Translating the Tradition

Fr. Justin (Edward) Hewlett
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Sermons and miscellaneous musings from St. John of Shanghai Orthodox Church in Vancouver, BC, Canada - mostly by Fr. Justin Hewlett. translatingthetradition.substack.com

  1. 22H AGO

    The Point of Prophecy

    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. The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in the prophets, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you. The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” Actually, we spoke last Sunday about the prophets, just briefly, so today I wanted to mention a little more about the role of the prophets, because there is a bit of a misunderstanding that tends to be out there, that the prophecies and the prophets were there so that you could read them very closely and figure out, from all sorts of kind of mystical clues, what exactly God was going to do and when he was going to do it and so on and so forth. Kind of like prophetic bingo, if you will. The one problem with this kind of approach to prophecy now, as we live in the “end times”, at the end of all things, is that when you’re playing prophetic bingo, and you’re like, oh, well, hey, look, I’ve got wars. Oh, wait, I’ve got rumours of wars, and I’ve got earthquakes and floods in various places, and, and, oh, I’ve got Bingo! Because we live in the last days. And that’s precisely what the apostles, what they, what struck them as they were looking at the various prophecies. Because, this isn’t really the point of prophecy. It was to let us know ahead of time. That was the point. And God made it clear to his people, Israel, that that was the point, in the book of Isaiah that we just heard, quoted from, as well as Micah. God says to his people—and this is a pretty clear articulation of what the point of prophecy is: I have declared the former things from the beginning. They went from my mouth, and I caused them to hear it. Suddenly I did them, and they came to pass because I knew that you were obstinate, and your neck was an iron sinew, and your brow bronze. Even from the beginning, I have declared it to you. Before it came to pass, I proclaimed it to you, lest you should say my idol has done them, and my carved image and my moulded image have commanded them. (Isaiah 48:3-5) In essence, what we have here is God, the eternal God, the great I am, for whom all of time is spread out, not in sequence, but as all unfolded to him at the same time, telling his people, what is going to come to pass so that they will know that he is God. So that they will know that, in contrast to those idols which don’t know anything about what’s going to happen, that he knows exactly what’s going to happen. And in fact, he is the one who brings it to pass. Because he alone is the true God. And some of what he tells them is actually pretty specific. For example, a virgin shall conceive, and bring forth a child, and you shall call his name Maher-shalal-hash-baz (poor kid!), which means swift to the spoil and speedy to the prey. And before the child is old enough to distinguish right from wrong, the lands of the kings that you are worried about—This is a prophecy given to the king Ahaz, after he refused to ask God for a sign. God gave him a sign anyway!—that the lands of the kings that you’re worried about will be laid waste before this child is even old enough to distinguish right from wrong. So very specific timing, very specific prophecy, to let King Ahaz—who was one of those kings who was kind of wishy-washy when it came to worshipping the most high God—that God, Yahweh, the the creator of the world, was the one and only true God. And this is exactly what God has done down through the ages. He lets his people, those whom he has chosen, know what is coming, even going all the way back to Abraham. Abraham, of course, you remember at the tent of Mamre, entertains three visitors, and then, as they’re getting up and to go, the one says to him (presumably God), “Shall I not let Abraham, whom I have chosen, know what I am about to do?” Or, later on, in Moses’ day, God talks to Moses face to face as a man talks with his friend. Because what does God want? From us? He actually wants friendship with us. And what is more typical of friendship than saying, “Hey, I have a secret, I’m going to tell you.” Or, “Hey, I have a plan. Let me let you know ahead of time exactly what I’m going to do.” That’s what God does with his people. Beginning with Abraham, going down through Moses and the prophets, he calls his people, and he tells them exactly what he’s going to do, through his servants, the prophets. That’s not all he tells them, through his servants, the prophets. He also—as he is reminding his people that he is God—he also calls them to repentance. That was what all that part about your neck being like an iron sinew, was about: You stiff-necked people. You really don’t want to repent. You don’t want to bow the neck. You don’t want to bow the knee to God. You don’t want to actually change your ways, but that is precisely what you need to do. And the prophets were always calling the people to repentance, telling them that they needed to change their ways, because God was going to come and do stuff amongst them. And they should get ready for that. And that’s exactly what the last of the really great prophets, John, does. Which is why the Mark begins his gospel with characterizing John as a voice in the wilderness. Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Because John comes preaching this gospel of repentance. Telling the people of God, they need to repent because the Messiah is coming. He’s on his way now, and he is going to appear amongst them. John makes it very clear that he is not the Messiah. He is not himself the promised one of Israel. He’s simply a messenger, a voice, preparing the way for him. And he says, at the end of the passage today, that he’s not even worthy to stoop and unloose his sandals, because while John baptizes with water, the one coming will baptize with the Holy Spirit. And this, therefore, is why, when the apostles have been trained up by our Lord, and he’s divulged to him his whole heart—all that is on his heart—he has told them that he has not hidden anything from them. He himself says to them the reason that he has told them what’s going to happen. Because of course you remember, Jesus, hmm… rather like God, tells his disciples, what is going to happen.And they don’t like what they are hearing, right? He tells he tells them that he’s going to go down to Jerusalem, and they’re going to take him, and they’re going to crucify him. Peter then says, “Lord, these things must not be.” And Jesus, who has just told him, as Peter has just confessed, “that you are the Christ the Son of God,” that he’s blessed and that flesh and blood has not revealed this to him, but his Father in heaven, now turns to Peter and says, “Get behind me, Satan!” Right? They don’t want to hear what he’s telling them, but he is telling them this. Why? He says, “I have told you now, before it comes, that when it does come to pass, you may believe.” Almost like what we just heard in Isaiah chapter 48, about how God works with prophecy, telling them that he’s telling them this before it comes to pass, so that they may know he is God. And Jesus goes further. He says, Greater love has no one than this than to lay down one’s life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from my Father, I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, and that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give you. These things I command you, that you love one another. (John 15:13-17) Again, if we think about the whole point of the prophets—or even further back than that, the law and the prophets, because the prophets were always calling the people back to the law of God—what was the point of that teaching? What was the point of that proclamation? What was the point of that prophecy? It was to call God’s people to metanoia, to a change of mind that would enable them to love one another, to be defined by love for one another. So that they could be the friends of God. And here Jesus, as he fulfils all of the prophecies, as he brings to pass and sets in motion all of what God has planned for us as his people, he tells his disciples, I have not hidden anything from you. I no longer call you servants. I call you my friends. Because a servant doesn’t know what his master wants. He just gets orders, like, go, do this, do that. A servant doesn’t get to say, “Uh, why?” The master will just say, “What? No, you’re my servant. Just go do it. I don’t need to have to explain everything to you.” But Jesus says, no, you’re not servants. You are my friends, if you do what I command. And so this culmination of all the teachings, culmination of all the prophecies, that the apostles saw in their day, where it’s not merely a virgin bringing forth a child, but a virgin, who has never known a man, bringing forth a child, the fulfilment of the prophecy in the grandest, most complete terms possible, reveals to us exactly what God is calling us to become: his people, his friends. And as we begin with repentance, and as we continue in repentance, allowing God to change our minds, to reform us into the image in which he created us at the very beginning, as we enter into the waters of baptism, uniting ourselves with Christ in his death, his burial, and his resurrection, we’re uniting ourselves to the God who united himself to us, so that he might call us his friends. And all he asks of us, all of the prophets have e

