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

On Gentleness (Homily 59)

We're all labeled.

"...Thy gentleness has made me great." Ps. 18:35b

To speak of God's gentleness is to speak of His understanding. He knows us. He knows how small and frail we are, how limited and imperfect in our knowledge and abilities. He knows our propensity to fear, and He knows our frustrated desire to be better than what we are. We cannot fool Him. Our weakness is like an open book before Him, like an open wound, and He sees us for the bumbling fools that we are, sees our strutting and posturing for the facades that they are. He sees. He knows. He understands, and on the basis of that understanding He pities us. Not as our betters "pity" us, with a smirk hiding a sneer, but as a father would his children (Ps. 103:13-14): with a smile, and a loving, helping, outstretched hand.

God handles with care.

It is the gentleness of God that makes us great. It is by His mercies that we are not consumed. Where is boasting? It is removed. Where is pride? It has been swallowed up in love. What can we say to these things, for who is a god like this? Many gods have understood who we are and what we're made of, but they have not responded with gentleness, nor with pity, save the "pity" of the smirk-painted sneer. Our God never smirks or sneers. He forgives. He heals. He upholds by His right hand. He reaches out to lift up, to redeem our souls out of hell, to show us the paths of life (Ps. 16:10-11). We have deserved none of this, earned none of this. How could we? We are weak and frail, but God responds to our weakness with gentleness, breathing boundless grace and mercy through our lifelessness like a soft breeze sends dead leaves dancing across the ground. And because we are always weak, God is always gracious. Therefore, we only have grounds for joy, for we are caught up in a whirl of gentleness, of God's gentleness making us greater than we ever were before. Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

On Goodness (Homily 58)

"...men of the world who have their portion in this life, and whose belly You fill with Your hidden treasure. They are full of children and leave their substance to them. As for me, I will behold Your face in righteousness. I will be satisfied, when I awake, with Your likeness." Ps. 17:14-15

Scandalous!

Every good thing come from God (James 1:17), and He gives good things even to those who do not love Him (Matt. 5:44-45). He gives them passions to pursue and talents to realize those passions. He gives them minds to think and reason to arrive (in part) at the truth. He gives them hearts to love and the ability to find love, to see and appreciate beauty and desire its presence, to long for and attempt to deliver goodness to others. He gives them strength to accomplish things as well as various comforts to succor their weaknesses. He gives rain for their harvests and opportunities for their enterprises. He delivers their enemies into their hands and delivers them from their enemies. He gives them peaceful sleep and happy days, and all this without asking. It is and has been scandalous how good God is to those who do not love Him (Job 21:7-13; Ps. 73:2-5; Jer. 12:1-2). But there is one good thing He does not give them, for they do not, will not ask for it: Himself.

"I am restless for You."

God gives all good things because He is all good things. They find their source and being in Him and are meant to draw us to Him (Rom. 2:4) like rivers flowing to the ocean. The goodness of God belongs to all (Acts 14:17), but God Himself belongs only to His people, His children, His beloved and bride, to those who are satisfied with Him alone. One can never be satisfied with the goodness of God alone. You will always want more, reducing God to a blessing machine for your own avarice. But to have God Himself, to seek God and be found by God, is to find the Good behind the goodness and the goodness thrown in. Then His goodness is no longer a blessing but a bonus, for God is the blessing, the satisfaction of our souls (Ps. 42:1-2) when we taste and see that He is good (Ps. 34:8). Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

All Shall Be Well (Homily 57)

"My heart is glad and my spirit rejoices. My flesh also shall rest in hope, for You will not leave my soul in hell.... You will show me the path of life...." Ps. 16:9-11

The dark is bitter so that the light may be sweeter. For the child of God, all things are redeemed: all failures and faults, all things meant for evil, all festering wounds and burning humiliations. God is turning them into goodness. He will not leave you in hell, though hell you have to go through. Just now the way is bumpy and uncertain, and doubt and despair swarm on you like flies, and fear and anger bubble inside; but though the way is dark, it is moving to a place of light, where all light is lightning because of the dark. This is the inheritance of those who love God because He loved them: we endure the horror and great darkness, for it is not worthy to be compared with the glory that is coming.

