The Ministry of the Son

Luke 15:11-32

In Jesus’ parable, the older brother probably couldn’t remember a time without his younger brother.

They would have eaten together, worked together, gotten in trouble together, and played together.

From the first light of dawn until the last word spoken before drifting off to sleep, their lives were intertwined, they were brothers.

And that’s precisely why it would have hurt so much.

Sure, they would have fought, all brothers fight and there were probably times when his younger brother said stupid things, hurtful, disrespectful things, like all kids do.

But when did it really go bad?

At first maybe his younger brother made threats, “Fine, if nobody understands me, if nobody really cares about me, then I’ll just leave.”

It would have been a horrible thing to say, an unthinkable thing to say,

but who could have imagined that he’d actually go through with it.

And then his younger brother finally made that scandalous demand to their father,

for his share of the inheritance…

imagine that, half the inheritance—as though their father was already dead!

No one ever thought his father would agree to it.

And maybe in the days that followed he watched in cold disbelief as his father sold the land and the cattle and put together the money.

It was unthinkable.

But none of it seemed real until that last day, the day that his younger brother actually took the money from his fathers hand, and walked out of the house, out of the village, and out of their lives.

How could his younger brother do it?

The older brother must have been so angry!

It was so stupid, it was so selfish, and idiotic!

Everyone in the village knew about it, and it was so shameful.

Everyone would be talking about their family; the awkward looks in the market, the accusations, the innuendo.

It would have been the cruelest thing a brother could do.

So while younger brother left with his money, the older brother was left to pick up the pieces.

There was no less work to do in the household, the fields were no easier to plow and plant, and harvest.

And his father wasn’t getting any younger, so the older brother would have had to take over his younger brother’s share of the work.

For what?

Did he get anything out of it?

No, he didn’t.

His foolish, wasteful brother took off with his share of the family money to do what?

To start a business, to invest in trade, to build something meaningful?

No, of course not.

He went off to party, to wine and dine, and sleep around.

Even in those days, news traveled from place to place, and bad news traveled even faster.

So, I’m sure that the older brother would have heard about his younger brother’s exploits.

And at some point, he probably heard about the famine and how the money had run out.

How his younger brother had burned through all the family money, and how he was forced to take a dirty, filthy disgraceful job.

And perhaps at that moment, the older brother thought, “Well, he betrayed us all,

he made a laughing stock of our father and our family, he burned through everything in sinful, drunken debauchery, and now he gets what he deserves."

Maybe he said to himself, “Sit in the mud with those unclean swine and think about what you’ve done.

Think about how good it was here in your father’s house.

You’ve made your bed, now lie in it.”

And so the big brother would have carried on, working at home, in the fields, in obedience to his father,

day in day out, through the seasons, under the hot sun of the summer, and through the rains of winter.

And then one day, the older son finished his work and on his way back home, and he heard a strange sound.

Music and dancing.

This didn’t make sense, it wasn’t a feast day, and nobody was getting married.

What on earth was happening?

He saw some of the servants, carrying fresh meat from the slaughterhouse.

He asked “What’s going on? What’s all the music, and where did that meat come from?”

The servants say, “Your father told us to kill the fatted calf for a great feast, because your brother has come home. Your father gave him his best robe, put sandals on his feet, and a ring on his finger. It’s a huge celebration.”

“What, you’ve got to be kidding!?! He’s back? That worthless good-for-nothing has dared to come home? And now my father is throwing a party, serving a feast…?

OK, fine.  You guys go about your business if that’s what my father wants.

But count me out.  I’ll have nothing to do with this. My brother is dead to me. I have no brother!”

Now the older brother, thinks that he’s on moral high ground. After all, he’s the one who’s been a good obedient, hard working son. But his anger and sense of righteous indignation lead him to make a tragic mistake. Because the moment that he says that he will not come in to the feast, the older brother does exactly the same thing that the younger brother did. In his arrogance, he presumes to know better than his father, and he cuts himself off from the family.

Sure, the older brother is not sitting in the mud with the swine, but in his anger he has severed ties with his father and his family, and how awful it must have been for him to stand out there in the fields, hearing all that music, seeing all those people joining the celebration, as he was alone with his anger and his righteous indignation.

The older brother falls into the most deadly trap of Satan, the trap of pride and arrogance.

Now, only a few of us are older brothers, and some of us have brothers and sisters.

But all of us have friends, and classmates, and spouses, parents, colleagues and coworkers.

All of us are part of a community.

And anyone who lives in community has a ministry, because ministry is about serving others.

It is ministry, our service to others, that creates and strengthens community.

But living in community, serving in ministry is not easy, because sometimes people let us down, and it hurts.

This is the challenge of ministry.

And there are times in our lives of ministry in community, when we may say to ourselves, “There is just no way. How can I continue in my ministry of being a brother or sister,

my ministry of being a parent,

my ministry of being a friend,

my ministry of serving others in the name of Jesus Christ?

It is just too painful."

When people betray us, when they let us down we wonder:

how can we ever love them again;

how can we ever trust them again;

how can we ever allow them back into our lives when they have caused us so much pain?

The older son felt that kind of pain when his younger brother left, and he felt even more of that pain when his brother came back.

