Let us press in upon Jesus to hear the word of God (cf. Luke 5:1). When we do, maybe he’ll withdraw a little, as if getting into Simon’s boat and putting out a little from the land, but he won’t neglect to teach us (Luke 5:3).  Let us each seek out and listen to the word of God in our own lives. He is always speaking to us, I believe, in the language of our lives. But it can be difficult to make out what he’s saying over the crashing of the waves.

The word of God to us is often counterintuitive.

What he’s telling us often isn’t what we want to hear.

It’s often not easily recognized or understood, agreeable or believable to us.

Hearing the word of God and keeping it requires a little faith.

Hearing the word of God is like toiling all night in a boat on the lake in the grueling and backbreaking work of fishing. Casting nets, pulling them in, catching nothing. Casting again, pulling in again, catching nothing again. All night long. Hour after hour. Then, exhausted and disheartened, giving up, coming near the shore to wash your fruitless nets and call it quits only to hear a man command you to put out again into the deep and to let down your nets again for a catch (Luke 5:4).

You know how good it feels to get home from work after a long day. But how would it feel if, when you just get home, your boss calls you and tells you to come back in and get back to work? My first thought probably wouldn’t be that this is the word of God to me. My first thought would probably have more to do with what my boss could do with his suggestions. To recognize such a seemingly mad suggestion as the word of God would take a little faith.

Simon, who Jesus will later call Peter, has a little faith. He says to Jesus, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! Nevertheless, at your word I will let down the nets” (Luke 5:5). Notice that he doesn’t say, “for a catch.” Jesus tells him to let down the nets “for a catch,” but Peter just says that he’ll let down the nets. He’s holding on to a little skepticism, I think, but he also has a little faith. As it happens, God is the master of more than fish, and so the haul they take in by heeding his word was enough to nearly sink two boats.

Let us listen carefully for the word of God in our lives and be open to it, because it can be counterintuitive. Our God is a God of surprises.

Hearing the word of God is also like long suffering from a thorn in the flesh – a weakness of body or spirit or condition of life – and asking the Lord to remove it, yet still suffering it and so asking the Lord again to remove it and yet still suffering it and so asking a third time for the Lord to remove it, and finally hearing the word of the Lord: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power reaches perfection in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9).

The word of the Lord isn’t always what we want to hear. Sometimes he has to tell us three times before we’ll accept it. Accepting it requires a little faith. Paul finally accepts his weakness and even boasts of it, saying, “for the sake of Christ, I am content with weaknesses” (2 Cor 12:10). The word of God can be hard to hear.

Hearing the word of God is also like trying to sleep at night but being woken by the voice of your teacher calling your name, getting up, going to see what he wants and hearing, “I didn’t call you. Go back to sleep.” Then, trying to sleep again, hearing him call you again, getting up and going to him only to hear again, “I didn’t call you, my son. Go back to sleep.” And again a third time – but this time at last your teacher recognizes that the voice you’ve been hearing is the voice of the Lord (1 Sam 3:3-10).

Sometimes we mistake the voice of the Lord for the voice of our human teachers, just as sometimes we mistake the voice of our human teachers for the voice of the Lord. His voice in our lives can be hard to recognize, but our teachers, if they are wise and humble, can help us to recognize him when he calls us.

The priest Eli is a good example of this kind of teacher. It is Eli who finally recognizes the Lord calling the boy Samuel in the night, only to learn that the Lord will punish his house for the iniquity of his sons, to which news Eli says, “It is the Lord; let him do what seems good to him” (1 Sam 3:18). This demonstrates a rare humility and openness to the word of God, necessary in teachers who would help us to hear the word of God in our own lives.

Hearing the word of the Lord is also like suffering the oppression of another nation for seven years and them destroying all the produce of the land and taking all the livestock, instigating famine (Judges 6:1, 4) making you so weak and so powerless against them that you just know that there’s nothing you can do about it (6:15), so you call out the Lord and ask him, “Why don’t you do something? Where are your wonderful deeds? Why don’t you deliver your people?” (6:13) only to hear back from the Lord, “Why don’t you deliver your people?” (6:14). Sometimes we ask the Lord, “Why don’t you help us?” only to hear him say, “You are the help I have sent.”  Sometimes we see our own particular problems because God is telling us to deal with our own particular problems.

This is how it went with Gideon against the Midianites. What the Lord was asking him to do to was unbelievable to him. He was of the weakest clan in Manasseh and he was the least in his family and yet the Lord chose him, of all people, to deliver Israel from the Midianites (6:15). He took a lot of convincing.

