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 to welcome Christ at His Nativity, we must resist the temptation to corrupt this blessed season into merely a time full of food, family, and fun.  Contrary to popular opinion in our culture, Christmas is not a celebration of this world on its own terms or of ourselves. We are preparing to celebrate nothing less than how the God-Man has entered fully into our life and world, becoming truly one of us even as He remains truly divine and makes us “partakers of the divine nature” by grace.  For the healing and restoration of the human person and of creation itself, He was born to fulfill a kingdom that stands in prophetic judgment over our inclination to place our hope in what is passing away and can never truly satisfy and sustain us as His living icons.

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, exile, and bitter disappointment.   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) As we read in the Psalms, “Do not put your trust in princes…in whom there is no help. His spirit departs, he returns to his earth; In that very day his plans perish.” (Ps. 146:3-4)

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 was part of being a powerful ruler, but wallowing in the blood of those who bear God’s image remains 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, which is a reminder that our salvation does not come through the rule of any earthly kingdom or nation.

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 some arrangement of earthly power inevitably fall into the idolatry of placing their hope in the false gods of this world and demonizing those who stand in their way.  If we are truly entrusting ourselves to Christ, then we must follow the example of Abraham, who “looked forward to the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” “For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.” (Heb. 13:14) No nation, agenda, or geographical area should ever become an idol for us or an excuse not to obey the Lord’s teaching to love our neighbors as ourselves.

The shock of bitter exile for the Hebrews was so profound 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 power that these and other prophets foreshadowed and foretold the coming of Christ.  They entrusted themselves to God, regardless of whether things seemed to be going well or poorly for them according to conventional standards.   Far from making political calculations or seeking vengeance against anyone, they 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.”  They remained faithful because they lived in expectation, not merely of a certain course of events for themselves and their nation, 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.”

No one forces us to choose today between idolatry and faithfulness, but we so often freely worship false gods 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 those who seem to stand in our way.  Even without being taken away into exile, we typically hope 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. 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 as we know it, not only to those who appear respectable or who are members of this or that favored group. 

When the Son of God became a human person, He did not do so by being 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 brutal 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 animals’ 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.  Like those who had foretold the coming of the Messiah, they repudiated the idolatry of serving themselves or any earthly agenda as they came to hope only in the Lord.

  As we prepare for Christmas, let us embrace the 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 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 who is excluded 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 the Forefathers (Ancestors) of Christ in the Orthodox Church

 

Luke 14:16-24

              Even before the internet and cell phones, people struggled to remain focused on what was truly important.  Now we must contend not only with constant messages, images, and other forms of electronic distraction, but also with passions that tempt us to be mindful about just about anything other than preparing to welcome Christ into our lives and world at His Nativity.  All the more is that the case when worrying about everything from the persistent problems of the world and of our families to meeting the challenges of paying for presents, travel, and other seasonal expenses threatens to convince us that there are matters more important than accepting the Savior’s gracious invitation to enter fully into the joy of the banquet of the Kingdom of Heaven.  He calls us to embrace our true vocation not only during divine services or in the eschatological future, but in every moment of our lives, regardless of the circumstances in which we live.    

             The people in today’s gospel reading had made themselves blind 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 in the Holy Land.  Marriage may represent the belief that God’s blessings were only for their particular family line or ethnic group.  Many rejected our Lord because He interpreted the law in a way that challenged the authority of the Pharisees, repudiated the temptation to become an earthly king of the Jews, and extended the blessing of His Reign even to those considered 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. We must never, then, fall into the idolatry of thinking that serving the false gods of nationality, ethnicity, or political ideology has anything at all to do with entering into life eternal.  If anything, they easily become obstacles to our salvation in light of our passionate attachment to seeing ourselves and other people light of the categories of the fallen world.   

         The Hebrews who looked forward in faith for God’s fulfillment of the promises to Abraham did not do so simply on the basis of their observance 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 longed 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.  Though often overlooked at the time, 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. Nationality, ethnicity, and political affiliation do not limit God’s gracious purposes for us in any way.

             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 Jewish people and became the God-Man’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.  Despite our personal brokenness, we all have the ability to respond to Christ with the obedience of humble faith.

         Unfortunately, those in the parable 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.  Otherwise, we will bring judgment upon ourselves as those who refused to orient our lives toward “the one thing needful” of hearing and obeying the Word of God.   

         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 lack of mindfulness keeps us from making our daily responsibilities points of entrance into eternal joy.  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]

We make the choice every moment of our lives whether we are going to offer our blessings and struggles 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 exclude ourselves from 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” who must open our hearts to receive Him through prayer, fasting, generosity to our needy neighbors, and confession and repentance of our sins.   That is how we may accept His gracious invitation to dine at the Heavenly Banquet.  Let us use the remainder of the Nativity Fast to do precisely that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

[2] St. Porphyrios, 145.

"Woman, You Are Freed from Your Infirmity": Homily for the Twenty-fourth Sunday After Pentecost & Tenth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

Ephesians 2:14-22; 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 celebrate tomorrow 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, culture, ethnic group, or political faction over another or to set up an earthly kingdom of any kind in any part of the world.  He is born to fulfill our original calling as those created in the image and likeness of God so that we might become “partakers of the divine nature” in Him.  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 brokenness of the relationship between man and woman stems from the fall of our first parents and is an abiding sign of the corruption of a world that has not yet embraced its restoration in the New Adam, Who was born of a woman, the New Eve, for our salvation.  The supremely honored position of the Theotokos in the life of the Church shows that the denigration of women is antithetical to our salvation.  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 ounce 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, including those that lead to hatred and condemnation of those we consider our enemies.   As St. Paul taught, “Christ is our peace, Who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in His flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that He might create in Himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the Cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end.”

The particular division that the Apostle addressed was between Jew and Gentile, but the same truth applies to division among all who bear His image and likeness.   As Gentiles who have become heirs to the fulfillment of the promises to Abraham by faith in Christ, who are we to say that anyone is beyond receiving the merciful lovingkindness of the Lord for which we pray?  Who are we to look at anyone through the darkened lenses of our own passions and to declare that they are anymore beyond redemption than we are? If we, despite our sinfulness and lack of any ancestral claim to the blessings of the Messiah, “are no longer strangers and sojourners, but …fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone,” then we must treat every neighbor—male or female and of whatever nationality, affiliation, or ideology-- as a beloved child of God to whom the Savior’s gracious proclamation,   “Woman, you are freed from your infirmity,” is addressed.

Since there is much within all of us that would rather condemn our enemies than see them as being no more in need of the Lord’s healing mercy than we are, we need these blessed weeks of Advent to pray, fast, give alms, and confess and repent of our sins so that we will gain the spiritual clarity to see that the One born at Christmas comes to loose 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.