Homily for the Twenty-first Sunday After Pentecost & Sixth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

Galatians 2:16-20; Luke 8:26-39

 

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

            If we need a clear example of how the Lord has extended the ancient promises to Abraham to all people to restore the beauty of our darkened souls, we need look no further than today’s gospel reading about a man so miserable that he was barely recognizable as a human person.  He was so filled with demons that he called himself “Legion.” (A legion was a large unit of the Roman army made up of 5,000 soldiers.) The forces of evil had disintegrated his personality.  He was naked, like Adam and Eve who had stripped themselves of the divine glory and were cast out of Paradise into our world of corruption.  He lived among the tombs, and death is “the wages of sin” that came into the world as a consequence of our first parents’ refusal to fulfill the calling to become like God in holiness.  This miserable man living in the cemetery was so terrifying that guards tried unsuccessfully to restrain him with chains.  People understandably feared that he would do to them what Cain had done to Abel.  But when this fellow broke free, he would run off to the desert by himself, alone with his demons.  The Gadarene demoniac is a vivid icon of the pathetic suffering of humanity enslaved to death, stripped naked of the divine glory, and isolated in fear.  He embodies the tragic disintegration of the human person that the Savior came to heal.   

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

            Perhaps there is no clearer image of how evil debases our personhood than the plight of this miserable man.    The corrupting forces of darkness were so powerful in his life that he had lost all awareness of being a person in God’s image and likeness.  We can also become so consumed by our inflamed passions that we become blind to our identity as living icons of God.  When that happens, we would rather that Christ leave us alone to wallow in the mire of our sins than to heal us.  We then become overwhelmed with fear that His salvation will simply torment us, for often we cannot even imagine living without the corruption that has become so deeply embedded in our hearts and evident in our habits.    

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

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

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

            The liberation of the Gadarene demoniac also provides a clear demonstration that the healing of our souls is not a reward for good behavior for those who follow the rules.  It is clear that this man did nothing at all to earn or merit his deliverance. He lived in a largely Gentile area, which is shown by the presence of pigs, which the Jews considered unclean.  No one would have expected the Messiah to come to his aid as a demon-possessed Gentile, naked and living in a cemetery.  His restoration reminds us of St. Paul’s teaching that we are not “justified by works of the Law but through faith in Jesus Christ.” The formerly demon-possessed man’s faith was evident in  “proclaiming throughout the whole city all that Jesus had done for him,” especially since he knew how his neighbors had viewed him. 

St. Paul wrote that “I have been crucified with Christ; 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.” The Apostle united himself to the Lord’s victory over sin and death through His cross and resurrection after the Risen Lord appeared to him in a blinding light on the road to Damascus, where he was headed as a Pharisee to persecute Christians.  Christ delivered the Gadarene demoniac from demons and St. Paul from physical blindness that symbolized his spiritual blindness.  Neither had initially sought out Christ and both knew that they had no one to thank other than the merciful Savior.  That is how they came to have faith in Him, not as a passive feeling or an emotional experience, but as they learned to entrust every dimension of their lives to Him.  They lived in gratitude as they took up their crosses daily to share more fully by grace in the life of the God-Man.  

Our encounter with Christ is surely less dramatic than theirs, but the spiritual truth is the same.  We must not thank ourselves for becoming Orthodox Christians or for whatever level of spiritual growth and healing we currently possess.  We must cooperate with the gracious divine energies as we embrace the struggle daily to become our true selves as those who are like God in holiness.  The more that we do so, the more we will know our own brokenness and our need for restoration that we cannot give ourselves.  The more that we do so, the less enslaved we will be to illusions of spiritual self-righteousness and moral pride over against anyone else.  Let us, then, be “crucified with Christ” and “live by faith in the Son of God” as we embrace the blessed life of  the God-Man in Whom we are becoming our true selves as beautiful living icons of God by grace.       

 

 

Homily for the Feast Day of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

Colossians 4:5-11, 14-18; Luke 10:16-21

We must be careful today to look for role models in the right places.  Our culture celebrates many powerful, wealthy, and famous people whose lives provide examples we should definitely not follow. One of the many reasons that we remember the Saints in the Orthodox Church is because they are wonderful examples of what it looks like when human persons truly become like Christ.  They shine brilliantly with holiness and inspire us to become like them as “partakers of the divine nature” by grace. The Saints comprise the great cloud of witnesses that encourages us to “run with endurance the race that is set before us” to the eternal joy of the Kingdom of Heaven.  (Heb. 12:1)    

On this feast day of the Holy, Glorious, All-Laudable Apostle and Evangelist Luke, we have an opportunity to celebrate the great witness to the Lord made by the Patron Saint of our parish.  Our small community is named in his honor and memory.  We see his image on our iconostasis and regularly ask him to pray for us in the Divine Liturgy.  Author of both a gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, as well as an iconographer and a physician, St. Luke died a martyr’s death at the age of 84.