Betrayal is painful, but what hurts even more is when we refuse to love another person, when we stand in judgment over them and reject them because of their sins and failures. This is when we condemn ourselves to the hateful isolation of hell.

But it doesn’t have to end like this.

In the Bible there is a story about another son who found himself in a similar situation.

He had a large family, in fact, it was a huge family. And in this family all of his brothers and sisters betrayed their father.

But this son was not allowed to stay home.

His father said to him, “I’m sending you out to find your brothers and sisters.”

And being an obedient son, he went. He left his father’s home and went to live with his people. He did everything he could to convince them to come home.

But the people did not believe him.

They called him a liar,

They said he was a fake, an imposter, a deceiver.

But this son wouldn’t give up. His father had sent him to bring his brothers and sisters home,

and he would not abandon them.

But the people he came to rescue were so fixed in their ways, so mired in uncleanness and sin, so hardened with arrogance and pride, that they decided they couldn’t let him live.

And so they decided to kill the son.

Of course we know who this son is, he is Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

And on that night in the Garden of Gethsemane when it was absolutely clear that the people were going to kill him, He prayed to God, “Father if it is possible let this cup pass from me,

nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”

As we know, they handed Jesus over to the Roman soldiers, who beat him and mocked him and crucified him. But his Father raised him on the Third Day, revealing to his disciples and to anyone with ears to hear that Jesus IS the Son of God. And after forty days, Jesus ascended into heaven to show us the way home to the house of our Heavenly Father, the Kingdom of Heaven.

Christ does not bitterly condemn us, nor does he stand outside of His Father’s house filled with indignation that sinners like us are welcomed home.

Instead, Christ gives his life so that we might be forgiven and welcomed home to His Father’s house.

Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is one of us, like us in every way except sin,

He is perfect God and perfect man, which makes him very much like our older brother, as one of my Church School students pointed out last week.

Jesus is like our older brother who leads us back to the house of the Father.

And today, we take another step on that amazing journey home. Today we rise up out of the mud of our sins, and our bitterness, for the Risen Lord raises us up out of the darkness of sin.

It is not a journey that we make on our own, or according to our own plans or rationale, for it is Christ who leads us on every step of the journey home.

Our journey with Christ is one of love and forgiveness and mercy.

It is not a journey to a distant location, somewhere “out there,” but it is an interior journey of the heart, bringing us ever closer to God and ever closer to one another, for the love of Christ reconciles us to God and to one another. The love of Christ strengthens us in our loving service to others, strengthens us in our ministry to the people around us.

Ten years ago a very wise person said to me,

In your ministry there will be moments when Satan may whisper in your ear that you do not belong in your ministry.

But always remember, no matter what, no matter how hard it might be, no matter how much you might doubt yourself, that Christ has called you to serve others in love.

And whether we are mothers or fathers or brothers or sisters or priests or laypeople,

today Christ renews our ministry as we are forgiven our sins, and as we forgive the sins of those around us.

And whenever God’s children turn and repent from their sins, and return home, our Heavenly father prepares a great feast to welcome us home, not the feast of a fatted calf, but the feast of the Body and Blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

For today we who were dead in sin are alive again, and we who were lost now are found.

Glory to Jesus Christ!

Can you hear the wolves?

John 10:9-16  

11/13, Feast of St. John Chrysostom 

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

At night the shepherds would have heard the wolves.  The shepherds in the time of Jesus who took their flocks out into the countryside,  to find pasture and water.  Journeying far from the safety of the village or the city, settling down for the night they could hear the hungry wolves that prowled in the distance.  Remember, this was not Wild West, shepherds did not carry lever action Winchester rifles to fend off predators.  The shepherds in Jesus’ day would have had a wooden staff, a sling and a bag of small round stones.  Shepherd’s had to be brave folks, who could face danger.  But at night, as the small fire would have been dying down to embers,  and as the sheep settled down,  they would have heard the wolves, and it would have sent a chill up the spine of the bravest shepherd.  

Can you hear the wolves?  

When Hurricane Sandy knocked us off the grid, and devastated the Tri-State area could you hear the wolves?  

As the national election shook the country and enflamed passions of anger and bitterness between brothers and sisters, could you hear the wolves?  

Hearing about scandals and controversy within the Church, on the national level, in the parish, or between friends and family,  can you hear the wolves?  

It is awfully tempting to run for it, isn’t it?  Just give up the whole thing and run for your life.  

Today Jesus tells us that if the shepherd was a hired hand,  if the sheep weren’t his own,  and if he caught a glimpse of those ravenous wolves advancing towards the sheep,  he’d abandon the flock and run for his life.  And the sheep scatter, and the wolves attack at will.  Now, if we are merely talking about livestock, then a shepherd might fare pretty well if he ran for his life.  There are only so many wolves, maybe a dozen or so, and odds are that a pack of wolves would much rather go after a young lamb, a slow pregnant female, or an old feeble sheep.  

But here is the problem.  Jesus is not giving advice on caring for livestock,  he is speaking of a spiritual reality.  And the wolves that Jesus is talking about are not of this world.  They are demons, intent on dividing the Body of Christ,  and devouring human souls.  So, if the shepherd runs away, and leaves the flock of Christ to the demonic wolves,  there is no safety,  for anyone.  The demonic powers of Satan will not only hunt down every last one of the sheep   but also go after every shepherd that runs and tries to save his own life.  