You must rest in hope, for all is redemption. All of life is redeemed and is being redeemed, though the process is mysterious and hidden. For now the soil lies silent, but it will blossom, and the barrenness of the past will accentuate the harvest of the future. The stumbles of the past will accentuate the strong steps of the future. This is the meaning of redemption: all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well, not by erasure but by reversal. Not by annulment but by eucatastrophe. The shame shall not be forgotten but instead shall serve to brighten the glory. The faults and failures will not be lost but rather woven into the tapestry, adding pattern to pattern and color to color, emblazoning the whole.

And we shall see it. We shall see the redemption of all things. Of our things. We shall see the rescue and restoration. We shall see our ashes turned to beauty. We rest in this hope, for there is rest in this hope. Let all our troubles be calmed, for though we cannot see it now, they are all wrought with redemption.

-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

Further Up, Further In (Homily 55)

What hath God wrought?

"I have trusted in Thy mercy. My heart shall rejoice in Thy salvation. I will sing unto the Lord, because He has dealt bountifully with me." Ps. 13:5-6

The foundations of the past are hope and strength for today; light and guidance come from what has already been established. "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path" (Ps. 119:105), a word written long before I was born and spoken long before the foundations of the earth were laid. In fact, the Christian life is all about foundations, about seeing them laid thick and solid. It is all about God setting precedent, of watching Him build His case in your life like a man builds a tower, or better yet, a cathedral. Watch each brick be laid and ornamentation carved, and slowly but surely the monstrous edifice takes shape before your eyes, and what was once an amorphous rubble becomes a sublime work of art.

"I support which candidate?"

It is all art with God. All beauty. All true beauty and beautiful truth. It is not about machinery or efficiency. God is not reducible to a system. We are not here to deduce and define some divine algebra. We are not here to "figure it out," not because there is nothing to figure out but because the figure is too great for us, a figure shaped in the Person of God. We do not comprehend Him; we stand in awe, in overwhelming humility and wonder. We stand still and know that He is God and that we will never reach the end of Him. We can never reduce Him to our myriad manias, to our legalistic claptrap or liberal corrosion, to our efforts to explain or obscure Him. Thank God that He is greater than all our rabid reductionism, or innate and insane desire to make everything smaller than us.

God has revealed Himself, not that we may "figure" Him "out," but that we may begin to know Him (John 17:3), not as a principle or some cosmic machinery, but as a person, as a friend would a friend or a lover a lover. To this end He is building His presence into your life, brick by brick, moment by moment, until He is the most real thing you know, the one true thing, the Fact above all other facts. The point of Christian living, of the life of faith, is to know that God is real: vividly, intimately, personally real. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something: an ideology, a gimmick, or another reductionism. They cannot give you God, the reality of God spreading over and through every inch of your life like waves to the sand of the shore.

Nope. Still haven't arrived.

Like a good marriage, God is known over time, not grasped in an instant. You must never fall into the snare that says, "I have arrived" when it comes to your relationship with God, that you have discovered all there is to know about Him and now the adventure is over. That can only lead to boredom and despair (and perhaps an abandoning of God for something more "exciting"). The truth is that we never arrive, even throughout eternity, not because there is nothing to arrive at, but because God is incomprehensible, beyond our full comprehension, which means it will take all eternity to know Him fully, and therein lies hope and peace and joy.

Further up. Further in.

Hope because even if we cannot see far ahead, we can see for miles behind us, and all of God's bountiful goodness and love trumps our doubts. Peace because all things are working together for our good (Rom. 8:28), working towards are knowing of God, until we finally see what life was meant for: all knowing, all intimacy, all a drawing further up and in to divine love. And joy because identity and purpose and meaning are found at last, not by an arbitrary fiat of our own but by the God who created us for Himself. So see your life for the divine art that it is. Look and see God building His presence into your days, becoming more and more real. See all that you've been through, even the hard and horrible (II Cor. 4:16-18), as the foundations of a yet greater structure, one that will stretch on into eternity, deeper and deeper into the heart of God.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

"...they are weak, but He is strong...." (Homily 54)

You just gotta beliEEEEEve!

