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

Homily Magnus: Ends and Means (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"O Lord, Thou art my God. I will exalt Thee, I will praise Thy name, for Thou hast done wonderful things.... For Thou hast made a heap of the city, a ruin of the fortified city...." Is. 25:1-2

In the previous chapter, Isaiah had been going on and on about the desolations of God. Then, without missing a beat, he praises God for the "wonderful things" that He has done, and those "wonderful things" are those desolations. This reasoning would seem mad at best and masochistic at worst if not for the fact that the desolations of God are never about themselves. They are not the temper tantrums of the divine, but rather the purging out of imperfection in His people (Is. 1:25). In short, God's desolations are always leading towards glory; specifically in Isaiah's case, the glory of God's coming kingdom (Is. 24:23), the deliverance of the weak (Is. 25:4), and the death of death (Is. 25:8). These glories are ours as well, for the desolations of the Lord are always working towards greater and greater glory (Rom. 11:25-36).

In light of this, it would seem that the ends do in fact justify the means, but only if those ends so greatly outweigh and outshine those means that the latter fade into insignificance. Such thinking is radical (and surely offensive), but it is also apparent within the New Testament: "For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us" (Rom. 8:18). In view of the "exceeding and eternal weight of glory" that is waiting for us, all of our afflictions are deemed "light" by comparison (II Cor. 4:17). This is shocking language, but it is the language of the Bible. We, whose lives are consistently shaped by tragedy, are told that those tragedies are moving us towards something so magnificent, so unspeakable wonderful, that before it all our tragedies will shrink and shrivel away into the smallness beyond thought. To some, this understandably may seem to be an insensitivity to our condition as humans; for me, I see it as a beautiful hope for our condition.

Yet that hope is even greater than I have stated, and that in two ways. The first is in the nature of that glory, viz., it is "Christ in us, the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27). This glory is not some vague mystical abstraction but a concrete identity. We are to be "conformed into the image" of Christ (Rom. 8:29), who is "the image of the invisible God" (Col. 1:15), and in whom "the fullness of the Godhead" dwell (Col. 2:9). The glory that we are moving towards is the very glory of God Himself. We are moving closer and closer, and deeper and deeper, into a oneness with Him (John 14:20; 17:3, 23), so that "when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is" (I John 3:2). Thus will begin the "manifestation" and "glorious liberty" of the children of God, where God's glory will rain through His children to the redemption of all things (Rom. 8:19-21). And we and all creation will dance in that glory as lover with lover, for it is Love that bade us come and Love that brought us in and Love that keeps us in (Rom. 8:31-39).

The second way that our hope is even greater than I have said is in this: I actually misspoke earlier when I said that our tragedies and pains will fade to insignificance in the light of our coming glory. It is not quite right to say that, for "all things work together for good" for those who are called to God's purpose of glory (Rom. 8:28-30), and "all things" includes our tragedies as well. It is still true to say that the ends justify the means, but it is because the means will be gloriously justified before our eyes. They will find their significance. They will not fade, for they too will find their place in the infinite goodness of God. When the grey rain curtain of this world rolls away, and our eyes see the good country all hearts long to have, we will see that our pain and sorrow has infused every blade of grass and ray of sunshine, making them even more glorious. When the tapestry of God turns to us at last, so that we move from its back to its front and what was once a gibberish of stitches reveals itself to be a glorious pattern of color and beauty, we will also see our pains, our broken hearts and broken bodies, woven into the whole, adding to the pattern, accentuating the colors, and bringing more beauty than it had before. When we see Him, and are like Him, and watch His glory unfold and unfurl like a banner of victory across the stars, then we will find the words of Job on our lips: "Oh! Now I see."

