Lorica

Episode Notes When we study Jesus' life in the Scripture he appears as many things, he is a shepherd carrying for his sheep, a vintner growing and tending his vine, a creator bringing things into existence, a teacher showing the way, a miracle worker setting people free, a destroyer of death, a redeemer who offers his life to pay the price of our salvation and deliverance from enslavement to the enemy. He is certainly all of these things and more. The first clear apostolic proclamation to the world was: JESUS IS LORD!

Episode Notes The temptation of any heresy is to choose. That's what heresy means, to choose. The tension between truth and love, the seeming tension, as if somehow we need to "strike a balance", is a false dichotomy. And whenever a choice is made, in choosing that thing that is chosen, the choice becomes something other than it is, when it is left without its partner. Things that are good and true are only good and true when taken together. As soon as they are broken apart, they become something else. Love becomes "tolerance", niceness, an occasion to blur reality in order to salve our broken psyche. Truth becomes some radicalized system which excludes judges, radicalizes and oppresses people. We have to ask, how can Christ himself, who is the Truth and who is Love, how can Christ be divided? We cannot choose! To choose is heresy.

Episode Notes God has not predestined anyone to perdition- that notion is an obscenity to be denounced and rejected. We are not trapped in a hopelessly irreversible trajectory towards our fate. You can choose the good and the beautiful or you can do nothing in which case by tragic default you will succumb to the powers of this fallen state, the overlords of corruption and atrophy. These harsh taskmasters will carry you down a dark river to a place you do not really want to go but you will go because you did not bother to desire what you truly desire. That is up to you. That is the power that God implanted in your being and which identifies you as human made in God’s image.

This is a test of keeping your bearings, of good judgment and discernment about what is true, about what matters, about who butters your bread, about what kingdom you belong to, where do you draw your breath, what is the source of your life? Whose your mother? Everything that can be shaken is shaking right now, are you shaken? Confused and destabilized? This world will burn, the kingdom of God alone will remain.

In times like these when everything has been thrown into disorder and chaos, when our lives have been disrupted by threat of sickness and death and loss of property and comfort we must be courageous and steady in our faith and in our living as well. There is no more important time than in this to live orderly. We shall go on living- if you are a follow of Christ that is what you shall do, you shall live, that is not a prophecy that you will not get sick itis a fact- whether you get sick or not you shall live and so live your life free from fear, live courageously in faith.

The symbolism of ashes goes all the way back to Genesis chapter 3 where God is telling Adam the consequences of his sin. He tells him that the ground, the earth has been cursed and now since Adam broke the fast and ate the forbidden fruit his eating from now on –all the days of your life- will be in sorrow. He goes on: Through thorns and thistles and sweat and toil and pain will Adam eat and to make matters worse- in the end his eating will not result in life anyway. His painful eating will prolong his painful life but in the end he will return to the dust from which he came. “For dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return”

When you said I will fast and I will pray, and I will deal with my besetting sins over the next 40 days you picked a fight. And whatever this confrontation may mean we must not remove the demonic element from this discussion. And we can be valiant because we have been armed with the ashes of penitence. Our foreheads have been sealed with the mark of Christ, we have been branded as his own and our victory is assured by His Resurrection. This call to battle was issued on Ash Wednesday at the conclusion of the imposition of ashes in the following collect: Grant to us, O Lord, to put on the armor of our Christian warfare with holy fastings: that we, who are to fight against all spiritual wickedness; may be defended by the power of abstinence. Through Christ, our Lord.

The life of Jesus of Nazareth did not unfold before the eyes of God, it was all of it- always present before Him, His Birth, Passion and Glorious Resurrection the whole life fully present, His glory was present in his birth and in his death, there was no uncertainty about how things would end up. Your life too- for all the doubt, uncertainty and vacillation, for all the weariness and wandering- your life, your whole life past present and future is all present before the face of God, God knows you in this way, even the you - you do not yet know is present before His face.

One of the most basic fundamental duties of a Christian soldier is to be attentive to their thoughts. This is where the battle will be won or lost. We are admonished to take every thought captive. It is astonishing to realize how many people do not understand the critical battle ground of our thoughts. If you do not do something about your thoughts, if you do not take this seriously and address this you will lose the fight.