One of the 70 Apostles sent out by the Lord to proclaim the good news, St. Luke was the only Gentile to write a canonized gospel.  Like St. Matthew, he includes the family tree or genealogy of the Savior, but he traces the Lord’s lineage all the way back to Adam, the first human being who lived before the distinction between Jew and Gentile.  By doing so, he showed that Christ came to bring all peoples and nations into the glory of His Kingdom.  As a Gentile, St. Luke’s own heritage did not place him in the house of Israel, and his gospel especially emphasizes the mercy of Christ for those considered cut off from God’s blessings.    

           The Lord rejoiced in today’s gospel reading that the Father hid His truth from the wise and prudent, but revealed Himself to babes, to humble and simple people with little standing in the eyes of the world.   Gentiles, the poor, the sick, and women got little respect in that time and place, but St. Luke presents the ministry of our Lord in a way that makes clear that the lowly and despised are often the ones most ready to receive the good news of Christ and enter into the joy of His Kingdom, precisely due to their humility. 

          For example, St. Luke tells us of the Virgin Mary’s obedient acceptance of the calling to become the Theotokos.  She sings the Magnificat in response, praising God for regarding the low estate of His handmaiden; for henceforth all generations will call her blessed.  A simple, unknown virgin girl miraculously became the living Temple of God; through her, the Savior came into the world.  In humble obedience and with purity of heart, she freely accepted a shocking pregnancy that put her own life and reputation at risk. She sings of a God who has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted the lowly, who has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.  

            The physician St. Luke describes the meeting between the pregnant Theotokos and the pregnant St. Elizabeth in which St. John the Forerunner leaped in the womb in the presence of the Savior. This very maternal scene coveys the vital importance of the role of women in the salvation of the world as well as the true humanity of Christ, Who has sanctified the womb.  It is a remarkable scene that few men of that time, or perhaps of any time, would have recognized as being so spiritually profound.

            St. Luke also writes of the astounding humility of Christ’s birth in a cave used as a barn, where the Son of God had the feeding trough of a farm animal for His crib.  Shepherds—poor, dirty, and on the margins of society-- were blessed as the first to hear of this event from the angels.  In the Lord’s first sermon in St. Luke’s gospel, He read a text that showed His love for the weak, the outcasts, and the suffering. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor…to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”  (Lk. 4:18-19) Those present in the synagogue that day liked the beginning of the sermon, but they hated the ending.  For the Lord reminded them that God at times worked through the great Old Testament prophets Elijah and Elisha to bless Gentiles instead of Jews.  When the people heard that, they literally tried to kill Christ by throwing Him off a cliff.  They wanted a Savior to make them first in this world by bringing them power and glory, not One Who came to save even then those they viewed as worthless enemies.

          St. Luke’s portrait of Christ demonstrates that His healing of the human person does not occur according to conventional social standards of who is important, powerful, or worthy.  In contrast to those who equated holiness with popularity and privilege, the Savior taught that the last will often be first in the Kingdom of Heaven and the first will often be last. (Lk. 13:30) To this day, the persistent struggles of weak, humble, and lowly outcasts often prepare them to respond to Christ with great joy.  In contrast, those addicted to their possessions, power, and social standing so easily entrust themselves to the things of this world and risk losing their own souls.  That was an uncomfortable and even dangerous message to proclaim in first-century Palestine, and it remains so in our time and place.   

          Even with so many being drawn to the Church today, ours remains a small, obscure parish in a region with very few Orthodox Christians.  St. Luke is an especially appropriate Patron Saint for us since, like the common people he described, our community has no special prominence or standing at all. There is no common ethnicity or other human characteristic holding us together. To put it bluntly, there is no earthly reason for our parish even to exist.   Our life together is a sign of nothing but God’s abundant grace and mercy for a very unlikely collection of people.            

