The Rev. John Guest
St. Margaret's Episcopal Church & School
Friend of Long Standing: Getting older and older all the time and glad to be living to be here year every year. Thank you, it’s great to be here with you Father Robert Certain and your flock here. It’s great to be out in the desert again, I love the way you all drive out here so fast — you really move along, it’s great to see that especially what is partially your retirement community. Back east, we have an island just off the coast of South Carolina called Hilton Head Island and the people there who are in a very similar community drive murderously slow. And, I did hear about four white haired ladies riding in a car together and the cop pulled them over and when he came along side the car the lady wound down her window and she said officer I wasn’t speeding, I was not speeding. I saw the speed limit just back there and I was driving exactly the speed limit - and he said what do you think the speed limit is down here lady? She said 27 mph, that’s what it said. Lady, that’s the route number. You’ve got to drive faster. You’re driving too slow, that’s the problem - then he looked in the car and all the other little ladies were sitting there were like blanched white - like scared stiff - and the officer said, are you all right? And the woman behind the wheel said yes, they’re fine at least they will be - we’ve just come off of route 102 !!! You all drive like you’re on route 102 around here. It’s spectacular. Let’s bow our heads here for a moment and hear what the Lord has to say.
Lord, thank you that you are present here, powerfully present. Walk up and down these rows and come and visit each one of us personally, we need you, we know we need you, we’re asking you to come by and help us so please Lord, take my lips and speak through them take our minds and think through them and take our wills and bend them to your own and take your hand Lord Jesus and place them over our hearts and set them on fire with love for your self. We pray this for you namesake. Amen.
I want to speak about three things rather having to do with God’s love for us. The first is this, that he comes and calls us personally, individually to himself. Because he loves us, that is, he knows who we are; he knows who you are, name by name. And he comes to you and calls you by name, that’s the first thing.
The second thing is just how much he loves you that he has given his son for you, as if one by one, he loves us each, individually, personally. Then, thirdly, because he loves us he looks for a response from us, love always looks for a response and needs are response and when there is no response it is taken that love is not reciprocated. It’s not returned. So love demands a response.
Those three things, God calls us personally, in Christ he died for us personally, and he looks for a response from us personally - that’s the outline. Turn to his calling us personally, you heard about the call of Samuel. He’s just a lad in the temple interestingly, did you know that it said he did not yet know the Lord? Did you hear that - the word of the Lord has not been revealed to him? To be in the temple and working in the temple yet not to know the Lord and sense the God has spoken to him and called him and that was to change as God called him by name! And the Gospel reading that Fr. Certain read, had Nathaniel been brought to the Lord and the Lord knowing him. He said, I know you, you’re an Israelite in whom there is no guile. And Nathaniel said how do you know me? And he said I saw you under the tree. And just on account that how it seemed Jesus knew Nathaniel by name. Nathaniel responded to him extravagantly you are the Son of God you are the hope of Israel just because he knew him.
Do you know powerful it is that God knows who you are and calls you personally? Whether you sense that you are in the house of God here today but don’t really know him personally but you could walk out of here this morning and know him intimately and personally. It’s like he really does walk up and down the aisles and walks along and visits with you. He knows who you are, he knows what you are dealing with he knows where you’ve been. He knows what your life is about and Jesus comes by to call us to himself, individually, listen, the love to be real it has to be personal if God does not know you personally he doesn’t love you because you can’t love someone you don’t know. So when it’s said the God so loved the world he must love us one at a time.
So it’s not just like for today, for instance, there’s going to be a huge crowd, it’s going on right now, sad to say, I should be watching the Steelers taking their shot at Indianapolis because that’s happening right now, I’d love to say I have a little screen down here but it’s not true - and there’s a huge crowd out there and the whole of America is watching on TV. I presume, at least anybody interested in the play-offs. God knows every one of those people in that area. To just say you look down on it, on the roof of it, and say I love you all, is nonsense. Because he doesn’t know who there are if that’s all there is. But because he’s God he know who we are and comes to us personally that is powerful. So how can that be. I’ll tell you how that can be, because he’s God I have noticed because I’ve been told, otherwise I wouldn’t know it, that they have cameras on every traffic light now. You go through red and what do they get? You know what they get don’t you - your license plate and your face, photographed. Did you know that? You better know that. Driving down 110 at 110 is not going to be good for you. And if we can pull that off, we immortals, do you think God has a problem of knowing who you are? And where you are and what your up to and what your needs are?
Addie is going to be baptized, God knows her. Addison Taylor Brooke — The first thing, the second thing is that He loves us. You heard that scripture did you not that we are not our own we’d be born with a price, you see that on page six in service the last statement from the lesson Corinthians, we are not our own, Paul writing to them says, you are not your own, you’ve been bought for a price and the price being the death of Jesus.
So the apostle Peter along with the other apostles who wrote the New Testament says we have been ransom that has been purchased not with silver or gold - perish - but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without spot or blemish. The price on our heads was the death of Christ on the cross that we might be purchased, redeemed, ransomed back to God. That’s the price. It says Paul writing to the Corinthians you’re not your own. Well, that’s one thing we all think we are don’t we, it’s one thing we think we have is ourselves - but Christ has died for us and it’s a lavish price that was paid.
