Putting on a Robe of Light: Homily for the Sunday After Theophany (Epiphany) in the Orthodox Church

             

             With all the focus on fashion and style in our culture, we may overlook the most obvious function of clothing:  to protect our bodies.  With the very cold weather we have had lately, most of us have probably been wearing the warmest clothing that we possess.  Unlike our family’s three well-fed cats who seem to have enough fat and fur to survive an ice age, we have to protect ourselves from the elements in order to survive.

            God gave Adam and Eve garments of skin when they left paradise after turning away from Him.  Through their disobedience, they had become aware that they were naked and were cast into the world as we know it.  The spiritual meaning of their nakedness was that they had repudiated their calling to be in the image and likeness of God.  Having stripped themselves of their original glory, they were reduced to mortal flesh and destined for slavery to their passions and the grave.   

            As we prepared for Theophany last Sunday, we heard this hymn:  “Make ready, O Zebulon, and prepare, O Nephtali, and you, River Jordan, cease your flow and receive with joy the Master coming to be baptized. And you, Adam, rejoice with the first mother, and hide not yourselves as you did of old in paradise; for having seen you naked, He appeared to clothe you with the first robe. Yea, Christ has appeared desiring to renew the whole creation.”   If it seems strange to think of Christ being baptized in order to clothe Adam and Eve—and the rest of us—remember St. Paul’s teaching that “as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”  In the Orthodox baptismal service, the priest puts a white garment on the newly baptized person immediately after he or she comes out of the water with the words “the servant of God is clothed with righteousness…”   Then the chanter sings “Grant to me the robe of light, O Most Merciful Christ our God, Who clothes Yourself with light as with a garment.”

            In baptism to this day, Jesus Christ clothes us with a garment of light, restoring us to our original vocation to be in the image and likeness of God.  He saves us from the nakedness of being reduced to mortality and the vulnerability of being enslaved to our own passions and those of others.  He is baptized in order to save Adam and Eve, all of their descendants, and the entire creation, fulfilling the glorious purposes for which He breathed life into us in the first place.   Through His and our baptism, He makes us participants in His divinized humanity.

It would be very nice, of course, if that meant that the rest of our lives after baptism would be perfect in every way without pain, disease, sin, or death.  Obviously, that is not the case.  Remember that, in the aftermath of Christ’s birth, the wicked Herod had all the young boys in the region of Bethlehem murdered out of his desire to kill the Savior.  Today’s gospel text begins with a reference to the arrest of St. John the Baptist for his bold prophetic denunciation of the sins of the royal family.  St. Matthew tells us that the Lord’s going to “Galilee of the Gentiles” to begin His public ministry fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy that “’the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.’” 

Those who suffered under the oppression of Herod and the Roman Empire knew all too well about darkness and death.  The countless victims of war, terrorism, and persecution in the Middle East, the Ukraine, and now even France, certainly do also.  We do as well, not only when we understandably worry about the problems of our world and nation or recall the loss of loved ones, but also when we acknowledge the truth about our own dark thoughts and desires, how our actions and failures to act have harmed others, and the many other ways in which we would often rather remain in the darkness than live as those who wear a robe of light.  When we do so, we prefer the ways of the old Adam to those of the New Adam.  We choose nakedness and weakness over divine glory and strength. 

St. John the Forerunner called people to repent in preparation for the coming of the Messiah.  Interestingly, Christ’s preaching after His baptism focused on repentance also:  “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”  We usually get a bit nervous about repentance and may associate it with punishment.  Of course, it is really a very different undertaking, fundamentally positive in nature, of reorienting ourselves in light of the truth, of walking out of the darkness into the light, of leaving behind the sorrow and anxiety of naked vulnerability for the joy of being fully clothed as the sons and daughters of God.

Even as being fully clothed on a cold winter’s day warms the whole body, repentance concerns offering every dimension of our life to Christ for healing and transformation.  That is one of the reasons that we bless houses with holy water in the weeks following Theophany.  By being baptized in the Jordan, Christ made water holy by fulfilling its original intended purposes to give life, cleanse, and satisfy our deepest thirst.  Holy water manifests Christ’s blessing of the entire creation extending even to the small details of our daily lives.  In light of our Lord’s baptism, we are always on holy ground; now nothing is intrinsically profane, evil, or cut off from God.  All reality is called to shine forth with holiness.

 Our challenge, then, is to play our role in showing forth the holiness of our bodies, our words, our relationships, our actions, and every aspect of the creation for which we are responsible.  Christ calls each and every one of us uniquely to offer ourselves to Him and to play our distinctive roles in fulfilling His purposes in the world.  In other words, we already participate by baptism in the divinized humanity of Jesus Christ.   We wear the garment of light that He has given us, but at the end of the day each of us must actually do the work of wearing it; each of us must actually turn away from sneaking around naked in the garden like Adam and embrace the glory of our salvation personally and intentionally.  That is what repentance is all about, and no one else can do that for us. 

