Preparing to Follow the Theotokos as Holy Temples of the Lord : Homily for the Twenty-first Sunday After Pentecost & Ninth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

Galatians 2: 16-20; Luke 12:16-21

 Having begun the Nativity Fast on November 15 in preparation to welcome the Savior at Christmas, today we anticipate the Feast of the Entrance into the Temple of the Most Holy Theotokos. 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 not simply about fulfilling their desires, but 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 reading.  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.

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.   Those who serve such false gods, which are merely projections of their own self-centered desires, inevitably lack peace within their souls and act in ways that are contrary to God’s gracious purposes for those who bear the divine image and likeness.   No matter what form our particular temptations take, we impoverish our souls when we indulge in self-centeredness to the point that we cannot even imagine following in the way of the Theotokos as God’s holy temple.

The healing alternative to such corruption is not any form of simplistic legalism, which inevitably leads people to frustration, despair, and even cynicism about pursuing a life pleasing to God.  If we try to make ourselves righteous simply by our own willpower and obedience to a code of conduct, we will experience only our own weakness and guilt before our passions.  No wonder that many scoff at the possibility of pursuing righteousness and instead decide to indulge their passions in the false belief that that is really the only possible way to live as a human being in this world. 

St. Paul identified the only way that we can avoid falling into such despair when he wrote that we are “not justified by works of the Law but through faith in Jesus Christ.”  The point is not to seek some form of illusory religious or moral perfection that makes us superior to our neighbors, but to recognize that we need restoration and healing beyond what even obedience to the strictest code of behavior could ever achieve.  This is possible when turn away from obsession with self-justification and instead gain the spiritual clarity to say with the Apostle “it is no longer I who live, but Christ Who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me.”  In order for that to happen, we must look the folly of justifying ourselves by our own accomplishments squarely in the face and, instead of falling into cynicism, entrust ourselves in humility to the One Who shares His eternal life with us, having conquered even death itself and made it possible for us to become like Him in holiness by grace. 

We are now in the Nativity Fast, the 40-day period during which we prepare to celebrate the birth of the Savior at Christmas.   The weeks of Advent call us to wrestle with the passions that threaten to make us so much like the rich fool that we become blind to the healing and restoration brought by our Lord.  Far from obsessing about earthly cares and indulging in the richest and most satisfying foods, this is a season for fasting, confessing and repenting of our sins, giving generously to the needy, and intensifying our prayers.  It is a time for preparing to open our hearts to receive Christ more fully into our lives at His Nativity.  

 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, let us 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.  So let us mindfully reject all 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 temple even as we live and breathe in this world.  

Homily for the Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost & Eighth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

Galatians 1:11-19; Luke 10:25-37

             It is terribly tragic when people fall into the delusion of thinking that they love God and neighbor, when in reality they are using religion to serve only themselves and perhaps others with whom they identify for some worldly reason.  We do that when we narrow down the list of people who count as our neighbors to the point that we excuse ourselves from serving Christ in all who bear His image and likeness.  When we do so, we disregard not only them but also our Lord Himself, the God-Man born for the salvation of all.  Our actions then reveal that we are not truly conforming our character to His.  Instead of uniting ourselves to Christ to the point that we convey His mercy to all His living icons, we serve only ourselves with our vain imaginations of being truly religious and moral.

    That is precisely the attitude that the Savior warns against in today’s gospel reading. After describing how the Old Testament law required loving God “with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself,” the lawyer wanted to justify himself by limiting the type of people he had to love.  That is why he asked, “And who is my neighbor?”  He wanted to limit what God required of him so that he could continue to believe that he was a perfectly righteous man who had already justified himself by his good deeds.

             The Lord’s parable does not allow us, however, to place any limits on what it means to love our neighbors.  He tells us about a man who was robbed, severely beaten, and then left on the side of the road to die. Surely, anyone who saw him in that condition would have an obligation to help him.  All the more is that the case for the religious leaders who were going down that same road.  They knew that the Old Testament law required them to care for a fellow Jew in a life-threatening situation.  Like the lawyer, however, they must have come up with some excuse not to treat him with even an ounce of compassion.  We do not know exactly what they were thinking, but they somehow rationalized passing by on the other side without helping him at all.

