Posted on 08/27/2005 9:06:09 AM PDT by evangelium
| The Rev. William Klock: "The Godly Virtue of Love" From the Rev. William Klock of Christ Church REC in Oregon, we have the sermon, The Godly Virtue of Love, which is based on Galatians 3:16-22 and Luke 10:23-37, the readings for Trinity 13 from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. He notes the following about our use of the Decalogue in the liturgy: The Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, have been a part of our Communion liturgy since the second revision of the Prayer Book in 1552. The Old Testament Law summarised as these ten short commandments is something we need to hear before we hear the Good News of our two lessons from the New Testament. As I said in my sermon last week: we will never be ready to receive the Gospel until we understand our own neediness and sinfulness. The Law is God?s holy measuring stick to which we can never live up. The Summary of the Law was integrated into the liturgy by the non-jurors of Scotland who used it as a replacement for the Decalogue. They saw a tendency toward legalism on the part of the Puritans ? especially when it came to the Fourth Commandment regarding the Sabbath. Our modern liturgies have balanced between the two, I think, and so we have both the Decalogue and Jesus? Summary. If you?ve noticed, we say the Decalogue on the first Sunday of every month, but we hear Jesus? Summary of the Law every single week. There?s a reason for that: we need to be periodically reminded of the Law in more detail (the Decalogue), but we need to hear Christ?s words of grace and love all the time, lest we fall into a sheer legalism, like that of the Pharisees. We must never separate the Law from love. God is love and he gave his people the Law as a thing that would point to himself. But they (and we) had a tendency to look at the Law alone, rather than at the love behind it, and instead of worshipping and following its author, they made an idol out of the Law itself.This makes a fitting introduction indeed to the rest of the sermon, which addresses the two Scripture passages--both having to do with what it truly means to have the Law written on our hearts rather than simply trying to use it as a rulebook for our own selfish gain. By all means please read this well-crafted sermon. Posted by Will at 12 : 01 am |
Welcome to Free Republic.
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. In the ECUSA today it seems that the heirarchy wishes only to think of certain parts of Jesus' message and wish to ignore the law altogether.
Thanks for the welcome. I don't have much time to post or get into the discussion, but I saw that you had posted a few of Fr. Klock's sermons from earlier in the year and was disappointed that you didn't continue to post them. I read them via the Prydain Blog and the Christ Church website and always get something out of them. A few weeks ago I was in Portland and able to visit Fr. Klock's parish, Christ Church. Their a small group that just got started this past year, but are very faithful and Fr. Klock's a great preacher. I think sermons like this need to be more common in the Episcopal world.
BTW, you should really add Christ Church (REC) of Portland to your Traditional Anglican resource page.
I don't add specific churches unless they're explicitly recommended -- but now I have a recommendation and so they are on the list.
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