Epiphany is a great feast of our salvation in Jesus Christ.  The eternal Son of God has made a way for us to participate in His divine glory by humbling Himself to be baptized the waters of the Jordan.  He does so to save Adam and Eve, all their descendants, and the entire creation.  He clothes us in a garment of light to cover our nakedness, which had reduced us to slavery to our mortal flesh in a world of death and decay.   Even as we eagerly turn away from freezing when we put on warm clothing, let us joyfully celebrate our Lord’s baptism by remembering that He has already clothed and restored us to our ancient dignity in His image and likeness.  Let us drink and sprinkle holy water as a sign that we must play our unique roles in making every dimension of our lives an icon of God’s holiness.  In other words, let us behave each day as those who have put on Christ.  Let us shine with the great glory that He has given us both through His birth and His baptism. There is no better way to bear witness that the prophecy really has been fulfilled:  “[T]he people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.”

The Christmas Truce of 1914: Learning About Peace from the Men in the Trenches of the Great War

                                                                                 

          One hundred years ago this past December 24, many soldiers in the trenches of Western Europe started singing Christmas carols and stopped killing one another for at least a day.  Despite the different uniforms that they wore, they knew that the birthday of the Prince of Peace was no time to engage in gruesome slaughter.  Popular enthusiasm for a quick, decisive victory had given way by then to a stalemate that would continue for years,   take millions of lives, and sow the seeds of even worse conflicts.   The spontaneous Christmas truce was surely not in keeping with military discipline and did not happen again on such a large scale, but it has gone down in history as a sign that the way of Christ contradicts the ways of worldly powers.

            With the exception of the Ottoman Empire, the major players in the Great War were thought of as Christian nations, whether primarily Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox.  It was not their theological disagreements that led to the senseless conflict; nonetheless, their leaders did their best to use the faith to support their respective war efforts.   The late American entry into the war in 1917 had the flavor of a messianic crusade as a war to end all wars and to make the world safe for democracy. Wilson learned in France, however, that America’s allies had not fought for such high-minded ideals, as though any nation in any war—including the United States-- ever had.  It is one thing finally to take up arms after the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare against neutral shipping, for example, but quite another to do so in order to usher in a western democratic millennium of peace.   One would hope that nations influenced by even mildly historic forms of Christianity would see the folly of secular salvation by warfare, but the crusading spirit apparently does not die easily.       

The Swiss Calvinist theologian Karl Barth was profoundly disillusioned when his German theological mentors supported the Kaiser’s war effort.  He saw the global conflagration as the end of the easy identification of God’s Kingdom with the advance of modern western culture.  Barth was among the first to recognize an even more perverse idolatry in the rise of the Nazis, whose heretical distortion of Christianity made pagan nationalism and racism their true lords in the aftermath of the Great War and its resolution at Versailles.  Before the collapse of imperial Germany, the Russian Revolution had led to a separate peace on the Eastern front and the rise of a bloodthirsty and godless Communist regime that made countless martyrs and confessors, eventually played a leading role in destroying the Nazis, and then enslaved Eastern Europe for decades. 

The Great War’s impact on the Middle East was no less profound, as the victorious European powers dismembered the Ottoman Empire, sometimes creating nations out of whole cloth.  If you have ever wondered why jihadist terrorists hate western influences, why certain Middle Eastern nation states have so much trouble holding together competing ethnic and religious groups, and why brutal dictators often seem fairly successful in that part of the world, the answers lie at least in part with the legacy that the outcome of World War I left that region.  Contradictory promises to Arabs and Zionists concerning Palestine are part of the story also, as is the West’s thirst for oil.  The Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian genocides at the hands of the Turks, as well as many other humanitarian disasters, find their place in the trajectory of the Great War.   

The deadly conflicts of our time have their roots in the deadly conflicts of earlier times, which is nothing new. It is has been that way since Cain and Abel.  Nations and cultures often place these conflicts—and the sacrifices they require-- in the context of happy narratives about progress or virtue.  Yes, things can get relatively better in various ways due to the outcome of a war in this way as opposed to that.  While some people display the worst human qualities in these tragic situations, others display the very best.  However, our Lord’s teaching that those who live by the sword will die by the sword remains all too true.  And the sins of the parents are visited upon the children for many generations, as the resentment and vengeance sparked by past outrages—whether recent or ancient—bear witness to this day

We live in the tension between the heavenly peace that we celebrate in the Divine Liturgy and the broken, imperfect peace of a world in which we must also pray in the Liturgy for the tranquility and salvation of our civil authorities and armed forces. That is not because politicians and armies will ever save us, but because those who bear the spiritual burdens of sustaining a tolerable level of peace in the world as we know it especially need our prayers for guidance, healing, and mercy. The risks to the soul in these matters are great and the more realistic we are about them, the better.   We cannot undo World War I or any other historical event, but we can learn what not to do from its many bad examples and draw inspiration from the prophetic witness of the Christmas Truce of 1914. 