       Ironically, a Samaritan—a hated foreigner, a despised heretic-- is the one who treated the unfortunate man as a neighbor.  The Samaritan did not limit his concern to his own people.  He did not restrict the demands of love in any way.  Even though he knew that the Jews had nothing to do with Samaritans, he responded with boundless compassion and generosity to this fellow’s plight.  He did not figure out how little he could do and still think of himself as a decent person.  Instead, he spontaneously offered his time, energy, and resources to bring a stranger back to health. Even the lawyer got the point of the story, for he saw that the one who treated the man as a neighbor was “The one who showed mercy to him.” 

             The Lord used the story of the Good Samaritan to show us who we must become if we are truly united to Him in faith.  Purely out of compassionate, boundless love, Christ came to heal us all from the self-imposed pain and misery that our sins have worked on our souls.  He came to liberate everyone, Jews and Gentiles alike, from slavery to the fear of death, which is the wages of sin.  Like the Samaritan, He was despised and rejected as a blasphemer.  In the parable, the religious leaders were of no help to the man who was robbed, beaten, and left to die.  They passed by and left him to suffer in the state in which they had found him.  Likewise, the legalistic, hypocritical religious leaders who rejected the Messiah were of no benefit to those who needed healing from the ravages of sin and liberation from the fear of death.   They interpreted and applied the law in order to gain power in this world and were powerless to heal anyone. We must be on guard against the temptation to become like them by distorting our faith in ways that would excuse us from seeing and serving Christ in every suffering neighbor, including those considered enemies according the standards of our fallen world.    

            Christ has brought salvation, not by giving us merely a religious or moral code of conduct, but by making us participants in His divine life by grace.  By becoming fully human even as He remains fully divine, He has restored and fulfilled the basic human vocation to become like God in holiness.  Only the God-Man could do that.  If we are truly united with Him, then His boundless love must become characteristic of our lives.  Among other things, that means gaining the spiritual health to show our neighbors the same mercy that we ask for from the Savior.  Doing that even for those we love most is difficult because our self-centeredness makes it hard to give anyone the same consideration we want for ourselves.

 The challenge of conveying Christ’s love to people we fear, resent, or do not like for whatever reason may seem impossibly hard. Remember, however, what the Samaritan in the parable did for the robbed and beaten man.  He administered first aid, took him to an inn, paid the innkeeper to care for him, and promised to pay for any additional expenses when he returned.  Christ does the same for us in baptism, the Eucharist, and the full sacramental life of the Church, which is a hospital for our recovery from the wounds of sin. Through spiritual disciplines such as prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, we open the chronic weaknesses and festering sores of our souls to receive His healing strength.  As we prepare to celebrate His Nativity during the upcoming Nativity Fast through such practices, we will simply offer ourselves in humility to receive the healing necessary to convey His mercy to our neighbors, even when they are strangers and enemies to us according to the corrupt standards of our society.  

 Even as the parable of the Good Samaritan challenged assumptions about who counted as a neighbor in first-century Palestine, we must remain constantly on guard against the temptation to see any of our neighbors through the lenses of the factions that line up against one another in the debates and divisions of our culture.  Regardless of our opinions about any controversial matter in society, we must manifest the reconciling and sacrificial love of Christ to those who need our assistance, attention, and care.  If we allow ourselves to narrow down our list of neighbors to those we imagine are worthy of our concern, we will fall prey to the temptation of trying to justify ourselves by limiting the vocation that is ours in Jesus Christ.  He calls us to become radiant with His gracious divine energies to the point that we embody His infinite love and mercy for all who bear the divine image and likeness, irrespective of who they are.   

 Our Savior not only spoke the parable of the Good Samaritan, but also showed shocking concern and respect for St. Photini, the Samarian woman at the well.  He praised the faith of the Roman centurion as being superior to that of any of His fellow Jews, cast demons out of Gentiles, and brought healing and restoration to notorious sinners.  His mercy extends even to people like you and me, not on the basis of where stand according to any of the divisions of this world, but because of His infinite grace and love.  If we dare to claim such grace and love for ourselves, how dare we try to narrow down the list of our neighbors according to our own preferences.  The only question that we should consider is how to gain the spiritual clarity and strength to “Go and do likewise,” especially in relation to those whom the world encourages us to hate, fear, and resent. 

