Homily for the Sunday of the Forefathers (Ancestors) of Christ in the Orthodox Church

 

Colossians 3:4-11; Luke 14:16-24

 

             If you are like me, you know how easy it is to come up with excuses for not focusing on what is most important when you would rather be doing something else.  When that happens, the problem is not so much with the circumstances of our lives as with ourselves, for we have chosen not to keep our priorities in order and to become distracted from putting first things first.    

 

            The people in today’s gospel reading did precisely that when they rejected the invitation to enter into the joy of the great banquet that represents the Kingdom of God.  They made excuses based on the blessings that they had received:  One owned real estate, another had animals, and a third was married.  These commonplace conditions are certainly not evil or even temptations in and of themselves.  They preclude no one from seeking first the Kingdom of God.  They provide opportunities for offering all the good things of this life to the Lord for the fulfillment of His gracious purposes for the salvation of the world.  Nonetheless, all the invited guests in the parable used them as excuses to refuse the invitation to the feast.  That is when the master commanded his servant to “Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and maimed and blind and lame.”  Because there was still room, the master ordered him to go out even further to “the highways and hedges, and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled.”  

 

There may be deeper spiritual significance to the symbolism of the yoke of five oxen in the parable, for there are five books of law in the Old Testament.  Having a field of land may represent those who wanted the Messiah to set up a nationalistic religious kingdom in the Holy Land.  Marriage may represent the belief that God’s blessings were only for their particular family line or ethnic group.  Many rejected our Lord because He interpreted the law in a way that challenged the legalism of the Pharisees, repudiated the temptation to become a military or political leader, and extended the blessings of His Reign even to those considered foreigners and enemies.

 

In the historical setting of the passage, “the poor and maimed and blind and lame” and those brought in “from the highways and hedges” represent us as Gentiles who are not the descendants of Abraham and have no ancestral connection to the law and prophets of the Old Testament.  Especially as we prepare for Christmas, we must remember that we have no claim to the blessings of the Messiah on the basis of nationality. Apart from the mercy of the Savior, which extends to foreigners and outcasts like us, we would have no part in the great spiritual heritage of those who foreshadowed and foretold the coming of the Christ across the centuries before His birth. To see ourselves and our neighbors in light of the divisions of our fallen world is simply to make yet another excuse for not embracing the gracious healing that He offers even to unlikely people like us.  As St. Paul wrote, “Here there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free man, but Christ is all, and in all.”

  

The Hebrews who looked forward in faith for God’s fulfillment of the promises to Abraham did not do so simply on the basis of their observance of the law, which came later through Moses.  The law was necessary for sinful people as a tutor in preparation for the coming of Christ.  The ancestors of the Lord longed not merely for a great teacher, but for liberation from slavery to sin and death, which the law lacked the power to accomplish. The forefathers of the Savior trusted God that their hope would not be in vain.  Though often overlooked at the time, the original promise to Abraham extended to the Gentiles, for God told him, “In you all the nations of the world will be blessed.”  (Gen. 22:18) Now all who are in Christ “are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (Gal. 3:29) Jew or Gentile, “those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham.” (Gal. 3:9) The Savior is born to bring all who bear the divine image and likeness into the joy of the heavenly banquet.

 

The Hebrews of the Old Testament who prepared for the Messiah’s coming through faith did so of their own free will in response to their calling as the children of Abraham.  That is true also for the Theotokos, who is the highest offering of the Jewish people and became the God-Man’s living temple in a unique way as His virgin mother.  She was chosen for this astounding vocation and responded in freedom to the message of the Archangel Gabriel.  No one forced her, but she chose to remain focused on hearing and obeying the Word of God.  Likewise, no one forces us.  No matter what excuses we have made so far in our lives, we all have the ability to respond to Christ with the obedience of humble faith. Doing so means that we will obey the Apostle’s teaching: “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.”

 

Unfortunately, those in the parable who had convinced themselves that the normal cares of life excluded them from entering into the joy of the heavenly kingdom responded differently.   As the master said in the parable, ‘”For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.’  For many are called, but few are chosen.”  Those who are chosen are those who follow the Theotokos’ example of making receptivity to Christ the top priority of their lives.  Like her, we must use our freedom as those who bear the image of God to seek first His Kingdom.  Doing so requires that we obey the Apostle’s teaching: “But now put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and foul talk from your mouth.  Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old nature with its practices and have put on the new nature, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator.”

 

Contrary to what we like to tell ourselves, the conventional responsibilities of life are invitations to love and serve Christ in our neighbors each day of our lives.  Nothing but our own lack of mindfulness can keep us from making our daily responsibilities points of entrance into eternal joy.  What St. Porphyrios taught about the spiritual possibilities of our daily work applies to the rest of life also: 

 

At your work, whatever it may be, you can become saints—through meekness, patience and love.  Make a new start every day, with new resolution, with enthusiasm and love, prayer and silence—not with anxiety so that you get a pain in the chest.[1]

 

Let your soul devote itself to the prayer “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me” in all your worries, for everything and everyone.  Don’t look at what’s happening to you, look at the light, at Christ, just as a child looks to its mother when something happens to it. See everything without anxiety, without depression, without strain and without stress.[2]

 

We make the choice every moment whether we are going to offer our blessings and struggles to the Lord as opportunities for finding the healing of our souls or whether we are going to use them as excuses to fuel our passions.  The path we take will lead us either into the joy of the heavenly kingdom or into the despair of those who have wasted their lives on what can never truly satisfy the living icons of God.  Before His holy glory, we are all “the poor and maimed and blind and lame” from “the highways and hedges” who must open our hearts for healing through prayer, fasting, generosity to our needy neighbors, and confession and repentance of our sins.   That is how even unlikely people like us may accept His gracious invitation to dine at the Heavenly Banquet with those who looked forward to the coming of the Messiah with faith across the ages.    Let us use the remainder of the Nativity Fast to do precisely that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] St. Porphyrios, Wounded by Love, 144.