But our shepherd is not a hired hand.  Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ lays down his life for His reason endowed flock.  He offers His life as he is suspended on the Cross so that we would know without a doubt, that He loves us and that we belong to Him.  Jesus Christ is the Good Shepherd, He knows his own flock, and his flock know him, we hear his voice and we follow Him.  

Today we celebrate the life of St. John Chrysostom, a man who listened to the voice of the Good Shepherd a man who followed in the footsteps of Christ, a man who did the work of the Gospel.  He served the flock of Christ in the midst of a wilderness of sin.  Constantinople with it’s spectacles and games its greed and its wealth, its lust and its passion the demonic wolves in that capital city threatened the flock of Christ more than any predators in the Jordan Valley ever threatened a flock of sheep.  In the midst of that danger, St. John stood by the poor, and the weak and the vulnerable, constantly providing for spiritual and material needs.  Ravening wolves attacked him from every side.  On one side, strict disciplinarians said that he was too soft in his merciful appeal to sinners.  He would say, “If you have fallen a second time, or even a thousand times into sin, come and you shall be healed.”  On the other side, influential and wealthy bishops and priests mocked him for his austere lifestyle, and publicly accused him of mismanagement, claiming that his care of the poor was a “waste” of Church money.  Finally, he was attacked head on by a vain and decadent empress and her imperial court,  who did not feel it was right for a bishop to criticize their public spectacles.  

Yet in spite of it all St. John stood by his flock and never ran for his life.  Facing the imperial threat he said,  “Though the sea roar and the wave rise high, they cannot overwhelm the ship of Jesus Christ.    I fear not death which is may gain; nor exile for the whole earth is the Lord's, nor the loss of goods for I came naked into the world and I can carry nothing out of it.”  

He stood by his flock until armed guards dragged him out of the city into exile.  But even in exile, he wrote letters and exhorted his friends and spiritual children,  reminding them of the love of God, and the mercy of Christ.  And in his death, out in the lonely, harsh place where he had been literally dragged in chains,  he completed his course by laying down his life, in emulation of Christ the Good Shepherd.  And with his last breath, saying, “Glory be to God for all things.”  

Hearing the Word of God, preaching the Gospel and standing by the weak and the vulnerable, even when it costs you your life, this is the legacy of St. John Chrysostom.  

This is our life, this is our work, this is our calling.   

Today we follow Christ the Good Shepherd.  

When a stranger is hungry, we feed him.  

When a sister is lonely, we sit by her side.  

When a brother is angry, we patiently listen to him, just like God always patiently listens to us.  

We follow Christ the Good Shepherd,  we hear His word and know that we belong to Him.  And we lay down our life for others,  just like He laid down his life for us.    

Amen    

Christmas burnout?

(Preached on Jan 2, 2010)

Are you feeling a touch of post-Christmas burnout?

If you are in school, it is the feeling that you’ll have this evening,

when someone says,

“Do you have everything ready for school tomorrow?”

And you think to yourself, “Oh, no, not school again!?!”

If you are a teacher, it is the feeling you’ll have tonight when you think,

“OK, do I have everything ready for class tomorrow?”

Of course, many of us have been back at the office, or on the jobsite for several days already.

Maybe, you hardly had any time off for Christmas.

But regardless of how much vacation you had,

just about all of us get a touch of post-Christmas burnout.

You look around the house, and think about taking down the tree down.

Or maybe you’re still trying to get all of the cardboard boxes into the recycling.

Somewhere, deep down, even as we kept singing, “Christ is born.”

It’s easy to feel of weary, and exhausted right after Christmas.

All of that work, all of that preparation, all of that food, all of that cleaning.

And now what?

Back to the grind?

Back to the same old thing…again?

That’s the worst part about Christmas burnout.

It is that sense that after all of that excitement and celebration and work,

That somehow we return to being stuck in the same old thing,

where life is just one darn thing after another.

This is such a deadly trap, yet so easy to fall into.

It is where life seems like a long endless series of chores

and somehow you are expected to do them all.

But who likes to do chores?

I sure don’t!

When I was a kid, we lived in the mountains, and we heated our house with fire wood.

I don’t know how much wood we actually burned in a winter,

but it was a lot.

Every weekend, we’d go out into the hills behind our house cut down the trees,

chop off all the limbs,

and carve the trunks into firewood size chunks.

But that was just the beginning,

because all those hundreds of pieces of firewood,

had to be schlepped back down the hill,

and stacked in the woodshed.

I remember, looking at a big pile of firewood, freshly cut, and piled up at the head of the trail that led back to our house,

and I’d think to myself, “How in the world are we ever going to get all of this wood into the woodshed! It is going to take forever!!!”

And in that moment a wave of despair would fall down on me, like a cold, wet blanket.

Now, maybe you don’t heat your house with wood,

but have you ever had that experience of feeling deflated, and hopeless about the work that stands before you?

It is depressing, and somehow, the days after Christmas can seem particularly deflating.

After all of the expectation, and preparation, and celebration…and now…blah.

Well, maybe the apostle Timothy was feeling a bit like this when St. Paul wrote to him and said,

“Preach the word, be ready when it is convenient and when it is not convenient…

always be steady, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist,

fulfill your calling.”

