Sermon for the 4th Sunday after Epiphany (29 Jan. 2023)

In Revelation 10 we see the culmination of Jesus Christ’s victory over the waters, and how His Kingdom unites both Israel and Gentile nations when it describes Jesus as “standing one leg on the sea and one leg on the land raising His right hand to heaven” (Rev. 10:5). The land representing Israel and the sea the Gentile nations, here Christ is standing atop His kingdom as He puts all enemies under His feet, swearing an oath to the Ancient of Days as a divine Witness to the New Creation and the New Covenant, a creation and covenant that unites all things in Him. Revelation 15 also shows that those of us in Christ also stand over the sea as part of the heavenly choir. Like Peter, who when he had faith could walk on the water with Christ, those of us who remain faithful can stand above the waters, above Satan and our sins and in dominion of the nations under Jesus’ Kingship. 

Scripture verses & Quotes:
Numbers 12:13 
2 Kings 5:7 
Matthew 8:24-27
Job 9:8
Psalms 89:9
Amos 4:13
Micah 7:19 
Isaiah 17:12-13; 57:19-21
Revelations 13:1  
Isaiah 23:11; 27:1; 43:15-16 
Matthew 13:47-48
Revelations 10:5

“This peace, though, is not the absence of hostilities. Peace with God means warfare with the enemies of God. Christ made it clear that allegiance to Him meant a sword of division, as He divides order from chaos and the wheat from the tares. In a sinful world, some warfare is inescapable. We must therefore pick our enemies: God or sinful man? If a man is at peace with sinful men, he is at war with God”.
- J.R. Rushdoony. “The Institutes of Biblical Law”. Page 781.

If I could close with a word of encouragement from that Pillar of the Church – St. Athanasius the Great, who at one time had to stand against the world in defense of Trinitarianism – he wrote:
“Worship, then, the Savior "Who is above all" and mighty, even God the Word, and condemn those who are being defeated and made to disappear by Him. When the sun has come, darkness prevails no longer; any of it that may be left anywhere is driven away. So also, now that the Divine epiphany of the Word of God has taken place, the darkness of idols prevails no more, and all parts of the world in every direction are enlightened by His teaching.”
- St. Athanasius. “On the Incarnation of the Word”. Chapter 8, Refutation of the Gentiles (55)

Jesus Above the Waters & Above the Nations

Sermon for the 3rd Sunday after Epiphany (22 Jan. 2023)

It is interesting to note that the very first place, or very first event on earth, where Christ decides to begin His miraculous ministry is at a wedding. If we go back to the very beginning of creation, what is one of the first interactions God has with mankind – it is the joining, or marriage, of Adam and Eve. Then, if we go to the very end of the Bible, how is Christ pictured as completing His work - it is by describing the Church as the New Jerusalem being delivered to Him as a bride, ‘the wife of the Lamb’ (Rev. 21:9). Moreover, everywhere in between, the way God chooses to picture or describe His covenantal relationship with first Old Covenant Israel and then later New Covenant Israel, which is the Church; it is as a marriage covenant. So, it is probably pretty safe to say that God considers marriage very important. Indeed, quite essential to our relationship with Him. The appreciation of marriage in this light is one of the things that makes our present-day society’s treatment, or rather disdain, of it even more painful.

Scripture Verses:
Revelations 19:7; 21:9
Mark 10:6-9 
Romans 8:5-7
Ephesians 2:10

What is a 'Marriage'?

Sermon for the 4th Sunday after Epiphany (29 Jan. 2023)

While Scripture does indeed contain all things necessary for salvation, it can also be said that it does not contain everything Christ did or taught to the Apostles. That’s not to say the Scriptures are deficient it just means that this written Word was meant to be coupled with the Living Word and Holy Traditions of the Church. St. John wrote: “And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which, if every one of them were written down, I suppose not even the world itself could contain the books that would be written”. Likewise, Paul in 2Thess wrote: “So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter”. As St. Cyprian, an early bishop of Carthage wrote: “No one can have God as their Father who does not have the church as their Mother”.

Both Scripture & Holy Tradition Are Needed

Sermon for the Sunday Next Before Lent (19 Feb. 2023)

The LORD asked Abraham: 
“Why did Sarah laugh, saying, ‘Can I really have a baby when I’m old?’ 
‘Is anything impossible for the LORD? At the appointed time I will come back to you, and in about a year she will have a son’. 
Sarah denied it. ‘I did not laugh’, she said, because she was afraid. 
But he replied, ‘No, you did laugh’.”

Sarah’s sin here is that she not only mocked what the LORD was saying, she then lied to Him about doing so. We insult God and do a disservice to ourselves when we do not fully confess or own up to our sins. Like the animal presented for sacrifice, our sins must be laid naked, bare, and exposed upon the altar, so that it can be entirely consumed by the flames. Animal sacrifices were for the benefit of the nation and not for the care and feeding of God, as other religions treat their idols. Likewise, confession is for our benefit, God already knows and loves His children despite the knowledge of all their sin. You see this play out in things like therapeutic psychology, where if you’re trying to overcome a fear, they will increasingly expose you to that fear until you are able to conquer it. The exact opposite of what people nowadays think they are achieving through avoidance methods like trigger warnings. But this is how we are to treat sin; we must continuously expose ourselves to the whole, unadulterated truth of our sins in confession to overcome them with the help of the Holy Ghost.

Sarah's Denial of Sin to the LORD

Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent (26 Feb. 2023)

God tells us in Leviticus 17:14: 
“Since the life of every creature is its blood…You are not to eat the blood of any creature, because the life of every creature is its blood; whoever eats it must be cut off.” 

When God is speaking of life in the blood, He is referring to the spirit – the animating life giving spirit that God breathed into animals and man at creation. In accordance with the ruling of the First Council in Jerusalem as recorded in Acts 15, and reconfirmed at the 4th and 7th Ecumenical Councils, the command for Christians to always abstain from eating blood is a moral and permanently binding precept.  

Zechariah 9:7:
“I will remove the blood from their mouths and the abhorrent things from between their teeth. Then they too will become a remnant for our God; they will become like a clan in Judah”.

Fasting & Blood (Lent & Acts 15)

Sermon for the 21st Sunday after Trinity (06 Nov. 2022)

What Is a Woman: A Co-ruler in Dominion

Sermon for the Third Sunday after Lent (12 March 2023)

'Return to Me' says the LORD of Armies

Sermon for the First Sunday after Easter (16 Apr. 2023)

The First Mass

This is how St. John has defined love for us in his epistles:
“Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. 
Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us first and sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins…This is how we have come to know love: He laid down his life for us. We should also lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters...let us not love in word or speech…but in action and in truth."

Love Defined

Where Is Your Passion

St. Barbara’s Anglican Catholic Church is a living branch of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ. We profess the orthodox Christian Faith as received in the canonical Holy Scriptures, the three ancient Creeds, the Seven Ecumenical Councils, the consensus of the Church Fathers, and the Holy Tradition of the ancient and Undivided Church of the first millennium. We celebrate the seven Holy Sacraments of the historic Church. We joyfully proclaim the timeless Gospel of our Savior to all the world. We are a “Continuing” Anglican Church because we continue to live and practice the fullness of the Christian Faith in its unique English form — English Catholicism — which has been present in England since the early second century. Today, St. Barbara’s maintains the historic Catholic faith in the Anglican tradition.

St. Barbara's Anglican Catholic Church