Had the Great War not sown the seeds of so many later conflicts, surely some other course of events would have done something similar.  But near the beginning of that paradigmatic catastrophe of this age, soldiers on different sides of the trenches paused to praise a King Whose peace is of a different kind than that of an uneasy armistice between powers exhausted from years of pointless slaughter that in turn sowed the seeds of countless other blood baths. In memory of the men in the trenches who broke out spontaneously in Christmas carols a hundred years ago, we must pray and work for ongoing epiphanies of Christ’s peace that provide ways to prevent mass slaughter in the name of ideologies of whatever kind, for even the best among them so easily become false gods that require unholy sacrifices from generation to generation.

               

      

Prepare the Way of the Lord: Homily for the Sunday Before Theophany (Epiphany) in the Orthodox Church

2 Timothy 4:5-8

Mark 1:1-8

Today is the Sunday before the Feast of Theophany or Epiphany, when we will celebrate Christ’s baptism in the river Jordan and the revelation that He is truly the Son of God.  His divinity is manifest, is shown openly, when—at His baptism-- the voice of the Father declares “You are my beloved Son” and the Holy Spirit descends upon Him in the form of a dove.  Epiphany shows us that Jesus Christ is not merely a great religious teacher or moral example.  He is truly God—a member of the Holy Trinity-- and His salvation permeates His entire creation, including the water of the river Jordan.  Through His and our baptism, we become participants in the holy mystery of salvation.    

Think for a moment how stunning these statements about Jesus Christ as God would be to those who knew Him before He began His public ministry.  St. Luke records that the Theotokos and St. Joseph were shocked to find the12-year-old Savior discussing the Law in the Temple in Jerusalem with the elders.  The witness of the angelic choirs, the visit of the wise men, and all the wonder of the events surrounding His birth were apparently forgotten or unknown by the disciples and the religious and political leaders of the day.  The gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke record these events, but do not tell us that they figured prominently during His earthly ministry.

Moreover, no one expected a Messiah who was both God and man.  The word “messiah” means “anointed one,” and most Jews were looking for a leader who would deliver them from Roman oppression and lead Israel to political power and independence.  Christ’s own disciples thought of Him in those terms until after His resurrection.  Even those closest to the Lord had great difficulty accepting that He was not an earthly king, the kind of Messiah they had grown up expecting.  How difficult it was for anyone to accept that Jesus Christ is truly the Son of God, the incarnate second Person of the Holy Trinity, the divine Word Who spoke the universe into existence.    

Perhaps that is part of the reason that God sent a prophet to prepare the way, to begin opening the hearts and minds of the people for a coming Messiah Who did not fit their preconceived notions.  Of course, few people would be comfortable around St. John the Baptist and Forerunner.  He was a strict ascetic, living in the desert, eating bugs and honey, and wearing camel skin.  Like many of the Old Testament prophets before Him, St. John was outrageously bold.  In addition to his shocking appearance and lifestyle, his message was severe to the point of being insulting.  He proclaimed God’s truth and did not care who might be offended.  Instead of gently welcoming the Pharisees and Sadducees into his movement, St. John mocked them as a brood of vipers—a bunch of slimy snakes.  He told the rich to share with the poor, soldiers to stop abusing their authority, and tax collectors to stop stealing from the people.  He went beyond offending those powerful groups by criticizing the immorality of the royal family and lost his head as a result.

God began to shake up Israel with St. John the Baptist, the Forerunner of our Lord.  He began to open their eyes to a Messiah Whom they did not expect.  Gentle words from a respectable rabbi would not cut it; everyone had seen and heard that before.  They needed a call to repentance from a wild and holy man who was absolutely fearless in calling the people to repent, to change the direction they were going in relation to God and neighbor.  They were to make straight whatever crookedness there was in their lives.  They were to stop violating God’s requirements for how to live.  No one was to say, “But I am a child of Abraham or a religious leader or a well-respected person, so repentance is not for me.”  He called everyone to greater holiness, to serving God more faithfully than they had done before.

As we prepare for the Feast of Theophany, St. John’s message should ring loudly in our ears today, right here and now.  For even more than the Jews of old, we must bring our lives in line with God’s salvation in Jesus Christ because we have already received the fulfillment of the promise, the fullness of the blessing.  Having celebrated His birth as Orthodox Christians, we already know that our Savior is the Son of God.  The Holy Spirit dwells in our hearts and we are members of the Christ’s own Body, the Church.  Nonetheless, everyone single one of us has much room to grow in living according to the great truth that we have received, for our lives have not yet become perfect epiphanies of what Christ’s salvation means for human beings. 

