Man of Sorrows

"Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all." Ps. 34:19

"I'm having my best life now."

Our God is a man of sorrows. He has been acquainted with grief and affliction (Is. 53:3-4), and He has promised the same to those who follow Him (Matt. 10:16-25; John 15:18-20). I find an odd comfort in this. Our God has made a plan for pain. He does not ignore it or downplay it or frown upon those who experience it. He experienced it, deliberately (Phil. 2:8; Heb. 12:2-3), and has sanctified it into an avenue of glory (II Cor. 4:16-18). This does not suddenly candy-coat it. This does not mean that all who suffer should "buck up" and smile more. Pain is still pain. Affliction is still affliction, and suffering is still suffering. It all still hurts and wears you out. The difference is that it isn't meaningless anymore; nothing is meaningless anymore. All has been infused with purpose, and thus infused with hope: not just that you'll get through it all but also that it is all leading somewhere good (Rom. 8:18, 28-30).

"Just BeliEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEve!"

This is what makes "prosperity" teachings or any other syrupy Christianity so laughable and damnable. Laughable because they so blatantly contradict common sense about the fundamental tragedy in existence, and damnable because they attempt to undo the deeper comedy that God has done. He gave pain a purpose, but they would undo that purpose in our minds, returning suffering to a sign of disfavor and failure. They have displaced hope with despair, for who can truly say they are living their best life now? Who can truly say they have claimed all that they've named? Who can say that their afflictions have all ended because they had just enough faith (as if faith were a cure for suffering rather than the strength and succor to endure it)?

The world does not need another rabid optimism to spread childish lies; rather, it needs something stronger, something more robust, something adult. It needs something that can face all the rugged realities of life without flinching or excusing or dismissing. In short, it needs a God who is acquainted with grief to take pity on our frail frames (Ps. 103:13-14) and provide a purpose for pain.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

In Our Midst (Christmas Homily)

"...eyes to see..."

"O taste and see that the Lord is good." Ps. 34:8

The goodness of God is not an abstraction, not a mere dog- matic assertion requiring no more than intellectual assent. Rather, the goodness of God is to be a sensory experience (and not the only one). It is meant to be tactile and fragrant, audible and visible and flavorful. This does not mean that you will suddenly receive complete comprehension of the incom- prehensible God. What it does mean is that His goodness is meant to be experienced in the actual moments of your life. It is to be a point of contact between you and the Divine, a moment of Incarnation, a moment where God leaves the ivory tower of your mind and becomes real in the midst of your experience.

As close as the house you're standing in.

If our God is hidden, it is because He is too immense and not because He is too obscure, like the house you're living in, which is the only one you don't see when you look out your window. It is too close for perception, and so is God. The incomprehensibly im- mense God is in your midst always, and though the limits of our mind cannot grasp Him fully, He is meant to be experienced. He is meant to be met in the moment. In ancient days, though veils and walls kept Him separate from His people, He still had a place amongst them, an actual dwelling in the Holiest of Holies. Today, though time and space and perception seem to separate us, He is not far from any one of us (Acts 17:26-28). Furthermore, He has made His people His dwelling place (John 14:23; II Cor. 6:16), a body fitly joined together (Eph. 4:15-16), so that He may be experienced by us as well as through us to the world (Matt. 5:14-16).

Our God believes in making Himself known, believes in revelation and incarnation, believes in proving Himself to be real. If he had not spoken through His word, if He had not come in the likeness of men, then we would have cause to call Him an obscurantist. But He did, so we do not. He has proven His presence (Is. 45:18-19; Heb. 1:1-2), he has proven His love (Rom. 5:8; I John 4:9-10), and He continually proves His goodness. Therefore, ask for eyes to see Him, to see His goodness, and to let that goodness build a monument to His presence in your life.

"I have not spoken in secret...."

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

On Strength (Homily Magnus)

"Be thou exalted, Lord, in Thine own strength. So we will sing and praise Thy power." Ps. 21:13

The babe with the power!

The modern western world is obsessed with power. From our most intellectual blather to our most common jargon, we've got power on the brains. In literary circles, we're concerned with characters having "agency," the ability to make their own choices and choose their own destiny. In the world of pop psychology, we endlessly seek "empower- ment," an affirmation and enabling of our own self and desires. Popular culture regularly feeds into our need for self-actualization, and in the revolving-door insane asylum of social and political activism, power is the key agenda: who has it, how they're abusing it, and how we can acquire more for ourselves and others.

"Come at me, bro."

