Who are we?

Homily 583 – 38 APE
Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Church, Ames, Iowa
February 25, 2024
Epistle – (296) 2 Timothy 3:10-15
Gospel – (89) Luke 18:10-14

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.

You have probably heard me say that most of the time, when I prepare my homilies, I’m preaching to me.  That is still true, and here’s what it means:  I read the epistle and gospel, and try to share with you what I find interesting.  Most frequently this is something I need to apply to my own life, and perhaps you or someone you love can benefit from this.

So what jumps out at me from this really brief passage is that our salvation is rooted deeply in our recognition that we are unworthy of it.

We are completely unworthy of everything – salvation, the Eucharist, life itself.  We don’t deserve it.  And, more than that, we can’t deserve it.  Nothing we can do, nothing that we can NOT do, will make us worthy of it.

The Pharisee does all the – quote – right things.  He thanks God.  Not for anything other than making him great.  Making him different than everyone else – and by implication better than everyone else.

He touts his own obedience to the most miniscule aspects of the Torah, the Law.  He brags about his fasting.  He brags about his tithing.

To be honest, it seems that the issue is – he brags.  Doesn’t matter what about.  He brags, and that is feeding his ego.  His self-righteousness.

But Jesus tells us that his bragging didn’t justify himself before God.  In fact, the opposite.  It was the sinner, the publican, the tax collector, who was justified.  Why?

He knew himself well enough to beg for mercy.  And, give us perhaps the most poignant and powerful prayer Christianity has ever known:  God, be merciful to me, a sinner.

All of our prayers, if we reduce them to the essential plea to God, is for His mercy.

If you are like me, perhaps you envision God in heaven, stern faced, looking down at us and saying, “Beg and grovel, insignificant creature!”  You don’t deserve Me.  You will have to jump through more hoops than that to enter My presence, you undeserving slug.”

Perhaps I’m a bit harsh in imagining God.

Yet, what we know, is that God isn’t like that at all – AT ALL.

God waits, patiently, for us to figure out that we are nothing without Him.  That we are truly wasting the most precious gift – life itself – by our self-focus.  He is waiting for us to recognize that He is even there.

Humanity is so self-absorbed at this point that it has become somewhat comical.   If not for the tragedy, it would be comical.

Back when I was in college, back in the 1900’s, everything in life from the media to even those who thought themselves Christian were proclaiming that self-focus was the answer to all our problems.

They called it the “Me” era.  That phrase was coined by an editor at New York magazine, Tom Wolfe, in 1976.  He defined the dream as being “changing one’s personality.  Remaking, remodeling, elevating, and polishing one’s very self.

He wasn’t wrong.

Our nation had just come out of the 1960s, a time of civil and social upheaval and justice.  The bohemian culture had grown into the hippie culture which had taken a mainstream turn.  The motto was “if it feels good, do it.”

That was where we began to embrace our fallen nature as “normal.”  As not in need of correcting and healing.  We, like Adam and Eve before us, said, I’ll fix it.  I’ll do it.  I don’t need God, I can do it myself.

Problem is, we can’t.  We just can’t.  Try as we might, all the self-help books, and pleasant self-improvement seminars and retreats, and all the loads of cash we pay – and we are no better.

St. Paul predicted this, by the way.  In the letter to Timothy which we read this morning, he speaks to the fact that all who desire to live Godly lives in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, and that what he calls “wicked imposters” will go from bad to worse, and deceiving others, because they are deceived.

What is the solution?

Same as it was in the beginning.  The opposite of self-acceptance and selfishness.  The solution is self-denial.

You have heard this before and will likely hear it again:  the whole of the Christian life is found in self-denial.  In crucifixion of our ego.  Christ puts it so plainly:  “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

How can we start this process?  I would offer that to begin is maybe the most difficult part of the journey.

The first step is to decide to do it.  That’s it.  Then, don’t focus on denial, nor on indulgence.  Focus on God.  Focus your attention, your thought, your very being, on God.  Focus on His love for us.  His desire for our attention.  His desire for our love.

The more you focus your attention on that one thing, the less bandwidth you have to focus on yourself.  If God consumes your every waking moment, then you will have no time remaining to focus on yourself.

Be in God’s presence.  As we begin the week without fasting, be thankful to God, over and over and over again.  Be thankful to Him who loves us and desires us and gives us life.

That, dear brothers and sisters, is humility.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.

Being with sinners.

Homily 582 – 37 APE
Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Church, Ames, Iowa
February 18, 2024
Epistle – (285-ctr) 1 Timothy 4:9-15
Gospel – (94) Luke 19:1-10

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.

Why do we have a problem with sinners?

When Jesus goes to the house of Zacchaeus, a chief tax collector, that is one of the criticisms leveled at Christ – and reading the text closely, they were talking behind Jesus’s back to the disciples – the criticism that Jesus was staying with a sinner.

With the benefit of 2,000 years of hindsight, as well as the words of our Lord elsewhere, we know that being with and serving sinners is why Christ came.  He washed the feet of the disciples, then said that our role is to do the same to others.

But do we really believe that?  Sometimes the behavior of some would have me questioning that proposition.  The story is told of the man, probably homeless and hungry, that came into Church, late, dirty, smelly.

