We need many 4th watches in the night
Don’t be afraid of having feelings that are negative. Just don’t give in to them.
In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Brothers and sisters, I’ve told you many times that
when we read the Scriptures, we must apply them to
ourselves. First we must understand what they say,
dogmatically; and when you understand this, then there is
application to your personal life. Like I’ve said
before, not what kind of car you should buy or should you
go to this college or that. It’s spiritual
things.
Much of the Scripture can be thought of allegorically. You
must be careful with this, not to have any fanciful
fantasies about the Scripture, but to apply the Scripture
to your lives.
And this particular selection today for the 9th Sunday
after Pentecost, where Jesus walks on the water, is
particularly good to apply to our own personal lives. When
I read this Scripture, I think about my own personal
weaknesses - and yours too. The reason I know this,
not because I’m a mind reader but because
you’re human and you have human weaknesses and
passions and get tired and get lonely and are unsure of
yourself and have darkness in your heart just like
everybody else.
So it feels like the fourth watch of the night to me sometimes, just like it did to the Apostles.
When Jesus came to them on the water, it was late in the
morning, just before the sun would rise. They had been at
sea the entire evening and there was a terrible storm. And
they were in a very small ship, and they were in danger of
sinking and the Lord was not with them, or so they
thought.
Of course, the Lord is always with us. But He was not
visibly with them because He was on a mountain praying
apart from them. And He had sent them out in the ship to go
to the other side, away from the multitudes.
So the Lord sends us, sends me, sends you.
Christianity is not just collections of facts, not just things we know, not just wonderful stories of saints that inspire us. It is life. It is how to live. We have a task. We are told to do it. So the Lord sends us, and we go before Him.
The Lord is not walking the earth anymore. Of course, He’s with us but not visibly with us. And sometimes, let’s admit it, we don’t feel Him. Of course He’s there. We know He’s there. But we don’t feel Him. Of course, the reasons for this are our own. Our own darkness. But nevertheless, there is this feeling of sometimes being alone or not being completely protected or being confused.
I’m sure that if the Lord was present with us visibly
right now, there would be no confusion. When He speaks, we
would feel peace. But this is not the way that the Lord
would have us live. He would have us go before Him. He
would have us do the things that He did. And in fact, the
Lord said that we would do greater things than He. Because
we would all do good things that the Lord taught us to
do.
But He’s not visibly present with us. He is still praying and He’s still looking after us. And He still sends His angels to help us.
So the Apostles are in the waves and the wind, and it is
early in the morning, before the sun would rise. If you
ever have trouble sleeping, that time of day is the worst
of all. There’s just a sense of real sadness about
that day or real sense of melancholy just before the dawn.
And so the Apostles were struggling and they didn’t
know if they would live or not. They were afraid, but the
Lord came to them.
And I find in my life, and I should think you should find
in yours, that the Lord comes to you too in times of
distress, in times of struggle, in times when you are down,
in times when you’re not so sure of yourself, in
times of - dare we even breathe it, dare we whisper it -
when our faith fails us. And He comes.
But look what happened. They were afraid. The Lord is too
much for us. We are about to, soon, I guess, whatever, in
two weeks or so, celebrate the Transfiguration of the Lord.
And when the Lord went up on the mountain and He became, as
He is, visibly to the Apostles, that was way too much for
the Apostles, that was too frightening, that was too much
Grace, too much light, and they were afraid.
The greatness, the goodness of the Lord, is too much for us
all at once. That’s why it comes little by little,
because we could not bear it all because of our sins, our
weaknesses, and our darkness.
The Lord walking on the water frightened the Apostles, and yet they were glad when they saw Him. And then Peter says, if it’s You, then tell me to come out and walk on the water too. And so Peter went and of course we know what happened. Peter failed. His faith was not strong enough. Even though the Lord was with him, his faith was not strong enough.
This kind of thing, to be honest with you, makes me happy because that’s me out there on the waves with the Lord right with me and I’m still sinking.
Many stories of great men in the Scriptures show their weaknesses. That’s for a reason. Just recently we celebrated Saint Elias. After a great victory, after killing all the prophets of Baal and having a great victory, he was afraid and he ran away. And then after this period where he ran away, the Lord fed him and sent him on a mission to a mountain, and he heard the voice of God in the cave. The Lord revealed Himself to Elias after Elias had shown cowardice, and yet Elias was great and is great.