St. Luke described the original Christian community in similar ways in the Acts of the Apostles.  By the power of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, people who spoke different languages were united together as the Body of Christ.  Both Jews and Romans persecuted them.  There were tensions in the Church between different ethnic and cultural groups.  Arguments raged over whether Gentiles had to be circumcised and obey the Jewish law before becoming Christians.  The Church as described by St. Luke was not wealthy, well-known, or powerful.   To follow Jesus Christ under those conditions was a difficult struggle.  In their weakness, however, the first Christians found God’s strength.  In their humility, they were lifted up by His power.  In their obedience, they became victors over their enemies by sharing in Christ’s triumph over sin and death in their own lives.

Let us celebrate our patronal feast by persisting in obedience to the Lord for Whom St. Luke gave his life, both throughout his long and varied ministry and as a martyr.  That means taking up the cross of being strangers to the proud ways of the world so that we may acquire the humble purity of heart necessary to experience the blessedness of the Kingdom.  To do so, we must offer our time, talents, and resources for the flourishing of our parish as a sign that the world’s healing does not come through the acclaim of the high and mighty, but through the faithfulness of meek and obscure people who together are being transformed by the Lord’s mercy into living icons of a reign that stands in sharp tension with the conventional ways of the world.  St. Luke is our role model in pursuing such a life together, not according to what is popular, easy, or widely celebrated, but as a sign that in Jesus Christ the ancient promises to Abraham are fulfilled and extended to all who bear the divine image and likeness.   Let us ask for the prayers of our Patron Saint even as we follow his example in continuing to run “with endurance the race that is set before us…” (Heb. 12:1) We could not ask for a better role model.

 

Homily for the Sunday of Holy Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council & Fourth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

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

 

Our culture tempts us to be constantly in a hurry and distracted.  We expect answers for the deep struggles of our lives with the speed of looking something up on the internet.  So many today have lost respect for the many years of preparation that it takes to develop skill and expertise.  The same is true of our disregard for the pursuit of wisdom, which typically comes through the long experience of a life well lived.  We must be on guard against becoming so accustomed to accepting quick, easy, and superficial answers that we lack the patience and focus necessary to mature to the point that we are able to bear good fruit for the Kingdom of God.

  

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

 

The 7th Ecumenical Council addressed matters that strike at the very heart of how we embrace the vocation to become like God in holiness in a world that so desperately needs the peace of Christ.  Too often, however, we think that iconography simply has to do with art history and is unrelated to the question of whether we are becoming more like Christ and gaining the strength to seek first His Kingdom in the midst of our world of corruption.  The icons are not merely beautiful visual objects for they proclaim the Gospel, reminding us that to become a truly human person is to become like Jesus Christ.  He has restored the beauty of the living icons of God who had become disfigured by slavery to despair, death, and decay. 

 

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

 

We do not have to be experienced farmers or gardeners to see that this parable calls us to fulfill our potential as those who bear the image of God.  Our vocation is to become more beautiful living icons of the Savior, and we diminish and distort ourselves when we refuse to become who God created us to be.  Plants must grow and flourish as the kinds of plants that they are in order to become healthy and bear fruit.  Farmers must care for them accordingly.  The sun, soil, moisture, and nutrients must be appropriate for that particular type of plant in order for them to flourish. For us to mature to the point that we bear good fruit for the Kingdom, we must attend to the health of our souls with the patience and focus of a careful farmer or gardener.  If, to the contrary, we become distracted and careless for whatever reason, we put ourselves at grave risk of being “choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life.”   

 

In today’s epistle lesson, St. Paul urged St. Titus to tell the people to focus on doing good deeds and helping others in great need.  He wanted them to avoid being distracted by foolish arguments and divisions, “for they are unprofitable and vain.”  St. Paul did not want the people to waste their time and energy on matters that would simply inflame their passions and hinder them from attaining spiritual health and maturity.  He called them to care for their spiritual wellbeing with the conscientiousness of farmers who are single-mindedly dedicated to bringing in a bumper crop.  If they let down their guard to the point of being so consumed by pointless controversies that they ignored basic disciplines like loving and serving their neighbors, they would risk dying spiritually like a neglected plant overtaken by weeds.  Remember St. James’ teaching that “pure and undefiled” religion is “to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” (Jas. 1:27)

 

