26. Killing Giants

Sermon by Father Dimitri Cozby.

Dealing with giants is not easy. And we do occasionally have to deal with them. I don’t mean literal physical monsters, but threatening situations which we are emotionally and spiritually unprepared to face. Relationships with family, friends, or coworkers become strained by differences which seem irreconcilable. Financial or health problems arise which threaten our physical well-being and our peace of mind. These challenges seem about to overwhelm us. We cannot face life’s difficulties and our problems appear too great for us to solve.

.We must face life’s difficulties the way the boy David faced Goliath – with faith. Then we find that we too can conquer giants. What we are not strong enough to deal with in our confusion, fear, and weakness we can overcome through the grace and power of Christ. We need not face our monsters alone. Confronting life’s problems in faithful prayer shows us that they were not so overwhelming as we thought. Only our fear made them giants; Christ’s mercy and grace cuts them down to size. Like David, we put our confidence and our hope in God, and we find that, in His mercy, we accomplish things far beyond our own power, “… through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13).

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98. Jesus Weeps for You, O Viewer

Jesus weeps, and he weeps for you. For His friend, you, has died. Next to Lazarus you lay, and you both rot. You rot with isolation and loneliness. You rot with fear and uncertainty. You rot with danger of eviction and joblessness. The other corpses cry out in darkness - this tomb isn’t so bad. Learn a new skill, enjoy the cold stone beneath your back, read a book, become one with the burial shroud and its spices and myrrh, watch a movie, learn to love the tomb.

The sepulchral stone is so heavy. You want to see your loved ones, to smell incense in church, to cry out with others “Christ is risen!” But the stone remains unphased.

Yet you hear voices from beyond, you hear them from the overworld, from the land of the living. Are those saints? Are those angels? Isn’t that God amongst them, His face covered in tears? For if You were there, your patron saint says, my friend would not rot. Take away the stone, says a powerful voice, so full of authority that you marvel that the slab itself did not crack at these words to let the sunshine in and to let the stench out. You hear your guardian angel cries in disbelief: But Lord, there is a stench, for this one has been dead for many days.

And so we wait, until we hear those powerful words, “Lazarus, come forth!” We finally fear air in our lungs, and only now we realize that we did not breathe; we feel warmth in our body, for a moment ago we were no warmer than the rock beneath us. They remove the shroud, and for the first time in our death, we feel alive.

For the name that we heard when Jesus bid us to come forth, “Lazarus,” was not that of Lazarus, but our very own.

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4. Afraid of the Dark

"In the fourth watch of the night Jesus came to them walking on the sea. But when
the disciples saw him walking on the sea they were terrified and said it: It is a
ghost! And they cried out in fear." Matthew 14:25-26

In the room where I lay down to sleep as a little boy there was a closet, the door of which was never closed. When the lights went out I became convinced my hanging clothes were

actually monsters, waiting for me to close my eyes. Turn on the lights again and my fear melted away, but in the dark my imagination defined reality. Most of us probably remember this experience from childhood but it isn't purely a childish phenomenon. In the dark of the

night alone on still black water, fear and imagination dominated the disciples' mind such that for a moment the familiar form of the master became strange and terrible to them. In the same way physical darkness leads to fear which distorts our perception physical things, spiritual darkness, the absence of the light of Christ in our hearts distorts our perception of

spiritual things. Confession, repentance, the services of the Church, the fruits of the Spirit,

all seem strange or even monstrous to us from such a vantage. In just this way, the light shines in the darkness, as the Gospel of John says, but the darkness does not comprehend it.

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2. God in the Ordinary

"While walking by the Sea of Galilee Jesus saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them: Follow me and I will make you fishers of men. Immediately they left their nets and followed him."  Matthew 4:18-20

Almost every Orthodox Christian has a conversion story. Whether you were raised in the Church from infancy or converted later in life, at some point you consciously chose to make

the faith your own. I call this moment, though it may certainly take longer, 'the aha moment.' When writers and filmmakers depict this event it typically contains a high degree of cathartic drama. Consider for instance  the conversion of Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens |A Christmas Carol." By contrast, one theme that unites many of the real-life conversion stories I've heard is their relative ordinariness. Weather while entering the church simply to light a candle, driving to work or packing school lunches, God often calls to us in the most mundane circumstances of life. This shouldn't be surprising, after all, this is where Jesus chooses to call Peter and Andrew as well, as they apply their trade on the Sea of Galilee. But is there some lesson to be gleaned from this observation? I think there is. The world may hold up high drama as the best expression of what it means to be alive, but the Scripture shows us that ordinariness is no bad thing. God can find you in the dullest of circumstances. In fact, it may be that very dullness that enables you to hear His voice.

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1. John 6:35 - "The Bread of Life"

"Jesus said to them: I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger and whoever believes in Me shall never thirst." - John 6:35

When you are hungry you know it. Your body has ways of signaling that you need sustenance. Your stomach will rumble loudly in complaint and food will look and smell especially appetizing. Most of us are so attuned to the needs of our body that we recognize
these cues almost before they happen. We are far less familiar with the workings of our soul, however, so we don't often notice that it gives us the same kind of cues when it is in need of nourishment. The Entertainer Louis C.K. described the feeling of soul hunger as
a deep feeling of sadness caused by the realization that each of us is ultimately alone. He called it "the forever empty." While he correctly describes the feeling of soul hunger he is mistaken in thinking there is no cure. The soul does not need to be forever empty any more than the stomach. It is simply made to be filled with a different food, the bread of heaven,
Christ Himself. When we eat this food Christ fills that place of deep sadness and we are no longer empty and alone.

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