[2] St. Porphyrios, 145.

Homily for the Twenty-Sixth Sunday After Pentecost & Tenth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

Ephesians 5:8-19; Luke 13:10-17

 

            It would be impossible to make sense of this time of preparation for Christmas without recognizing the essential role played by a woman, the Theotokos who miraculously contained God in her womb as His virgin mother.  Near the beginning of the Nativity Fast, we celebrated the feast of her Entrance into the Temple, where she prepared to welcome Christ into her life in as His living temple.  Every expectant mother prepares for the birth of her child, but the Theotokos’ preparation was surely unique, for as we sing in these weeks before Christmas: “On this day the Virgin cometh to the cave to give birth to God the Word ineffably, Who was before all the ages. Dance for joy, O earth, on hearing the gladsome tidings; with the Angels and the shepherds now glorify Him Who is willing to be gazed on as a young Child Who before the ages is God.”

            Fr. Alexander Schmemann wrote in For the Life of the World that all generations call the Mother of God blessed “Because in her love and obedience, in her faith and humility, she accepted to be what from all eternity all creation was meant and created to be:  the temple of the Holy Spirit, the humanity of God.” (101-102) He teaches that she did so by fulfilling “the womanhood of creation,” for the Church is the Bride of Christ in which “the world…finds its restoration and fulfillment.” (102)  For both men and women, the Theotokos is the ultimate model of humble obedience and receptivity to the Savior’s healing of the human person.  She shows us what it means to embrace our identity as living members of the Church, the Body and Bride of Christ, as a sign of the salvation of the world.

             Today’s gospel reading presents Christ’s interaction with a woman who was bent over and had not been able to straighten up for eighteen years. He saw her in a synagogue on the Sabbath and said to her, “Woman, you are freed from your infirmity.” When He laid hands on her, she was healed.  When the woman stood up straight again, she glorified God.  As was often the case when the Savior healed on the Sabbath day, there were religious leaders eager to criticize Him for working on the legally mandated day of rest.  He responded by stating the obvious:   People do what is necessary to take care of their animals on the Sabbath.  “So ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath?”  Then “all the people rejoiced at all the glorious things that were done by Him.” By restoring the woman in this way Christ showed that He is truly “Lord of the Sabbath” and that “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”  (Mark 2:27-28)

            The woman whom the Lord delivered from her infirmity represents us all who are weakened, broken, and paralyzed by our passions and by the corruption that has been our common lot from generation to generation. Like her, we are not in need of more religious rules and practices that lack the power to heal and restore us as the beloved children of God.  Instead, we need to be set free from bondage to all that cripples us from becoming like the Theotokos in freely offering herself to fulfill the vocation of all humanity and of the creation itself to become the living temple of God.  That is precisely why the Savior is born at Christmas as the God-Man, the Theanthropos, in Whom all people may share by grace in the divine life. Nothing else could truly liberate those who bear the divine image and likeness from the pernicious corruption of sin, which leads ultimately to the grave. 

            We all have diseases of soul, of personality, of behavior, and of relationships that cripple us, keeping us from acting, thinking, and speaking with the joyful freedom of the children of God.  We are all bent over and crippled in relation to the Lord, our neighbors, and even ourselves.  We have all fallen short of fulfilling God’s gracious purposes for us, as has every generation since Adam and Eve stripped themselves naked of the divine glory.   Indeed, “the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now.” (Rom. 8:22) That is why we need these weeks of the Nativity Fast to purify our hearts through prayer, fasting, generosity to the needy, and confession and repentance of our sins.  We must grow in acquiring the spiritual clarity necessary to say with the Theotokos, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”

If we want to straighten up like the woman who had been bent over for eighteen years, we must become the Lord’s holy temples as we open our hearts to receive His gracious divine energies for strength and restoration infinitely beyond what we could ever give ourselves.   In baptism, we have put on Christ like a garment, receiving the robe of light that our first parents lost through their disobedience.  In chrismation, we have received the fullness of the Holy Spirit, our personal Pentecost. In the Eucharist, we are nourished with the Body and Blood of our Lord as participants in the Wedding Feast of the Lamb.  Nothing constrains us from being healed of our infirmities of soul other than our own stubborn refusal to receive the healing, transformation, and fulfillment of the human person that Christ was born to bring to the world. 

In our epistle reading, St. Paul instructed the Christians of Ephesus to resist the spiritual and moral corruption of pagan culture.  In contrast to the darkness of worshiping false gods, engaging in sexual immorality, and making pride and power their highest goods, he called them to “walk as children of light…and try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.”  He told them to “take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.”  Like the Ephesians, we live in a time in which we must be vigilant against corrupting the way of Christ with practices and beliefs that are completely contradictory to our vocation to become His holy temples.  From all points of the cultural compass today, we face temptations to remain stooped over by our passions.  That is why we must obey St. Paul’s teaching as we prepare to receive Christ at His Nativity: “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.” 

Evil is the corruption of good, and we must not simply condemn the creation or pretend that we can completely isolate ourselves from the world.  Our calling, instead, is to call the world to find its fulfillment as the Church, as God’s holy temple, the Body and Bride of Christ.  In order to do so with integrity, we must personally bear witness to the Lord’s healing mercy in our own lives as we mindfully turn away from all that tempts us to remain enslaved to our passions.  That is why the Apostle tells us “not [to] get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart.”