If we are to become “those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bring forth fruit with patience,” we must remain constantly on guard against allowing distorted desires of whatever kind to grow like weeds in our hearts and minds. We must do the hard, daily work of mindfully refusing to fuel our passions and rejecting the temptations that threaten to weaken our souls. Contrary to the immediate gratification that we have come to expect in so many areas of life, maturing to the point that we bear fruit a hundredfold for the Kingdom is going to take time and effort.  It requires patience not only of time but more importantly of repentance when we fall short of fulfilling our calling as living icons of God.  Instead of giving up when we do not get the results that we want on our own timetable, we must humbly acknowledge our weakness and focus on “the one thing needful” of hearing and obeying the Word of God. (Lk 10:42)  Doing so requires grounding our daily lives in prayer, fasting, and tangible acts of generosity toward our neighbors.  It requires shutting our eyes and ears to the ever-present nonsense and noise that so easily inflame our passions and lead us to seek first the fleeting pleasures and projects of this world of corruption.  It requires confessing our sins and struggling to reorient the desires of our hearts toward their true fulfillment in God. 

 

 Following St. Paul’s advice, we should all take a close look at our lives to see if we are wasting our time, energy, and attention on “foolish disputes” that distract us from patiently pursuing the healing of our souls.  We will find salvation not by arguing about whose opinion is correct on some controversial topic but by taking up the struggle to become like Christ in holiness, radiant with the divine energies as His beautiful living icons. Tragically, it is so easy not to recognize that we are being “choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life” to the point that we never mature and bear good fruit.  With the patient attentiveness of a careful farmer, we must care for the garden of our souls each day, refusing to become discouraged by our failures.    Whether we realize it or not, we are all iconographers and gardeners with the responsibility to bring beauty and life into the world as we cooperate with the Lord’s grace through patient, persistent dedication.  In doing so, we do not work with paint or soil but with ourselves.  We do not work merely with our own talents but in cooperation with the mercy of the One Who has brought salvation to the world through His Cross and glorious resurrection on the third day.  In Him, we may all mature to the point that we bear good fruit for the Kingdom and shine brightly with heavenly glory.

 

 

Homily for the Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost & Second Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

 2 Cor.  9:6-11; Luke 6:31-36

People in our time and place often get carried away with the ideal of love.  Whether we mean falling in love, loving our family and friends, or loving our favorite food or activity, we talk about love a lot.  We have to be careful, however, not to make our fascination with love simply a way of serving ourselves.  It is so easy to make loving ourselves the basis of our attachments to the people and things who bring us pleasure and satisfaction.  There is nothing wrong with pleasure and satisfaction in and of themselves, and we should give thanks to God for all the blessings of this life.   We should certainly love ourselves as those who bear the image of God like everyone else.  The problem is that we are often so attached to our own pleasure and satisfaction that our love becomes simply a form of self-centeredness that extends only to those who give us what we want.  In other words, we are often simply in love with ourselves.  That is why Christ said, “And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?  For even sinners do the same.”  St. Maximos the Confessor taught that such self-love is “the mother of the passions,” which leads to a host of spiritual maladies.[1]  

Our vocation is not to treat other people according to how they serve our sense of self but to acquire purity of heart, for as the Lord said, that is necessary to “see God.” (Matt. 5:8) There is perhaps no greater test of the purity of our hearts than whether we respond with love and forgiveness to those who have wronged us and who do not bring us pleasure or satisfaction in any way. Remember what Christ said of those who crucified Him, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” (Lk. 23:34)   As Orthodox Christians, our calling is nothing less than to embody the mercy of God from the very depths of our being. That sublime vocation goes well beyond being an outwardly religious or moral person who feels justified in determining who deserves our good will, care, and forgiveness for whatever reason.  If we are truly sharing in the life of God by grace as “partakers of the divine nature,” we will learn to love all our neighbors as He has loved us. 

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

To become a person so radiant with the love of Christ that we convey His mercy even to people we do not like and who do not like us obviously requires much more than cultivating warm religious feelings or a sentimental attitude toward humanity in general.  To love our enemies as He loves us requires our deep spiritual transformation and healing as living icons of God.  We must not, then, rest content with confessing the Orthodox Faith, attending divine services, devoting ourselves to prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, and avoiding the most obvious forms of sin in our outward behavior.  These practices are all essential and we must not neglect or diminish them in any way.  We must remember, however, that they provide the basic foundation and structure of our life in Christ.  It is through them that we open our hearts to receive the strength to take up the difficult struggle each day to reject the habits of thought, word, and deed that so easily lead us to treat our neighbors according to our passions and not according to the mercy of the Lord.  If we persist in refusing to take up the cross of learning to love our enemies as the Lord has loved us, it will become impossible for us to love God, for “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.” (1Jn. 4:20)   

