2 Corinthians 11:2, 5-6. I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago—whether in the body I do not know, or whether out of the body I do not know, God knows—such a one was caught up to the third heaven. Of such a one I will boast; yet of myself I will not boast, except in my infirmities. For though I might desire to boast, I will not be a fool; for I will speak the truth. But I refrain, lest anyone should think of me above what he sees me to be or hears from me.
St. Luke 5: 5-6, 8, 11. Simon answered and said to Jesus (after He told them to throw out the nets and fish), “Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing; nevertheless at Your word I will let down the net.” … When Simon Peter saw it (i.e. how great the catch was), he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” … So when they had brought their boats to land, they forsook all and followed Him.
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In Flannery O’Conner’s short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” – the psychopath says “If I had actually met Jesus, I’d have made different choices.”
We do not have this excuse: we see and know Him
- When we gather in His name(St. Matthew 18:20)
- When we see and care for those in need (St. Matthew 25:40)
- And when we come to Communion (St. John 6:56).
He is here and he has given us so many gifts (list them), but do we behave like people who have encountered God?
- Do we act like people who have, following the example of St. Paul (Galatians 2:20); now have Christ-God living within them?
- As St. Peter puts it, our relationship with Christ, our membership in His Body (the Church) is supposed to make us “partakers of the Divine Nature” (2 Peter 1:4);
- As St. Athanasius, the great defender and teacher of Christianity, put it in the fourth century; “God became man so that man might become (little g!) god”.
- This claim sounds shocking, but it comes straight from the Gospel!
- As St. John put it in the first chapter of his Gospel; “To those who believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, He has given them power to become sons of God (bene elohim – like the greatest of the angels).
- St. Paul tries to wake us up to the magnitude of this when he says; “don’t you know that you will judge the angels! (1 Corinthians 6:3)?
Forget sliced bread or the internet… this is BY FAR the most important thing that has ever happened in the history of the world… but we act as if this relationship was mundane and normal.
- “What did you do this weekend?”
- “I encountered God and allowed Him to confirm me as His son and an heir of His kingdom.”
- What we are doing right here, right now, is so powerful and so unlike everything else that “normal” people do in this world that it should shock people.
- It’s like saying; “I met someone who gave me his lottery ticket… it ended up being the big winner… I now have 200 million dollars in my bank account.”
- Such a person’s life would not be the same; no one could pretend that their circumstances were the same as everyone else’s.
And yet, we behave as if we were “just going to Church” or just a “dues-paying member of Pokrova in Allentown.
We are members of the Body of Christ! God works His miracles through that Body! We are sons and daughters of the most High! We have the power to share that “winning lottery ticket” with everyone else!
It’s hard to react appropriately: St. Paul didn’t until he was “taken up into the Third Heaven”; St. Peter didn’t until he saw Christ perform the great miracle of catching so many fish.
- Our first response – and the first response of everyone whose eyes have been clouded by this fallen world – is doubt. And that doubt is always there.
- But we have to open our eyes to the miracles that God is performing in our midst, and to His willingness to accomplish miracles THROUGH US, His children.
This is my prayer for you as your pastor, and it is my calling as your priest: to guide you in seeing the Glory of God, and to lead us to the proper response as demonstrated by Saints Peter and Paul in today’s readings: from doubt to awe and repentance and from awe and repentance into service….
Because not only is His glory real… we have work to do!