"Oh Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Thy name.... Out of the mouths of babies and infants you have ordained strength.... What is man that You are mindful of him? [...] You have crowned him with glory and honor, [and] have made him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands.... How excellent is Thy name in all the earth!" Ps. 8:1-9

"God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things to confound the mighty, and the base and despised things that are not to bring to nothing the things that are, so that no flesh should glory in His presence." I Cor. 1:27-29

We want to be strong. We want to be better than others, or at least better than ourselves. We want our projects to succeed and our plans to bear fruit. We want our dreams to be realized, and we hope we have the skill and wit and tenacity to see them through. We want to be noticed and appreciated, to be seen as worthy and valuable, to be know as someone who brings something to the table. We hope that we have the charm and looks and abilities necessary to grab and hold someone's, anyone's attention. We want to know that we can do it. We want to know that we are loved and have secured that love.

"Hello! I am your problems."

We fear weakness. We fear failure. We fear being worthless and of no consequence, but that is often how we feel. Projects and plans and dreams stall or stall-out, becoming insurmount- able, seeming so very, very big and we so very, very small. We are ignored and unnoticed and undervalued. We feel everyone's eyes piercing past us, or worse: piercing into us and seeing all the mess, the flaws, the inconsistencies and hypocrisies. The failures and inabilities. The terrible burden of our innate weakness. We can feel unmade and exposed before others, and we will avoid any place or any person we feel we cannot fool. We will not risk the exposure. We will not risk having to confront ourselves, our small, weak selves.

God confronts us. He knows us. He knows our weakness. He knows that we are dust and fading vapor (Ps. 103:13-16). He knows how the weight of even our fleeting existence can become crushing. He knows our frustrations. He knows our fears. The fear of failure. The fear of weakness. The fear of making mistakes and not being who you were meant to be, not fulfilling all you were made to do, always feeling out of joint like a bone out of socket. He knows all about it, and He has only compassion and pity and sympathy for you. This Great Strength has nothing but merciful, loving kindness to we who are the great weak. He has kindness and purpose, for this Great Strength uses the weak for His great purposes. He calls and justifies and glorifies the doubting and the frail and the fearful and the downright unimpressive (Rom. 8:28-30) while all who are supremely confident in their own impressiveness are left outside (Luke 18:9-14), for this Great Strength summons the sick and not the healthy (Mark 2:16-17) and exalts the weak while crushing the proud through the weak (James 4:6; I Cor. 1:27-29).

The Word became weakness.

We who are weak and fearful and frustrated and self-de- feated and weary, come and find rest (Matt. 11:28-30). We have a great and mighty advocate, for we have a God who has been touched by our infirmities (Heb. 4:14-16). God became a man; not just a man, but a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief (Is. 53:2-4). He felt with His real skin and real soul the agonies of fear and rejection and betrayal and the seeming failure of all His efforts. We have a God who was afraid (Matt. 26:38-39), whose stress created sweat as thick as blood drops (Luke 22:44). We have a God who failed, whose messianic ministry lost all of its followers through offense (John 6:60-61, 66) or fear (Mark 14:50) and ended in ignominy and death. And yet, and yet, it was through those fears and failures and agonies that God triumphed. He triumphed through weakness, not in spite of it. The weakness of God, the strength made perfect in weakness, is still stronger than all the might of darkness and evil and human skill and ability. He has sanctified weakness and made it holy, made it into a means of triumph (II Cor. 12:9-10), made it His favorite tool and weapon and made weak people His favorite heroes, all so we may know that there is no God like this. Amen.

-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 Decadence of God (Homily 51)

"Why do you spend money for that which is not sustenance? Or labor for that which never satisfies? Harken diligently unto Me and eat that which is good and let your soul delight itself in richness." Is. 55:2

"You will show me the paths of life. In Thy presence is fullness of joy; at Thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore." Ps. 16:11

How full is your God? How rich? How vast? How measureless and strong? Every false god is a thin, pale thing, whose pleasures are paltry and whose potency is fading. The real God of the real universe is no limp thing, no phlegmatic amoeba glazing over into apathy and weariness. His stars are bright enough to burn up the sky: the light is relentless and stretches to the uttermost. His goodness is all-consuming: whither shall you flee from it (Ps. 139:7-12)? On earth, it meets you at every corner, at every turn and tilt of your life, interweaving the texture of your existence with the colors of His presence. In Heaven, you find its very home, the fountainhead bursting all boundaries, pulsing with furious joy and love. And in Hell, you find it still, for goodness does not let evil go unanswered, and it will not release until it is paid the uttermost farthing, for love is as strong as the grave (Song 8:6-7).