St. Silouan the Athonite provides good advice on how to grow in love for those who offend us:  

I beseech you, put this to the test.  When a man affronts you or brings dishonor on your head, or takes what is yours, or persecutes the Church, pray to the Lord, saying: “O Lord, we are all Thy creatures.  Have pity on Thy servants, and turn their hearts to repentance,” and you will be aware of grace in your soul.  To begin with constrain your heart to love enemies, and the Lord, seeing your good will, will help you in all things, and experience itself will show you the way.  But the man who thinks with malice of his enemies has not God’s love within him, and does not know God.[2]

 

St. Paul wrote that “he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.”  The more fully we offer ourselves to the Lord, the more receptive we become to His grace. That is certainly the case for how we respond to those who wrong, insult, or disappoint us. We must refuse to welcome vengeful or judgmental thoughts about them into our hearts.  We must refuse to speak about them or treat them according to our passions.  Instead of focusing our attention on their errors or fantasizing about how to get even with them, we must mindfully pray for God to grant what is best for them according to His lovingkindness.  To pray for them with integrity, we must take up the struggle each day of relating to them as we would like them to relate to us.

The Apostle wrote that “Each one must do as he has made up his mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”  Our calling is not to meet some minimal standard of forgiveness but to become so radiant with the gracious divine energies that it becomes part of our character joyfully to love our enemies as He loves us.  As the Lord taught, “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.”  The healing of our souls is an infinite journey of theosis, of becoming like God in holiness in every dimension of our personhood. It is no surprise, then, that such forgiveness is such a struggle and that we so often fall short of being reconciled with others.  We must use our weakness in this regard for our humility as we call to the Lord from the depths of our hearts for the strength to grow in loving our neighbors as He loves us.  We must use our weakness as a reminder to keep a close watch on our thoughts, words, and deeds as we redouble our efforts to sow bountifully the seeds of Christlike mercy in our souls.  Then, as St. Paul taught, “You will be enriched in every way for great generosity, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God.”

The Eucharist is the Church’s great act of thanksgiving for the infinite love of God for sinful humanity and the fallen creation.  We lift up our hearts and offer bread and wine, which by the power of the Holy Spirit become the Body and Blood of the Lord, Who offered Himself without reservation for the salvation of those who rejected Him.  Since we become “one flesh” with Him in the Eucharist, how can we refuse to extend to our neighbors the same mercy and forgiveness that we have received from our Lord?  Remember what He said: “But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish.  Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.”

 

 

 

 

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[1] Larchet, Therapy of Spiritual Illnesses, Vol. 1: 145.

[2] Archimandrite Sophrony, Saint Silouan the Athonite, 377.

Homily for the Sunday after the Elevation of the Holy Cross in the Orthodox Church

 

Galatians 2:16-20; Mark 8:34-9:1

 

            As we continue to celebrate the Elevation of the Holy Cross, we must remain on guard against the temptation to corrupt the Christian faith into a soothing piety that requires nothing of us because the Lord Himself has already done all the work.   Through His Self-Offering on the Cross, Christ has conquered death and brought salvation to the world, but for us to share personally in His great victory, we must take up our own crosses, deny ourselves, and follow Him each day of our lives.  Refusing to do so amounts to being ashamed of Him and wanting no part of His Kingdom.  No matter what we believe or how we feel about the Lord, refusing to take up our crosses means continuing in the old ways of death and rejecting the call to enter into the joy of eternal life.    

            Today’s gospel reading follows Saint Peter’s attempt to explain to Christ that dying on the Cross had nothing to do with being the Messiah.  That is when the Lord famously said, “Get behind Me, Satan! For you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.”  The Savior did not fit Peter’s expectations for the Messiah, whom he expected to be a righteous military leader like King David.  By His sharp response, Christ demonstrated that following Him is not a path to success according to the conventional standards of this world, but a calling to embrace the deep struggle of offering ourselves for growth in holiness, no matter the cost.  

            The calling to take up our crosses also stands in stark contrast to the persistent temptation to use religion to exalt ourselves in our own minds and condemn a segment of our neighbors.   It is blasphemy to corrupt the great sign of our salvation into an instrument for fueling our self-centered desires and illusions.  To the contrary, our Lord’s Cross calls us to do the hard work of refusing to gratify our passions as we unite ourselves to His great Self-Offering for the salvation of the world.     

