“The People Who Sat in Darkness Have Seen a Great Light”: Homily for the Sunday After Theophany (Epiphany) in the Orthodox Christian Church

 

Ephesians 4:7-13; Matthew 4:12-17

          In this season we celebrate the great feast of Theophany, of Christ’s baptism when the voice of the Father identified Him as the Son of God and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in the form of a dove. Epiphany reveals that the Savior Who appears from the waters of the Jordan to illumine our world of darkness is the God-Man, a Person of the Holy Trinity.  He is baptized to restore us, and the creation itself, to the ancient glory for which we were created.  He comes to make all who wandered in the blindness of sin and death radiant with the brilliant light of holiness.

        Tragically, our first parents turned away from their high calling and ushered in the realm of corruption that we know all too well, both in the brokenness of our own hearts and in our relationships with one another.  God gave Adam and Eve garments of skin when they left Paradise after they chose to serve their own self-centeredness instead of Him.  Through their disobedience, they had become aware that they were naked and were cast into the world as we know it. They tried to become human apart from God, Who made them in His image, and their nakedness showed that they had repudiated their vocation to become like Him in holiness.  Having stripped themselves of their original glory, they were reduced to mortal flesh and destined for slavery to their passions and to the grave.   Because of them, the creation itself was “subjected to futility…” (Rom. 8:20)  We have all followed in their way of proud self-centeredness, which inevitably leads to spiritual blindness and despair.

        As we prepared for Theophany, we heard this hymn: “Make ready, O Zebulon, and prepare, O Nephtali, and you, River Jordan, cease your flow and receive with joy the Master coming to be baptized. And you, Adam, rejoice with the first mother, and hide not yourselves as you did of old in paradise; for having seen you naked, He appeared to clothe you with the first robe. Yea, Christ has appeared desiring to renew the whole creation.”   If it seems strange to think of Christ being baptized in order to clothe Adam and Eve, remember St. Paul’s teaching that “as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”  (Gal. 3:27)   In baptism, Jesus Christ clothes us with a garment of light, restoring us to our original vocation to become like God in holiness.  He delivers us from the nakedness and vulnerability of slavery to our own passions and to the fear of the grave.  Through His and our baptism, He makes us participants in His restoration and fulfillment of the human person. He is baptized in order to save Adam and Eve, all their descendants, and the entire creation, fulfilling the glorious purposes for which He breathed life into us in the first place.

        Our lives after baptism are not, however, without pain, disease, death, and other sorrows.  The more we are illumined by His light, the more clearly we will see the darkness that remains within us.  In contrast with the divine glory of the appearance of our Lord, the darkness of sin becomes all the more apparent.  In the aftermath of Christ’s birth, Herod the Great had all the young boys in the region of Bethlehem murdered. Today’s gospel reading refers to the Forerunner’s arrest by Herod Antipas for prophetically denouncing the king’s immorality.  After the one who baptized Him was arrested, the Lord went to “Galilee of the Gentiles” to begin His public ministry in fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy that “’the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.’” (Matt. 4:15-16)

        The Jews who suffered under the oppression of the Romans and their client kings knew all too well about darkness, death, and crushed hopes.   Their homeland was controlled by foreigners who worshiped other gods and exploited the people.  Understandably, the dominant expectation among the Jews was for a Messiah like King David to defeat their enemies and establish a reign of national righteousness.  Jesus Christ, however, rejected the temptation to become an earthly king throughout His ministry, from His testing by Satan in the desert to His crucifixion.  He repudiated the idolatrous attempt to identify the heavenly reign with any version of politics or religion as usual in our world of corruption, for they can not help us attain the purity of heart necessary to see God.   Even though the Savior did not seek earthly power, the powerful still viewed Him as such a threat that a wicked king tried to kill him as a small child and the Roman Empire crucified Him at the request of corrupt religious leaders.  He rose in glory over the very worst that those whose hearts were full of darkness could do to their enemies.  Our true hope is in Him, not in any of the false gods that tempt us today to seek first something other than His kingdom.

