Homily 705 – 17APE
Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Church, Ames, Iowa
September 27, 2026
Epistle:  (182-ctr) 2 Corinthians 6:16-7:1
Gospel:  (17) Luke 5:1-11

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, One God.

We should look closely at St. Peter’s reaction to Christ this morning.  What does Christ do to prompt this reaction?  They catch some fish.

That’s it.  Fishermen catching fish.  So yes, it was a lot of fish, probably more than they had ever caught in one net before, after a night of no fish at all.  Peter’s reaction is still pretty astonishing.  He falls on his knees and asks Christ to leave, for Peter realized his sinfulness, and the presence of Christ’s holiness.

And maybe we look at that and marvel, or wonder a bit, at the demonstration of power by Christ, and the reaction of those witnessing that power unleashed.

I see something different, though.  What I see is a man, Peter, confronting his own sinfulness, realizing his own ego, in that moment.  We spoke a lot last week about ego, and I’m not going to rehash it here and now.  But that is what Peter is realizing.

Everything he has told himself about faith, about life, about religion, about God – everything is a lie.  He is recognizing that his ego has deceived him.  He isn’t good.  He isn’t righteous.  He isn’t pursuing holiness.

He isn’t even obedient to the law which had been instilled in him since birth.  It is all he has ever known, and it turns out to be a lie.

Maybe lie is too strong.  The law is, properly understood, the truth.  What did God say in Genesis?  But of the tree in the midst of the Garden you shall not eat?  And the devil warped that truth – and used our ego to convince us that God didn’t really mean that, but that God was hiding greatness, power, and equality from us.

Peter, in this very moment, encounters the Christ that is real.  The God that is real.  And he tells Christ to depart.  He’s not the only one – the people of the Decapolis, at the expulsion of the demons from the Gadarene demoniac, also asked Christ to leave.

We do well to ask what this means to us?

In a word, the place of holiness, the place where Peter finds himself encountering Christ directly and really, is the place where all the barriers between us and God are stripped away.

Again, go back to Genesis 3, and recognize what Adam and Eve did after the fall.  They hid from God.  Or at least that was the attempt.  They attempted to hide from God.  To tell God to go away.  They said this because they were naked.  And they recognized their nakedness.  They realized that the Glory of God which had formerly enveloped them, the uncreated light which eminiated from them, was gone.

What they also learned was that nothing they could do would replace that glory.  They could no longer hide their nakedness.  They had no excuse.

Unless something drastic happened, like the one who attended the King’s wedding feast dressed inappropriately, they would be cast out.

Or, like Peter, they could ask God to leave them.

Thankfully, Christ’s response was not of judgement nor condemnation, but one of love.  Christ tells Peter, do not be afraid.  Don’t fear.  From now on you will be catching people alive.

This entire event – the fish, the recognition that you are sinful, everything – was to God’s use and God’s glory and for God’s purpose, because through this event – not in spite of but because of – you will become fishers of men.

Christ had to strip Peter of everything his ego threw up there to attempt to hide him and to cover himself, in order to be the person that God could then utilize.  No excuses.  No barriers.  No lies.

The same is asked of us.  Exactly the same.  We have to have our egos crucified.  Anything used to blame, to hide, to shift responsibility, everything has to be destroyed.  We have to stand naked, meaning without excuse and without any emotion, and when we do, Christ is there.

Christ is where He is all along – in the midst of us, in the heart of us, in the soul of us.  Waiting, patiently, for us to tear away the barriers our ego puts up, to stop worrying about our behavior and our desires and what Christ really calls ourselves.  My “self”.  That is what has to be torn away.

Then, only then, will we find Christ.

Because truthfully, if we are honest with ourselves, we don’t want to find Christ.  We want to hide from Him.  Adam and Eve wanted to hide.  St. Peter wanted to hide.  We want to hide.

And God, throughout all of the hiding of humanity, has been searching for us.  Beloved, we don’t have to find Christ.  We don’t have to seek God.

All we have to do is stop hiding, and let Him find us.  We stop hiding, and recognize who we really are, which is dust and dirt and filth.  But in that honesty, in that recognition, in that pain and suffering, we will find Christ, or rather, He will find us.

What a comforting, but humbling, thought.  I can say it like it is easy – and it very much isn’t.  It isn’t particularly difficult, but it is painful.  The ego is powerful and doesn’t like to be ignored.  It is even agonizing.

At the same time, it is easy, if we can fight through the pain and the pride and the desire to control and the desire to be good.

If we can give up every idea that we are anything – good, bad, kind, evil – any word that we want to use to describe ourselves.  Because we are none of that.  We ARE none of that.  Who we ARE – our self, our true self, our existence, is found not in us, but in Christ.

At the end of the day – we can’t desire anything but Christ.  We can’t feel anything but Christ.  We can’t find value in anything but Christ.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Glory to Jesus Christ!