In our epistle reading from Galatians, Saint Paul opposes fellow Jewish Christians who relied too much on their own ability to obey the Old Testament law and would have required the same of Gentile converts.  Refusing to trust in his own ability to obey religious rules, he writes that, “I have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself up for me.”  Paul took up his cross by enduring many struggles and difficulties out of faithfulness to the Lord, ultimately dying for him as a martyr.   He wrote to the Colossians that “I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church.” (Col. 1:24)

There is obviously nothing deficient in our Lord’s great Self-Offering.  All that is lacking is our taking up our own crosses in obedience to the Lord’s calling to deny ourselves and follow Him. Because of our passions and the brokenness of our world of corruption, the struggle for healing inevitably requires suffering, but not as though pain were somehow pleasing to God.   Such suffering results from the inevitable tension we experience in embracing the struggle to offer ourselves fully to Christ. There is so much within each of us that does not want to do that. Truly taking up our crosses means fighting the difficult battle of confronting our own personal brokenness each day as we reject thoughts, desires, and habits that would keep us serving ourselves and the false gods of this world.  

  Christ prayed the night before His crucifixion, “Father, if You are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but Yours be done.” (Luke 22:42) He ascended the Cross in free obedience, and no one forces us to take up our crosses either.  So many problems and pains come upon us without our asking for them in this life, and it is so easy to refuse to suffer in a spiritually healthy way. As Job’s wife suggested, we can “Curse God and die!” (Job 2:9) in response to deep frustrations and disappointments.  We can refuse to offer our wounds to Christ for healing by finding ways to ignore them or convincing ourselves that we are still better off than the people we like to condemn.  Doing so is simply a dead end that will fuel our passions, blind us with spiritual pride, and demonstrate how ashamed we are of Christ and His Cross.

Since freedom is an intrinsic dimension of being in God’s image, no one can make us take up our crosses. Only we can unite ourselves to Christ in His Great Self-Offering for the salvation of the world. Regardless of the circumstances, we have the freedom to refuse to fall into despair, for any instance of suffering provides an opportunity to purify the desires of our hearts as we learn to entrust ourselves more fully to the Lord.  Difficulties by their nature present challenges to which we may respond in a Christlike way or according to our passions.  He offered up Himself fully upon the Cross and refused to respond in kind to those who hated and rejected Him.  Likewise, we may unite ourselves to Him in every dimension and circumstance of our lives, including those in which we are sorely tempted not to respond as He did. Illness, broken relationships with others, worries about the future, regrets about the past, crushed hopes, and even the worst losses imaginable all present opportunities to grow in “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”  Saint Paul wrote that “those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”  (Gal. 5:22-24)

Our self-centered and distorted desires usually rear their ugly heads quickly when we face trying circumstances.  If you are like me, you sometimes react like Jonah when the vine that gave him shade was eaten by a worm.  That was a very small thing, but Jonah became so angry that he literally wished he would die. (Jonah 4:5-11)   Other times we face circumstances so grave that we must struggle mightily not to fall into despair about life itself.  Whether in matters small or great, we have the opportunity to take up our crosses daily as we struggle to find healing for our souls.   

Doing so usually does not require anything dramatic or extraordinary. It is normally a matter of focusing on the basic disciplines of the Christian life, such as refusing to accept sinful thoughts into our hearts, forgiving those who have wronged us, and trusting that nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom. 8:39) The more that we open our souls to the Lord’s healing strength through prayer, fasting, serving our neighbors, and otherwise responding faithfully to the daily circumstances of our lives, the less time and energy we will have for stirring up the impassioned thoughts that lead to sinful actions.  The less that we cultivate worry, fear, and resentment, the more we will be able to pray to God from our hearts to grant what is best in even the most broken circumstances. We must follow the Apostle’s teaching, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6-7)

To share in Christ’s victory over death, we must embrace the struggle of dying to all that would keep us from uniting ourselves to Him in holiness.  Our hope is neither in our own willpower nor in being superior to anyone else, but in the gracious mercy of the One Who offered up Himself for our salvation purely out of love.  Through the Cross, He has brought life in the midst of death, light in the midst of darkness, and joy in the midst of despair.  We will receive His healing in even the most difficult dimensions of our lives as we persistently offer ourselves to Him in humble faith, no matter what challenges, pains, or disappointments life may bring us.  That is how we may die to the corrupting power of sin and enter even now into the blessedness of His Kingdom.  It is how we may learn to say truthfully with St. Paul, “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.” It is how we show that we are not ashamed of Him and His Cross, which remains a weapon of peace, a trophy invincible, and the great sign of our salvation.

