Homily for the Sunday After the Nativity of Christ with Commemoration of Joseph the Betrothed, David the Prophet and King, and James the Brother of God in the Orthodox Church

 

Matthew 2:13-23

        Christ is Born!  Glorify Him!

As we continue to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ for the salvation of the world, we must resist the temptation to think that we have heard the story so many times that we no longer really have to pay attention.  Like the other great feasts of the Church, the Nativity provides us with an invitation each year to enter more fully into the mystery of our salvation.  The miracle of the Word becoming flesh does not change, but we must change in order to welcome Christ into the temple of our hearts more fully each year of our lives. 

        We live in a culture with a sentimental view of Christmas focused on superficial family happiness and commercialism.  Our culture also prizes youth and encourages us to think that we should be ashamed of gray hair, wrinkles, and other perfectly normal aspects of aging.  Today the Church calls us to mature in our understanding of the Lord’s Nativity by commemorating Joseph the Betrothed, an elderly relative of the Virgin Mary who reluctantly became her guardian when she had to leave the Temple where she had grown up.

One of the verses chanted for Joseph states that “a strange betrothal fell unto his lot.” Joseph certainly thought so. This betrothal was an arrangement in which a man became the guardian of a woman without the intimate relations of marriage.  As an 80-year-old widower, he was reluctant to take on this responsibility for a teenaged girl, but he obeyed God’s command nonetheless.  He played an essential, but often overlooked, role in how salvation came into the world. 

The story of Joseph resonates with so much of the heritage of the Old Testament.  An evil ruler wanted to murder the young Savior because he viewed Him as a threat.  Pharaoh had ordered the deaths of Hebrew male infants long ago in Egypt, and now a wicked king like him reigned in Jerusalem.  Herod slaughtered the young boys in and around Bethlehem when he realized that the wise men had tricked him.  In the Exodus, the Hebrews had fled Egypt on the night of the Passover.  Now the young Messiah flees Israel to go to Egypt at night.  Once the danger had passed, Joseph brought the family back to the Promised Land, just as the Hebrews eventually returned after wandering in the desert for forty years. Recall also the story in Genesis of another Joseph.  He went to Egypt unwillingly as a slave, but eventually saved his whole family from a famine by bringing them there.

These connections are surely not accidental, for Matthew’s gospel describes Joseph’s role in the Lord’s early life with obvious Old Testament symbolism.  Joseph’s story is a challenging reminder that God calls us in unanticipated ways to cooperate with His gracious purposes for bringing salvation to the world.  He does not call us to serve Him in a realm of imaginary perfection or according to our own preferences, but in the same world with pregnant women and children whose lives are in danger of deadly violence and with families who must flee for their lives as refugees.  There are surely many rulers and regimes every bit as vicious as Herod today. 

The story of Christmas also magnifies the importance of our free response to God’s calling. We cannot tell that story properly without celebrating the Theotokos, who freely chose to say “yes” when the Archangel Gabriel visited her with the good news that she was chosen to be the Virgin Mother of the Son of God.  Despite his reluctance to become her guardian in the first place, Joseph accepted the responsibility.  After being horrified to discover her pregnancy, he had the faith to believe the message of the angel that the Child was conceived of the Holy Spirit.  Despite his advanced age, Joseph successfully guided his family to Egypt as they fled the murderous Herod.  He had certainly not anticipated or desired involvement in such a dangerous set of circumstances, but he accepted the calling to do what had to be done for the safety of the Theotokos and her Child. 

Joseph reminds us that God uses our cooperation to accomplish His gracious purposes in the world.  That was certainly the case in the Old Testament:  Abraham, Moses, David, and countless others responded to God’s initiative, and He worked through them, despite their many failings.  And through the free response of a teenaged girl came the Messiah in Whom the ancient promises to the descendants of Abraham are fulfilled and extended to the entire world.

The details of our Lord’s conception, birth, and infancy show that God does not force people to obey Him.   We can disregard God and refuse to live as those created in the divine image and likeness.  It is tragically possible to become like Herod in moral depravity and spiritual blindness to the point of disregarding even the basic humanity of innocent children and ruthlessly destroying anyone who stands in the way of getting what we want.  Such corruption is a possibility for anyone, not only for the rich, famous, and powerful. Violence, hatred, and lust for revenge and domination so easily corrode the character of people in all walks of life today. 