The people looked at him, some turned away in disgust, others acted like he wasn’t there at all.  A few told him to shush, after he had a coughing fit.  He got the message and left.

There was a bar around the corner.  He walked in, was greeted by the bartender, a couple of people smiled and asked how he was doing.  He ordered a drink, and in his shaky hands, dropped it and broke the glass.

The bartender smiled, and told him not to worry, and poured him another drink no charge.  The waitress came by several times asking if he needed anything.

Which of the two places showed love?

I’m thankful that we don’t do that here.  But some of our brothers and sisters do.  We hear them tell people that because of their sin, they aren’t welcome in Church.  I guess the self-appointed guardians of our temples have decided that they aren’t worthy.

They don’t have to be homeless.  They don’t have to live on the street.  Maybe they love people who share their biological sex.  Maybe they use drugs or other mood altering substances.  Maybe they are workers in those industries and places that aren’t discussed in polite company.  Maybe they don’t understand why the gender they have isn’t the gender they are comfortable with.  Maybe they escaped persecution, or escaped poverty, looking for a new start to take care of their family.

The Church, on the whole – and I mean those who call themselves Christian, including some Orthodox Christians – the Church dismisses these folks.  Says they are unclean, unrepentant.

And that would be correct.  They are.  But then again, we all are.  We are all unclean.  We are all unrepentant.  Maybe our sins aren’t as visible as theirs.  Maybe their cry for help, and for love, and for understanding is masked by their demands for rights and recognition.

When you have been thrown out of churches, thrown out of families, and find yourselves truly alone, willing to do almost anything to fit in somewhere, even when fitting in means living what we call euphemistically an “alternative lifestyle.”

Jesus had no problem with sinners.  He knows all of us, and our sins and our imperfections, and He loves us anyway.  He loves us in spite of us.  In spite of our unwillingness to repent – to change our ways.

In many ways Jesus was significantly more tolerant with the sinners than with the disciples and certainly with the people in the Temple.  His favorite term for the Pharisees was “hypocrite.”

Will Jesus say that about us?

As we think about this, recall that very few of us, I include myself in this, very few of us venture outside these walls and seek to find these lost souls where they live.  And when the Holy Spirit draws them to Church, we let them know they aren’t loved here either.

Now again, that hasn’t been our experience here at Holy Transfiguration.  We have had people with a variety of desperate situations in our midst, and I’ve been so thankful that we have by and large tried to help, and make them feel welcomed if not comfortable.  I can think of several that many of us thought were, frankly, mentally ill who stayed and fellow-shipped with us for quite a while.

I’m so thankful for that.  Truly thankful.  But I’m not sure it is enough.  We may not behave that way, but our neighbors and friends who call themselves Christians are giving us a reputation.  Like it or not, we are lumped in with those calling for exclusion.

Online, where anonymity provides cover, we agree with those who want to exclude people from our presence until they repent – until they change.  Or, maybe worse, we are silent, and in our silence provide our amen to maintaining the purity of the Temple.

Some of you are aware that I used to work as an administrator in mental health facilities.  One of the primary differences between a mental health facility and a medical hospital is that in a mental health facility some, perhaps most, will tell you they are fine and have no need to be healed.

The first part of treatment involves getting the patient to recognize their condition.  A condition that will result in most cases in their being ostracized from society.  Maybe from family.

When we say that the Church is a hospital for sinners, we need to adopt the approach of the mental health workers.  First, we will demonstrate that we care, and we will demonstrate that you need help.  Then, we will demonstrate our own healing process, and show the patient how they too can begin being healed.

The world will not tell them they are in need of treatment, of healing.  The world won’t tell them to get thyself to Church to be healed.  That has to come from us.

That’s what Jesus did.  Jesus hung out with sinners.  And we should be like Jesus.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.

Deals with the Divine.

Homily 581 – 36 APE
Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Church, Ames, Iowa
February 11, 2024
Epistle – (280-ctr) 1 Timothy 1:15-17
Gospel – (62) Matthew 15:21-28

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.

This Canaanite Woman – not a Jew, a gentile, not able to participate in the Temple, or any of the Jewish rituals – this woman is a brave figure.  She has, what they say in Yiddish, chutzpah.

Here she was, a minority, a foreigner in the land of Judea, the land of the Jews, and yet she had the audacity to approach Christ.  She knew she wasn’t worthy of Him, at least by the definitions of the day.  She was a woman, and not a Jew.  Two strikes.

She pestered the disciples of Jesus, trying to get the attention of Jesus.

And from that pestering, and from her humility, characterizing herself as a dog, she got what she was after.  From this event, there are two things I want to think about.

First, she didn’t pretend she was worthy.  She didn’t present Christ with a resume of good works, or religious achievements.  She didn’t say that she tithed or prayed three times a day, or fasted when she was supposed to fast.

None of the things that the Jews thought were necessary to receive a blessing from God.

We tend to do that.  We tend to say, Look, God, look at what I’m doing – or, more likely, we make promises about what we will do.  We bargain with God.  And depending on how important the thing is to us, we offer something that we believe to be equally impressive to God.

We beg for our lives and promise God that if we survive, we will never miss church again, or we will become a monastic, or we will become a missionary and tell everyone about the miracle.

Or maybe we want a job, and we’ll offer something lesser, like promising to say our prayers every morning and night.