    15 min

  2. 12/29/2025

    Wisdom, Folly, Prophecy, and Free Will

    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 terms of the Gospel reading. After Pascha, of course, we have the great and glorious joy of Pascha, and then we have Thomas Sunday, Doubting Thomas. This one is even more of a downer, really, when you think about the content of what we just heard. So we’ve just had the birth of the king, the king of the Jews, whom the wise men came to worship, and now the current king of the Jews, Herod, decides that he’s going to kill him. It’s a pretty solemn contrast and kind of makes you think about, well, what this world is—well, was, but really still is—that Christ came into. Because Herod, in his paranoia and the horror of his action, really is, in many respects, a stand-in for all of the horrors of human civilization down through the centuries. A stand-in, really, for us. One of the slight complicating factors in this story, at least in terms of how we tend to approach it, is the prophecy. Every time we have a prophecy, one of the big questions that comes up is free will. If God knows ahead of time that this is going to happen, and then he tells us ahead of time that this is going to happen, does that not mean that God made it happen? And this would be something pretty horrific if God made it happen, right? All of the infants, two years old and under in Bethlehem, are killed by Herod. I think it’s important for us to then understand that prophecy is probably better thought of more like a parent who loves their child and says to their toddler, who is just starting to move around, “That stove over there is hot. If you touch that stove, you will get burned.” It’s a warning; it’s a prediction of what will happen. And then, of course, inevitably, the child toddles over to the stove and says, “Hmm. What’s going to happen? Ow! Why didn’t you tell me?” Well, I did tell you. Just because you have foreknowledge of something, it doesn’t mean you made it happen. Again, I can look over and see my child across the room handling something, and I know exactly what’s going to happen. They’re handling it carelessly: it’s going to fall and it’s going to break. But, at least in terms of my own limited human abilities, there’s nothing I can do about it. Here is where it gets a little more complicated, because there is something God could do about it, but at what cost? Because when God made us in his image, one of the great gifts that he gave to us—and, as Paul says, “the gifts and the calling of God are without revocation”—is the gift of free will, agency, and authority over the world that we live in. What we see here in this story is all of those gifts going wrong, being abused by Herod. And there’s also a contrast in this story: the three kings—well, the three wise men, actually—are kind of a beautiful contrast to what Herod is doing. Herod, of course, was the king of the Jews at the time, famously paranoid, and we see an example of this paranoia here. The wise men come from the east seeking him who is born king of the Jews. They come naturally to the capital, Jerusalem, and they ask where he is. These magi are ancient astronomers; they’ve seen a star in the east, which they see as a sign from God, and they spend months travelling to Jerusalem to honour the new king—they assume Jerusalem because that’s where the king of the Jews would be born, right? Eventually they come to Herod, and he gathers his chief priests and scribes and asks them where the Messiah is to be born. And they quote the prophecy: “But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are not the least among the rulers of Judah. For out of you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.” Herod then calls the wise men in to him, determines from them exactly what time the star appeared, and sends them to Bethlehem saying, “Go and search carefully for the young child, and when you have found him, bring back word to me, that I also may come and worship him.” So they go off to Bethlehem, and they find the young child, thanks to the star, and they rejoice with exceedingly great joy. And they open their treasures to him and they present gifts to him: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And if you know the old Christmas carol, then you know exactly what each one of those represents. They are recognizing him as king, as God, and as the one who is going to die for the world. But then, of course, they are warned by God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, so they return by another way. Herod then finds out and is absolutely furious that his trick didn’t work, and he gives orders that every child two years old and under, according to the time determined by his conversation with the wise men, must be slaughtered. Fortunately, God does intervene, at least with Joseph, and maybe with more. According to tradition, John the Baptist gets caught up in this too, and this is why he ends up in the wilderness. But an angel of the Lord appears to Joseph in a dream, saying, “Arise, take the young child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I bring you word, for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.” So they get up and they leave. It’s interesting, too, to think about what the implications of this are: God did not come down and directly intervene here. He didn’t cut off Herod’s free will. He didn’t even come and