Thank God for Humility!

This past Sunday was the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee. The Gospel reading is from a parable of Jesus,

“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men—extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’ And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” Luke 18:9-14

We have a picture of two different men, two different types of hearts. I hear the story, and I want to have the humility of the publican with the good deeds of the pharisee. I know the truth, though. I have few of the pharisee’s good deeds, but much of his arrogant heart. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner!

What hope is there for those of us with the arrogant hearts of pharisees? Continuing in the epistle of St. James we read,

“Let the lowly brother glory in his exaltation, but the rich in his humiliation, because as a flower of the field he will pass away. For no sooner has the sun risen with a burning heat than it withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beautiful appearance perishes. So the rich man also will fade away in his pursuits.”

At first glance, these are some harsh words for the rich man, the man of pride, the person of the passions and earthly gain. And perhaps they are harsh, but if so they are harsh for our own help. Looking closer, however, something strikes me as funny: James not only instructs the lowly brother to glory in his exaltation, but also for the rich man to glory in his humiliation! Who glories in their humiliation? It just doesn’t seem to fit.

We people of proud hearts, ensnared by the passions, should rejoice in our humiliation, because our humiliation and repentance are also our salvation. Christ has come to heal us of that terrible disease pride. Christ is our sun, and his “burning heat” is his love for us. Upon his resurrection, his love for us will wither the grasses and weeds of the passions that choke our faith. The flower of our pride will wither and fall beneath Christ’s love, and the attractive appearance of its sin will perish. Our humiliation is for our healing. Glory to God!

St. Paul speaks of this in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18,

“Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

During the upcoming Lenten fast, let us glory in our humiliation and give thanks to God. Let’s remember that we fast from earthly things that do not bring us life in order that we may have place for He who abundantly gives life to all. May the Lord bless you and give you strength of body and heart throughout the fast, and throughout this life. Amen.

The Waves of Doubt

It is easy to read the epistle of St. James and be offended. The language is harsh and unyielding. St. James is single-minded and emphatic on the need for Christians to live lives of holiness. Whether he’s exhorting us to exercise self-control over our speech or addressing the need for our faith to produce good works, James never gives us a break and allows us to be “mere humans.” Instead, he continually calls us to resurrected lives transcendent of the world and the flesh, lives where the Holy Spirit is shown manifest – our life in Christ.

Martin Luther is said to have disliked the epistle of St. James because he could not find the Gospel in it. And he is right to a point. You will not find his understanding of the Gospel in James’ letter; however, you will find the Gospel proclaimed by the Church throughout the ages. We find the good news of God’s work of mercy and redemption in us coupled with our call to be active participants in his grace. James is not compromising about the call to Christian perfection, or theosis, nor should he be.

When we read James say that one who doubts “should not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord,” it is easy for us to take offense or become discouraged. Who among us never struggles with doubt? Who among us can merit the favor of such a God? How easily and quickly we forget the preceding verse, “let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.” The problem is not with God. God is not an impossible-to-satisfy taskmaster. God gives to all liberally and without reproach. We are the ones who do not receive. We are the ones who doubt. The problem is not with God, but with us.

The person who doubts “is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind… he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.” What imagery! Back and forth, back and forth; it’s enough to make one seasick. This is the icon of doubt. A wave has no firm foundation, consistency, nor self-control, and neither do we when we let ourselves to be driven by the winds of the changing world culture, winds of popular opinion, winds of the economy, winds of the passions. If we are to grow in our faith and “work out our salvation with fear and trembling,” then we must turn our attention from the wind and the waves and center our focus upon Christ.

A storm came upon the apostles as they were boating across the Sea of Galilee. The waves crashed against the boat as the winds continued to rise, and the boat was filling with water. The disciples woke Jesus who was asleep in the stern and cried out to him in fear. “Then he arose and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace, be still!’ And the wind ceased and there was a great calm. But he said to them ‘Why are you so fearful? How is it that you have no faith?”

When the winds of the passions stir up the waves of doubt around us, and we feel ourselves tossed about by the storm, let us not be afraid. We too need to go to Christ in prayer and ask for deliverance. He is our rock and sure foundation. If we build our house on him, when the winds and the waves comes against us, we will be unmoved. In turning to Christ, we grow in faith, and we open ourselves to receive the abundant gifts of God’s grace. This is truly good news!

May the love of God the Father made manifest in Jesus Christ calm the storms in your heart and send you His Spirit of peace as you strive towards salvation and holiness. Amen.