        We are baptized into Christ’s death in order to rise up with Him into a life of holiness in which we regain the robe of light rejected by our first parents. In every aspect of our lives, we must become radiant with the divine glory shared with us by the New Adam.  In order to do so, we must find healing for the passions that have darkened our hearts and distorted our relationships even with those we love most in this life.  It does not matter whether we are at home, work, school, or other settings, we must reject the temptation to become blinded by pride, lust, hatred, anger, resentment, or the desire to dominate others.  If we have put on Christ in baptism, we must become living icons of His salvation and peace in every thought, word, and deed.

        For that to happen, we must be on guard for all the ways in which we have become accustomed to “the region and shadow of death.”  That requires struggling mindfully each day to obey the Lord’s command: “Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”  Because the Savior has hallowed the water and the entire creation through His baptism, we must remember that nothing in our life and world is intrinsically evil or profane.  No dimension of God’s good creation requires us to return to the nakedness of passion in any way.  Theophany reveals that we are always on holy ground and must speak, act, and think as those who wear a garment of light.  Though we fall short of fulfilling that goal each day, we must constantly strive to turn away from corruption and embrace our high calling “until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”  That is His gracious will for us all.

        If we are to discern how to fulfill our vocation to bear witness to our Lord in the midst of a world still enslaved to the fear of death, we must focus on opening even the darkest corners of our own souls to the brilliant healing light of Christ.  Doing so requires resisting the temptation to pretend that we know the hearts of others and are in a position to judge them, for that is simply a distraction from doing “the one thing needful” of hearing and obeying the Word of God from the depths of our hearts.  Doing so requires constant vigilance against allowing self-centered desire to corrupt our souls and distort our vision of ourselves, our neighbors, and our world.  Doing so requires turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, and treating others as we would have them treat us, especially when we think we are justified in responding in kind to those we consider our enemies.    Doing so requires turning away from whatever fuels our passions so that we may build peaceable relationships even with those we find it hardest to love.  As we celebrate Theophany in “the region and shadow of death,” let us focus mindfully on living each day as those who have died to sin and risen up into a new life of holiness through the Lord Who has baptized by John in the Jordan for our salvation.  Anything else is a distraction from embracing the full meaning and purpose of our baptism as those who now wear a garment of light and are called to become living epiphanies of the salvation of the world each day of our lives in every thought, word, and deed.

Homily for Theophany (Epiphany) in the Orthodox Church

 

Matthew 3:13-17; Titus 2:11-14; 3:4-7

          Today we celebrate that Jesus Christ is truly the Son of God and One of  the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity.  At His baptism by St. John the Forerunner in the Jordan, the voice of the Father proclaims, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,” and the Holy Spirit descends upon Him in the form of a dove.  The meaning of the Feast of Christmas is fulfilled at Theophany, for now it is made clear that the One born in Bethlehem is truly God come to restore our fallen humanity and to renew the entire creation as the God-Man.  The Savior now enters the flowing water of a river in order to make it holy, in order to bring His blessing upon the world that He created.  The entire creation was subjected to futility because of the rebellion of our first parents, and now the New Adam comes to restore it and us.  As St. Paul wrote, “the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now” for it also “will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.“  ( Rom. 8: 21-22)

At Epiphany, we celebrate that the Creator has become part of the creation in order to make it a new heaven and a new earth.   At Theophany, we celebrate that no dimension of our life or world is intrinsically profane or cut off from sharing in the holiness of God.  All things, physical and spiritual, visible and invisible, are called to participate in the divine glory that our Lord has brought to the world, to become even now signs of the coming fullness of God’s Kingdom.  He sanctified our flesh and blood at His birth, and at His baptism He demonstrates that we, too, are saved along with the rest of the creation, for it is through water that we share in His life.  “As many of you as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ.”  In baptism, we receive the garment of light that Adam and Eve lost when they degraded themselves and the entire creation through slavery to sin and death.

When we bless water at the conclusion of Liturgy today, we will participate in our Lord’s fulfillment of His gracious purposes for all reality.  Holy water is a sign that God desires everything to find restoration and perfection in His Kingdom.  Though we pollute it and it often seems like our enemy in storms and floods, water is fundamentally God’s gift to sustain our lives.  We simply cannot live without it, and neither can anything else in nature.   By entering into the Jordan at His baptism, Christ has restored and fulfilled water’s life-giving purpose as a sign of His gracious will for every dimension of the universe that He spoke into existence.

