Showing posts with label Subordination. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Subordination. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Homily for the Holy Matrimony of Marc Miller and Lauren Craig - August 6, 2016



John 15:9-12; 1 Corinthians 13:4-13; Ecclesiastes 4:9-12

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Marc, Lauren – today you two will follow in the steps of billions before you and establish a new community, a new household, a new partnership, a new family. Since sometime shortly after the Sixth Day of Creation, man and woman have been joined in marriage and the two have become one flesh. So, this day, you, Marc, will cease to be merely Marc, and you, Lauren, will cease to be merely Lauren. Truly, you are no longer two, but you are one.
But, what does this mean? That is a good question! It is commonly believed today that each of us is independent. Indeed, independence is a founding principle of our nation and the American Dream we each pursue. However, independence is neither natural to us as God’s children, nor as holy, sacred, and virtuous as we might be tempted to believe. Truth be told, we are never independent, but we are always dependent upon each other. Not a one of us came into this world independent. Quite the opposite! We each came into this world completely dependent upon our mothers who nourished and protected us in the womb and who continued to do the same after we were born. Each of us was born, quite by necessity, into a community, a family, each of us having, at the very least, a mother and a father and grandparents, and quite likely siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins. John Donne was quite correct when he wrote that no man is an island. Likewise, beyond our immediate families, we were each born into communities, villages, towns, cities, states, a nation, etc. Our dependence upon others, from the beginning of our lives to their ends, is absolutely obvious. And, yet, we cause ourselves and others so much heartache and suffering by striving for and insisting upon our independence.
After each day of creation, the LORD looked upon what He had made and He declared it good. However, after the creation of the man, for the first time, God looked at what He made and He declared that something was not good. “It is not good that the man should be alone.” And, that’s the beginning of the greatest love story ever told – the only love story there is, from which all others are drawn. That is the story that you, Marc and Lauren, enter into this day. “So the LORD caused a deep sleep to fall upon the Man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the Man He made into a woman and brought her to the Man. Then the Man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman because she was taken out of Man.’ Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”
The two shall become one flesh. What does this mean? That’s another great question! Well, I know of no equation of mathematics where one plus one equals one. In terms of relationships, however, marriage in particular, the only way that one plus one can equal one is through mutual sacrifice. And, that is precisely how marriage is described in the Holy Scriptures. St. Paul teaches in His Epistle to the Ephesians: “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.” Likewise, St. Paul teaches in the same Epistle: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might by holy and without blemish. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.”
Now, I know that word submit makes everyone’s neck hairs bristle, and rightly so given the way that term has been twisted and distorted from its true meaning in Scripture to justify all manner of misogyny and discrimination and abuse. However, that is not what the Lord and St. Paul have in mind in using that word. What the word submit means in this context is “Taking one’s proper role in God’s order and laying aside one’s selfish interests.” And, that goes for the husband as well as for the wife and for us all. As I shared with you during our counseling in preparation for your marriage, St. Paul says elsewhere, in 1 Corinthians, “The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.” Marriage is selfless. Those who enter into marriage insisting upon maintaining their independence not only miss the meaning and purpose of marriage, but they are setting themselves up for great difficulty if not out-right disaster.