exert his power with his twelve legions of angels that Jesus said he could have sent to save him from the cross. Instead, Jesus experiences what it means to be a refugee. He’s already experiencing what it means to be helpless. Now he and his adoptive father and his mother are refugees in the land of Egypt, just like his people were. Again, he’s identifying with us, his people—with us, in our humanity, in every imaginable aspect. But I want to focus our attention here on the horror, for a moment, of this terrible exercise of the gifts that God gave to Herod, and I want us to think about what that means for us. Herod, in this horrible, terrible action, exercises his free will. He freely chooses to issue this order. He also exercises his God-given agency: he has the ability to speak or not to speak, to give orders or not to give orders, and he chooses to give the order that he hopes will protect his kingship. And he uses his authority, which we would understand as his God-given authority as a ruler, in this unimaginably horrific way, which actually echoes the order of the Pharaoh way back when, when he gives orders that all the young children of the Hebrews be thrown into the Nile to make sure that his kingdom is safe. And, when we stop and think about it, is this not also what we so often do, especially when we are motivated, like Herod, by fear and paranoia? We use our free will, but the choices that we make are often—especially when motivated by fear—bad choices. And then our agency gets involved. I’m going to choose to do something with my life. Often it’s some form of addiction or some form of protective action or some form of—well, whatever it may be—where we turn and we actually engage our physical bodies in this choice that we have made with our spirits. And then, even worse, we can get others involved in our sin, in our fear, in our self-centeredness. Contrast this now with the wise men. They too made a choice. They saw a star in the east. They are using their God-given intelligence and abilities to read the heavens, and, as they see this sign that very clearly shows them that someone is born king of the Jews, they then undertake, they make the decision, they use their God -given agency over a sustained period of months to journey to find the one who is born king of the Jews. And then, as they find him, what are they motivated by? They’re motivated by love of God, obviously, in terms of the quest. But, as they come into his presence, they’re motivated by joy. And in joy, they open their treasures to him. All that they are able to offer: gold, frankincense, myrrh. This is what we are called to do. To not act out of fear. To not allow that paranoia, that self-preservation, that sense that I must preserve my integrity, I must preserve what I have, I must preserve my life at the cost of whatever may be around me, at the cost of the abuse of my own free will and agency. No. If we are motivated by love, and we act on that, we make our choices based on that, and we open our hearts, open our resources, open our time to love, honour, and joyfully worship God, that’s the end, our purpose. The end of that trajectory of love is joy. We see the path of folly in Herod. We see the path of wisdom in the wise men. Let us exercise our God-given free will, and our agency, and our authority in the path of love to the destination of joy, to his glory, the glory of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit translatingthetradition.substack.com

    16 min

  3. 12/15/2025

    How Can We Refuse the Heavenly Banquet?

    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 sermon,” as I like to call it. In both this parable and in our Lord’s rejoinder immediately preceding it, those to be invited to the feast are “the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind” and even random strangers who happen to be passing by who are compelled to come in. We can and should understand this initially in its literal sense: when we give a banquet we should invite those in need, who cannot possibly repay us. But we can also see in this—especially those of us who are converts to the faith—ourselves: those who were poor in spirit, helpless, unaware of the true nature of reality, who have been compelled to come in by the grace of God at work in our lives and have found ourselves the recipients of a heavenly banquet we did not anticipate receiving. Now joyful, illumined, and satiated, our response should be one of deep gratitude and adoration and praise towards our unexpected benefactor, along with a desire to complete what is, in the parable, the unfinished work of filling the banquet hall with other beneficiaries who may well be as unaware of their spiritual needs as we were. Our motive and our modus operandi should not be to “compel them to come in” in any physically coercive sense, but rather to so reveal the splendour of what they are missing out on that they can’t help but be as moved by the invitation and the experience as we have been. Because the benefit of being illumined, of being healed by the joy of the heavenly banquet is simply something too good to keep to ourselves! Scripture Readings Referenced: * Luke 13:22-17:10, with a focus on today’s reading, Luke 14:16-24 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit translatingthetradition.substack.com

    15 min

  4. 12/08/2025

    What Do We Do When the Days Are Evil?