Count it All Joy

In St. James’ epistle he begins by encouraging us to “Count it all joy, my brethren, when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.”

Those are some bold words to start a letter with! But they are true. We ought to consider ourselves blessed when we endure hardship. It isn’t pleasant. It isn’t easy. But it helps heal us. Those trials purify us and strengthen our faith. They realign our hearts toward God. They smash the idols of our ego that we have erected in our hearts. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I have erected many idols in my heart and have need of God’s mercy in delivering me from their darkness and death.

Often in times of hardship and trial, times I have called misfortune, and times I must admit I do not understand, I have asked God, “Why?” I have complained, and I have certainly not considered these occasions joyous by any means. What I have learned from these situations, though, is that I need to trust God. I need to have faith and remember that God is good. I need to remember the numerous blessings I have received. I need to remember the times in the past when God has brought redemption and good from the trials I’ve already faced. I need to look beyond myself and my own comfort and towards the love of God that shines light into my darkness.

When we look at the Psalms we see this so beautifully.

LORD, how they have increased who trouble me!
   Many are they who rise up against me.
Many are they who say of me,
   “There is no help for him in God.”   Selah
But You, O LORD, are a shield for me,
   My glory and the One who lifts up my head.
I cried to the LORD with my voice,
   And He heard me from His holy hill.   Selah
I lay down and slept;
   I awoke, for the LORD sustained me.
I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people
   Who have set themselves against me all around.
Arise, O LORD;
   Save me, O my God!
   For You have struck all my enemies on the cheekbone;
   You have broken the teeth of the ungodly.
Salvation belongs to the LORD.
   Your blessing is upon your people.   Selah   (Psalm 3)

Why count our trials and troubles as joy? St. James continues by instructing us to “let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” Responding with patient faith and thanksgiving in hardship loosens the chains of our anxieties. It loosens the chains of our fears. It loosens the chains of our guilt. It loosens the chains of our self-love. It purifies and transfigures us into the image of Christ our God, who counted his suffering as pure joy on account of his love for us. God wills for us to “be perfect, just as [our] Father in heaven is perfect.”

Let us strive to count our struggles and hardships and trials as joy as we approach the great fast of Lent. When Jesus emerged from the waters of baptism, “Immediately, the Spirit drove him into the wilderness.” And so, following our baptism into the Lord, we too are driven into the wilderness. Into the wilderness for God to prepare us. Into the wilderness for God to perfect us.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me. …Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.” Amen.

Let Our Mouths be Filled with Thy Praise, O Lord

“O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus” by Samuel T. Francis

O the deep, deep love of Jesus,
Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free!
Rolling as a mighty ocean
In its fullness over me!
Underneath me, all around me,
Is the current of Thy love
Leading onward, leading homeward
To Thy glorious rest above!

O the deep, deep love of Jesus,
Spread His praise from shore to shore!
How He loveth, ever loveth,
Changeth never, nevermore!
How He watches o’er His loved ones,
Died to call them all His own;
How for them He intercedeth,
Watcheth o’er them from the throne!

O the deep, deep love of Jesus,
Love of every love the best!
’Tis an ocean vast of blessing,
’Tis a haven sweet of rest!
O the deep, deep love of Jesus,
’Tis a heaven of heavens to me;
And it lifts me up to glory,
For it lifts me up to Thee!

O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus!

The Church celebrates the Feast of the Theophany of Christ today. We commemorate the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River, but that we refer to this feast as the Theophany suggests that something deeper is happening beneath the surface.

We say “Theophany” because in Christ’s baptism we have a revelation of the Holy Trinity. The Father’s voice speaks from heaven, The Son of God is baptised in the waters, and the Holy Spirit comes down from heaven in the image of a dove.

Deeper still God reveals more about Himself. In his humility, the Forerunner acknowledges that it is he who ought to be baptised by Jesus, yet Jesus reassures him that He must be baptised to “fulfill all righteousness.” What does this mean? These words invite us to look deeper into the mystery of what is revealed before us. The Son of God, perfect and without sin, obviously has no sin from which to repent. So why be baptised?

Because where God is revealed, so is the Gospel. And the good news for us is that God does not want heaven without us. When we sinned and had fallen away, God has not ceased to do all things to bring us back into union with him. God sends his Son into the world to save us from death and darkness, and there are no lengths or depths to which he does not go for us. He descends into the depths of our hearts to find us – in the murky waters of our fear and selfishness Christ comes to deliver us.