Marriage is about love. I’m certain that we all agree about that. In fact, some of you are probably thinking, “Finally, he’s going to talk about love!” Ah! But, what is love? That’s yet another great question! In know, everyone thinks that they know what love is. After all, Hallmark and Hollywood and Tiger Beat and Vogue and Oprah Winfrey and Ellen have all told us what love is, right? Wrong. Dead wrong. Love is sacrifice. I’ll bet you haven’t thought about love that way before. But, let me share with you just a few words about love from the Holy Scriptures. St. John the Evangelist has written that “God is love.” Well, there you go! A simple definition of God: God is love. However, we still don’t know what love is, so we can’t know who God is. Ah, but Jesus tells us a bit more. Jesus says, “Greater love has no man than this, that he would lay down his life for his friends.” Let me paraphrase that for you: No greater love is possible than that a person would sacrifice their own life for the sake of another. That is love; love is sacrifice. So, God is love; and love is sacrifice; therefore God is sacrifice. But, there’s more! Jesus also commands you that you love one another as He has loved you – that you sacrifice yourself for others and for another. Love is sacrifice. And, as I said a moment ago, and you all agree – marriage is about love. Marriage is about sacrifice.
Marc, this day you commit yourself before God and these witnesses to sacrifice yourself for the sake of Lauren and for the sake of your marriage to Lauren. She and her welfare, both physical and spiritual, will, from this day forward, be more important to you than your own life and wants and desires. And, Lauren, this day you commit yourself before God and these witnesses to sacrifice yourself for the sake of Marc and for the sake of your marriage to Marc. He and his welfare, both physical and spiritual, will, from this day forward, be more important to you than your own life and wants and desires.
The passages you selected from the Holy Scriptures were good choices! From 1 Corinthians: “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; […] Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” Do you see how all of the qualities that are said to be love are selfless and sacrificial? It means being forgiving, slow to speak in anger, long in listening, and always putting the best construction on the words and deeds of the other. As you think of and treat your husband, your wife, so do you think of and treat your own body, for you are one flesh. However, this is no easy task, for our flesh tempts us to lash out in anger, to point out our spouse’s failings and mistakes, to be impatient when we believe we know a better way, to harbor resentment and not forgive, etc. Therefore, you will need a source of strength and patience and forgiveness and mercy and compassion to draw upon and to fill you that you may love.
And that is where the passage you selected from Ecclesiastes comes to bear: “Two are better than one […]. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. […] A threefold cord is not quickly broken.” Just as the LORD brought our First Parents together and established the covenant of marriage in which two become one flesh, so is Jesus Christ the third strand in the cord of your marriage that will make you strong and unbreakable. If you abide in His love, then you will have ample love for one another to bear and to endure all things. Do not neglect the Third Partner in your marriage. It is Jesus’ love for you that has brought you together. It is with His love that you love each other. And, it is with His sacrificial love you that you will be able to sacrifice yourself in love for each other. You have asked Him to bless your marriage and your one-flesh union, and He will most certainly will.
Keep this image in mind: When God created Eve, He did not take her from Adam’s feet – that he might rule over her and subdue her. Nor did He take her from Adam’s head – that she might be lord over him. But God took her from Adam’s side – his rib – that she might be an equal partner with him, ever at his side, close to his heart.
Marc, Lauren, always remember that your marriage, blessed by God, is a reflection of God’s own Divine Family – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As you sacrifice yourselves for one another, two becoming one flesh; and as, if God should so bless you, you are fruitful and bear children – remember the third partner in your marriage – your Lord Jesus Christ. It was God who brought Adam and Eve together because He desired for them to know the love and fulfillment of His own Divine Family. He is the love that binds you and makes you one flesh; and He has promised to be with you always. Call upon Him daily for your needs. Thank Him daily for your blessings. Make Him Lord of your hearts and your marriage – and He will bless you and your marriage. You will be fruitful. And your one flesh union will be very good.