It feels cheap and easy to lay this particular mania at the feet of Nietzsche, but I cannot help it. He is too obvious a target, as he would prefer. No doubt he had his inspirations, and he has definitely inspired others who carried his ideas further and further, but if you observe all the assumptions of our postmodern society and reduce them back to their source, you get Nietzsche. He was the voice crying in the wilderness, the first step in a new direction. It is he who successfully reduced all of life to power, to dominance and submission, to masters and slaves, to supermen and sheep. It is he who declared (ironically) that all language is the myriad masks of power, and it is his postmodern disciples of the mid to late 20th century that stretched his ideas all the way into popular consciousness. Now there is no truth; there is only power, and all claims on truth are merely disguised plays at power. There is nothing left for us but the destruction of all the "truths" and then the mad scramble for power that pours out of them like candy from a sad, shattered pinata.

There can be only one.

It is no wonder that Nietzsche (and everyone poisoned by his epistemological children) hated Christianity. It is a great rebuke to his worldview of power, for not only will the meek inherit the earth, but also all-power already belongs to One. Forever and endlessly belongs to One. God has all the power, for He is all the power. He infinitely is it and has it and gives it to all without once diminishing His surplus. Before Him, the mad scramble for power and the mad cycle of dominance and submission end. There is only one Power, and it is God. Likewise, there is only one dominance, and that is His. And there is only one submission, and that is ours. The superman already exists, has always existed. He is God incomprehensible, the Father Almighty.

All of Him, all at once.

Yet it is not mere power that makes God incomprehensible, but rather all of His divine attributes at once. He brings all of Himself to bear on every action that He takes, and included in Himself is not only infinite power but also infinite love and justice and grace and wisdom and goodness. Perhaps the greatest rebuke to the Nietzschean ethic is God's irreducibility: His incomprehensible nature is not a complexion of parts but rather a single, harmonious whole with every attribute working in perfect interwoven tandem and solidarity. Thus, His all-power can only come prepackaged with His all-love and all-wisdom and all-goodness and everything else that He infinitely is.

Think of it this way. We know what it means to leave a part of ourselves behind when we make a decision. We leave a part of ourselves "at the door," so to speak. There are times when we make a solely emotional decision (with our children or loved ones), where we leave logic and reason and other factors behind. On the other hand, we can with effort make solely logical decisions, blocking out emotional elements and trying to make a cold, rational choice. In either case, something is left out. This is not necessarily the best or worst way to make decisions, but it is a way we are familiar with, because it is true to who we are: we are not like God. We are not a harmonious whole of attributes; He is. He never leaves any of Himself "at the door." He brings all that He is into every action He makes, for He cannot be reduced to any one part of Himself. That is what is meant by His "irreducibility."

Portrait of the superman.

Every heresy and error of man can be traced to a reduction of God (or the ultimate "thing"). Every crazed philosopher or good natured guru has made the same mistake, though they make it in a myriad of ways. Reduce all to peace, and you create a rabid pacifism that would allow horrific injustices to occur just to keep its hands clean. Reduce all to power, and you unleash a world of merciless narcissism, cruelty, and brutality. God is a slap in the face to all our nonsense, the spitting in the eye of our reductionistic insanities. He will not be reduced to our minimalist understanding. He will not be confined by our finite categories. He will be Himself and nothing less. His peace will not rest until it has broken every peace-breaker, and His power wrought its most awesome work in a poor carpenter from Nazareth who would not revile when He was reviled, and whose humiliating submission to death crushed the power of death forever, for the weakness of God is still stronger than the strength of supermen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

One Question (Homily 56)

Priorities, son.

"...who is lord over us?" Ps. 12:4b

The question of lordship is still the most practical question you can ask anyone. For every person, the buck ultimately stops somewhere, and wherever it stops can tell you a lot about that person: what they believe, what they care about, and what they're willing to put up with.

Now, Psalm 12 mentions two kinds of people: the godly and the proud (vs. 1-4). The former are failing and fading while the latter are flourishing. The dichotomy is simple enough---there are those to whom God is their ultimate authority and those who are their own ultimate authority. That dichotomy is pretty well maintained throughout Scripture. There are those who "fear the Lord" and those who say "there is no God." Every human being can be boiled down to one of those two categories.

This is not merely a matter of God's existence. There are plenty of people who believe in God's existence that still live like atheists in day-to-day practical life. Rather, it is a matter of relevance, i.e., what is His relation to you and your life? Is he everything or nothing? That sounds like a false choice fallacy, but remember the dichotomy: if God is not everything to you, then He really is nothing to you, no matter how much you patronize Him. The greatest commandment is to love God with all that you are and got (Matt. 22:36-38), and he who transgresses one law is guilty of them all (James 2:10), and we all have transgressed the greatest law: we have not loved God (Ps. 14:2-3; Rom. 1:21-25, 3:10-11).

