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.

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.

Reality Check

Homily 570 – 26 APE
Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Church, Ames, Iowa
December 3, 2023
Epistle – (229) Ephesians 5:9-19
Gospel – (91) Luke 18:18-27

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

Do we want to know what is required of us to be saved?  Do I want to know?

We can look at our world today, and even ask the question – is there eternal life?  Does something beyond this life exist?  Many people would say no – nothing.  And, not for nothing, would consider us crazy for believing in something beyond this life.

Maybe we should begin there.

The acceptance of life beyond our own has existed for as long as humanity has been around.  In the ancient worlds, elaborate rituals were established to assist the soul of a deceased person to enter the world beyond.

Regardless of culture and regardless of geography, we see consistent evidence that life beyond this has always, and everywhere, been accepted as reality.  But we’re too smart for that right?

We don’t accept things without evidence.  Except it belies the question what is evidence?  Well, simple enough – it is what we can detect with our senses.  Sight, taste, touch, hearing, smell.

So, what about those who have lost a sense?  Those who cannot see, or those who cannot hear?  Can they still consider themselves to have evidence?  Maybe this is what Christ means when He tells us “let those with ears to hear, hear.”

Even those that have senses, sometimes don’t accept what they are experiencing.  Don’t always believe what you see, we are told.  Supposed “magicians” are adept at directing our senses away from the activity they want to hide.

That is why they are performing what are called illusions.  They deceive the senses.

And what about ideas?  Something that exists only in our thoughts, that doesn’t exist in tangible form?  Things like math for instance.  Does math supply evidence of its existence?  Is there something in the senses that can determine the existence of mathematics?

We can even take it to the absurd – do I exist?  Do you exist?  In our day and age, scientists, serious scientists, have theorized that we are somehow in a simulation in some elaborate computational device.  That what we call “the Universe” may be only the computational device itself.

The only thing I can make of any of this is that the more we study, and the more we observe, and the more we theorize, the further away we get from what we would call evidence, and we cross over into the world of belief.  The more we know, the less certain we become.

We have seen the modern ideas of a past time be found lacking, and disregarded.  We used to believe that spirits and evil forces caused disease.  Now, modern science has abandoned that idea, given that we now know about viruses and cells and proteins and all the other stuff.

But – science also tells us that we might be wrong.  We still don’t know.  New evidence may emerge that renders our current understanding obsolete.  I remember watching an episode of Star Trek back in my youth.

The doctor – McCoy – was lamenting the barbarism of the 20^th century, where they treated illnesses with scalpels and cut people open – in three hundred years, maybe even less, society and science will have progressed to the point that those in our day, with our internet and smartphones will be treated as if we were Neanderthal. 

At the end of the day, what we are questioning is reality itself.  We are asking ourselves what is real and what isn’t.  We don’t have to do that, though.

This goes back to the garden of Eden.  God told the first humans what was real, and how to live, and everything necessary.  But humans decided that wasn’t sufficient – that we would decide for ourselves.  The evil one came in and said “Don’t believe what God told you – believe what you yourselves can experience and determine with your senses.”

The entire fallen nature of humanity revolves around us only trusting what we ourselves experience.  But – critically – we can’t even determine if we can trust what we experience.

So maybe we’re missing something.  Maybe reality isn’t what we think it is.  Let’s go back to the garden, and recapture what God laid before us.

That is what the ruler asked – what do I have to do to find eternal life.  What do I have to do to get back to the Garden of Eden?

And Christ gave the answer – give up everything, and follow Christ.  He didn’t mince words, He didn’t offer alternatives.  If you want to be unfallen, if you want to be perfect, then give up everything.  Including yourself.

What God told us back in the Garden, and tells us now, is that we don’t need to worry about anything but focus all our attention on Him, and on each other. Our job is to steward creation.  To enjoy it, protect it, tend it.  He created us to commune with Him, to love Him, and to be the object of His love.  That’s all!  We can eat of the garden, we can enjoy the presence of God, and each other’s company.

It’s really that simple.  And everything about life becomes a lot simpler.

We can’t return to God and still determine everything ourselves.  We’ve been doing that, and made tremendous advances in making our lives easier as a result.  But we haven’t made our lives better.  We’re more stressed than ever, more worried about the future, more fearful about the world around us.

But we have a choice.  We can continue making our own way, ensuring everything is the way we want it to be.  Or, we can stop trying to be in control of everything, and accept God’s love for us.  The choice is ours to make, just like it was the rich young ruler’s to make.  If you don’t want it, Jesus won’t make you.

But – in the end, is it really a choice at all?

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