At Epiphany house blessings, the priest sprinkles holy water in every room, which is a sign of God’s blessing upon even the small details and physical settings of our daily lives.  The house blessing is also a calling to sanctify every aspect of ourselves as we become more fully the distinctive human persons God created us to be in the divine image and likeness.  To do so requires entering more fully into Christ’s baptism such that we die to sin and rise up with Him in holiness. The healing of our souls is not a one-time event, but an ongoing journey of sharing more fully in the restoration that He has brought to the world.  True Christianity is not an escape from any of the challenges of life, but instead the path for becoming an icon of the fulfillment of the human person, and of the creation itself, in God.

This Theophany, let us live as those who have become epiphanies of what happens when people put on Christ like a garment.   As St. Paul wrote to St. Titus, that means “to renounce irreligion and worldly passions, and to live sober, upright, and godly lives in this world; awaiting our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, Who gave Himself for us to redeem us from all iniquity and to purify for Himself a people of His own who are zealous for good deeds.”  Doing so is our only way to provide the world a much needed sign of its salvation in the Lord revealed as God in the waters of the Jordan.

 

Homily for the Sunday Before the Nativity of Christ 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 time full of food, family, and fun.  Contrary to popular opinion in our culture, Christmas is not a celebration of this world on its own terms or of ourselves. We are preparing to celebrate nothing less than how the God-Man has entered fully into our life and world, becoming truly one of us even as He remains truly divine and makes us “partakers of the divine nature” by grace.  For the healing and restoration of the human person and of creation itself, He was born to fulfill a kingdom that stands in prophetic judgment over our inclination to place our hope in what is passing away and can never truly satisfy and sustain us as 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 city, kingdom, or culture, but through a history characterized by corruption, idolatry, slavery, exile, and bitter disappointment.   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) As we read in the Psalms, “Do not put your trust in princes…in whom there is no help. His spirit departs, he returns to his earth; In that very day his plans perish.” (Ps. 146:3-4)

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 shying away from recalling these horrific events, Matthew highlights them, for he writes in the genealogy that “David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah.” When he wanted to build a Temple for the Lord, God told David, “You shall not build a house for My name, because you have been a man of war and have shed blood.” (1 Chron. 28:3) Doing so was part of being a powerful ruler, but wallowing in the blood of those who bear God’s image remains a paradigmatic sign of the slavery to the fear of death that sin has brought to the world.  It inevitably threatens grave damage to the soul, which is a reminder that our salvation does not come through the rule of any earthly kingdom or nation.

Even David’s son the wise Solomon, who did build the Temple, 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.  Those who distort biblical faith today in the service of some arrangement of earthly power inevitably fall into the idolatry of placing their hope in the false gods of this world and demonizing those who stand in their way.  If we are truly entrusting ourselves to Christ, then 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) No nation, agenda, or geographical area should ever become an idol for us or an excuse not to obey the Lord’s teaching to love our neighbors as ourselves.

The shock of bitter exile 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 seeking earthly glory or power that these and other prophets foreshadowed and foretold the coming of Christ.  They entrusted themselves to God, regardless of whether things seemed to be going well or poorly for them according to conventional standards.   Far from making political calculations or seeking vengeance against anyone, 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 because they lived in expectation, not merely of a certain course of events for themselves and their nation, but 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 serves only to inflame our passions and blind us to the humanity of those who seem to stand in our way.  Even without being taken away into exile, we typically hope for nothing more than a somewhat better life in Babylon, however we may define 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 Gentile.  The presence of these particular women in the genealogy foreshadows the scandalous, but also perfectly 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. 

When the Son of God became a human person, He did not do so by being born into a family of great 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 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, they repudiated the idolatry of serving themselves or any earthly agenda as they came to hope only in the Lord.

  As we prepare for Christmas, let us embrace the calling to hope in nothing and no one 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.  They wanted to be like the other nations and endured exile in foreign lands as a result. We wander as aliens from the everlasting joy of His Kingdom whenever we put serving ourselves or any worldly goal before obedience to Him.  We exile ourselves from His blessed reign whenever we view or treat anyone as anything less than His living icon or as a foreigner or stranger who is excluded from His love.  Like Daniel and the three holy youths, it is time for us to refuse to worship false gods 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.   