All sin and righteousness comes down to the one question Jesus asked his disciples: "Who do you say that I am?" (Matt. 16:13-16; c.f. Mark 8:27-29; Luke 9:18-20). The answer to that means everything, affects everything: what you live for and are willing to die for. Where the buck stops. Where the final line in the sand is drawn. Christian living, the life of faith, is the fight to recognize the lordship of God both in Christ and over your life. "You are not your own. You are bought with a price. Therefore glorify God" (I Cor. 6:19-20)---that is the way of life, and life more abundant.

The center is still the center.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

Inevitable (Isaiah's Doxlogy, Part V)

"For as the earth brings forth her buds, and as the garden causes the things that are sown in it to spring forth, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations." Is. 61:10-11

"...white unto harvest."

Truth is the foundation of love, and love is the foundation of life, but that love is not just an endless knowing, loving, and doing. There is even more bounty than that. Those who belong to God have not simply found a way of living but also an eschatology. In other words, they have been given a destination as well as a journey. The righteousness and glory given to them is going to flower. It is an inevitable fruition, just as inevitable as the earth bringing forth its fruits in their seasons, or a garden causes all planted therein to sprout in their time. So too those whom God has redeemed have become part of God's season and time.

We all go into the dark.

He has buried them in deliverance and justification like seeds in the ground. Within that dark security, there are a myriad of things happening just beyond their perception: rain to nourish them, weeding to purify and protect them. It is all leading to a great harvest, a bursting forth of flower and fruit, fragrance and food. This is not something that they hope to gain but rather what they've already been given. They have been swallowed up in salvation and righteousness have been set on one path headed in one direction: the unstoppable flowering of righteousness and glory across creation.

This is not syrupy optimism or escapism. This is the rock-solid eschatological vision of the Christian Faith, derived from the very facts and language of the Bible. Since the Fall, all of creation, from quarks to quasars, has been subjected to the meaningless futility and decay of a life separated from God, but there is a restoration coming (Rom. 8:18-22). God has called to Himself a people whom He will swallow up in justification (Is. 61:10; John 14:18-20, 17:20-23; Col. 3:3-4) so that they may flower into glory (Rom. 8:29-30), a glory that is God's (II Cor. 3:18) and which will be theirs (I John 3:2). At that moment, the whole world will fill with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea (Is. 11:9), and there will be no more tears or violence or darkness (Is. 60:17-21; Rev. 21:1-6). It is the inevitable conclusion and inheritance of the saints. God has spoken it, and as the rains water the earth and return a harvest, so God's word will not return empty-handed (Is. 55:10-11).

"...my cup runs over."

Dead in our trespasses and sins, we were sown in corruption; but by God we will be raised in glory and incorruption by His quickening, life-giving Christ (I Cor. 15:42-49; Eph. 2:1, 4-7), who is our righteousness (I Cor. 1:30), the righteousness that has swallowed us whole (Gal. 2:20; Col. 3:3) so that Death might be swallowed up in victory (I Cor. 15:53-57; Is. 25:8). All roads lead to this, to this glory divine flowing from God and through His children, like a great underground spring breaking through the earth in a myriad of fountains cleansing and feeding the earth, sparkling in the sunlight like stars. So too will be our end, an end that is our beginning, the beginning of glory. It shall fill our world to the brim like a cup, and then it will overflow that brim, spilling across the universe in furious love and ravenous joy, burning away all death and darkness and destruction until every last inch of creation is reconciled back to God. And even then it will not be an end but rather real life beginning afresh and anew.

This is what causes Isaiah to sing. This is what has filled him from top to bottom with joy. This is the destination of those who belong to God, whom His love has wrapped up in salvation and righteousness like a groom or bride dressed for their wedding. That salvation shall bloom into glory, and righteousness into praise forevermore. Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

Sex and Justification (the outrageous analogies of an orthodox rebel)

Just sayin'...

In ye olden times of the English-speaking world, "rape" was often spoken of as "dishonoring" a woman.

Now, describing "rape" as such doesn't have quite the punch most of us are looking for; calling it an "act of evil" sounds more appropriate (if a bit campy). Still, I think our ancestors were on to something, something very special and specific.

FOR HONOR!!!!!!!!

