Homily for the Sunday Before the Theophany (Epiphany) of Christ in the Orthodox Church

 

2 Timothy 4:5-8; Mark 1:1-8

Today is the Sunday before the Feast of Theophany (or Epiphany), when we celebrate Christ’s baptism in the river Jordan and the revelation that He is truly the Son of God.  His divinity is made manifest and openly displayed at His baptism when the voice of the Father declares, “You are my beloved Son” and the Holy Spirit descends upon Him in the form of a dove.  Theophany shows us that Jesus Christ, who was born in the flesh for our salvation at Christmas, is not merely a great religious teacher or moral example.  He is truly God—a member of the Holy Trinity– and His salvation permeates His entire creation, including the water of the river Jordan.  Through Christ’s and our baptism, we become participants in the holy mystery of our salvation, for He restores to us the robe of light which our first parents lost when they chose pride and self-centeredness over obedience and communion.  He enters the Jordan to restore Adam and Eve, and all their children, to the dignity of those who bear the image and likeness of God.  

At the time of His earthly ministry, however, people were looking for a very different kind of Savior.  The word “messiah” means “anointed one,” and the Jews wanted a leader who would deliver their nation from Roman oppression, not unlike how any people living under military occupation by the armies of another nation typically want their liberation and independence.  Christ’s own disciples thought of Him in those terms until after His resurrection, for even those closest to the Lord had great difficulty accepting that He was not the earthly king they had expected.  They were so focused on how Jesus Christ might fulfill their dreams for power in this world that they were blind to His true identity as the Son of God, the incarnate second Person of the Holy Trinity, the divine Word Who spoke the universe into existence. His Kingdom is not of this world and stands in prophetic judgment over those who idolatrously use religion to bring themselves glory and dominion in this world.

In order to prepare the way of a Messiah Who did not fit popular preconceived notions, God sent a very bold prophet who surely made most other people uncomfortable.  St. John the Baptist and Forerunner was a strict ascetic, living in the desert, eating only locusts and honey, and wearing camel skin.  Like all the true Hebrew prophets before him, John did not serve anyone’s worldly agenda.  In addition to his stark appearance and lifestyle, his message was severe to the point of being insulting.  He proclaimed God’s truth and did not care who might be offended, perhaps because harsh words were necessary to open people’s eyes to where they stood before God.   John mocked the Pharisees and Sadducees, calling them a brood of vipers—a bunch of slimy snakes.  He told the rich to share with the poor, soldiers to stop abusing their authority, and tax collectors to stop stealing from the people.  He let no one off the hook, fearlessly proclaiming God’s word even to those who had the power to destroy him. Ultimately, he lost his head for criticizing the immorality of the royal family. 

God shook up Israel with John the Baptist, the Forerunner of our Lord, who began to open their eyes to a Messiah Whom they did not expect.  They needed a call to repentance from a wild and holy man who served none of the petty kingdoms or factions of this world, but who instead called everyone to repent by changing the direction of their lives in relation to God and neighbor.  They were to make straight whatever crookedness was in them.   They were to abandon hypocritical and self-serving distortions of God’s Law.  No one was to say, “But I am a child of Abraham or a religious leader or a well-respected person, so repentance is not for me.”  No one was to point to the offenses of others as a distraction from reorienting their lives toward God.  The Forerunner called everyone straightforwardly to greater holiness in preparation for the coming of the Messiah, Who is truly the God-Man.

As we prepare for the Feast of Theophany, we must recognize that John’s message applies to each of us today in ways that should make us all uncomfortable.   If we have put on Christ in baptism, we must conform our character to His because we have already received the robe of light.  Having celebrated His birth as Orthodox Christians, we have already proclaimed that the Savior is not merely one of many insightful teachers or inspiring examples, but truly the Son of God.  In Him, we are “partakers of the divine nature” by grace as members of His Body, the Church.  The more that we share in His life, the more clearly we will see how infinitely much more room we have for growth in embracing the healing of our souls because none of us has become a perfect epiphany of what Christ’s salvation means for those who bear the divine image and likeness.