Maybe we are suffering, and we tell God that if he will remove our suffering, and heal us, we will do something significant for Him.  We’ll donate everything we own to the Church.  Interesting thing about those promises – we don’t generally keep them, do we?  We don’t see people lining up to join the monasteries, or emptying their bank accounts.  We barely have people agreeing to avoid sin.

The wonderful aspect of this witness on behalf of this woman was that it shows us none of those things are necessary – even though they are what we are supposed to do anyway.

The woman shows us that we depend not on ourselves, our actions, our behaviors to receive healing from God.  Quite the opposite.  We rely completely on God’s mercy for us.  St. Paul reinforces this idea in the letter to Timothy which we read earlier.  Jesus came into the world to save sinners.  And he called himself the first of sinners.

In the underlying language, it is really stressing the reality of sin, to the point of implying St. Paul is the only sinner.  And that isn’t false humility.

Paul recognizes what so few of us do.  Regardless of our actions, nothing will remove our sin from us.  Nothing.  We have to repent.  Paul tells us that this is to reveal Christ’s patience with us – never ending, never exhaustible patience.  Patience for what?

Our repentance.  Our humility.  Our recognition that we can’t change anything, and we have to rely on the Creator to take our effort and change us.

This is what the woman states to Christ.  Even the dogs, she says, get to eat the scraps from the master’s table.  And Christ says that this statement, by itself, demonstrates her faith.  So it describes faith to us. 

Faith is, first and foremost, not just mental assent to a set of facts about and untested or unproven ideas.  It is the altering of our life’s trajectory because they are true.  She doesn’t say, “I believe.” But rather she tells us the implications of her belief in reality – both who she is, and who Christ is.  It is really quite dramatic.

So, our actions do not earn anything for us.  Period.  Our repentance doesn’t earn anything for us.  Repentance for a Christian should be as necessary as oxygen or heartbeat.  It is what brings us life.  Not a reward.

So, the second point is that the Canaanite Woman wasn’t asking for herself.  It was about her daughter, tormented.  Innocent.  Nothing quite so horrifying to us as the suffering of children.

And in God’s eyes, we are all His Children.  The way we feel about our own children, or the children around us, is the same that God feels about us – even the ancient like me.

Jesus told God He’d rather not die, but would if God deemed it necessary.  I’m equally confident that this woman, and many of us, would prefer not to debase and humiliate ourselves, but would if God deemed it necessary.

And He does.  He totally does.  Why?  Because as the Canaanite woman demonstrates, we are made to love.  Not ourselves, but God, and the things and beings that God created.

Why can’t we love ourselves?  It’s a good question.  On some level, loving ourselves isn’t really love.  If we can call it selfishness, should we call it at the same time love?  How can selfishness and love exist together?

We need to rethink what love is.  Love is what St. Paul describes in his first letter to the Corinthians.  Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never ends.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.

God’s Venture Capital

Homily 580 – 35 APE
Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Church, Ames, Iowa
February 4, 2023
Epistle – (258) Colossians 3:12-16
Gospel – (105) Matthew 25:14-30

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.

I don’t know if you feel this way, but as I read the parable, I get afraid.  Afraid that God will not be pleased with what I have done for Him, and that I will be cast out.

Being cast out of the Kingdom of God is in fact worth being afraid of.  But that fear has to be mitigated in the light of God’s love for us.

In the parable, there isn’t just one person who gets cast out – there are two others that are rewarded!  So have hope!  Maybe we can find something there.  I think we can.

First of all, let’s look at what they were given initially.  One given five talents, one given two talents, and the final given one talent.

It may be our initial reaction to think about talent as a gift or ability, and that may be true.  In Christ’s day, however, a talent was a quantity of money.  Today, we might call this “seed capital”.  This portrays God as a kind of venture capitalist, which couldn’t be further from the truth, but for the purposes here, we’ll let that slide.

A talent was equal to 6,000 denarii, and a denarii was worth a laborer’s day wage.  In Iowa money, it would be worth maybe $65.  So a talent would be worth about $391,500.

Now the amount doesn’t really concern us much here.  What we are really interested in is that the individual the man gives his money to – that man is called “slave.”  This money still belongs to the master.  But it doesn’t belong to the slave, it is only in the custody of the slave.

The amount gets lower, according to the master’s assessment about what each individual slave could handle.  The first got $1.5, nearly $1.6 million.  The second got around $750,000.  The last one got $391,000.

That last one was suspect.  The master didn’t evaluate his ability very highly.  But, he was still entrusted with something.  And we know the first two put the money to use, and earned more – double – for their master.

The last one, however, buried his in the ground.

Now, the question that I have is what gains value in the Kingdom of God?  This parable is describing the Kingdom, so what does “increase” mean in the Kingdom of God?  The answer is in caring for the poor, the sick, the widow and orphan, the imprisoned.

That is what we see throughout Christ’s teachings – the value proposition, what God expects, is that the things we are given are used for the benefit of others.

So, it stands to reason that the individual, that third slave, who buried his talent in the ground – we might say “hid it in his mattress” – didn’t use the money for the benefit of others.  In all likelihood, he used it for himself.

Instead of providing food and clothing and shelter and companionship to the needy, he spent it on things that he could maybe enjoy until the day of accounting – then, he could give them to the master and say “here is all the things I bought for you.”