Homily for the Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost & Fifth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

2 Corinthians 11:31-12:9; Luke 16:19-31

 There is perhaps no more powerful example of our need for Christ’s healing of our souls than that contained in today’s gospel reading.  A rich man with the benefit of the great spiritual heritage of Abraham, Moses, and the prophets had become such a slave to gratifying his desires for indulgence in pleasure that he had become completely blind to his responsibility to show mercy to Lazarus, a miserable beggar who wanted only crumbs and whose only comfort was when dogs licked his open sores.  The rich man’s life revolved around wearing the most expensive clothes and enjoying the finest food and drink, even as he surely stepped over or around Lazarus at the entrance to his home on a regular basis and never did anything at all to relieve his suffering.  

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

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

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

 In the midst of our materialistic and consumeristic culture, it is easy to overlook St. Paul’s warning that “Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”  (1 Tim. 6: 9-10)   It was surely the love of money that led the rich man in today’s parable to become so enslaved to gratifying self-centered desire that he closed his heart completely to concern for his neighbors, even those so obviously suffering right before his eyes. Because he would not show love for poor Lazarus, he degraded himself to the point that he could not love God.   St. John wrote, “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?” (1 Jn. 4:20) The Lord Himself taught that love of God and neighbor are the greatest of the commandments. (Matt. 22: 37-40).   It is no surprise, then, that the rich man experienced the torment of bitter regret after his death, for he was in the eternal presence of the Lord Whom he had rejected throughout his life.  He had turned away decisively from God’s love and was capable of perceiving the divine glory as only a burning flame.  As St. Basil the Great proclaimed to the rich who refused to share with the poor, “You showed no mercy; it will not be shown to you.  You opened not your house; you will be expelled from the Kingdom.  You gave not your bread; you will not receive eternal life.”[1]

 Unlike those whose who ground their identity in the world’s power and wealth, we must learn to see and serve our Lord in light of the apparent weakness of His Cross, for as St. Paul wrote, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.” (1 Cor. 1: 27) He refers to his own “thorn in the flesh,” about which he received the divine word: “’My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.’ Most gladly therefore [he wrote] will I rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” 

To take the time to see and serve Christ in our needy and inconvenient neighbors will appear weak and foolish in the eyes of many in our self-centered, materialistic culture.  Doing so also may well go against the grain of our own desires for gaining all the comfort, ease, and status that we can in this life.  The more we invest our resources, time, and attention in serving the poor, sick, confused, and otherwise needy people in whom we encounter the Savior, the weaker we will be according to the standards of those who live only to serve themselves and impress their neighbors with the signs of wealth and power.  The more that we fight our self-centered desires to convey the Lord’s mercy to our neighbors, the more that we will cultivate the humility necessary to see ourselves clearly as those who remain weak before our passions. Our hearts will then be softened toward our weak neighbors who need us to convey to them the philanthropic generosity that we have received from Him.

Since the Savior taught that “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,” this is a struggle that we must embrace if we hope to acquire the spiritual clarity necessary to overcome the blindness of the rich man, who could no longer recognize poor Lazarus as an icon of God or the divine glory as anything but a tormenting fire.  (Matt. 6:21) There is nothing like sacrificing in tangible ways for the sake of our neighbors to open our hearts to receive the healing mercy of the Lord.  That is why He said, “In that you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did  it to me.” (Matt. 25:40)

 

 

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

Homily for the Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost and Sixth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

2 Cor. 6:16-7:1; Luke 8:26-39

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The presence of the pigs in this story reminds us that the man to whom Christ restored his humanity was a Gentile, like the compromised and confused Christians of Corinth to whom St. Paul wrote in today’s epistle lesson.  Even as they kept falling back into their old ways of idolatry and immorality, he referred to them as “the temple of the living God” and applied the exhortations of the Hebrew prophets to them: “’I will be their God, and they shall be My people. Therefore, come out from them, and be separate from them,’” says the Lord, “’and touch nothing unclean; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be My sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.’”