In the + Name of Jesus. Amen.

Sunday, January 19, 2014

Homily for The Second Sunday after the Epiphany (Epiphany 2)



John 2:1-11; Romans 12:6-16; Exodus 33:12-23

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
And so we are in the midst of the season of Epiphany. Each Sunday’s lessons were selected over a millennium ago by the gathering of the faithful, the Church, because they manifest whom Jesus is and what He has come to do. Therefore, when we consider these Scriptures, we must consider not only how they would have been heard and understood at the time of their telling, but also what meaning was intended from their placement within the Gospel narrative and the Church’s historic lectionary. Thus, the Wedding at Cana tells us, not merely the story of a particular wedding, although it certainly does that, but we must consider also the Evangelist’s placement of this particular story within the Gospel he authored. Indeed, this story appears only in John’s Gospel, and it is followed immediately by Jesus’ cleansing of the temple, which the other Gospels place within the account of Jesus’ passion. What are we to make of John’s inclusion of this wedding, seemingly ignored by the Synoptics? What are we to make of John’s unusual connection of this narrative with the cleansing of the temple? These are but two questions to be considered on this Second Sunday after the Epiphany of our Lord, that Jesus may be made manifest before us as God’s Son and our salvation in human flesh.
Understood as God instituted it, there is something about marriage that is connected with death – the death of the self. For, in marriage, the husband dies to himself and pledges his life to his wife; likewise, the wife dies to herself and pledges her life to her husband. In this selfless and self-sacrificial way, the two become one flesh. They are no longer two, but they are one flesh, even one creature, united by God, which man must not separate. St. John records Jesus’ first miracle having taken place at a wedding and, to be sure, passion imagery abounds: The crisis occurred “on the third day” of a wedding feast. Jesus said that His “hour had not yet come.” In the casting out of the money-changers from the temple, which follows immediately upon the wedding narrative, Jesus makes an explicit reference to His death and resurrection saying “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The temple He was referring to was His body. For, it was through His suffering, death, and resurrection that Jesus perfectly loved His Bride, the Church, giving His life for Her. He loved Her more than He loved Himself. He laid down His life for Her in selfless, sacrificial love that She might live. This is the connection that John, and the Holy Spirit who inspired him to write, mean for you to make.
Therefore, the crisis was not merely that a wedding banquet had run out of wine, though that would surely have been a social blunder and a great embarrassment for the family, but rather the crisis was that man’s life, joy, and hope for the future had run out because of his sin – the joylessness and hopelessness of death had become his fate. This was the crisis that His faithful mother, who believed in Him, asked Him to resolve. This was the crisis that He did resolve by fulfilling God’s Law for us and by dying in our place, that we might have life and joy and hope once again. Those six stone jars held water used to purify men for participation in the feast. Jesus had those jars filled to the brim so that they were full and complete, and then He did something more: He changed the water into wine, the finest wine imaginable. Where the water only purified for a time, His blood that He shed upon the cross for us purifies forever. Indeed, He gives us His cleansing blood now in the fruit of the vine which we drink in Holy Communion for the forgiveness of our sins, the strengthening of our faith, and eternal life through faith in Him.
John’s Gospel is thought to be constructed around seven signs performed by Jesus, of which the changing of water into wine is the first. Thus, John’s Gospel is more a catechism intended to teach the faithful revealed truths about Jesus than it is a narrative telling the story of His life and works. Each and every account recorded by John was selected and recorded for a specific purpose. Ultimately, that purpose was to demonstrate that, in Jesus, God’s Messianic reign had begun through which Jesus would restore His Father’s kingdom and make all things new. This is precisely how we must understand today’s Gospel: Jesus is revealed as God’s Messiah come to restore His fallen creation by means of His selfless and sacrificial death on the cross. Where man’s sin had introduced suffering and death into the world, robbing us of peace and joy and hope, Jesus came, not merely to reverse the curse, but to fulfill perfectly and completely all that we failed to do and then, even more, to recreate, restore, and renew His Father’s kingdom.
Jesus is the perfect and sinless Bridegroom who selflessly laid down His life in death to redeem His Bride, God’s children, the Church from Her sin and death. His life was Her life. She had forfeited Her own life, not for Her Husband, but to Satan. While God was faithful and selfless, His people played the adulterer, the fornicator, the idolater, and the unfaithful Bride. Because of this, man’s wedding feast had run out of wine, and there was no human way of getting more, of restoring man’s peace, hope, and joy. Mary, the mother of our Lord, has long been a symbol of the entire Church. In this narrative, it is Mary who appeals to Jesus in faith saying, “Do something!” Mary believed that Jesus was able to do something and that He would. His odd sounding protest is actually quite revealing, “My hour has not yet come.” Jesus’ “hour” is the time of His passion, His suffering and death upon the cross. Jesus answered His mother saying, “The time for me to lay down my life in selfless sacrifice and death for the Church has not yet come. Nevertheless, I will give this foretaste and foreshadowing of who I am and what I will do now. I will change the water of purification into the wine of joy as a sign that my dear Bride may trust in me and believe that I will purify Her and restore to her hope for eternal life and joy when I shed my blood for Her upon the cross.”
When the master of the feast tasted the water that had been made to be the finest of wines, he exclaimed, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” Indeed, this is how it is with men, but not with God. Whatever you have received from God that you count as good, now, is but a foretaste of the goodness He has laid up for you. This is as true for you today as it was for Adam in the beginning, for Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses, for David, for the guests at the wedding in Cana, and for the saints at rest with Jesus now. We are all, still, waiting in hopeful and joyful expectation for the feast to come, the Great Marriage Feast of the Lamb in His Kingdom that has no end! Yes! That is how the Revelation describes heaven, as a wedding feast where the Bridegroom is Jesus and where you, His Church, are the Bride! It is pictured as Eden, the Garden of Paradise, on steroids – so much greater still than that which we commonly consider perfection and paradise!
This kingdom is yours even now, though you do not see it or experience in its fullness and glory. However, you do see it and experience it through God’s Word and His Blessed Sacraments, particularly and especially in the Supper of the Lamb who has died and is alive again. Here at this banquet table we receive our sustenance and life, our hope and faith is strengthened and renewed, and we are kept and preserved in eternal life through Holy Communion with our living Lord and Husband. Yet, as good and comforting and revitalizing as it is, it is but the dimmest foretaste of that Great Feast to come! It is like manna during out wilderness pilgrimage. It is like the overflowing cup as we walk though the valley of the shadow of death. But, it is enough, it is more than enough for now, for through it, in communion with Christ, we do not walk alone, but He is with us, just as He promised, unto the end of the age.
In the + Name of Jesus. Amen.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Less comfortable than a bottle of Port

linusI found this C. S. Lewis quote as someone’s .sig file – Excellent!