 It is so easy today to fill our eyes, ears, and minds with messages and images that are full of darkness and lead us to become living temples to our own self-centered desires and the corruption that is all around us.  Doing so is the complete opposite of the way of the Theotokos.  More than anyone else, she shows us how to be liberated from our infirmities so that we may welcome the Savior into our lives at Christmas in humble obedience and purity of heart.   In the remaining weeks of the Nativity Fast, let us follow her example in becoming living temples of the Lord who embody this joyful proclamation: “Woman, you are freed from your infirmity.”

Homily for the Holy Apostle Andrew the First-Called in the Orthodox Church

 

John 1:35-51

Today we celebrate the Feast of Saint Andrew, who is known as “the First-Called” because he was the very first Jesus Christ called to follow Him as a disciple.  He is the first link in the chain of people across the centuries who have responded to the Lord’s commands “Come and see” and “Follow Me.”  Like his brother Simon who came to be Saint Peter, St. Andrew was a fisherman, a simple, hardworking man who left behind the life that he had known to follow the Lord in the ministry of the Kingdom for which he ultimately gave his life as a martyr. Andrew had been a follower of St. John the Baptist who had clearly identified Christ by saying “Behold, the Lamb of God.”  We do not know how much Andrew understood about the Lord at that moment, but he obeyed the command to “Come and see” and then told his brother Simon “We have found the Messiah.”

Our Lord’s disciples were Jews who underwent a radical spiritual transformation that did not occur in an instant.  Even though they were with Him on a daily basis to receive His teaching and witness His miracles, they did not understand what it meant for Him to be the Lamb of God who offered Himself on the Cross until after His resurrection when “He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures.” (Lk. 24:45) That is when the command to “Come and see” was fulfilled, for we know the Risen Lord by true personal encounter, not by mere ideas.   Sight is a prominent theme in the gospel according to St. John, which later gives us the account of the restoration of sight to the man who had been blind from birth.  The ultimate point is not physical sight, of course, but spiritual vision.   To know Christ as the Lamb of God is not simply to accept abstract truths about Him, but to have the spiritually clarity to behold His glory and to participate personally in His life by grace.

There is a remarkable level of interest in the Orthodox Church today with far more visitors, inquirers, and catechumens coming to our parishes than ever before.  No matter how experienced we are in Orthodoxy, this wonderful development should remind us that we all remain in the process of conversion, for the calling to “Come and see” is truly an eternal vocation that none of us may claim to have fulfilled.  Whether we are just being exposed to Orthodox Christianity for the first time or have been in the Church our entire lives, there is often a temptation to set our sights too low in the Christian life.  Nathaniel was so impressed that Christ saw him sitting under a fig tree that he exclaimed “You are the Son of God.  You are the king of Israel!”  But the Lord responded, “You shall see greater things than these…you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.”  Our calling is nothing less than to become those of whom the Lord said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”  (Matt. 5:8) Regardless of what initially sparked our interest in the Church or how we have experienced it so far, we must focus on coming to “the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” (Eph. 4:13)   The God-Man shares His restoration and healing of the human person with us by grace so that we may “be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (Matt. 5:48) Let us never think that the fullness of our vocation as Orthodox Christians is anything less than that infinite goal.  

            St. Andrew’s immediate reaction to his encounter with the Lord was to share the good news with his brother, saying “We have found the Messiah.”  From the very origins of our faith, there is a genuine evangelistic impulse to share with others the blessing and joy that we have found in Jesus Christ.  Just think how important it was that Andrew told his brother Peter about the Lord, for Peter went on to become the head disciple and the first bishop of both Antioch and Rome.  Likewise, to this day, we never know what God has in store for anyone in working out His purposes for the salvation of the world.  Simon Peter was surely an unlikely character for such an exalted role.  The Lord had said “Get behind me, Satan!”  to Peter when he refused to accept the Savior’s prophecy of the Cross. (Matt. 16:23) Then he denied Christ three times after His arrest and abandoned Him at His crucifixion.  Nonetheless, the Risen Lord restored Peter and empowered him with the Holy Spirit to preach and minister with boldness as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles.   

Whether we are taking the first steps in learning about the Church or have been Orthodox our entire lives, we must not allow our preconceived notions about religion or anything else to keep us from obeying the command to “Come and see.”  Peter found it impossibly hard to accept that the Messiah would not be a righteous military hero like King David who would deliver Israel from Roman occupation.  We may find it impossibly hard to accept that the way of Christ is not identical with our preferred cultural or political agendas.  Like Peter and the rest of the disciples, we may have confused our desires for a particular type of earthly realm with hope for Christ’s Kingdom, which remains “not of this world.” (Jn. 18:36) Truly taking up our crosses is never easy and forces us to confront our weaknesses, turn away from idolatry in all its forms, and pursue ongoing repentance as we struggle to acquire the purity of heart necessary to see God.  When we fall flat on our faces in doing so, as did our Lord’s first disciples with some frequency, we must do the hard work of humbly accepting the truth about our darkened spiritual vision and get back on the path of obeying the command to “Come and see.”   

Today’s gospel passage about the calling of St. Andrew presents profound spiritual truth that speaks directly to us all. Perhaps that is because the same matters are at stake in every generation, in all times and places, when Christ calls broken and confused human beings to follow Him.  We must not despair when our weakness becomes apparent, for the same Holy Spirit Who empowered the apostles on the day of Pentecost dwells in us and continues to bring us into the holiness of God.  Like Peter after his denial, Christ still calls us to follow and serve Him.  He is still the Lamb of God Who opens the eyes of human souls to heavenly glory beyond our expectations.   He calls and enables us to follow Him as He did for the very first disciples.  He calls the entire world to be transfigured by His grace, to be illumined by His holiness, and even to become participants in the heavenly Kingdom.

