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.