Repentance Requires Our Free Cooperation with the Merciful Grace of God: Homily for the Fifteenth Sunday of Luke (“Zacchaeus”) in the Orthodox Church

 

Luke 19:1-10 

What does true repentance look like?  Whenever we are tempted to think that it has to do only with how we feel and not with how we act, we should remember the story of Zacchaeus.     As a Jew who had become rich collecting taxes from his own people for the occupying Romans, Zacchaeus was both a traitor and a thief who collected even more than was required in order to live in luxury. No one in that time and place would have thought that such a person would ever change.  He was considered the complete opposite of a righteous person, and no observant Jew would have had anything at all to do with him. 

  We do not know why Zacchaeus wanted to see the Savior as He passed by.  He was a short little fellow who could not see over the crowd, so he climbed a sycamore tree in order to get a better view.  That must have looked very strange:  a hated tax-collector up in a tree so that he could see a passing rabbi.  Even more surprising was the Lord’s response when He saw him: “Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, for today I must stay at your house.”  The Savior actually invited Himself to Zacchaeus’ home, where the tax-collector received Him joyfully. 

             This outrageous scene shocked people, for no Jew with any integrity, and especially not the Messiah, would be a guest in the home of such a traitor and thief.  He risked identifying Himself with Zacchaeus’s corruption by going into his house and eating with him.  But before the Savior could say anything to the critics, the tax collector did something unbelievable.  He actually repented.  He confessed the truth about himself as a criminal exploiter of his neighbors and pledged to give half of his possessions to the poor and to restore restore four-fold what he had stolen from others.  He committed himself to do more than justice required in making right the wrongs he had committed.   In that astounding moment, this notorious sinner did what was necessary to reorient his life away from greedy self-centeredness and toward selfless generosity to his neighbors.  As a sign of His great mercy, Jesus Christ accepted Zacchaeus’ sincere repentance, proclaiming that salvation has come to this son of Abraham, for He came to seek and to save the lost.

           The importance of cooperation or synergy between the human person and God shines through this memorable story.  We do not know Zacchaeus’s reasons for wanting to see Christ so much that he climbed up a tree, but in the process of doing so he opened his soul at least a bit to receive the healing divine energies of the Lord. He did not have to condemn Zacchaeus, who surely already knew how corrupt he was.  When people complained that Christ had associated Himself with such a sinner, He did not argue with them, but instead let Zacchaeus respond by doing what was necessary to receive the healing of his soul.  The Lord did not force Zacchaeus to do anything at all, for he responded in freedom when he encountered the gracious presence of the Savior.

 Zacchaeus was so transformed by the mercy of Christ that he became an epiphany, a living icon of the restoration of the human person in God’s image and likeness.  This formerly corrupt and money-hungry man resolved to share with his neighbors a measure of the grace that he had received, for he gave half of what he owned to the poor and restored all that he had stolen four-fold.  In response to the gracious blessing he had received from Christ, he bore witness to the healing of his soul by blessing others.  He did not simply feel sorry about his sins, but acted in a way that showed he was reorienting His life away from the love of money and toward the love of God and neighbor. He was learning to obey the greatest of the commandments.  For as Christ taught, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength…[and] You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mk. 12: 30-31)

           Zacchaeus provides a wonderful example of repentance because he freely united himself to Christ by taking practical steps beyond any measure of justice.  In doing so, he was transformed by the merciful generosity of the Lord, like an iron left in the fire of the divine glory.  His transformation was not a reward for what he had earned in any way, for he did not ask for or receive from Christ what he deserved.  The healing that the Savior brings us all is never a matter of getting what we deserve, but instead manifests the boundless mercy and grace of the Lord Who conquered death itself in order to make us participants in His eternal life.  Zacchaeus’s example shows us that the more fully we know the gravity of our sins and the sickness of our souls, the better position we are in to cooperate with our Lord’s abundant mercy and to convey that same mercy to others.

             In the prayers before receiving Communion, we confess that we are each the chief of sinners.  That does not mean that we have broken more laws than Zacchaeus did, but that the light of Christ has illumined the eyes of our souls such that we can catch at least a glimpse of the truth about ourselves. We never know the hearts and souls of other people and must never even attempt to judge anyone else as though we were God.  The only true statements we can make about the state of someone’s soul are those that we make about ourselves when we receive the grace to see ourselves clearly   We do not know our sins fully, but when we know the sorrow of falling short of the infinite goal of becoming like God in holiness, then we can confess our brokenness and call out for the Lord’s mercy as we take concrete steps to redirect our lives toward Him. That is why we must all make regular use of the holy mystery of Confession.  We receive the Lord’s gracious strength for healing as we confront the hard truth about our sick souls.   We must do so in order to receive His Body and Blood for the forgiveness of our sins and life everlasting.  Doing so is not optional, but a free choice that is absolutely necessary in order for us to be transformed by personal encounter with the Lord as Zacchaeus was.   