If, like St. Andrew, we want to play our unique role in the salvation of the world, we must embrace the spiritual disciplines of this season of preparation for Christmas with faith, humility, and repentance.  In order to obey the command to “Come and see” and gain the strength to invite others to receive the healing of Christ, we must become credible living icons of His salvation.  We must be healed and transformed in holiness as the unique people we are in relationship to the particular persons God has placed in our lives.  Andrew told his brother Simon Peter about Jesus Christ and Philip did the same with Nathaniel.   Who knows if anyone else could have done that so effectively?  And who knows today whether anyone else can fulfill the particular vocations that God intends for us in our specific circumstances?  These questions are beyond our ability to answer rationally, but their practical implications are clear.  We must be faithful in whatever circumstances we find ourselves, “work[ing] out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.” (Philipp. 2:12-13)

 Let us use these blessed weeks of the Nativity Fast to pray, fast, give to the needy, and confess and repent of our sins so that we will be prepared for a transformative personal encounter with the Lamb of God, born the Babe of Bethlehem.  He calls us, no less than St. Andrew and the first disciples, to “Come and see” so that we may become participants by grace in His divine glory.  He is born at Christmas so that we “will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.”  Let us settle for nothing less in the weeks to come.

Following the Theotokos into the Temple During the Nativity Fast: Homily for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday After Pentecost & Ninth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

Ephesians 2:14-22; Luke 12:16-21

 

Having begun the Nativity Fast on November 15 in preparation to welcome the Savior at Christmas, today we continue celebrating the Feast of the Entrance of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple. Her elderly parents Joachim and Anna offered Mary to God by taking her to live in the Temple in Jerusalem as a young girl, where she grew up in prayer and purity as she prepared to become the Living Temple of the Lord in a unique and extraordinary way as His Virgin Mother.  This feast directs us to the good news of Christmas, as it is the first step in Mary’s life in becoming the Theotokos who gave birth to the Son of God for our salvation.  She is the epitome of our cooperation or synergy with God, for she freely chose to say “Yes” to the Lord with every ounce of her being.

Joachim and Anna had a long and difficult period of preparation to become parents, as they had been unable to have children for decades until God miraculously blessed them in old age to conceive.  They knew that their daughter was a blessing not simply for the happiness of their family, but for playing her part in fulfilling God’s purposes for the salvation of the world. Their patient faithfulness throughout their years of barrenness helped them gain the spiritual clarity to offer her to the Lord.  They knew that their marriage and family life were blessings to be given back to God for the fulfillment of much higher purposes.  They foreshadowed the proclamation in the Divine Liturgy: “Thine Own of Thine Own, we offer unto Thee on behalf of all and for all.” 

Joachim, Anna, and the Theotokos are the complete opposites of the rich man in today’s gospel lesson who exemplifies the way of life that is so appealing and popular in our world of corruption.  His only concern was to eat, drink, and enjoy himself because he had become so wealthy.  He was addicted to earthly pleasure, power, and success, and saw the meaning and purpose of his life only in those terms.  When God required his soul, however, the man’s true poverty was revealed, for the possessions and accomplishments of this life inevitably pass away and cannot save us.  As we read in the Psalms (48/49), “Do not become afraid when one becomes rich, when the glory of his house increases.  For when he dies, he will carry nothing away; his glory will not go down after him.”

This man’s horizons extended no further than his dreams of the large barns he planned to build in order to hold his crops.  Before the ultimate judgment of God, he was revealed to be a fool who had wasted his life on what could never truly heal or fulfill one who bore the divine image and likeness.  He had laid up treasure for himself, but was not rich toward God in any way. The problem was not simply that the man had possessions, but that he had made them his god, which is another way of saying that he worshipped only himself and surely was not concerned about the needs of his neighbors.  His barns were a temple of the greed to which he had offered his entire existence in a vain effort to satisfy his self-centered desires.   

In stark contrast, the Theotokos followed the righteous example of her parents.  She was prepared by a life of holiness to agree freely to become our Lord’s mother, even though she was an unmarried virgin who did not understand how such a thing could happen.  When she said, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word,” this young Palestinian Jewish girl bravely made a whole, complete offering of her life to God.  She did not ask what was in it for her in terms of money, power, or any kind of earthly success.  She was not enslaved in any way to the worship of any of the false gods of this world. Unlike the rich fool in the parable, she was not blinded by passion and had the purity of soul to put receptivity and obedience to the Lord before all else. That is how she became the Living Temple of the Lord and the greatest example of what it means to unite ourselves to Christ in holiness.

The world is full of tragic circumstances today that are caused by people who are so blinded by their self-centered desires that they think nothing is more important than doing whatever it takes to gratify their lust for possessions, power, and pleasure.   But even if they succeed in gaining dominion over the whole world, they will lose their souls because they have offered themselves to idols which lack the power to heal people from the ravages of sin, let alone to raise anyone up from the tomb.   Doing so will inevitably impoverish us spiritually, for it is the complete opposite of following in the way of the Theotokos as God’s holy temple.  There will be no true peace in our souls or in our relationships with other people if we wander in such spiritual blindness. To indulge in self-centeredness will make us isolated individuals who view others either as enemies to be feared and conquered or as pawns to be manipulated.  Nothing could be further from the way of true personal union with the Lord exemplified by the Theotokos and in the ongoing life of the Body of Christ.  

