Homily for the Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost and Sixth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

2 Cor. 6:16-7:1; 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 participate personally in Him as 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 in order 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 had no illusions about himself, for he was so filled with demons that he called himself “Legion.”  His personality had disintegrated due to the overwhelming power of the forces of evil in his life.  That is shown by the fact that he was naked, like Adam and Eve who 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 their calling to become like God in holiness.  This naked man living in the cemetery was so terrifying to others that they 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 provides a vivid icon of the pathetic suffering of humanity enslaved to death, stripped naked of the divine glory, and isolated in fear.  His wretched condition manifests 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 simply as even further torment.  By telling the Lord that his name was Legion, he acknowledged that the line between the demons and his own identity had been blurred.  He was in such bad shape 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 humanity than the plight of this miserable man.    He is an icon of our brokenness and represents us all in many ways.  He did not ask Christ to deliver him, even as we did not take the initiative in the Savior’s coming to the world.   The corrupting forces of evil were so powerful in this man’s life that he had lost all awareness of being a person in God’s image and likeness.  We can also become so overwhelmed by our inflamed passions that we lose all sense of being a living icon 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 can easily become overwhelmed with fear that His salvation will simply torment us, for sometimes we cannot even imagine living without the corruption that has become second nature to us.  

            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 at what had happened.  We may find their reaction hard to understand.  What could be so terrifying about this man returning to a normal life?  Unfortunately, we all tend to get used to whatever we get used to.  What we have experienced routinely in ourselves or from others, no matter how depraved, becomes normal to us.  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 as a sign of the glory of God.   There could not be a better witness of the salvation that the God-Man has brought to the world than a person who moved from death to life.  Such a radical change is a brilliant sign of the truth 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 presence of the pigs in this story reminds us that the man to whom Christ restored his humanity was a Gentile, like the compromised and confused Christians of Corinth to whom St. Paul wrote in today’s epistle lesson.  Even as they kept falling back into their old ways of idolatry and immorality, he referred to them as “the temple of the living God” and applied the exhortations of the Hebrew prophets to them: “’I will be their God, and they shall be My people. Therefore, come out from them, and be separate from them,’” says the Lord, “’and touch nothing unclean; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be My sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.’”

Contrary to the legalistic attitude of his fellow Pharisees, St. Paul knew that being a Jew was not a prerequisite for receiving the blessings of the Messiah, for all with faith in Him are now “Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (Gal. 3:29) His Kingdom is not defined according to ethnicity, nationalism, or geography. St. Paul also knew that being spiritually clean and separate from the corruptions of the world was not a matter of merely checking off the boxes of outward behavior.  The Corinthians had strayed far from the path of faithfulness to Christ, but the Apostle did not tell them that all was therefore lost. They had put on Christ like a garment in baptism and been nourished by His Body and Blood in the Eucharist.  He reminded them of who they had become by grace as “the temple of the living God” and called them to live accordingly.  Doing so was not an exercise in religious legalism, but required embracing the ongoing struggle for purity of heart as they did the hard work of reorienting their lives to the Kingdom.  As today’s reading concludes, “Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, and make holiness perfect in the fear of God.”

We must learn from the Lord’s deliverance of the demon-possessed man and St. Paul’s exhortation to the Corinthians that, no matter how consumed we are by our passions, we must never give up hope for healing.  Regardless of how far we have strayed from the path of faithfulness, we must refuse to define ourselves as spiritual failures cut off from the Lord’s mercy.  Instead, we must remember that, as “the temple of the living God,” we have the freedom to cooperate with the infinite healing power of the Holy Spirit poured out upon us as living members of Christ’s Body, the Church.  If we will do what we presently have the strength to do each day in embracing our true identity in the Savior, then we may all become like the man who was finally able to sit “at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind” and able to bear witness to the great salvation that He has brought to the world.  As the Apostle taught, “Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, and make holiness perfect in the fear of God.”  That is how we may become fully alive and behold the divine glory.

 

 

 

 

 

Homily for the Sunday of the Holy Fathers of Seventh Ecumenical Council & Fourth Sunday of Luke with Commemoration of the Hieromartyr Jacob of Hamatoura in the Orthodox Church

 

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

     Many are strongly tempted today to allow the problems facing our culture and world to distract us from growing to maturity in the Christian life and bearing good fruit for the Kingdom of God.  That is perfectly understandable in light of our constant access to global media and the gravity of current events.  All Christians should mourn the ongoing slaughter in the Holy Land, which has now engulfed Lebanon, a traditional heartland of our Antiochian Orthodox Church.  Our father in Christ, His Beatitude Patriarch John X of Antioch, has joined with other Orthodox leaders there to call for an end to “the on-going killing that has claimed the lives of thousands of innocent civilians” and displaced over a million people.”[1]  We are all aware of the invasion by Russia of Ukraine, where bloodshed continues between historically Orthodox nations and some have threatened even to use nuclear weapons.  There is no telling how much further these conflicts will spread.  Regardless of our particular political opinions, many Americans today are deeply worried about the future of our nation.  In ways that transcend conventional politics, so much of what we had taken for granted about our culture is being called into question.  And on matters including our health, our finances, and our families, most of us know the temptations of worry and fear all too well.  It can be very difficult, then, to “lay aside all earthly cares” in order to focus on “the one thing needful” of hearing and obeying the Word of God. 