Whether you know it or not everyone here today is a runner, a boxer, an entrepreneur, a vineyard worker, this is what you are, it is what God made you to be and you will never be happy until you start running, boxing, buying and investing, pruning and harvesting. Now the good news is this- if you run you will win, if you box you will overcome, if you buy you will get rich, if you prune you will reap a great harvest- it is guaranteed- you can have total confidence in the outcome if you only engage- be courageous, take up your sword and go into battle and you will be victorious. Sit on the couch- give up- quit- despair- and you will be lost.

Jesus does not provide the answer that so many are demanding of God on their own terms, shaking their silly little fists in the face of the one who died for them. But he does give an answer, he gives the only answer that will enable man to endure and make it safely through this stormy trip. It is up to us whether we will hear what Jesus tells us with faith and love, and trust because we know Him, we know he is trustworthy, he is true and good and just and we know that he loves us, really know it, that is faith, knowing you are loved and so we receive His word and it is enough.

If you are a Christian you have declared your allegiance to this kingdom. You are no longer a member of the world kingdom, even though you physically still exist in this world you are not of it, you are from above, your citizenship is in the kingdom of God and you are a member of the Family of God. And our society has different rules and a different way of life. We live here in God’s house.

Life is in the temple because Jesus is in and is the Temple and that temple as far as we are concerned is the liturgically gathering Apostolic Eucharistic Church. This is where we fulfill the very meaning of our existence, to offer ourselves to God in sacrificial worship as a community. We do this for one reason only because it is right, this is the only reasonable response of the creature to His creator.

The mother of Jesus said to Him, “They have no wine.” Jesus does not respond, there is only silence and yet there is so much for us to lean in that space of silence. Her confidence, her trust and faith ring out in the silence. In the empty pause when the Word did not speak - the Woman without much ado confidently gives a command that has echoed throughout the ages. With this command and her fiat spoken to the angel, the Woman has taught the world about the one thing most important- “Whatever He says to you, do it.”

The family becomes a true reflection of the divine society only in as much as they flourish in the Church, otherwise they can become a stumbling block to salvation. Jesus makes it clear in this story that his earthly mother has no rights over him which are at odds with His heavenly Father. The family is a sacramental union of divine life but only if it is subservient to the Church, to the Family of God in the Spirit.

Typically when a husband and wife have a baby they have the privilege to choose a name for their child. In the case of the naming of Mary’s baby things went a little different than usual. As far as I am aware this is the only known case in history where the baby… actually named himself.

What a glorious faith we have that mocks the fruitless foe that can do nothing to hurt God’s children; the more we are assailed the more we are blessed who trust in God if only we become like these innocent babes.

This is the irony of it. The immaterial God who cannot be seen has made himself known by becoming a man. In olden times he manifest himself in fire, smoke, or a burning bush, He hid in the rock and behind a thick curtain. But now he comes and is, Jesus of Nazareth, Mary’s boy. And yet- while He makes himself so very accessible and vulnerable he becomes more hidden. His manifestation in the flesh becomes a cloak. He takes form and in so doing becomes to many imperceptible.

“For while all things were in quiet silence, and the night was in the midst of her course, Thy almighty word leapt down from heaven from Thy royal Throne, as a fierce conqueror into the midst of the land of destruction.”

There is only one power and force in this world which can keep me from being close to Jesus and that is me. And I know what I must do. I must stop looking for someone to blame. I must stop looking to temporal things to make me happy, I must repent.

We are still in Babylon preparing to enter the eternal city. The sooner we embrace this reality the sooner we can find Christ in the midst, the sooner we can experience the comfort of the comforter.

Maranatha! is the bold cry of the Christian who is ready and desirous of the coming of the Lord. Why bold? Because he knows full well that that coming means judgment, but his conscience is clean, he is ready and anxious for the judgment because for those who love God the judgments means eternal joy, final deliverance, absolute perfection. The early Christians did not utter Maranatha with a tepid whimper but with great earnest pleading: Come Lord! The more confident we can say Maranatha the more ready we are for Christmas and the Holy Babe.

The Penitential fasting season of Advent (not as severe as Lent) uses the theme of the second coming and calls for repentance to prepare the soil of our hearts to fully embrace the seed of Christmas joy. We cannot fully embrace the holy babe if we do not adequately fear the judgment.