It would be different if the Epiphany of Jesus Christ as the Son of God were merely an idea to be grasped as an abstract truth. It would be different if Theophany were a calling to thwart those we deem our enemies or to achieve some conventional personal or political goal.  This feast is nothing like that, however, for it calls us to enter into the great mystery of our salvation by becoming radiant with the divine glory that the Savior has shared with us.  We must no longer live as those driven by obsessive insecurities and fears rooted in the fear of death, but as those clothed with a robe of light and enabled to shine like an iron left in the fire of holiness.  

In order to share more fully in the eternal life of the God-Man, we must follow the path of ongoing repentance proclaimed by John, always seeing ourselves as those who must prepare the way of the Lord in our lives.  That means that we must persist in cooperating with Christ’s healing mercy, actively making straight whatever remains crooked.  Like those who first heard the Forerunner, we have become too comfortable with life on our own terms, perhaps thinking that we are somehow God’s favorites and that repentance is for someone else, likely for particular people or members of groups upon whom we like to look down.  John would have none of it and would correct us to our faces in no uncertain terms for our hypocrisy.  As he did to the Jews of the first century, he would tell us to stop trying to turn God into an idol who serves our agendas for gaining whatever we happen to want in this world.  He would call us, instead, to become true icons of our Lord, sharing as fully as we can in the divine healing and transformation made possible for us in Jesus Christ.

Those who have put on Christ in baptism and who have received the Communion of His Body and Blood must become epiphanies of His fulfillment of the human person in God’s image and likeness. As we prepare to celebrate Theophany, let us gain the spiritual clarity to behold the glory of Christ’s baptism by straightening the crooked areas of our lives.  Instead of finding ways to ignore the preaching of the Forerunner, let us take his sobering message to heart as we confess and repent of our sins and reorient ourselves to our Lord and His Kingdom.  The Messiah is born and is on His way to the Jordan where His divinity will shine forth.  Will we have the eyes to behold His glory?  Will we be ready for Him?  There is only one way to prepare:  namely, to repent as we turn away from all that hinders us from shining brightly with the divine glory manifest in the God-Man. Nothing can keep us from doing so other than our own stubborn refusal to prepare the way of the Lord by making His paths straight in our own lives.  There is no other way to enter into the great joy of the Feast of Theophany.

 

Christ is Born! Glorify Him!: Homily for Christmas in the Orthodox Church

Galatians 4:4-7; Matthew 2:1-12

Christ is Born!  Glorify Him!

      We gather today to celebrate the Nativity in the Flesh of our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ for the salvation of the world.  He is born to fulfill the vocation of every human person to become like God in holiness as “partakers of the divine nature” by grace.  Because He has truly become one of us, every dimension of our life in this world may become a point entrance into the blessed peace of the Kingdom of Heaven.  In contrast with that high calling, the lack of such peace today in so many other parts of the world, including especially the Holy Land and Ukraine, as well as in our own society, relationships, and hearts, becomes quite apparent.

The Prince of Peace was born in the context of a brutal military occupation that required the elderly Joseph and the pregnant Theotokos to take a long and difficult journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem for a census. There He came into the world like a homeless child, born in a cave used as a barn with an animal’s feeding trough for his bed.   Herod, who reigned over Judea under the authority of Rome, plotted to kill the Messiah from His birth, for he certainly did not want a rival king of the Jews.  He cared far more about his own power than the lives of innocent people, as many rulers have done up to the present.  That is why Joseph had to lead the family to Egypt at night as they fled for their lives, just as refugees do today in the land of our Lord’s birth and in so many other places.

When the One Who spoke the universe into existence becomes part of His creation, the tension between the way of the Lord and the path of slavery to the fear of death becomes obvious.  Angels proclaimed His birth and the promise of peace not to those who will stop at nothing to destroy those they perceive as threats to their power, but to lowly shepherds who had no power or prominence.   Though the Messiah was expected to be a new King David who would give earthly power to the Jews, Gentile astrologers from Persia traveled far to worship a Lord Whose Kingdom transcends the divisions of empires, nations, and ethnicities. He fulfills the ancient promises to Abraham such that all who believe in Him become the adopted children and heirs of God.  The God-Man is born to restore all to the blessedness of Paradise as the New Adam.  He comes to heal us from every dimension of the brokenness that still leads Cain to slaughter Abel, from the desires of our hearts to how we engage with our neighbors, society, and world.   He comes to make us radiant with holiness and “perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect,” which requires especially love for our enemies.  (Matt. 5:48) 

