Sermon 213 November 27, 2025: Mt 6: 25-34; Ph 4; 4-9; Dt 8:7-16 Thanksgiving

 As preached by Brother Luke
Holy Wisdom Church

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit!

 

       Back in the late 1950s and early 1960s my family attended a Methodist church. It had a huge Cross at the back of the sanctuary. The church was used by a Jewish congregation on Saturday. They did not want to display that symbol during their service so they hung a large cover over the cross. For Christians, the Cross is the central symbol of the promise and cost of our salvation. Yet, for many Christians, the promise is much more palatable than the cost.

       When the pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving in this land in 1621 they could not know that only a few years later their settlement and all its inhabitants would be wiped out. We still remember and honor that celebration, but conveniently forget about the cost that they later paid.

       We don't want to think of our Thanksgiving holiday as a time to give thanks for disasters. After all, Thanksgiving is a time to celebrate the many wonderful blessings we have received and hope to continue to receive. And this is good to do, even if we do not do it as often as we might. But giving thanks for bad things, mishaps, disappointments, tragedies, this is another story. St Paul says give thanks to God for all things. [1 Thessalonians 5:18] That is a hard calling. This was the theme of one session of a recent on-line class we took, taught by Fr Sergius Halvorsen of St. Vladimir's Seminary. He called it radical thanksgiving.

       The Eucharist we celebrate and the communion we will receive today is the body and blood of Christ "shed for you and for many." The Greek word eucharist means thanksgiving. As communion, it is the ultimate symbol of the transformation of something horrible into a blessing and a grace. Every time we receive communion we are participating in a Eucharist, a thanksgiving celebration of the destruction of the "last enemy," death, which opens the gates of the kingdom of God for all who believe.

       God has given us life knowing that life includes both good and bad things. We are born and we die, and in addition to our many joys, we have to traverse many interim deaths--the pains, and disappointments of life--before the final one. But as Christ tells us, he is with us in all things. All of our life comes from God and is in God's hands.

       We celebrate and enjoy the good, the pleasant, the happy times but we also have to live through the bad things, mishaps, disappointments, and tragedies. How do we transform these? How is God a part of that? We look to Christ's life and teachings for the answer. We see him transforming peoples' lives in healings, in praising and supporting their faith, in constantly reaching out to help others and finally in freely giving up his life on the cross for us. Even on the cross he forgave his executioners and offered the kingdom to one of the thieves. He conformed to  God's will.

       At matins this morning we sang a portion of the beautiful thanksgiving Akathist hymn written in 1934, by a man in a Siberian prison who was soon to die. The title of the Akathist? Glory to God for all things. He was facing death while thanking God. In such a situation it would be perfectly natural and understandable to harbor in one's heart the feelings of distrust, abandonment, despair, dismissal, pain, and rejection. However, this prisoner transformed a situation of horror into a life affirming experience by crafting a paean of praise to God for all things. He brought to mind what is good to transform what is bad.

       In this morning's gospel Christ tells us not to worry. God provides everything we need. This is true in the largest sense. The source of all goodness, the source of our very life, is God. But when the hard times come, as they inevitably will, the thanks we offer to God gives us the strength and support to transform us and these trials as we go through them. To change our heart and our mind from despair, anger, rage, and despondency to hope, perseverance, peace, and even joy in the assurance that God is with us and we are in God's hands, to the end of time.

 

Glory be to Jesus Christ!

Luke 8:16-25

 As preached by Brother Christopher
Holy Wisdom Church

“So take care how you listen... my mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and put it into practice.”

 

Have you ever had the experience of watching the evening news and then when the telecast was over, wondered what you just heard? I know I have. It has helped to remind me how listening is an active process that requires intention as much as attention and is not something automatic. We live at a time when listening isn’t something to be taken for granted. How many times have you said something to someone and soon realized that they didn’t hear you at all?  I remember early in my monastic formation learning that during the first centuries of the Church when books were precious and limited in number, how the early monks would memorize passages of scriptures after having simply listened to them in common. They would then meditate on them and interiorize them, making them a storehouse of wisdom that translated into action. That sounds astonishing to us in our day, but it points to how serious they took listening.

