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

Inevitable (Isaiah's Doxlogy, Part V)

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

"...white unto harvest."

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

We all go into the dark.

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

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

"...my cup runs over."

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

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

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

"...death is swallowed up...." (Eschatological Vision, Part III)

Beyond the doors of night...

"Instead of bronze I will bring gold, and instead of iron I will bring silver. Instead of wood, bronze; instead of stones, iron. I will make your overseers peace and your taskmasters righteousness. Violence shall no more be heard in your land, [nor] devastation or destruction in your borders. You shall call your walls Salvation and your gates Praise. The sun shall no more be your light by day, nor for brightness will the moon give you light, for the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory. The sun shall no more go down, nor the moon withdraw itself, for the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning shall be ended." Is. 60:17-20

"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.... Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and He will be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." Rev. 21:1-4

"Oh, death is swallowed up. / It owns nothing in me." -My Epic

Oh, the agony and the ecstasy...

The third and final element in the Christian eschatological vision is the unstoppable redemption. This final piece gives to the vision the balance of truth. Here the optimism is fully balanced with the pessimism, which is the way it ought to be, for there is incomplete truth in both positions: things are as dark as you think they are, but there is still hope. And not just any hope, but an unstoppable hope, an inevitable, irrevocable hope. The culmination of the Christian eschatological vision is a glorious future where God and all good things ultimately triumph over all things dark and evil and sad. If it sounds like a Disney movie, then you're not far from the mark; all good (and even campy) stories have an inkling of this truth in them. Good will triumph over evil. It will be a long dark road, a long dark night of every soul, before it happens, but it will happen. There is no stopping it.

Like a light bomb, sucka.

Evil-doers and seducers will wax worse and worse, and worse still, and darkness will spill out and over all without measure, filling the heights and depths with its horror and ennui, until the very sun burns out and the moon burns red. Then the winepress of wrath will bleed much blood. Then the final invasion will commence, the final strike of the rebellion, the final movement of the symphony. The Word who spoke all things will return to un-speak them so that He may re-speak them, the sword of His mouth dividing asunder the very joints and marrow of existence so that they may be reset and refitted. The Light of lights will come crashing through, shattering the very dome of the universe like the shell of a rotten egg. Then all beauty will be awakened and the death curse revoked; then all street-rats and paupers will be made princes, and every mad and greedy oppressor hurled into howling isolation; then all things will become as a star, burning with the brightness of His glory, with those who are one with His glory enduring to the end. And they all will live happily ever-after, to the end of days and beyond.

All our colorful metaphors, from Scripture to Saturday morning cartoons, are trying to point us to one truth: victory is coming. It is inevitable; all things are moving towards this purpose because all things were built for this purpose: redemption, renewal, glory. This is not mere optimism, where everybody will wax better and better (with slight hiccups here and there) until we all flourish in the final enlightenment and eternal hug-fest of tolerance. Nor is it mere pessimism, where evil will wax worse to no end, until every star burns out and all energy is expressed and entropy works out its final corrosion, and the only "peace on earth" will be in the deathly static and silence. This, my friends, is the Christian story, the story of the Great God who made all things, of finite man ruining all things, and of that same God redeeming all things. It is the best of all stories put together into a perfect picture, which is how you know it is true; and not just true but beautiful also. For there is nothing more beautiful then the vision's ultimate refrain: "Death is swallowed up in victory, and shall be no more." Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

P.S. For thoughts on how to practically live within this eschatological vision, start here, here, here, and here.

All Things New (Homily 52)

"Do not remember the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing...." Is. 43:18-19

"If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things have become new." II Cor. 5:17

"And He that sat upon the throne said, 'Behold, I make all things new.'" Rev. 21:5

God is eternally unchanging in His nature and essence, yet it is in His nature and essence to make new things. This is what Chesterton would call "one of the million wild jests of truth." God is in the business of doing things you've never seen before, things like virgins giving birth, ways in the wilderness and rivers in the desert, and the death of death through the death of God. He is a God of surprises, showing us "great and mighty things you've never known" (Jer. 33:3), because He is the Creator and He cannot help but create newer and further splendors, surpassing the old without invalidating them, for the new law is the fulfillment as well as the end of the old (Matt. 22:37-40; Rom. 13:8-10).