We shall see. We shall see the significance, the consummation, the great and glorious meaning behind it all. We shall behold the King in His Beauty, and all action and activity will converge in Him and through us like a myriad of mirrors all reflecting back the light of the Sun. And in the light of that glory and grace, every part will find its place, even the ones that hurt the most. That is hope. Live in that hope. Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

Homily Magnus: The High and Holy Striving (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said: 'I will dwell in them and walk in them, and I will be their God and they shall be my people.'" II Cor. 6:16b

It is the presence of God that counts in His children's lives and nothing else. The greatest danger is not always in what you're doing but in how or why you are doing it. Though motivation and intention are often less important than what actually happens, they can still be the greater threat because of their subtlety and insidiousness. They can creep in unawares and poison the most noble of endeavors with foul foundations, twisting them into paths of destruction. It is the fundamental intents of the heart that can lead to actions that we did not intend. Small, blinding miscalculations can bring the whole things crashing to the ground. That is the seriousness of the matter.

The life that seeks holiness and upright living apart from the presence of God in their life will become Pharisaical and legalistic without warning. Hard on themselves, impossible with others, and unable to avoid turning into anxious hypocrites. Meanwhile, the life that seeks some numinous religious experience apart from the presence of God in their life will fall into either a hollow and abstract mysticism or (what is worse) a paranoid and pathological occultism. Locked into themselves, blind to others, and unable to escape being useless statuary in God's trophy room (or being seduced by darker, more treacherous spirits). And the life that seeks social activism and cultural change apart from the presence of God in their life will become hopelessly knitted to the failing schemes of man, replacing God's wisdom and patience with all manner of man-made theories and solutions for utopia. Zealous for passing causes, vindictive of those who do not follow them, and incapable from avoiding fashionable fanaticism.

Do not misunderstand: this is not just a matter of giving God's presence a nod; any fool with a cause can claim, "God is with me!" Rather, this is a matter of recognizing and living out the recognition that without God's presence with you and within you, you can do nothing and are nothing (John 14:20; 15:4-5). It is not merely about knowing that He is there (for that can turn into a highly selfish solace), but rather about knowing that in all things He is first. In other words, it is not about principles and practices only but also priorities, the priorities that shape your principles and practices. And if God is not the priority of your life (knowing Him, loving Him, and trusting Him), then the well is already poisoned. No matter your intentions, the fundamental Intention is wrecked already. If God is not first, then He is not anything.

There is no way to do this perfectly, of course. The whole of the Christian life is this struggle to keep God first, but that is the point. You must struggle: groping and panting and fighting and desiring for the presence and beauty of the living God (Ps. 27:4; 42:1-2); and that struggle, that high and holy striving, must be the wellspring from which all other streams flow. We must ask ourselves the right questions: Do you abstain to honor Him? Contemplate to find Him? Work and create because you love Him? You must do it all for Him and no other goal, for there is no other goal except a chasing of the wind.

-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 Magnus: On Death and Life (as proclaimed by an orthodox rebel)

"...for why will you die...?" Eze. 33:11b

Our world is made of antitrust. Over one-hundred years of unchecked, rampant skepticism has corroded away the image of trust. Suspicion is our new religion, forged on the altar of self-deification. All other things, whether they be friends or family or strangers or institutions or traditions or customs, are a threat to our own self-actualization. We must hold all others, however dear or precious, at arms length, taking with a grain of salt everything that they say or give. They must not be allowed to shape or dominate us. They must never own or conscribe any part of us. So we retract into ourselves in recesses beyond thought, in dark lairs of corners of our minds, and in those dungeons deep we forge in secret our master self, pouring into it our will with which we thwart all others. Our selves are always sword and shield, never true open arms and welcoming embrace. Something will always be held back, something no one is worthy of in our eyes, i.e., our real self, made only by the hand of God and the Fall. Such is the lonely, oh so lonely narcissism of our fragmented world.

God has a word for such self-centered isolationism. He has a strong, simple term for our sad division: Sin. It is from Sin that we cut ourselves off from all things. It is Sin that lifts high the banner of self as the flag of the world. It is the sin-sick soul who sings, "I am a god. I sit in the seat of God in the midst of the seas" (Eze. 28:2b), "My river is my own, and I have made it for myself" (Eze. 29:3b), and "I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will be like the Most High" (Is. 14:13, 14). Our narcissistic fragmentation is not a result of postmodern liberation and deconstruction, nor of heroic and idealized self-assertion, but rather the monstrous pride that sets the self at the center of all things. Our exaltation of self, having degraded and degenerated into a horrid and absolute skepticism, eventually collapsed from a hyper-individualism where we are the only star in our lonely little universe. There are no gods or kings or even man; there is only me. No man is an island, but every man dreams of a private island, and no island is more private than the island of self-love.