Our vocation is not simply to avoid becoming as wicked as Herod, but to become like the Theotokos and Joseph the Betrothed. Her life plans changed at the Annunciation, and we must accept that the healing of our souls will likely not occur according to our own preferences or schedules.   That was certainly the case for Joseph, who took on unanticipated responsibilities because He accepted them as God’s will for him.  Through the free obedience of this unlikely couple in their respective callings, the Savior came into the world. Such obedience is a form of martyrdom in the sense of dying to self-centered desire out of faithfulness to the Lord. 

We also remember today James, the son of the widower Joseph, known as “the Brother of the Lord.”  James wrote in his epistle, “Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good conduct, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.” (Jas. 3:13) He also famously taught that faith without works is dead.  (Jas. 2:17) In order to bear witness to the good news that the Son of God has become truly one of us, we must freely pursue the vocation of becoming like Him in holiness as we grow in our participation in His divine life. Our fundamental vocation remains the same:  to undergo a change of mind such that we offer ourselves without reservation in obedience to God.  As with the Theotokos, Joseph the Betrothed, and James, there is no telling what that will mean for the course of our lives, but saying “yes” in free obedience as we take the steps we have the strength to take today remains the only way to participate personally in the healing of the human person made possible by the birth of Jesus Christ.   Let us look to those we commemorate today as brilliant examples of how to enter into the joy of the Babe of Bethlehem, Who calls us all to salvation.

 

 

 

Christ is Born! Glorify Him!: Homily for the Nativity of the Lord in the Orthodox Church

 

Galatians 4:4-7; Matthew 2:1-12

Christ is Born!  Glorify Him!

      We gather today to celebrate the Nativity in the Flesh of our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ for the salvation of the world.  He is born to fulfill the vocation of every human person to become like God in holiness as “partakers of the divine nature” by grace.  Because He has truly become one of us, every dimension of our life in this world may become a point entrance into the blessed peace of the Kingdom of Heaven.  In contrast with that high calling, the lack of such peace today in so many parts of the world, including especially the Holy Land and Ukraine, as well as in our own society, relationships, and hearts, becomes quite apparent.

The Prince of Peace was born in the context of a brutal military occupation that required the elderly Joseph and the pregnant Theotokos to take a long and difficult journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem for a census. There He came into the world like a homeless child, born in a cave used as a barn with an animal’s feeding trough for his bed.   Herod, who reigned over Judea under the authority of Rome, plotted to kill the Messiah from His birth, for he certainly did not want a rival king of the Jews.  He cared far more about his own power than the lives of innocent people, as do so many rulers of the world as we know it today.  That is why Joseph had to lead the family to Egypt at night as they fled for their lives, just as refugees do today in the land of our Lord’s birth and in so many other places.

When the One Who spoke the universe into existence becomes part of His creation, the tension between the way of the Lord and the path of slavery to the fear of death becomes obvious.  Angels proclaimed His birth and the promise of peace to lowly shepherds who had no power or prominence at all.   Though many expected the Messiah to be a nationalistic religious hero, Gentile astrologers from Persia traveled far to worship a Lord Whose Kingdom transcends the divisions of empires, nations, and ethnicities. He fulfills the ancient promises to Abraham such that all who believe in Him become the adopted children and heirs of God.  The New Adam is born to restore all to the blessedness of Paradise.  He comes to make us radiant with holiness and “perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect,” which requires especially love for those we are tempted to hate, condemn, and disregard as strangers and enemies.  (Matt. 5:38)    