In other words, he was selfish with what the master had given to him.  And this is what angers the master when he returns.  Not that he still has the value, but the value didn’t get put to use – at all!

The slave is called wicked and lazy.  Not like the other slaves that did what they were supposed to do and returned a greater amount.  Those were called “good and faithful” and were given even more.

It is the selfish, fearful slave that is wicked and lazy.

Obviously, or maybe not, this principle applies to everything not just our finances.  We are slaves.  We are these slaves.  And whether we are given much, or little, we know what to do with it.

We give it away.  We put it to work for those in need.  We deposit it in the storehouses of God, which Blessed Theophylact in one of his commentaries calls “the stomachs of the poor.”

Even when we don’t have much to give, like the third slave.  Because even not much, in modern day America, is a lot more than some have.

And you all have heard from me by now that the idea of sharing is undervalued.  I love the idea of sharing because we too can share in the abundance.  If we give it away, and nothing belongs to us, we can’t have any of it.  There are no fees charged by slaves for managing resources.

But if we share, we join with the poor and the needy of our world, and we too can partake with them, of one dinner – because we are poor too!

Saint Paul, in his epistle to the Colossians that we read, outlines that act better than I ever could.  Clothe yourselves with a heart of compassion, kindness, lowliness, humility, and perseverance.

Consider others better than us, more needy than us.

We know how much we have, and, if we are honest with ourselves, we know how unworthy we are of everything we have.  Everything comes from God.

What Christ is telling us here is that in the midst of our unworthiness, we make ourselves worthy by giving – by sharing.

And adding what St. Paul says, walking in love, the bond of perfection.  Walking in peace – meaning, knowing that whatever we have been given is sufficient for us.  Not requiring more.  A common synonym for peace is to be content.

Love all, be content with what God has given, share what you can.  And finally, St. Paul tells us, be thankful.

Because none of it is ours.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.

Lawyers.

Homily 579 – 34 APE
Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Church, Ames, Iowa
January 28, 2023
Epistle – (257) Colossians 3:4-11
Gospel – (92) Matthew 22:35-46

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.

Lawyers.

They are some of the most irritating and yet essential people in our society.  In the business world, we have to consult them before making any move.  We have to assess the risks – primarily the risk of litigation, but also the risk of damaging our good name, or being accused of wrongdoing.

In considering the place of lawyers it might be easy to dismiss them as unnecessary.  If everyone just lived right and treated others with respect, then all would be good and there would be no need for lawyers.

That’s far from true, though.  Throughout time, back to the very beginning, humanity has wanted rules.  Not grey areas – black and white.  Right and wrong.  This is good – that is bad.

In the days after the deliverance from Egypt, Moses on God’s command and his father-in-law’s advice instituted the system of judges.  No “laws” per se, just if there were disagreements, a judge would decide what the fair thing would be.

That didn’t last long.

Before that, even, God gave what we call the Ten Commandments.  The Jews call them the ten words, or the ten sayings.  Even that wasn’t enough.  The Jews instituted rules to make sure they never got close to breaking one of God’s sayings, God’s words.

After all, the words weren’t clear.  Could I accidentally kill someone, or did I have to have intent?  What was considered “work”?

In our day, the most important part of a contract is the section that outlines the definitions.  We craft and wordsmith them until we’ve clearly defined every possible term.  Because, you know, grey area.  We don’t like grey.

What we see in society today is by no means new.  It has been going on, literally, since Moses, even further, since Adam and Eve.

There is a downside to all the details, though.  It can be used to trap us.  Officer, the speed limit is indeed 65, but you have to give me a little break because the speedometer in my car isn’t apparently accurate.  You have to give me more leeway.

But the law is clear.  The law doesn’t care if you can measure it or not.  The law doesn’t care if you had intent to break it or not.  The law just doesn’t care.  The law isn’t human, the law has no emotion, no empathy, none of the things that make us human.

The law doesn’t love.  Nor hate!

Today’s Gospel reading speaks of a lawyer, trying to trap Jesus.  This is a theme – seems there are numerous places in the Gospels where the lawyers try their best to catch Jesus in some sort of position that is at odds with “the Law.”

These aren’t representatives of the government – they weren’t part of Caesar’s rule or even the Jewish King’s rule.  They were religious lawyers and experts in how to remain in compliance with God.

How arrogant of them – and of us!  If we are really honest with ourselves, we want details to try to force God to do something He doesn’t want to do.  We want to be able to stand at the judgment before God and say, “But God, you have to give me salvation because, you know, technically, I didn’t break a rule.”

What’s the minimum I can pray each day?  What’s the minimum I can fast?  What’s God’s best deal, His best price?

Do I have to give everything?  Can’t I keep some little something back?

Brothers and sisters, we were created to be loved and to love.  It is as simple as that.  God doesn’t want to put us apart from Him.  He doesn’t want us to separate ourselves from Him.  You don’t have to convince God to save you.

God wants to save you!  More than anything, ever, God wants to save us!  And all we have to do is love Him.  With everything we have, not letting anything get in the way of that love – not even ourselves.

When Jesus tells the lawyer that the two pillars of the law are loving God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and loving your neighbor, there aren’t any exceptions.