"Honor" is a word we are familiar with, though less familiar than we think. Klingons have honor, as do all their endless sci-fi imitators. (Warrior culture, yes? Expect "honor" to get a word-workout.) In some rare cases, we may hear someone be called a "man of honor". There we are referring to their character, viz., what kind of person they are, what kind of ethics they have subsumed, "who they are when no one's around," etc. That's about the extent of our understanding of "honor": having a specific character to which you should take pride in, pride enough to act according to that character.

Such an idea isn't far off the mark, but the real meaning of "honor" is much simpler. "Honor" simply referred to one's value, i.e., what you as an individual were worth. To gain honor, one had to do something(s) of note or merit (slay dragons, win wars, don't cheat on your taxes, etc.). To lose honor, one of two things had to happen: either you did something that was unbecoming of your value (in other words, it is antithetical to who you are) or you didn't do something that was in line with or would have increased your value, increased your worth. In short, you either did something you shouldn't have done, or you didn't do something you should have done. In either case, you "dishonor" yourself (and the family and/or community to which you belong). You have not treated yourself with the value that you have (or need), and thus acted (or did not act) accordingly.

Clear enough? Of course not. But let's move on.

You are without honor, sirrah.

Now, to be "dishonored" is different from dishonoring yourself. In the latter, you did not live up to the value that you have (or are called to). In the former, however, you have not been treated in accordance with the value that you have. To put it another way, anyone can dishonor themselves, but only valuable people can be dishonored. Both the man of honor and the rogue can dishonor themselves: the former by not living up to their value and the latter by not seeking to gain value; but only the already-valuable can be dishonored. Your honor, your value, is the gauge by which you measure dishonor. The less value you have, the less you can be considered dishonored. If you have no value, then you cannot be dishonored at all. A sacred place can be dishonored; a secular one, less so. You can dishonor a man more than a horse, and both more than a rock.

This is where I think them olden-folks were on to something: "rape" is to "dishonor" a woman because you are not treating her with the value that she already has. She does not lose value, mind you; she has been disvalued, not devalued. The assumption is that women have a set, intrinsic value simply by being a woman. That intrinsic value ought to guide how we act around and towards them, and rape is to act untowards a woman. It is to disvalue her, to treat her as less than she's worth, as a thing or an object rather than a unique individual with intrinsic value. It "dishonors" her, for she has honor. She is already-honorable, already-valuable, and should be treated as such. Thus, as Cameron Poe would say, "Don't! Treat! Women! Like! That!"

That. Is. The question.

A logical question to ask at this point would be exactly what is the "value" of a woman. What does it look like, or how "big" is it (so to speak)? I think the Christian answer would be this: every person, man or woman, has limitless value because (1) they are all made in the image of the God whose "value" is limitless (Ps. 8:1) and (2) they are each a unique manifestation of God's image, a one-time-only, non-repeatable subject.
 
 The first point speaks to God's objective value: whatever value He has as a being is our value as well. That is the special quality and privilege of a human being. The second point speaks to our subjective value: we are not cardboard cut-outs of the same theme, but rather each of us is a unique note in the symphony that is "the image of God". Each of us sees the world from a unique perspective; each of us sees God from a unique perspective, and thus worships and loves God from a unique perspective. There is unity of belief and creed, of course, but not necessarily unity of expression and person. We are each and all a specific "I", and our "I"-ness is a part of our value. That is the special state of a human being. Therefore, the combination of God's objective value and our subjective value means our value is limitless. We have been "crowned with glory and honor" simply be being human (Ps. 8:3-5).

Clear again? No again? Right. Moving on.

Uh...no.

If human "value" is limitless (as I think it is), then a woman's "value" is limitless (as I also think it is). Thus, any act of "disvalue" towards a human person (both male and female) is wrong. Rape, murder, theft, kidnapping, lying to or against: every sin against another (including God) is in some way related to our disvaluing that other as a being. We deem them unworthy of respect or life or property or peace or obedience. I think that makes sense (a lot of sense), but it also creates at least one interesting...let's say, "issue".

Rape, in purely biological terms, is about sex. Sex in all the wrong ways, but sex nonetheless. Now, not to sound platitudinous, but sex in all the right ways is consensual, a natural outflow of love, and within the safeguards and security of a marriage covenant (at the very least). The "issue" is this: if a woman's value is indeed limitless, then there is no way you can be worthy of her. Your value may be limitless, too, but to demand any woman (or any one) on those grounds (i.e., your own worth or awesomeness or studliness or whatever) is to treat her as an object, a mere means to your own self-aggrandizing ends. It is dishonoring to her and to you. But then, how is this supposed to work? How can you ever be worthy of her?