St. Paul wrote to the Ephesians that “Christ is our peace” Who “has broken down the dividing wall of hostility” between Jews and Gentiles, making “in Himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace,” reconciling “us both to God in one body through the Cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end.”  That is why the Apostle told Gentile Christians that “you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, in Whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord…” That is something that the self-centeredness of the rich fool could never accomplish, for making success in the world our highest goal inevitably perpetuates division and resentment.  We will never become persons united in a communion of love with God and with our neighbors if we refuse to embrace the peace and reconciliation brought to the world by Christ, in Whom “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3:28)    

The Nativity Fast calls us to wrestle with the passions that keep us from becoming “rich toward God.” Even small steps in restraining our appetites and investing ourselves in prayer and generosity help to direct our hearts and lives in the way of the Theotokos as living temples of the Lord.  They help to heal us from the paralysis of self-centeredness so that we may gain the strength to embrace our identity as members together of the Body of Christ, in Whom the petty divisions and resentments of this world may be overcome.

The Theotokos entered the Temple, living there for years in preparation to become the Son of God’s Living Temple through whom He took on flesh. The Nativity Fast provides us blessed opportunities to become more like that obscure Palestinian Jewish girl who said “Yes” to God definitively and without reservation of any kind.  It calls us to become more like Joachim and Anna in the patient trust in God that enabled them to offer their long-awaited daughter to Him.  They show us how to enter the Temple by embracing the difficult struggle of learning to offer ourselves and all our blessings fully to the Lord. Like it or not, our lives are temples to one thing or another, for we will offer our time, energy, attention, and resources to something or someone.  Instead of becoming fools who give our lives to that which cannot satisfy or save us, we must follow in the way of the Theotokos and her holy parents.  Their choices were of crucial importance for their own salvation and for that of the entire world.  As hard as it is to believe, the same thing is true of us.  Now is the time to mindfully reject our self-imposed distractions from focusing on “the one thing needful” of hearing and obeying the Word of God, Who is born for our salvation at Christmas.  Now is the time to prepare to follow the Theotokos in becoming His holy temples, for that is the only way to become “rich toward God.”   

 

Homily for the Feast Day of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist Matthew in the Orthodox Church

 

1 Corinthians 4:9-16; Matthew 9:9-13

As we begin the Nativity Fast in preparation to enter into the great joy of the Savior’s birth, we do so with the recognition that salvation has come to the world through what appeared at the time as utter foolishness.  The eternal Son of God became a human being, born in lowly circumstances in a barn. Imagine how His coming looked to the leaders of the Jewish people who had no expectation of the God-Man, a truly divine Messiah with a virgin mother.  They had wanted a powerful political and military leader who would deliver their nation from the occupation of the Roman Empire.  They also expected their deliverer to be a strict teacher of religious law who would bring earthly blessings upon the righteous and condemnation upon Gentiles and sinners.    

            Jesus Christ certainly did not fit their expectations either at His birth or throughout His public ministry.  On this feast day of St. Matthew the Apostle and Evangelist, we remember that He called Matthew, a tax collector, to be His disciple.  As we remember from the story of Zaccheus, tax collectors were Jews who worked for the Romans, collecting more than was required from their own people and living off the difference.  Their fellow Jews hated them as traitors and thieves.  No one would have expected the Messiah of Israel to call a tax collector to follow Him as a disciple, but that is precisely what the Lord did.  If that were not shocking enough, He also ate with tax collectors and sinners, which in that time and place was seen as participating in their uncleanness.    In the eyes of the Pharisees, Christ defiled Himself and broke the Old Testament law by doing so.   For the Messiah to act in such ways was worse than foolishness; it was blasphemy and a sign that He was not a righteous Jew, let alone the one anointed to fulfill God’s promises to Abraham.    

            In response, the Lord made clear that His apparent wickedness demonstrated a much higher righteousness than that of His critics.  He said that sick people, not healthy ones, are in need of a doctor’s care.   He said that He came to call not the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.  Who requires healing, the sick or the well?  Who needs to repent, those who are already faithful or those who are not?  Christ quoted the Old Testament to remind His opponents that God desired mercy and not sacrifice.  In other words, He related to others in ways that embodied the divine compassion toward corrupt and broken people.  He came to heal every infirmity and to restore the fallen image of God in us all, which is why He offered Himself fully on the Cross for the salvation of the world and conquered death through His glorious resurrection.   As so many of the Old Testament prophets had proclaimed, religious ceremonies and rules are worthless for those who refuse to manifest God’s mercy to the human beings they encounter every day.  In conveying the divine compassion to those considered God’s enemies, Christ appeared to be a sacrilegious fool in the eyes of those who had so terribly distorted the faith of Israel.  

            Saint Paul wrote about the ministry of the apostles that they were fools for Christ’s sake.  Before Christianity was popular, established, or well-known anywhere, they left everything behind for a ministry that led to poverty, persecution, and death.   Like the countless martyrs of Christian history throughout the centuries, the apostles certainly appeared as fools to the vast majority of people in their time and place.  Why risk your life for the memory of an obscure Jewish rabbi?  Why not burn some incense to Caesar, become a Muslim, or join the Communist Party?  Why lose your own life for saving Jews from the Holocaust, as did St. Maria (Skobtsova) of Paris? 

            Those of us who face no real persecution for our faith must recognize that Christ still calls us to be fools for His sake in our lives every day.  He scandalized the self-righteous by calling St. Matthew to follow Him and by associating with people of bad reputation.  Christ did not endorse their sins, but He endured criticism in order to draw them to repentance and healing.  He showed them the mercy of God by building loving relationships with them that made it possible to invite them to recover the beauty of their souls. If we are truly sharing in the life of the Savior, we must not become like those who judged Him for treating tax collectors and sinners with compassion.  We must not demonize and condemn our neighbors whose ways of life are not the paths to holiness that we seek to pursue as Orthodox Christians.  Doing so will not draw anyone to the blessedness of the Kingdom, but it will bring judgment upon us for our pride and self-righteousness.  We will then be just like the Pharisees who criticized the Lord for keeping company with disreputable people. 

