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

Homily 47: For the Love of God (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"I have formed this people for Myself; they shall show forth my praise." Is. 43:21

The universe dances for the love of God, and by the love of God, for by the love of God were all things created, flying forth from the bounteous, rapturous joy of His Being like light from the sun, like sparks from the furnace, like foam from the sea. We were built from love and for love: from the love of God most glorious so that we may love God most glorious and all His glorious creatures. This is the true way of worship: not in words or song or dance but love, love that is not less than and yet is greater than all expression. True, our halting metaphors are ever-inadequate to pronounce our great purpose, yet we cannot help ourselves. We must sing, we must say, we must do, for the aching desire will not leave us be. Our bones burn until we prophesy the love of God to us, to all, to every one and thing.

Herein is love: not that we created ourselves, but that God created us, and recreated us. He is in the old things and the new things, and newer and newer things still, renewed in deeper and starker shades of glory and grace. There is no bottom to Him, and yet there is no bottom without Him. The dark is endless, the void deep where His love is not, where all things are not. Outside of His love is No-thing, and those who turn to its noths will feel the burn of endless exile, rejection by and of the summit of all light and desire. Who are we to neglect so great a salvation?  If we would be perfect as God is perfect, holy as He is holy, then we should abide by the summation of his commandments and law: love God, and necessarily love others (Matt. 22:37-40; Gal. 5:14).

But we are evil creatures indeed, for no one seeks after holiness, after righteousness, after God. No one seeks the way of worship, no not one. We have all of us turned astray, to our own way. Falling deeper and deeper into the abyss of our own isolation, our terrible loneliness, hard-won by our own spite and hell-born ignorance. God above, most brilliant and profoundest Being of the Deep Light, cleave our minds with Your truth, our selves with Your Selves. Strike us with Your love, your wild and reckless love; like a flash and crash of lightning against a dead tree, make your mark against our bark and spark the fire that burns towards Heaven once again. Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

The Beyonder (as explained by an orthodox rebel)

"To whom then will ye liken God? Or what likeness will ye compare unto Him? [...] 'To whom then will ye liken Me, or [to whom] shall I be equal?' saith the Holy One." Is. 40:18, 25

One of the main themes of Isaiah is God's war on hubris. A necessary correlation from that is the absolute incomparableness of God. Try as we might, and much to our chagrin, God is fundamentally (on principle) and essentially (in His being) beyond our categories. I say "beyond" rather than "outside" because the categories that we do have (as gathered by reason and received by revelation) can create an approximation to God, so that He is knowable to us. It is, however, only an approximation, and our knowledge, as always, is incomplete (I Cor. 13:8-9). True, yet incomplete. We will never get to the bottom of God, and all of our endless metaphors will never exhaust Him, never completely capture the fullness of His being. Thus, He is the "Holy One," i.e., the separate one who is absolutely, categorically different from us.

There is no worse hubris then that which assumes it has God figured out. Whether it is the atheist who figures out that God has no existence, or the believer who figures out that God has endorsed their personal preferences, the foundation is the same: God has become reducible to our finite categorizes. As I've said elsewhere, one of God's favorite pastimes is smashing all confident and comfortable assumptions about Him that did not come from Him. But there is another principle that we must realize here, and that is this: hubris is the dead thing, while humility is the living thing.

Hubris stagnates and rots because it has grown too big (or rather, its universe has grown too small) and it has nowhere left to go. Humility, however, recognizes and accepts its smallness, and thus it has nothing but room to grow; not itself, but its universe, and that is the key. It is not at all about us becoming bigger, but about God becoming bigger than our wildest dreams. God is not a philosophy that we figure out eventually; rather, He is the wild yet good adventure (a "comedy," as we used to call it) that we explore and enjoy forever. But hubris cannot enjoy and explore forever. It has nothing left to explore, and thus nothing left to enjoy. It has discovered all variants, understood and classified all unknowables, and dispelled all mysteries and surprises. It has nothing left but its own overbloated self in its own overbloated world, nothing more than a bubble waiting to be popped.