    [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:] All things are exposed or made manifest by the light, for whatever makes manifest is light. That’s what the light does. It shows things for what they truly are. It makes manifest the reality. Sometimes it’s an ugly reality, and people dislike the light being shined on it. But that’s okay. We still have to do it. Because it’s not something that we can even really control. It’s something that we simply are. We are light. And as we live as children of the light, we illumine the world around us, we help people to see it for what it truly is. Something broken, something leading only to death and destruction. Therefore it says, “Awake, you who sleep, arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.” And I kind of love Father Lawrence’s theory here. There’s no Old Testament verse that actually says, “Awake, you who sleep. arise from the dead and Christ will give you life.” But it’s quite possible that this was, in fact, a hymn of the church, possibly even a baptismal hymn of the church. Because that’s precisely the sort of thing that we understand baptism to do. It wakes us up. And as we wake up from this slumber that we are in and rise from the dead, it is Christ who gives us light. The light of the way of life that saves us from this way of death. The light of this new humanity that we are to put on, even as we shuck off the old humanity that is trending towards death. And so this is the way that the world will be saved through us. Not by any great work, not by any great conquest, but by simply being who Christ has called us to be, by living as children of the light, putting on this new man. And as we do so, we are awakening from sleep. And this then is the true awakening. Whether you’re awake or woke. As Christians, you are awake to Christ in God. You are awake to the truth of the love of God. And that this love, as it has been poured out in our lives, is that which we have to live out in the world, loving those around us, bringing them by that love, by that light into awareness of the brokenness that they are struggling with, and leading them, by our love, into the only place which is illumined. But then spreading that light throughout the world, as it has already been spread, from generation to generation, illumining the darkness, and showing the mercy, the love of God that he has so richly poured out upon us, to all those around us, that we and they might be to his glory: the glory of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Scripture readings referenced: * Ephesians 4:17-5:21 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit translatingthetradition.substack.com

    20 min

  5. 11/24/2025

    Adoration: The One Thing Needful

    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 for all his stuff. And he thought, “Okay, well, I need more space for all my stuff. And so I’m going to tear down my current barns and build bigger ones so I have all my stuff laid up for many years, and then I will say to my soul: soul, you have stuff laid up for many years, eat, drink, and be merry.” And then God says to him, “You fool. Today, this very day, your soul will be required of you. And then whose will all those things be, which you have stored? All that stuff. Whose will it be?” So as I say, it’s a solemn parable, but it’s actually, in many respects, very appropriate, given that, in baptism, you’ll notice, the child is stripped of everything, and goes into the water, and is immersed into the water, naked, and bereft of all stuff: has no stuff at all. Because that’s us. That is our ultimate destination. Nothing will enter the kingdom of God of all those things that we have accumulated in this life. Except, by the grace of God, us. So Jesus is telling this parable in a certain context. He’s telling the parable in the context of a family argument. Someone from the crowd comes up to Jesus and says, “Rabbi, Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” And Jesus responds, “Man, who made me a judge or arbiter over you?” And then he says, quite specifically, “Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.” And that’s the beginning of this parable that we just considered, the reason that Jesus says this parable in the first place. But it’s interesting that if you look a little further back in this in Luke’s Gospel, Luke actually sets up another family feud. And this one should be pretty familiar to us, particularly at this season of the year, when we are celebrating a Marian feast, because this is one of the Gospel readings that we hear, every feast, where we celebrate something about Mary. “And it happened,” it says, “as they went, that Jesus entered a certain village, and a certain woman named Martha, welcomed him into her house, and she had a sister called Mary, who sat at Jesus’ feet and listened to his word. But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she approached Jesus and said, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me.’” It may not be as big a deal as, “Lord, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me,” but this is what happens in families. We get annoyed with one another. Martha is really busy cooking up a storm, and Mary’s just sitting there. Doing nothing. And so, Martha asked Jesus to intervene on her behalf. And Jesus answers and says to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things, but one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.” Now we read this at Marian feasts not because the early Christians were really confused, thinking that anybody who has the name Mary must be the same person. They knew that this was a different Mary. But it’s interesting that this also isn’t the end of the reading. It is the end of the reading right here, but we actually skip ahead. In Luke’s Gospel, just a few verses later, when someone bursts out to Jesus, “Blessed is the womb that bore you in the breast that nursed you,” Jesus responds, “Say rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God, and keep it.” And we glom these two things together, because this describes the Church’s experience of Mary, the mother of God. And you can see this, even in Luke’s gospel, when, at the very beginning, when all these various things are happening to Mary and to her son, and what does it say? “Mary heard all these things, and treasured them in her heart.” So, the reminder, then, that we begin with today is this reminder of death. Death is coming for us all, even from our very beginning of our life. And we have to, then, think very seriously about what we prioritize in our life. And Mary gives us the clue as to what it is that we actually need to prioritize. What is the one thing that is needful, which will not be taken away from her? And that is, simply put, adoration. And here, again, it’s very appropriate that we have a baptism of an infant. Because if there’s one thing that an infant, a child, knows how to do, It’s to adore its mother. With the mother, the infant is at peace. With the mother, the infant is untroubled, and able to relax, and actually just enjoy life. Take the infant away from its mother, and you notice that sometimes they’re a little bit crotchedy and fidgety, and not quite comfortable. But give the infant back to the mother, and all of a sudden, it’s quiet. It’s calm. It’s at peace And this is the essence of adoration. But it also comes with something else, because one thing that the infant is doing, even at this point, is learning. And in order to learn, you simply have to do one thing: listen attentively. And that, of course, is what Mary is doing. She’s listening attentively at the feet of Jesus. That is the essence of her adoration. That is the essence of what is this act of worship that she is engaged in: that listening attentively at the foot of him who is her ultimate protector, at the foot of God incarnate. But there’s one more thing that is there, because, of course, as I said, we conclude the Gospel reading with, “Blessed are those who hear the word of God, and keep it.” This means two things. One, we, as we hear the word of God, we should treasure it in our hearts, as Mary did all the things that happened to her and Jesus. We should treasure in our hearts the experience of God that we have in our own lives, as we experience his goodness, his grace, his mercy, in all sorts of different ways. Ah, but more than that: that, then, should shape how we act. Shape how we are. Shape how we speak. Because the essence of adoration is love, and the natural response of love is action, action that is focussed on the beloved, whether that be simply sitting and listening attentively, or putting into practice that which you have heard from the beloved. And the motivation has to be love. Because, ultimately, that is the essence of what we will take with us in our journey through life into eternity. Because we can’t take anything with us. Except ourselves, and, by virtue of ourselves, by virtue of the soul being eternal, the relationships that we have, with God and with one another. That’s why the two commandments are summed up as, “Love the Lord your God, with all your heart, and all your mind, and all your strength, and love your neighbour as yourself.” Because this is the basis of our own journey through life into eternity. This is the basis of everything that we have, from here on, into eternity. This is the basis of everything that we will be, from now into eternity. That love that we have for God, that love that we have for one another, that adoration, that joy in the presence of the other. This is the one thing that is needful, and, by God’s grace, it will not be taken away from us, to his glory: the glory of the God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto to ages of ages. Scripture readings cited: * Luke 12:13-21 * Luke 10:38-42; 11:27-28 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit translatingthetradition.substack.com

