A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Jesus said to the crowds, to a multitude, what comparison can I use to describe this breed? They are like children squatting in the town square, calling to their playmates, we pipe to a tune, but you wouldn't dance. We sang you a dirge, but you did not wail. In other words, said our blessed lord, John appeared neither eating nor drinking, and people said, he's mad.
The son of man appeared eating and drinking, and they say, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a lover of tax collectors and those outside the law. Yet time will prove, concluded our lord, where wisdom lies. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. I just want to call your attention once again to that opening prayer.
Sunday, I devoted my well chosen remarks to the theme that so much of the liturgy looks to the future and if you take it isolated, you would think that the church was not acknowledging that we had a savior, that it was something in the future. Now and of course that of course is all wrong. I mean, that we have not a savior or that we are looking forward to his coming. He has come. Yet, now look at that prayer I read.
All powerful god, help us to look forward in hope to the coming of our savior. That certainly suggest that he hasn't come. Now, know we have the second coming but that certainly doesn't obviously have in mind the second coming. So it's very easy when in this advent with all this sense of preparation and of anticipation of waiting, it's very easy to get the idea, you know, that we've gotta sort of build ourselves up, get all psyched up to to sort of have Christ come on Christmas day. The point is we have a savior.
We have god almighty son who came to save us. And that's nothing in the abstract. Christ has come to be our savior in the nitty gritty, critical, sad, desperate moments of life as well as his joys and his hallelujahs. But when we're when things seem to be going well for us, when things are smooth, we don't generally have any idea that we need a savior. And yet, I'm going to make a state based on a very limited experience.
But on the basis of that limited experience, I have seen more lives ruined by prosperity than I have by what we call misfortune and tragedy. In speaking of my experience, nothing more, I have not seen a single marriage break up because of poverty or because of illness or because of what we can say are acts of god. Now I wanna stress that, acts of god. I haven't seen one marriage break up under those conditions. I've seen a number of them break up where you you might say they had everything or at least they had a good measure of everything.
Now the point is that when we talk about having a savior, we it's perfect past tense. I'm going to use the figure I use Sunday because it it appeals to me so deeply. It's Holman Hunt's picture, the portrait he painted in at 1854 of Christ standing standing at at the the door, door, the the light light of of the the world world it's it's called. Called. And And there there you you have have Christ Christ knocking on the door.
And when Holman Hunt first exhibited the picture, critics said, look my friend, yours we don't think much of you as a painter, but you even forgot to put a doorknob or a latch string on the outside of the door where Christ is standing. And Holman Hunt said, oh no, I may not be the world's best painter, but that was not a mistake. I meant, this is the story I've heard, I meant to suggest that you have to open the door from the inside. Christ is standing there. He's there.
His present tense. You have to open that door. He doesn't push his way in. He may pursue you as hound of heaven by Thompson points out. You can't escape him, those footsteps following after and after and after down the ages.
You may try to flee God, but you won't succeed. He's after you. As Thompson said, like a hound dog. Well, people were startled and embarrassed and scandalized when Thompson talked about Jesus Christ as a hound dog. But you see what Thompson was it's a I'm no poet, and I but that that that poem to me is great, the Hound of Heaven.
Now the point I'm making is that Christ is standing at the door, is waiting for us to open it. You have to open it from the inside. That was the point of Holman's Hunt, this picture, portrait. That it hangs at Keppel College in Oxford. I'm sure you've seen the you know, the Christ is standing there with the lanterns called Christ the light of the world.
But this story about the latch string to me tells you everything because the thought struck me in thinking this over last night. When when we're there, supposing you're on the inside of that great big heavy door and you're standing there and you know you have to open it, what do you expect to find on the other side? See, that's the question. As as a as CS Lewis has said, he said, when you ask and beg God to love you, you better be darn careful because he may just do that. Now when you open that door, what will you see there?
Will you see this glorious magnificent figure of Christ clothed in sumptuous garments that are luminous and suffused with a golden light coming from the lantern he's carrying his home and hunt and that, you know, he belonged to the pre Raphaelites. Is that what you expect to see? What do you expect to see when when you have to open the door, when you need Christ, when you're standing on the door and knocking to be let in, when he wants to come to you, but only you can open the door, what do you expect to find on the other side? A beautiful little baby in swaddling clothes with a magi all around it, an angel singing hallelujah and lights twinkling all around? Are you going to see a little boy lost in the temple?
Are you going to see a man of about 30 roaming up and down the the whole of which isn't so large, the whole of Palestine, going from the lake down to the up to Jerusalem, being spurned, a scandal because he couldn't do anything right. We have today an exhibition of it. John came eating and not drinking, and you said he was a maniac. I come eating and drinking, and you say I'm a drunkard and a glutton. That's so it's always been.
How how often have I heard people criticize people like Saint Jerome, Saint Paula, the hermits that went in the desert of the Nile. How they must have been lunatics. Psychologists study a man like a courier of ours, and they say the man was out of his mind. He must have been he must have been a masochist. On the other hand, if they eat and drink, then they're gluttons, then they're drunkards, then they're just worldly secular, Nick and poops.
So how can you win? Well, Christ didn't win. When you open the door, what do you expect to find? You may find Christ hanging on the cross. And he said, unless you take up that cross, you can't be one of his followers.
So when you open the door, you better be prepared. You may indeed find that lovable child, but you may find a repulsive figure on an infamous gibbet. And so our blessed lord stands at the door and knocks. He is there. He's our savior, remember, in the present tense.
We have to open the door and we have to be prepared to be welcomed by the Christ that's standing there. We better get out of our heads all this dribble because it's Jesus Christ who ended his life on that cross. In the name of the father and the son, holy spirit, amen.