It would be different if the Epiphany of Jesus Christ as the Son of God were merely an idea or concept to be grasped as an abstract truth, like a mathematical equation.  Perhaps then we could be satisfied with giving the correct doctrinal answer.  The spiritual life is not like that, however, because this feast calls us to be in right relationship with the One who unites humanity and divinity in Himself.    In order for our Lord’s epiphany is to occur in us, every dimension of who we are as we live and breathe in this world must be transformed by His divine glory.  His life must become ours.  Like an iron left in the fire, we are to participate in Him fully, sharing in a communion ultimately beyond words and radiating the glory of His divine salvation.  

The hard truth is that repentance is essential for opening ourselves to the life of Christ.   No, this calling is not to a self-righteous legalism that allegedly earns salvation or somehow impresses God.  We must do our part, however, cooperating with the great mercy of Christ, actively receiving and responding to Him in ways that make straight what is crooked in our lives.  Like those who first heard the Forerunner, we have  become too comfortable with life on our own terms, perhaps thinking that our religious, ethnic, or political heritage lets us off the hook as God’s favorites, as those who are respectable and decent and therefore do not have to worry about repentance.   “At least we are better than those groups we love to hate,” the Jews thought of the Gentiles and we might think of whomever we do not like.  St. John would have no patience with such foolishness, of course.  As he did to the Jews of the first century, he would tell us to wake up, abandon our excuses, and stop trying to turn God into an idol that pats us on the back and serves our agendas.  He would call us, instead, to become true icons of our Lord, to participate as fully as we can in the divine healing and transformation of Jesus Christ.  Those who have died to sin and been raised to new life in Him, those who have put on Christ in baptism, must live in a manner that manifests the holy union of God and humanity that our Savior embodies.  

So let us prepare for the great feast of Christ’s baptism by straightening the crooked areas of our lives.  Instead of finding ways to ignore the Forerunner, let us take his sobering message to heart.  For the Messiah is born and on His way to the Jordan where His divinity will be made clear.  But will we have the eyes to see His glory?  Will we be ready for Him?  There is only one way to prepare and that is to repent, to turn away from everything that hinders our full participation in the divine glory that He brings to all who bear His image and likeness and to the entire creation. That is what His baptism makes possible for us, but we must prepare by repentance in order to share personally in this great mystery of our salvation. 

The Shocking Humility of Christ's Birth: Homily for Christmas in the Orthodox Church

Christ is Born!  Glorify Him!

          The glorious feast of Christmas is finally here, and what a mysterious blessing it is.  For the Eternal Word of God becomes a human being--as helpless a babe as was ever born—with a manger for His crib. Angels sing in His honor.  The lowly shepherds and the foreign wise men worship Him.  A young virgin becomes a mother, not simply of a Son, but of the Son of God.   And kings tremble, for this baby brings to earth a Kingdom not of this world.

          The good news of Christmas is that Jesus Christ is born this day, not to judge or to destroy us, but to save and bless us.  He is the Second Adam in Whom the diseased decay of the first Adam is healed.  By becoming one of us, He brings us into the life of God.  We are made holy, we are fulfilled, we are raised to life eternal in Him.

       Our Lord brings His great joy to the world humbly and peaceably.  He does not arrive in the earthly splendor of a king, with the military power of a conquering general, or in the material comfort of the rich. Instead, He takes the lowest, most vulnerable place for Himself:  born in a cave used as a barn to a family that lived under the oppression of the Roman Empire and the cruelty of Herod.  Soon Joseph would take the Virgin Mary and the young Jesus to Egypt by night, fleeing for their lives from a wicked, murderous king.      What a difficult, lowly way to come into a dark and dangerous world, not unlike how refugee children are born in parts of the Middle East, Africa, and other war-torn regions to this very day.

          But when we pause to consider the glory of our Lord’s Incarnation, we should not be surprised at all.  For what does it mean for the Immortal One to put on mortality?  What does it mean for the One Who spoke the world into existence to become part of that creation?  What does it mean for the King of the universe to become subject to the kings of the world?  It means humility and selfless, suffering love beyond our understanding.  For our Lord, God, and Savior is not a rational concept to be defined, but a Person Who shares His life with us.   So that we could enter into His life, He entered into ours, sanctifying every bit of what it means to be a human being,  literally from the womb to the tomb that could not contain Him.

          The wise men show us how to respond to the unbelievably good news that God has become a human being:  they worship Him.  Let us follow their example this Christmas season by worshipping Him as we open ourselves to the glorious transformation that the Incarnate Son of God brings.  For Christ is born, and the peace and joy of God’s kingdom are ours even as we live and breathe in the world as we know it.  Christ is born, and we encounter Him in every human being, especially the poor, needy, and outcast.  Christ is born, and we participate in the eternal life for which we were created in God’s image and likeness. 