Rest assured, God will pop them all. He will implode all galaxies and shatter all vanities that have made no room for Him, piercing them through with shafts of Light and Truth. His Truth, the Truth about Himself, Truth unfathomable and uncontainable and inescapable. We may balk at this if we wish, but I far better fate (and life) awaits those who find good courage and take strong rest in the reality that God is greater, more loving, and more good than they could ever conceive.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

The Desolating Law (The Gospel According to Isaiah, Part 2)

"Then said I, 'Woe is me! For I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips and dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips! For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.'" Is. 6:5

Herein is the meaning behind those mysterious phrases about how "the letter kills" and works "the ministry of death" (II Cor. 3:6-7). When we catch sight of the Law, of God's holy standard, which is the substance of His quality and character, there can be no other response but despair and desolation. That standard is not simply beyond us; it is completely outside of our categories. We could not even approach such a venture, and all of our tools and plans fall from our hands as useless things. The perfections of God shatter all of our vanities and unravel all of our tightly woven self-delusions, bringing us face to face with the truth: Who then can be saved? There are none righteous. No, not one. There are none that understand. There are none who seek after God. We have all gone astray and become unprofitable. There is none that does good. No, not one. Our end is everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His might, and we will cry to the mountains and rocks, "Fall on us! And hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne!" (Luke 18:26; Rom. 3:10-12; II Thess. 1:9; Rev. 6:16).

If you would find salvation, then there is no way past this dark night of the soul. The horror of great darkness must fall upon you, for your confidences are your failures, and your strengths are your weaknesses. The foundations must be destroyed if new ones are to be laid, and is not God's word "like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces" (Jer. 23:29) and "a sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit" (Heb. 4:12)? Is not the Word Himself like a great stone, and "whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken, and on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder" (Matt. 21:42-44)? So you see, destruction and desolation are tied up into the nature of salvation, for we are not in need of rehabilitation but a revolution, a great upheaval of our being, uprooting and unknotting the fabric of our corrupt constitutions so that they made be made new. In short, when we catch sight of the heavenly vision, we are undone. We must be undone, for there can be no beginning of the new if there is not first an end to the old (II Cor. 5:17).

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

 

The Extremist (The Six Shades of Sin, Part II)

"Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning [so] that they may pursue strong drink; [who] continue until night, till wine inflames them! [...] they regard not the work of the Lord, neither consider the operation of His hands." Is. 5:11-12

Immoderation has always been misunderstood mainly because moderation is misunderstood. Moderation is often associated with a puritanical sense of abstinence, which it was never meant to be. It was never meant to be about abstinence but balance. This is a fact as old as human thought: the virtuous life is the point between extremes. For example, courage is not an extreme passion or pursuit but rather a moderate one. Cowardice and recklessness are the extremes, and thus they are the vices. Love is moderate; lust and apathy are the extremes. In short, moderation is not the life of a dullard or bore. On the contrary, it is the adventurous life, a perilous and precarious walk on the edge of a knife, the maintaining of a precious balance between two equal yet opposite points of mania. Such an endeavor calls forth the best from us, for as Chesterton put it, "There is an infinity of angles by which one falls but only one by which one stands." Any fool or weakling can go mad; it is easy to be insane, to be extreme. Sanity is the true struggle and spectacle. Vice can only be a sputter; virtue alone can be a song.

That virtue requires real struggle and adventure is the thought behind the ancient notion that evil was not only fundamentally wicked but also fundamentally dull. It takes the easy way out, settling for a lesser post. Much to the chagrin of popular perception, the evil life is ultimately lackluster because it is a stunted life. It always leaves something out. Rather than maintaining the healthy and powerful balance between caution and action (which we call courage), they succumb to either one extreme or the other, leading either the sedentary life of endless caution or the chaotic life of endless action. Likewise, rather than maintaining the healthy and joyous balance between restraint and pleasure (which we call love), they grow weary of the effort and slide into either joyless apathy or joyless lechery. In either case, they do not have love.

The immoderate life, the joyless, dull, inconsequential life, stems from one source: "they regard not the work of the Lord." Like all sin and all its insanity, the immoderate life is the life that disregards God. Is this any wonder? God is the supreme picture of sanity, of balance, of rigorous and living order that knows no extremity and therefore knows no ennui. In His trinitarian dance, we see His balance: Father begetting, Son creating, Spirit proceeding. Give and take, surrender and acceptance, obedience and love without confusion or division, nor dominion or neglect. The balance is perfect, the dance is tight, and thus the Being is One. Likewise in the Incarnation, we see the same balance: neither humanity dissolved into deity nor deity subsumed into humanity, but rather both gloriously preserved in hypostatic union, neither nature lacking or dominating. Both are maintained at the absolute fever-pitch of their intensity, and the God-man is One. God is the Great Sanity against all of our myriad madness. Both in His character and His actions, He proves how consistently we fall short of the glory of His moderation.