 

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

 

Luke 14:16-24

              Even before the internet and cell phones, people struggled to remain focused on what was truly important.  Now we must contend not only with constant messages, images, and other forms of electronic distraction, but also with passions that tempt us to be mindful about just about anything other than preparing to welcome Christ into our lives and world at His Nativity.  All the more is that the case when worrying about everything from the persistent problems of the world and of our families to meeting the challenges of paying for presents, travel, and other seasonal expenses threatens to convince us that there are matters more important than accepting the Savior’s gracious invitation to enter fully into the joy of the banquet of the Kingdom of Heaven.  He calls us to embrace our true vocation not only during divine services or in the eschatological future, but in every moment of our lives, regardless of the circumstances in which we live.    

             The people in today’s gospel reading had made themselves blind to the urgency of their calling, for they rejected the invitation to enter into the joy of the great banquet that represents the Kingdom of God.  They did so for the most mundane reasons:   One owned real estate, another had animals, and a third was married.  They somehow convinced themselves that the commonplace circumstance of having regular responsibilities justified their refusal.  After the invited guests refused to attend, 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.”   Even as God wants all to be saved, the master in the parable wanted as many people as possible to share in the blessings of the festival.

        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 authority of the Pharisees, repudiated the temptation to become an earthly king of the Jews, and extended the blessing 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” brought in from the streets to the great banquet represent the Gentiles, who were not the descendants of Abraham and did not know the law and prophets of the Old Testament.  Especially as we prepare for Christmas, we must remember that we are those with no ancestral claim to the blessings of the Messiah.  Our hope for entering into heavenly joy has nothing to do with having the right ethnic heritage or mastering a set of religious laws.  Apart from the mercy of the Savior, 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. We must never, then, fall into the idolatry of thinking that serving the false gods of nationality, ethnicity, or political ideology has anything at all to do with entering into life eternal.  If anything, they easily become obstacles to our salvation in light of our passionate attachment to seeing ourselves and other people light of the categories of the fallen world.   

         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. Nationality, ethnicity, and political affiliation do not limit God’s gracious purposes for us in any way.

             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 at all, but she chose to remain focused on hearing and obeying the Word of God.  Likewise, no one forces us.  Despite our personal brokenness, we all have the ability to respond to Christ with the obedience of humble faith.

         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 very 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.  Otherwise, we will bring judgment upon ourselves as those who refused to orient our lives toward “the one thing needful” of hearing and obeying the Word of God.   

         Contrary to some of our favorite excuses, the conventional responsibilities of life are in no way incompatible with uniting ourselves to Christ, for they provide opportunities to reorient the desires of our hearts to God as we love and serve Him in our neighbors.  Nothing but our own lack of mindfulness keeps 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 in this and at all other times of the year: "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 of our lives 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 become further enslaved to our passions.  The path we take will shape us decisively, leading 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.  If we remain so enslaved to our passions that we refuse to welcome Christ into our hearts and lives with integrity on a daily basis, then we will exclude ourselves from the joy that He is born to bring to the world.  Before His holy glory, we are all “the poor and maimed and blind and lame” who must open our hearts to receive Him through prayer, fasting, generosity to our needy neighbors, and confession and repentance of our sins.   That is how we may accept His gracious invitation to dine at the Heavenly Banquet.  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.

"Woman, You Are Freed from Your Infirmity": Homily for the Twenty-fourth Sunday After Pentecost & Tenth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

Ephesians 2:14-22; Luke 13:10-17

            When Jesus Christ was teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath, He saw a woman who was bent over and could not straighten up.  She had been that way for eighteen years.  The Lord 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)

           In these weeks of the Nativity Fast, we pray, fast, give to the needy, and confess and turn away from our sins as we prepare to celebrate the wonderful news of the Incarnation of the Son of God, the glorious proclamation of our Lord’s birth at Christmas for the salvation of the world.  Today’s gospel reading reminds us that Christ does not come to place even more burdens on the backs of broken people that will never help them to gain the strength to straighten up.  He is not born to enslave us further to chronic, debilitating infirmities of whatever kind.  No, He has united divinity and humanity in Himself in order to share His healing and restoration of the human person with all who respond to Him with humble faith.   That is a very good thing for us who are well acquainted with illness, pain, disability, and death.  We also 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 of the divine glory.   Indeed, “the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now.” (Rom. 8:22)

            Joachim and Anna knew long-term frustration and pain all too well, for like Abraham and Sarah they were childless into their old age.  God heard their prayers, however, and gave them Mary, who would in turn give birth to the Savior Who came to liberate us all from sin and death.  We celebrate tomorrow the feast of St. Anna’s conception of the Theotokos, which foreshadows the coming of the Lord to free us from the infirmities that hinder our entrance into the blessedness of the Kingdom.