But what if my neighbor is mean to me?  What if my neighbor, my boss, my coworker, my in-laws – whoever.  What if they are trying to harm me, belittle me, or slander me?  What if they sin?  What if they support someone who supports a sin?  Like abortion?  Or greed?  Or killing?

Doesn’t matter.  We love.  We love everybody.  Let God sort it out.

And He will sort it out.  Actually, He will simply honor our wishes.  If we want to be self-centered, and selfish, then He will allow that, and we can focus on ourselves for eternity.  If people want their – quote – “rights”, then He will let them go their own way.  But that way will be away from Him.  Disconnected from Him.  Separated from Him.

Separated from life itself.  We will utterly and truly die.

And that will break God’s heart.  It isn’t His choice – it’s ours.

We need to see that the Kingdom is based not on law, but on principle.  The two principles that Jesus outlined so clearly.  If we do so, we’ll be perfect.  We will find unity with God – theosis.  Not only will we pay no attention to our ego, our pride, we will have crucified it, voluntarily, as Christ did.

Our focus will be on loving God and loving everyone around us.  And in turn, being loved by God, and by everyone around us.

But we have to love first, even when they don’t love us back.  Just like God loves us, and we choose not to love God back, or to love Him only a bit.  Just enough, we think.

Except, we don’t serve a lawyer.  We serve a lover.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.

The wedding.

Homily 578 – 33 APE
Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Church, Ames, Iowa
January 21, 2023
Epistle – (250) Colossians 1:12-18
Gospel – (89 Slavonic, 90 Greek) Matthew 22:2-14

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.

The Kingdom of heaven is like …

A lot of Christ’s descriptions begin like that.  There is the field with the hidden treasure.  There is the pearl that was very expensive.

And here, a wedding feast.

In Matthew 13, where the parables of the hidden treasure and the expensive pearl are found, not only do we understand that the kingdom of God is valuable, more valuable than anything this life, this world can throw at us, but that it also requires us to give up everything to obtain it.

What about this parable?

There are a couple of things to point out.  First, the easy part – those who were invited decided not to go, for their own reasons – and they are understood by us, in hindsight to be the Children of Israel.  They didn’t have the opportunity taken from them – rather they chose not to attend, and to pursue their own, if I might suggest, selfish aims.  A farm, a merchant’s goods, and so on.

Then, we see that everyone gets an invite – everyone!  When the servants went to the highways, that was understood to be those who were undesirable, and in fact, most likely, robbers and bandits.  There were some good people as well, but the good people were typically not on the highways, which were dangerous places.

So far, so good.

And then we get to a part that troubles some people.  There is a man, who isn’t dressed appropriately for a wedding, or to be in the presence of the King.  We’re not really told, and scholars can’t find anything in the historical record about this wedding garment, other than perhaps the occasion called for the best one had available to them.

And he, this man, gets thrown out.  Not just thrown out, but thrown into the outer darkness, meaning a place with no light – where God’s light couldn’t be seen.

And in that place there was weeping and gnashing of teeth.  We might say agonizing or whining, but we really don’t know what it means.  It is an idiom that only appears to us in the New Testament, and doesn’t appear to have an equivalent Hebrew idiom.

So we aren’t sure – but the imagery is pretty clear.  It isn’t a place that is pleasant.  It seems to be a place of physical, mental, and emotional torment and pain.

And, if we look at the images together, a place we choose to go.  By not choosing God.

Now, I’m not much of a fire and brimstone kind of guy.  But even I have to admit the imagery is pretty scary.  The English translation makes it sound like this guy may have showed up by the command of the King, and maybe accidentally forgot to wear his best.  It’s that accidental part that gives most of us pause.

As it should!  We shouldn’t be accidental in what we do – we need to be intentional.

The Fathers and mothers of the Church tell us pretty consistently that this wedding garment refers to the virtues.  We can clothe ourselves with Christ, if we choose, just as it is sung at baptism – to put on Christ.  To clothe ourselves with light, the uncreated light of the Transfiguration, as with a garment.

The other thing it suggests, to me at least, is the idea that everyone will stand before the King at the wedding.  We are invited – but in actuality, we are commanded to be there.  Everyone will be there – both the good and the bad.

And God will call us friend.  But if we haven’t put on Christ, we will be thrown out.  If we haven’t at least tried to put on Christ, we will end up leaving.

And the saddest part – in reality – is that we aren’t just guests.

We’re the bride.

Not individually – collectively.  The Church is the bride of Christ.  Christ is our bridegroom. 

And what bride doesn’t dream of that wedding day, presenting herself as beautiful, attired in beautiful clothing – not, as we might think, to bring praise on ourselves, but because we love our bridegroom, and want to make ourselves not just presentable, but radiantly beautiful for Him.

The opinion of others won’t matter, or at least, shouldn’t matter.  Only one opinion matters – that of our bridegroom.

We are, in a few weeks, beginning our travel to this wedding to which we have been invited, and celebrating our bridegroom risen from the dead.

So, we need to begin thinking about what we will wear.  How will we present ourselves at the great feast of all feasts?  It isn’t about fabric.  It isn’t about outward beauty.  It is about virtue.  It is about denying ourselves, denying our own ego, and living with every fiber of our being to please our Bridegroom.

We enter into lent with the idea of ascetical sacrifice.  We’re giving up things – food, entertainment perhaps, giving up the things that bring us physical comfort and pleasure.