          Yes, this wonderful news really is true.  And the only limits on the blessing of Christmas are those that we place on ourselves.  For the One Who comes as a humble, meek, peaceable baby in a manger never forces us or anyone else.  He is the Mystery of Love made flesh for our salvation.  If we accept Him, we must become participants in the deified humanity that the God-Man Jesus Christ has brought to the world.  We must live in this world in ways that reflect the deep truth of the Incarnation.  We must become living icons of the good news of this season.   

          So this Christmas, let us be like Mary the Theotokos who received Him with joy, like the elder Joseph His steadfast protector, and like that strange combination of lowly shepherds and Persian astrologers who first worshipped Him.  Let us welcome Him into our life and live accordingly, for now nothing but our own refusal can separate us from His love.  That, my brothers and sisters, is the good news of Christmas.       

Christ is Born!  Glorify Him!

Scandals in the Family Tree: Homily for the Sunday Before the Nativity of Christ in the Orthodox Church

             

           

Hebrews 11:9-10, 32-40; St. Matthew 1:1-25

              During the season of Christmas, many of us will see family members whom we may not visit often.  I hope that most of us truly enjoy our family celebrations, but unfortunately they can be difficult for many people because of strained relationships, old resentments, and the fact that no one is perfect, including those to whom we are related by birth or marriage. In the world as we know it, family can be a struggle.   

            Our gospel reading today does not shy away from such difficulties, even in the genealogy of Jesus Christ, Who had the right heritage to be the Messiah, the anointed One in Whom all God’s promises to Abraham are fulfilled for the entire world.  What family would not be strained by remembrance of scandalous stories involving figures such as Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba, Gentile women who were disreputable in one way or another, precisely the sort of women Jewish men were told time and again not to bring into the family.  For example, Tamar disguised herself as a prostitute and bore twins by her father-in-law.  Rahab actually was a prostitute.  King David committed adultery with Bathsheba and then murdered her husband.   Ruth was King David’s great-grandmother and a Moabite woman.  The Old Testament is full of warnings to Jewish men against marrying Gentile women like Ruth.  Just think for a moment how amazing it is that St. Matthew began his gospel by reminding us of these embarrassing stories. Their presence in the genealogy is a sign that God worked through generations of families not unlike our own to bring salvation to the world.  They are a reminder that His blessings are not only for the proper and upstanding with perfect reputations, but for everyone with faith in the Lord, no matter their memorable failings or roles in embarrassing situations that we would rather forget.  Through this shockingly honest family tree, St. Matthew prepares us for the unique Messiah we encounter in Jesus Christ Who came to save sinners, to heal the sick, to exalt the humble, and make those who are dead last in the eyes of the world the very first in the Kingdom of God. 

            This family tree does not stop with unlikely characters from the Old Testament, for it culminates in the shocking and unconventional event of the Most Holy Theotokos’s conception of Christ.  That is the kind of news that would shake up any family even today.  When we remember that this is the story of the union in Jesus Christ of God and humanity for the salvation of the world, the story becomes even more shocking.  For we like to think that God’s ways are like our ways, that He favors those who are living the dream, who appear healthy, wealthy, and wise by our culture’s standards.  But when we do so, we simply make God in our own image and ultimately let ourselves off the hook as though holiness were not really for us because our lives are not perfect in every way. We forget, however, that many of the Saints we know best were once outrageous sinners, and that even those who were not faced difficult struggles that were embarrassing, unconventional, or inconvenient. Just think of the suspicions people had about the Theotokos and St. Joseph the Betrothed.   

Though not many people noticed it at the time, God’s promises in the Old Testament extended to all who believed, including Gentiles and sinners. Think for a moment of all the sufferings and struggles of the righteous people of the Hebrews. As our epistle reading states, “And all these, though well attested by their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had foreseen something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.”  As astounding as it sounds, the promises to them awaited their fulfillment until the coming of Christ in Whom we may all become part of this family tree.  

For Jews and Gentiles, for the upright and the scandalous alike, He is the vine and we are the branches.  True, we are all unworthy and unlikely members of such a family.  Like those who prepared for the coming of Christ and have served Him since, we are also sinners whose lives in many ways fall short and wide of the mark. Perhaps that is why the Son of God chose a human heritage full of imperfect people who often stumbled themselves;  perhaps that is why He was born in circumstances that at least outwardly commanded the respect of no one.

