I Corinthians 1:10-17 (8th Sunday after Pentecost)
Matthew 14:14-22 (8th Sunday of Matthew)
Even as some of us are enjoying the last weeks of summer vacation, things are very busy in the life of the Church. For the first two weeks of August, we are in the Dormition Fast which leads to the Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos on August 15. “Dormition” means “falling asleep” and every year at this time we commemorate the end of the earthly life of the Mother of God, after which she followed her Son body and soul into the Kingdom of Heaven. We fast during this time just as we do in Lent, for we all need to humble ourselves and fight self-centered desires if we are to follow her example of complete obedience and receptivity to the Lord. As we did this past Friday evening we will pray the Paraklesis service to the Theotokos this coming Friday at six o’clock, for there is no better intercessor with the Son of God for us than His Mother. We need her prayers now especially, with so much violence and hatred around the world and so many in our own parish who have health problems.
This
Wednesday we celebrate another great feast of the Church, the Transfiguration
of our Lord. The eyes of Sts. Peter,
James, and John were opened on Mount Tabor to behold the divine glory of Christ
as He shined with heavenly light. We
will serve the Divine Liturgy for this feast Wednesday at six o’clock, and all
who are able to attend the service should do so. Of course, we want our spiritual eyes to be
opened also so that we can know and experience the glory of the Lord as did
those apostles on Mount Tabor. We want
to be transfigured so that we will also shine with uncreated light, reflecting
the brilliant holiness of our Savior just as an iron left in the fire manifests
the heat and light of the flames.
We
must be careful, however, to resist the temptation of thinking that
participating more fully in the life of Christ is simply a passive matter of
asking Him for a miracle or otherwise to help us out according to our own
preferences. In other words, we have
to take responsibility for doing our part in actually obeying His
commandments. The point is to become the
kind of people who actually do His work in the world; it is certainly not to
manipulate Him somehow into following our preferences. For example, in today’s
gospel lesson the disciples understandably did not want to take responsibility
for feeding thousands of hungry people.
They asked Christ to send the people away to buy their own food, for
they had collected only five loaves and two fish. But the Lord did not let them
off the hook so easily. He told them to
bring Him their few loaves and fish, which they did. Then the Savior blessed the food, had the
disciples distribute it, and everyone had more than enough to eat. I bet that the disciples were as shocked as
everyone else at how well things turned out that day.
Notice
that Jesus Christ required the apostles to bring the offering, to give what
they had, and to take responsibility for their role in feeding the people. The very same thing is true for you and
me. We are all tempted at times to ask
the Lord for this or that, to solve a problem, or to get something done
according to our own desires. We may
think that we have done our part then; of course, there are some circumstances
in life about which we can do little other than pray. But most of the challenges we face daily are
not like that. What we think, say, and do
really does matter; we need to grow in our ability to fulfill the role to
which God calls us in the circumstances we face. To let ourselves off the hook by asking for
God’s help and then continuing life as usual with no changes on our part is
irresponsible and a sign that we view Him more as magician than as our Lord. We will never develop the spiritual eyes to
behold the divine glory by living like that.
Jesus
Christ fed thousands of people miraculously, but the disciples had to do their
part of offering what little they could find for the meal. He required them to provide the material for
the project, you might say. Imagine what
the story would have been like had the disciples refused to bring the loaves
and fish to Him. What if they had been
offended at His command and walked away or simply did not follow through? What if they had decided to eat all the food
themselves in place of bringing it to Him?
Instead, they obeyed the command:
“They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” And through their obedience, the Savior
worked a miracle that fed thousands of hungry people and fulfilled so much
imagery from the Old Testament.
No,
the disciples did not earn or deserve anything as a result of their
obedience. But their obedience surely
changed them at least a bit. It made
them stronger spiritually and helped to solidify in them the good habit of
doing what Christ said and offering what they had to Him. They got many things wrong during the time
that they followed the Savior during His earthly ministry, but that day they
got it right and played their intended role in fulfilling God’s will for their
lives.
Though
our lives and circumstances are very different from theirs, we all need to
become more like them in learning that the point of our faith is not to get
Christ to do more of what we want Him to do. Instead, it is for us to gain the
spiritual clarity and health both to recognize what He calls us to and then
actually to carry it out. In order for that
to happen, we must be transfigured or changed from people who basically want
God to do our will into those who want to do God’s will. We want to become like the Theotokos in her
simple, honest, and pure response to the Archangel Gabriel: “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word.” That was how she received Christ into her
life in a truly miraculous way as His virgin mother: through humble obedience.
In
the last few weeks, our parish showed humble obedience by giving generously to
help our suffering brothers and sisters in Syria. Our parish is blessed by
those whose obedience includes giving of their time and talents to chant, to serve
at the altar, to teach Sunday School, to work in the yard, and to attend
services regularly, even when it is inconvenient and requires sacrifices. We all have the opportunity to offer our
lives to Christ in humble obedience when we observe the Dormition Fast, pray
and read the Bible daily, come to Confession, mend broken relationships with
others, and refuse to worship the false gods of money, pleasure, and power that
are so loved in our corrupt world. If we
are not making a serious effort to offer our lives to the Savior in obedience
to His command, we really cannot expect to grow in our participation in His
life or the joy of His kingdom.
In
a sense, Christ says to each and every one of us: “You give them something to eat.” Everyone we
encounter is hungry for the Bread of Life.
Everyone needs to be fed. And we sometimes feel like idiots with our few
loaves and fish in the face of such overwhelming need. Yes, we can refuse responsibility and tell
God that it is all His business and we have better things to do. We do not want to go down that road, of
course, for we know that it is a dead end. Far better to be like the disciples
and offer our meager resources to Him, trusting that He will do with them what
we cannot. In ways that we cannot fathom, He will use us—and heal and transform
us—to accomplish His glorious purposes for our parish, our neighbors, our
families, our enemies, and for those at home and abroad who bear burdens far
too heavy for anyone to bear. So in this
busy season of the life of the Church, let us all be like the Theotokos and the
disciples, offering ourselves to the Lord in humble obedience as best we
can. At the end of the day, that is what
it means to be a Christian.
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