Contrary to the legalistic attitude of his fellow Pharisees, St. Paul knew that being a Jew was not a prerequisite for receiving the blessings of the Messiah, for all with faith in Him are now “Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (Gal. 3:29) His Kingdom is not defined according to ethnicity, nationalism, or geography. St. Paul also knew that being spiritually clean and separate from the corruptions of the world was not a matter of merely checking off the boxes of outward behavior.  The Corinthians had strayed far from the path of faithfulness to Christ, but the Apostle did not tell them that all was therefore lost. They had put on Christ like a garment in baptism and been nourished by His Body and Blood in the Eucharist.  He reminded them of who they had become by grace as “the temple of the living God” and called them to live accordingly.  Doing so was not an exercise in religious legalism, but required embracing the ongoing struggle for purity of heart as they did the hard work of reorienting their lives to the Kingdom.  As today’s reading concludes, “Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, and make holiness perfect in the fear of God.”

We must learn from the Lord’s deliverance of the demon-possessed man and St. Paul’s exhortation to the Corinthians that, no matter how consumed we are by our passions, we must never give up hope for healing.  Regardless of how far we have strayed from the path of faithfulness, we must refuse to define ourselves as spiritual failures cut off from the Lord’s mercy.  Instead, we must remember that, as “the temple of the living God,” we have the freedom to cooperate with the infinite healing power of the Holy Spirit poured out upon us as living members of Christ’s Body, the Church.  If we will do what we presently have the strength to do each day in embracing our true identity in the Savior, then we may all become like the man who was finally able to sit “at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind” and able to bear witness to the great salvation that He has brought to the world.  As the Apostle taught, “Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, and make holiness perfect in the fear of God.”  That is how we may become fully alive and behold the divine glory.

 

 

 

 

 

Homily for the Sunday of the Holy Fathers of Seventh Ecumenical Council & Fourth Sunday of Luke with Commemoration of the Hieromartyr Jacob of Hamatoura in the Orthodox Church

 

Titus 3:8-15; Luke 8:5-15

     Many are strongly tempted today to allow the problems facing our culture and world to distract us from growing to maturity in the Christian life and bearing good fruit for the Kingdom of God.  That is perfectly understandable in light of our constant access to global media and the gravity of current events.  All Christians should mourn the ongoing slaughter in the Holy Land, which has now engulfed Lebanon, a traditional heartland of our Antiochian Orthodox Church.  Our father in Christ, His Beatitude Patriarch John X of Antioch, has joined with other Orthodox leaders there to call for an end to “the on-going killing that has claimed the lives of thousands of innocent civilians” and displaced over a million people.”[1]  We are all aware of the invasion by Russia of Ukraine, where bloodshed continues between historically Orthodox nations and some have threatened even to use nuclear weapons.  There is no telling how much further these conflicts will spread.  Regardless of our particular political opinions, many Americans today are deeply worried about the future of our nation.  In ways that transcend conventional politics, so much of what we had taken for granted about our culture is being called into question.  And on matters including our health, our finances, and our families, most of us know the temptations of worry and fear all too well.  It can be very difficult, then, to “lay aside all earthly cares” in order to focus on “the one thing needful” of hearing and obeying the Word of God. 

 

That is why we all need to concentrate our attention today on commemorating the 367 Holy Fathers of the 7th Ecumenical Council, which met in Nicaea in 787.  The council rejected the false teaching that to honor icons is to commit idolatry, for it distinguished between the worship that is due to God alone and the veneration that is appropriate for images of Christ, the Theotokos, and the Saints.  The council’s teaching highlighted the importance of the Savior’s incarnation, for only a truly human Savior with a physical body could restore us to the dignity and beauty of the living icons of God in every dimension of our existence.

