“And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.”
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
St. Paul clearly says in today’s Epistle both to strive and to gain an incorruptible crown. Faith is a gift. Growing into the likeness of God is a gift. Salvation is a gift. Yet our striving matters. But it is a gift. This confuses us.
Today’s Gospel lesson provides us a parable which helps explain this. The goodman of the house goes out time and again to hire laborers for his field. Despite the difference in time worked, he pays them all the same. Each one of the laborers worked, but the pay they received said nothing about how much they worked and said everything about the generosity of the goodman.
We work with God in our salvation. God esteems our labor, poor that it may be in his infinite majesty. We must labor in order to get paid. Yet we are not paid in accordance with our labor.
We live in a city of wreckage this Sunday morning, even after crews have been working to restore power and fix roads and houses for days. The storm hit us very hard. Thankfully, the earthquake seems to have caused no damage.
Among many, I am thankful for the out-of-town utility crews that have been fixing our power lines. But we cannot simply rest easy and sit back while they come and restore our power. Other things need to be done. At the very least, we need to gather up sticks and put them aside for the county to pick up. We must clean our refrigerators and freezers. Even though the professionals are doing the heavy lifting, we must handle the small stuff. Our homes are not back into good order without a little bit of elbow grease on our part.
So it is with the grace of God. We are entirely stuck without power until he bestows upon us grace from beyond ourselves, grace which we cannot manage on our own. And yet the job is not entirely done without our participation.
So God has chosen us and adopted us in Holy Baptism and given us grace upon grace in our lives. But we must participate in this grace, we must work with this grace, but we may not work for this grace. The distinction is between working in order to gain something and working alongside and in conjunction with something.
Isaiah tells a powerful story at the beginning of his fifth chapter. Let me read it to you.
Now will I sing to my wellbeloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard. My wellbeloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill: And he fenced it, and gathered out the stone thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein: and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard. What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes? And now go to: I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down: And I will lay it waste: it shall not be pruned, nor digged; but there shall come up briers and thorns: I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for judgement, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry.
Here, the Lord does everything but the people do not contribute their little part. Isaiah shows that the Lord will prepare a great thing, but if the people do not do it, not only does it not get done, but the Lord will judge the contrary people.
The Lord gave all manner of goodness to Israel, and Israel spurned God’s love and pursued their own ends. And lest we too quickly hasten to condemn Israel, we do this ourselves all too often. We substitute what we want for what God has clearly communicated to us. We substitute our fleshly desires over holy discipline. We substitute sentimentality over truth and love. We substitute feeling good and avoiding bad feelings over pursuing holiness.
God has given us good things. He has communicated his will to us. He has sent His only-begotten Son into the world to save us from our sins. He has sent the Holy Ghost into the world to dwell in us, making us tabernacles of God himself. And yet we run rampant, choosing our own way. We say with our lips that we love God and our neighbor, but we act like strangers to both neighbor and God.
We ought to pray as Thomas Wilson, sometime Bishop of Sodor and Man, once prayed, “Grant that the end of all my actions, and designs, may be the glory of God.”
This glory of God for which we must strive St. Paul likens to the prize of an athletic contest. Many of us have been watching – when we have electricity – the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi. In the Olympics, individuals and teams strive for the gold. In ancient Greece, athletes strove for laurels, that is, a crown of olive.
St. Paul mentions the crown in II Timothy ii.5: “And if a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully.”
St. Peter mentions the crown in his first epistle: “And when the chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away.”
St. John mentions the crown in Revelation ii.10b: “be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.”
And again, St. Paul mentions winning the crown in today’s Epistle: “And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.”
These bring to my mind my favorite quote of St. John Vianney: “All that we do without offering it to God is wasted.” Indeed, all that we do without God is ineffectual. While our cares and concerns may seem important now, time will wear away even the greatest of monuments, age will wipe away the most notable of lineages. All that is worthy, all that is eternal, all that is virtuous is the Lord’s.
Either you have the crown or you don’t. And the crown is bestowed upon you, it is not earned.
We need sustained discipline. Christians are spiritual athletes, and if we are spiritually lazy, digesting poor spiritual food, and not exercising what God gave us, then we will be sorry spiritual athletes indeed. We must exercise vigorously whether we feel like it or not, listen to our teachers and coaches, eat a proper diet, get enough sleep, and avoid harmful things.
We are not competing against one another. Instead of a race with one winner, all who run the race swiftly and with vigor will win the crown which God alone bestows upon his elect. But we must run. We must run our hearts out. We run a difficult course with treacherous obstacles and dangerous challenges. In this race, some racers will be tempted to quit the course.
We must hold our bodies in subject to our wills and hold our wills in subject to God’s will. The way of Christ is tough and exacting. Soon enough, we will again walk the road to Calvary with Christ and intensely recall how difficult the Via Dolorosa has always been. Running a race whilst carrying your cross is impossible without the grace of God, whose grace, thankfully, he freely bestows upon us. He loves us. He desires us to join in his victory. He does not want a single one of us to turn from God and consort with the enemy. He wants abundant life for us all.
So how do we run this race to the satisfaction of God?
The minimum that we can do are the Duties of Churchmen. But these are not enough. And there is no maximum that we can do.
But still, first we faithfully fulfill the Duties of Churchmen. These duties are:
1. Worship God in Church every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation
2. Receive Holy Communion at least three times a year
3. Keep the fasts of the Church
4. Keep a clean conscience by confessing our sins and seeking righteousness
5. Tithe and give alms
6. Obey the Church’s Law of Marriage
In addition, we must regularly spend time with God in prayer: adoration, thanksgiving, and confession. Do not worry yourself about naming lists of loved ones to God. Marvel at God, gaze upon him, and thank him. Confess your sins and faults and grow close to him. And here’s something important that we so often miss: Slowly and thoughtfully pray the Lord’s Prayer every day. You may always come to me and ask for more after you do that.
Finally, we must live righteous lives. Are you living in a sinful situation? Stop it. Stop it now. Don’t reason with evil – avoid it. If you are living in fornication, or stealing from others, or shirking your duty, or disrespecting your parents, or greedily desiring more than you need, stop it immediately. Follow the Ten Commandments and all Christian morality.
In all we do, we are to exercise our wills so that we may love our God and our fellow man more fully. Virtue, communion with God, and righteous living all help us love God more fully and thereby love our neighbors more fully as well.
If you faithfully fulfill the six Duties of Churchmen, pray adequately and earnestly every day, and live a life of increasing righteousness, then you are well on your way to running the race worthy of a crown. But remember, you never earn it. You can never do enough to satisfy God. God will grant you your crown of glory because he wants to, not because you feel – or don’t feel – like you deserve it. In God’s open and free love does he give us all that we need for eternal life with him. Accept the goodness and grace which flows from God and strive mighty hard to live a life worthy of Christ in the Holy Ghost.
“And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.”
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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