 

That is why we all need to concentrate our attention today on commemorating 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 that is appropriate for images of Christ, the Theotokos, and the Saints.  The council’s teaching highlighted the importance of the Savior’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 our fundamental 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 wood and paint, and is unrelated to the question of whether we are becoming more like Christ and gaining the strength to seek first His Kingdom.  The icons are not merely religious art, but reminders that to become a truly human person is to become like Jesus Christ, who, according to St. Paul, “is our peace… and has broken down the middle wall of separation” so that “He might reconcile…both [Jew and Gentile] to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity.” (Eph. 2:14-16) The more that we become like our Lord, Who worked this reconciliation, the less we will see anyone through the darkened lenses of those who place their hopes in earthly kingdoms of whatever kind.   

 

Today’s gospel reading addresses these same questions with different imagery.  Christ 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.” 

 

This parable warns us about what happens when we fail to fulfill our potential as those who bear the image of God.  Our vocation is to become more beautiful living icons of the Savior, but 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.  In order for us to bear good fruit for the Kingdom, we must attend to the health of our souls with the conscientiousness of a careful farmer or gardener.  We must do so in order to become more fully who we are as living icons of Christ.  If, to the contrary, we become obsessed with worry and fear about earthly cares of whatever kind, we will never gain the strength to bear good fruit for the Kingdom.   

 

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 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. 

 

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 refuse to allow the passions of worry and fear to take root in our hearts and minds, regardless of what is happening in our world, our nation, or our families.  We must do the hard, daily work of learning to trust and hope in the Lord as we mindfully turn away from fueling our passions and instead invest ourselves in serving the living icons of Christ who are our neighbors. In order to bear good fruit for the Kingdom, we must refuse to focus on anything that will distract us from sharing more fully in His blessed, eternal life.  Unless we struggle mindfully against this temptation, it can easily choke the life out of our souls. Because our risen Lord has conquered even the grave through His glorious resurrection on the third day, we must refuse to become enslaved to the fear of death and instead focus on becoming more beautiful icons of Christ.  That is the only way to know true peace in this world.

 

The example of St. Jacob of Hamatoura should inspire us in this regard.  After a year of torture, he was beheaded for Christ in the fifteenth century in Lebanon. Centuries later, monks returned to restore the ancient monastery on the mountain of Hamatoura. The monastics and pilgrims then began to encounter the saint through visions and miracles, but his name was not known until the discovery of a manuscript in 2002, after which his relics were discovered also.  St. Jacob is a shining example of how even the very worst that the corrupt powers of this world can do can never separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 8:39) Our Risen Lord has liberated us from slavery to the fear of death, which is at the root of all our  anxiety and despair.  So the next time that you find yourself worried and afraid about anything, mindfully commend that concern to Christ and invest yourself in prayer, fasting, and generosity with your time and resources to help the neighbor right next to you.  That is how we may become “those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bring forth fruit with patience.”   There is no other path for entering into the joy of the Lord.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] https://www.antiochian.org/regulararticle/2205

Homily for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost & Third Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

2 Corinthians 4:6-15: Luke 7:11-16

            Across the centuries, there has been a persistent temptation for many Christians to view salvation as an easy spiritual escape from life in the world rather than as the demanding journey of pursuing its fulfillment and healing in God.  It is possible to abuse the hope of heaven as an excuse for not responding faithfully to the many challenges that stare us in the face in the world as we know it.   I am sure that many people have rejected the Christian faith because they believe it is otherworldly to the point of irrelevance before their very real suffering and pain, as well as that of their neighbors and loved ones.   A key problem with such escapist forms of Christianity is that the Lord brought salvation to the world by entering fully into its brokenness as the God-Man, even to the point of death, in order to bring us into the joy of a new heaven and a new earth through His glorious resurrection.  His Kingdom is not only a future hope, but also a present reality, for as Christ said, “the kingdom of God is within you.” (Lk 17:21)   Remember how He responded to the question of whether He was the Messiah: “Go and tell John the things you have seen and heard: that the blind see, the lame walk, the   lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the gospel preached to them.” (Lk. 7:22) Those are the words of the New Adam who came to heal all the infirmities of His suffering sons and daughters.    

            Today’s reading from the gospel according to St. Luke comes right before that passage.  The widow of Nain was having the worst day of her life and had no reason to hope for a blessed or even tolerable future, for in that time and place a widow who had lost her only son was in a very precarious state.  Poverty, neglect, and abuse would threaten her daily; she would have been vulnerable and alone.  When contrary to all expectations the Lord raised her son, He transformed her deep mourning into great joy. He restored life itself both to the young man and to his mother.