             Saint James stated the matter clearly: “Faith without works is dead.” (Jas. 2:26) To repent is not merely to feel sorry for our sins, but to turn away from them and toward Christ so that we may receive the Lord’s gracious divine energies for our healing and transformation.  That is what Zacchaeus did in response to the initiative of the Savior in coming to His house.  Given the importance of hospitality in that culture, Zacchaeus surely shared a meal with Christ, which in that time and place was understood to establish a close personal bond between them.  When we receive the Eucharist, our Lord’s gracious initiative makes us “one flesh” with Him through our communion in His Body and Blood.  If we are truly in communion with Christ, then His life will shine through ours.  Even more than Zacchaeus, we will then share with our neighbors the gracious mercy that we have received in practical, tangible ways that go beyond any standard of justice.  Even more than Zacchaeus, we will rejoice that salvation has come to our house and extend God’s blessings to others.   

            No matter how tempted to despair we may be today about ever finding healing for our personal brokenness, the transformation of Zacchaeus provides a sign of hope for the fulfillment of the Lord’s gracious purposes for each of us.  This memorable little man shows us how to respond in freedom to the One Who “came to seek and to save the lost,” which includes us all.  If the Savior’s healing extended even to someone like Zacchaeus, a notorious traitor and a thief, then there is hope even for you and me as the chief of sinners. All that we must do is to take the steps we presently have the strength to take in reorienting our lives according to the love of God and neighbor as we confess our failings and call on His mercy.  If we stay on this path, refusing to deviate from it and getting back on it whenever we stumble, then salvation will come to our houses as we share the great blessing we have received with others.  For we are also sons and daughters of Abraham by faith in Jesus Christ, Who says to each of us, “I must stay at your house today.”  Like Zacchaeus, let us chose to receive Him joyfully for the healing of our souls.   

 

  

 

 

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Acquiring the Spiritual Clarity of the Samaritan Leper: Homily for the Twenty-ninth Sunday After Pentecost & Twelfth Sunday of Luke with Commemoration of Venerable Makarios the Great of Egypt, the Anchorite in the Orthodox Church

Colossians 3:4-11; Luke 17:12-19

        During the season of Christmas, we celebrated the Nativity in the flesh of the Savior.  Born as truly one of us, He is the New Adam Who restores and fulfills us as living icons of God.  During the season of Theophany, we celebrated the revelation of His divinity as a Person of the Holy Trinity at His baptism, where the voice of the Father identified Him as the Son and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in the form of a dove.  Christ has appeared in the waters of the Jordan, blessing the entire creation, enabling all things to become radiant with the divine glory.  When we put Him on like a garment in baptism, we participate in the sanctification that He has brought to the world as we regain the “robe of light” lost by our first parents. 

            We must never think of our Lord’s birth or baptism, or of our own baptism, as somehow the end of the story.  Saint Paul wrote that, “when Christ, Who is our life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”  As we confess in the Nicene Creed, there is a future dimension of Christ’s appearance, for He “will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, Whose kingdom will have no end.”  We “look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”  When Christ returns in brilliant glory, the true state of our souls will be revealed.  The Last Judgment will be the ultimate epiphany or manifestation of whether we have embraced His healing and become radiant with His gracious divine energies.  It will be impossible to hide or obscure on that day whether we are full of darkness or light.  

            To shine eternally with the light of Christ requires that we undertake the daily struggle to purify and reorient the desires of our hearts toward fulfillment in God and away from slavery to our passions.  The Colossians to whom Paul wrote were mostly Gentile converts who needed to be reminded that they had repudiated corrupt pagan practices and put on Christ in baptism.  That is why Paul told them to “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.”  It is contradictory to unite ourselves to Christ and then to refuse to conform our character to His.  In order to gain spiritual health, we must mindfully reject all that keeps us from becoming living epiphanies of our Lord’s salvation. As Paul notes, “anger, wrath, malice, slander…foul talk” and lying should have no place in our lives, for 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.”  We must vigilantly turn away from the darkness and remain focused on receiving the light.

    As those who live in hope for the coming of the Kingdom, we must struggle every day of our lives to enter more fully into Christ’s restoration and fulfillment of the human person in the image and likeness of God.  There is no other way to appear with Him in glory, whether today or when His Kingdom comes in its fullness.  And the merely human distinctions that we so often celebrate due to our passions and insecurities have nothing at all to do with sharing in the life of our Lord, for as Paul wrote, “Here there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free man, but Christ is all, and in all.” 