    11 min

  6. 11/21/2025

    Holiness and Joy

    Sources cited: from II Samuel 6:14-22: 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 shouting and with the sound of the trumpet. Now as the ark of the Lord came into the City of David, Michal, Saul’s daughter, looked through a window and saw King David leaping and whirling before the Lord; and she despised him in her heart. So they brought the ark of the Lord, and set it in its place in the midst of the tabernacle that David had erected for it. Then David offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the Lord. And when David had finished offering burnt offerings and peace offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord of hosts. Then he distributed among all the people, among the whole multitude of Israel, both the women and the men, to everyone a loaf of bread, a piece of meat, and a cake of raisins. So all the people departed, everyone to his house. Then David returned to bless his household. And Michal the daughter of Saul came out to meet David, and said, “How glorious was the king of Israel today, uncovering himself today in the eyes of the maids of his servants, as one of the base fellows shamelessly uncovers himself!” So David said to Michal, “It was before the Lord, who chose me instead of your father and all his house, to appoint me ruler over the people of the Lord, over Israel. Therefore I will play music before the Lord. And I will be even more undignified than this, and will be humble in my own sight. But as for the maidservants of whom you have spoken, by them I will be held in honor.” from the Protoevangelium of James: And the child was two years old, and Joachim said: Let us take her up to the temple of the Lord, that we may pay the vow that we have vowed, lest perchance the Lord send to us, and our offering be not received. And Anna said: Let us wait for the third year, in order that the child may not seek for father or mother. And Joachim said: So let us wait. And the child was three years old, and Joachim said: Invite the daughters of the Hebrews that are undefiled, and let them take each a lamp, and let them stand with the lamps burning, that the child may not turn back, and her heart be captivated from the temple of the Lord. And they did so until they went up into the temple of the Lord. And the priest received her, and kissed her, and blessed her, saying: The Lord has magnified your name in all generations. In you, on the last of the days, the Lord will manifest His redemption to the sons of Israel. And he set her down upon the third step of the altar, and the Lord God sent grace upon her; and she danced with her feet, and all the house of Israel loved her. Sources not cited (which I intended to): “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3) from For the Life of the World (Fr. Schmemann citing Romano Guardini): Man, with the aid of grace, is given the opportunity of relaying his fundamental essence, of really becoming that which according to his divine destiny he should be and longs to be, a child of God. In the liturgy he is to go “unto God , who giveth joy to his youth.” … Because the life of the liturgy is higher than that to which customary reality gives either the opportunity or form of expression, it adapts suitable forms and methods from that sphere in which alone they are to be found, that is to say, from art. It speaks measuredly and melodiously; it employs formal, rhythmic gestures; it is clothed in colors and garments foreign to everyday life … It is in the highest sense the life of a child, in which everything is picture, melody and song. Such is the wonderful fact which the liturgy demonstrates: it unites act and reality in a supernatural childhood before God. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit translatingthetradition.substack.com

    10 min

  7. 11/10/2025

    Who Is This Man?