"I didn't go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don't recommend Christianity." -- C.S. Lewis

Sunday, August 9, 2009

A Reflection

Maybe it’s because I turned 40 last month and have been a bit more reflective of where I’ve been, what I’ve done, and where I’m going, but lately I’ve found myself thinking about all the wonderfully inspiring people – people of some degree of notoriety (e.g. authors, professors, pastors, poets, etc.) – that, remarkably, happen to live in this same time of two score years, with, hopefully, at least, an equal amount of time left.

I suppose what I mean is that, given the 7,000 plus years of human history, my 40 years are insignificant, to say the least; and to think that these individuals that I admire and find so inspiring and illuminating just happen to live and write at this same time is simply remarkable (to me). I’m so very thankful for them and I consider them gifts; but then, at the same time, recognizing my own insignificance (in the grand scheme of things) I also recognize that even these men and women I admire are really insignificant – they will likely be remembered but a little longer than I.

In the movie version of The Fellowship of the Ring Gandalf tells Frodo “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.” It is tempting to become consumed by projects and deadlines and “what-might-be” thoughts. The weeks and months slip by ever so quickly as each day that passes is another day closer to the next bible study, confirmation class, sermon, or paycheck. The next thing you know, you’re 40, and 41 is coming quickly. Ok, so this is getting existential – What is the meaning of life? (I know someone’s dying to say “42”.) Gandalf didn’t give an answer but a question. What will I decide to do with the time that is given me?

Well, I’m probably not going to be famous or rich. I’m probably always going to live paycheck to paycheck. Hopefully I’ll remain in fairly good health. I don’t even know where I’m going to be buried when I die. I am of just above average intelligence (B-). I am, by God’s design (it has to be His) a pastor, and not a great one at that. I know that I do have influence on a number of people’s lives, though I feel quite inadequate to meet their needs.

So, what am I going to do with the time that is given me? Ok, so I’m not ambitious; maybe I’m just lazy. I will be a father, a son, a pastor, and not to the best of my abilities (I simply know that I do not always do that), but in humility and repentance. I will try to practice the Christian virtues of love, mercy, forgiveness, charity, peace, kindness, gentleness, patience, selflessness, humility, etc. I will do what I am called to do – when I don’t want to, when I don’t feel like it, when I doubt my efficacy or ability. I will continue to read and to study, to grow and to learn, to stand firm in my conviction while tolerating with gentleness those who disagree with me. I will make no ultimatums and will try not to capitulate.

I will pray the rote liturgy and rote prayers. I will read people who talk about the bible more than I read the bible (though those writers always get me digging deeper into the bible). I will be frustrated with people who clearly have greater gifts than me but seem to like people to acknowledge that.

God, I really need a father confessor. O Lord, hear my prayer.

Sunday, July 26, 2009

The Bread of Freedom

The Seventh Sunday after Trinity 26 July 2009

Mark 8:1-9 / Romans 6:19-23 / Genesis 2:7-17

Audio of sermon.

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Ever since the fall into sin, labor and bread go together. We all need our daily bread to live, and there’s no such thing as a free lunch. In the 60’s the term bread became synonymous with money, the means by which bread was acquired. Money implies work, but that same generation loathed work. The fall into sin brought the curse, “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread,” and then death, “till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The result of the curse is that we must toil and labor to put daily bread upon our tables. Each day is a struggle to survive – with the end result that we die. All our striving to feed ourselves and our families, to put a roof over our heads and clothing on our backs, all our striving to do the right thing, the moral thing, the good thing, leads to death. Life is short and then you die.

Notice how we call it a “fall” into sin? Almost makes it sound like an accident, doesn’t it? And of course, if it’s an accident, then we like to reason that “We didn’t mean to do it, it just kind of happened.” And that doesn’t sound quite so bad. However, honestly, man didn’t simply fall into sin, it was a choice. In fact it was man’s first free choice. The LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” That day is today. That day is tomorrow. That day is each and every day that you insist that you provide for yourself. That day is each and every day that you insist on determining for yourself what is good and what is evil. That day is each and every day that you insist on being god unto yourself.

