10th Sunday of Pentecost  
1 Corinthians 4:9-16; Matthew 17:14-28

If someone a hundred years ago began to seriously assert that a person could start an engine or some kind of machine at a distance of a hundred or a thousand miles, such a person would be considered out of their mind.

But in our time, a person, being on Earth, starts and controls the actions of a complex machine that is on the Moon 250 thousand miles (380 thousand kilometers) away, controls mechanical apparatus that is on Mars - 214 million miles away, takes pictures, and even receives bright colour photos, which we can see while sitting in our homes.

In general, 100 years ago, if one were to begin talking to an average person, highly educated or with a primary education, or completely illiterate, about the direct flight of a person through the air, he would say that only a crazy person can dream of such a thing, only crazy people speak of such things, and only children can believe in such things. For, something like this cannot be; it is unnatural. After all, only birds fly naturally.

And, yet, today, traveling by airplanes that fly at supersonic speeds is an everyday phenomenon that does not surprise anyone in the civilized world. We don't need to “believe” such a thing - we already know and are convinced of that.

An average person who does not believe in God is ready to believe only in what is available or attainable for human action today, in the current time. In fact, such a person does not “believe” in anything, because to believe, as evidenced by Apostle Paul, is to accept the possibility of what we cannot see, what we cannot verify with our human means. "But faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1). The unbelieving person's primitivism is deepened by the fact that he believes that when something is impossible for people to do, it is impossible for any force, for man is, according to them, the strongest, wisest creature in the world.

But the Lord Jesus Christ testified almost two thousand years ago that nothing is impossible for those who have great faith. Figuratively speaking, He said: "...if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, and you say to these mountains, 'Move from here to there,' it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you" (Matthew 17:20).

On another occasion, the Lord testified: "What is impossible for men is possible for God" (Luke 18:27).

A person must always understand and know that God created him in His likeness, according to His spiritual image (1 Moses 1:26). God created man with creative gifts, a creative mind, with a desire for harmony, for love, for beauty, for completeness. Our Lord Jesus Christ, who was sent from God the Father to earth, calls to us:

"Therefore, be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48).

According to such an instruction from Christ, we have unlimited possibilities for perfection. We can strive to improve, strive to reach greater and greater frontiers in science, in various technological inventions, in mastering God's creation, in harnessing the various forces of nature for our benefit.

Jesus Christ, while on earth, performed many miracles, especially various healing miracles, but He also commanded and testified to His disciples:

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do, and even greater works from them he will make..." (John 14:12).

And, we can assume that, in our time, technical advances for mastering the cosmos are part of the direction for "greater works" mentioned by Christ.

However, we, who are believers in God, followers of the Saviour, should not judge the possibilities of God the Creator, as well as the possibilities of human works in the future, today, by the possibilities inherent in our current development. For, if someone took this approach in the past, they would never have been able to allow for the possibility of light without fire – by electricity. And in a similar vein, people oriented in this way, could not dream of or allow for the possibility of transmitting a message, especially a voice - over thousands of miles.

We should also bear in mind that only believing people could dream and strive to use invisible magnetic waves to transmit images on television. However, we should all be aware that such people did not invent those radio or magnetic waves. They have always existed, and only humankind, by God's grace, in our time learned to recognize, grasp and use those waves for their own good.

We believe that God has many “waves” still unknown to us. There are still many invisible and elusive things in the universe that the Creator will gradually reveal to His people who believe in Him and seek union with Him. And there will never be a limit to people's knowledge of the new, of the unlimited, because the world created by God is limitless - both in space and in different waves, in different components and properties.

All human generations, no matter how many there have been, can access the knowledge of God's creation, the unlimited universe, as well as its unlimited Creator. But a person should strive not only to know the outside world, but to try to know himself - this is ancient wisdom.

There was a time when people did not know about pumps. Water and any liquid had to be scooped up and lifted up by physical force. But, over time, people observed that there is a force in the surrounding world that pumps or lifts water up, that the pressure of the same water can force it to rise up through pipes. And thus, people came to invent pumps, different pumps for their own benefit.

However, people also learned that they have always had a pump in their body that operates for decades without stopping, without any of effort of our own, without any lubrication. That wonderful pump, more perfect than any invented by humankind, is our heart.

And together with the heart, there are filters that are automatically connected and regulated, lungs that breathe, and our blood that circulates. Our blood and all the components of our body are continuously formed and renewed. Even from a purely mechanical point of view, our body is the most perfect machine ever invented.

And our body also has a brain, in which thoughts are somehow invisibly born, which seeks to know both its God the Creator and His creation - the universe, nature and space, to know the visible and invisible world, the limitless world...

And we, the people of faith, who are witnesses to the fact that people very much like us can now start engines, machines, various devices from thousands or even millions of miles, we can all the more easily understand that our almighty Creator God in all ages was and is able to affect the people chosen by Him, the prophets, who later wrote prophecies and predictions with inspiration to direct their brothers and sisters to the path of salvation, to union with the same God-Creator.

With all that in mind, we will repeat after Jesus Christ that with God all things are possible, that God can create all miracles for people who believe in Him. Moreover, according to the word of the Lord, those people who have great and deep faith can accomplish great works for the glory of God.

Amen.

Very Rev. Fr. Taras Slavchenko

Taras Slavchenko was born on March 8, 1918 in Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk region in Ukraine. After graduating from school and the Pedagogical College, he entered the language and literature faculty of the Scientific Pedagogical Institute. Having successfully completed it in 1938, he served as a teacher in a secondary school.

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