Yet His creations and recreations are all of a single consistency. Nothing is random or arbitrary. Our God's constant life-giving, creative effusions are all new and yet of the same pattern, wrought with the same purpose, "as ancient and as young as spring" (as Lewis put it). It is neither a mindless repetition nor a mindless chaos but a plan, a work of art, thoughtful and creative, ordered and free, true and beautiful. Like a hill full of flowers: different colors, all flowers, growing into a quilt of many-colors on the hillside. So is the creative work of God. He builds newer and newer, greater and greater, edifice upon edifice, line upon line, thread upon thread, all into an infinite tower and tapestry standing as an ever-living, ever-growing monument to His goodness and might. Its fruits and flowers shall never fade, but shall bloom anew and afresh with colors and flavors hitherto unknown, yet always hinted at in the crops that came before. And on every cornice of that holy mountain, shooting up like a technicolor geyser into the infinity of God, the Father will forever delight His children with the same refrain: "Behold, I do a new thing." Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

The Decayed (The Six Shades of Sin, Part VI)

"Woe unto them...who justify the wicked for a reward and take away the righteousness of the innocent!" Is. 5:22-23

Justice is a popular virtue these days, and injustice is an equally popular bogeyman. Properly understood, justice is based on balance: rendering unto everyone what is rightfully due to them. It is an error, however, to then simply equate injustice with imbalance. There is more to it than that, for imbalance is merely the effect of a more fundamental cause: corruption. That is the meaning of Isaiah reiterating immoderation at this point: "Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink..." (vs. 22). Injustice is a product of a prior corruption, the final effects of far deeper decay, and the sequence of this decay has already been made clear by the five previous "woes" in this passage.

From the endless void of greed spawns the reckless imbalance(!) of immoderation, which in turn leads to the greatest of all immoderation: the hubris of impiety. Once we consider ourselves to be equal to or greater than God and His law, the crooked unreality of immorality is a necessary consequent, and consequent to that is the paranoid stronghold of pride, for what else is that fear but a failure to see clearly? Finally, from there injustice blooms, the rear-guard of all moral decay, the crown jewel of that deadly diadem. The rot began long ago, and the decay is inevitable (and in worse cases, final). If woe is upon those caught in the net of sin, then greater woe is upon those who underestimate the insidiousness of Sin itself. This is the great strength of Christian ethical thought: Sin is not doing bad yet pleasurable things. "Bad things" are merely a superficiality, like the skin to a skull. The harder substance is beneath the surface. Sin is not bad doing but bad being. It is an inherent corruption and rottenness, a cancerous and infectious malady of the soul.

Both pagan philosophers and church fathers spoke of an "ascent" of loves, i.e., progressing upwards from the love of lesser things to the love of higher things until you reach the highest of all: God. But there is a descent to match the ascent, a downward spiral to match the upward flight. The true terror of this is that while in the ascent every step upward makes it harder and harder to take a step back, so every step downward makes it harder to step back up again. Glory is alluring; so is evil. "Sin is behoovely," said Lady Julian. It has its siren songs and seductive wares, and every step into its domain is another step deeper into the mire. At some point, there is no return. The descent into Hell is a consummation as irrevocable as the ascent to God. That is the horror and great darkness of Sin.

Sin is that dark, however, so that Grace may be all the brighter. The room is made pitch black so that the light may be like lightning. Herein lies another great strength of Christian thought: we are all of us born the sons and daughters of Hell. We need not concern ourselves with a descent into the mire; we have descended. We need not worry about dying that death; in Adam, we have all already died (I Cor. 15:22). We need not obsess with how to rise or fall; we have already fallen, and we are beyond the aid of men, but not beyond all aid. There is another who descended into Hell, one who was like us and yet not like us. Jesus came, born like a man and died like a man, plunging head-first into death, the dread offspring of Sin. But when He made that plunge, it was like a spark falling into an oil pit. The dungeon could not help but flame with light.