            The history of the Hebrews was preparatory for the coming of the Christ, the Messiah in Whom God’s promises are fulfilled and extended to all who receive Him with faith, regardless of their ethnic or national heritage.  Christ did not come to promote one nation, culture, ethnic group, or political faction over another or to set up an earthly kingdom of any kind in any part of the world.  He is born to fulfill our original calling as those created in the image and likeness of God so that we might become “partakers of the divine nature” in Him.  He unites divinity and humanity in Himself and makes it possible for us to share in the eternal life of the Holy Trinity as distinct, unique persons who become radiant with the divine glory by grace. God breaks the laws of nature, at least as we know them in our world of corruption, in order to save us, enabling elderly women like Sarah and Anna to conceive and bear children and a young virgin named Mary to become the Theotokos, the mother of His Son, Who Himself rose from the dead after three days in the tomb.  He is born at Christmas for nothing less than our liberation through breaking the bonds of death and healing every dimension of the brokenness of our life in this world of corruption.     

           The Lord surely did not treat the woman in today’s reading as being undeserving of His mercy due to her disability, her sex, or any other human characteristic.  Instead, He revealed her true identity as a beloved person, a daughter of Abraham, by enabling her to regain the basic human capability of standing up straight for the first time in years.   On that particular Sabbath day, Jesus Christ treated her as a unique, cherished child of God who was not created for slavery to a wretched existence of pain, disease, and despair, but for blessing, health, and joy. 

            The good news of Christmas is that the Savior is born to set us all free from captivity to the decay, corruption, and weakness that have taken root in our souls and in our world. He comes to deliver us from being defined by infirmities of any kind so that we may enter into the joyous freedom of the children of God.  The New Adam comes to us through the holy obedience of His virgin mother, the New Eve, to heal every dimension of our brokenness, including the common temptation for men to view women in light of their own passions and to treat them as being somehow less in the image and likeness of God than themselves.  The brokenness of the relationship between man and woman stems from the fall of our first parents and is an abiding sign of the corruption of a world that has not yet embraced its restoration in the New Adam, Who was born of a woman, the New Eve, for our salvation.  The supremely honored position of the Theotokos in the life of the Church shows that the denigration of women is antithetical to our salvation.  As St. Paul wrote, “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) Our Savior comes to deliver us all from slavery to the bondage of seeing and treating anyone as less than a living icon of God for any reason.

Especially in these weeks of preparation for Christmas, we must remember that salvation came to the world through the free, humble obedience of a particular Palestinian Jewish teenaged girl who said “Yes!” to God with every ounce of her being. The only way to prepare to welcome the Savior at His Nativity is to become like her as we receive Him with humble faith, even as we turn away from all that keeps us weakened and distorted by our passions, including those that lead to hatred and condemnation of those we consider our enemies.   As St. Paul taught, “Christ is our peace, Who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in His flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that He might create in Himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the Cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end.”

The particular division that the Apostle addressed was between Jew and Gentile, but the same truth applies to division among all who bear His image and likeness.   As Gentiles who have become heirs to the fulfillment of the promises to Abraham by faith in Christ, who are we to say that anyone is beyond receiving the merciful lovingkindness of the Lord for which we pray?  Who are we to look at anyone through the darkened lenses of our own passions and to declare that they are anymore beyond redemption than we are? If we, despite our sinfulness and lack of any ancestral claim to the blessings of the Messiah, “are no longer strangers and sojourners, but …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,” then we must treat every neighbor—male or female and of whatever nationality, affiliation, or ideology-- as a beloved child of God to whom the Savior’s gracious proclamation,   “Woman, you are freed from your infirmity,” is addressed.