St. Paul’s’ letter to Timothy is a basically a first century Christian pep-talk.

You see, St. Paul was Timothy’s teacher, mentor, and father in Christ,

and Paul had recently been thrown into prison.

So things were looking pretty bleak for St. Paul,

and by extension, they were looking pretty bleak for Timothy as well.

There were scandals, and divisions, in the Churches that St. Paul had established.

There was treachery, and betrayal, and there were probably at least a million reasons for Timothy to be depressed and downhearted.

In other words Timothy had plenty of good reasons to feel burned out.

But St. Paul says to Timothy,

and he says to all of us,

“rekindle the gift of God that is within you…for God did not give us a spirit of cowards

but a spirit of power and love and self-control.”

St. Paul says to rekindle the Gift of God that is within us.

And that gift is Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ is the gift that God gives to us on Christmas,

the Only Begotten Son of God the Father comes into our world,

comes into our lives,

comes to us right now as a gift.

Yet, as wonderful as Christmas is, that is not the end of the story.

Jesus Christ doesn’t merely come to us as a beautiful infant, lying away in the manger.

Yes, Christ comes into this world on His glorious nativity.

And that is a tremendous gift.

But Christ is God’s gift that keeps on giving.

Even the best gifts that we gave and received a week ago,

can grow old and stale, be used up, or simply lose their relevance.

You get a fancy box of European chocolates,

the kind where each one is wrapped up in pretty foil,

and they are filled with all of these creamy, crunchy bits.

But, soon, you eat them and they are gone.

Or, maybe you get the coolest smart-phone on the market,

and it does all of these amazing things.

But in six months or a year, something else will come out and your phone won’t be special anymore.

Or, maybe you get a stack of books.

And then you dive into them, and they are really interesting, and great to read,

but sooner or later, they have all been read.

But the gift of Jesus Christ is never used up,

Christ never becomes dated or irrelevant.

Jesus Christ has come into this world as an infant, born to the Virgin Mary,

and He is coming to us as a man, teaching and preaching the good news of our salvation.

And we look forward to that celebration in a few short days on the glorious feast of Theophany.

For Christ is always with us,

always increasing His presence in our lives,

always surprising us with new gifts of mercy and love and truth.

This is why St. Paul talks about rekindling the gift of God.

If you have ever heated your house with firewood, you are intimately familiar with re-kindling a fire.

The night before, the fire was good and hot,

a blazing hearth that warmed the whole house.

But through the course of the night, that fire burns down,

and when you wake up the house is cold, and you are cold.

And you look at the remains of the fire, and mostly it is just cold, gray ashes.

But then, as fish around in the ashes with the fire poker,

you discover that the fire has not burned out,

deep down under the ashes, there are a few hot coals.

So, you carefully scrape them together, and gently blow on them.

And as you do, the edges start to glow, and with a few more gentle breaths, they start to get hot.

And then you put a few small pieces of kindling over those coals,

and with a bit more coaxing, the kindling smokes and then bursts into flame,

and your fire has come back to life.

And it gives you heat, and light and all the goodness of being warm on a cold winter day.

Rekindle the gift of God within us.

It might seem like we are burned out, but we are not!

The gift of God, Jesus Christ, is still within us.

The fire may have burned down, but it has not burned out.

Today we remember the great St. Seraphim of Sarov,

a man who was on fire with the love of God in Jesus Christ.

and perhaps the most beloved saint of the Russian Church.

But the amazing thing about his life is that it was so simple.

He was a monk, who went out to live in the forest as a hermit,

and every day of this life, he put all his focus on the gift of Jesus Christ,

the gift that God had given him.

He carried the scriptures with him wherever he went,

and he would read the entire new Testament every week.

And at the heart of everything that he did, and all the wonders that surround his life,

was the Gift of God, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

But St. Seraphim’s life wasn’t just all gold and incense, and shining with the uncreated light.

He had immense struggles, and faced constant temptation.

But St. Seraphim led a life of continuously rekindling the fire of the love of God in his heart.

So, if you find yourself feeling a little burned out,

close your eyes for a minute, and think back to Christmas.

Think of one truly wonderful moment in the course of all that celebration.

Was it the joy of giving a gift to someone that made them happy?

Was it the joy and excitement of looking forward to a new gift?

Was it the warmth and hope of having your family sit down together at the table?

Maybe it wasn’t even this year.

Maybe it was something you remember from ten years ago.

Picture it in your mind, and then focus on Jesus Christ.

For Christ is the gift and Christ is the source of that joy,

and ask Him to help you rekindle that fire of divine love.

If you were thinking about the joy of giving someone else a gift,

then go out and give someone a gift.

It doesn’t have to be big, and it certainly doesn’t have to be Christmas.

Just go out and give something to someone.

If you were thinking about the joy and excitement of looking forward to opening a present,

then begin each day with that same sense of expectation.

For each day Christ is giving us something, new, something wonderful,

something beyond our expectations.

If you were thinking about the joy of sitting around the table with family,

then invite people over for a meal.

It doesn’t have to be a big deal, serve them a big bowl of hot soup, and a piece of bread,

and share the love of Christ with everyone in your home.

Rekindle the love of God in your heart.

With a regular fire that you use for heat or for cooking,

you constantly rekindle it,

day after day, after day.