            Our calling is to remain faithful to the teachings and practices of Orthodox Christianity as exemplified by the saints across the ages.  It is not to accept the lie that all behaviors and beliefs are somehow equally good and holy. That would not be the way of the Lord, Who told His disciples that “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will certainly not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Matt. 5: 20) Such righteousness requires that we are so transformed by His grace that we do not abandon our loved ones, friends, and acquaintances when they lose their way and make disastrous decisions about how to order their lives.  Our calling is to treat others as the Lord treats us, who are each “the chief of sinners.”   Our Savior looked like a fool to many when He kept company with people known to be sinners, and we should not be afraid to follow His example in maintaining relationships that serve as a signs of God’s steadfast love to broken and confused people whose burdens we never know fully.  If they do not experience a measure of the love of Christ through us, then how will they be drawn to the life of the Kingdom?  If they experience Christians as people who want nothing to do with them, why would they ever want to have anything to do with Christ?

We sometimes forget that those who responded best to the Lord were those who were completely shocked to receive His care, for they knew that they appeared to be lost causes.  That was surely the case for both St. Matthew and St. Zachaeus as tax collectors, thieves, and traitors.   The same was true for St. Photini, the Samaritan woman at the well with a very broken person life, who became a great evangelist and martyr.  The Canaanite woman with a demon-possessed daughter understood that God’s blessings were not only for the Jews far more clearly than did the disciples, and the Savior set her child free.  The only one of the ten lepers who returned to Christ to thank Him for his healing was a Samaritan.  The Lord said that the faith of the Roman centurion, whose servant He healed, surpassed that of any of the Jews.  He said of the sinful woman who anointed and kissed His feet in the house of Simon “her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little.” (Lk. 7:47)   Their examples show that it is not our place to declare anyone as a lost cause before the mercy of the Lord.  

            In order to have the spiritual strength and clarity to discern how to build relationships with neighbors that convey the healing mercy of Christ, we need the spiritual disciplines of the Nativity Fast, such as prayer, fasting, repentance, generosity to the needy, and reconciliation with those from whom we have become estranged.   These practices also appear foolish in our culture, especially this time of year with its focus on self-indulgence and consumerism.  The great irony is that this season is one of preparation to receive Christ Who, both at His birth and throughout His ministry, looked like a fool according to the conventional standards of His day.  But through what appeared to be foolish, He made—and continues to make-- saints out of tax-collectors, prostitutes, adulterers,  murderers, Gentiles, and other unlikely characters.  So in the weeks before Christmas, let us embrace our calling to live in what seem to be foolish ways that will draw others to the celebration of the birth of the Savior not only on December 25, but in their hearts and lives every day of the year—no matter who they are and no matter what they have done. Christ was born because our only hope, like theirs, is in His mercy for sinners.      

             

Lazarus and the Rich Man: Homily for the Twenty-first Sunday After Pentecost & Fifth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

Galatians 2:16-20; Luke 16:19-31

 

It is tragic that some distort the way of Christ into a magical formula for becoming wealthy and successful according to conventional standards.  It is pathetic that some misinterpret the demands of God’s Kingdom to support whatever political or cultural agenda they happen to like.  Our recent readings from the gospel according to St. Luke present the way of Christ very differently, for they demonstrate that He often made those who were last in the eyes of the world the first to receive His healing mercy.  Remember the grieving widow of Nain whose only son He raised from death.  Recall the Gadarene demoniac, a Gentile whom He restored from a wretched existence of isolation and fear.  And today we remember poor Lazarus.

 

A rich man with the benefit of the great spiritual heritage of Abraham, Moses, and the prophets had become such a slave to gratifying his desires for indulgence in pleasure that he had become completely blind to his responsibility to show mercy to Lazarus, a miserable beggar who wanted only crumbs and whose only comfort was when dogs licked his open sores.  The rich man’s life revolved around wearing the most expensive clothes and enjoying the finest food and drink. He surely stepped over or around Lazarus at the entrance to his home on a regular basis and never did anything at all to relieve his suffering.  

 

After their deaths, the two men’s situations were reversed.  The rich man had spent his life rejecting the teachings of Moses and the prophets about the necessity of showing mercy to the poor.   He had blinded himself spiritually to the point that he could not recognize Lazarus as a neighbor who bore the image of God.  He remained blind to the love of God after his death and could perceive the divine majesty as only a burning flame of torment.  When the rich man asked Father Abraham to send Lazarus to his brothers to warn them of the consequences of living such a depraved life, the great patriarch responded, “‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’”

 

That statement applies to the corrupt religious leaders who called for Christ’s crucifixion and denied His resurrection because they wanted a warrior king who would slaughter their enemies and give them earthly power.  We must not rest content, however, with seeing how the Lord’s statement applies to others, for it challenges us even more as those who have received the fullness of the mystery of God’s salvation.  Our responsibility is far greater than that of the Jews of old, for as members of Christ’s Body, the Church, the Holy Spirit strengthens and sustains us in seeing and serving our Lord in our neighbors.  Since every human person is an icon of God, how we treat them reveals our relationship to Him.  Christ taught that what we do “to the least of these,” to the most wretched people, we do to Him.  If we become so obsessed with gratifying our own desires for pleasure or impressing others that we refuse to convey His mercy to our neighbors, our actions will show that we have rejected our Messiah and denied the truth of His resurrection.  We will then be unable to bear witness to His victory over the corrupting power of sin and death.  Regardless of what we say we believe or our membership in the Church, our actions will demonstrate that we want no part of the salvation that the God-Man has brought to the world.   Like the rich man, we will exclude ourselves from the joy of the Kingdom.  Remember the words of the Lord: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.”  (Matt. 7:21)  