              The first reading from the prophet Ezekiel describes a different aspect of this: what I would call “pseudo-listening”. We might characterize this as listening to be entertained, turning the word of God into a lullaby. The people love to hear the gracious words flowing from the prophet’s lips but they have no effect on their behavior. They listen to words intended to challenge, to provoke positive change, but no one acts on them. And so we feel the frustration of the prophet, who realizes that their pseudo-listening is going to result in a disaster that ultimately leads them into exile.

              In this morning’s gospel from Luke we see how serious Jesus takes real listening. Those who truly hear him, who really get it and put his words into practice he describes in the most intimate of terms: they are truly his mother, brothers and sisters. They are part of his family, with all of the bonds such a connection implies. Yet here is where things get a little sticky. Are we as a Church really taking care how we listen? Would Jesus identify us as his mother and brothers and sisters? For example, what would he make of Orthodox Christians fighting against one another in Ukraine, or at times what feels like our insensitivity to those suffering in the mid-east, or risking starvation in parts of Africa? Or the horrific conditions in Haiti? But let’s even bring it closer to home: what about how some minorities are currently being treated here, to the poor in our midst who are struggling to feed their families, or those suffering from mental health issues who can’t get assistance?  What would Jesus say about the scandal of Christian divisions, where we seem to have grown comfortable with an immovable status quo? I don’t pretend to have easy answers to any of these issues, but shouldn’t the Church have a more prophetic voice in addressing life’s most pressing challenges? That has to come from our listening intently to the Gospel and acting on it. That involves each of us.

              This past Friday we celebrated the Feast of the Entry into the Temple, which reminded us of the Theotokos as an example par excellence of one who listened to the word of God throughout her life and then acted on it. Jesus highlighted this later in the gospel of Luke when a woman raised her voice and said to him, “Blessed the womb that bore you and the breasts that fed you.” And he replied, “More blessed still are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” For Jesus, that’s where Mary’s virtue really lay: her hearing the word of God and then keeping it. May we benefit from her example and try our level best to hear God’s word to us and to keep it.       

Homily for Lk 7:1-10

As preached by Brother Christopher

Holy Wisdom Church

 

 

“When Jesus heard this he was amazed at the centurion, and turning to the crowd that followed him, he said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”

 

This morning’s gospel comes immediately after the conclusion of Luke’s account of the sermon on the plain. That ended with the memorable words, “Why do you call me, “Lord, Lord” and not do what I say?” and Jesus’ contrast between the person who built their house on rock versus the person who built on sand. It is significant that Luke follows this up by the healing of the centurion’s slave, for, given Jewish culture and beliefs at the time, the last model of faith one would expect to be given would be that of a Gentile. Yet here we are.

          This story foreshadows a more universal gospel message that would spread like wildfire during the early centuries of the Church: yes, even Gentiles shall be included in the Kingdom of God. And not only that: it is the example of a Gentile centurion that Jesus chooses to use as a teaching moment. The centurion most likely belonged to the militia of Herod Antipas, a formidable figure commanding a unit of 100 soldiers. He had the backing of Rome with no obligation to look on the Jewish people with respect. Yet he does. Luke tells us that he loves their nation, had built their local synagogue and now was showing love for his neighbor, a lowly slave whom he nevertheless valued highly and who was at death’s door.

It is noteworthy how he handles this situation. By initially sending a group of Jewish elders to ask Jesus to heal the slave, and then subsequently a group of his friends to intercept him along the way to deliver a further message, he shows a sensitivity to Jewish custom. It is more than false humility. He knows that were Jesus to enter the house of a Gentile he would risk ritual pollution. So tactfully he has the friends say to Jesus the memorable words, “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you... only say the word and my servant will be healed.” He gets the bigger picture. Being a commander who understands authority himself on a human level, he knows that if Jesus’ authority comes from God, (which he believes it does), all that is required is the power of his word. He can heal the servant from where he stands. It is this level of faith, of trust in who he believes Jesus to be, that Jesus finds so amazing and which he then turns to the following crowd and commends to them. “Not even in Israel have I found such faith.”

This presents us with a challenge, as well: while we live 20 centuries apart from Jesus in his earthly existence and so were not witness to his mighty works, where his word is present the power that was revealed through him then expresses itself through the Spirit now – the power of the Risen Lord – in many and diverse ways, including places where we least expect it to be manifest. Who might be today’s centurion? A Muslim, a Buddhist,... a Jew? I wonder. Is our faith up to that?