And it is always basically the same.

But the amazing thing about the love of God,

is that every time it is rekindled, it burns hotter and brighter than before.

So today if you feel a little cold, a little weary, a little lifeless,

remember that the fire may have burned down,

but it has not burned out.

For the gift of God is still within each one of us.

Jesus Christ is still within each one of us.

Rekindle the gift that is within you.

Rekindle your love for God.

Rekindle your love for Jesus Christ.

And as you do, the warming, hopeful, joyful fire of God’s love,

will burn ever more brightly in your heart.

Amen.

Matt 9:9-13

Have you ever felt like you did not fit in?
Sometimes it can be very subtle, this feeling of not fitting in.
You have a job, you have your friends, you have your family,
but somehow, it seems like don’t quite belong.
It has to do with the way people treat you.
There are people we live with, work with, even play with,
and yet there is something not quite right.
No matter how much we would like to be respected and loved,
no matter what we try to do to get these people to like us,
it never quite works out right.
Not fitting in can be a subtle thing…
or it can be quite dramatic.
Maybe there is something about us that sets us apart from the people
around us in a more profound and painful way.
Maybe we are not the same age of the people around us.
Maybe we are not as wealthy or healthy as the people around us.
Maybe we are not as athletic, or beautiful, or stylish as the people around us.
Sometimes there is something that sets us apart in a dramatic way that is painful and obvious.
Think about a bunch of kids on the playground picking teams for a game of touch football.
And lets say that there is one kid who really loves football,
but try as he might, he just can’t throw or catch, or run the ball as well as the other kids.
So, as they are picking teams, all of the kids get picked first,
and then this one kid is left alone, standing there all by himself.
And then the two captains do a quick count of the players, and they say,
“Oh, sorry, we already have equal teams, you can’t play with us.”
And then both teams run off to play ball, and leave the one kid standing on the sidelines.
Do you ever feel like this kid?
Left out?
Don’t fit in?
Matthew the tax collector certainly felt this way.
In the time of Jesus, some of the people of Israel, chose to work for the Roman Empire as tax collectors.
If you know anything about the ancient world, you know that this was a brutal business, collecting taxes.
Basically, you worked on commission. the more taxes you collected, the bigger your paycheck.
So, if you were a Hebrew tax collector, you might have made good money, but you were definitely an outcast in your community.
Matthew the tax collector did not quite fit in to his community,
and when you don’t quite fit in, it is painful, deeply painful.
Sometimes, it is so painful that it can drive us to do extreme things.
Do you remember the horrible tragedy at Columbine High School in Colorado?
The kids that did all of that evil did not fit in.
They did not fit in among their peers, and they did not fit in to the society.
So they made a terrible decision to respond to that deep pain and frustration with hateful violence.
When we are deeply wounded by others who judge us and exclude us,
we may never go out and commit criminal acts,
but when the pain of not fitting in deep it is frighteningly easy to respond with evil.
A spouse who no longer fits in a marriage can walk away.
A young person who no longer fits in at school may act out in destructive ways.
A faithful Christian person who no longer fits in to the community may just give up in bitter sadness.
But sadly, none of these choices bring us any true healing.
It is only Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who brings true healing into our lives,
for it is Christ who reaches out to us when we do not fit in.
Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ sees Matthew sitting in his tax collectors office.
And Matthew did no fit in.
His community saw him as sinful and unworthy and marginalized him.
But Jesus says, “Come follow me.”
And today, to each one of us who does not quite fit in,
to each one of us who is marginalized and left out,
Christ says to us, “Follow me.”
So, Matthew the tax collector follows Christ, and later that day when Jesus has dinner with Matthew and his friends,
all of the Pharisees start to talk among themselves saying,
“Why does that Jesus associate with tax collectors and sinners?”
Why does Jesus associate with all of those people who don’t fit in?
And hearing them Jesus says, “Those who are healthy do not need a doctor,
but those who are sick.”
And this is the reason that God sent his son in to this world,
to give hope to those who are suffering and in need of God’s mercy,
to offer us forgiveness and reconcile us to God the father.
Christ did not come into this world to choose the best and the brightest and the holiest,
rather he comes into this world to show God’s mercy to those who are weak,
to those who are sinful and
to those who don’t fit in.
Look at the people that Jesus chose to be his apostles.
He chose Peter who would deny Jesus three times.
He chose Paul who as a persecutor of the Church,
and he chose Matthew who was a tax collector.
And having experienced God’s mercy, each of these men turned away from their sin, and followed Jesus.
Now, it is really important to remember that Jesus did not choose these disciples because they were saints.
No, he chose them, he showed mercy upon them, and they followed Him, and because of that they BECAME saints.
Jesus went into the house of Matthew the tax collector and shared a meal with him to show God’s mercy on those who did not fit in.
And today we experience the very same thing at this meal,
this Mystical Supper at which our Lord offers us his broken body and spilled blood.
Imagine that there was a coach who did something totally radical.
Instead of recruiting all of the best and most powerful players for his team,
he went from field to field, gym to gym, playground to playground and he recruited all of the kids who were left out,
all of the kids who did not fit in.
And together they trained, and studied and worked out,
and in time all of those kids got into better shape, and developed their skills, and got faster and quicker.
But what was really remarkable about this team is that it grew so quickly.
In a few short years it became massive, with hundreds even thousands of kids all coming together to work together and inspire one another.
Because everywhere they went, members of this great team would look for the lonely, the outcast, and the one who does not fit in,
always inviting new people to join in their work.
Does this sound familiar?
It should, because this is the Church.
Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.
Today Christ comes to us, who in our own way feel like we don’t quite fit in.
And Christ says to us, “You DO fit in.
For you are mine.
Come follow me.”
Brothers and sisters, in Christ we DO fit in.
We belong to Him, as brothers and sisters, members of one another, in the mystical Body of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who gave his life for us,
so that we may know God’s mercy and live.
Amen.