We all have been drawn away by our own lusts for our will and way and self above and against all others, even God Himself; and when that lusts conceives, it brings forth sin, and when sin is finished it brings forth death (James 1:15 KJV). The soul that sins shall die (Eze. 18:4b). There is no other alternative. It is a law of existence just as much as gravity is a law of nature. It is the only reason and explanation for this living death that we are in: our noise and insanity, our fashions and futility, our callousness and frigidity, our decadence and apathy, our lusts and lunacy, our ugliness and horrible, horrible depravity. We are the hub of a lone wheel, trapped in the mud, spinning endlessly in an infinite rut, digging our own graves as we whirl in maddening stillness.

Hear now the word of the Lord who made the heavens and the earth and your self: "Why will you die?" Life is never found in the self; rather, it is found when the self is finally forgotten, given away, killed outright for the sake of another; and God is the ultimate Other: "He who loses His life for my sake shall find it" (Matt. 10:39). Herein is life, not the uncompromising worship of our self, but the unconditional surrender of the self into the love of God. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His only Son to save us from the dark tyranny of Sin that makes the self a god, so that we might know the only true God, know in the most intimate and sacred of ways. As Father and child. Friend and friend. Lover and lover. It is only when we take that first step, that first step of trust in the God who made us and loves us, that first step off of our lonely precipice to fall headlong into the infinite ocean and drown therein, only then will our sad division cease.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011

"We all are lonely, Maker -- each a soul

Shut in by itself, a sundered atom of thee.

No two yet loved themselves into a whole;

Even when we weep together we are two.

Of two to make one, which yet two shall be,

Is thy creation's problem, deep, and true,

To which thou only hold'st the happy, hurting clue."

-George MacDonald (from Diary of an Old Soul)

Homily Magnus: On God (as proclaimed by an orthodox rebel)

What can I tell you about this God of mine? What can I say to make you truly see Him? Words are inadequate, no matter how well they are wrought. They fall short every time. Furthermore, it does not help that God's image has had so much silly sentiment and slipshod verbiage dumped upon it for many years now. The skeptics of the world howl at us for good reason; our God has become a pathetic, paltry thing. He does not inspire awe of any kind: no art of literature or music. He is no one's muse anymore. Even our worship has become shallow and repetitive, noisome and hollow. What can I say to repair such damage? How can I help you see God rightly again?

In Ezekiel 18, we find a strange conversation. God is rebuking His people for their misuse of a proverb; they are trying to use it to shift the blame for their sins (vs. 2). In response, God goes into a rather famous monologue about the nature of sin and how He deals with it. As He speaks, a fascinating pattern begins to evolve.

The First Precedent

God starts by laying down a simple rule: "the soul that sins, it shall die" (vs. 4b). In addressing sin, God lays down the immutable fact of His holiness. Sin is not something that He can or will simply look over or ignore. He deals with it. He must deal with it. If He did not, then He would not be God. His holiness will not allow sin to take a pass or slip by. It will be destroyed along with whatever souls swear allegiance to it. In verse 20, He repeats the same rule, as though to drive the point clearly home: "The soul that sins, it shall die."

What is interesting about this rule is that it is not merely saying that sin will be punished. It is also saying that every man's sin is his own: "The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son" (vs. 20). No man's sin is imputed to another. Every one shall give an account of themselves, and no one else, unto God (Rom. 14:12). So we see that in laying down this one rule, God reveals not only His holiness but also His justice. What he decrees and delivers is not arbitrary; it is pinpoint accurate every time: "I will judge you...every one according to his [own] ways" (vs. 30).