Yes, the good news that we will celebrate at Christmas is that there is hope for us all in Him.  And if we want to have hope in Christ for ourselves, then we must also not give up hope for other people.  Whether family members, friends, coworkers, or whoever, our Savior calls everyone to become part of the current generation of this blessed family tree.  Perhaps there are those we think are just too broken, who have made such messes of their lives that they appear as better candidates for condemnation than for salvation.  When we start thinking that way about particular people, we should immediately turn our thoughts to the humble repentance of the Jesus Prayer, for not one of us deserves a place in the Kingdom on the basis of our accomplishments.  The Lord’s human ancestors include notorious sinners; tax-collectors and prostitutes were among His first followers; St. Peter denied Him three times; and St. Paul had been a persecutor of Christians.  If His healing mercy extended even to them and if we want that same grace for ourselves, we simply cannot write anyone off as a hopeless case.  Much less are we ever justified in speaking or acting in self-righteous, judgmental ways toward anyone.  

Of course, there are broken and severely strained relationships that we do not have the power to heal.  But to the extent that it depends on us, we are to be at peace with everyone.  That may mean keeping our mouths shut when we would like to remind someone of their failings or otherwise to criticize them or to slander them behind their back.  It may mean small gestures to let others know that, despite a painful history, we do not judge or abandon them.  It may mean simply praying in silence for God’s mercy on those who have lost their way and for strength to treat others as we would like to be treated.  We must show others the same mercy that we have received as undeserving members of His most blessed family. Above all, we must remember that God knows people’s hearts—including our own—in ways that we do not.  Christ was born to save sinners, not to condemn them.        

So as we conclude our preparation for Christmas, let us fast not only from rich food and drink, but also from words, thoughts, and deeds that would discourage anyone from finding their place in the ongoing story of Christ’s salvation.  Let us ask for forgiveness of those whom we have offended and otherwise take the steps that we can to bring health to strained relationships.  Let us refuse to see other people with eyes blinded by our own passions or the conventional standards of our society.  Who knows whether God will make great saints out of some whose lives are scandalous?  It should not surprise us if He does, of course, for Christ’s family tree included many such people.  His birth continues to be good news for them, for you and me, and for all who so desperately need the healing and transformation that the Savior was born to bring.      

It is Time to Get Ready for Christmas: Homily for the Sunday of the Holy Forefathers in the Orthodox Church

             Today is the Sunday of the Holy Forefathers, when we commemorate all those in the Old Testament who foretold or prefigured the coming of Christ, from our first father Adam to the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary.  We remember today that the Incarnation of our Lord did not simply occur one day out of the blue, but was the fulfillment of God’s plan to bring humanity into His divine life, which took many generations to fulfill.  No one was forced, of course, to prepare for our Lord’s coming.  Today we honor those who responded in freedom to God’s calling, who accepted His invitation to prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah.  And in this season of the Nativity Fast, we want to be like them.  For we all face powerful temptations to pay more attention to worldly cares than to welcoming Christ into our lives.  

            Today’s gospel text reminds us of what is at stake.  When a great man invited people to a great feast, they all had better things to do.  They turned down the invitation because they had land to inspect, oxen to test, or family responsibilities.  In other words, they did not want to attend and made excuses out of their everyday obligations. So their places at the banquet were taken by the most unlikely of party guests:  the poor, the maimed, the blind, and the lame.  Strangers from the highways and hedges came to the celebration, but none of those who were originally invited tasted of the supper.

            The Lord often used the image of a great feast for the Kingdom of God.  This parable reminds us that many of the religious leaders of Jesus Christ’s own people refused to accept Him as the Messiah, while many disreputable people—such as tax collectors and others of low standing, including even Gentiles—did accept Him.   But we would miss the meaning of this passage if we think that it refers simply to what happened long ago to other people.  Just as they were, we too have been invited to the Heavenly Banquet, to the life of the Kingdom of God.  Unlike the people of the Old Testament, we have more than the Law and the Prophets to foreshadow the coming of Christ.  We have Him, living in our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit; nourishing our souls with His Body and Blood in the Eucharist; we are members of His Body, the Church; He is the Bridegroom and we are the Bride.  He has brought us into the life of the Holy Trinity by grace.  We could not ask for more.  

            But unfortunately, we often act just like those who refused to attend the great banquet in today’s gospel lesson because we use our daily habits and concerns as excuses not to accept the great blessing and glory to which our Lord invites us.  We do so because we make false gods out of just about all the blessings God has given us.  Instead, of seeing that our work, family, health, friendships, and even our recreation and pastimes have their proper place only when we offer them to the Lord, we so often choose them instead of God.

            So we worry instead of pray; we would rather obsess about our problems and indulge our desires than serve our neighbors, forgive those who have offended us, and find healing for the damage that we have done to our own souls. Instead of making our life a Eucharist and offering of every bit of who we are to the Lord for blessing and fulfillment, we try to live on our own terms.  And when we do, we turn away from the greatest blessing of all, from participation in the eternal life of our Lord and His Kingdom.  And consequently we shut ourselves out of the great banquet and turn away from the unspeakable glory that is ours in Christ Jesus.   