When God's people were not His people and did not know Him, He gave them an identity through a religion; but when that religion turned into dead formalism and meaningless rite, He broke their religion (Is. 1:10-15) and spoiled their identity (Is. 5:1-7). When Messiah came, He continually frustrated and bewildered both His enemies and His friends, for they could only conceive of Him as either this or that when He was both this and that. He was both conqueror and conquered, the breaker and the healer, the judge and the victim, the poor and the king, He who was dead and yet lives. The sanity of God frustrates our every plan, for our world is a ship of fools and the lunatics run the asylum. Sanity is only insanity to the insane, and moderation is only a threat to the extremist.

Even today God's holy sanity bears witness against us. We who are caught up in the seemingly endless euroclydon of American Christianity often find ourselves tossed about with wave upon wave of doctrines or fads or movements or agendas or politics or some other unholy alliance between the Christian Faith and a fleeting element of American culture. We hear the siren calls every day as we walk a hairline between an array of Scylla's and Charybdis's. To remain moderate in such an environment is to live a life on the edge, but it is on the edge where we find God, and make no mistake: it is God who we must desire if we are to live moderately. It cannot be out of duty or drudgery but out of love, love for God and His Christ, for all that they are and all they have done and are doing and will do. God must be the highest, our all in all, with every thought or plan or scheme or desire or inkling or good intention made captive to the glory and supremacy of His sweet moderation. That is what it means to live moderately: not to wallow in prudery, but to every day, bit-by-bit and step-by-step, dance the dance of God, where all things find their place, and all of life is consumed into the holy harmony of His fullness.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

In Christ Alone (practical Christianity as explained by an orthodox rebel)

"For Christ also has suffered once for sins, that just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but quickened by the Spirit...[and He] has gone into Heaven, and is at the right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers being made subject to Him. [...] For inasmuch then as Christ has suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind, for he that has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, that he should no longer live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God." I Peter 3:18, 22; 4:1-2

Peter laid down the precedent that we should be different because we are different (1:15, 23). He then unpacks that precedent, explaining what is our purpose and identity (2:9, 15-16). He then gives some practical examples of being different, relevant both to his time and (in many ways) ours (3:1-9). Now he comes to the end of the matter, and that ending is about the beginning, i.e., the foundation for the precedent that he began with. We have seen that we are different as well as what that difference looks like, but the question remains: on what grounds are we different? Granted that we have been changed into new creatures and thus should act accordingly, by what right, power, or authority have when been made new so that we might live new? The answer that Peter gives is the Gospel.

Christ died and rose again "that He might bring us back to God" (3:18), and since He has brought us back to the One who is holy, so we ought to and can be holy as He is holy. Thus, the Christian's one foundation is Jesus Christ the Lord, not just in matters of justification but also in sanctification and glorification. In truth, the whole of salvation belongs to Christ, and none belongs to us. This is an essential truth that we lose constantly, for how often, day-by-day, do we attempt to live holy lives in our own strength and power? And how often do we inevitably fail and wallow in the mire of self-pity? We would be free and much happier if we would understand and embrace the truth that the Christian has neither the right nor the power to be holy on his or her own.

Neither the right, because we have done and could have done nothing to save ourselves. All of our best intentions and best-laid plans crumble into ruin before the awesome ledger of God's perfection. Holiness could not be purchased by us, for all of our currency is filthy rags. Not only are we broken cisterns, but all of our wells have run dry. We will never earn holiness, but rather we must accept it as a gift from the one who has it, viz., Christ, who has become our righteousness (II Cor. 5:21). Thus, we have no right to glory except in Him (I Cor. 1:30-31). Nor the power, because we have neither the strength nor the will to be holy, for it is a divine attribute, and we are mortal, made of dust. Only a holy quickening (Eph. 2:4-8) could make us fit to live the life of God (Rom. 8:10-17; Gal. 2:20).

So you see, though we are different and ought to live differently, neither the right nor the power to be different was ever ours. It has been bought with a price, therefore we glorify God, who has made us fit to be partakers of His difference, and that is the key. The difference that we are and that we live and can live in Christ does not originate in us but in God, for He alone is holy. He alone is not like us. He alone is God. And He alone has raised us to walk in newness of life, to sit together in heavenly places with Christ Jesus, to be holy as He is holy. So let the final word of those who are holy be this: I will not boast in anything---no gifts, no power, no wisdom; but I will boast in Jesus Christ, His death and resurrection. We have gained from His reward, and by His stripes, we are different. Now and forever. Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

Not Like Us (a Greek exposition by an orthodox rebel)

"Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen." I Tim. 1 (vs. 17)

This praise of God gives flesh and bones to the concept of His holiness and unpacks the notion that holiness means "other than," i.e., that God is "holy" means that he is not like us. Because God's "otherness" sounds too abstract, verses like this one in Timothy help make it concrete. God is described three different ways in this verse, each one applying not simply a mere attribute to Him but rather an attribute that exemplifies exactly how not like us God is.