 

Lazarus, like everyone else, bore the image and likeness of God.  There is simply no way around the basic truth that how we relate to our neighbors reveals how we relate to our Lord.  What we do for even the most miserable and inconvenient people we encounter in life, we do for Christ.  And what we refuse to do for them, we refuse to do for our Savior.  Our salvation is in becoming more like Him as we find the healing of our souls by cooperating with His grace.  While we cannot save ourselves any more than we can rise up by our own power from the grave, we must take up the struggle to order our lives according to His commandments in order to open our souls in humility to receive His healing mercy as “partakers of the divine nature.” If we do not do that, we will suffer the spiritual blindness of the rich man in today’s gospel lesson and bring judgment upon ourselves, regardless of how much or how little of the world’s treasures we have. 

 

In the midst of our materialistic and consumeristic culture, it is easy to overlook St. Paul’s warning that “Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”  (1 Tim. 6: 9-10)   Wealth is not evil in and of itself, but orienting our lives around it so easily becomes a false god that inflames passions of greed, fear, self-centeredness, and a lack of love for our neighbors.  Due to love of money and the self-indulgence it fuels, the rich man in today’s parable became so enslaved to his passions that he closed his heart completely to his neighbors, even to one so obviously suffering right before his eyes. Because he would not show love for poor Lazarus, he degraded himself to the point that he simply could not love God.   As St. John wrote, “whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?” (1 Jn. 3:17) The Lord Himself taught that love of God and neighbor are the greatest of the commandments. (Matt. 22: 37-40).   It is no surprise, then, that the rich man experienced the torment of bitter regret after his death, for he was in the eternal presence of the Lord Whom he had rejected throughout his life.  He had learned to love only himself, having turned away decisively from God’s love.  Hence, he was capable of perceiving the divine glory as only a burning flame.  As St. Basil the Great proclaimed to the rich who refused to share with the poor, “You showed no mercy; it will not be shown to you.  You opened not your house; you will be expelled from the Kingdom.  You gave not your bread; you will not receive eternal life.”[1]

 

Some struggle to understand how the requirement of living righteously relates to the gracious mercy of God.  This difficulty often roots in a misunderstanding of our epistle reading from St. Paul when he teaches that we are “not justified by works of the Law but through faith in Jesus Christ.”  The Apostle was responding to the insistence of some of his fellow Jewish Christians that Gentile converts had to be circumcised and become observant Jews before being baptized.  He taught that this perspective, which he strongly rejected, replaced trust in the gracious mercy of the Savior with obedience to religious rules as the very foundation of our hope for sharing in eternal life.  That is a completely different matter, however, from discerning what it means to live faithfully as those who are entrusting themselves to the mercy of Christ.  For example, St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians that persisting in gravely sinful behavior has devastating spiritual consequences.  He includes thieves, the covetous, and extortioners, along with idolators and others, among those who will not inherit the Kingdom of God, if they do not find the healing of their souls through repentance. (1 Cor. 6: 9-10)

 

There is no competition between faith and faithfulness, which are like two sides of the same coin. Since the Savior taught that “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,” we must invest the treasure of our time, talents, and energy in tangible actions that convey the mercy of the Savior to the poor Lazaruses of our lives, as well as to those who grieve like the widow of Nain and who suffer like the Gadarene demoniac.  (Matt. 6:21) Doing so is not a matter of religious legalism but of offering ourselves to the Lord in union with His great Self-offering for the salvation of the world.  It is a matter of living as those who are in communion with Christ. His Kingdom stands in stark contradiction to the ways of the corrupt world.  If we are to gain the spiritual clarity to behold His glory as something other than a burning flame, then our lives must embody the same gracious mercy that we ask from Him every day of our lives.  That is how we will be able to say truthfully with St. Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ Who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

 

 

 

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[1]Basil the Great, “To the Rich,” On Social Justice, 49.

Homily for the Great Martyr Demetrios the Myrrh-Streaming & the Sixth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

Timothy 2:1-10; Luke 8:26-39

 

            St. Irenaeus wrote that “The glory of God is a man fully alive, and the life of man consists in beholding God” (Adv. haer. 4.20.7).”  To be a human person is to bear the image of God with the calling to become more like Him in holiness.  The more we do so, the more we become our true selves.  The God-Man Jesus Christ came to restore and fulfill us as living icons of God.  He enables us to become truly human as we grow in union with Him, the Second Adam.  As St. Paul wrote, “For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us.”  (2 Cor. 1:20)

            If we need a clear example of how the Lord has extended the ancient promises to Abraham to all people to restore the beauty of our darkened souls, we need look no further than today’s gospel reading about a man so miserable that he was barely recognizable as a human person.  He had no illusions about himself, for he was so filled with demons that he called himself “Legion.” (A legion was a large unit of the Roman army made up of 5,000 soldiers.) His personality had disintegrated due to the overwhelming power of the forces of evil in his life.  That is shown by the fact that he was naked, like Adam and Eve who had stripped themselves of the divine glory and were cast out of Paradise into our world of corruption.  He lived among the tombs, and death is “the wages of sin” that came into the world as a consequence of our first parents’ refusal to fulfill their calling to become like God in holiness.  This naked man living in the cemetery was so terrifying to others that they tried unsuccessfully to restrain him with chains.  People understandably feared that he would do to them what Cain had done to Abel.  But when this fellow broke free, he would run off to the desert by himself, alone with his demons.  The Gadarene demoniac provides a vivid icon of the pathetic suffering of humanity enslaved to death, stripped naked of the divine glory, and isolated in fear.  His wretched condition manifests the tragic disintegration of the human person that the Savior came to heal.   