The answer is: only if she declares you to be worthy.

"Love bade me welcome..."

Sex, in that it is a physical representation of love, is to be an invitation, i.e., an other invites and welcomes you to come closer than any one else. They must do the inviting; anything else would make us gatecrashers. Thus, we wait on their declaration, wait in hope that they will declare us worthy. Whether we actually are worthy is not the point; the point is that the other has declared us so out of love, and on the basis of that loving declaration we approach with boldness and yet humility. Boldness, because nothing now bars our way; humility, because it is all an act of grace. Like all acts of true love, sex is to be about grace.

The image of justification is hard to avoid at this point. Union with God is possible because He declares us worthy in Christ. We are not worthy; we could never be worthy of God. But I have good news: Christ died for our unworthiness, proving God's love, and providing us a worthiness not our own (Rom. 5; Phil. 3:8-9). God gives us worth because we have none to merit His favor, and He gives out of love and now invites out of love, invites all to come to the table and feast, to the waters and drink, to taste and see the goodness of God. Christ is the gracious invitation and welcome of God, and to try and enter by any other door is to be a rogue and cheat, a robber and thief, an attempted-rapist of the divine. We will fail, of course, but we will be rightfully punished for our insolence, for our pride, for our disobedience, for our deeming God and His ways unworthy of our respect or adherence, for daring to disvalue the purest and greatest and most extravagant Lover and Love of all:

In short as well as conclusion, the sacred symbols and realities surrounding romantic (and even sexual) love continue to surprise.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

All About Love (thoughts on Romantic Theology)

"He that has seen Me has seen the Father...." John 14:9

"He is the image of the invisible God...." Col. 1:15

In the Divine Comedy, Dante reaches the end of his journey in the last cantos of "Purgatory". I say it's the end of his journey because he finally reaches his true love, Beatrice. However, he will soon discover that this "ending" is only another beginning. He meets her at the top of Mt. Purgatory where she comes at the end of strange pageant: a train of creatures and people, all representing the books of the Bible, theological and cardinal virtues, and even Christ Himself (represented by a Griffin). Every element of the pageant is meant to symbolize a different sacrament, i.e., a means and point of contact with God, whether it be divine revelation, "the law written on our hearts," or Christ (who is the Sacrament).

Beatrice belongs to this train. She symbolizes how romantic love (when done properly) is yet another sacrament, a doorway to the divine, a means of ascension higher and higher into the love of God. This is not only the central conceit of the entire Comedy, but also a key component in the Christian view of marriage. Christianity has always viewed marriage as a sacrament, a means of contact with God where He administers and ministers grace to us. This is what Charles Williams called "Romantic Theology," though he never claimed the idea to be novel. Christian orthodoxy has always believed and taught that romance, though it can go awry like anything else, was always meant to be an avenue of communion with God through another person, which was the entire point of marriage: two people brought together by God to be used of God to sanctify each other. The grace of God given to us through each other---that is the essence of Christian romance, and it is a sacramental essence.

The Bible reveals the sacramental essence of marriage in some surprising ways. One of those ways can be found in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. Now, First Corinthians is all about love (and not just the 13th chapter). "Let all things be done out of love" (16:14) is the summation and theme of the whole book; furthermore, if we love each other, then we will seek each others "well-being" (10:24) and do all things "for edification" (15:26). In other words, love should lead us to be a means of grace (i.e., a sacrament) to other Christians. If you belong to God, then you have been made a sacrament to others, especially those inside the Church.

What does this have to do with marriage? Well, in chapter 7, Paul explains how men and women can "avoid fornication": "let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband" (vs. 2), i.e., get married and have sex. That's right. Paul (that cranky old curmudgeon) is telling Christian spouses to have sex, and (get this) it's not just a matter of practical morality: "Let the husband render unto his wife due benevolence, and likewise also the wife unto her husband" (vs. 3). This is not just about keeping yourself sexually pure (and faithful) in marriage; this is also about showing "benevolence" to your spouse by not withholding sex (vs. 5). Thus, in marriage, sex is tied directly to edification. It is one of the ways a husband is a sacramental means of grace to his wife (and vice versa).