Ask God for eyes to see His rich love. Ask Him to open the sight of the real eyes of your real heart to see the chariots of His fire encircling you, the pillars of cloud covering you, the columns of fire guiding you. Ask your Lover-God, for He desires to prove Himself (Mal. 3:10), to show Himself strong (Jer. 33:3), to put another brick in the wall, to fill your life with evidence insurmountable, so that no mouth will be able to gainsay it, not even your own. Ask your Father-God to make you speechless before His love, to strike you silent before the ignorant wrath of the skeptic or doubter, who being in the darkness outside cannot begin to comprehend the light. Let them rage; your joy is beyond words. Beyond categorization and argument. It is neither here nor there but everywhere, in every iota in the book of your life. It is beyond summary, which is all a part of the joy: it will take an eternity to express it, to know it, to trace every thread to its final consummation, for our God is rich. Decadently rich. Full to bursting with glory divine, calling everyone who thirsts to come to His waters (Is. 55:1) and taste and see that He is good (Ps. 34:8). Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

The Failures of Doubting (Homily 50)

"Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God. Behold, all you who kindle a fire, who equip yourselves with burning torches, [and] walk by the light of your fire and the torches you have kindled! This you shall have from my hand: you shall lie down in torment and sorrow." Is. 50:10-11

Control is the very opposite of trust. Do not misunderstand: it is not bad to make plans. Those who trust make plans and act on them. Faith is more than common sense, but it is not less than it. You are free to make plans and move on them, but you must beware to not trust in the plan. That is the key. It is not about your actions but your reliance. If your reliance is on God, then your action is of faith. If your reliance is on your plans (and your ability to fulfill them), then your action is not of faith, and whatever is not of faith is sin (Rom. 14:23). So make your plans and act on them, doubting nothing except your plans and actions.

Control is all about doubt: doubting God and His presence, providence, promises, and power. To trust in our own strengths and wits above all else is the essence of unbelief, and it creates two kinds of people. The first is gripped by an impenetrable pride. They are unshaken in their self-confidence and never think to question themselves. Their end will be anger: anger at others for doubting them, anger at God for being greater than them, and anger at themselves when their plans fail, as they will always fail. The fire of their torches will burn them up.

The second kind of person is gripped by an impenetrable fear. They are always shaken by the ordeal of decision, because they believe it is all on them, and their loneliness becomes a crushing burden of anxiety. The never think to turn to the One who is greater than them, for they do not think their even is anyone greater than them. Their end will be despair, of both their situation and themselves. They see their torches for what they really are: pathetic, paltry lights revealing nothing but shadows and the enormity of the darkness.

In truth, both the prideful and fearful strains touch us all at different times. They often come packaged together because they spring from the same source. Still, different people will manifest one side more readily than the other as well as fall to its consequences more easily. The point is this: trust is a hard game, but it alone can lead to peace; control is an easy game (it is the most natural thing in the world to trust yourself), but it can only lead to anger and despair. Pride and fear cannot sustain themselves; their fires will be the doom of those who lit them. But he who trusts in the Lord shall never be ashamed, for His fire never fails: its light has pierced the deepest darkness, and that darkness could not, nor ever could, overcome it. Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

The Sacrament of Waiting (Homily 49)

"...they shall not be ashamed that wait for Me." Is. 49:23b

Trust is a matter of waiting. Waiting to see what happens. Waiting to see what unfolds. Waiting to see how it all turns out. Waiting to know whether or not the endeavor was successful, or the enterprise was worth it, or the action had its consequences, or the person kept their word. Trust is all a waiting game, a frustrating yet common game, feeling more like a necessary evil than a necessity.