The word of God can be like that. It confounds us. It calls us to do things we think are impossible. And they would be impossible without God, but they are not without God. When God calls us to seemingly insurmountable tasks he says to us, as he says to Gideon, “But I will be with you” (6:16), and that makes all the difference.

Sometimes people say that God will never let you suffer more than you can bear, but I don’t think that’s true. Rather, we may get crushed by our problems, but he will bear them in us. He’s the one who can bear them, not us. He will be with us and he will raise us up when we fall (Ps 145:14). It really was impossible for Gideon to drive out the Midianites, but God in Gideon can do anything.

Of myself, I can’t do anything.

God can do anything.

In God, I can do anything God wills.

So, with the guidance of wise and humble teachers, we must listen carefully for the word of God in our lives so that we can know his will for our lives and live in him who accomplishes great, surprising, new, impossible, confounding, and glorious works in and through us.

Do you see that the kingdom of God has come with power? (Mark 9:1) Jesus said to the multitude with his disciples, “There are some standing here who will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.”

I can tell you, almost with certainty, that everyone who was standing there has by now tasted death. I do not say that they are dead! Our God is not the God of the dead, but of the living! And he is their God! I say, rather, that they have tasted death. Just as Jesus Christ himself has tasted death and yet is not dead.

Jesus is not wrong here. He has not miscalculated the day of the second coming, as many modern doomsday prophets often do. This is not what Jesus has done. So, if he is not wrong, and all who was standing there have tasted death, then it can only mean that the kingdom of God has already come with power and some who were standing there have seen it.

So I ask you again, have you seen the kingdom of God? Remember that the reign of God is forever and ever. When the kingdom of God comes, it does not then retreat away again. If the kingdom of God has come already in the lifetimes of those who lived with Jesus, then it must be that the kingdom of God persists now today. But the kingdom of God is among us and the kingdom of God is within us (Luke 17:21). So I ask you again, have you seen the kingdom of God that has come with power?

Who is the king of glory? The Lord Jesus. Who is the king of kings? Jesus Christ! Who is the Lord of hosts? Our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ.

It is no earthly politician, neither this candidate nor that candidate, that is Lord of heaven and earth. Jesus Christ alone rules over all and he is King and God of all.

As citizens of this country, it’s important for us to vote. But, if we love our country, there’s something even more important. It’s even more important for us to pray. How often we pray for our civil authorities in almost every liturgical service, and rightly so.

St. Peter teaches us: “Honor everyone. Love the brethren. Fear God. Honor the emperor.” (1 Pet 2:17). Yes, even the emperor, he says. Even Nero, who would slaughter Christians and use their burning bodies as torches to light his dinner parties. Yesterday I saw a Christian confess on Facebook that he would not pray for Ruth Bader Ginsberg. As Christians we pray for everyone, even those opposed to us.

It is prayer for them and for all that can truly bring needed change, which is metanoia – repentance – the change of heart. Change of policy unaccompanied by change of heart yields precious little fruit. This coming Thursday is a National Day of Prayer and Fasting for God’s mercy on our land and the healing and conversion of our hearts. Consider joining in.

Who would Jesus vote for? Would he vote at all? I have no idea. But do we even care? Vote your conscience. But if you leave your conscience unformed by prayer to the one true king and Lord, it will lead you astray. It will be malformed. You’ll be like the wooden puppet Pinocchio before he got his conscience in the form of a cricket. Your decisions will be immature and inadvisable. Pray before you vote. Pray while you are voting. Pray for whoever wins the election, whether or not you voted for them.

I know it’s not November and that maybe I should save all this for then, but today Jesus Christ is talking about the kingdom of God! And I follow his schedule. Because I’m living in his kingdom.

Yes, I am an American. I found that out real fast the moment I visited foreign country. When I went to Germany in my early twenties it became very quickly clear to me that my Americanness was written all over my face. And that it came out in all of my mannerisms and habits and that there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. It is an aspect of our identity, where we we’re from, it shapes us. So, yes, I like most of you am an American. But God forbid that I should make that my primary identity. That I should put that first. If my first identity is not in the Lord, I am lost. Indeed, it is for his sake and the Gospels, that we are to lose our lives if we intend to save our lives (Mark 8:35))

What does it mean for us to lose our life for Christ’s sake and the Gospels? For some, it means just that. Many of those Jesus was speaking to would soon after his death and Resurrection begin to join the ranks as martyrs. And martyrdom has persisted into our own day. Just one example among many is the Coptic Orthodox martyrs beheaded by the Islamic State five years ago in Libya. If we are not prepared and willing to act as they did in that kind of situation, then we are not yet truly followers of Jesus Christ. He calls us to lose our life for his sake and the Gospels. Now remember that the gospel is a gospel of life not of death. It is for life that we are losing our lives. Jesus is the life. For nothing else would it be worthwhile after all to lay down our lives. But this is the pearl of great price and we eagerly and willingly sell everything else we have to buy it.