I like the image Fr. Stephen Freeman used in his recent homily about how Christ descends into the waters where John had been baptising and took the repented sins washed in those waters upon himself. YES! Jesus takes the sins of the world upon himself and bears them for us! Not merely out of bearing our punishment, mind you, but rather binding himself to us in his love. He enters the furthest depths of our darkness and death, into the lowest corners of Hades – our very hearts even – and transforms the abyss there into a wellspring of life.

Christ is baptised so that we might be baptised into him. Christ descends into our darkness so that we might be immersed in his light. Christ descends into our chaos and fear so that we might be baptised into his peace. Christ descends into the death of our sin, so that being buried with him in death, we might also be raised with him into newness of life and clothed in the light of eternity; clothed in Christ himself. 

“O, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters!”

A Fresh Start to the New Year

 

Today we celebrate a new year on the secular calendar. May God bless you with peace and fill you with joy throughout this coming year. Amen.

Today the Church celebrates the Feast of the Circumcision of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It is the eighth day after Christ’s birth when he is circumcised according to Jewish custom and given the name Jesus.

This is not only the day of the Christ child’s circumcision, though, but also a reminder of our own. As the Epistle reading for today tells us <em>”In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of flesh in the circumcision of Christ; and you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.”</em>

The idea of our “putting off the body of flesh” seems fitting for a day in which we celebrate a new year and a fresh start. Some of us may take this literally in resolutions to trim a few fleshy pounds from our physical bodies. But let us not forget the need to circumcise our hearts. Let us put off greed, jealousy, and pride. Let us put off anger, bitterness, and grudges. Let us put off fear, falsehood, and indifference. Let go of the baggage you accumulated over the past year. Do you hold any resentment? Let it go! Do you hold a grudge against your neighbor? Let it go! Do you hold guilt and depression? Let it go! Let these hindrances of the flesh be removed so there can be healing, forgiveness, growth, new life, joy, and peace. Let the love of Christ fill you and take the place of everything that attempts to chain you to the grave.

May the peace of our Lord and Savior Jesus be with you always, guiding you to truth and love, and blessing you with life abundantly. Amen.

“Broken Cisterns”

Ever searching
Ever trying
Often failing
Instead of flying
Ever hoping
Ever seeking
Broken cisterns
Ever leaking

Ever failing
But never quitting
A gospel that is
Ever fitting
Ever growing
Ever needing
Broken cisterns
Ever bleeding

Ever wanting
Ever gain
Fountains of love
Puddles of pain
Ever wounded
Ever healed
Broken cisterns
By love are sealed.

Contradictory Christs

Growing up, I had mixed feelings about the idea of Christ’s second coming. Something didn’t add up. Jesus had always been portrayed as good and loving. How many times as a child did I hear songs like “Jesus Loves Me” and “Jesus Loves the Little Children”? I heard wonderful stories about how good and loving Jesus was. Jesus told the children to come to him, and he blessed them. There was also Zaccheus (the wee little man) who climbed up a tree to see Jesus. Jesus inspires Zaccheus to repentance by calling him down so that he could visit Zaccheus’ house that day. A loving, caring Jesus fed thousands of people with a small child’s lunch. Jesus healed the blind man and the man who could not walk. Jesus calmed the storms. Jesus loved me, and the Bible told me so. Yes, come Lord Jesus, and please come soon!

Yet, before too long, Jesus was suddenly portrayed in a different light. Jesus got mad. Jesus had a vendetta to settle with the sinful. Jesus was coming back one day riding a war-horse and wielding a sword. Jesus was going to judge everyone for all they had done, said, and thought; Jesus was going to cast all the sinners into hell for all eternity. And as a child this made a degree of sense. After all, didn’t my sins nail Jesus to the cross? That is what I was told, at least. Now Jesus was coming back someday like a parent who walks into a room finding their children doing something bad. The parent gets angry and everyone gets spanked. Such were the questions: you don’t want Jesus to come back and find you being bad do you? Sounds like Santa Claus, except if Santa found out you were bad, he’d just not bring you presents (and I never had a Christmas without presents, so either Santa was very forgiving, or he had bad intel). At least Santa left you alone. Jesus was coming back with rage and a belt. No, please don’t come, Jesus! Isn’t there something better for you to do in Heaven? At least take your time coming, and don’t get here too soon!