The Savior born this day is the Prince of Peace, but not of the illusion of peace that comes from blinding ourselves to the humanity of those we fear and resent to the point that we beat them into submission, whether literally or figuratively.  He is the Prince of Peace, but not of the illusion of peace that comes from indulging our self-centered desires as we neglect the needs of others and refuse to see them as living icons of God.  He is the Prince of Peace, but not of the illusion of peace that comes from projecting our hopes for wellbeing on the success of nations, cultures, and agendas that operate according to the standards of a world enslaved to the fear of death.  Christ’s peace is nothing less than sharing in His life to the point that we become those who will be blessed in His Kingdom:  the poor in spirit; those who mourn their sins; the meek; those who hunger and thirst after righteousness; the merciful; those who acquire purity of heart; and the peacemakers. To know His peace is to become so much like Him in holiness that, regardless of what sufferings and obstacles may come our way, we make even the deepest challenges of our lives points of entrance to the joyful blessedness of His Kingdom.  (Matt. 5:3-12) 

Even as the circumstances surrounding His Nativity were not peaceful by conventional standards, welcoming the Prince of Peace into our lives requires embracing the inevitable tension of mindfully entrusting ourselves to Him as we share in His fulfillment of the human person in the image and likeness of God.  That is not a matter of sentimentality or trying to use religion to achieve any worldly goal, but of responding with true spiritual integrity to the gloriously good news that the Son of God has become one of us—in the world as we know it--for our salvation.  The more that we undertake the struggle to do so, and to treat every neighbor as one for whom the Savior was born, the more we will participate personally in the true peace of Paradise brought by the God-Man.  Let us celebrate this glorious feast by doing precisely that this day and every day of our lives.  

 

 

  

Are We Looking for a Kingdom Not Like the Other Nations? : Homily for the Sunday Before the Nativity of Christ in the Orthodox Church

 

Hebrews 11:9-10, 32-40; Matthew 1:1-25

 As we conclude our preparation for celebrating the Lord’s Nativity, we must resist the temptation to corrupt this blessed season into an excuse for glorifying ourselves in any way.  Instead, we must allow our hopes for whatever we want in this life to be called into question by the God-Man, Who was born in such strange circumstances to fulfill a kingdom not of this world that stands in prophetic judgment over all our agendas, preferences, and desires. We must learn at Christmas to hope only in Him.

Christ is born to fulfill the ancient promises to Abraham, who “looked forward to the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.”  The many generations of preparation for the Savior’s birth did not occur through the unbroken progress of any earthly city, kingdom, or culture, but through a history characterized by corruption, idolatry, slavery, and exile.  The prophet Samuel was the last of the judges of Israel over a thousand years before Christ was born.  When his sons ruled unjustly, the people asked for a king so that they could be like the other nations.  God told Samuel, “Heed the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them.”  (1 Sam. 8:7)

We do not have to know much about the Old Testament to know that wanting to be like the other nations is the exact opposite of what God intended for His people.  Their kings abused their authority like the rich and powerful of any period with David, the greatest of them, infamously taking Bathsheeba, the wife of his soldier Uriah, and then having him killed.  Far from shying away from recalling these horrific events, Matthew highlights them, for he writes in the genealogy that “David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah.” When he wanted to build a Temple for the Lord, God told David, “You shall not build a house for My name, because you have been a man of war and have shed blood.” (1 Chron. 28:3) Doing so surely went with the territory of being a powerful ruler, but wallowing in the blood of those who bear God’s image is a paradigmatic sign of the slavery to the fear of death that sin has brought to the world.  It inevitably threatens grave damage to the soul.

Even David’s son the wise Solomon, who did build the Temple, later fell into the worship of false gods.  Because of Israel’s ongoing unfaithfulness, the kingdom divided into two, with both eventually going into exile after being defeated at the hands of their enemies. Those who returned from Babylon were then dispersed yet again by the Romans.  Those who distort biblical faith today in the service of earthly kingdoms and political ideologies inevitably fall into the idolatry of worshiping their own lust for power and demonizing their earthly opponents.   In contrast, we must follow the example of Abraham, who “looked forward to the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” “For here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come.” (Heb. 13:14) No nation or piece of land must ever become an idol for us or an excuse not to love our neighbors as ourselves.    