Since there is much within all of us that would rather condemn our enemies than see them as being no more in need of the Lord’s healing mercy than we are, we need these blessed weeks of Advent to pray, fast, give alms, and confess and repent of our sins so that we will gain the spiritual clarity to see that the One born at Christmas comes to loose us all from our infirmities and bring us into the blessedness of His Kingdom.  He delivered Joachim and Anna from barrenness and comes to set us all free from the sorrow of our first parents as daughters and sons of Abraham by faith.  The healing force of His words, “Woman, you are freed from your infirmity,” extends to us all.  Now is the time to prepare mindfully to enter into the great joy brought to the world by our Lord, the New Adam, Who was born of a woman, the New Eve, for our salvation. 

 

 

 

Receiving Christ at His Nativity like a Blind Beggar: Homily for the Twenty-third Sunday After Pentecost & Fourteenth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

Ephesians 2:4-10; Luke 18:35-43

On the last couple of Sundays, our gospel readings have reminded us what not to do if we want to prepare to welcome Christ into our lives and world at His Nativity.  The rich fool was so focused on money and possessions that he completely neglected the state of his soul.  The rich young ruler walked away in sadness when it became clear that he loved his wealth more than God and neighbor.  The weeks before Christmas are the most commercialized time of the year when we are all bombarded with messages that this season is primarily about having lots of money to spend on our perfect families and good-looking friends.  Since the Lord warned so clearly of the folly of seeking first anything other than His Kingdom, it is sadly ironic that the celebration of His Nativity so often occurs in ways that tempt us to the idolatry of worshiping the good things of this life as ends in themselves.     

In contrast, today’s gospel reading gives us a model of how to receive the Lord for our healing.  The blind beggar was the complete opposite of the rich, powerful, and popular people of any time and place.  He had to sit by the side of the road and beg; there was no realistic hope that the course of his life would ever change.  He surely had no illusions about his circumstances, for he was defined in that setting by his disability.  But when told that the Savior was passing by, the poor man grasped at his one chance for healing and a new life.  That is why He refused to stop calling out loudly for Christ’s help even when others criticized him, saying “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”  The more they criticized him, the louder he shouted.  He did not care what others thought of him in that moment, but was determined to do all he could to receive the Lord’s healing mercy.  And after Christ restored his sight, the man followed Him and gave thanks to God.

One of the reasons that we need these weeks of the Nativity Fast in preparation for Christmas is that, unlike the blind beggar, we often lack a sense of urgency about presenting our darkened souls to Christ for healing. We have learned to ignore our spiritual blindness by distracting ourselves in the vain effort to find fulfillment by abusing God’s blessings to gratify our self-centered desires.  Since we are not literally blind and destitute, it is much easier for us to ignore our true state than it was for him. In our affluent society, we do not have to be rich in order to wrap ourselves in a warm blanket of creature comforts as we indulge in food, drink, entertainment, and other pleasures to distract ourselves from seeing clearly where we stand before the Lord and in relation to our neighbors.  We are often so much in the dark that we feel no sense of urgency to call out to Christ from the depths of our hearts for His healing mercy.  

The blind beggar shows us how to open the eyes of our darkened souls to the light of Christ.  The man “cried, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’  And those who were in front rebuked him, telling him to be silent; but he cried out all the more, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’”  He provides us with the basis of the Jesus Prayer, the heartfelt plea for healing, help, strength, and restoration that we should use often.  Others told him to be quiet, but this fellow called out to the Lord with even greater intensity.   When we pray the Jesus Prayer or otherwise cry out to the Lord from the depths of our hearts, we will very likely be tempted strongly to think about or do something else.  There is much within us all that would rather embrace some distraction that will enable us to stay in the dark and gratify our passions.  When that happens, we must pray with even greater intensity and humility as we lift up our conflicted and compromised hearts to the Lord. 

Christ asked the blind beggar, ‘”What do you want me to do for you?” He said, “Lord, let me receive my sight.”  And Jesus said to him, ‘Receive your sight; your faith has made you well.”’  We must open our darkened souls to the brilliant light of the Savior in order to gain our sight, in order to know the Lord from the depths of our hearts as we share more fully in His blessed eternal life.  We are preparing to receive Christ more fully into our lives at His Nativity, and what better way is there to do that than to be present to Him with our minds in our hearts as we call for His mercy?  Fasting and almsgiving will strengthen our prayers in this regard.   Struggling with both disciplines will reveal our weakness before our passions and should fuel our humility and sense of urgent need for the Lord’s healing.  They are also practices that help to purify the desires of our hearts and direct them toward fulfillment in God.  They teach us that we actually can live without gratifying every self-centered desire. The less focused we are on catering to our taste buds and stomachs, the more resources we should have to share with those in need.  Growing in selfless compassion for our neighbors is an essential dimension of being illumined with the light of Christ.  There is no more direct way to serve Him than by limiting our self-centeredness and self-indulgence in order to help “the least of these” with whom He identified Himself.