 

The 7th Ecumenical Council addressed matters that strike at the very heart of how we embrace our fundamental vocation to become like God in holiness in a world that so desperately needs the peace of Christ.  Too often, however, we think that iconography simply has to do with wood and paint, and is unrelated to the question of whether we are becoming more like Christ and gaining the strength to seek first His Kingdom.  The icons are not merely religious art, but reminders that to become a truly human person is to become like Jesus Christ, who, according to St. Paul, “is our peace… and has broken down the middle wall of separation” so that “He might reconcile…both [Jew and Gentile] to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity.” (Eph. 2:14-16) The more that we become like our Lord, Who worked this reconciliation, the less we will see anyone through the darkened lenses of those who place their hopes in earthly kingdoms of whatever kind.   

 

Today’s gospel reading addresses these same questions with different imagery.  Christ used the parable of the sower to call His disciples to become like plants that grew from the seed that “fell into good soil and grew, and yielded a hundredfold.”  He wanted them to become “those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bring forth fruit with patience.”  Not all who hear the Word of God will do so, even as not all seeds will grow to fruition.   Some never even believe, while others make a good start and then fall away due to temptation or “are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature.” 

 

This parable warns us about what happens when we fail to fulfill our potential as those who bear the image of God.  Our vocation is to become more beautiful living icons of the Savior, but we diminish and distort ourselves when we refuse to become who God created us to be.  Plants must grow and flourish as the kinds of plants that they are in order to become healthy and bear fruit.  Farmers must care for them accordingly.  The sun, soil, moisture, and nutrients must be appropriate for that particular type of plant in order for them to flourish.  In order for us to bear good fruit for the Kingdom, we must attend to the health of our souls with the conscientiousness of a careful farmer or gardener.  We must do so in order to become more fully who we are as living icons of Christ.  If, to the contrary, we become obsessed with worry and fear about earthly cares of whatever kind, we will never gain the strength to bear good fruit for the Kingdom.   

 

In today’s epistle lesson, St. Paul urged St. Titus to tell the people to focus on doing good deeds and helping others in great need.  He wanted them to avoid foolish arguments and divisions, “for they are unprofitable and vain.”  St. Paul did not want the people to waste their time and energy on matters that would simply inflame their passions and hinder them from attaining spiritual health and maturity.  He called them to care for their spiritual wellbeing with the conscientiousness of farmers who are single-mindedly dedicated to bringing in a bumper crop.  If they let down their guard to the point of being so consumed by pointless controversies that they ignored basic disciplines like loving and serving their neighbors, they would risk dying spiritually like a neglected plant overtaken by weeds. 

 

If we are to become “those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bring forth fruit with patience,” we must refuse to allow the passions of worry and fear to take root in our hearts and minds, regardless of what is happening in our world, our nation, or our families.  We must do the hard, daily work of learning to trust and hope in the Lord as we mindfully turn away from fueling our passions and instead invest ourselves in serving the living icons of Christ who are our neighbors. In order to bear good fruit for the Kingdom, we must refuse to focus on anything that will distract us from sharing more fully in His blessed, eternal life.  Unless we struggle mindfully against this temptation, it can easily choke the life out of our souls. Because our risen Lord has conquered even the grave through His glorious resurrection on the third day, we must refuse to become enslaved to the fear of death and instead focus on becoming more beautiful icons of Christ.  That is the only way to know true peace in this world.

 

The example of St. Jacob of Hamatoura should inspire us in this regard.  After a year of torture, he was beheaded for Christ in the fifteenth century in Lebanon. Centuries later, monks returned to restore the ancient monastery on the mountain of Hamatoura. The monastics and pilgrims then began to encounter the saint through visions and miracles, but his name was not known until the discovery of a manuscript in 2002, after which his relics were discovered also.  St. Jacob is a shining example of how even the very worst that the corrupt powers of this world can do can never separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 8:39) Our Risen Lord has liberated us from slavery to the fear of death, which is at the root of all our  anxiety and despair.  So the next time that you find yourself worried and afraid about anything, mindfully commend that concern to Christ and invest yourself in prayer, fasting, and generosity with your time and resources to help the neighbor right next to you.  That is how we may become “those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bring forth fruit with patience.”   There is no other path for entering into the joy of the Lord.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] https://www.antiochian.org/regulararticle/2205

Homily for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost & Third Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

