Pastor: Fr John Vazquez | (518) 462-0579 |
fatherjohnvazquez@gmail.com
Wednesday, September 25th—8am—Divine Liturgy
Wednesday, September 25th—6pm—Paraklesis of St George followed by OCF gathering for young adults and college students
Friday, September 27th—8am—Orthros
Saturday, September 28th—Great Vespers with Bible Study to follow
Sunday, September 29th—9am—Orthros and Divine Liturgy—Memorial for Bassir Rezek to follow Liturgy
Sermon—Sunday 13th Sunday After Pentecost
Lk 5.1–11 and 1 Cor 16.13–24
YOU WANT ME TO WHAT!?
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one God, amen.
Most of us know the story about Noah. Noah the righteous—the only righteous man at that time. It says he found favor in God’s eyes.
God tells Noah to build an ark and Noah builds this ark, because God is going to destroy all flesh upon the earth. The people of the earth had become so extremely sinful.
Sometimes people think, "wow this is really harsh of God to destroy all these people" but what we don't think about is Noah building this ark…
This ark was 450 feet long—enormous, enormous boat. And Noah and his three sons are building this ark and it takes a long time to build something this big, right? And so, the people, no doubt, are seeing this—this project is not something you can just hide in your backyard, right? People are seeing.
And, certainly they're asking him, what are you doing? And being that Noah was a righteous man, certainly he tells the people—there’s a flood coming and it's going to destroy everything. We're done, we're running out of time.
But do any of them repent and change?
If we look at the scriptures it perhaps took Noah 100 years to build this ark!
There's no tools like we have today—people are saying, "it's not going to rain, there’s not gonna be a flood you crazy old man." And Noah's saying, repent, change, it's going to rain. There's going to be a flood and everything is going to be destroyed.
But again, we don't think about this part of the story. God in His mercy and love always gives us an opportunity to repent.
It is up to us if we want to change the way we live. Do we change the way we live when we hear the gospel and what the repercussions of not following Christ are?
Now both the readings we heard today are similar…
We hear in the epistle, that Paul is telling the Corinthians, watch, stand firm, be faithful. He's just preached to them…the reading today was from chapter 16 so he's just preached to them for the first 15 chapters of how to live a Christian life. Do this, don't do this, you need to have order in your services…
And now he's saying, Watch, stand firm, and be faithful.
So like Noah, Paul preaches to the Corinthians and to us and we can choose if we will respond and do what we are asked to do.
And in the gospel today what do we hear? We hear that our Lord was preaching from the boat. Our Lord is preaching the good news from the boat
And then He tells Peter to launch out into the deep.
But Peter's like, I fished all night. It’s the middle of the day now. I have fished my whole life. With all due respect you are a carpenter…and I am a fisherman
He says, nevertheless, I will do what you ask…
So sometimes the Lord asks us to do something and we're like—really?! You want me to do that?
And Simon does it, and he casts out into the deep and he's overwhelmed with the catch of fish that he has.
And so, when we hear the gospel preached to us, when we hear the good word preached to us, that Jesus died for us, rose from the dead, and that now we have to live a certain kind of life, following Him, sometimes when we are asked to put into practice this life of the gospel, when we are asked to act on the knowledge that we have received it can be difficult.
What can that be from?
That comes from pride.
The people around Noah saying, we know better, you're dumb, you’re deluded.
Simon Peter could have given in to pride and said—look, I'm a fisherman. I know what I'm doing. I'm not stupid.
He could have given in to pride. But he didn’t, right?
And the same for the Corinthians—they could have said, we’ll take it from here Paul thanks…
They could have given in to pride.
Alright, so we all have this temptation to this sin of pride because this is the original sin that caused the devil to fall.
This is the sin that the devil tempts Eve with—he says to her—you can be a god (Gen 3.6)
So how do we watch? How do we stand firm? How do we do what our Lord asks even when it seems counter intuitive?
You want me to love my enemy,
Give to those who ask,
Take up my cross,
Fast,
Pray?
What about doing it my way. I can love You Lord and do it my way right?….
But the only way is the Lord’s way.
And it is this way that He asks us to follow
So how do we hear the words of the gospel and repent of our pride, how do we launch out into the deep, how do we watch, stand firm and remain faithful
There are three things that I'm going to focus on for today.
First is that we have a little silence in our life, and I've talked about this before, but having time to set aside five, ten minutes a day, of having no input.
Be quiet and then we can hear what's going on inside of us.
It's for five minutes. It's not that long. We can all afford five minutes in a day. If you can't find a place to be still inside, go take a walk. And there you can have a little bit of time. A little bit of peace and quiet. Just be with God in your mind.
And listen to what's going on inside of you.
Silence is so important in the spiritual life.
Yes, we can pray, that’s good, that's one thing but then we also have to spend time to listen and hear what our Lord is saying.
We just say the short prayer—Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me.
And then we can see what's popping up inside of us as we say that short prayer.
What are the things that are on our mind? Things at work, things in relationships, school, whatever.
We can see those things and we can offer them to God. We can hear what He's trying to tell us after we dive below these cares and into our hearts.
The next thing is to be consistent.
Pick something to do every day.
I'm going to read one chapter in the New Testament or a couple verses.
I'm going to read the readings for the day on our website and I am going to pray these certain prayers
Just pick what you want to do and be consistent with it
Don't make it overwhelming or it's not something that you can do every day.
We want to make it something that we can do every day because that is watching, that's standing firm.
Standing firm is being consistent with what we're doing, being committed to what we're doing.
So pick something, if you don't know what to do, you can come talk to me or talk to someone else who is more experienced than you.
And ask them, what should I do to be consistent in my spiritual life?
Because this consistency is an offering to God because pretty soon we're not going to feel like it—a couple days in, probably.
The first few days are like, “oh man this is great.”
Third day, “ah man I have to do this?”
Okay, so, just be consistent with whatever you're capable of.
And that's the second way that we can Watch and Stand firm and choose to listen to the Lord’s admonition.
The third way is in order to strengthen us in those first two things we have to come to the Church.
The Church is where we receive the grace of God and the grace of God is not just in the Eucharist.
It's not just in the holy oil or the holy water.
But it's in the act of gathering together as Church and receiving the grace of God through the words of the services.
We're hearing God come to us and hearing Him explain salvation to us, right?
And so this is the way that we receive strength so that we can go out and we can be silent and we can be consistent in our prayers. And in this way we can hear the good news, we can hear the gospel, and then we can do those hard things that our Lord asks us to do in humility rather than in pride.
Through the prayers of the righteous Noah, the apostle Peter and the apostle Paul may our Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on us and save us. Amen!