The shock of exile for the Hebrews was so important that Matthew describes the Lord’s genealogy accordingly:  “So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ were fourteen generations.”  The prophet Daniel and the three holy youths Ananias, Azarias and Misael all went into captivity in Babylon, where they refused to worship other gods and were miraculously delivered from death, respectively, in the lions’ den and the fiery furnace.  Christ, before His Incarnation, was with the youths in the flames.  Being unconsumed by the fire, they also provided an image of the Theotokos, who contained the Son of God within her womb without being consumed by the divine glory.        

It was not by seeking earthly glory or self-interest that these and other prophets foreshadowed and foretold the coming of Christ.  Far from making political calculations or seeking vengeance against anyone, they simply refused to abandon hope in God and to worship idols, even when their refusal seemed certain to lead to their deaths.  Consequently, they are among those who “suffered mocking and scourging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, ill-treated—of whom the world was not worthy—wandering over deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.”  These holy people did so because they lived in expectation, not merely of more tolerable earthly circumstances for themselves, but of the fulfillment of a promise that would not come in their lifetimes and transcended all conventional boundaries, “since God had foreseen something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.”

Though no one forces us to choose today between idolatry and faithfulness, we so often freely worship idols when we ground the meaning and purpose of our lives in some vision of cultural success or personal fulfillment that serves only to inflame our passions and blind us to the humanity of our neighbors.  Even without being forced into exile, we have become accustomed to hoping for nothing more than a somewhat better life in Babylon, however we may define that.  We face the same temptations that our Lord’s ancestors did, and we regularly fall into some version of the sins they committed. On the one hand, it is reassuring to know that the Savior’s genealogy included people whose lives were far from perfect.  In addition to recalling David’s grave sins, Matthew lists Judah, who fathered children with his daughter-in-law Tamar. He also mentions Rahab, a Canaanite prostitute, and Ruth, a Gentile.  The presence of these particular women in the genealogy foreshadows the scandalous, but also perfectly innocent, conception of the Lord by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary.  By including their names among the ancestors of Christ, Matthew reminds us that He is born to bring healing to all the broken, scandalous people of the world, not only to those  who appear respectable according to any set of conventional expectations.  No one is excluded from the possibility of sharing in His salvation.  

 The checkered past of the Savior’s family tree should also remind us of how easy it is to entrust ourselves to false hopes that extend no further than the grave.  When the Son of God became a human person, He did not do so with all the trappings of the false hopes we typically embrace.  He was not born into a family of great wealth, power, or fame.  There was certainly no sin involved in the virginal conception of our Lord, but the circumstances were hardly conventional.  Joseph, the older man to whom the Theotokos was betrothed as her guardian, would have divorced her quietly, had not an angel told him the truth about the situation in a dream.  Living under the military occupation of the Roman Empire, they had to go to Bethlehem for a census at the time of His birth, where He came into the world in the lowly circumstance of being born in a cave used for a barn with an animal's feeding trough as His crib.   

  Despite the temptation throughout Christ’s ministry to overthrow the Romans by force and set up an earthly reign as a new King David, He refused to be distracted from His vocation to conquer death itself, which required that He submit to execution on a Roman cross and wear a crown of thorns, being mocked as the king of the Jews.  Though the false hopes of His disciples had been crushed and He appeared to fail by all conventional standards, the Savior rose in victory on the third day.  His disciples then learned to hope anew for the fulfillment of God’s promises in ways that required a complete change of mind and heart, for they took up their crosses as they learned to serve a kingdom not of this world.  Along with countless generations of martyrs and confessors, they repudiated the idolatry of serving themselves or any earthly agenda as they came to hope only in the Lord.

