be
served by frantic speech and wrathful deeds. So busy and distracted by what
seem to us obvious goods, we become inattentive to God’s word – slow to
hear, swift to speak, swift to wrath. We become distracted in the pursuit
of a myriad of apparently excellent gifts, and fail in our perception of
that “good and perfect gift” which is ours for the listening. “Be swift to
hear.”
Thus, today’s Collect would have us pray for patient
attentiveness to God’s word; for God alone can order our unruly wills and
affections. We pray that we may love his commandments, and desire what he
promises; that our wills may be steadfast in accord with the eternal and
invariable righteousness of God; that amid “the sundry and manifold changes
of the world”, amid all the distractions of swift speech and swift wrath,
“our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found,”
The message of the Easter season, and the lessons of this
Sunday, are simple and vitally important. The perfect gift of God, the seed
of new spiritual life, the word of God, the seed or resurrection, has been
implanted in our minds and hearts. In Eastertide, we celebrate the Passover
of Christ, through death to resurrection; and that must be our Passover as
well: “Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God”. The temple
of his body must be raised up in us, the House of God must be rebuilt in us
and among us: not in frantic speech and wrathful deeds, but in
attentiveness to God’s word, in steady, constant discipline of prayer, in
patient and long-suffering labour of mind and heart and hands, waiting upon
the Spirit’s strengthening, in the sure and certain confidence that though
we be in sorrow for a season, the good and perfect gifts of God our Father
do not fail. Fear not; it is your Father’s pleasure to give you a kingdom.
And he will surely do it.
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