Homily 696– 7APE
Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Church, Ames, Iowa
July 19, 2026
Epistle:  (116) Romans 15:1-7 and (334) Hebrews 13: 7-16
Gospel:  (33) Matthew 9:27-35 and (56) John 17:1-13

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

Don’t know if anyone has noticed or thought about it – maybe it’s just me – but there seems to be a bit of tension between living in the Church and living in the world.  St. Paul in his letter to the Hebrews, the Jews living in the diaspora, discusses this apparent contradiction.

First off, let’s remember the context.  St. Paul is discussing Christ’s priesthood.  So what that means is we need to ask ourselves a question.  What does it mean to be a priest?

First and foremost, a priest is one who offers sacrifice to God.  In the Old Testament, the sacrifices were animals and produce and grains.  These animals were sacrificed in the temple to God.  Their blood was offered.  The remainder, the flesh, bones, organs – everything else – was taken outside of the temple, outside of the city, and one of two things happened.

Either it was cooked and eaten by those who serve in the temple, or it was discarded by burning.  Even today, our Holy Things are consumed and eaten.  But other holy things that cannot be eaten, when their service is over, are typically burned.

In here, inside the Church, is a place of safety, a place where worship is offered.  Again, it is worth asking the question – what is worship?  When we say we “worship” something, or in our case, Someone who is our Creator, what do we mean?

Worship in every case and every definition is sacrifice.  It is offering sacrifice.  Our sacrifice is bloodless, though.  Over and over we proclaim the bloodless sacrifice.  This is the sacrifice of us – ourselves.  Our being.  Our lives.

There are a couple of implications about this bloodless sacrifice of ourselves.  We take that bloodless part very, very seriously.  No one who is actively and uncontrollably bleeding is ever to be in the Altar space.  If you are bandaged and bleeding is controlled, then fine.  We never risk having blood of any type spilled in or even near the altar or the icons.

The second is that idea of how we are offered.  We are physically, really, truly present on the paten – the diskos – which is elevated with the Chalice by the deacon or priest with the proclamation of “your own of your own, on behalf of all, and for all.”  At the proskomedia, the composition of the entire Church is placed on the paten.  The Lamb, who is Christ, the Birthgiver of God, the ranks of prophets and saints, our fathers in Christ the Bishops, both living and departed, and all of us, most of us by name, both living and departed.

We are really present on the paten.  So what does it mean to be offered?  It means, beloved of God, that we no longer control what happens to our lives and to us.  We no longer have a say.  We no longer have a will, a desire, or a dream.  We only have God.  Whatever happens when we are offered, belongs to God and not to us.  We can only accept, and give thanks.

We don’t try to understand.  We don’t try to interpret.  We don’t try to anticipate.  In fact, the only effort we make is to keep God squarely in our focus, taking up all of the bandwidth we have, without any distractions.

Confession, and repentance, are for the distractions.  We don’t care why things happen, or attempt to interpret, or to anticipate.  We just accept that this or that distracted us from having our focus on Christ.

When we get to the second part of worship, we go into a place that isn’t so safe.  Isn’t so supportive.  Isn’t so understanding.

According to St. Paul, we follow Christ, after having offered Himself to death, He was taken outside the city, with the other temple sacrifices.  Unlike the other sacrifices from the temple, these aren’t eaten nor burned.  St. Paul says what we do is this:  We bear His disgrace.

We are not expecting to be applauded or recognized for our holiness.  We bear His disgrace.  We start right where we are, and we love and care for those we come into contact with.  Sometimes those people are absolutely unloveable, and yet we love them anyway.

Not to make them better.  Not to make us better.  Not to make us good, even.  Rather, to bear the disgrace of Christ, who was so sharply derided and shamed and ridiculed for associating with the outcasts of society.

If we are thinking about our own behavior – our holiness, our sanctity, our own standing with God – then we are being distracted from the needs around us.

Additionally, and I’m a bit out of order here, but St. Paul reminds us that we are to consider the ones gone before us, the saints, and emulate them.  Particularly in the way they both endured and bore the disgrace of Christ to the world.  How they wore their humility in Christ, recognizing that Christ is everything and we – I, me – am nothing.  I stand naked before God, and recognize that I cannot even clothe myself.

Like Adam and Eve, I stand naked and wait for God to clothe me with Himself.

St. Paul adds that because Jesus Christ never changes – the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow – we can also be absolutely certain that He will respond to us and treat us as He treated those who came before us.

In that treatment, we will find that we are treated like the Apostles or the prophets.  As a reminder, all of the Apostles, save John the Theologian, were crucified and executed.  John was exiled.

What we expect from our lives in Christ is not a life of ease, nor of comfort, but of continual struggle with the ever-present distractions, and the offering of ourselves – as we say in the petition of every little litany, “Commemorating our most holy, most pure, most blessed, and glorious Lady Birthgiver of God and Ever-virgin Mary with all the Saints, let us commend ourselves and each other, and all our life unto Christ our God.”

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