            St. Paul reminded the Colossians to put their sins to death, for they are all forms of the idolatry that have brought corruption and misery into our lives. Everything from anger and slander to sexual immorality and covetousness are symptoms of the “old nature” that Christ came to heal for all humanity.  Yes, we really are all invited and enabled to turn away from those corruptions and to have our lives put in order by the Second Adam.  

            The problem, of course, is that we are good at excusing ourselves from accepting the invitation.   We tend to prefer the corruption and decay, the way of the first Adam, the old man, over that of the Second Adam, the new and true man, Jesus Christ. The problem is not with the good things of life that draw our attention, it is with us.  We make false gods of our families and friends, our possessions, our daily responsibilities, and just about everything else in life.  Pride, anger, lust, greed, and other passions tempt us mightily to believe that satisfying our desires is more important than loving and serving God and neighbor.  We do not even have to appear overly sinful in order for this to happen, as it is easy simply to define ourselves by what we like to do each day, the problems that we face, and what we think is necessary for a good life.  If we are not careful, these ways of thinking will become temptations that lead us to become like the people in the gospel lesson who really believed that they had better things to do than to share in the great joy of the Lord’s banquet.

            Christmas, of course, is a banquet, a great feast.  It is a celebration of our salvation in the God-Man Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son of God Who became a human being in order to unite our fallen, corrupt humanity with divinity, to bring us from mortality to immortality.  No matter how seriously we have taken the Nativity Fast so far, we all have a choice whether we will use the next ten days to prepare to enter more fully into the blessed truth and reality of this feast.  And it is clear what we need to do:  to confess our sins and repent, as we do in the Sacrament of Confession that we should all take during Advent; to be generous to the needy with our resources and attention; to fast in a way appropriate to our spiritual strength and life circumstances; to open our hearts, souls, and minds to God deliberately and regularly in prayer; and to be mindful, keeping a watch over our words, thoughts, and deeds.

            As those who practice them know, these spiritual disciplines will not make us saints overnight and none of us does them perfectly.  Fortunately, that is not really the point.  Instead, these disciplines are our way of accepting the invitation of the Lord to the banquet of His Kingdom, of putting Him first before the routines and worries of life.  They are how we fight our passions, resist our temptations, and do what we can to prepare to receive Him at Christmas.  They are what Advent is all about.

            Christmas will be here soon.  Regardless of whether your tree and lights are up or how much shopping you have left to do, the most important part of the preparation is spiritual.  Will we be ready to welcome Christ into our lives at His birth?  Will we be ready to accept the invitation to the feast?  I certainly hope so. For we stand at the end of a very long line that goes back to Adam, the first-created; that extends through Abraham, Sarah, Moses, Ruth, David, Bathsheeba; Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel; that includes Joachim, Anna, and the Theotokos. 

            The good news of Christmas is that in Christ Jesus, the fulfillment of all God’s promises are extended to people like us, who are poor, blind, and lame with sin, who suffer from the pain, weakness, and corruption of life in the world as we know it, and who certainly are not yet perfect.  The good news is that, in the Babe of Bethlehem, even unlikely people like you and me are invited to take our place with the Holy Forefathers and Foremothers of Christ in the heavenly banquet and to shine with the light of heaven, with the Divine Glory.                Now is the time to stop making excuses and get ready for His coming, to get our lives in order for the feast, and to prepare to receive Him with the fear of God and faith and love.   

Prayer is the First Step in Bearing Fruit for the Kingdom: Homily for the Twenty-Sixth Sunday after Pentecost & Tenth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

Ephesians 5:8-19

St. Luke 13:10-17

            Many people today think of religion as a matter of feeling or emotion that simply helps them cope with the problems of life.  That may sound appealing, but it is ultimately a perspective that limits God and takes away real hope.  For Jesus Christ was not born simply to change how we feel about our broken world and lives.   No, He came to restore and fulfill the entire creation, including every aspect of our lives as human beings in the image and likeness of God.

            That is precisely what we see in today’s gospel lesson when, as the Lord taught in a synagogue on the Sabbath, He saw a woman who was bent over and could not stand up straight.  She had suffered for eighteen years with this terrible condition.  He said to her, “Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity.”  Then He laid hands on her and healed her, so she actually stood up straight and glorified God.

            A legalistic critic took offense at this healing on the Sabbath, when no work was to be done.  Christ responded by noting that everyone takes care of his donkey and ox 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?”  The truth of His teaching was so clear that His critics were put to shame and the people rejoiced.

            Here is a powerful image of what the Son of God has done for us by becoming a human being, for we are all like that poor woman stooped over with an infirmity and  unable to straighten herself up.  We live in a world of corruption, illness, pain, and death in which there are harsh realities that we cannot control. 

            We all have diseases of soul, of personality, of behavior, and of relationships that cripple us, that make it very difficult to follow St. Paul’s advice to “walk as children of light.”  Like every generation since Adam and Eve, we have fallen short of God’s purposes for us.  We are all bent over and crippled in profound ways in relation to the Lord, our neighbors, and even ourselves.   

