I am going to address you, by the Lord’s help, on the lesson which has just been read from the holy Gospel; and thereupon I exhort you not to let faith go to sleep in your hearts, when you have to face the storms and billows of this world. For do not suppose that Christ our Lord had not full power over death as over sleep; or that the Almighty, during His voyage, was by chance, and apart from His own will, oppressed by sleep. If you believe this, He is asleep in you; but if Christ is awake in you, your faith is awake. The Apostle tells us that Christ should “dwell in our hearts by faith.” Therefore Christ’s sleeping is the sign of a mysterious truth10. The ship was a figure of the Church; and individuals, indeed, are temples of God, and every one is in his own soul a voyager; nor does he make shipwreck if he keeps good thoughts. A temptation has sprung up; that is the wind. You are agitated; the wave mounts high. Wake up Christ; let Him speak to you. “Who is this, that even the winds and the sea obey Him?” “The sea is His, and He made it.” “All things were made by Him.” Do you rather imitate the winds and the sea; obey your Creator. Do not be overcome by the waves when your heart is agitated. But still, since we are human, if the wind has come down upon us, if it has stirred up the feelings of our soul, let us not despair; let us wake up Christ, that we may sail on in quietness, and reach our Country. –St. Augustine, Sermon lxiii.

And from Melville Scott, on “Christ the Lord of Nature”:

The disciples had learned to love Christ as a Man, and to listen to Him as a Teacher; now they must learn to trust Him. Doubtless Christ sent the storm that they might find in Him one mightier than the storm. They saw the calmness of trust and how faith can sleep while the storm rages. He wonders that the disciples have not the same confidence. They saw the quiet naturalness of Kingly power, for He acted with the untoiling ease of Godhead, and the powers of nature in their wildest uproar yielded immediate obedience to His voice.

We dread nature now more than ever, for though man has made nature his servant, nature only serves so long as man obeys. We stand in awe of the magnitudes, regularities, and potencies around us; there is, therefore, the greater need to retain faith in a Christ Who is above nature. We may not speak of interference, for Christ is at home in nature, and Master in His home.

Our lives are scenes of storm as well as of calm. We need not suppose that because we meet with storms Christ is not with us, nor that because Christ is with us we shall not meet with storms. So the Church is often storm-tossed, but this does not prove her Lord to be absent. There is a calm which might prove this, and a sleep more like that of Jonah than that of Christ. The sleep of conscience is by no means the sleep of faith, and better any storm endured with Christ than calm without His presence.

Both of these readings impart to us the valuable lesson that we must remember our faith in Christ can bring us through any storm.  ”Let us not despair, let us wake up Christ, that we may sail on in quietness, and reach our Country.”

There is a wish to cut and paste the flawed Republican candidates’ strengths into a composite nominee: Romney’s sobriety, Santorum’s conviction, Paul’s sense of outrage over debt, and Gingrich’s glib lectures about civilization—while pruning away their unique defects: Santorum’s self-righteousness, Paul’s otherworldliness, Romney’s Tom Dewey/George H.W. Bush patrician woodenness, and Newt’s tom-foolery.

Santorum and Paul cannot beat Obama. Romney is still the most likely to make it a close race; Gingrich possibly to win by a wider margin — or, more likely, to lose by an even wider one.

We are in for a rough ride, indeed.

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I. THE LEPER.

“LORD, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean.” Great is the intelligence and faith of the applicant. For he did not break in upon the discourse, nor interrupt the audience, but awaited the fitting time, and approached Jesus when He had come down. And he supplicates Him, not carelessly, but even with great fervour, and kneeling before Him, as another Evangelist says, and with genuine faith and a right opinion about Jesus. For he said not, ” If Thou wilt ask it of God,” or, “If Thou wilt pray,” but, “If Thou wilt.” Nor did he say, ” Lord, cleanse me;” but commits to Him the whole matter, and makes Him the disposer of his cure, and bears witness to the plenitude of His authority. If the opinion of the leper had been erroneous, Jesus ought to have confuted it, and reproved him, and set him right. Did He then do so? Not at all; quite the contrary. He even confirms and ratifies what was said: therefore He said not, ” Be thou cleansed,” but, “I will, be thou cleansed.” Not so the Apostles; when the whole people were amazed, they said, “Why do ye fix your attention on us, as though by our own power or authority we had made him to walk ?” But the Master, although He often spoke, with great modesty, what fell short of His own glory, in order to confirm His dogmas, here, when men were astonished at His authority, says, “I will, be thou cleansed.” Further, He extended His hand and touched him; to indicate, as I think, that He was above the law, and not beneath it, and that, thenceforward, to the pure nothing was impure. For His hand was not made unclean by the leprosy, but the leprous body became pure from the touch of His holy hand. St. Chrysostom, Hom. xxv. on St. Matthew.

Do you ever wonder why some people have zero interest in God, zero interest in Jesus, zero interest in the Gospel or in what the Bible has to say?  It’s because until we’re born again, we’re of the world, not of God’s kingdom.  If the only birth you’ve experienced is the birth of the flesh, then you’re of the flesh.  You’re not only not part of God’s kingdom, but you’re actually an enemy of his kingdom by birth.  Ephesians reminds us that before we were born again, we were spiritually dead.  Life only comes as Jesus calls us to himself like he called into the tomb to Lazarus.  The only way we can be “of the Spirit”, the only way we’ll ever understand or identify with the things of the kingdom is to experience spiritual new birth through the power of Jesus’ own Spirit.

Think of Nicodemus.  This was a man who had spent his life studying, learning, and even memorising the Scriptures.  He lived his whole life according to them and in devotion to what he thought they taught him about God, and yet when he was face to face with the Messiah, when Jesus told him that he must be born again, he couldn’t wrap his mind around any of it.  I’ve known lots of people like that.  I’ve known Bible scholars and bishops who know the Bible, but they don’t really knowit, because they don’t know Jesus and because he hasn’t’ given them a new heart and a new mind to see and to understand.  In 1 Corinthians 2:14 St. Paul tells us: “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”  This is why there’s no other way into the kingdom than the new birth.

But, brothers and sisters, as much as we need to understand the necessity of new birth, we also need to understand something else Jesus stresses here: the new birth is the supernatural work of God.  How many people here were born the first time of their own will and on their own power?  No.  None of us is here on our own power.  We’re here because of our mothers and fathers.  In much the same way, we can only be born again on our Heavenly Father’s initiative.  We can’t do it on our own.  No one enters the kingdom based on his own effort or his own initiative.  We enter only on the merits of Jesus and we can only come when Jesus himself calls us and when his Spirit has done the work of changing our hearts.

To a large extent this is why examining oneself for spiritual fruit is so important – because if one has zero interest in the things of God, it is quite likely he or she is not of God.   And Scripture commands us to make our calling and election sure. (2 Peter 1:10)  Fr. Bill goes on to provide some helpful applications in the rest of the sermon, and if you’d like to hear it, you can find the audio here.