As we prepare to celebrate the birth of the God-Man at Christmas, we must be distracted neither by obsession with earthly cares nor by an unhealthy focus on the darkness that remains within us.   As St. Porphyrios taught, “Don’t occupy yourself with rooting out evil.  Christ does not wish us to occupy ourselves with the passions, but with the opposite.  Channel the water, that is, all the strength of your soul to the flowers and you will enjoy their beauty, their fragrance and their freshness.  You won’t become saints by hounding after evil.  Ignore evil.  Look towards Christ and He will save you.”[1]  In the remaining weeks of the Nativity Fast, we must look toward Christ with the urgent expectation of that blind beggar who let nothing stop him from persistently calling for mercy from the depths of his heart.  If we do so, then we will have the eyes to behold the glorious light of the Lord when He is born for our salvation.  

We must be careful, however, to resist the temptation to distort the spiritual disciplines of this season into legalistic religious requirements that we imagine could somehow impress or appease God.  St. Paul reminded the Ephesians that such a mindset has nothing at all to do with how we may share in the life of our Lord, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God—not because of works, lest any man should boast.”  The Lord’s restoration of sight to the blind beggar conveys clearly that we need something of a completely different order than even the strictest type of legal or moral observance.  The blind man required nothing less than unfathomable divine mercy to regain his sight. The Savior’s healing ministry reveals that He came to restore and fulfill us in holiness as His living icons, neither to give us what we deserve nor simply to inspire us to better behavior.

After he received his sight, the blind man “followed Jesus, glorifying God; and all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God.”  The same must be true of us, for as the Apostle taught, “we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” We must embrace our identity as those who have been illumined by Christ in baptism and not fall back into the blind idolatry of serving only ourselves. Let us do precisely that as we continue to pray, fast, give alms, and confess and repent of our sins during the Nativity Fast.  There is no other way to prepare to welcome Christ into our lives at His Nativity than to become like that persistent, humble blind beggar who knew that he needed nothing other than the lovingkindness of the Lord and who then glorified God in thanks for his healing.  

 

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[1] St. Porphyrios, Wounded by Love:  The Life and Wisdom of Saint Porphyrios, 135.

Following the Theotokos in Becoming a Living Temple of the God-Man in Preparation for Christmas: Homily for the Twenty-second Sunday After Pentecost & Thirteenth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

Galatians 6:11-18; Luke 18:18-27

 

            Today we continue to celebrate the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple, where she grew up in preparation to become the Living Temple as the Virgin Mother of the God-Man, our Lord Jesus Christ.  As we sing in celebration of this feast, “Today the Virgin is the foreshadowing of the pleasure of God, and the beginning of the preaching of the salvation of mankind. Thou hast appeared in the Temple of God openly and hast gone before, preaching Christ to all.”  For the eternal Son of God to become truly one of us for our salvation, He had to have a mother who gained the spiritual strength to say “Yes” to God with every ounce of her being.   As one so fully receptive to the Lord and organically united with Him, “she is truly the heavenly tabernacle.”  This feast obviously points us to Christmas, the Nativity in the flesh of our Savior, Who makes it possible for us to become “partakers of the divine nature” by grace.  In Him, we may all become His holy living temples, for through the Holy Spirit Christ dwells in our hearts, enabling us to become radiant with the divine energies in every aspect of our lives as whole embodied persons. The blessed example of the Theotokos, who entered the Temple in Jerusalem in order to prepare to become the Living Temple, shows us what the season of the Nativity Fast is about, for we must all take up the struggle to prepare in order to receive Christ more fully into our lives at Christmas.