    Today’s gospel reading provides a shocking example of this truth, for the Lord’s healing mercy extended even to a Samaritan with leprosy.  Among the ten lepers the Lord healed, the only one who returned to thank Him was a hated Samaritan, someone considered a despised heretic by the Jews.  After the man fell down before Him in gratitude, the Lord said, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”  Our Lord’s gracious interaction with this man shows that His healing mercy extended even to those conventionally understood to be sinners and enemies.  The Lord’s love for humanity transcends all the petty divisions of the fallen world, and we must not pretend that His benevolence somehow does not extend even to those we consider our worst enemies.  There is simply no way to become a living epiphany of His salvation if we persist in remaining more attached to our own grievances and prejudices than to the boundless love of our Lord, before Whom we are all “the chief of sinners.”     

    The Savior praised the faith of a Roman centurion, who was an officer of the Roman army that occupied Israel.  By any conventional standard, that man was His enemy.  (Lk 7:9) The people of Nazareth tried to throw Christ off a cliff when He reminded them that God had at times blessed Gentiles through the ministry of great Hebrew prophets and had not helped Jews.  (Lk 4:29) He shocked everyone by talking with St. Photini, the Samaritan woman at the well, and then spending a few days in her village.  (Jn 4:40) The list could go on, but the point is obvious that our Lord’s love for broken, suffering humanity extends literally to all who bear the divine image and likeness.  He was born and baptized in order to bring all people into the Holy Trinity’s eternal communion of love.  It is only “the old nature” of corruption that would keep us so enslaved to hatred, division, and vengeance that we would imagine that those we consider our enemies are any less called to become brilliant epiphanies of His salvation than we are.   

        One of the great virtues of the Samaritan leper is that he did not allow fear about the hatred of others toward him to keep him from remaining focused on finding healing and expressing gratitude.  Together with a group of Jewish lepers, he called out “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” He obeyed the Lord’s command to head toward the temple in Jerusalem to show himself to the priests.  No one at the time would have expected a Samaritan leper to receive anything but rejection and condemnation from the Messiah and other Jewish religious authorities.  When he realized that he had been healed, he did not immediately head back to Samaria to his own people, for “he [alone] turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and…fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving Him thanks.”  He did not allow fear of rejection to keep him from showing gratitude for this life-changing miracle.  Christ, of course, did not condemn him in any way, but said “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”  The Samaritan shows us the importance of finding healing from our fear of criticism and our love of praise from other people.  He did not allow concern for what others thought or said about him to keep him from calling for the Lord’s mercy, obeying His command, or giving thanks.   

          A fellow monk once asked St. Makarios the Great of Egypt, one of the great Desert Fathers from the fourth century, how he could be saved.  Abba Makarios told him to go the cemetery and abuse the dead. So he insulted them and threw stones at their graves.  When the monk returned, Makarios asked what the dead said in response.  He reported that they said nothing.  Then he told the monk to go to the cemetery and praise the dead, which he did.  When asked by Makarios what they said in response, the monk reported that they said nothing.  “Then Abba Makarios said to him, ‘You know how you insulted them and they did not reply, and how you praised them and they did not speak; so you too if you wish to be saved must do the same and become a dead man. Like the dead, take no account of either the scorn of men or their praises, and you can be saved.’”[1]

         If we want to open our darkened souls to the healing light of Christ, we must gain the spiritual clarity of the Samaritan leper.  He was so focused on receiving the healing mercy of the Lord that he died to concern about what others thought or said about him. In order to become living epiphanies of His salvation, we must find healing from the obsessive desire to ground the meaning and purpose of our lives in the attitudes, words, and actions of other people, which can be a very subtle temptation.  Like the Samaritan, we must refuse to allow worry about the opinions of others to keep us from focusing our energies on calling for the Lord’s mercy, obeying His command, and giving thanks for His blessings.  Doing so is necessary to “Put to death…what is earthly in you” and to live as those who “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.”  In order to “appear with [Christ] in glory,” we must not allow anything to keep us from uniting ourselves to Him with the humble faith of the Samaritan.

    

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[1] As cited in “Orthodox Road:  Rediscovering the Beauty of Ancient Christianity.” https://www.orthodoxroad.com/a-lesson-from-the-dead

 

“The People Who Sat in Darkness Have Seen a Great Light”: Homily for the Sunday After Theophany (Epiphany) in the Orthodox Christian Church

 

Ephesians 4:7-13; Matthew 4:12-17

          In this season we celebrate the great feast of Theophany, of Christ’s baptism when the voice of the Father identified Him as the Son of God and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in the form of a dove. Epiphany reveals that the Savior Who appears from the waters of the Jordan to illumine our world of darkness is the God-Man, a Person of the Holy Trinity.  He is baptized to restore us, and the creation itself, to the ancient glory for which we were created.  He comes to make all who wandered in the blindness of sin and death radiant with the brilliant light of holiness.

