Translating the Tradition

<p>So on this Wednesday of Great Lent, we’re given the story of Noah just after the flood to meditate on. The story is about the first recorded sin after the flood. Noah and his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth come out of...

<p>There’s supposedly an ancient Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.” Well, apparently we’ve all been cursed. People are concerned. Some are worried that Islam is encroaching on our civilization. Some are...

<p>Those of you who have been coming to St. John’s for a while will know that the Sunday of the Last Judgment and the parable of the rich man and Lazarus are my two least favourite passages on which to preach. Because...

<p>We spend a lot of our lives waiting. And it can be really tough. We’re waiting for justice. We’re waiting for, I don’t know, an appointment at ICBC or something like that. We’re waiting for the fruition of some sort...

<p>As an experiment, I thought I’d try getting Google’s NotebookLM AI to summarize my sermon, and I was rather impressed with the following (lightly edited) results:</p><p>In his sermon for Zacchaeus Sunday, Fr. Justin...

<p>So in today’s Gospel reading, our Lord is approaching Jericho, and there’s a blind man sitting by the side of the road. He’s begging, because if you’re blind in those days, they didn’t have a lot of alternative...

<p>As we’ve been going through Father Alexander Schmemann’s For the Life of the World, one of the things that Father Schmemann is very careful to point out is this dichotomy that we human beings naturally fall into: we...

<p>So today, as we get ready for the great Feast of Theophany, we begin with the beginning of the gospel of Mark. And the gospel of Mark begins with prophecy. </p><p>The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son...

<p>Somewhat similar to the pattern that we see at Pascha (and, indeed, Christmas is for us in many respects a mini Pascha—you’ll notice I’m wearing white), the Sunday after the great feast, we have a bit of a downer in...

<p>Today’s homily was (for me) relatively short, so, rather than posting the transcript here (the automated version of which is already readily available), I want instead to add an addendum: “the sermon after the...

<p>[The how of all that follows here is outlined in the preceding parts of the homily, in the audio recording. What follows is the conclusion of the matter:]</p><p>All things are exposed or made manifest by the light...

<p>So on this joyous day of Raissa’s baptism, we have a fairly solemn Gospel reading, in which our Lord tells a parable of a certain rich man, who had lots of stuff—like too much stuff, so he didn’t have enough space...

<p>Sources cited:</p><p>from II Samuel 6:14-22:</p><p>Then David danced before the Lord with all his might; and David was wearing a linen ephod. So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with...

<p>So in today’s gospel reading, we get two stories for the price of one. And these intertwined stories actually are the culmination of this particular section of the Gospel of Luke, which begins with the centurion...

<p>So we come again to the story of the rich man and Lazarus, and, since I don’t really want to talk about this story, I feel like that probably means that I should talk about this story. One of the reasons I am...