To all who reach out to Him, He laid hold of us and we of Him. And by that mystic, sweet communion, out of the pit we rise, not by might nor by power but by the love of Him who loved us (Rom. 5:6-8; Col. 1:12-14; I John 4:9-10). Sin is behoovely, but all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well, for grace is greater than all our sin and is able to save to the uttermost of its decay (Heb. 7:18-25). If the woes of Sin are great, it is so the blessings of Christ may be greater, for darkness can do nothing against the light but magnify its brilliance.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

Homily 38: A Day of Days (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"Then comes the end, when [Christ] shall have delivered up the Kingdom to God the Father, when He shall put down all rule, and all authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death...." I Cor. 15:24-26

The ancient Middle-eastern concept of a "redeemer" had several different facets to it, and Christ (being the great Redeemer) fulfills them all. As a "kinsmen redeemer," He has come and completely purchased back His people from Sin, making them a Church widowed by the Cross and being made spotless and pure until He returns for her and takes her away to His Father's house. As a "property redeemer," He has purchased back all of creation that was sold under Sin, and He will deliver it back up to the Father as a kingdom renewed by redemption. These two facets of a "redeemer" are the two we hear the most often about, and we ought to continue hearing about them, for they are for our joy and strength.

There is one other facet of a "redeemer," however, that Christ also fulfills and yet doesn't get nearly as much thought. In light of recent tragic events, it would do us good to hear it again: that of the "blood redeemer," the one who avenges their family and loved ones against those who have harmed them. We find much comfort in the "gentle" Jesus of the gospel narratives, but have we forgotten the mighty Jesus of "the end"? There He is no longer the suffering savior but the blood redeemer, coming for vengeance with red sword in hand.

Understand this: the first time Jesus came it was for the redemption of His beloved; the next time He comes, it will be for the redemption of His beloved's blood against all her enemies. I am not speaking of temporal institutions or powers (though they will have much to answer for as well), but rather her greater enemies: Hell and all its malicious guile, the Devil and all his cruel hate, and Death, the last and greatest enemy of them all, the one whose mindless travesties have broken every heart including the heart of God (John 11:33-35). Vengeance on Hell and the Devil would be vengeance enough, but how sweet will be that final vengeance? Vengeance against the last enemy? There is coming a day when death will answer for its many crimes: for all the loved ones lost in agony and fear, for all the millions consumed in disaster or atrocity. The end is coming, where death will have neither power to stand nor any place to hide. Christ, death's great nemesis, will return in splendor and with purpose. He will claw death's wretched frame from out of the very fabric of existence, hold him up against the blood-red sky, look him in the eye and say, "Now is the day of my vengeance."

What a day it will be, a day of days, when the problem of evil will be answered at last, for Christ the mighty Blood-Redeemer will take the scoundrel death and smite his ruin against the wrath of God.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

Boil to Rags, Part 7: The Last Enemy (a devotional series by an orthodox rebel)

(See the first post in the series here.)

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish...." John 3:16

Everything dies.

Everything fades, fails, burns out, and runs its course. Even secular skepticism cannot deny this one unalienable truth, this last absolute left to willful unbelief. Everything is perishing. Even as we speak, men and animals and plants and planets and stars and all things are moving faster and faster towards a static equilibrium, a silence and stillness and dark and cold. Long after every living things is a corpse, the universe itself will rot away leaving behind dead planets and empty voids, the skull and bones of existence. To those who do not have God, or redemption, or any other hope outside of this material deathtrap called Nature, death alone is crouching at the door, and its open maw will be satisfied with much blood.