The Lord’s great act of compassion for this woman manifests our salvation and provides a sign of hope in even the darkest moments of our lives in our fallen world.  We weep and mourn not only for loved ones whom we see no more, but also for the brokenness and disintegration that we know all too well in our own souls, the lives of our loved ones, and the world around us.   Death, destruction, and decay in all their forms are the consequences of our personal and collective refusal to fulfill our vocation to live as those created in the image of God by becoming like Him in holiness.  We weep with the widow of Nain not only for losing loved ones, but also for losing what it means to be a human person as a living icon of God in a world that seems so far from manifesting the fullness of the heavenly reign.

           The good news of the Gospel is that the compassion of the Lord extends even to those who endure the most tragic and miserable circumstances and the most profound sorrows.  Purely out of love for His suffering children, the Father sent the Son to heal and liberate us from slavery to the fear of death through His Cross and glorious resurrection. The Savior touched the funeral bier and the dead man arose.  Christ’s compassion for us is so profound that He not only touched death, but entered fully into it, into a tomb, and into Hades, because He refused to leave us to self-destruction.   He went into the abyss and experienced the terror of the black night of the pit.  The Theotokos wept bitterly at His public torture and execution, not unlike mothers today who weep at the loss of their children.  When He rose victorious over death in all its forms, He provided the only true basis of hope that the despair of the grave will not have the last word on the living icons of God.  His Mother and the other Myrrh-Bearing Women were the very first to receive this unbelievably good news.    

            The widow of Nain wept bitterly out of grief for the loss of her son.  Christ wept at the tomb of his friend St. Lazarus, not only for him, but for us all who are wedded to death as the children of Adam and Eve, who were cast out of Paradise into this world of corruption.  We weep with broken hearts out of love for those whose suffering is beyond our ability to ease, those who are no longer with us in this life, and those from whom we have become otherwise estranged due to their and our sins.  We must learn to weep for ourselves as those who have caught a glimpse of the eternal blessedness for which we came into being and who know how far we are from entering fully into the joy of the Lord.  The corruption that separates us from God and from one another takes many forms and the same is true of our healing and restoration.  The particular paths that we must follow in order to embrace Christ’s victory over death as distinctive persons will certainly vary.  But they must all be routes for gaining the spiritual clarity to learn to mourn our sins and take the steps that are best for our healing and restoration as whole persons in the world as we know it.  If we refuse to take those steps and simply wait passively to ascend someday into heavenly peace, we will only weaken ourselves even further as we refuse to do what is necessary to lift up our hearts to receive the Lord’s healing.  There is no way around the truth that we must do the hard work of taking up our crosses and following Him, if we want to share in His blessed life.  

            In today’s epistle reading, St. Paul reminds the Corinthians that “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God” shining in our hearts through Christ does not guarantee a life of ease and comfort, for “we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the exceeding greatness of power is from God, and not from us.”  God created us from the dust of the earth, to which we will all return.  We are not only mortal, but also subject to all kinds of weaknesses, maladies, and imperfections in every dimension of our existence as embodied persons.   As the Apostle describes his ministry, “We are pressed on every way, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; smitten down, but not destroyed; always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our body.”

            Those tempted to spiritual escapism forget that Jesus Christ came in the flesh with a body just like ours.  His humanity is whole and complete while being united with His true divinity:  He is one Person with two natures.  We unite ourselves to His great Self-Offering on the Cross when we take up our cross of struggling to be faithful in the midst of our weaknesses, infirmities, and corruptions, those of everyone we encounter, and those of our culture and world.  Christ does not call us somehow to escape from this difficult path, but to pursue it as He did.  As St. Paul stated, “For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our mortal flesh.”  We must die to the ongoing power of sin in our lives so that we may rise up with Christ in holiness, gaining the spiritual strength to manifest His loving kindness and merciful blessing to those as miserable as the widow of Nain.  In order for our lives to become signs of the presence of His Kingdom in our world of corruption, we must take up our crosses to the point that we may say with integrity: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, 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 for me.” (Gal. 2:20)  

              The Lord said, “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.”  (Matt. 5:4) His mercy on the widow of Nain provides us all a sign of the hope for eternal life that is ours in Him.  In order to enter into the blessedness for which we hope, we must mourn our sins by embracing the difficult struggle to repent of them.  That is the only way that we may gain the spiritual strength to play our unique roles in conveying His comfort and blessing to those who suffer to the point of despair in our world of corruption.  The more that we unite ourselves to Christ in faith and faithfulness as we take up our crosses, the more that we will know the joy of His Kingdom even now and become instruments for bearing witness to His salvation, which is already breaking into the world as a “treasure in earthen vessels, that the exceeding greatness of power is from God, and not from us.”