    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 asking Jesus to heal his servant. One of the things that runs throughout this section of the Gospel of Luke is the question, who is this man Jesus? Who is he? And as we look at this section as a whole, and in particular, at this culminating pair of stories, we begin to see exactly who he is. So, Jesus has just gotten back from healing the Gadarene demoniac. Everybody’s really happy to see him back. And in particular, a man named Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue, is ecstatic because his daughter is dying. And now he really needs Jesus to come and heal her. And so Jesus does, or at least he starts to try to do so. But, like everywhere he went—and you will remember from another story in this section, the raising of the widow’s son, the widow of Nain—Jesus is accompanied by a crowd. And the crowd is pressing on him from all sides. So his progress is excruciatingly slow as he’s making his way to Jairus’ house. And then it stops altogether as Jesus stops in the middle of this crowd, which is pressing on him from all sides and says, “Who touched me?” Now, we know the story. But there’s another story in this section which has to do with someone touching Jesus. If we go back to the central story in this section, Jesus was invited to the house of a Pharisee named Simon, and he was sitting at table, and as he’s sitting at table, eating with Simon, the Pharisee, and the company of a whole bunch of exalted guests, a woman comes off the street. A woman of the street comes off the street, and sets herself up behind Jesus, and is really making a scene. She’s weeping, and her tears are falling on Jesus’ feet, and she’s bending down and drying off his feet with her hair, and she’s anointing his feet with fragrant ointments. And the host of the feast, Simon, who must be more than a little annoyed by this point at this scene that’s developing, is thinking to himself, If this person was really a prophet, he’d know exactly who touched the kind of person who just touched him. And he’d tell her, “Get out of here. What are you doing? This is terrible. Go away!” Now, Jesus sees Simon’s heart, and he sees the woman’s heart, and he knows that there is an obvious communication gap here. How does he bridge it? And so, as always, he tells a story. “Simon, I have something to say to you.” “Say it, Master.” “There were two people. One owed 500 denari, and the other 50. And the master forgave both the debts. Now, which of the people, do you think, is gonna love him more? The one who owed 500, or the one who owed 50?” And Simon answers, “Well, I guess the one who owed him more money would love him more, right?” And Jesus says, “You’ve answered me rightly. I came into your house, and you did not anoint my head with oil, yet this woman has anointed my feet. You gave me no kiss of greeting, and yet she has not ceased to kiss my feet. I tell you, this woman, who loves much, her sins are forgiven.” And then we get one of the many questions in this section: “Who is this man who forgives sins?” And so this story that we’re in the middle of now, with the woman who has the flow of blood, who’s actually touched Jesus, the hem of Jesus’ garment. And Jesus knows this: He knows exactly who is touching him. Because he is a prophet, and more than a prophet. And as he stops now, he stopped for a reason. He stopped for her. He stopped for her and for her salvation. And, of course, the disciples are all confused. “Master. People are pressing against you on all sides. Why do you ask who touched you? There’s lots of people touching you.” And he says, “No, I felt power go out from me.” And so this woman then comes forward finally, and tells them, in the presence of all of them, how she touched his garment, and she was healed. And it turns out that she’s had a flow of blood that has made her unclean for twelve years. And Luke can’t help commenting, as a physician, that she spent all her livelihood on physicians, trying to get them to help her. And none of them have been able to help her. And now all she did was reach out, touch the hem of Jesus’ garment, and she’s healed. And Jesus says to her, “Daughter, be of good cheer. Your faith has made you well. Go in peace.” There’s another interesting parallel here: immediately after the story of Simon, Luke makes a comment, kind of out of the blue, that there’s lots of people, and, in particular, lots of women that Jesus has helped. And that they have contributed to his and the apostles’ livelihood. They are the ones who are sponsoring Jesus and the apostles, making it possible for them to travel around. And so what we have here, as Jesus has deliberately stopped the entire procession—brought it to a milling halt—is not simply a healing. It’s not simply that Jesus wants to get credit for this healing. It’s that there’s more that needs to be done here. There’s more that needs to be done for the woman. Because she has been, for twelve years, an outcast from Jewish society. She’s been unclean. Everybody knows that. It’s probably why she snuck up behind Jesus and touched his robe without telling anybody. But our Lord is not simply here to heal people. Our Lord is here to heal relationships. And so, as he gets her to tell her story, not only do people realize who he is, realize he knows exactly who is touching him, realize ultimately that he has the power to forgive sins—but she is restored to fellowship in the community. Everybody knows the story. Everybody knows that she’s been healed. And her livelihood, which has been, unfortunately, diverted to these physicians who are completely unable to heal her, can now be used to the glory of God. While he’s still standing, someone comes from the ruler of the synagogue’s house. and says to the ruler, “Your daughter is dead. Do not trouble the teacher. There’s no need for him to come over. There’s no point anymore.” But when Jesus heard it, he answered him, saying, “Do not be afraid, only believe and she will be made well.” And there’s an interesting contrast here between this and the beginning story, where the elders of the Jews encourage Jesus to come and to heal the centurion’s servant, even though the centurion is obviously not a Jew. “He loves our nation,” they say. “He’s even built us a synagogue.” And the centurion, of course, after asking Jesus to come and heal his servant, has second thoughts and he tells Jesus, “No, don’t come. I’m not worthy that you should enter under the roof of my house.” This is a note of honour, in the one point, of understanding of the Jewish custom that to go into the house of a Gentile would make you unclean. But more than that, he says, “I’m not worthy for you to come. I didn’t even think myself worthy to come to you, but say the word, and my servant will be healed, for I am a man placed under authority, having soldiers under me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” And when Jesus heard these things, he marvelled at the centurion and turned around and said to the crowd that followed him, “I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel.” There’s an interesting corollary here, as well, in that just before Jesus goes and heals the demon-possessed man, he and his disciples get into the boat. Jesus is tired, he falls asleep, and a big storm blows up, and the disciples get all panicky and are scared, and wake Jesus up, saying, “Master, don’t you care that we’re perishing here?” And he arose and he rebuked the wind and the raging of the water, and they ceased. And there was a calm. He turns to them, and he says to them, “Where is your faith?” And they were afraid, and marvelled, saying to one another, “Who can this be? He commands even the winds and the waters and they obey him.” And so, Jesus, who he is, is being made manifest. All he has to do, as the centurion knows full well, and his disciples don’t, is speak the word. And it will happen. It will come to pass. The centurion’s servant is healed. And the disciples, they just don’t get it. Even after seeing the great miracle of the calming of the storm, they’re still asking, “Who is he? Who can this be? He commands even the wind and the water. And they obey him.” But now, Jairus’ daughter is dead. There’s no need to go to his house. And yet Jesus says, when he hears it, “Do not be afraid, only believe, and she will be made well.” And he continues on. And he comes to the house. And they’re all weeping and wailing, and he doesn’t let anyone go in, except for Peter, James, and John, and the father and mother of the girl, and he tells everybody that, “Don’t worry, she’s just asleep,” and then they all laugh at him. They know she’s dead. But this is really interesting. Because, again, just after the middle of this section, Jesus starts telling stories. I mean, he’s told a story to Simon, but now he really starts telling stories, as we heard Father Lawrence speak last week about the parable of the sower. He tells the parable of the sower. And then he tells some more stories. But he tells his disciples in particular, that to them is given the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but not to everybody else, that hearing they may not hear, and so that they won’t understand yet. They’re not ready to understand. But the disciples are ready. So try and understand here. Try and follow. And at the end of this session, when he’s telling these parables, his mother and his brothers are trying to come to him, but they can’t, because o