 

            There is much in our world today that would distract us from focusing on doing so this time of year.  People in our culture have some awareness that Christmas commemorates the birth of Christ, but it is tragic that the extraordinarily good news of the Incarnation of the God-Man is so often reduced to a cultural and commercial celebration that has almost nothing to do with sharing personally in the healing that the Savior has brought to the world.  In order to enter into the great joy of the Lord’s birth, we must pray, fast, give generously to our needy neighbors, and confess and repent of our sins in order to gain the spiritual clarity necessary to unite ourselves to Him in holiness as His living temples. Such spiritual disciplines are not legalistic religious requirements that somehow make us worthy of Christ.  They are, instead, ways of learning to seek first the heavenly kingdom, opportunities to redirect and purify the desires of our hearts for true fulfillment in God so that, like the Theotokos, we will receive Him fully and without reservation.   

 

Today’s gospel reading provides us with a warning against subtle distortions of what it means to do so with integrity.  The rich man approached Christ not as the Son of God, but as merely a teacher of the Old Testament law, which he thought that he had obeyed perfectly from his youth.  In response to his question about how to find eternal life, the Lord challenged the man to confront his spiritual weakness by saying, “Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” This was a command that He knew he lacked the spiritual strength to obey, for the man was enslaved to the love of money and the comfort and power that it brings.   Upon hearing this command, the rich man did not receive Christ joyfully, but “was sad at this word, and went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.” (Mk. 10:22) 

 

The Savior then shocked everyone by saying, “How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!  For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”  The common assumption then was that wealth was God’s reward for those who were righteous. Since the man was one of very few rich people in that time and place, he and his neighbors surely assumed that his possessions were due to his exemplary behavior.  Their true spiritual significance in his life was very different, of course, for he had come to love his wealth more than God and neighbor and, thus, obviously had failed to fulfill the greatest of the commandments. As St. Basil the Great wrote of the rich young ruler, “Those who love their neighbors as themselves possess nothing more than their neighbor; yet surely, you seem to have great possessions!  How else can this be, but that you have preferred your own enjoyment to the consolation of the many…For the more you abound in wealth, the more you lack in love.”[1]   Even though this fellow departed in sadness, the Lord did not condemn the man, but concluded with the statement: “What is impossible with men is possible with God.”  In other words, there remains hope for those who come to see clearly where they stand before the Lord and humbly call out for mercy as they become His holy temples by grace. 

 

If we want to prepare to welcome the Savior into our lives and world more fully this Christmas, then we must find healing for our love of our money and possessions by generosity toward our needy neighbors.  We must also be on guard against the temptation of spiritual pride and self-righteousness.  Perhaps we imagine that being Orthodox justifies us in condemning people of other faiths or those whose behavior apparently does not conform to Christian standards. When we face such temptations, we must remember the Lord’s words: “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.” (Lk. 12:48) Since we confess that we have received the fullness of God’s truth, we are held accountable to the highest standards and obviously have no business condemning anyone else.  As the Lord also said, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” (Matt. 7:1-2) And if that is not a sufficient warning of how we put our souls at risk by judging others, remember how Christ interpreted the commandments against murder and adultery in the Sermon on the Mount. He said that anger and insult make us guilty of murder and that lust makes us guilty of adultery.  He calls us to nothing less than the purity of heart necessary to see God.  (Matt. 5:8, 21-22, 27-28) Which of us can claim to have achieved that?   

 

Before such standards, we must learn to say with St. Paul, “far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.”  Against those who insisted on the outward legalistic requirement of circumcision for Gentile converts, the Apostle taught that “neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.”  That is precisely what Christ taught the rich young ruler by challenging him to confront his need for gracious healing beyond what he could acquire by legal observance.  Even the most exemplary forms of behavior cannot deliver us from slavery to the fear of death or make us participants by grace in the eternal life of our Lord.  But what is not possible for us by our own power is possible in the God-Man Who is born at Christmas to make us His holy living temples. Now is the time to prepare to receive Him for our salvation at His Nativity as did the Theotokos, who entered into the Temple in order to prepare to become so fully receptive and obedient to Him that she gained the spiritual strength to say “Yes” to God with every ounce of her being.  That is how she became “truly the heavenly tabernacle.” Our calling is to follow her blessed example so that we also may become radiant with holiness as a “new creation” in the God-Man born for our salvation at Christmas.   

 

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[1] Basil the Great, “To the Rich,” as quoted in Andrew Geleris, Money and Salvation (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2022), 54.