Is your mind blown yet? It should be. Who views sex like this? Not our culture. Whether inside or outside of marriage, sex is merely a means of domination: two individuals mutually working their will on the other. It has nothing to do with grace at all. Furthermore, I daresay that the Church in America does little better. Marriage is important, at least politically and socially, but what about theologically and sacramentally? All of marriage (whether it be sex or something else) is meant to be sacramental, i.e., about grace, about meeting God. That is why wives "submit" themselves to their husbands and husbands "lay down" themselves for their wives: it is a mutual sacrifice on behalf of the other, and into that loving matrix the presence of God comes into our midst.

That, of course, is the whole point: of the Divine Comedy, of Christian marriage, of Christianity and Christ Himself. God is a sacramental God. He meets us in the midst of our moments, especially (as Dante showed us) in our darkest moments. Love reaches out to us in the dark wood, and it will lead us home, even through Hell itself. It is what T.S. Eliot meant by "mid-winter spring": those moments of light and life in the midst of the cold, dead lands, the intersection of our time with God's eternity. This is not about abstractions; this is about love, about Christ, who is the fullest proof of God's love (Rom. 5:8; I John 4:9-10), a love that manifested itself in our midst, that was made flesh and blood and bones and veins and fat and walked into our winter with all the glories and colors of spring. The point of the story, of all good stories (whether Dante's, Christ's, your marriage, or your walk with God), is love, love manifested in our midst with all its surprises and its unapologetic, relentless and reckless sacrifice for its beloved.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

High and Low (Homily 53)

"For thus says the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place with him who is of a humble and contrite spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. [...] But the wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace...for the wicked." Is. 57:15-21

God is the High and Holy One: His very nature is "other than" ours. He is categorically distinct and separate, sui generis. He dwells in a high and holy place, i.e., a mountain, the traditional symbol for the dwelling of divinity (from Olympus to Zion). God is above; He reached to the tops of the clouds. God is great; His size is sublime, stretching beyond the limits of our comprehension. "Beyond" is the only word for Him, for He surpasses us in ways we have neither scale nor system to measure.

Yet who dwells with Him? Who also stands on His mountaintop? Who also abides in His holy hill? The humble, the contrite, the lowest of the low. Brought lower by their own abasement, yet brought higher by the surprising love of God, for His love too is beyond us, sublime and measureless and strong. This High and Holy Beyonder loves the broken (Ps. 51:17; Is. 66:2) and takes pity on we fragile children of dust (Ps. 103:13-14), raising us up to heavenly places in Christ (Eph. 2:4-7), setting our feet on the rock, the immovable mountain, that is our God (Ps. 18:31). This too is "beyond" us, exceedingly overflowing what the cup of our mind can hold.

Can you see why there is no peace for the wicked? No peace for those outside of God and His Christ? For what can be more opposite to a mountain than the sea? The one is high, glorious, unmovable, and stable; the other low, treacherous, mutable, and fluid. To the one, storms can only hang about it like a cape or a crown, only adding to its majesty. To the other, storms are their master. Impotent before them, they have no choice but to be whipped and whorled and blown about, unstable in all their ways, broiling and spewing and foaming all of their hidden substance to the surface, bringing to light their true character and quality. The sea has not the strength to be at peace, but the mountain has strength and that to spare. It is the inheritance of the saints of God: you who are established upon the mountain shall never be moved  (Ps. 15:1-5), for the mountain shall never be moved (Rev. 1:8). But for all those who stay outside, I can only give you this: you will lie down in the midst of the sea and have no peace while you drown.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

The Gospel to the Postmoderns (A Philosophy of Potatoes, Part V)

"I am the Lord, and there is none else. I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create [national] calamity. I, the Lord, do all these things. Drop down, ye heavens from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness. Let the earth open, and let it bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up together. I, the Lord, have created it." Is. 45:6-8

There are always gaps in our lives: gaps of knowledge, of understanding, of ability, of identity and purpose. The truth of things always seems just beyond our reach, lost in a cloud of contradictory witnesses, all shouting their personal preferences in a private language of their own making. The white noise created by their effusions and emanations drowns out the clear cadences of reality, and we despair of ever getting to the truth of things, of ourselves. Our only hope (and what a paltry hope!) is to make our best guess, our best approximation to a target we cannot even see clearly. It is no surprise, then, that we all fall short.

It is no surprise to God either. It is the biggest joke of our contemporary, postmodern world that it thinks itself the new thing when it is really the old thing. The same old thing. The same old unbelief, now writ large. The same old failures: failure to see, to hear, to understand, to believe. All of our newest thoughts are merely a shiny new wrapper on the same old junk. We say that the authorial origin is displaced from us by our excess of discursive derivatives. God put it much simpler: we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We are separated from the Divine Origin of Being and Goodness by our primal deviation from His course. Consequently, we have all of us gone astray, even turning others to their own way, every man doing what is right in his own eyes because there is no king in the land. No authorial center to know and reference and be. We lost Him long ago. In our ignorance and arrogance we are lost, spiraling further down into the ever-widening yet ever-increasingly empty abyss of our lostness.