Some of us, on the other hand, do not have the opportunity to die in the flesh by those persecuting Christ and his Church. Does this mean that we are lost? Because we have had no chance to lose our life Jesus and his gospel? Don’t worry, we will have that chance in one way or another

This is in fact the vocation of every Christian. We must take up our own cross. We will discover our own way to lay down our lives. Every vocation – being married or being unmarried, being laity or clergy – is a vocation of martyrdom of one kind or another. Each vocation is to give witness, which is what the word martyr means. And each is a way of giving up our whole lives for the love of others.

This is what Christ does on the cross. He lays down is life for the love of others, for the love of us, and for the love of all. It is on the cross, which we continue to exalt today, that the coming of his kingdom is realized.

We know that Pilate ordered it to be written and posted above Christ on his cross, “Jesus of Nazareth the king of the Jews”. It’s interesting to note that in iconography, this is not what we find on the cross of Christ. Rather, it says here, Ό Βασιλεύς της Δόξης – the king of Glory. Pilot likely did not consider Jesus to be glorious in this moment. He likely failed to see the kingdom of God come in power here. He did not regard of a cross as the throne of the most high King. He thought of it rather as something he could threaten the king with. When, in fact, it is his throne. And here he is enthroned as king of glory. And some who stood there before when he was preaching and heard him say that there was some standing there who would not taste death until they saw the kingdom of God which has come in power. They looked, and they remembered, and they saw exactly that. That in this moment of supreme weakness and humiliation, was the power of the coming of God to be exalted. By them and us until this very day.

Those of us who do not yet see the kingdom of God, are like pilot who failed to recognize the king standing before him. It isn’t that to the kingdom of God is not among us. It is that we do not see it. It is present and it is invisible. As invisible as it was when Jesus hung on the cross. It looked to be his defeat, but in fact it was his victory. The same continues on and on. The saints of God and his martyrs and those who give testimony and witness to him by their lives laying down their lives both literally and figuratively. We have seen the self-sacrificial love of Christians, I hope. If we have not, we have not yet met Christians. And if we have, we have seen the kingdom of God, and power. The cross gives us power to seek God where God is not. Or where God seems not to be. The cross gives us the power to see the kingdom of God. And to live in the kingdom of God. Even now. Live first of all as citizens of the Kingdom. Let’s make that our identity above all things and l et the cross inform how we see things and all the decisions that we make. May all our decisions be cruciform.

Don’t you just love the whole wide world and everyone in it? God does. Perfectly and truly and absolutely. And the more like God we become, the more we will love the world and everyone in it. Unreservedly. Unconditionally.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” John Three Sixteen. This is, among Americans anyway, probably the most famous of verses in Scripture. Its fame, of course, precedes America by millennia.

Our holy Father Saint John Chrysostom includes it in his Anaphora, which we usually pray at The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom after the Holy, Holy, Holy several times a week (except during the Great Fast, when we pray it only once a week on Saturday mornings). So, you see, this verse has been popular among Byzantine Christians long before it was widespread among Americans. We liked it before it was cool.

And rightly so. The love of God for the world it is the good news. It is the gospel that we preach. It ought to be the first and the last message the world hears from us as the Church. We love you. God loves you.

Sometimes Christians with our moralizing fail to communicate to the world the love that God has for the world. We fail to communicate that the morality itself is an expression of love. Too many Christians are eager to play gotcha and condemn others in their sins. Our first and last message is love. It’s the good news we preach, not the bad news. That’s what it means to evangelize.

No matter who you are and no matter what you’ve done, no matter what color you are and no matter where you’re from, no matter what language you speak or don’t speak, God loves you.  Whether you’re rich or you’re poor, powerful or weak, God loves you. No matter what you believe, God loves you. Even if you deny that he exists or, worse, deny that he loves you, he loves you.

I don’t say your beliefs and your actions don’t matter. But I do say that God loves you completely and just as much as he would otherwise regardless of what you’ve done and what you believe. There is nothing you can do to diminish God’s love for you. You have not power over him and he is unchangeable and perfect and his love for you remains unconditionally perfect.