 

 

 

Homily for the Sunday Before the Elevation of the Holy Cross in the Orthodox Church

 

Galatians 6:11-18; John 3:13-17

We may be tempted at times to think that we will find healing for our souls simply by   doing this or that.  We may assume that fulfilling our calling as Orthodox Christians means attending divine services, receiving the holy mysteries, and devoting ourselves to prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and other acts of piety. These are certainly indispensable practices for us to share more fully in the life of Christ, but they are not merely rituals or ends in themselves.  Our Savior calls and enables us to become not merely religiously observant but truly “a new creation” through His Cross and glorious resurrection on the third day. 

Today’s gospel reading is taken from Christ’s conversation with the Pharisee Nicodemus, who could not understand what it meant to be born again.  The Lord spoke to him neither of physical rebirth nor of the type of hypocritical religious legalism associated with the Pharisees.  Instead, He foretold the centrality of the Cross, saying that “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”  He refers here to an event described in Numbers 21:8-9, when the Hebrews were saved from deadly snake bites when they looked at the bronze snake held up by Moses in the desert.  

In today’s epistle reading St. Paul argued against those who trusted more in their ability to obey religious laws than in the Lord’s great Self-Offering.  He wrote, “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.”  The Apostle opposed fellow Christians of Jewish heritage who thought that Gentile converts had to be circumcised in obedience to the Old Testament law.  He rejected that practice, “For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.”  As St. Paul taught, “you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.  For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.  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. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (Gal. 3: 26-29) By conquering death through His Cross and resurrection, the Savior has opened the gates of Paradise to all who respond to Him with faith and faithfulness, regardless of who they are.   As He said to Nicodemus in today’s gospel reading, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.  For God sent His Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”

Our Lord was lifted up upon the Cross because, contrary to the expectations of the Pharisees, even the strictest obedience to the Old Testament law could never make anyone “a new creation.” If legalistic outward observance had the power to heal our souls, then there would have been no need for “the Son of man [to] be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”  Likewise, prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and all the other spiritual disciplines of the Orthodox Christian life are not matters of legal observance whereby we satisfy, impress, or earn anything from the Lord.  They are, however, ways in which we open ourselves in humility to become more receptive to His grace as His “new creation.”

In order to celebrate the Feast of the Elevation of the Cross with integrity, we must follow the instruction of St. Paul not “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.” That means we must not become Orthodox Pharisees who imagine we are more righteous than others because of how we pray, fast, or observe any aspect of our Orthodox faith as though it were some kind of personal accomplishment.  To the contrary, the more receptive we become to the Lord’s grace, the more aware we will become of our sinfulness and our ongoing need for the healing mercy of the crucified and risen Lord, Who was lifted up upon the Cross out of His infinite compassion and love for the salvation of the world.  In Him, we are “a new creation,” not as a reward for any act of piety or religious observance on our part, but because “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”   

 

 

 

Homily for the Fourteenth Sunday of Matthew in the Orthodox Church

 

2 Corinthians 1:21-2:4; Matthew 22:2-14

 

            We began a new ecclesiastical year on September 1, which also marked the beginning of the new civil year in the Byzantine Empire.  For the ancient Hebrews, September was a time of gathering the harvest and giving thanks to God. It was in this context that Christ read from the Prophet Isaiah in the synagogue in Nazareth to “proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” (Lk. 4:19) He said to the astonished people of His hometown: “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (4:21) His neighbors quickly moved from praising Him to trying to throw Him off a cliff, however, when the Savior noted that there were times when God had blessed Gentiles through the great prophets Elijah and Elisha and did not come to the aid of Jews.  The Lord had promised to Abraham “In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed,” but the dominant hope in first-century Palestine had become nationalistic, focused on building an earthly kingdom in which righteous Jews would be blessed and Gentiles and sinners would be put down.  (Gen. 22:18) 

 

            The people of Nazareth tried to kill Christ when He proclaimed that He was a very different type of Messiah than they had expected.  Today’s parable of the wedding banquet follows the parable of the tenants in the vineyard, which was last Sunday’s gospel reading.  The Savior used these parables in the week leading to His Passion to make clear what was at stake in the actions of the corrupt religious leaders who had blinded themselves spiritually to the point that they orchestrated His death.  The parable reveals that they had become so obsessed with their own desires for worldly power that they rejected the Messiah in Whom God’s promises to Abraham are fulfilled and extended to all.