            Joachim and Anna knew all about long-term struggles and disabilities, for like Abraham and Sarah they were childless into their old age.  But God heard their prayer and gave them Mary, who would in turn give birth to the Savior Who came to heal us all from the ravages of sin and death.  This Tuesday is the feast of St. Anna’s conception of the Theotokos which we celebrate as a foreshadowing of the coming of the Lord to set us free from the infirmities that hold us captive and hinder our participation even now in the life of the Kingdom.

            The entire history of the Hebrews was preparatory for the coming of the Christ, the Messiah in whom God’s promises are fulfilled and extended to all who have faith in the Savior, regardless of their family heritage.  Christ did not come to privilege one nation or group over another, but to fulfill our common vocation to be in the image and likeness of God, to share by grace in the eternal life of the Holy Trinity as distinct, unique persons. He transcends the laws of nature in order to do so, enabling elderly women to conceive and bear children and a young virgin to become the mother of His Son Who Himself rises from the dead.  Yes, this is a story of liberation, of breaking bonds, and of overcoming the brokenness and limitations of life in the world in the world as know it.  

            The Savior did not treat the woman in today’s reading as nameless bundle of disease.  Instead, Christ restored her true identity as a beloved person, a daughter of Abraham.  He treated her as a cherished child of God who was not created for an existence of pain, disease, and despair, but for blessing, health, and joy.  She glorified God for this deliverance, as did those who saw the miracle.  Likewise, barrenness did not have the last word on Joachim and Anna.  God heard their prayer and was not finished with them yet.  

            The good news of Christmas is that the Lord is born to do the same for us and for the whole world, to set us free from slavery and barrenness in all their forms, including the decay, corruption, and weakness that distort us all.  He comes to restore us as living icons who manifest His glory and salvation in unique, personal ways.  Even as the icons of the Saints portray them as distinctive persons who participate in the life of God by grace, the same should be true of us as we live and breathe in this world.

            As we become less the slaves of “the unfruitful works of darkness” and more “the children of light,” we become more truly ourselves and experience a joyful freedom from the sinful habits of thought, word, and deed over which we had previously been powerless.  Despite the lies we hear from our culture and that we often gladly accept, evil is just the same old boring thing that leaves us empty, alone, and ashamed because we are not made for it.  Sin and corruption may be packaged a bit differently in each generation, but they remain essentially the same and lead to the same end.   

            As St. Augustine prayed, “You have made us for Yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.”  No wonder, then, that turning away from the Lord brings only disappointment, despair, and greater bondage to our own self-centered desires.   Holiness, in contrast, is fulfilling and liberating, for we are made for it as those created in the image and likeness of God.   The more we become like Him, the more we become truly and freely ourselves as we turn away from slavery to sin and passion in order to embrace the new life that Christ was born to bring to the world.

That is why we should all follow St. Paul’s advice:  “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.”             In other words, why should we continue to stumble along the familiar paths of darkness and decay which simply make our situation worse?  That is no way to live.   We have to change our course.  It is time to wake up from sleep and to open ourselves to the healing and fulfillment for which we were made.

Sts. Joachim and Anna did that by intense prayer for a child, and God heard them and gave them Mary.  Though we do not know much about the woman bound with infirmity whom Christ healed in today’s gospel reading, she was in the synagogue on the Sabbath, presumably praying for healing.  We should follow their example, but that is hard to do in a world with so much noise and distraction which we often welcome into our hearts and souls.  We find it so easy to fill our minds with everything but prayer, with everything but being fully present with the only One Who can set us free from bondage to corruption in all its forms.  Like Joachim, Anna, and the crippled woman, we simply must devote ourselves to prayer if we are to open our lives to the healing presence and power of God.

St. Paul instructs us to “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.”  In other words, he tells us to pray and to fill our minds—and our mouths—with words and thoughts that direct us more fully into the life of Christ.  Most people need words in prayer, for our minds tend to wander when we attend to God.  We all know the words of the Jesus Prayer, which we can use at any time.  We should know the Trisagion Prayers by heart, and we all have access to Orthodox prayer books, the Psalms, and other resources that help us focus on the Lord.  But no matter what resources we have, they will do us no good if we do not use them, if we do not devote time and energy on a daily basis to prayer from the depth of our hearts.  

Prayer is where the journey begins and is the means by which we open ourselves to the healing and fulfillment of our lives, to our being set free from slavery to our sins.  It is how we begin to participate in the new life that Christ has brought to the world.  So as we continue the Nativity Fast, let us make prayer a settled habit so that our spiritual eyes will open wide to the brilliant light of the Savior when He comes to set us free at His birth.  That is how Christ will loose us from our infirmities.  It is how we will overcome our spiritual barrenness and instead bear fruit for the Kingdom of God.