What can bridge this infinite gap? What can slice through all of the derivatives and find the Origin? What can retrace all the traces back to the Source? What can refill every absence with the presence of Meaning? What can reset all displacement and dispersion until the Whole is realized again? What can wash away our Sin? Nothing but the blood, the blood of God in Christ. Nothing but grace, the grace of God in Christ, for in Christ God became flesh and dwelt among us. The Origin became a derivative, the Source a trace, the Whole a discursive displacement, becoming one with the text, the conversation, the discursive field of play, the flesh and blood of men and the whoop and wharf of time. This was not an act of detached Reason, or cold Machine or mere Mind, nor another absurdism of fundamental Chaos. This was an act of grace, grace on the part of One greater than us, greater than all our noise, all our displacements, our mythologies and differances, greater than all our Sin.

Hear the Word speak into our present day delusion and crisis: grace alone is the bridge that spans the gulf of our mighty separation, the sword that slices through the jungle of our seemingly endless texts and myths and positions and postures and preferences and opinions and interpretations, cutting right through all of our jargon and gibberish, navigating the vacuity of our hyperspaces, deconstructing all of our simulations and simulacra, powering through every wall and obstacle that we have erected, crashing through with infinite, furious love and passion and purpose. His head is bleeding. His hands and feet and side are bleeding. His body has been demarcated by those in power. He was wounded for our dispersions, and by His stripes we are healed. By His resurrection, He defeated death and displacement and truth-to-power, so that at His name every knee shall bow and every discourse confess in one voice that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God most gracious. See what His grace has done. What only His grace could have done. It has brought us back to God. Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

Advent Homily: Born a King (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"Behold, a King shall reign in righteousness...and the work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness [shall be] quietness and security forever." Is. 32:1, 17

The child in the manger is a memorable and adorable emblem of Christmastide and time, but we must not lose the substance of a greater image. The Christian Faith is fundamentally monarchical in its vision, and the child in the manger is our king. He is a special king, of course. He has condescended to His people in ways that are unthinkable, submitting to every limitation we have, taking upon is trinitarian Person the burden and fragility of flesh. A unique tale indeed: the prince became a pauper so that all paupers might become "princes [ruling] in judgment" (vs. 1). Our king is no ordinary king.

Even so, He is still a king. Much more than a king, but no less than one either. You owe Him your allegiance and life, a life He bought and paid for with His own life and blood. The blood is a mystery, but the allegiance is an offense. In our highly fragmented, postmodern, democratic West, where every man and woman is a king and kingdom unto and locked up into themselves, dutiful allegiance to another (especially as authoritarian a figure as a king!) is anathema. The whole thing reeks of hegemonic oppression or discursive tyranny of panoptic meta-narratives or some other nonsense bloated on non-words. We don't like kings because we are all anarchists at heart, regicidal maniacs in our very being.

The proof of our anarchy is in the pudding of Calvary. When the King of kings made Himself a man, we found Him amusing for a while but did not hesitate to slaughter Him when it was convenient for us. Alas, it would be our undoing, for His death led to His resurrection, which in turn legitimized His throne forever, a throne of grace and seat of mercy, pouring forth love like the sun does its shining. It was truly a beautiful defeat on our part, and if you embrace that defeat, swearing fealty to the once and future and forever King, then you shall be a partaker of His Kingdom, a Kingdom of love and joy and dance and song. Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

The Evils of Freedom (as explained by an original orthodox rebel)

"The earth is also defiled under the inhabitants thereof, because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinances, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore, the curse has devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate." Is. 24:5-6

"Rules are made to be broken," or so goes the cliche. It is inaccurate, of course. For starters, no one actually believes it. What we actually believe is that the rules of others are meant to be broken, but you'd better not touch mine! We all have our private codifications that are untouchable, unquestionable, and binding for everyone. Thus, we are all hypocrites in our rebellions, for we are only rebels to others. No one is a rebel to themselves.

This hypocrisy is a particular mark of our own age. Every day and in every way we are encouraged further towards some vague notion of freedom: freedom to express ourselves, to find ourselves, to be ourselves and be true to ourselves. The result is that there is freedom of expression but no freedom of correction. You may express yourself as you please, but no one has the right to suggest that your expression (and your "self'") may be unwholesome or even destructive to you and others. Such suggestions are oppressive, mean-spirited, and the way of the bigot, or so we are told by those who are apparently free to correct us.