    23 min

  8. 10/27/2025

    Hellfire, Brimstone, and Sodom

    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 reluctant to talk about this story is probably my upbringing. I grew up in a very conservative evangelical Christian community with lots of really nice people there. They loved Jesus. But I do remember there was a certain trend in the sermons where you had to have—and even some people, some of the very nicest people in the parish—they didn’t feel like it had really been a Gospel message unless they were kind of scared. It’s a tradition that goes a long ways back in Protestantism. You have this famous sermon by Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”. One of the central ideas or images in this sermon is that God has you in his hand, and he’s dangling you over the fires of the abyss. And you just better hold on and make sure he doesn’t let go. He actually read this in a very dry tone, apparently, but he had people clinging to the pillars; they were shaking in their boots. So there is this tradition, particularly in the post-Protestant Christian West, of a good hellfire and brimstone sermon. That’s not what you’re going to get today. However, the subject of hell has been raised. It’s there in the Gospel, so we need to address it. We need to think about it and talk about it. And one of the things I think we probably need to think about is, why don’t we want to hear it? Why is it, in fact, why is it even a stumbling block for some people who might want to come to the faith? A big part of it is what I just described. It was kind of overused. Admittedly, the Bible does talk about God being angry. He’s angry at sin. He’s angry at what turning away from him, the source of life, does to us who are dependent upon him, the source of life. He’s angry at sin because it’s like any father who loves their children, looking at what sin does to them, all their desires that pull them away from what they should be doing and what is good for them, and seeing the destructive power of that. Of course, you’ve got to warn somebody about that. Of course, you don’t want your children to go there or do that. Don’t play in the traffic. You might get hit by a car, right? But I think another part of it is, this kind of philosophical approach that we have to Christianity. And, you know, again, that’s not something bad. We want to understand who God is. If God is the source of all goodness and you want to understand what goodness is, then of course you want to understand who God is, how he is good, what his goodness means. And then you have this. And we’ve even had Orthodox philosophers write books against this, against the idea of there being hell. And I think this is problematic. Pause for a second and think about this—think about what we’re doing when we’re criticizing God for having this hell thing. And think about it in particular in the context of this story. You have a rich man and you have a beggar. The rich man is clothed in purple and fine linen and lives sumptuously. In that day, they didn’t have nice gaming computers or anything like that, so this is the pinnacle of life. So he’s enjoying all there is to enjoy in the world in which he is. And as he’s faring sumptuously every day, there is at his gate a beggar named Lazarus, who’s sick. And he’s covered in sores. And the only people who seem to minister to him at all are the dogs, which in Jewish tradition are unclean animals, who come and lick his sores. And then they both die. This is not an unusual story in the history of the human race. This is not something exceptional. There are people out there whose lives are miserable, brutish, and short. They didn’t all live in the Middle Ages, but that is the reality that we do encounter at times. And then there are those who have an abundance, an overabundance, more than they know what to do with. They’ve got to build like lots of yachts and stuff to use up all this disposable income that they have. And, you know, then go sailing on the yachts, which I guess is the clothes of purple and fine linen of our day. This is the reality that we have as human beings that we encounter. It is not right. It is wrong. It is evil. It is unjust. And we should be calling it out as such. St. John Chrysostom did. He said, that extra cloak that you have in your closet that you don’t wear, you stole it from the poor. In fact, this particular parable or story—some of the fathers say that it’s not a parable, it’s actually a story, because it’s the only one in which Jesus actually uses the name of a person. All these other parables, it’s like a certain…, but here it’s like a certain beggar named Lazarus. Be that as it may, he tells this story in the context of the Pharisees’ response to him. He’s actually just told the story of the corrupt steward (one of my favorites), where the steward is like, “Hey, my master has found out that I’m embezzling and he’s going to fire me. So what am I going to do? I’m like, I’m too old to dig and stuff like that. So I know.” And he calls his master’s various debtors