The Savior born this day is the Prince of Peace, but not of the illusion of peace that comes from being so self-centered that we blind ourselves to the needs of our neighbors, who bear the divine image every bit as much as we do.  He is the Prince of Peace, but not of the illusion of peace that comes from intimidating and manipulating people so that they do our will.  He is the Prince of Peace, but not of the illusion of peace that comes from projecting our hopes for wellbeing on some fleeting standard of worldly success that can never heal our souls.  To know Christ’s peace is to share in His life to the point that we become those who are blessed in His Kingdom:  the poor in spirit; those who mourn their sins; the meek; those who hunger and thirst after righteousness; the merciful; those who acquire purity of heart; and the peacemakers. To know His peace is to become so much like Him in holiness that, regardless of what sufferings and obstacles come our way, we make even the deepest challenges of our lives points of entrance to the joyful blessedness of His Kingdom.  (Matt. 5:3-12) 

Even as the circumstances surrounding His Nativity were not peaceful by conventional standards, welcoming the Prince of Peace into our lives requires embracing the inevitable tension of mindfully entrusting ourselves to Him as we share in His fulfillment of the human person in the image and likeness of God.  That is not a matter of sentimentality or of using religion to build ourselves up over anyone, but of responding with true spiritual humility and integrity to the gloriously good news that the Son of God has become one of us—in the world as we know it--for the salvation of all.  The more that we undertake the struggle to do so, and to treat every neighbor as one for whom the Savior was born, the more we will experience the true peace of Paradise brought by the God-Man.  Let us celebrate this glorious feast by doing precisely that this day and every day of our lives.  

 

 

 

 

Homily for the Sunday Before the Nativity of Christ (The Genealogy) in the Orthodox Church

 

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

 

As we conclude our preparation to welcome Christ at His Nativity, we must resist the temptation to corrupt this blessed season into merely a celebration of this world on its own terms. At Christmas we celebrate nothing less than the God-Man’s full personal entrance into our life and world, becoming truly one of us even as He remains truly divine in order to make us “partakers of the divine nature” by grace.  He was born to bring the entire creation into the eternal joy of His Kingdom, which stands in prophetic judgment over all that mars the beauty of the souls of His living icons.

Christ is born to fulfill the ancient promises to Abraham, who “looked forward to the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.”  The many generations of preparation for the Savior’s birth did not occur through the unbroken progress of any earthly kingdom, culture, or family, but through a history characterized by the deep brokenness and disappointment that are our common lot in this world of corruption. The prophet Samuel was the last of the judges of Israel over a thousand years before Christ was born.  When his sons ruled unjustly, the people asked for a king so that they could be like the other nations.  God told Samuel, “Heed the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them.”  (1 Sam. 8:7)

We do not have to know much about the Old Testament to know that wanting to be like the other nations is the exact opposite of what God intended for His people.  Their kings abused their authority like the rich and powerful of any period with David, the greatest of them, infamously taking Bathsheeba, the wife of his soldier Uriah, and then having him killed.  Far from hiding these horrific events, Matthew highlights them, for he writes in the genealogy that “David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah.” He could not have made the point about David’s sin any clearer than that. 

Even David’s son the wise Solomon later fell into the worship of false gods.  Because of Israel’s ongoing unfaithfulness, the kingdom divided into two, with both eventually going into exile after being defeated at the hands of their enemies. Those who returned from Babylon were then dispersed yet again by the Romans, under whose authority the Lord was crucified. If we are truly entrusting ourselves to Christ, Who rejected the temptation to set up an earthly kingdom, we must follow the example of Abraham, who “looked forward to the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” “For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.” (Heb. 13:14) We must not place our ultimate allegiance and hope in any arrangement of the powers of the world or allow any earthly affiliation to blind us to welcome Christ in every needy neighbor and stranger, especially those we are inclined to reject as enemies.   

The shock of exile from the Promised Land for the Hebrews was so profound that Matthew describes the Lord’s genealogy accordingly: “So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ were fourteen generations.”  The prophet Daniel and the three holy youths Ananias, Azarias and Misael all went into captivity in Babylon, where they refused to worship other gods and were miraculously delivered from death, respectively, in the lions’ den and the fiery furnace.  Christ, before His Incarnation, was with the youths in the flames.  Being unconsumed by the fire, they also provided an image of the Theotokos, who contained the Son of God within her womb without being consumed by the divine glory.        