This was the problem that led to my mixed feelings. You see, there were two Jesus’s who were as completely different as night and day. I wanted the loving and good Jesus to come, but I had a suspicion and fear that the wrathful and violent Jesus might come instead, and so I hoped in the very least it might be a while till he came. This led to another problem. How does one rationalize two contradictory Christs? In my experience, I either tried to appease Jesus, ignore the bad, or simply despaired in guilt. Where is the good news here?

Unfortunately, as we age, we often come to believe in the wrath of God rather than the love of God. It is the wrathful God who we fear. It is the wrathful God from whom we hide. We watch our steps so we can try to live in a manner that won’t provoke God’s anger upon us. We watch our backs as well, that God might not catch us when we do fail and sin. We put on the best act and face possible in order to convince the world, ourselves, and God that we really aren’t so bad, and we hide our failings, our hurt, and our weakness the one place we can refuse anyone’s entrance – and that is our heart. And as a result, we find ourselves in hell; imprisoned by our fear and guilt; locked up alone with our hopelessly painful sins.

We have chosen the wrong Jesus, and believed in a savior who does not save. We put our faith in a god that does not exist. The good news for us is that the loving, caring Jesus, who we doubted, does exist.

He was in the world, and the world came to be through him, but the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him.

And when he is lifted up from the earth, he draws everyone to himself.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. And this is the judgment, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil.

Jesus does love you, and that is what the Bible tells us. The loving Jesus comes down from Heaven and dwells among us, because he does not want Heaven without us. Jesus loves us to the end and he descends into the deepest crevices of hell to find us, even into our very hearts. His love is the light that overcomes the darkness into which we fled. His love is stronger than death, and he carries us with him into life that is as boundless and unending as his love, for his love is our life.

Because the love of Jesus is our life, let us repent of our sins and turn wholly to him. Let us find our pleasure and joy and fulfillment in he who is the fullness of being, the I AM. Yes, come Lord Jesus, and may your love abide in us always! Amen.

What Should I Do?

“What should I do?”

What a common question we ask. We want to do the right thing. We want to obediently follow God’s will. Yet it feels like when we ask, “What should I do?” we are met with either vague answers, or even still, silence.

What are we supposed to do? Where are we supposed to go? Or should we stay? And what about our relationship with this person? How might we be saved?

If gets old reading all these questions, but it also gets old asking these kind of questions day in and day out with little to no relief. I have asked these questions often throughout life. As I journey toward Orthodoxy, however, I am discovering a larger problem beneath these questions: they are rooted in fear and unbelief.

I ask these questions of God because I fear him (and not in the holy, reverent manner). I ask these questions because I do not trust God. I do not love him.

I’m not saying this is true for everyone, just that it is true in my experience of it. “What am I supposed to do, God?” I have normally asked this question out of the fear one would have in asking an overbearing, never satisfied, vindictive and angry, earthly father. I try to “follow the rules” and do everything properly and according to the letter. In doing so, though, I do nothing more but seek to live by the law rather than the Spirit, and I miss the point entirely. God is not a prison warden with a stick waiting to bust our kneecaps the second we step out of line. God is not a math teacher searching for ways to fail us. This is not God.

I also ask out of a lack of faith, somehow believing that it is possible for me to make a wrong move and in my ignorance or sin thwart the will of God. It’s as if God could wake up one morning and be surprised by my mistakes and sins. “What did you do? I had everything worked out for you, and you screwed it up!” This is not God.

No, God is not a deranged sociopath with his finger on the “Smite” button eagerly waiting to squash us. No, God is not aloof and incapable, dependent on us to make sure his will is done. I doubt any of us would say God is, but the way we live often suggests it.

“What should I do?” I should love God with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength, and I should love my neighbor as myself. “What should I do?” I should first seek the Kingdom of God, and all other things will be added. I should trust God, that the God who sent his Son into the world and made himself incarnate, and taught me, and healed me, and died for me, loving me to the end, and did not end, but descended into hell to rescue me, and bore me on his shoulders and carried me out, and raised me to eternal life with himself, the God who is almighty, who is everywhere present and fills all things, the God who is Love – yes this God will not leave or forsake me. He will not be surprised or thwarted by my sins, but his strength is made perfect in my weakness.

“What should I do?” I should repent and love God. I should forgive and love my neighbor. I should seek out God. I should seek him in my neighbor, for my neighbor is the image of God. I should seek him in all places and in all things and in all situations, and when I find him (or am found by him, perhaps), I should give glory to God; give glory to God in all who I meet; give glory to God wherever I go; give glory to God in all situations; give glory to God in and for all things.

If I do this, I will not fear. I will not worry. I will not be despondent. I will always be thankful. “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

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