Eternal

The Greek word is "aphtharto," which means "incorruptible" or "impossible to decay". Our God does not fade away or bleed out or wash out. His substance is not lessened by the passing of time nor damaged by any action of His or ours. He does not burn out like a star nor collapse in like an abandoned building, and above all He does not die. Death has no hold on Him at all, which is the complete opposite of us. We fade. We dry out and burn out. We decay; with every breath we are decaying. Our energies are burning up and our materials are breaking down. We cannot hold ourselves together at all. We will disperse, and God alone can pull us back together again, because He is not like us. He is incorruptible. He is holy.

Invisible

The Greek word is "aorato," which means "invisible" in the sense that He cannot be seen. God's "invisibility" does not speak to His non-presence but rather to our inability to see Him. He is too big to be seen, and His light inaccessible is too glorious. This is what the ancient creeds meant when they called God "incomprehensible": not that He is gibberish, but that He is beyond our summation. Our sight cannot apprehend His wholeness, because He is too great for us, like the sun at noonday. The wealth of his being and glory of His brightness are treasure troves too vast to be plundered by any hand our mind. We cannot fathom such a thing because we are not like Him. We are comprehensible. We are limited and finite. We are small, and we only know in part. Much foolishness has been done in the name of the "part" that we know, but it serves to speak to our smallness, to our comprehensibility. We are each but a single word spoken from the mouth of God: unique, but singular, with limits and edges known to God alone, because He is not like us. He alone is incomprehensible. He is invisible. He is holy.

Only Wise God

The Greek phrase is "mono sopho Theo," which means that God alone is wise. In Him only is all truth and knowledge and wisdom. All reason and logic and every epistemological certitude find their ground in Him alone. Outside of Him there is only nonsense and insanity. Outside of Him there is only wailing and gnashing of teeth. In Him alone is all understanding and comprehension. Without Him, without his "logos" and "cosmos," there is only gibberish and disarray. We do not understand this, because we do not have understanding. As said before, we know in part: our understanding is incomplete; our knowledge is seen through a glass darkly. We cannot ascertain like God can ascertain. We cannot reason like God can reason. We cannot have thoughts like He has thoughts, for His thoughts are past finding out. He is not like us. He alone is wise. He is holy.

One final thought: the Textus Receptus alone contains the "sopho" in "mono sopho Theo" (thus, "only wise God" appears in KJV, NKJV, and KJ21). All modern Greek versions, however, simply have "mono Theo," i.e., the only God (as in NIV and ESV). This difference is unfortunate, as there is much to say about God being the "only wise"; but the difference is also apt because "mono Theo" sums up the entire point: God alone is God. There is none like Him. There is no other God beside Him. We are not like Him. We are not God. That is the point. That is the truth. Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

Homily 37: Love and Holiness (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"And may the Lord make you to increase and abound in love...to the end that He may establish your hearts unblamable in holiness...." I Thess. 3 (vs. 12-13)

There is a sacred bond and intimate connection that love has with holiness, with the otherness of God, for love is not a human invention. It does not even do it justice to call it a discovery. It is more like a revolution. Love falls upon humanity like a clap of thunder or erupts from amidst it with volcanic violence. In blatant opposition to the dark instincts of survival and domination that to this day drive the bestial side of mankind, there comes a voice and notion piercing through, wholly alien and yet wholly welcome, a passion that in its finest and truest manifestations places the self on the lowest rung and places another on the highest in an act that seems nigh to worship. Indeed, it inspires worship, whether in ceremony or in song; for mankind's instinct to survive has always been natural, but love has always been divine.