in to him because he’s the steward. He takes care of his master’s debts. And he’s like, “How much do you owe my master?” And the guy says, “Well, like, 40 bushels of wheat.” “Okay, take your bill and write down 20.” I’m getting the numbers wrong, but essentially that’s it. So he’s cheating his master, and then his master actually ends up commending him. He’s like, “Oh, that’s actually pretty smart, because now he’ll have friends.” And he’s using money, as Jesus says, wisely. This is how we should be using our money. And he points out that you cannot serve two masters. No man can serve both God and the love of money. And the Pharisees laugh at him. “Well, yeah, of course, you’re poor. Of course you’d be valorizing the poor.” And it’s in this context, then, that Jesus tells this parable. This context both of extreme riches and extreme poverty. This context when money and the value of money, the danger of money, is being misunderstood. And again, I want us to think for a second about— I don’t know, let’s play God for a minute. (God forgive us.) And say, “Okay, well, you know, you kind of got it wrong, Lord. It would be better if they both went to heaven.” Okay, well, let’s think about that for a moment. Maybe on some level it would be, but in terms of justice, you’ve just destroyed the whole point of the story. Where is the justice? Here’s the rich man. He gets to enjoy all of life’s bounties and blessings, and here’s poor Lazarus. And there’s no consequence for the rich man not sharing his abundance with Lazarus. And Lazarus has not... well, I guess he’s in heaven, so that’s nice. But then what’s the meaning of that life that he just lived, which is just full of misery and suffering? It deprives it of meaning. Or, okay, let’s try another one with, you know, we’re scientific materialists here. So we’ll just, like, say, “Okay, well, it’s the end.” Great. That’s it. Okay, well, now you’ve really messed up the story. Now everything’s kind of just completely meaningless. The rich man gets to enjoy all this, and then he dies. And the Lazarus gets to suffer, and then he dies. And that’s it. That’s the end of the story. Wait. It’s like, maybe we’re not as good at being God as we think we are. There’s another way to approach this. And here I want to take us back, all the way back, to the father of the faith, Abraham. He has this encounter with God, you’ll remember. The three visitors at the Oak of Mamre come and he entertains them and realizes this isn’t just any three visitors, this is God himself. And God, in fact, as two of the visitors make their way down to Sodom, where Abraham’s nephew Lot is living, God says to Abraham, “Shall I conceal from Abraham what I am about to do? The wickedness of Sodom has reached my ears. I need to judge them.” And Abraham, thinking of Lot, no doubt, says, “Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?” I want to pause there for a second in this story. That’s a hugely important statement. A hugely important question. Because it’s a rhetorical question. “Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?” Abraham’s assumption, the father of our faith’s assumption is, well, of course he will. Of course he’s going to do what’s right. He’s God. He’s the source of goodness. How could there be anything more good than God? And so the question is purely rhetorical, although admittedly, then Abraham then proceeds to engage in a Middle Eastern bargaining session with God, and he manages to get God down from 50… “What if there were 50 righteous souls in Sodom? You wouldn’t destroy the whole city and all those 50 souls, would you?” And “Well, okay, for the sake of 50 souls, if I find 50 righteous souls in Sodom, I won’t.” And it’s like, “Okay, well, wait, what if there’s not 50?” Abraham’s thinking. “Okay, well, but maybe there’s, you know, only 40. I mean, for the lack of 10 people, you wouldn’t destroy the whole city and all those 40 righteous people with it, would you?” He goes, “No, okay, if there’s 40, I won’t.” He gets God all the way down to 10. And, of course, there aren’t even 10 righteous people in Sodom. The two men come to Sodom, and they’re going to just like camp out in the marketplace, and Lot, who is like the only righteous guy, really, in Sodom, says, “No, no, don’t do that. Come, come out, you know, I’ll put you up for the night.” And he gives them hospitality in his home. And then the men of Sodom come and are pounding on Lot’s door, telling him to send out these two men so that they can do whatever they want with them. (Read bet

    23 min
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About

Sermons and miscellaneous musings from St. John of Shanghai Orthodox Church in Vancouver, BC, Canada - mostly by Fr. Justin Hewlett. translatingthetradition.substack.com

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  • Creator
    Fr. Justin (Edward) Hewlett
  • Years Active
    2017 - 2026
  • Episodes
    74
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Fr. Justin (Edward) Hewlett
  • Show Website
    Translating the Tradition