2 Corinthians 4:6-15: Luke 7:11-16

            Across the centuries, there has been a persistent temptation for many Christians to view salvation as an easy spiritual escape from life in the world rather than as the demanding journey of pursuing its fulfillment and healing in God.  It is possible to abuse the hope of heaven as an excuse for not responding faithfully to the many challenges that stare us in the face in the world as we know it.   I am sure that many people have rejected the Christian faith because they believe it is otherworldly to the point of irrelevance before their very real suffering and pain, as well as that of their neighbors and loved ones.   A key problem with such escapist forms of Christianity is that the Lord brought salvation to the world by entering fully into its brokenness as the God-Man, even to the point of death, in order to bring us into the joy of a new heaven and a new earth through His glorious resurrection.  His Kingdom is not only a future hope, but also a present reality, for as Christ said, “the kingdom of God is within you.” (Lk 17:21)   Remember how He responded to the question of whether He was the Messiah: “Go and tell John the things you have seen and heard: that the blind see, the lame walk, the   lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the gospel preached to them.” (Lk. 7:22) Those are the words of the New Adam who came to heal all the infirmities of His suffering sons and daughters.    

            Today’s reading from the gospel according to St. Luke comes right before that passage.  The widow of Nain was having the worst day of her life and had no reason to hope for a blessed or even tolerable future, for in that time and place a widow who had lost her only son was in a very precarious state.  Poverty, neglect, and abuse would threaten her daily; she would have been vulnerable and alone.  When contrary to all expectations the Lord raised her son, He transformed her deep mourning into great joy. He restored life itself both to the young man and to his mother.

The Lord’s great act of compassion for this woman manifests our salvation and provides a sign of hope in even the darkest moments of our lives in our fallen world.  We weep and mourn not only for loved ones whom we see no more, but also for the brokenness and disintegration that we know all too well in our own souls, the lives of our loved ones, and the world around us.   Death, destruction, and decay in all their forms are the consequences of our personal and collective refusal to fulfill our vocation to live as those created in the image of God by becoming like Him in holiness.  We weep with the widow of Nain not only for losing loved ones, but also for losing what it means to be a human person as a living icon of God in a world that seems so far from manifesting the fullness of the heavenly reign.

           The good news of the Gospel is that the compassion of the Lord extends even to those who endure the most tragic and miserable circumstances and the most profound sorrows.  Purely out of love for His suffering children, the Father sent the Son to heal and liberate us from slavery to the fear of death through His Cross and glorious resurrection. The Savior touched the funeral bier and the dead man arose.  Christ’s compassion for us is so profound that He not only touched death, but entered fully into it, into a tomb, and into Hades, because He refused to leave us to self-destruction.   He went into the abyss and experienced the terror of the black night of the pit.  The Theotokos wept bitterly at His public torture and execution, not unlike mothers today who weep at the loss of their children.  When He rose victorious over death in all its forms, He provided the only true basis of hope that the despair of the grave will not have the last word on the living icons of God.  His Mother and the other Myrrh-Bearing Women were the very first to receive this unbelievably good news.    

            The widow of Nain wept bitterly out of grief for the loss of her son.  Christ wept at the tomb of his friend St. Lazarus, not only for him, but for us all who are wedded to death as the children of Adam and Eve, who were cast out of Paradise into this world of corruption.  We weep with broken hearts out of love for those whose suffering is beyond our ability to ease, those who are no longer with us in this life, and those from whom we have become otherwise estranged due to their and our sins.  We must learn to weep for ourselves as those who have caught a glimpse of the eternal blessedness for which we came into being and who know how far we are from entering fully into the joy of the Lord.  The corruption that separates us from God and from one another takes many forms and the same is true of our healing and restoration.  The particular paths that we must follow in order to embrace Christ’s victory over death as distinctive persons will certainly vary.  But they must all be routes for gaining the spiritual clarity to learn to mourn our sins and take the steps that are best for our healing and restoration as whole persons in the world as we know it.  If we refuse to take those steps and simply wait passively to ascend someday into heavenly peace, we will only weaken ourselves even further as we refuse to do what is necessary to lift up our hearts to receive the Lord’s healing.  There is no way around the truth that we must do the hard work of taking up our crosses and following Him, if we want to share in His blessed life.  