We think very little of death until it's coming for us or those we love, until we discover that every place wherein our soul has trod is its hunting grounds. Then it is no longer a morbid abstraction. It becomes an enemy: a living, breathing, calculating enemy. An enemy with all the advantages: inescapable and unstoppable. It takes at will and seemingly at random, stealing young and old and friend and foe. Many today laugh and mock the "simple" view of a being whose ways are malicious and meaningless beyond all imagining. But let them taste of death, let their lives be stained by its horror and great darkness, and they will never be so naive again. We have a great foe, the last enemy left to mankind, who touches all of our lives on a relentless day-to-day basis, and he does not have red horns and a pitchfork but a black hood and a scythe. Indeed, the power of death is the Devil's for a season, but in the end even he will have to give up the ghost before that infinite dark.

See, now, why the Gospel is good news. It is not because another sage has taught us morality. It is not because a martyr died for a cause. It is not because a humble rabbi rebelled against his superiors. It is because whosoever believes in Christ shall never die. Death may claim a body, but it will find it a hollow treat, for the soul belongs to death's Great Enemy, the imperishable and incorruptible God-man. When long ago death met the Being of Life and the Life of Being face-to-face in a man, what else could happen but its power crumble like a hollowed-out house before an earthquake? When death swallowed Christ, it was as if a corpse swallowed a live coal and in turn was swallowed up with fire unquenchable. That is the Gospel: the immortal God has scattered the immortal dark. Christ died and rose again, and death has been swallowed up in His victory, and every soul surrendered to that victory shall not perish, for death owns nothing in them anymore.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

Boil to Rags, Part 5: Behold the Man (a devotional series by an orthodox rebel)

(See the first post in the series here.)

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son...." John 3:16

What can God give to man? What haven't the gods given to us already? Favor and apathy. Blessings and wrath. All arbitrary, all done before, and all very wearisome. By the noonday life of the Roman Empire, the world had grown weary of playing favorites with the gods. Their wills had grown old like the gods. They had altars aplenty. They had hedged every imaginable divine bet that they could find. So what of this one God? What could that Incomprehensible Dance give to comprehensible man? What could that Majestic Infinite give to the fallen finite? What was there to give that could outdo and outstrip all the false deities of the human mind and heart? Nothing less than Himself, for all that He gives is Himself, for there is nothing greater that can be given.

What offensive mystery is this? The incomprehensible becoming comprehensible. The infinite becoming finite. The Word becoming flesh. Many gods have made worlds, and many more have made men and walked amongst them, but only one has dared to play the man. Many gods scheme and plot and plan as though they were playing a game with mankind, but only one chose to play the game Himself and keep all the rules. He was born in blood and filth like us, raised by imperfect parents, lived in poverty under the heel of tyrants, and watched the dead formalism and religious hypocrisy of His people's faith. He tasted the bitterest cup that humanity has to offer: of sorrow and pain and death. Yes, the incomprehensible has comprehended death as intimately as we all will one day. Life more abundant was swallowed by the grave so that he might swallow it up in return. Let the world say what they will about this God, but let their lips be silent on this one point: we have not a High Priest who is untouched by our infirmities. God knows our frame and pities our frame because He made and has been our frame.

Yet this is only half of the gift, only part of what has been given. For though the Almighty God has played the man in every way, yet He has done what we cannot. In older times, holy men wrought miracles of all kinds by the power of God, even raising the dead. But none of these men could ever end death. When faced with that awful darkness, the last enemy before whom even Satan himself will succumb, all men have fallen. All men, save one. One who was like us and yet not like us. He was man, and He was God. And when Death killed the man, it found the God, and against that unrelenting Light and Life and Love pouring forth with ravenous splendor and strength, what else could Death do but die?

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

On Christ (a contra mundi by an orthodox rebel)

"[Seeing] the exceeding wickedness of men, and how by little and little they had increased it to an intolerable pitch against themselves..., He took pity on our race, and had mercy on our infirmity, and condescended to our corruption...." -St. Athanasius

He would not abandon the miry clay, but took unto Himself a body of clay that He might consume and undo the mire and sanctify a people unto Himself.