We substitute prayer.  We attend Church more.  We go to confession, and tell God what we both know to be our weaknesses and failures.  He knows, but He wants to hear that WE know.

We beg His mercy, we appeal to His love.  We ask our bridegroom to teach us how to repent – how to put on the virtues.  And the virtues begin with self-denial.  If we put the needs of others first in our lives, the virtues will follow without much effort.

We will be clothed with Christ, bathed in the Spirit, and be a suitable bride for the Creator and redeemer of our world, and of us.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.

Don’t just hear, listen!

Homily 576 – 31 APE
Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Church, Ames, Iowa
January 7, 2023
Epistle – (224-ctr) – Ephesians 4:7-13 and( 42) – Acts 19:1-8
Gospel – (8) – Matthew 4:12-17 and (3) – John 1:29-34

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.

In listening to the Old Testament readings for the Vespers liturgy of Theophany I had my own epiphany of sorts – weak pun intended.

The Third reading, from Exodus, has this passage:

There God laid down for him statutes and judgments and he tested him there and said, “If you listen to the voice of the Lord, your God, and do what is well-pleasing before him, heed his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will not bring on you any of the diseases that I brought on the Egyptians. For I am the Lord who heals you”.

If you listen – listen – to the voice of the Lord.  Not just hear, but listen.  Hearing can go in one ear and out the other, but listening is putting what is heard into action – taking it to heart.

This is what Jesus may mean when He said, “He who has ears to hear, should hear.”  Maybe that would be appropriately translated, “He who has ears to hear, should listen.”

We all hear so much in our day.  Many of us keep a lot of noise going on the background of our lives.  A radio station or streaming service, perhaps, maybe we listen to podcasts, or we just have the hearing of conversations going on around us.

I have a particularly difficult time in noisy environments.  I have difficulty in focusing on one conversation when other conversations are going on around me.

So, what we end up doing is hearing a lot, but not listening to any of it.  It becomes to us as noise.  It doesn’t communicate anything.

I doubt seriously Christ or the people of that day struggled with that scenario.  They didn’t have the noisemakers which are so ubiquitous in our world today.  Yet, they could still hear, without listening.  And that is what Christ warned us against.

Don’t just hear – listen.  The first tasks of Christians, especially in the evangelical traditions I grew up in, was always thought to be telling – speaking – to others about Christ and about our faith.  Witnessing to what Christ has done for us.

There is a role for that, certainly, but not before listening.  We have to listen, spend time listening, and trying to understand, before beginning to proclaim to the world the thoughts and interpretations we have developed.

We have to listen, and compare with the interpretations of others throughout history and indeed throughout the world.  This is the sacred role that Holy Tradition plays in our Christian life.  It is said that Holy Tradition is listening to the voices of Christians throughout time.

Listening is our first job as Christians.  Learning, not teaching.  Most of you know my son just graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in Education, and also English.  That means he first spends the time learning both subject matter and teaching skills before presuming to teach others.

Christianity is the same way, although in many cases today we ignore that.  I can’t tell you how many people I’ve seen and heard on podcasts, videos, in print, and on streaming services that have begun teaching, when the chrism is not yet dry.  They haven’t listened yet.  They have heard – they have responded – but they haven’t really listened.

When St. Paul was converted, it appears from the scripture that he immediately went out and started preaching.  But that isn’t the case at all.  Paul was converted, and certainly preached his experience.

But he preached doctrine only after a three-year stint in Arabia and in Damascus, according to his Epistle to the Galatians.  And only then, he went to the Apostles themselves to complete his learning.

After that, he began his missionary journey.

Of the people Christ instructed to “Go and tell” they were the people He had healed of a physical malformation or a case of casting out a demon.  What those people were telling were their own experience, not instructing others in doctrine or dogma or ascetical practices.

The risks of teaching before listening are immense.  The risk of coming to a conclusion before listening are immense.  Another of the Old Testament readings for Theophany tells the account of the Governor of the King of the Assyrians, who visited the prophet Elisha.  This governor had leprosy, and Elisha told him to go was in the Jordan River seven times.

The governor, in his pride and arrogance, got angry – that wasn’t the answer he wanted.  He wanted Elisha to come out and lay hands on him and heal him.  That was how it – quote – “should be done”.  In his mind they had better rivers in Assyria, anyway.

Then his servants went to him and spoke some sensible words.  Instead of being angry, why not listen?  Why not try what the prophet says?  And the king listened.  And the king was cleansed.

How many of us approach the message of Christ, the message of the Church, with preconceived notions about what is right and wrong and expected?  Where did that preconceived notion originate?

Most of the time, it originates either with the world, or a false prophet.  We can see it all around us today even, with all the so-called prophet interpreting the prophecies, saying this has to happen before Christ can return or that must take place to allow Christ to return.  None of it is worthy even of hearing.

The Church offers us the Truth.  Be it through Scripture, or through the words of those considered elders and holy persons of the Church, or through the services and readings, the Church communicates to us Truth.

It is then up to us to not just hear – but to listen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.

The humiliation of incarnation.

Homily 575 – Theophany
Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Church, Ames, Iowa
January 6, 2023

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.

Note:  This homily was delivered extemporaneously, and is transcribed with light editing.