God is love, not in an accidental sense of His actions but in an essential sense of His existence. Love is His very being, which is to say that it is His holiness, the very quality of His otherness that makes Him separate and unique and above us. For us, love is lovely but seemingly foreign to our natures, a transplanted essence from other realms; but God knows no such division in Himself. His persons dance so fully in love's purest reality and expression that we cannot help but call them one, for they are one. Love pulls together perfectly (Col. 3:14), binding all together in a harmonious whole by its continuous deference to another, to the beloved. Its deference is its unity: therein is the paradox and the beauty. Sin is separation (Matt. 7:23, 25:41) and isolation of the self (Is. 14:13-14): therein lies the terror and the reason for why holiness can never know sin, for sin cannot abide its communion. To be freed from sin, to be holy, is to be one with Love: not our love, our vapid, shallow, half-halting indifference masquerading as tolerance; but love fierce and faithful and everlasting. The love of God and the God who is love. Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

God is not a Democrat (an observation by an orthodox rebel)

"Love is not an attribute of God, it is God; whatever God is, love is. If your concept of love does not agree with justice, judgment, purity, and holiness, then your idea of love is wrong. It is not love you conceive of in your mind, but some vague infinite foolishness, all tears and softness and of infinite weakness." -Oswald Chambers

"Love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds. Where loveliness is incomplete, and love cannot love its fill of loving, it spends itself to make more lovely, that it may love more.... Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love's kind, must be destroyed. And our God is a consuming fire." -George MacDonald

Our society's long-standing shallow view of tolerance has produced a strong internal notion to accept ourselves and others "just the way we are". This is not necessarily a bad thing. Outer appearances should in no way be a litmus test for a person's dignity and value as a human being, and ofttimes what certain callous persons refer to as "flaws" in others are merely quirks that serve as facets to a person's unique and individual essence. Christian orthodoxy sets a standard for human worth that is simpler and yet higher than such paltry things as looks, education, status, class, race, gender, or even behavior. That standard is the imago dei, which we all meet simply by being born. It is God who determines are value, and no one else.

That being said, God's standard and our toleration are both double-edged swords. The latter is so, because it would have us believe that "who we are" (or who we make ourselves to be) is as good as it will get for us, and the idea that we should "love ourselves" means that we should just be satisfied with what we get. The former, however, knows no such satisfaction. Who we are is valuable, but who we are is not the end. We are what we are, but we are not what we ought. For there is another doctrine of Christian orthodoxy called the Fall, and if it says anything at all, it says that we are not who we ought to be. Herein lies the danger of our self-satisfaction: to be content with a categorically valuable and yet lesser state of being when there is a higher one available to us; and God is saying, "Friend, go up higher."

Judging people by our shallow personal standards is wrong, but not because people are ultimately "fine the way they are". Rather, it is wrong because (as stated before) we are not the judge of human value: God is. We "judge not" because we are not the judge; but (much to the chagrin of our postmodern society) there is a judge, and though He loves us for who we are (i.e., the imago dei) He also loves what we ought to be. There is an excellence of existence for which we were created for, an excellence that is nothing short of God Himself, for it is His glory that we have fallen short of (Rom. 3:23).

A democracy cannot stand excellence, and it is an unfortunate element of modern society (which worships at the altar of democracy) that we would rather view excellence with suspicion and tear it down to our level than aspire and try to ascend to its. We sense that there is something intrinsically undemocratic about glory, about perfection, about holiness; but unfortunately for us, God is not a democrat. He is a King and a Father, and He will see His children be like Him. Not for His sake, but for ours, so that we may finally know the infinite satisfaction in being what we ought, of being like Him by knowing Him fully and absolutely and intimately forever and ever. That is life more abundant, and it is available to everyone born in the imago dei. God's hand is stretched down towards us all. It is a human hand, riven and strong; and know this: it is only our self-centered, democratically fueled sentiments that claim no higher standard than their own private one, it is only our shallow toleration of our self, that will make us spit at the grace of God.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

Homily Magnus: On the High Calling (as proclaimed by an orthodox rebel)

"This is the law of the house: Upon the top of the mountain, the whole limit thereof round about shall be most holy. Behold, this is the law of the house." Eze. 43:12

Ezekiel is met by an angel who's holding a very large ruler (Eze. 40:1-3). This angel takes Ezekiel through a vision of the temple and spends three whole chapters measuring it down to the last detail (Eze. 40-42). Then God's presence appears in the temple, promising to return in like manner to His people if they will turn from their sinful ways (Eze. 43:5-9). He then lays down this one law of the temple: since it is the abode of God, every single inch of it is "most holy," a holiness beyond holy, for God is most holy, being the Most High God.

Now, holiness does not merely mean that someone or something is "nice" or even moral. The word itself, of course, means "sanctified" or "separated," but what that means is lost on us today. To understand it better, a modern equivalent for "holy" would be "different" or "other". When someone or thing is "holy," it is other than you. Its "niceness" is not your niceness. Its morality is not your morality. It is beyond you, completely and absolutely other. Thus, when we say that God is holy, we are actually saying that simple yet profound truth that God is not like us. His "niceness" is not how we view niceness (Is. 55:8-9), and His idea of what is moral is worlds beyond ours (Is. 64:6), because God is worlds beyond us. He is farther than we can imagine, for He is not just holy: He is "holy, holy, holy".