Homily on 1Cor 1:10-18

Have you ever been poisoned?
Maybe when you were a kid, you accidentally drank something or ate something poisonous.
When I was in college I worked for a paving contractor,
and once we were paving a remote stretch of road way out in the mountains.
It was a blistering hot day and before lunchtime I had drank all of the water out of my cooler,
and I was dying of thirst.
There was a little cabin just off the road from where we were working and nobody lived there.
So, in desperation I went over to see if I could find a garden hose, or a faucet, or something that would let me get some water.
At the corner of the cabin, there was a faucet, and I quickly filled up my big thermos.
As I was walking back, I hefted up the thermos and took a few deep gulps of the water,
but as the water was going down, I knew something was wrong.
I stopped dead in my tracks coughing and gagging.
The water system in the house had recently been shock treated with chlorine,
and the water that I was drinking had about a hundred times more chlorine in it than the water in a public swimming pool.
Usually, when you are poisoned you know immediately that something is wrong,
most poisons taste awful.
They burn your mouth and make you gag.
But the real danger is from the poisons that don’t taste that bad.
I have a friend who loves soft shell crabs,
they are his favorite food in the whole world.
Once he went to a nice restaurant and ordered their soft shell crabs,
and he munched down this big plate of summer delicacy.
But all that night, and the entire next morning he was sicker than he had ever been in his entire life.
It was the worst food poisoning that he had ever known.
Sometimes when we are poisoned, we don’t realize it is happening until it is too late.
Today, St. Paul warns us of this kind of poisoning.
He says, “I hear that there is quarreling among you and that the community is divided.”
Fighting and division.
How easy it can happen.
If you are under the age of eighteen and you have a brother or sister, do you ever fight or argue with them?
If you are over the age of eighteen and you are married or dating,
do you ever quarrel or argue with your spouse, your boyfriend or girlfriend?
If you are single do you ever quarrel or argue with your neighbors, or colleagues?
If you are a parent, do you ever argue with your children?
Is there fighting and division within our families, and communities, and even within our Church?
Certainly there is, and it is a deadly poison because like food poisoning, we hardly notice that we are being poisoned.
When there is trouble or you find yourself in discomfort, the natural reaction is to identify the source of the discomfort, and then get away.
This approach works fine for mosquitoes, or the roasting midday sun, or a cold draft.
“Oh, wow, that feels awful. I’m getting out of here.”
But what do we do when another person makes us feel uncomfortable?
How easy is it to say, “You are the source of my discomfort, so I’m getting out of here.”
Or, we may simply choose to drive the annoying person away from us.
When we do this, when we point the finger at another person, and say,
“You are the source of my problems, you are why I feel bad, and you have to go.”
it may feel great at the moment.
And communities and cultures have done this kind of thing for ages.
The Puritan communities that settled Connecticut were masters of pointing the finger.
If you misbehaved, you could be banished from the community.
Or, if there was a drought and the crops failed, or if there was an epidemic and people got sick and died,
there might be a witch hunt.
The people would band together and place the blame for their misfortunes on the person in the community who didn’t quite fit in.
Maybe it was the old widow who lived on the outskirts of town, the one who is not like us,
“It is her fault, it is the fault of the witch.”
And if things go too far, the mob might very well burn someone alive.
Fighting and division can poison families, marriages, communities, parishes and entire churches.
And if things go too far, people can be in danger of spiritual death.
Have you ever been poisoned?
Satan and his devils want nothing more than for us to be divided from one another,
because when we are fighting and divided from one another,
when we isolated from one another,
then we are isolated from Christ.
And without Christ, we are lost.
Someone once said that the only thing that you can do all by yourself is to go to hell.
And the more that we isolate ourselves from each other in this life,
the more that we are poisoned by hatred, and anger, and judgment,
the more that our lives become a living hell.
So when you have been poisoned what do you do?
You find a doctor who can give you an antidote.
And if you are already too ill to get to a doctor yourself, then you pray that a doctor can come to you and save you.
And this is exactly what Christ does for us.
Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the perfect physician,
the physician of souls,
comes to us and offers us the perfect antidote,
his Precious Body and his Spilled Blood,
the Holy Mysteries.
Once a dear friend of mine was suffering from an overdose of narcotics,
and it was dreadful.
She could barely maintain consciousness,
and it was hard for her to breathe.
The life was slowly draining out of her.
But once the doctors realized what was going on, they gave her an antidote called narcan,
and miraculously, within seconds, she regained consciousness, and was able to breathe.
Antidotes can work like that.
Now a regular chemical antidote administered by a regular doctor,
cures us whether we understand how it works or not.
The Doctor gives us the proper dosage and we get better.
But Christ’s Body and Blood don’t work this way.
It is not magic, and it is not chemistry,
it is love.
God’s love is the perfect and only antidote for the poison of fighting and division.
Because the love of God is the love of forgiveness.
God loves us more than anyone could possibly imagine,
but God is not ignorant.
God’s love is not like “first date love” where you are head over heels on fire for someone before you know about their bad habits and character flaws.
God knows all of our character flaws, and all of our dirty secrets.
He knows our sins better than we do…and yet, knowing all of our failings he loves us just the same.
This is why the Mysteries of Holy Communion are so holy,
because the Body and Blood of Christ is the Word of God saying,
“I know what you have done. I know that you have hurt me.
I am painfully aware of the horror of betrayal, and mockery, and abandonment.
I am perfectly aware of the nails in my hands and my feet, and the pain of the crucifixion.”
And in the middle of all that pain and suffering, God says to us,
“I love you. Even if you hate me, I love you.”
This it the word of the Cross that St. Paul offers us today.
It is the word that sustained the martyrs, like St. Lawrence of Rome who was burned alive,
but who responded in love to those who tortured him.
So, we’ve all been poisoned, and what do we do now?
Take a minute to picture in your mind the person who you like the least, the person who has hurt you the most,
the person who you cannot stand.
And in your mind make this little confession to that person:
“Christ loves me, so I love you.”
During the week, make that part of your prayer life.
It takes less than a minute, but it allows the antidote of God’s love to course through our veins,
and cure us of the poison of sin.
And as we are cured of our illness, each one of us will begin to radiate more and more fully,
the love of God, perfectly expressed in the broken body and spilled blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
It is the antidote for the poison of argument and division.
It cures us of our sins, heals our wounds, binds us to one another in the perfect bond of love.
For in Christ there is no strife, no argument, no division,
but only perfect love and everlasting life.
Amen.