        Tragically, our first parents turned away from their high calling and ushered in the realm of corruption that we know all too well, both in the brokenness of our own hearts and in our relationships with one another.  God gave Adam and Eve garments of skin when they left Paradise after they chose to serve their own self-centeredness instead of Him.  Through their disobedience, they had become aware that they were naked and were cast into the world as we know it. They tried to become human apart from God, Who made them in His image, and their nakedness showed that they had repudiated their vocation to become like Him in holiness.  Having stripped themselves of their original glory, they were reduced to mortal flesh and destined for slavery to their passions and to the grave.   Because of them, the creation itself was “subjected to futility…” (Rom. 8:20)  We have all followed in their way of proud self-centeredness, which inevitably leads to spiritual blindness and despair.

        As we prepared for Theophany, we heard this hymn: “Make ready, O Zebulon, and prepare, O Nephtali, and you, River Jordan, cease your flow and receive with joy the Master coming to be baptized. And you, Adam, rejoice with the first mother, and hide not yourselves as you did of old in paradise; for having seen you naked, He appeared to clothe you with the first robe. Yea, Christ has appeared desiring to renew the whole creation.”   If it seems strange to think of Christ being baptized in order to clothe Adam and Eve, remember St. Paul’s teaching that “as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”  (Gal. 3:27)   In baptism, Jesus Christ clothes us with a garment of light, restoring us to our original vocation to become like God in holiness.  He delivers us from the nakedness and vulnerability of slavery to our own passions and to the fear of the grave.  Through His and our baptism, He makes us participants in His restoration and fulfillment of the human person. He is baptized in order to save Adam and Eve, all their descendants, and the entire creation, fulfilling the glorious purposes for which He breathed life into us in the first place.

        Our lives after baptism are not, however, without pain, disease, death, and other sorrows.  The more we are illumined by His light, the more clearly we will see the darkness that remains within us.  In contrast with the divine glory of the appearance of our Lord, the darkness of sin becomes all the more apparent.  In the aftermath of Christ’s birth, Herod the Great had all the young boys in the region of Bethlehem murdered. Today’s gospel reading refers to the Forerunner’s arrest by Herod Antipas for prophetically denouncing the king’s immorality.  After the one who baptized Him was arrested, the Lord went to “Galilee of the Gentiles” to begin His public ministry in fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy that “’the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.’” (Matt. 4:15-16)

        The Jews who suffered under the oppression of the Romans and their client kings knew all too well about darkness, death, and crushed hopes.   Their homeland was controlled by foreigners who worshiped other gods and exploited the people.  Understandably, the dominant expectation among the Jews was for a Messiah like King David to defeat their enemies and establish a reign of national righteousness.  Jesus Christ, however, rejected the temptation to become an earthly king throughout His ministry, from His testing by Satan in the desert to His crucifixion.  He repudiated the idolatrous attempt to identify the heavenly reign with any version of politics or religion as usual in our world of corruption, for they can not help us attain the purity of heart necessary to see God.   Even though the Savior did not seek earthly power, the powerful still viewed Him as such a threat that a wicked king tried to kill him as a small child and the Roman Empire crucified Him at the request of corrupt religious leaders.  He rose in glory over the very worst that those whose hearts were full of darkness could do to their enemies.  Our true hope is in Him, not in any of the false gods that tempt us today to seek first something other than His kingdom.

        We are baptized into Christ’s death in order to rise up with Him into a life of holiness in which we regain the robe of light rejected by our first parents. In every aspect of our lives, we must become radiant with the divine glory shared with us by the New Adam.  In order to do so, we must find healing for the passions that have darkened our hearts and distorted our relationships even with those we love most in this life.  It does not matter whether we are at home, work, school, or other settings, we must reject the temptation to become blinded by pride, lust, hatred, anger, resentment, or the desire to dominate others.  If we have put on Christ in baptism, we must become living icons of His salvation and peace in every thought, word, and deed.

        For that to happen, we must be on guard for all the ways in which we have become accustomed to “the region and shadow of death.”  That requires struggling mindfully each day to obey the Lord’s command: “Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”  Because the Savior has hallowed the water and the entire creation through His baptism, we must remember that nothing in our life and world is intrinsically evil or profane.  No dimension of God’s good creation requires us to return to the nakedness of passion in any way.  Theophany reveals that we are always on holy ground and must speak, act, and think as those who wear a garment of light.  Though we fall short of fulfilling that goal each day, we must constantly strive to turn away from corruption and embrace our high calling “until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”  That is His gracious will for us all.