And so is Peter great, but with weaknesses, with darkness,
with fear. But the Lord will help us in all these things.
The thing about Elias, the thing about Peter, the thing
about all of the saints - they did not give up.
Don’t be afraid of your feelings. Don’t think
that there’s somehow a sign that you’re not a
Christian, that you don’t have enough faith. Well, of
course, you don’t have enough faith. But do what you
need to do despite your feelings.
And if any of you, I tell you, I tell you boldly, if any of you don’t sometimes have those feelings when you get tired and you wonder, you get confused about why the world is the way it is and why there’s so much pain and why God seems far away to you - if you don’t have these feelings sometimes, then you’re not thinking hard enough. Because these feelings are natural to the human condition.
The Lord is revealing Himself to us bit by bit. Like I
said, we cannot take Him all at once, and He is too
fantastic for our sinful hearts to fully believe in except
we be converted, except we be changed.
And we need a lot of fourth watches of the night and a
lot of storms and a lot of wind over many periods of our
lives in order for us to truly believe in Him.
So don’t be afraid of having feelings that are negative. Just don’t give in to them.
Just believe that the Lord will come to you. And you will partially understand Him. But the next time a little bit more and a little bit more.
And of course, the understanding of the Lord is not
understanding dogmatic facts about Him. The understanding
of the Lord is to become like Him. So that we know Him by
our experience. And that is over many, many occurrences in
our life, some very difficult, some rather easy. But
hundreds and thousands of times when we struggle to do the
right thing, to follow the Commandments and when we
struggle with loneliness and confusion and fear.
This Gospel gives me great hope. I hope it gives you great
hope too because it describes the Lord coming to heal the
human condition and how it happens in pieces. Little by
little.
But in order for us to be healed, we must obey the Lord.
And He says go before Him so we had best do that. We had
best spread the good news to others in the way we live.
It doesn’t have to be by any absolute formal method.
It means to love others as the Lord loves us.
It means to be compassionate with others as we would be to ourselves.
It means to humble ourselves.
It means to think of others first.
It means to pray, and pray that God would reveal Himself to us and to our enemies.
And as we do this, little bit by little bit, the Lord reveals Himself in such a way that we can apprehend Him, in such a way that we can actually hold onto the things that He gives us and not drop them because they are too heavy, too wonderful, too fantastic for us to bear.
The way that we become able to see the Lord is to live like
Him. And a lot of that living like Him is where we are sent
out on our own.
There’s a lot of mothers, fathers, here. Nobody told
you how to be a mother or a father. How many mistakes have
you made? How many times have you wondered what is the
right thing to say, to do? Why do I have this weakness? Why
do I do this or that? And yet, your children know that you
love them. You pray for your children. And by God’s
Grace you will all be saved. But it’s not absolutely
crystal clear at all, what to do.
And if you take the experience of being a mother or father
and you multiply it by about a million, then you have what
it feels like to be a pastor because so many times the
pastor has no idea what to say, what to do, what is right,
the right way to proceed or the wrong way. And yet, somehow
by God’s Grace people grow, people change and God is
revealed.
It’s the same in all of our lives, when you’re
a mother, a father, a pastor, a sister or a brother,
anybody. There’s much that we don’t know and we
are sent out to do, even though we don’t completely
understand. But the Lord is with us, even though we
don’t feel Him.
That’s what this Gospel tells me. I hope it says
something of the like to you. God is with us at all times,
even when we don’t feel Him.
And we need these times, brothers and sisters, when we
do not feel Him. So that we can learn to reach out for
Him all the more and so that when we see Him and when we do
feel Him, we would appreciate and obey Him and in a more
complete way.
May God help us to look forward to, to endure those fourth
watches of the night that come in our lives and to await
for the Lord to enlighten us.
But remember, the way a Christian waits is not by sitting
down and doing nothing. The way a Christian waits is by
being in the ship and fighting the waves and the wind and
believing that the Lord will come, and He will for us,
every time.
May God help us in all things.
Transcribed by the hand of the handmaiden of God Helen.
Priest Seraphim Holland 3010.
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