Homily on Luke 5:1-11

Once there was a kid who wanted a new bike.
He really wanted a new bike!
He wanted this bike so much that it was the first thing he thought about in the morning,
and all through the day, as he was at school, he kept thinking about the new bicycle he wanted so much.
And of course, when he got home and rode around on his old clunker bike that was falling apart,
he really thought about how much he wanted a new bicycle.
Have you ever really, really wanted something?
St. Peter wanted something.
He wanted a savior.
He wanted the Messiah that God had promised to send when he spoke to the prophets.
He wanted to be rescued from the pain and suffering and misery in his life.
Because God’s people were suffering under the iron fisted rule of the Roman Empire.
So, just imagine the tremendous joy that St. Peter experienced when Jesus comes to him on the shore of that lake!
Realizing that he is standing face to face with the Messiah, the one he had been hoping for, Peter and his companions leave everything behind,
their nets, boats, and everything, it is all left behind so that they can follow Jesus.
But what happened to Peter after that amazing moment on the shore of the lake?
He follows Jesus, he witnesses Jesus’ great miracles,
he listens to Jesus’ teaching and preaching.
And there must have been great joy in those experiences.
But during this time, something else is going on.
The Jewish authorities begin to conspire against Jesus.
The powers that be are not happy with the revolutionary message that Jesus preaches.
And as we know, even one of Jesus’ closest friends,
Judas, decides to hand Jesus over to those who seek to kill him.
And in the end even Peter denies Christ,
the same Peter who was so filled with joy and faith in the Messiah that he left everything to follow him.
When Jesus has been arrested and is about to be handed over to the Roman soldiers to be crucified,
Peter is there, because he wants to know what is going to happen.
But then people come up to Peter and ask him, “Are you one of Jesus’ friends?”
And Peter says, “I don’t know him.”
Someone else asks, “Aren’t you one of his disciples?”
Peter says, “No, I’m not his disciple.”
Then someone else says, “Wait minute, I’m sure of it, you are definitely one of Jesus’ disciples, you are a Galilean.”
And Peter says, “I’m sorry I don’t know what you are talking about.”
And at that moment the rooster crows,
And Jesus looks at Peter, and Peter realizes what he has done.
And Peter goes away from Jesus and weeps bitterly.
What happened to this man whose faith and joy were once so intense that he left everything to follow Christ?
What happened to the chief of the apostles?
How did such faith, such joy, such rock solid confidence crumble so quickly?
How can such a thing happen to Peter?
More importantly, how can such a thing happen to us?
We may not have left our jobs and sacrificed everything to follow Christ,
but the mere fact that we are here in this church right now is evidence that we have made some kind of sacrifice.
At the very least we all gave up the opportunity to sleep in this morning,
or have coffee and donuts while we read the paper,
or sit on the couch and watch Sponge Bob.
All of us have given up something in our own way to follow Christ,
not just this morning, but over the course of our Christian life.
But does it ever seem like your faith not what it once was?
In this world, it is rare that our faith is tested in a bold and dramatic fashion.
In the United States, we are never told that we must
deny Christ or face execution.
Unlike Peter who feared for his life when he denied Jesus,
our faith can just slowly drain away, and leave us flat.
Have you ever had a tire with a slow leak?
There’s no dramatic blowout, but over time the air slowly leaks out.
And then, one morning you get in your car to go somewhere really important,
some meeting or event that you really have to be on time for,
when all of a sudden you realize that your tire is completely flat.
And then you are stuck.
This is exactly how it is with our faith.
We may not even notice that our faith is draining away,
but then one day we face a serious crisis,
or we are put in a situation that requires strong moral character
only to discover that our faith has drained away and we have been left stranded.
And maybe in our own way, Just like Peter, we also weep bitterly in our faithlessness, and in our failure.
But just because it looks like our story has come to an end, does not mean that it is the end of the story.
Yes, Peter denied Jesus and our Lord was crucified and buried,
but this was not the end of the story.
Peter may have abandoned Christ but Christ did not abandon Peter.
At the end of St. John’s Gospel, we hear another story about Peter in his fishing boat.
Again, Jesus comes to Peter, but this time Christ has risen from the dead.
Jesus tells Peter and his friends to let down their nets, and once again they make a great catch,
and Peter suddenly realizes that it truly is Jesus speaking to him,
and he jumps out of the boat and swims to shore.
And Jesus says to Peter, “Do you love me?”
Peter says, “Yes, lord, you know that I love you.”