Waiting is not about sitting still or inactivity. On the contrary, waiting is often when we are at our busiest. We fill out applications. We make calls, make connections. Go to this place and that. Get involved in this thing or that. We make assessments, weigh options, keep our eyes open and ears to the ground, and do our research, all while continually puttering about in our daily work and hobbies and habits. Truly, waiting is more than a static thing. You could almost call it an ecstatic thing: we feel ready to explode at any moment.

Reality is always a paradox on some level, and intimately woven into our bustle is waiting. No calls have been returned. No letters (for good or ill) have been received. No significant or special someone has presented themselves. No one rewards or even seems to acknowledge any of your contributions. Therein is the paradox. In the very midst or all our doings, we can only sit, sit, sit, sit, sit. And we do not like it, not one little bit.

Waiting is a frustration for anyone, but for the child of God it need not be a source of despair, for as said earlier waiting is where trust begins. Even after our best efforts to make something happen, there is always the period of silence and uncertainty. Into that void come doubts and fears and the diabolic death spiral that pulls us into ourselves: "What else could I have done? I should have done more! It's all on me!" It is not all on you, and that is what the silence teaches us.

The book of Isaiah is saturated with the promises of God, complete with fantastic proclamations and wild resolutions so unexpected and counter-intuitive that you would think God is mad. But He is not mad. He is the only sanity left, and He is teaching us how to think straight. The times of waiting are for our sanity, viz., they are meant to turn us to God. "This thing is not in my hands. It is too big for me." That is the beginning of sanity and peace.

When the waiting does finally end (as all waiting does), it will be so much sweeter than any instant gratification, for "thou shalt know that I am the Lord" (vs. 23). If things were easy, then God would be as unreal as vapor. It is in the trying that He is made real. In the birth pangs, He is enfleshed. If we would have a real God in our lives, then we must let the waiting play itself out. We must go about our business in hopeful expectation of God's goodness. That is how we live. That is how we trust. That is how we taste and see that the Lord is good. Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

Homily 46: Now I See (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"I, even I, am the Lord, and besides Me there is no savior. I have declared and have saved, and I have shown, when there was no strange god among you; therefore you are my witnesses...that I am God." Is. 43:11-12

It is good to take stock of what God has done in your life, for His real activity in the midst of your real world is the very foundation of evangelism. We err when we think that evangelism is about delivering some prepared speech or memorized strategy that's composed of various verses, talking points, and arguments. Unless something is real to you, it will reek of insincerity (and if there is one thing our generation is acutely aware of, it is insincerity). No one believes the salesman who does not believe in his own product. That is why even the greasiest of them have to at least feign interest. If their heart is not in it, you will know. Likewise, no one believes the evangelism of someone to whom God is reducible to soundbites (or even feigned interest!). To be a "witness" for God and Christ does not mean taking the party-line out of some dutiful yet empty sense of loyalty. Rather, "that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you" (I John 1:3). The precedent is simple: it is all a matter of reality, not dull responsibility. You bear witness because you have tasted and seen (in some way) that the Lord is good.

That is why it is wise to take stock of God's goodness to you, all of His goodness, both in your life specifically and in believers' lives in general. Ask yourself: How has God manifested His goodness to you in the past week? month? year? (It is easier to find out than you think, for even small things make grand testimony: God is in the details.) What does His incarnation mean to you? What does His w/Word mean to you? The point is that God is in the business of proving Himself, and He never demands what He hasn't already earned. If He declares us to be His "witnesses," then obviously we have witnessed something. Furthermore, whether or not we have witnessed something speaks to the most important question of all: is this whole "God" thing real to you? Do you really believe in who He is? in what He has done? what He is doing? Or are you merely playing at religion? playing at spirituality? playing at mysticism? going to church and doing your duty and spouting the right phrases like a machine? I have news for you: God is not interested in machines but rather flesh and blood people that can bear witness to His actual goodness in space and time. He is looking for those who will be marked by His goodness and thus go tell His story because it has become their story. The Christian life is about God becoming more and more real to you everyday, for He builds His case in His children. Is your life a testament to the reality of God?

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013