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.

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.