You heard what I quoted from the apostle Peter - the blood of a lamb, precious, without spot or blemish, perfect - that’s Jesus, precious to God and trust precious to us that he would give himself. I hope you’ve all gone to see the Narnia movie, the Chronicles of Narnia, C.J.Lewis is the author, it’s amazing to see his name come up early on the screen together with the credits - as the author, this stuffy, tweedy Oxford Professor who wrote the Chronicles of Narnia and here it is taken by Disney and made into this spectacular movie. Aslom the Lion is the Christ figure in the movie as he is in the book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. You need to get for your kids and read to them. Aslam has to die for just one traitor - Edmond, one the four kids in the movie, because Edmond has been a traitor - Aslam must die.
Jesus died for us who betrayed our birthright in God - died for us and just as that movie is an allegory of Christ’s redemption the most graphic description I have ever heard in contemporary terms is of a Mr.Griffith who operated a lift bridge over a river and his one job in life was to lower the bridge when the train was to come across it and raise the bridge for river traffic to come through - that was his job. He was in his observation tower and would pull the lever and lower the bridge and then pull another lever and raise the bridge. One day on a take your kid to work day, he took his son and he took him down into the machine room to show him how it all worked and the big mighty wheels that turned when he pulled the lever and then the phone rang on wheel down in the machine room that drove the bridge and he was told to lower the bridge immediately and that a train was running ahead of schedule - and he sat his son on the cat-walk in the machine room and said don’t you dare move! Don’t you dare move, I’ll be right back, raced up out of the machine room, up the ladder into the observation tower and just as he went to pull the lever he could see way off in the distance - the train - in his line of vision he could see down into the machine room below and saw that his son had climbed into the machinery! I received this as a true story. And he’s caught now between pulling the lever and lowering the bridge and crushing his son or leaving the bridge up and leaving the commuter train to plow into. Mr. Griffith took the lever lowered the bridge - and crushed his son — sopping and weeping as the train comes speeding through over the bridge safely and as it comes through he sees people reading their newspaper, sipping their coffee, and he began to pound on the windows of his observation tower, don’t you know? I just killed my son for you. Don’t you know, I just killed my son for you? Well, they had no idea, just sipping their coffee, business of the day, reading their newspapers - no idea.
It’s almost like God is pounding on the windows of heaven this morning saying to you, don’t you know, I killed my son for you. What are we going to say in Eucharist? This is my blood of the new covenant which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins - do this in remembrance of me, that’s what Jesus said and it’s as if Jesus died for each one of you personally, individually, knowing that that was your deep, deep need. Do you believe that? That I died just for you? As if you were the only person who needed it? I trust you can say yes. And last of all, that the kind of love demands a response - it’s not just blasé it’s not something innocuous what I have just described to you in Christ dying for you is powerful and demanding. What are you going to do with that information?
Samuel was told to say speak Lord for your servant hears, Nathaniel when he understood and grasp it stood just said that’s who you are, Lord. He became one of the followers of Jesus. And there was a night when I was 18 years of age in London, grasping this information, listening to Dr. Billy Graham speak that I surrendered my life to Jesus Christ and asked him to come in and take possession of my life. Do you know the Bible says that Jesus stands and knocks at the door of our life, individually, personally, each life longing to come in and we open the door and says I will come in.
It’s no wonder that Paul says don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. How does that happen, how can your mortal body with all the stuff you’ve been into with it, be the temple of the Holy Spirit - how does that happen? When Jesus Christ comes into your life the spirit of the living God comes into you and makes you a new person. So as we respond to him, so he comes in and transforms us so the Bible makes it very, very clear that if anyone is joined to Christ, he or she has made a new creation and individually and personally we need to respond. I mean when we baptize little Addison here this morning, it will be by name do you know that - we won’t say here Lord take this kid, so we dunk the kid and say she’s yours. Now I’m being very, very grass, that’s not going to happen - it’s by name, why do you think that is? Because God know her by name, he died for her by name and in that huge symbolic act; we’re bringing that child to Jesus. We have four daughters my wife and I — one wife and four daughters, that’s very expensive in case you haven’t got that worked out, we told them, we actually brought our children right from the hospital and laid them on the alter, first stop was church - we laid them right on the alter, just like this - gave them to the Lord, then we later had them baptized, we told them we are Jesus family - and when the kids would say, why do we have to go to church? What do I have to do this? Because we are a Jesus family. And, when you were a child we gave you to Jesus. So they were raised to know and love Jesus. That’s what’s going on here this morning, but by name it’s that personal have you ever grasped that.
It’s not just that you are sitting in a crowd here its Jesus coming to visit where you are personally and this is your moment - you may never get it again. If you see it now, grasp the whole of him now, don’t say later, that’s when I sorted this out. Now grasp the opportunity.
Will you pray with me? Let’s bow our heads and pray:
Thank you for coming and visiting with us . Thank you for the whole meaning of Epiphany that you’ve come to reveal yourself to us - may each one of us have that Epiphany here this morning, grasp in clarity and reality - that you know who we are, you died for who we are and you want us just as we are to come to you and give our lives to you. Please Lord, make this so. Pray in the first person for each of us individually, see yourself speaking to the Lord Jesus and say to him, dear Lord Jesus thank you for loving me, thank you for dying for me thank you for being patient with me, thank you for knocking at the door of my life come into my life Lord Jesus and spirit, take possession of me, make me new and clean from the inside out, from this day on. Lord Jesus, I no longer count myself as my own, I am yours, purchased with your precious blood, that was shed for me, granted I may live for you.