            In today’s epistle reading, St. Paul reminds the Corinthians that “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God” shining in our hearts through Christ does not guarantee a life of ease and comfort, for “we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the exceeding greatness of power is from God, and not from us.”  God created us from the dust of the earth, to which we will all return.  We are not only mortal, but also subject to all kinds of weaknesses, maladies, and imperfections in every dimension of our existence as embodied persons.   As the Apostle describes his ministry, “We are pressed on every way, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; smitten down, but not destroyed; always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our body.”

            Those tempted to spiritual escapism forget that Jesus Christ came in the flesh with a body just like ours.  His humanity is whole and complete while being united with His true divinity:  He is one Person with two natures.  We unite ourselves to His great Self-Offering on the Cross when we take up our cross of struggling to be faithful in the midst of our weaknesses, infirmities, and corruptions, those of everyone we encounter, and those of our culture and world.  Christ does not call us somehow to escape from this difficult path, but to pursue it as He did.  As St. Paul stated, “For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our mortal flesh.”  We must die to the ongoing power of sin in our lives so that we may rise up with Christ in holiness, gaining the spiritual strength to manifest His loving kindness and merciful blessing to those as miserable as the widow of Nain.  In order for our lives to become signs of the presence of His Kingdom in our world of corruption, we must take up our crosses to the point that we may say with integrity: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20)  

              The Lord said, “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.”  (Matt. 5:4) His mercy on the widow of Nain provides us all a sign of the hope for eternal life that is ours in Him.  In order to enter into the blessedness for which we hope, we must mourn our sins by embracing the difficult struggle to repent of them.  That is the only way that we may gain the spiritual strength to play our unique roles in conveying His comfort and blessing to those who suffer to the point of despair in our world of corruption.  The more that we unite ourselves to Christ in faith and faithfulness as we take up our crosses, the more that we will know the joy of His Kingdom even now and become instruments for bearing witness to His salvation, which is already breaking into the world as a “treasure in earthen vessels, that the exceeding greatness of power is from God, and not from us.”

 

"Love Your Enemies" : Homily for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost & Second Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

2 Cor.  1:21-2:4; Luke 6:31-36

 One of the great challenges that many of us face is learning to see that being an Orthodox Christians may not be reduced to confessing certain beliefs about God, no matter how true those beliefs are.  Our faith may not be reduced to conscientious participation in the worship of the Church or keeping our own rule of prayer, fasting, almsgiving, or other spiritual disciplines.  Our faith may not be reduced to following a code of moral behavior or distinguishing clearly between actions that are good or evil.  These endeavors are all virtuous in and of themselves and we must not neglect or diminish them in any way, but our calling is much higher, for it is nothing less than to embody the mercy of God from the very depths of our being. That sublime vocation goes well beyond the demands of being a conventionally religious or moral person, for it requires nothing less than becoming “partakers of the divine nature” by grace.  Remember what the Lord said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”  (Matt. 5:8)

 The laws of the Old Testament were necessary to make clear to the Hebrew people how they were to act as those in a covenantal relation with God.  Jesus Christ is not simply an especially insightful rabbi or prophet on such matters, but truly the God-Man in Whom the ancient promises, laws, and prophecies are fulfilled and extended even to Gentiles like us who respond to Him with humble faith.  He is a Person in Whose life we share as living members of His Body, the Church.  The Church is the bride of Christ and we must live as those in a “one flesh” union with Him in every aspect of our existence. In Him, we become truly sons and daughters of the Most High, for His eternal life becomes ours.   

 It is only in this context that we can understand our Lord’s teaching in today’s gospel reading:  “But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish.  Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.”  In this passage from the gospel according to St. Luke, Christ does not rest content with calling His followers to limit their vengeance to “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” even though that Old Testament principle had placed needed restrain on vengeance. (Matt. 5:38) He did not affirm the common attitude of the time, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy,” an attitude that unfortunately remains with us today in so many ways, including religion, politics, and ethnicity.   (Matt. 5:43) Instead, the Savior called His followers to be in communion with Him from the depths of their hearts to the point that we embody the divine mercy, loving our enemies like God, Who cares even for “the ungrateful and selfish.”  Let us be clear:  That means that God cares even for people like me and you.