            Evil was so firmly rooted in this man’s soul that his reaction to the Lord’s command for the demons to depart is shocking: “What have you to do with me?...I ask you, do not torment me.”  He had abandoned hope for healing and perceived Christ’s promise of deliverance simply as even further torment.  By telling the Lord that his name was Legion, he acknowledged that the line between the many demons and his own identity had been blurred.  He had lost his sense of self to the point that it was not clear where he ended and the demons began.  The Savior then cast the demons into the herd of pigs, which ran into the lake and drowned.  In the Old Testament context, pigs were unclean, and here the forces of evil lead even them to destruction. 

            Perhaps there is no clearer image of how evil debases our personhood than the plight of this miserable man.    He is an icon of our brokenness and represents us all.  He did not ask Christ to deliver him, even as we did not take the initiative in the Savior’s coming to the world.   The corrupting forces of evil were so powerful in this man’s life that he had lost all awareness of being a person in God’s image and likeness.  We can also become so consumed by our inflamed passions that we simply ignore that we are living icons of God.  When that happens, we would rather that Christ leave us alone to wallow in the mire of our sins than to heal us.  We can easily become overwhelmed with fear that His salvation will simply torment us, for sometimes we cannot even imagine living without the corruption that has become so familiar.  

            After the spectacular drowning of the swine, the man in question was “sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.”  The one who had not been recognizably human returned to being his true self.  That was a very upsetting scene to the people of that region and they asked Christ to leave out of fear at what had happened.  We may find their reaction hard to understand.  What could be so terrifying about this man returning to a normal life?  Unfortunately, we all tend to get used to whatever we get used to.  What we have experienced routinely in ourselves or from others, no matter how depraved, becomes normal to us.  The scary man in the tombs was afraid when Christ came to set him free, but his neighbors seemed even more disturbed when they saw that he had been liberated.  

            It should not be surprising that the man formerly possessed by demons and still feared by his neighbors did not want to stay in his hometown after the Lord restored him.  He begged to go with Christ, Who responded, “Return to your home, and declare all that God has done for you.”  That must have been a difficult commandment for him to obey.  Who would not be embarrassed and afraid to live in a town where everyone knew about the wretched and miserable existence he had experienced?  It would have been much easier to have left all that behind and start over as a traveling disciple of the One who had set him free.

            But that was not what Christ wanted the man to do.  Perhaps that was because the Lord knew that the best sign of His transforming power was a living person who had been restored from the worst forms of depravity and corruption.   There could not be a better witness to the salvation that the God-Man has brought to the world than a person who so obviously moved from death to life.  Such a radical change is a brilliant sign of Christ’s resurrection, for He makes us participants in His victory over death by breaking the destructive hold of the power of sin in our lives.   

            Today we commemorate the Great Martyr Demetrios the Myrrh-Streaming, an accomplished military leader who refused to worship the false gods of the Roman Empire and boldly proclaimed Christ.  After his arrest for being a Christian, he was slain at the command of Emperor Maximian when the young Christian Nestor, whom Demetrios had blessed, slew the giant Lyaeus in the gladiatorial games with the plea “God of Demetrios, help me!”  The emperor then had Nestor killed also. St. Demetrios’ relics continue to exude myrrh as a sign of God’s blessing and healing through the intercessions of this great martyr.

            St. Paul instructed St. Timothy to “Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.”  The discipline and self-sacrifice of military members to this day requires accepting the possibility of suffering even to the point of death.  Many who survive combat physically endure spiritual, psychological, and physical wounds for the rest of their lives. The witness of model soldiers like St. Demetrios to the lordship of Christ required a deep level of suffering, for he willingly accepted the humiliation of losing his exalted status in Rome and being arrested and killed at the command of his emperor.  He is not a saint because of his military prowess but because, despite the grave dangers to the soul of shedding the blood of others, he gained the spiritual strength to make the ultimate witness of shedding his own blood. The many military martyrs of the early Church embodied the soldierly virtues of courage, discipline, obedience, and self-sacrifice when they laid down their lives out of loyalty to a Kingdom that stands in judgment over even the most laudable realms of this world.  Empires, nations, and their rulers can never heal our souls or raise the dead, but they can easily tempt us to the paganism of making them our highest good.    

If we are to follow the blessed example of St. Demetrios, we must refuse to entangle ourselves in anything, including the worship of earthly realms, that hinders us from becoming like the man formerly possessed by demons who sat “at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.”  He was also surely a good soldier of the Lord.  Doing so requires the discipline of enduring the suffering necessary to turn away from gratifying passions that have become second nature to us.  We may be terrified of doing so, fearing what it means to live without sins that have become part of our character. We may have become comfortable losing our true selves in the face of our temptations.  Nonetheless, we must cultivate the courage of the man who, though he wanted to follow Christ into places where no one knew him, obeyed the command to “Return to your home, and declare all that God has done for you.”  Embracing Christ’s healing of our souls is not a matter of satisfying our preferences but of steadfastly enduring the tension and struggle that are necessary to become the evermore beautiful living icons of God that He created us to be.  Doing so requires engaging the battle every day to become fully alive and behold the glory of God.  That is simply what it means to be “a good soldier of Christ Jesus” as we fulfill our vocation to become like Him in holiness, no matter the cost.