He would not abandon us to death, but has made a way out, breaching as the forerunner the veil between us and life everlasting.

He would not abandon us to the nihilistic reign of Sin, but became Sin for us so that His Father might strike the fatal blow of his wrath and leave us untouched and unscathed forevermore.

He would not abandon you to the sin that so easily besets you, but instead would infuse you by divine transplant with the presence of His divinity, transpositioning your frail body into a Temple of God where sweet communion imparts sweet satisfaction and strength.

He would not abandon you to narcissistic fear and doubt and anger, but will make you brave because He is brave, and believing because He is faithful and true, and at peace because He is your peace. You belong to a new world now. You belong to God and He belongs to you, because Christ has opened the door, breached the wall with his bare hands, blood-stained and unrelenting.

He has not abandoned us. Say it loudly to the dark night of this world: God has not abandoned us, because Christ has come and is coming again.

-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

Homily 36: The Other Coming (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"...[we] wait for His Son from Heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus, who delivered us from the wrath to come." I Thess. 1:10

The Coming Christ

Christ will come again, and this is no mere delusion or escapism. Beyond the folds of time and the edges of creation, there is a glory prepared and preparing for us, a glory that will outstrip all of our imaginations and shatter all of our vanities.

We each are splintered shards of color, looking and longing for the prism from which we have been refracted and to which we can find the wholeness of light. It is light that is coming, light inaccessible made manifest in the man called called Christ that He might finish what He started millennia ago: to destroy the works of the devil, the outer darkness and its gnashing teeth, banished to the fringes beyond thought by the onset of living light, which it still cannot overcome or comprehend. In this hope, we find patience and endurance everlasting (vs. 3).

The Coming Wrath

There is, however, another coming than that of glory. Beyond the light glorious, there is the fire dreadful. Out past the limits of space and time burns the furnace of the white hot fury of God's wrath. Wrath against darkness. Wrath against sin. Wrath against death. Wrath against all that is fallen, whether worlds or stars or souls. It is no sudden or random wrath; it is deep-seated and long-brewing, for the earth is old with sin and death, and its stench is that of an open sore soured with much filth. There is a holy cauterization looming in the distance, gathering force and speed, until that day when the skies will crack with anger and burn as with the fires of dawn but now with a fire everspreading and unquenchable, whose satisfaction is not met until it receives the furthest farthing.

 

You who long for the glory of living light: do you give no thought to the wrath of ravenous light? A light that hates? Hates because it loves? Hates all dark because it loves all that is light? We who rejoice at the distant music of the spheres: do we not also hear the distant thunder of the hammers of God, forging the sword of His mouth, whereby the Maker will unmake all things? Do we not hear, and do we dare not have pity on those still undelivered, still lost in and doomed to die with the hated dark?

-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)

The Gifts of God (an Advent devotional by an orthodox rebel)

"Behold, I do a new thing...." Isaiah 43:19

Existence is paradoxically simple and bewildering. It is mundane and it overwhelms. Like that strange little game with the black and white discs: minutes to learn but a lifetime to master. Mere existence takes only seconds to admit (if we are sane) but an apparent eternity to comprehend (again, if we are sane). Whenever we walk through it and amongst it, its presence is so commonplace that it becomes transparent. Whenever we pause and look upon it and think on it, its presence is so odd and its meaning so incomprehensible that it becomes equal parts beatific and monstrous. Ever tree is both a flowering wonder and a demon with a thousand bursting hands, shedding flakes of green blood and other fantastic colors. Even the size of the universe that we know of (and we know very little) overcomes us. The seemingly infinite expanse overhead is as wide and rolling as an open plain and as dark and gaping as an open maw. We shudder and we wonder, and then we try not to think about it.