The Second Precedent

Just one verse after He repeats the first rule, He suddenly lays down a second: "But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he has committed and will keep my statutes and do what is lawful and right, then he shall surely live; he shall not die" (vs. 21). Here we see that God has provided a way out. He lays down the immutable fact of His forgiveness. When a sinner repents and turns back to God, He will forgive Him. He must forgive him. If He does not, then He would not be God. Now we are beginning to see something interesting start to appear. It is not wholly unique (for many other gods offer forgiveness of some sort), but it does begin to stir the heart with something unspeakable. The holy and just God of the universe who stores up His wrath against sin and the souls that sin, He has also stacked the deck against Himself: He left the backdoor open, on purpose.

The Divine Position

As I said, none of this is inherently unique. Many gods throughout time have punished those who would not do as they were told, and many have offered forgiveness to those who do. Amidst that swelling cosmic monotony, however, a new tone begins to play, a note wholly unique and unto itself, spinning forth from some new song and unheard of string that the universe had never known before. At its sound it dissolves the darkness and shatters the stars. The pillars of the earth quake before it, and every false god quails in fear when they hear it, for it is completely alien to them, and every creature fears the unknown.

In verse 23, we hear this original song: "Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die...and not that he should turn from his ways and live?" All gods punish. Many gods will forgive. But only one God amongst the endless pantheon of human imagination has ever esteemed one over the other; only one continually sought out the one to the detriment of the other. He alone pleads for forgiveness so that He may not have to punish at all: "I have no pleasure in the death of Him that dies, saith the Lord God. Therefore turn, and live" (vs. 32).

The Divine Plea

Here the new song crescendos into its fullest and highest expression: "Repent, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions, so iniquity shall not be your ruin" (vs. 30b). Every god punishes and many forgive, but they all do it for the same reason: for the benefit of themselves, for an increase of worship and worshipers through fear of eternal damnation and hope of material blessings. But this God does nothing for His own benefit. He needs no benefits; if He did, then He would not be God. Rather, He does all for our benefit. Sin is punished so it will not afflict those who are oppressed by it, and sinners will be forgiven so that the soul that sins but repents shall not die. Do you not see? It is for us that He pours out His wrath, and for us He pours out His love; and He desires that His love would overflow all of His wrath, so that all His wrath would be a mere drop in the bucket in comparison.

What can be said about such a God? Perhaps there are no better words than that of the prophet Micah, when he finished his words to the people of God: "Who is a God like unto thee, who pardons iniquity and passes by the transgressions of the remnant of His heritage? He retains not His anger forever, because He delights in mercy" (Micah 7:18). Did you hear that? His anger will not last, because He delights in mercy. What God is there like this? A God who punishes sin, but forgives the sinner because He delights in mercy? You will not find a God like this, not yesterday, today, or tomorrow.

Let us take every god from every religion there is, both modern and ancient, monotheistic and polytheistic and pantheistic. Let us line them all in a row and stack them high, until they are a towering wall of divine qualities and attributes. Let us catalog all of those qualities and attributes until we have the definitive list and measurement of godliness. Let us take even the gods of the atheists, their science and rationalism and personal principles, and add them to the ever growing pile. Then let us stand in wonder at this tapestry of divinity, and then let us watch it diminish as a candle does before the dawn, as a fading spark before the light of the sun. All of the gods of man and earth cannot come close to this one God. All the gods of earth cannot come near to Jehovah. Every quality and attribute they represent is merely one facet upon the infinite and awesome jewels that crown His head. They cannot come near to His fullness, nor even touch the hem of His garment. But we can touch that hem. We have already touched it in Christ. The God that is greater than all of our bewildering creations is nearer to us than our own breath. He has brought us in. He left open the backdoor from sin; so too He has left open the front door to His own house.

What, then, can I say about this God? Why would I leave Him? Where else would I go? What man would leave the absolutely perfect woman to waste his days amongst all the desolate prostitutes of the world? Or who would spend their life a moorless vagabond when their true home suddenly appears around the corner? God is not one choice amongst many. He is the only choice. He alone has the words of life (John 6:68). To refuse Him is to make no-choice, to leave the realms of freedom and joy and beauty forever and cast yourself into the infinite dark, where there is no sound save for the gnashing of your own teeth.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011