 

            The context of the parable is a wedding feast for the son of a king, which would have been the greatest celebration imaginable in that time and place.  The prophet Hosea had spoken of the relationship between God and Israel as a marriage, and weddings were signs of God’s faithfulness in blessing the Jews from generation to generation.  It is not surprising, then, that Christ often compared the Kingdom of God to a wedding feast.  He is the Bridegroom and the Church is the Bride.  (Eph. 5:32) The book of Revelation also describes the fulfillment of the heavenly reign as a marriage banquet, the Wedding Feast of the Lamb. (Rev. 19:6-9)

             

            How tragic, then, that the religious leaders who should have been in the best position to enter into the joy of spiritual union with Christ refused to do so.  They were like the guests invited to the wedding in the parable who “made light of it and went off, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized… [the king’s] servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them.”  In the parable, the king then sent his servants out into the streets to invite whomever they could to the celebration, “both bad and good; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.”

 

When Christ spoke of those who disregarded the invitation in order to go to their farms and businesses, He was criticizing those who were so obsessed with their wealth, possessions, and status that they refused to attend to the healing of their souls.  They were so passionately attached to the things of this world that they chose them over entering into the fullness of God’s blessing.  They were honored religious leaders, but the desires of their hearts were focused elsewhere.  It is not surprising, then, that the others who refused the king’s invitation “seized his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them.”  Even as idolatrous rulers and false prophets killed the righteous servants of God in the Old Testament, those primarily driven by the love of money, possessions, and power stopped at nothing to destroy even the Lord Himself, Whom they perceived as a threat to what they held most dear.

 

In light of their refusal to come to the wedding feast, the king in the parable instructed the servants to invite as many other people as possible, including “the bad and the good.”  The Savior points here to the Church in which the distinction between Jew and Gentile is overcome, for He invites everyone to enter into the great joy of the heavenly banquet.  As St. Paul taught, “if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (Gal. 3:29) His fulfillment of the human person in God’s image and likeness is not reserved for those of a particular ancestry or nationality.   It is not reserved for those who have never fallen short of doing what is pleasing to God.  If that were the case, it would have nothing to do with us.  The good news is that, even as the king in the parable wanted the banquet hall to be filled, Christ came to save the entire world and turns no one away who responds to Him with humble faith, love, and repentance.

 

“Many are called, but few are chosen.”  Those words end the parable right after the king ordered that the man without a wedding garment be thrown out of the celebration.  In that time and place, the host provided guests with the proper attire.  This fellow, after being invited to the great banquet, did not respond with gratitude and respect toward his host.  He must have refused to put on the garment, apparently wanting the benefits of being at the party on his own terms.  Thus, he excluded himself from the celebration.

 

We enter into the Body of Christ through baptism, in which we put Him on like a garment.  “As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ,” wrote Saint Paul. (Gal. 3:27) Our baptism is the beginning of the Christian life, and we must attend mindfully to living each day as those who are entering into the Kingdom of God by grace.  If we do not, then the entire life of the Church will leave us cold, and we will find even the most basic spiritual disciplines to be burdens we would rather do without.   If we define what is truly important in life as fulfilling our usual set of daily obligations, satisfying our self-centered desires, and finding ways to distract ourselves from confronting the true state of our souls, then  we will always think that we have better things to do than to unite ourselves to Christ.  We will then become like that man who wanted the benefits of being a wedding guest without accepting even the most basic expectations of the invitation.  He was so focused on himself that he shut himself out of the great celebration every bit as much as those who had refused to come in the first place.

 

Living according to the “acceptable year of the Lord” is completely different from becoming like those who disregarded the invitation to the wedding feast or like the fellow who was thrown out.  We must not give our hearts to the things of this world but to the eternal blessedness of a Kingdom that we do not deserve.  Instead of making religion a tool for getting what we want on our own terms or pretending that this or that is somehow more important than sharing in the life of God by grace, we must cultivate the gratitude of those who are shocked to become guests at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb.  That is not simply a future hope but also a present reality, for we enter mystically into the Heavenly Reign whenever we lift up our hearts and offer bread and wine in the Divine Liturgy.  Our calling is to live each day as those who wear a wedding garment, the garment of light restored to us in baptism.  Recognizing that “Many are called, but few are chosen,” let us begin this new year in the Church with a steadfast commitment to make doing so the highest priority of our lives.