Those who try to think about it hardly do better. Their quaint explanations run hollow, and only satisfy us in those deathly moments when the world is transparent rather than monstrous. Even we, as Christians, do no better. In the face of the universe, we spit the phrase "God did it," as though that solved the puzzle or ended the mystery. Only in the church pews, those deadest of the dead moments, can such a glib statement stick. Step out of the dusty church hall back into the wilderness wonderland outside, however, and that insubstantial thought drains from your soul like color from your face. It is not good enough to simply say, "God did it," for it does not answer the ultimate question of "Why?"

God is perfect, which means that he is complete or whole. He lacks nothing and needs nothing; if He didn't, then He wouldn't be God. Whence comes creation, then? It cannot be for Himself. There are some bizarre (though sincere) notions that creation is God's way of "completing" Himself, that each soul's experiences will fill up what is lacking in the Godhead. It sounds quite charming, and perhaps even lovely; but it is in error, for the Godhead cannot "lack" and still be the Godhead. So we are still left with the question of why: why did God make all of this stuff anyway?

Some would say that he made it for us, but that does not solve anything either. It is a matter of biblical authority and Christian orthodoxy that the earth and its fullness are the Lord's. All glory belongs to Him. Nothing in creation is "for" us in an ultimate sense; the heaven's declare His glory, no matter how beautiful they shine on us. Furthermore, even if it was "for" us, that still does not solve the problem, for why then did God make a creation that needed creation? What was the purpose of making needy beings? The neediness itself becomes one more facet to the "stuff" of existence, and so we are back to square one.

Herein are the two facts: God needs nothing, yet everything is for Him and His glory. What then, are we to make of this? I am no theologian, and am at best only an "arm-chair" philosopher, but I would posit this: it seems to me that existence is fundamentally arbitrary, i.e., it is there, but there is no reason why it should be here. It just is. Even though it gives glory to God, He does not need glory anymore than He needs creation. The whole thing is ultimately superfluous; yet there is a unique beauty to its superfluousness that is found in this fact: for God, superfluous does not equal meaningless. There is a reason to this random rhyme, and we have a name for something that is completely unnecessary and yet full to bursting with sweet meaning. It is called a gift.

All is a gift of God, and marvelous are His gifts. He did not make them because He needed glory, or stuff, or needy beings to need the stuff and give Him glory. Rather, he made it because He simply wanted to: for the sheer good and joy that is inherent in the act of creation, for the sheer joy of being able to see it and see that it is good. Every scrap of this universe is the bounty of God, a treasure whose light Sin can diminish but not extinguish, and some day it will burst forth in an eruption of brilliance and sound that will eat away the darkness like some benevolent cancer that restores the very cells of Being back to health. For redemption, too, is one of the gifts of God. Arbitrary, because the creation it saves is arbitrary; meaningful, because like the creation it redeems, it is chocked full of the goodness and delight of God, a substance that is weightier than the densest star and more infinite than the voids of Hell.

God's arbitration is not that of a machine; it is that of a Creator. He is not the steel-cold mind lost in a fog of its own frigid and abstract divinity. He is the supremely happy artisan, working wonders out of His own two hands, who makes out of the sheer delight for making and for no other reason; and every occurrence, whether it be good or ill from our view, is yet another chance for Him to prove His good pleasure. All glory is another place for creation, and all sin is for recreation. He makes all things new, always making a new thing out of His unquenchable gladness for making and newness. Thus it has always been and ever shall be.

In the vast, burning simplicity of perfect communion that was God's existence before Time began, the Godhead rolled up Their sleeves, and in Their Trinitarian nature said to Themselves, "Watch this." Thus was creation. When our first parents sinned, and death's black sorrows spread like spilt ink across that creation, God had already rolled up His sleeves and said to the host of Heaven, "Watch this." Thus was redemption. And I would like to think that when we reach that golden shore, and the grey rain curtain of this world fades away, and we finally past the threshold of Revelation's final chapter, and the last words of Time are written in the last book ever written, we will look into those glad eyes of the glad Creator and say, "Now what?" And He will smile, and roll up His sleeves, and say yet again, "Watch this," not out of necessity, but out of love, and goodness, and the sheer unutterable joy of gift-giving.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011