Indeed, it is precisely for you that he has entered into the world and become a human being like you and accepted death, even death on a cross, to save you from death and to save you from the suffering you have brought upon yourself with your evil deeds and false beliefs.

“For God so loved the world.” This is indeed a fitting verse for us to here as we prepare to Exalt the Holy Cross. This small phrase contains so much paradox and mystery. And the cross is the meeting place of all true paradox and mystery. Why do I call love for the world paradoxical and mysterious? Well, what is the world that God should love it?

When we say that God loves the world, that means everybody. Everybody. The doers of righteousness and the doers of evil. The wise and the foolish. His friends and those who make themselves his enemies. The just and the unjust, upon both of whom the rain falls and the sun shines alike (Matthew 5:45). The love of God is like the rain falling down upon us all this morning. It just like the sun that shines on us all. We can hide from it. We can keep ourselves unwatered by his nourishing rain and we can hide in the dark. Many do. “The light has come into the world but people prefer darkness to light because their works are evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come toward the light so that his works might not be exposed” (John 3:19-20). But his rain is falling and his sun is shining nonetheless. His love for us is not diminished even slightly by our lack of love for him or for others, all of whom he loves every bit as much is he loves us.

His love is total and all consuming. His love for us is patient and it is kind. He does not dwell on the evil we have done! He does not rejoice in the evil done to us nor that which we do to ourselves. He rejoices in the truth. He bears everything and endures everything. He is always faithful. His love for us never fails and it never ends (cf. 1 Cor 13:4-8). God is love.

John Three Sixteen is about God’s love for us. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.” That “so” does not mean “very much.” It does not precisely mean God loved the world “so very much” that he gave his only begotten son. Rather, it means “thus.” Thus God loved the world: He gave his only begotten son.” This is how he loves us. He gives us his Son.

This is cruciform love. It is self-sacrificial love. Who do we love with this love? For whom do we lay down our life? Perhaps our children. Perhaps our spouses or our friends. Such love for our friends is no small thing. Indeed, Jesus teaches us that “there is no greater love than to lay down your life for your friends” (John 15:13).

By the way, let’s pause for a moment there and notice how highly Jesus exalts friendship. And how low friendship has fallen in the esteem of our culture. It is regarded as well beneath familial love. Isn’t that what we say in our culture? Don’t many say, for example, that there is no greater love than the love of mother has for her child? Well, that’s not what Jesus says. He says, “There is no greater love then to lay down your life for your friends.” Remember when Jesus lifted up his friends to equality with his mother and his brothers. “Who is my mother and who are my brothers?” he asked. And then he pointed to his disciples, whom he later called his friends, and said “Here is my mother and my brothers.” They and we make ourselves friends of Jesus by doing the will of his Father. (Matthew 12:48-50; John 15:15).

But what about strangers? Do you we lay down our lives for them? Our Lord laid down his life for strangers. What about our enemies? Our Lord forgave his enemies even as they drove the nails into his hands. Our patron Stephen forgave his enemies even as they stoned him to death. Our Lord not only forgave them but loved them deeply. He lay down his life for them, too. Our Lord loved Israel even as it was unfaithful to him. He was like a husband who went on loving an unfaithful wife, as prophesied by Hosea.

The Lord is faithful! He is the faithful one. He’s the one who remains true. We are not faithful. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). If you deny it, even your denial is a sin.

Bear this in mind as you listen to John Three Sixteen: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

I want to suggest a different reading here. I think it may be better translated, “whoever has faith in him” or “whoever is faithful to him.” “Belief” can mean anything from faith all the way down to mere assent or opinion. Merely opinion is not faithfulness and that is not what is meant here when Jesus says that everyone who believes in him might not perish but have everlasting life. What is meant is faithfulness. Whoever is faithful to God will not perish but have everlasting life.

Who is faithful to God? Only one is faithful to God. Jesus Christ is the faithful one. Not me and not you. Jesus Christ is the faithful one. God is faithful. First Israel was unfaithful and God loved her anyway. And now us sinners who make up the Church are unfaithful and God loves us anyway. God loves the world.

What has been accomplished in Christ is that his love for the world, like a bridegroom’s love for his bride, has been consummated. It has become flesh. It has been incarnated. He has become one with us. And it is in him and only in him, the only faithful one, that it is possible for us to be faithful. Only when we have joined him on the cross, which is God’s supreme act of love for the world, will we know what love is, and what it is to be faithful, and what it is to live eternally.

Jesus Christ is the Cornerstone. This is one of his names.

Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians that we are the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets and that Christ Jesus himself is the cornerstone (Eph 2:19-20). This is the corner foundation stone – the foundation stone placed at the extreme corner where two walls of a structure meet – the stone that both supports and unites both walls. This is an important piece. Were it to crumble, the whole structure would be compromised and would likely collapse.

It is clear that Jesus Christ is the foundation upon which the house of God is built and that if we try to build our churches, our families, or our lives on any other stone, they will be compromised and will likely collapse. Any other stone is too weak to support such weight and it will crumble.

And yet we often seek to do just that. We make central to our lives concerns that really are secondary. Instead of eating to live, we live to eat. We pursue not almighty God so much as the almighty dollar. We care more for the crumbling stones of our church buildings than for the living stones which comprise the true Church.

Jesus Christ is the stone that matters. Sometimes we care too much for church buildings and not enough for the body of Christ, which is his people. The body of Christ is risen from the dead and ascended to the right hand of the Father. This is the everlasting temple in which we worship God: the temple of his body. We are members of his body and living stone of his temple. If Christ lives in us, we are his holy place more so than this church building, even more so than Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, yes, even more so than the Church of the Anastasis in Jerusalem, which houses both Golgotha and the tomb of Christ and which, for the first time since 1349 during the Black Death, was closed for services this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The temples of our bodies, I tell you, were not closed.

St. Gregory of Nyssa writes, “Change of place does not effect any drawing nearer unto God, but wherever you may be, God will come to you, if the chambers of your soul be found of such a sort that He can dwell in you and walk in you. But if you keep your inner man full of wicked thoughts, even if you were on Golgotha, even if you were on the Mount of Olives, even if you stood on the memorial-rock of the Resurrection, you will be as far away from receiving Christ into yourself, as one who has not even begun to confess Him.”

Let us remember what our patron, St. Stephen clearly said, “Solomon built a house for him, but the Most High does not dwell in houses made with hands” (Acts 7:47-48). Jesus said of the temple buildings, “There will not be left one stone upon another, that will not be thrown down” (Matt 24:2). The same is likely true of this building in which we now worship. Let’s not forget that. It is Christ whom we worship here who is the eternal stone, not this brick and mortar. He is who matters. All this is passing away.

Jesus is the cornerstone upon which we would build if we were wise. Though he is often rejected by worldly builders, he is the only one who can really hold it all together. If we’ve been building our lives on other things: on money, on comfort, on our own pride, let’s go ahead and let the shanties we’ve assembled collapse. Just let it go. And start rebuilding on Christ an edifice that will stand for ages.

Today Jesus shows us that the scripture is speaking of him when it says, “The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is the work of the Lord, a marvel in our eyes.” We chant this together with other verses from Psalm 117 every Sunday morning at Matins. If we pray the whole divine office, we chant this every single morning, except on days of alleluia. This is clearly an important image for us, which the Church presents to us almost every day for our consideration and meditation.

This verse is also quoted five times in the New Testament – by Jesus himself in all three synoptic gospels, by Peter when filled with the Holy Spirit in Acts, and again in 1 Peter (Acts 4:8,11; 1 Pet 2:7). This has been a central piece of apostolic preaching from the very beginning.

The phrase repeatedly quoted by the apostles is an exact quote from the Septuagint – that’s the purportedly inspired Greek translation of the Old Testament that was used by the apostles, by the Jews of Jesus’ time and place, and by the early Church. The phrase is actually a little different from that which appears in Ephesians and may be more literally rendered, “the head of the corner.”

These terms can refer to the cornerstone as I’ve described, but they can also refer to the keystone or the capstone of an arch. This is the stone that supports the arch from above – the last stone placed while building the arch – the stone that holds the whole thing together. If you’ve got some building blocks of the right shape, it’s fun to build an arch with them with your children or grandchildren.  And it’s a good physics lesson. You can build the arch and see how strong it is – but then pull out the keystone and watch the whole thing collapse.

This sense of the term may make more sense with the timing of the verse: “The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” If the builders rejected a stone and started building, but then returned to it when they needed it, it may make sense that this would be the keystone of an arch, which is the last stone placed when building an arch, rather than the cornerstone of two walls, which may be the first stone one would lay.

I think the multivalence of this image is actually a good thing. Jesus is both our cornerstone and our keystone, I would suggest. He is both the one who supports us and also the one who unites us. He is both the first stone upon which we build and the last stone which completes us. He is the beginning and the end – the alpha and the omega.

Also, if we rejected him when we began building our lives, or at any point along the way, if our priorities have gotten out of whack, it’s not too late to return to him and place him as the keystone which holds our lives together.