The forgiveness of God is not simply a general attitude of mercy toward us. It is our very real and actual redemption. Can we say God forgives all, yet not all are saved or is it more accurate to say, God has an attitude of mercy and forgiveness towards all but not all are forgiven and redeemed. Our parable helps us to understand why not all are forgiven their debt.

Both the Centurion and the Nobleman had faith in Jesus. The difference is the centurions faith was perfect and mature and relied solely on the Word of Jesus, the nobleman’s faith was imperfect and weak and required a sign. When Jesus rebukes the nobleman’s faith and refuses to come he is disciplining the nobleman and doing what is needed to perfect his faith.

If someone asks you why we pray for the departed- ask them why do we pray for anyone? God knows what we need, He does not need us to inform him. Jesus is the Mediator, Jesus finished the work, Jesus is our intercessor, He doesn’t need us to pray. Why pray at all?

Johns prophecy to the first Christians is that while apostate Israel will be destroyed- they will survive, they will not go down with old Israel, they will emerge as the remnant, they will endure the coming persecution and tribulation and it will become clear that they are the true Israel the perfected Israel of which the former was a type and a shadow.

When He Ascended into Heaven accompanied by the Angelic Host trumpeting His return to majesty as the glorified God-man the conqueror of death and reconciler of creation. He entered into the Heavenly tabernacle and presented before God the Father a new Humanity, Holy and Blameless and he said: “Here am I and the children whom God has given Me.”

And because we know and we believe we must speak, we must respond to the Word we have received. We have a voice, the Logos has been put into our mouths from the knowledge of the voice and we must bear witness, we must speak the truth to the world and back to God in praises.

If we think of our creation as God throwing us into existence and thus propelling us toward a goal the image is not of God throwing a ball-- but a boomerang. The Divinely caused trajectory of our existence is meant to be an arc which comes back to the source. We who came forth from God must return to God.

Love God and Love Neighbor this is everything. This love is manifest thru worship. Worship is the offering of sacrifice which we associate with the direct worship of God but may not realize that the sacrificial deeds we do on the behalf of our neighbor are accounted as sacrifices offered to God and they are pleasing and acceptable to Him. Our good deeds, our love of neighbor are part of our worship of God.

When man became his own god and started fabricating rules the rules he made destroyed love. And this is the constant challenge that Jesus runs into with the Pharisees and lawyers. Their rules are tyrannous and love depleting. God’s rules are life giving and love building. It is not a matter of rules or no rules. Of law being bad and lawlessness being good. The problem is the source and the inner meaning and motivation.

We honor the great warrior Archangel this day and celebrate his mighty defeat of Satan, if we want St. Michael to be our friend and defender we must become like a child seated on the lap of Christ. This is how we will make his victory our own and the angels will fight for us and bring us to Christ through all the dangers and snares of this world.

There is only one way, one door, to finding life, to becoming truly human and that is to be willingly joined to Jesus Christ upon His cross. God has shown us how to live, how to be a human being, we have seen it with our eyes when we have seen him hanging upon that cross. When we see how God has chosen to die we have seen what it means to live.

What are you going to do? You- no one else, you what will YOU do? Will you become a human being? Will you turn yourself toward the light of your being and fulfill that deep hunger and longing to be the fullness of what you were given in your creation?

Our Lords passion, his suffering and sorrow is his embrace of us in our grief- and thus his embrace of our grief- this is His love for us. He first love us in this way so that we might be able to Love Him in the same way. He enters our grief so that we might enter Gethsemane and pray with Him, so that we might stand at the foot of the cross and die with him, this is how we will also live with him. When we embrace his grief and passion then we will be lifted up on high and know the joy of His immortality.

Mary is not a doctrine to be figured out or explicated. She is not a conundrum, she is not a concept or abstract philosophical theory to resolve. The Blessed Mary is the Woman who bore the God Man, she is His Mother, she is our Mother- she is a person- She is a person we can know, you don’t solve a person, you know and love a person.

Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.

God’s Almighty power is displayed chiefly in showing mercy and pity. The power of God which transforms all, which brings something out of nothing, which brings the world into existence and your little life into existence, which creates light out of darkness, which brings beauty and goodness out of your own darkness, your own ugliness and sin, which goes into death and thru His embrace of our suffering and death subjecting himself to it he overcomes it’s power and destroys it, all of this is accomplished not by a sheer overwhelming force of raw power, a simple strength which is stronger than the one opposing Him, no his power is Love, is humility, is his own sacrifice for us. His power is shown chiefly in His mercy and pity for us.