and then Jesus asks him again, “Peter do you love me?”
“Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”
But Jesus asks him yet again, “Do you love me?”
And now Peter starts to feel bad, because Jesus keeps asking him this question,
and he replies, “Lord you know all things, you know that I love you.”
So what is Jesus trying to do here with Peter?
Why does he keep asking Peter if he loves him?
Jesus is giving Peter an opportunity to repent,
to turn back from the way of denial and faithlessness,
and travel on the road of faith and love.
Peter abandoned Christ, but Christ did not abandon Peter.
You and I may have abandoned Christ, but Christ does not abandon us.
No matter what we do, no matter how we might fail, no matter how deep a hole we dig for ourselves,
Christ is always there, asking us, “Do you love me?”
Giving us a way out of our faithlessness and sin.
So this week, when you are at work, or sitting at your desk in school, or driving your kids to a soccer practice, or washing dishes or paying bills,
wherever you are, remember how Christ came to Peter on the lake.
Jesus did not sit in the temple and wait for people to come to him,
he went out and met people where they lived.
Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ reveals himself to Peter on the shore of a lake in a fishing boat.
Christ does not make people come to Him, He comes to us!
And when He comes to us, it is always a joyful surprise.
Remember that kid who wanted the bicycle?
Well, it was Christmas and he was really hoping that he would get the new bike for Christmas.
But, he really hadn’t been very good, and he knew that his parents didn’t have a lot of money.
So, Christmas morning came, and the whole family opened up all the presents under the tree, and it was a happy time, but there was no bicycle.
And the boy was a little sad.
But then, after all of the wrapping paper had been cleaned up, his parents said,
“What is this envelope in the branches of the tree?”
The boy pulled it out, opened it up, and there was a note that said, “Go look out on the deck.”
Do you know what was out there?
Yep, it was the bike that he had dreamed about.
Christ is waiting to surprise us,
not with a bicycle,
but with the same gift that He gave St. Peter’s on the shore of that lake.
Christ is waiting to surprise us with His love, and the gift of new life.
And today Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ gives us an opportunity to express our love for him once again.
Because when we confess our love for Christ, he fills our hearts with joy.
Today he asks us, “Do you love me?”
And we are free to cry out, “Yes Lord, I love you.”

Why a blog on preaching?

When I finished my M.Div. in 1996, I had a passionate desire to learn more about preaching. Homiletics was part of the M.Div. curriculum at St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, but at that time it was not highly developed, and I finished with the feeling that so much more needed to be said about preaching the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

During my years in seminary, the homiletics program seemed to reflect the unfortunate sentiment that great preachers are born, not trained. However, my thought at the time was that if even the most tone-deaf seminarian can be trained up to basic competence in liturgical chant shouldn't there also be a way to methodically teach preaching? And, while fully acknowledging the importance of liturgical chant in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, can't we say that good preaching is AT LEAST as important to the life of the Church as liturgical chant? My answer was a resounding YES. So, I actively sought out a doctoral program where I could do advanced studies in homiletics. I happened to find just such a program at Drew University, and I began my doctoral work in 1998.

The strength of the program at Drew, was that I studied homiletics from within the Liturgical Studies discipline. My adviser, Charles Rice, had made a powerful argument for approaching homiletics from a liturgical perspective in his book, The Embodied Word. In my dissertation I examined the "liturgy of the word/liturgy of the eucharist" dichotomy from the perspective of an Eastern Orthodox Christian. My dissertation advisor, John Behr suggested the title of the dissertation, Encountering the Word, and thus the title of this blog.

Since completing my Ph.D. significant advances have been made in the curriculum at St. Vladimir's Seminary, for which I am immensely grateful. Yet, more can always be done. My objective, in creating this blog, is to have a place to post thoughts, ideas, homilies and reflections on the preaching life. Specifically, I would like to help further the discussion about preaching in the Orthodox Church, both from the perspective of those who preach, and perhaps even more importantly, from the perspective of those who listen. On a more general note, I hope that this blog is an opportunity for anyone who is passionate about preaching to participate in a discussion on how it is manifested in the Eastern Orthodox Church. In the end, however, the most important thing is our encounter with the Word of God, Jesus Christ.