In the beginning, God provided for man’s sustenance – all that he needed to support his body and his life. The fall into sin, the willful eating of that one forbidden food, the one free choice that man made of his own will in opposition to the will of God, to decide for himself what was good and what was evil, was a willful turning away from God. And from that day, and every day since, man has toiled and striven to provide for himself, physically and spiritually, daily bread – to the inevitable end, death. For the wages of sin is death – what you earn for your labor, what you earn for your striving, what you earn for your struggle, is death. From the very moment of conception we die a little more each and every day. It is what we have chosen freely. It is what we have earned.

Too much is made of human free will. There was no free will in the beginning, at least not in the way we commonly think of free will, for there was only God’s will. Man, made in God’s image, knew God’s will and shared God’s will. Man knew nothing other than God’s will. It was in the eating of that forbidden food, a sustenance that the LORD had not given man, a food that the LORD had commanded man not to eat of, it was in the eating of that forbidden food that man came to know something other than the will of God. And in his knowledge of good and evil, free will entered the picture – man no longer shared the will of God, but man knew something in opposition to God’s will – his own will. Dietrich Bonheoffer put it this way:

In knowing about good and evil, human beings understand themselves not within the reality of being defined by the origin [God], but from their own possibilities, namely, to be either good or evil. They now know themselves beside and outside of God, which means they now know nothing but themselves, and God not at all. For they can only know God by knowing God alone. The knowledge of good and evil is thus disunion with God. Human beings can know about good and evil only in opposition to God.

And so what seemed like freedom, turned out to be slavery. Man found himself knowing that he must do God’s will, and striving to do it, but without knowing any longer what God’s will actually was. And worse, man, exercising his own fallen will, began to call good evil and evil good. Man presented the members of his body as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness with the result that the fruit of his efforts, the fruit of his labor and toil, was still more lawlessness: man’s striving to produce bread on his own still leads only to death.

Bread is not supposed to bring death, but life – Bread is a staple for life, bread is good for you. The poorest people on the earth eat bread and drink water and survive. But man’s bread still brings only death, not life. For man does not live by bread alone but by every, but man lives by the Word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And God’s Word became flesh and made His dwelling here amongst us. As in the beginning God provided man’s daily bread, so again God would provide the only Bread that truly give life – Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life, our Bread King, the daily Bread of our earthly lives and the Bread that gives life that never dies.

Jesus was the Second Adam. He was sent to labor and travail and to die. By the sweat of His brow and the stripes on His back He would produce the Bread of Life. He would eat the bread of our death so that He might provide us His bread that brings life. Jesus looked at that crowd and had compassion on them because they had been with him three days and had nothing to eat. That word compassion is telling – it literally means “to suffer together with”. Jesus didn’t simply feel pity for the 4,000 plus, but he suffered with them – He suffered their toil, their struggle, and their strife, and, ultimately, He suffered their hunger and their inability to produce life-giving bread. Jesus took the meager offering of bread that they could produce – seven loaves and a few small fish – and in a way hidden from the crowd provided them food enough that they were satisfied, with leftovers to spare.

But there’s still no such thing as a free lunch and the wages of sin is still death. Shortly after the miraculous feeding of the four thousand Jesus began to teach His disciples that “the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again.” The bread He provided them in the feeding of the four thousand was but a foretaste of the bread that He would die to provide them. Jesus, who knew no sin, was made to be sin for us. Even though He was innocent, sinless, holy, Jesus became our sin. He became our sin so that the wage of death would no longer be ours. He didn’t just take our sin upon Himself, He became our sin. And death was meted out to Him – PAID IN FULL. It is finished. You are free, truly free – free to worship Him without fear, holy and righteous in His sight all the days of your life.

“When you were slaves to sin you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, [‘slaves of God’, see, I told you that free will was overrated] the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.”

On the third day He provided hungry, fainting pilgrims bread in the desolate wilderness. On the third day our Bread King was raised from the dead to give us the Bread of Life which a man eats that he may never die. And that Bread of Life is His body, given for you, and His precious blood shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins. This bread is not food enough to keep you alive in this body forever, it’s barely enough to keep you from fainting today; but this Bread will keep the life freely given you in Holy Baptism alive forever, and it is all you will ever need.

In the + Name of Jesus. Amen.