It was not by worshiping their ancestral homeland or doing whatever it took to gain earthly power that these and other prophets foreshadowed and foretold the coming of Christ.  No, they steadfastly entrusted themselves to God, regardless of the cost. Far from making self-serving political calculations or seeking their own vengeance, they refused to abandon hope in God and to worship idols, even when their refusal seemed certain to lead to their deaths.  Consequently, they are among those who “suffered mocking and scourging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, ill-treated—of whom the world was not worthy—wandering over deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.”  They remained faithful as they lived in expectation, despite their displacement and disappointment, of the fulfillment of a promise that would not come in their lifetimes and transcended all conventional boundaries, “since God had foreseen something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.”

No one forces us to choose today between idolatry and faithfulness, but we so often freely worship false gods when we ground the meaning and purpose of our lives in some vision of cultural success or personal fulfillment that inflames our passions and blinds us to the humanity of those who seem to stand in our way.  Even without being taken away into exile, we often hope for nothing more than a more comfortable life in Babylon, however we may envision that.  We face the same temptations that our Lord’s ancestors did, and we regularly fall into some version of the sins they committed. In addition to recalling David’s grave sins, Matthew lists Judah, who fathered children with his daughter-in-law Tamar. He also mentions Rahab, a Canaanite prostitute, and Ruth, a Moabite.  The Old Testament warns Jewish men against marrying Gentile women many times, but here are their names in the family tree of the Savior.  Their presence in the genealogy foreshadows the scandalous, but also completely innocent, conception of the Lord by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary.  By including their names among the ancestors of Christ, Matthew reminds us that He is born to bring healing to all the broken, scandalous people of the world as we know it, not only to those who appear respectable or who are members of this or that favored group.  That is certainly good news for us as strangers and foreigners who have been grafted into the olive tree of the Hebrews by faith in Christ Jesus.  (Rom. 11: 17-18)   

When the Son of God became a human person, He did not do so by birth into a family of wealth, power, or fame.  There was certainly no sin involved in the virginal conception of our Lord, but the circumstances were hardly conventional.  Joseph, the older man to whom the Theotokos was betrothed as her guardian, would have divorced her quietly, had not an angel told him the truth about the situation in a dream.  Living under the brutal military occupation of the Roman Empire, they had to go to Bethlehem for a census at the time of His birth, where He came into the world in the lowly circumstance of being born in a cave used for a barn with an animals’ feeding trough as His crib. 

  Despite the temptation throughout Christ’s ministry to overthrow the Romans by force and set up an earthly reign as a new King David, He refused to be distracted from His vocation to conquer death itself, which required that He submit to execution on a Roman cross and wear a crown of thorns, being mocked as the failed king of the Jews.  Though the false hopes of His disciples had been crushed and He appeared to fail by all conventional standards, the Savior rose in victory on the third day.  His disciples then learned to hope anew for the fulfillment of God’s promises in ways that required a complete change of mind and heart, for they took up their crosses as they learned to serve a kingdom not of this world.  Like those who had foretold the coming of the Messiah across the centuries, they repudiated the idolatry of serving themselves or any earthly agenda as they came to hope only in the Lord.

  In order to welcome Christ at His Nativity, we must fulfill our calling to hope in nothing other than the God-Man Who is born to heal and fulfill all who bear the divine image and likeness.   His human lineage shows that He came for people as conflicted, confused, and compromised as we are.  Many of His ancestors wanted to be like the other nations and endured exile in foreign lands as a result. We exile ourselves from the everlasting joy of His Kingdom whenever we put devotion to any worldly goal before obedience to Him.  We exile ourselves from His blessed reign whenever we view or treat anyone as a foreigner or stranger who is excluded from the same divine mercy that we ask for ourselves.    Like Daniel and the three holy youths, it is time for us to refuse to worship false gods of any kind and to trust that the Savior is with us and with all who endure the lions’ dens and fiery furnaces of life in a world still enslaved to the fear of death.  Having been prepared by prayer, fasting, generosity, confession, and repentance, let us receive the God-Man born for our salvation at Christmas, for He alone is our hope and the hope of the entire world. His family tree shows that He came to save us all.      

 

      

 

 

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.”