The God of the Old Testament is the Same God who hangs upon the Cross. We were made for Him and He comes to claim us for Himself and to give us everything He has for our own enjoyment but He is fire and light and the darkness has no fellowship with the light and that is absolute and cannot be otherwise. We are in great danger when we dispense with all fear and trembling in the Christian life. How many have adopted a presumptuous devil may care attitude and perished along with it. The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom.

Asterius 4th Century "When, therefore, any one anticipating his end and his removal to the next world, lightens the burden of his sins by good deeds, either by canceling the obligations of debtors, or by supplying the poor with abundance, by giving what belongs to the Lord, he gains many friends, who will attest his goodness before the Judge, and secure him by their testimony a place of happiness."

Late have I loved Thee, 0 Beauty so ancient and so new; late have I loved Thee! For behold Thou wert within me, and I outside; and I sought Thee outside and in my unloveliness fell upon those lovely things that Thou hast made. Thou wert with me and I was not with Thee. I was kept from Thee by those things, yet had they not been in Thee, they would not have been at all. Thou didst call and cry to me and break open my deafness: and Thou didst send forth Thy beams and shine upon me and chase away my blindness: Thou didst breathe fragrance upon me, and I drew in my breath and do now pant for Thee: I tasted Thee, and now hunger and thirst for Thee: Thou didst touch me, and I have burned for Thy peace. Saint Augustine "Confessions" Episode Notes Notes go here

If Orthodox Christians seek to practice true religion then we must recognize the inherent danger of becoming Pharisaical. Of keeping the rules without paying attention to the inner disposition. We believe that we are to become holy, not just on paper but really holy, that is a dangerous belief, but we must believe it despite the risk. In the Old they were commanded to walk but they had no legs, in the New we are commanded to fly but now we have wings. Episode Notes Notes go here

When God created us He did not create us in motionless static position and then say chose what direction you will go. When man comes into being he is thrown into being, our coming into being is a kinetic event in which God hurls us into existence in a very specific direction. He did not throw us down like a rock in the mud. He throws us toward our beautiful and holy purpose of sharing in His fullness of being. And as long as we are ascending unimpeded in this God induced directional movement there is bliss, it is all peaceful and light, everything is beautiful and keeps getting more and more beautiful the further we progress. # Episode Notes Notes go here

Episode Notes We often feel like we need to do God’s job for him. That’s a heavy weight to bear, being God - Judge and Jury of the cosmos. A weight we were not designed for. A weight that will crush us if we are not careful. It is a heavy burden holding everyone to account, it is a light yoke to forgive and show mercy to feel empathy for the sinner who is suffering under the weight of their own sin. This is much better than being a critical judge who is eaten up with anger and bitterness which will lead to our own destruction.

I assure you there is fire in that chalice, divine fire, the very blood of God who was made Man. There are angels all around this altar standing in awe at the great miracle. That the Glorified Crucified Lord of Heaven and Earth is with us not just Spiritually but bodily and we take him into ourselves, we eat his flesh and drink his blood and we do not even realize what we do but with some measure of fear and trepidation and joy we do it in faith.

The enemy offers a faux power, it is a power which destroys and tears down and leads to emptiness and annihilation. The power of the Spirit creates and builds up and makes something out of nothing. You have received the Eternal Spirit as your friend and comforter he who hovered over the waters in the beginning and formed the structures and order of the cosmos is in you in the most intimate way. Do you not think He is capable of ordering your life? Of making something beautiful? Is your sin and dysfunction so great that the One who set the boundaries of the seas cannot make something of your life?

Not only priest and victim He is also King and Ruler of all. And all of this as God made Man, as your elder brother as your new and true Father-Adam in whom your humanity is ransomed, crowned, and fulfilled.

How important is faith? Without it you cannot be pleasing to God. Faith is what compels you to go search for God because you believe that He exists and that He will reward you with delectable delights if you chase Him down and catch Him.

Jesus endured His cross was glorified, made immortal and went home to majesty while we remain in the polluted world that killed him and wants to kill us. This could be taken as a negative but Jesus says it is for our good and to our advantage that He go away so that He might send another comforter who will not only be with us but in us and be the instrument that will enable us to follow Jesus thru the cross into resurrection-immortality-eternal glory-union with God.