Today we’ve come to the baptism of Christ. We also see in the gospel reading for today why in the West the feast is not called Theophany but Epiphany.

The word basically means the same thing.  It’s a revelation to or revelation of something.  With me, Theophany is a revelation of God and Epiphany would mean that’s a revelation to us – our revelation. We are the one to have an Epiphany.

And so when we look at that, what we’re seeing here is not just the importance of Christ’s obedience to God to be baptized. John’s obedience to Christ that he be the one to baptize Him.

We see the revelation of the entirety of everything in this one feast which is WHY this feast was the most important feast other than Pascha in the ancient times. We see the revelation of Everything, that is we see God the Father telling us that this Jesus Christ is His Son, the Word of God, the second person of the Trinity.

We see the Holy Spirit descending in the form of a dove. We see Christ’s obedience and we also see all these things that are coming in to plan. Sometimes it’s good to remember these things that happen because when these things happen, they remind us that what we see and what we feel and what we contact in the world is not what God created it to be.

What we see is a world that’s fallen. What we see is a world that is crumbling. We see a world that is subject to corruption.

What does that mean subject to corruption? It means it doesn’t have life. It is in the process of dying and decaying. So whenever you hear or see someone in the world say “Well this is the way God made it”, no far from it! This is not what God made. God, yes, made it but God made it unfallen. We made it fall.

We are the one who brought the world – the creation, the cosmos – into this decaying, dead process. And we did that because of our own ego.

I think about in my own life and times – unemployed or underemployed or how do you want to look at it – and I thought – and I confess that many times I would think to myself, I would apply for that job, but that job is beneath me you know?

I don’t want to be a custodian. I mean my father-in-law was and he found joy and peace in being a custodian, and he took care of his family. I had no right and no reason to be able to say that job is beneath me. I’m thinking, “I’m a college-educated guy! I’ve got licenses and professional reputations and all this other stuff!”

That’s my confession but now take that, and think about Christ, the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God enthroned at the right hand of God from all eternity. The one through whom God made all of this – Creation –and the will of the Father was that Christ come here and not just be God in this world, but to be incarnate. To become part of creation. To become a human.

How beneath him was that? We look at the circumstances around his birth, unwedded mother – betrothed but unwedded – in Bethlehem, with no place to stay. He was homeless. He was born in a stable with animals. He was laid for his first bed as incarnate God on this planet, he was laid in a manger.

It’s sure the icons that we see of the nativity tell us that revealed to us that even in that moment, when he was wrapped in swallowing clothes, that was foretelling of his death and burial.

You will see him in the icons of the nativity, wrapped in burial clothes and lying in a manger that ostensibly looks very much like a tomb, a coffin.

From the very beginning we see what Christ was doing. Christ never owned anything other than the clothes on his back. He didn’t have a job. He didn’t have means to support himself.

When He came to John, John recognized what was happening, and Jesus was then treated like the person He was – the Son of God – and yet still in that treatment he was given, He offered humility.

He said, “No John you have to baptize me because this is the Will of God.”

So as we go through our days on this sojourn in this place, remember who we are as sons and daughters of God, as members of the Kingdom of Heaven.

But also remember that we imitate our Lord in everything that we do. That we serve others in every way that we can, just as Christ washed the feet of the apostles.

How humbling has Christ ascended the cross and sacrificed his own ego in the garden of Eden? In the garden of Gethsemane, the new Eden. We remember these things and we imitate these things and we no longer think these things are beneath me. Rather we think this is what Jesus would have done.

He would have served. He would have found, even sought out, the unlovable – the ones who are dismissed by society. Those who are even dismissed by the rest of the Christian world.

Those are the people that Christ would have looked for and would have served.

And I encourage us to do the same because, beloved, when we find that humility, when we’re able to offer ourselves to others with abandon, with freedom, the same freedom that Christ had:  that’s when we find the essence of who we are.

That’s when we find the joy of living in the Kingdom, and that’s where we find eternal life

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.

The King who wouldn’t listen.

Homily 574 – Eve of Theophany
Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Church, Ames, Iowa
January 5, 2023

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.

Note:  This homily was delivered extemporaneously, and is transcribed with light editing.

I’m struck by a couple of things in the Old Testament Readings.

Perhaps the most important one is the passage about the king who sought the will of God through the prophet, and then when the prophet told him what to do he said that can’t be right.

See, he wanted to do something else.  I think about that and I think about how often we are that king because it’s pride that gets in our way.  It’s pride that tells us don’t worry about this; do it the way you think makes sense

But that’s not right. God is mysterious in his ways because in certain cases He is simple in his ways.  He doesn’t demand much from us. He doesn’t demand much of us.

What he asks for first and foremost is to love Him.  Is that really too much to ask?

To love God, the one who created us, who created us simply to love Him. That was all that He had intended for us to do and to be in the garden of Eden when he created humanity. He placed them there and He said “be fruitful; multiply”.

In the garden he said come in with me and I will commune with you. That was the extent of life, and then we had to go and let our ego get in the way and let our pride get in the way.

As a result we find ourselves now separated from God not because God can’t do anything but because we chose it. That’s what we choose when we follow our ego, instead of setting it aside just simply to love God.

If we start with the love of God then everything else will follow.

If we start with the love of God then we will do everything to either follow his law, follow the commandments that he set out for us, and repent when we fail to do.