             To become a person so radiant with the love of Christ that we convey His love even to people we do not like and who do not like us is obviously not a matter of being conventionally religious or moral.  To love our enemies as He loves us requires our deep spiritual transformation and healing as living icons of God.  It is not enough to be kind to our friends and allies, to those we think will return our good will, or to those with whom we have some characteristic in common. It is not enough simply to restrain ourselves from abusing our enemies verbally or otherwise or even to go through the motions of being decent toward them.  No, the God-Man calls and enables us to become brilliant with the gracious divine energies to the point that we convey His merciful love to everyone from the depths of our souls. 

            If we approach this sublime calling merely as a reminder to obey a religious law, we will either fall into despair or delusion about our ability to fulfill it.  The vocation to become like God in mercy and holiness is something we cannot accomplish by willpower or behavior modification alone, even as we cannot raise ourselves up from the grave.  And if we think that we have already fulfilled this calling, then we show only that we have become blinded by spiritual pride to the point that we do not see ourselves clearly at all.  The fact that we seem inevitably to fall short of loving our neighbors, and especially our enemies, as ourselves indicates that we have a truly eternal vocation that we should never think that we have completed.  The struggle that we all have in treating other people, especially those who have wronged or offended us, as we would like to be treated, reveals that we have not yet embraced fully the Lord’s gracious healing of our souls.  St. Silouan the Athonite saw the love of enemies as a clear sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  He taught that when the soul “grows humble, the Lord gives her His grace, and then she prays for her enemies as for herself, and sheds scalding tears for the whole world.”   These words reveal our need for ongoing repentance as we turn away from fueling the passions that make it so appealing to fixate on the wrongs of others and open our hearts in humility to receive the Lord’s gracious healing.  The more that we are aware of our own dependence upon His mercy as “the chief of sinners,” the less inclination we will have to misdirect our attention and energy to holding grudges and condemning our neighbors.

        In today’s epistle reading, St. Paul writes candidly to the confused Christians of Corinth that he knows he has caused them pain by correcting their many abuses of the faith as mostly Gentile converts who kept falling back into the ways of paganism and fell short of manifesting the unity of the Body of Christ in holiness. He did not pain them out of malice or a desire to dominate them, “For I wrote you out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you pain but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you.”  In any sphere of life, it is so easy to fall prey to the temptation of thinking that whoever is disagreeing with us or criticizing us is simply trying make our lives difficult or show that they are in a superior position. So often, we are tempted to respond to them in kind, which usually tempts them to get back at us in a never-ending cycle of resentment. We so easily jump to the conclusion that this or that person is simply an enemy when our judgment is clouded by our own passions.  Paul’s statement should remind us that love for neighbor can certainly require telling people what they do not want to hear.  The healing of broken relationships can require confronting uncomfortable truths about ourselves and others.  It is rarely an easy or comfortable process when imperfect people come face to face with how they have wounded one another. It is only by finding healing for the soul as we unite ourselves evermore fully to Christ that we will gain the spiritual clarity to discern what it means to speak and act mercifully in such situations and not according to our passions.  

If we are truly in Christ, we must struggle to do what we can each day to treat those we are most inclined to disregard and condemn as we would like them to treat us.  We must take every opportunity to convey the mercy we have received from Christ to our neighbors, especially those we consider our enemies.  When we fail to do so, we must use our weakness to fuel our humility before the Lord and our sense of unworthiness to judge anyone else.  We must pray, fast, give to the needy, and mindfully reject the nonsense in our own minds, and in all factions of our culture today, that would encourage us to treat anyone as anything less than a living icon of God.  As hard as it is to accept, whether we are sharing in the life of Christ is most clearly revealed in how we treat those we find it hardest to love.  This is not a matter of being conventionally religious or moral, but of whether we are acquiring the purity of heart necessary to see God, especially as He is present to us each day of our lives in those we are least inclined to see as beloved neighbors.  That is the ultimate test of whether we are becoming radiant with the gracious divine mercy of the Lord as His sons and daughters.