Our responsibility is even greater than that of those who came before us, for we have received the fullness of the promise.  Time and again, however, we live as though the promise had not been fulfilled, as though a Savior had not been born.  Sometimes we even distort Christ into an inspiration for responding in kind to our enemies with the conventional means of this world, as though King David had fulfilled, rather than dimly foreshadowed, the fullness of the promise.  We must remember that our Savior rejected the temptation to use religion as a means to the end of gaining power, praise, or success in this world.  We must focus on welcoming Him into our lives in humble obedience as did the Theotokos, not on trying to dominate others, for doing so will only fuel our passions and distract us from entrusting ourselves to our Lord and His kingdom. 

  As we prepare for Christmas, let us embrace the scandalous calling to hope in nothing and no one other than the God-Man Who is born to heal and fulfill all who bear the divine image and likeness.  His human lineage shows that He came for people as conflicted, confused, and compromised as we are.  They wanted to be like the other nations and endured exile in foreign lands as a result. We wander as aliens from the everlasting joy of His Kingdom whenever we put serving ourselves or any worldly kingdom or goal before obedience to Him.  We exile ourselves from His blessed reign whenever we view or treat anyone as anything less than His living icon or as a foreigner or stranger from His love.  Like Daniel and the three holy youths, it is time for us to refuse to worship false gods and to trust that the Savior is with us and with all who endure the lions’ dens and fiery furnaces of life in a world still enslaved to the fear of death.  Having been prepared by prayer, fasting, generosity, confession, and repentance, let us receive the God-Man born for our salvation at Christmas, for He alone is our hope and the hope of the entire world.   

 

      

 

 

 

      

 

 

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

 

Colossians 3:4-11; Luke 14:16-24

              As we continue to prepare to welcome Christ into our lives and world at His Nativity, we must remain focused.  There is no shortage of distractions this time of year that appeal to our passions and threaten to convince us that there are matters more important than accepting His gracious invitation to enter fully into the joy of the banquet of the Kingdom of Heaven.  The  Savior calls us to embrace our true vocation not only during divine services or in the eschatological future, but in every moment of our lives.   

             The people in today’s gospel reading had made themselves deaf 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 on Earth.  Marriage may represent the belief that God’s blessings were only for their particular family line or ethnic group.  Many did reject our Lord because He interpreted the law in a way that challenged the authority of the Pharisees, rejected the temptation to become an earthly king of the Jews, and extended the blessing of His Reign even to 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.

           Those who looked forward in faith for God’s fulfillment of the promises to Abraham did not do so simply on the basis 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 hoped 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.  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.

         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 Hebrew people and became God’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, but we all have the ability to respond to Christ with the obedience of humble faith.

       Unfortunately, those 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.   

         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 sinfulness keeps us from making our daily responsibilities points of entrance into eternal joy.  By mindfully offering them to God every day of our lives, we will gain the strength to obey St. Paul’s instruction to “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.”  Family life, work, and the countless challenges of living faithfully in our culture present opportunities to find healing from “anger, wrath, malice, slander, and foul talk,” as well as lying.  This is possible not because we have fulfilled a list of legalistic requirements, but because in baptism we have “put off the old nature with its practices and have put on the new nature, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator.” 

          As in the parable, “many are called, but few are chosen.”  As in the parable, many of us have become blind to the profound spiritual significance of living faithfully amidst our daily challenges.  Perhaps we have made work, school, family, our financial situation, or concerns about political or cultural issues into false gods that take precedence over our calling to share more fully in the life of the God-Man born at Christmas for our salvation.  We make the choice every day of our lives whether we are going to offer the blessings and struggles of this life 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 shut ourselves out of 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” in need of His gracious healing mercy.

          Christ came to save us who are perpetually distracted by disordered desires in every area of our lives.  He calls us to learn to see all aspects of our life in this world as an invitation to “seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness” with the humble trust that “all these things” we need “will be added unto you.”  (Matt. 6:33) That is our calling every day of our lives and especially now during the busy and often stressful last days before Christmas, when we must remain vigilantly on guard against every temptation to excuse ourselves from focusing on entering into the great joy of the feast of the Nativity in the Flesh of the Word of God. 