Sunday, July 12, 2009

The Foolishness of God’s Love

I tried something new today – I recorded my sermon on a digital recorder. So, here is my first attempt at posting an audio file of a sermon.

The Fifth Sunday after Trinity (Historic) – Luke 5:1-11; 1 Peter 3:8-15; 1 Kings 19:11-21 (Click link for audio)

God’s ways are not our ways. You, and I, all of us know that to be unequivocally true. But why? Are our ways always so wrong? Do we never do the right thing, the righteous thing, the virtuous thing? Of course we do. We build hospitals to heal the sick. We give food, clothing, and money to provide for the poor. Our young men and women lay down their lives to defend our freedoms and to secure freedoms for others. Of course, we also destroy infant lives, we better ourselves at the expense of others, and we tend to think more of ourselves than of anyone else. But why must God’s ways always be so very different from our ways? Why must God’s thoughts be so completely the opposite of our thoughts?

There is an answer to that question, and I think that you will agree that it is every bit as true as the fact that God’s ways are not our ways, even if you don’t find it very satisfying. The answer to the question “Why?” is, “Because He is God, and you are not.” That’s why.

We so want God to act in the ways in which we think that He should act. We so want God to be like us. It’s only human after all. But God is not like us; God is not a human creature. God created humanity in His image, not the other way around. So, who’s ways must be conformed to whom? Who’s thoughts must submit to whom?

The greatest obstacle to faith, and the greatest contributor to suffering, is pride. Pride is your idol, your god. An idol is anything that you put your fear, love, and trust in before God; an idol is anything that gets in between you and God. It’s a First Commandment thing: You shall have no other gods before me – not even yourself. It’s an Original Sin thing – man is not content to be created in the image of God, but man wants to be God himself. We want to determine what is wisdom and what is foolishness, what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil. But it is pride. It is arrogance. It is self-righteousness and self-centeredness and self-ISH-ness. And it is sin. And it brings death. And it is utterly, and truly foolishness.

Each of our lessons today speak to us of foolishness. For it is foolishness in the eyes of the world that God would speak to Elijah, not in a mighty wind, not in a jarring earthquake, and not in a blazing fire, but in a still, small voice – even a whisper.

Likewise, it is foolishness in the eyes of the world that you do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling but rather do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you, even love your enemies.

And so also was it foolishness in the eyes of the world, indeed foolishness in the weary eyes of Simon, James, and John, when Jesus told them to “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets. And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking.”

Foolishness. But the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. God’s foolishness is wiser than man’s wisdom. God’s thoughts are not man’s thoughts, neither are man’s ways His ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are God’s ways higher than man’s ways and His thoughts than man’s thoughts.

Man’s pride separates him from God. The man who trusts in himself does not seek God – he is a fool. But God is merciful and just, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. He calls the fool to repentance and afflicts man’s pride to break it. Elijah feared for his life because he trusted only in himself and knew that he had not the strength in himself to survive. But in his self-despair, Elijah was receptive to God’s Word. God demonstrated to Elijah that He would act, not in ways that men find impressive – winds, earthquakes, and fire – but in His way, the way of His Word.

Simon, James, and John despaired at the failure of their own efforts to catch fish. But in their broken and weary desperation they were receptive to Jesus’ Word “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” By that Word alone they put to their boats and let down their nets, not expecting anything, but catching instead a great catch of fish.

Why are God’s ways and thoughts so different from ours? Because He is God and we are not – thanks be to God. In His grace and mercy, God loves us enough to crush us; God loves you enough to crush your pride, to beak your self-reliance, to destroy your self-righteousness. It is a good thing to be broken by the Lord – for He is powerful and willing to put you back together again, not as you were before, but as a new creation, restoring you once again to His image.

God’s foolishness is wiser than man’s wisdom. He does the unthinkable. He does what men would never do. He saves the best wine for last. He eats and drinks with sinners, tax collectors, and prostitutes. He touches the unclean with no concern for Himself. And He lays down His own life for men who hate Him. Foolishness.

And so, thanks be to God, His ways and thoughts are not your ways and thoughts. He afflicts your ways and thoughts. He afflicts your pride, your reason, and your assumed wisdom. He breaks you, so that He can re-create you in the image of His Son.

Through the foolishness of the Gospel – the preaching of Christ crucified – a great catch of fish – you – is still brought into the boat – the Church. The message of the cross is foolishness and a stumbling block to the world; but to you, that cross is the power of God and the wisdom of God.

In the + Name of Jesus. Amen.