Unfortunately, when qualifications are made, the hypocrisy only gets worse, viz., becomes confused and confusing. "You may do as you please as long as you don't hurt anyone." If I may do as I please, then why can I not hurt anyone? Will you now plead for absolutist morality to bolster your relativism, like flying buttresses for a fortress of air? The whole thing is ridiculous because it is groundless by its own logic. If I am free (and encouraged!) to be myself, and "my self" just happens to be a violent monstrosity (or simply has a proclivity for deception and manipulation or any other less spectacular cruelty), then who are you to limit my freedom with your narrow-minded notions of social contract? Am I free or not free? Or am I free in one way but not in another? Which? Why? How? Exceptions can prove a rule, but in this case exceptions only complicate the rule into oblivion. It is no wonder that common folk (being fed their daily indoctrination of freedom through their iPods, streamed videos, and game systems) don't really think on these things: a moment's scrutiny would send the whole house of cards tumbling into the wind.

At this point, some of my readers may be annoyed with me. "Look, we don't know why we draw the line here and not there, okay? Are we not free to draw lines as we please? And is it so bad that we are more tolerant of someone's fashion sense than their murdering someone? It's just common sense." It is a fair frustration to have, and like any sane person I don't want to be a bother, except with things that are bothersome. And here is what I see as bothersome: the so-called "freedom" that is the foundation for all of this hypocrisy and confusion. We have an unhealthy love of freedom. We have poisoned our own well, and what once may have been a virtue is now most certainly a vice.

If you think this is about politics (about candidate "X" or legislation "Y"), it's not. This is a moral issue, not a political one. Politically, you may be a liberal or conservative or points in between. Morally, however, we are all libertines. We all inherently distrust rules and authority and the order they bring. We instinctively consider them to be oppressive and suffocating, and consequently the one and only desire is to be as free as possible. But it is a destructive desire, for this one, radical reason: order is the only grounds for all good things, including freedom.

That is "common sense," for those of you who are flabbergasted at the moment, so allow me to repeat myself: there is nothing good without order. There is no freedom without laws (like "the right to bear arms") to keep you safe from tyrants and robbers alike. There is no possibility of peace without the confines of civilization and all its "oppressive" accoutrements: a police force, traffic laws, court systems, and common civility and custom. There is not even the possibility of fun, for without rules (hard, binding rules) there is no game, not even Calvinball. And if you think you can disprove all of this, then you have already failed, for there is no argumentation at all without the cold bigotry of the laws of logic.

All of our modern ruin (from social decadence and political corruption to school shootings and abortion on demand) can be traced to a confusion of terms. We equate "order" for tyranny and then mistake anarchy for "freedom". Our slobbering lover-affair with limitlessness has taken its toll (and many lives). We have forgotten old wisdom, the wisdom of balance and moderation, of the simple notion of the "point between extremes"; for order, truly beneficent and wholesome order, is the point between extremes, the extremes of tyranny and anarchy. The extremes of law gone mad and freedom gone mad. It is a truth as old as Plato, as old as the Bible: when the good king rules, all is well; when the bad king rules, or when no man rules, the city of oppression will fall, and the city of confusion will break down. Then all joy will be darkened, and the mirth of the land will be gone (Is. 24:10-11). Peace and prosperity is found in order alone, in the beauty, the κοσμος, of a thing rightly put together, for only when every bone has found its socket can the whole man stand.

We must not be deceived: democracy is not divine. God is not a democrat, and although Christianity (and God) values every individual person as a unique creation, it cannot be called a democratic institution. If it is anything, it is monarchical, in service to the King and Lord of Heaven and Earth. It still believes in freedom, but as a means and not an end. Freedom is to be the road to a greater glory: telling the story of God and living in His righteousness, for the Christian does not live for themselves but for their Beloved Belover.

It is love that is the key, for love is the foundational principle for true beneficent order. For love of the people, the king rules rightly. For the love of existence, God made all things. For the love of our "selves," He submitted Himself to the limitations of flesh and blood and the political claptrap of men, because God is not a democrat. He is a lover. He is Love, and from His Love springs the order of all things, and without His Love there is no order. No freedom. No peace. No-thing, except the dark with its weeping and gnashing of teeth, for in the darkness outside the kingdom there is only the wasteland, where all hope is abandoned, and all joy and mirth fade forever away into puffs of smoke and ash.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012