One of the verses says that Christ was baptized in order that humanity could receive forgiveness. As we look at that and as we hear these myriad of scriptures talking about the Jordan, talking about the power that water has, we realize that’s what Christ was doing in the baptism of Himself. He was restoring Water to its place of healing.

That healing is not for those who are full of pride. Those like Pharaoh’s soldiers, his cavalry, his chariots.

They were not Saved by the Water of The Red sea. They were drowned in it and it was because they did not recognize their place.

They did not recognize that God wanted and deserved their love.

So as we go forth from this place with the blessing of the water, with the blessing of Jordan, may we also find ourselves in the place where we love God, and we really focus our attention on that.

When we do that we will love everyone else, and we will be kind, and we will find ourselves obeying his commandment even without thinking about it.

Because we love

So with that I wish everyone a blessed feast – a glorious feast – of the water and that we find ourselves wrapped in our own baptism, which is the same as the baptism of Christ.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God

Do not be afraid.

Homily 573 – 29 APE
Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Church, Ames, Iowa
December 24, 2023
Epistle – (328) Hebrews 11:9-10, 17-23, 32-40
Gospel – (1) Matthew 1:1-25

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.

Family – our roots – are important.  Seems obvious, but sometimes in our urgency for independence, we forget this.  Family grounds us.  Family gives us stability.

Family connects us to the past.  Family helps us define who we are – providing context to our lives.  We can’t know what makes us unique until we first know how we are the same.

Family isn’t something that we choose – at least not most of us.  Many of you know that I have twin sisters who are adopted.  One might say that they got to choose their family – which isn’t really true because they came to us when they were 8 months old.  Even those adopted later may have a choice, but they still cannot choose their lineage.  They cannot choose their DNA.

What this Sunday, the Sunday before the birth of Christ tells us, first and foremost, is that Jesus is like us in every respect.  He also had a lineage.  He had a family.

One major difference is obvious to us now – He was the Son of God.  His Father was THE Father.  That is still something that as humans who are in God’s image, but not God’s nature, struggle with.  We want to understand how Christ is unique.

That isn’t necessarily how the Church would have us look at this, though.  What the Church offers us is how Christ is the same.

In that, as we go further back in time, we find that we are all from the same lineage.  We are all sons and daughters of the Creator.  We are all brothers and sisters.  Christ is our brother, as well as our Lord.

Unlike Christ, however, we sometime – occasionally – reject our creator in favor of doing our own thing.  We, unlike Christ, are selfish, wanting what we want and unconcerned about our family of God.

We sacrifice the role we are needed to play in the family for the role that we want to play in the family.  We want to be prominent – above the others – but refuse to serve them.

And, in our most intimate moments of self-reflection, we understand that our actions, our selfishness, is shameful.  That our selfishness is not God’s will nor desire for us, His Children.

We can look back in our family histories and find those who were selfish, and those who served.  Sometimes it is the same person, even, because no one except the saints are pure in motivation.

Looking back in my own family tree, I find on my father’s side a line of hard working, hard living Scots-Irish for generations.  Same on my mother’s side, except they were German.

My German great-great grandfather immigrated to the US just before the turn of the 20^th century, for likely less than honorable reasons.  He had a wife and family in Germany – and we don’t know the full story, but he left them in Germany and came to the US, because Germany wouldn’t allow divorce at that time.  He arrived in the US with a woman who became his wife.  He had another family.

Again, we shouldn’t be too hard on our ancestors, since we likely don’t know everything about the situations.  But it would definitely be a challenge to think of how this action served his former family in Germany.

His son, my great-grandfather, served in World War I, and fought against his own half-brothers and sisters, presumably.

Now, that’s my story.  Not good, nor bad, just facts.  I can learn from it.

St. Paul tells us we can learn from our Old Testament ancestors also.  He lists the names, and doesn’t necessarily detail the stories of each of them, recognizing he can’t replicate the entire history of the nation of Israel in one letter.

He does give us enough to ensure we can go back on our own and uncover the accounts of these people, these prophets and kings.  And what we find will give us more information about who they are, and in turn, who we are.

Because brothers and sisters, the genealogy of Christ is also our genealogy.  We can look at what God asked of them, and if they did it or not, and what the consequences were both for them and for the nations.

We can apply those lessons to our lives, and make our decisions accordingly – will we go off on our own, or will we be faithful, serving others and not ourselves, showing love, accepting our own torture of the world in which we live, to achieve a better outcome – our resurrection?

Both the Birthgiver of God and her betrothed husband Joseph accepted what God placed in their path.  God didn’t tell them beforehand – this wasn’t something they had to seek out.  They simply accepted the circumstance and understood, to an extent, that this was indeed God’s will.

They still, both of them, could have opted out.  Like the rich young ruler they could have walked away.  In fact, this was Joseph’s plan – to put Mary away, quietly, not to cause her shame.  But the angel visited him, offering Joseph a simple message:

Do not be afraid.

We do well to follow this life lesson.  If God is involved, and He is involved in every circumstance, we should not be afraid.  Every situation works for our salvation we are told.  Every circumstance is used of God.

Do not be afraid.

Even if you don’t understand what is happening, accept it, thank God for it, and offer love to the world.  Do your best to love God and love everyone and everything God created.

Do not be afraid.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.