Sunday before Theophany 2025

Glory to Jesus Christ. Glory to the Lord. We

celebrated Christmas. We celebrated St. Basil,

New Year's Day. We celebrated St. Seraphim Day.

And for the past few days, we've been preparing

for what comes this evening and tomorrow. And

today is a big part of that preparation. In a

little while after communion, We're going to

take the lids off of these containers here. And

we'll sing some hymns. We'll do some prayers.

We'll ask God to bless the water. Then we'll

carry that water home. I'll come to your homes

and we'll do house blessings. At the end of the

liturgy, I'll go over to the parish hall, to

the office in the church school, and we'll bless

that. We'll try to bless everything in Santa

Rosa, every little house here and there, so the

whole town is somehow vibrating with the holiness

of the Holy Spirit. But before we continue the

liturgy and get to this blessing, I was reminded,

I want to share with you, I was reminded last

night, to really think and consider that reading

from the book of Kings about Elijah. We had it

last night. We did a whole group of readings

in preparation for today and for tonight and

tomorrow. In this particular reading, the 400

priests of Baal, that is, the pagan god, basically

a fallen angel, looking for worship, demonic

power. These 450 priests, which the prophet Elijah

calls the priests of shame, because they're not

worshiping the true God, have a sacrifice that

they're going to prepare, the evening sacrifice.

One of the things that the worship of Baal would

sometimes involve would be human sacrifice. Fertility

rites and human sacrifice. Well, if you remember,

sacrifice always means a meal. This is something

too horrible to contemplate right now. Shameful,

it's destructive, it's violent, it's evil. These

prophets of shame were going to do their evening

sacrifice. The prophet Elijah comes, he hears

about this, and he... Well, the way we put it

now, he challenges them to a duel, to the ultimate

smackdown of Baal. And he says to them, go ahead,

and you ask God, your God, Baal, to send down

fire from heaven and consume this offering. They're

praying all day. Nothing happens. They're cutting

themselves, put blood on it. Nothing happens.

Elijah says something like, oh, your God must

be on vacation and must be asleep. You need to

wake him up so he can do something for you. And

he says, enough of this. So he goes and he sets

12 stones, one for each of the tribes of Israel.

And he has the servants pile on wood. And then

he says, build a ditch. And they build a ditch.

They dig a ditch. And he says, fill it with water.

And they fill it with water. He says, fill it

again. And he fills it again. Of course, like

us, he did everything three times also. Fill

it the third time. And they filled so that the

water was running over. Then he said, cover the

sacrifice, which was a lamb or an oxen. I can't

remember. Cover it with water. Drench it. Completely

drench it. He prays. Briefly, the fire of God

comes, completely, utterly destroys, not destroys,

consumes everything. Even it says the dust is

gone. No more rocks, no more sacrifice, no more

water, no anything. What we are about to do,

brothers and sisters, is ask God to send down

the power, the fire of the Holy Spirit. That

same fire. that Elijah asked for to sanctify

this water. The people seeing this incredible

event at the altar that Elijah made said, oh,

the Lord, your Lord, Yahweh, the one that Elijah

worships. Yahweh meaning I am who I am. It's

what it says on the icon. Or another way to say

it, the one who causes all things to be. The

Lord, he is God. The Lord, he is God, and all

the people worship, but that worship didn't last

long. Faithfulness came almost immediately if

you keep reading the book of Kings. But when

Christ comes and we see his fresco of him in

the Jordan, and we see the icon before us, it's

not with sound and fury. And frightening fire

from heaven. It's humble. It's quiet. He hears,

it says, the voice of the Father. Doesn't say

everybody heard it. He hears, this is my beloved

Son. And he sees the Spirit of God descend upon

him. That same Spirit that caused that fire to

come down and consume the offering. The same

Spirit that we have been given at our baptism.

For the people worshiping Baal, who then proclaimed

the true God, it didn't last long. For us, it's

not external. It's not something we see. It's

not something fantastic out there. It's something

that happens in the human heart. The illumination

of truth of the Holy Spirit that comes to us.

This is what... one aspect of what we are celebrating

today, tonight, and tomorrow and what we've been

preparing for since Christmas Day. It's the illumination

of the soul which is to see our own sins and

to stop seeing everybody else's sins. It's to

worship the true God, the knowledge of the Father,

the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That's what's given

to us here today. It's to see The goodness of

creation. The glory of God permeating everything.

The heavens declare the glory of God. And the

firmament proclaims his handiwork. It is to see

that water becomes what it's supposed to be.

A means of communion with God. So, in a little

bit, we're going to stand before these containers

of water. And I want you to remember. that what

you are going to experience and see, whether

you experience it emotionally, psychologically,

or you see it with your eyes or with your soul,

what you will see is the same water that that

blessed Adam saw when he opened his eyes in creation

and saw what God had made. That's what we're

going to restore today. And we will be sanctified

by that to carry it home. Don't be like the worshipers

of Baal, only faithful for a little while. You

heard the epistle. St. Paul says, I've run the

race. I've done everything I need to do. I've

been faithful. There's so much against us to

be faithful. Think of today and carry that holiness

with you all the time. May the grace... be with

each and every one of you. Amen.