Titus 3:8-15; Matthew 5:14-19
In just about anything we do in life, it is helpful
at times to sit back and ask ourselves what we are trying to achieve. Unless we have a clear purpose in mind, we
are probably not going to get very far in anything. By taking a hard look at ourselves, we may
find that there is a disconnect between our goals and our actions. If so, some adjustments are in order.
What
Jesus Christ told His followers in today’s gospel lesson certainly challenged them
to take a hard look at themselves and change their expectations. He made clear
that He was not calling them to join a nationalistic campaign for Israel’s
liberation from the Romans, as most Jews then expected the Messiah to do. Instead,
they would have to abandon their dreams of using Him to gain power. They would not conquer with an army, a
revolution, or a political party, but were to become the light of the world by
becoming holy. That holiness would not
be the result of obedience merely to the externals of the law as interpreted by
the Pharisees, but would instead reflect its fulfillment to the depths of their
souls.
By teaching in the following
verses that the commandment against murder extended to prohibit anger and
insult, Christ showed that He called His followers to a purity of heart that
would enable them to see God. He did the
same by insisting that the law against adultery also condemned lust. He called the disciples to embody the
fulfillment of the ultimate purpose of the law:
to become perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect. It is in that context that the Savior taught that
we must go beyond “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” and instead love,
forgive, and bless even our enemies. Whether
in first-century Palestine or today, those who live this way will be a light to
the world as they provide a vivid example of a holy life that stands in stark
contrast to the usual ways of our age. It will be as impossible to hide the
brilliance of their souls as it is to hide a shining lamp in a dark room.
Today we commemorate the Holy Fathers
of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, which met at Chalcedon. This council taught that Jesus Christ is one
person with two natures, being fully divine and fully human. It is only by
confessing that He is both perfectly God and perfectly man that it is possible
to give an account of how He is the Savior Who brings human beings into the
eternal life of God. For if He is not
truly one of us, even as He is divine, how can He make human beings “partakers
of the divine nature” who shine with holiness like an iron left in the fire? Christ enables us to become the light of the
world by becoming radiant with His light, by being illuminated with His
gracious divine energies. He is able to
share His holiness with us because He is both fully God and fully human. This is not simply a point from ancient
Church history, but the bedrock of our faith and our hope.
It is also the most basic reason
that we must all take a hard look at ourselves and adjust how we think and live
as Christians. For if we truly believe that
the eternal Son of God has become fully one of us and makes us participants in
His eternal life, then His holiness must become characteristic of our
lives. Anything less than that is a
distortion of what it means be a person in communion with our Lord. His true
humanity enables us to become truly human as the fulfillment of our creation in
His image and likeness. That is why we
speak so much of theosis in the
Orthodox Church as the process of being united with God in holiness.
If we have made any progress at
all in this journey of the healing of our souls, we will immediately be aware
of how poorly we have answered this call.
The greater spiritual clarity we acquire, the more open our eyes will be
to how far we are from shining brilliantly with the light of holiness. So if our reaction to this high vision is
along the lines of “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner,”
we are in the perfect place to embrace more fully our identity as the light of
the world. That is the case because
humility is absolutely essential to opening ourselves to the gracious divine
energies of our Lord. Consider again His
interpretation of the laws against murder and adultery. If they referred only to the physical actions
of taking life or being unfaithful to a spouse, many could congratulate
themselves for not breaking them. But
when they extend to condemn anger, insult, and lust, our illusions of
self-righteousness immediately fall away.
The same is true about loving our enemies, for Christ calls us to go
beyond limiting our vengeance to turning the other cheek, going the extra mile,
and loving as our Father loves the just and unjust. We probably do not have to
have much spiritual clarity to see that we are not there yet.
Were Jesus Christ simply another
religious or moral teacher, these high requirements would probably lead us to
despair and give up. Rules tell us what
to do, but do not give us the strength to obey them. But because Christ is both divine and human,
He provides more than a set of instructions.
For precisely through our awareness of how far short we have fallen from
meeting these standards, He heals and strengthens us to serve Him more faithfully.
The calling to holiness is not about meeting abstract rules by our own power,
but about being united with a Person by grace.
Even as He has made great saints out of so many sinners who kneeled in
humility before Him, His transforming mercy extends also to us. That is a sign of hope for us all. Who would have thought that Zacchaeus, a
notorious tax collector, or Photini, a Samaritan woman of questionable
reputation, would become shining lights of the world? They
did not do so because of perfect obedience to the law. Far from it, they came to see their own
brokenness through personal encounters with Jesus Christ. Their humble acceptance of the distance
between themselves and the Lord enabled them to grow closer to Him, to open
their lives to a divine healing that they could never have given
themselves.
They show that, as we fall before
Christ in humility, He will raise us up to participate personally in His
holiness in ways that simply cannot be known except through repentance. If we truly believe that Jesus Christ is the
God-Man Who has come to make us participants in His healing of every
dimension of our humanity, then we must follow the example of all the sinners
who have become saints by opening themselves to participate in our Lord’s
holiness. Instead of worrying about whether we will get our lives in perfect
order according to our own standards, we must simply do what we have the sight
and strength to do today in serving Him as we know we should. St. Paul reminded St. Titus to tell the
people to avoid foolish arguments, do good deeds, and meet urgent needs. If we fill our lives with the things we know
we should be doing and ignore the temptation to become distracted by nonsense, He
will enable us to become light to the world.
Since He Himself is the Light, the more closely united we are to Christ,
the more brilliantly our lives will become signs of the fulfillment of His
purposes for the entire creation.
Perhaps one of the reasons many
people do not take the faith seriously today is that the lives of so many
Christians do not manifest Christ’s healing and blessing of our humanity. If we are not living icons of His fulfillment
of the law and the prophets, then we are very poor witnesses to our Lord. As Orthodox Christians who have received the
fullness of the Church’s teaching about Jesus Christ as God and man, we have no
excuse to accept distorted views of what faithfulness to Him means such that we
excuse ourselves from the vocation to holiness.
Even as He did with His first disciples, He calls us to adjust our lives
to be in line with His gracious purposes for those created in His image and
likeness. As we turn away from all distractions, let us keep focused on shining
the light of Christ so that others will give thanks to God and be drawn to the
new day of His Kingdom. There is no other way to bear true witness to the
Savior Who is both fully human and divine, for He came to enable us to shine
with His holy light in our darkened world.
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