          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]

During the remaining days of the Nativity Fast, let us refuse to exclude ourselves from the great joy of the heavenly banquet by focusing on Christ through prayer, fasting, generosity, confession, and repentance.  That is how we will gain the spiritual clarity to accept His gracious invitation to the blessedness of the heavenly banquet, where “there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free man, but Christ is all, and in all.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] St. Porphyrios, Wounded by Love, 144.

[2] St. Porphyrios, 145.

Christ Comes to Free Us All from Our Infirmities: Homily for the Twenty-Seventh Sunday After Pentecost & Tenth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

Ephesians 6:10-17; 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 celebrated yesterday 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 or culture over another or to set up an earthly kingdom of any kind in any part of the world, but to fulfill our original calling as those created in the image and likeness of God.  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 supremely honored position of the Theotokos in the life of the Church reminds us of the falsehood of such assumptions. 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 once 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.  As St. Paul taught, we must “put on the whole armor of God,” grounding ourselves in truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, and the Holy Spirit.  Unlike those throughout history to the present day who have foolishly identified their spiritual enemies with their earthly adversaries, he teaches that “we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” 

While there are certainly dangers in giving too much attention to the demons, there is even greater danger in becoming careless and complacent before the familiar temptations that habitually weaken us.  To receive Christ’s healing for the passions that keep us spiritually crippled, St. Paul advises that we must “be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.”  We should never presume that we are so spiritually strong that this guidance does not apply to us.  That is why we must embrace the basic spiritual disciples particularly stressed in seasons such as the Nativity Fast, like prayer, fasting, generosity to the needy, and confessing and repenting of our sins.  That is why we must read the Scriptures and learn from the example and teaching of the saints. These are basic building blocks of the Christian life, not because they meet some legal requirement, but because they are channels through which we open ourselves to receive His healing strength.

  When we are tempted to despair that we will ever receive Christ’s healing, we should remember that He is present with us even more so than He was to the woman who could not stand up straight, for we are living members of His Body, the Church, having put Him on like a garment in baptism.   We are “one flesh” with Him in the Eucharist and He dwells in our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit.  The way to healing and restoration is not through obsessing about our sins or giving up hope, but through persistently turning to Him with love.  As St. Porphyrios taught, “If you give your heart to Him, there will be no room for other things.  When you have ‘put on’ Christ, you will not need any effort to attain virtue.  He will give it to you.  Are you engulfed by fear and disenchantment? Turn to Christ.  Love Him simply and humbly, without any demand, and He Himself will free you.”[1]     

Let us use the remaining weeks before Christmas to turn to the Savior in humble love, trusting that He is born to heal 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. 

 

 

 

 

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[1] St. Porphyrios, Wounded by Love, 135.

We Must Open Our Eyes to the Light of Christ in Order to Prepare for Christmas: Homily for the Twenty-sixth Sunday After Pentecost & Fourteenth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

Ephesians 5:8-19; 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 the good life is primarily about having a lot of money and being able to buy whatever we want.  Since the Lord warned so clearly of the folly of giving our hearts to the false god of riches, it is sadly ironic that the celebration of His Nativity so often occurs in ways that contradict the blessedness of His Kingdom.   

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 mercy.  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, 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.  

That is why we must follow St. Paul’s guidance to the Ephesians to “walk as children of light—for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true.”  Instead of remaining comfortable with “the unfruitful works of darkness” in our lives, we must “expose them” to the light of Christ, for “when anything is exposed by the light it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light.”  If we remain in the dark, we will never learn to see ourselves, or anyone or anything else, clearly.   Instead, we will see everything in terms of our passions, which means that we will place gratifying our desires before both serving God’s gracious purposes for us and meeting the needs of others.  St. Paul’s warning to the Ephesians against drunkenness applies also to anything that would blind us to the great spiritual urgency of being “filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart.”

It should be obvious that we all routinely fail to treat and speak to our neighbors as the living icons of God that they are.  We have all welcomed thoughts and desires into our hearts that obscure the light of Christ and lead us to stumble in the darkness.  Our spiritual vision becomes less focused every time that we do so as we fall prey to our familiar temptations.  Especially during the Nativity Fast as we prepare to welcome the Savior at Christmas, we all need to hear the phrase from the ancient baptismal hymn that St. Paul cites: “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.”

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.  

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, let us 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.  

 

 

 

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