The truly startling thing, however, is this: the God who is absolutely beyond us has come and dwelt with us. "I will dwell in the midst of them forever" (Eze. 43:9b), says the Most High God. The Most High has brought Himself low, and the place wherein He dwells is "most holy". That is no small thing, and yet we treat it like a small thing. For all the gushing sentimentalism that people laud upon God these days, He is still a small God. He is not the God who is "holy, holy, holy," whose presence instantaneously makes the surrounding area "holy ground" (Ex. 3:4-5). Our church houses are too stuffed full of our own flippancy to make room for such a God.

But that is not even the half of it; for you see, God does not dwell in temples made with men's hands. At least not anymore. He has found a new dwelling place, and that is within each of us (I Cor. 6:19). We have been made the house of God, and the law of that house is one: every square inch of it, body and mind and soul, shall be "most holy". This is the goal which we press towards (Phil. 3:14): not lavish and successful ministries, and not even saved souls. Our goal, our mark, our high calling is the otherness, the holiness of God Himself. This is the truth of the Old Testament (Lev. 19:2, 20:7) and the New (I Peter 1:15-16). Even Jesus set the same standard (Matt. 5:48). God has not saved us to be "good' people by some convenient standard of our own. He has saved us to sanctify a people unto Himself, to make us holy, to make us other, to make us like Him. God is the goal and nothing less.

This is no cause for pride. God does not say that we are holy. Rather, He calls us to be holy. It is a process, a "working out," and ultimately an act of God (Phil. 2:12-13), the God who is intimately with us. The point here is that our focus is entirely skewed. We obsess over irrelevancies or secondary issues: with social agendas and Bible translations and worship styles, with ministry stats and conferences and even evangelism. We do not realize that unless God and His holiness are our goal, all of our agendas and argument, our conferences and creeds and converts, all of our herculean activity is in vain, just as an arch with no keystone is in vain. Until God is the center, all is wood and hay and stubble, fit for the fire. We must set our affections aright, acknowledging with awe and humility the great weight of glory to which we have been called. That glory is not in amiability or moralism or political activism, but in becoming as holy, as different, as other, and yes, even as scorned as Christ was. For we are not of this world, but of God. Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

Homily 22: Your Little Foothill (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"And they took offense at Him." Matthew 13:57a

Have you ever seriously considered Jesus' rejection by His hometown? Those who supposedly knew Him the best ("Is this not the carpenter's son?" vs. 55) did not know Him at all ("because of their unbelief," vs. 58). They had a preconceived and well entrenched conception of Jesus, and they had grown quite familiar with their conception. Thus, when the real deal came thundering into their lives, they were "astonished" (vs. 54) and offended. How dare Jesus step outside of our conception of Him! How dare He defy our notions and self-made expectations! How dare He indeed.

There is a saying that "absence makes the heart grow fonder," the inverse implication being that familiarity makes the heart grow stale. That is not true in regard to God. If our heart is growing stale, it is not because we have grown too familiar with Him. Rather, it is because we have grown too familiar with what is not Him, with some cheap imitation and concocted notion. Christ and the scriptures reveal God to be the fountainhead of infinite Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, the summation of all perfection, the source and aim of all desire, and the author of salvation. No heart can ever grow stale by going deeper and deeper into His presence. Staleness doesn't come because we know God too well, but because we have grown comfortable with what is either not Him or less than Him. In this way, we indeed fall short of the glory of God.

The real danger, however, is manifested in Jesus' hometown crowd. It is one thing to grow familiar with a false or incomplete image of God. It is quite another thing to grow fond of that image, so fond that when the real God comes bursting through your life and upsets your misconceptions you become offended by Him. How dare God not be what I want Him to be! This is the same trap that the Pharisees fell into. They stood in the tension between the God they wanted and the God who is. Blinded by their own conceptions, they rejected the God who is. When unbelievers do this, they damn their souls. When believers do this, they stunt their sanctification. They come to a certain spot in their relationship to God and say, "There can't possibly be anything higher than this," and so they take the foothills over the summit, an unfortunate state of affairs that only a God-sent avalanche can cure. Are you small enough in your own eyes to see God for the mountain that he is, or will He be forever your little foothill?

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011