        If we are to discern how to fulfill our vocation to bear witness to our Lord in the midst of a world still enslaved to the fear of death, we must focus on opening even the darkest corners of our own souls to the brilliant healing light of Christ.  Doing so requires resisting the temptation to pretend that we know the hearts of others and are in a position to judge them, for that is simply a distraction from doing “the one thing needful” of hearing and obeying the Word of God from the depths of our hearts.  Doing so requires constant vigilance against allowing self-centered desire to corrupt our souls and distort our vision of ourselves, our neighbors, and our world.  Doing so requires turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, and treating others as we would have them treat us, especially when we think we are justified in responding in kind to those we consider our enemies.    Doing so requires turning away from whatever fuels our passions so that we may build peaceable relationships even with those we find it hardest to love.  As we celebrate Theophany in “the region and shadow of death,” let us focus mindfully on living each day as those who have died to sin and risen up into a new life of holiness through the Lord Who has baptized by John in the Jordan for our salvation.  Anything else is a distraction from embracing the full meaning and purpose of our baptism as those who now wear a garment of light and are called to become living epiphanies of the salvation of the world each day of our lives in every thought, word, and deed.

Homily for Theophany (Epiphany) in the Orthodox Church

 

Matthew 3:13-17; Titus 2:11-14; 3:4-7

          Today we celebrate that Jesus Christ is truly the Son of God and One of  the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity.  At His baptism by St. John the Forerunner in the Jordan, the voice of the Father proclaims, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,” and the Holy Spirit descends upon Him in the form of a dove.  The meaning of the Feast of Christmas is fulfilled at Theophany, for now it is made clear that the One born in Bethlehem is truly God come to restore our fallen humanity and to renew the entire creation as the God-Man.  The Savior now enters the flowing water of a river in order to make it holy, in order to bring His blessing upon the world that He created.  The entire creation was subjected to futility because of the rebellion of our first parents, and now the New Adam comes to restore it and us.  As St. Paul wrote, “the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now” for it also “will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.“  ( Rom. 8: 21-22)

At Epiphany, we celebrate that the Creator has become part of the creation in order to make it a new heaven and a new earth.   At Theophany, we celebrate that no dimension of our life or world is intrinsically profane or cut off from sharing in the holiness of God.  All things, physical and spiritual, visible and invisible, are called to participate in the divine glory that our Lord has brought to the world, to become even now signs of the coming fullness of God’s Kingdom.  He sanctified our flesh and blood at His birth, and at His baptism He demonstrates that we, too, are saved along with the rest of the creation, for it is through water that we share in His life.  “As many of you as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ.”  In baptism, we receive the garment of light that Adam and Eve lost when they degraded themselves and the entire creation through slavery to sin and death.

When we bless water at the conclusion of Liturgy today, we will participate in our Lord’s fulfillment of His gracious purposes for all reality.  Holy water is a sign that God desires everything to find restoration and perfection in His Kingdom.  Though we pollute it and it often seems like our enemy in storms and floods, water is fundamentally God’s gift to sustain our lives.  We simply cannot live without it, and neither can anything else in nature.   By entering into the Jordan at His baptism, Christ has restored and fulfilled water’s life-giving purpose as a sign of His gracious will for every dimension of the universe that He spoke into existence.

At Epiphany house blessings, the priest sprinkles holy water in every room, which is a sign of God’s blessing upon even the small details and physical settings of our daily lives.  The house blessing is also a calling to sanctify every aspect of ourselves as we become more fully the distinctive human persons God created us to be in the divine image and likeness.  To do so requires entering more fully into Christ’s baptism such that we die to sin and rise up with Him in holiness. The healing of our souls is not a one-time event, but an ongoing journey of sharing more fully in the restoration that He has brought to the world.  True Christianity is not an escape from any of the challenges of life, but instead the path for becoming an icon of the fulfillment of the human person, and of the creation itself, in God.

This Theophany, let us live as those who have become epiphanies of what happens when people put on Christ like a garment.   As St. Paul wrote to St. Titus, that means “to renounce irreligion and worldly passions, and to live sober, upright, and godly lives in this world; awaiting our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, Who gave Himself for us to redeem us from all iniquity and to purify for Himself a people of His own who are zealous for good deeds.”  Doing so is our only way to provide the world a much needed sign of its salvation in the Lord revealed as God in the waters of the Jordan.