1 Corinthians
4:9-16; Matthew
9:9-13
As we begin the
Nativity Fast in preparation to enter into the great joy of the Savior’s birth,
we do so with the recognition that salvation has come to the world through what
appeared at the time as utter foolishness.
The eternal Son of God became a human being, born in lowly circumstances
in a barn. Imagine how His coming looked to the leaders of the Jewish people
who had no expectation of the God-Man, a truly divine Messiah with a virgin
mother. They had wanted a powerful
political and military leader who would deliver their nation from the
occupation of the Roman Empire. They also
expected their deliverer to be a strict teacher of religious law who would
bring earthly blessings upon the righteous and condemnation upon Gentiles and
sinners.
Jesus Christ certainly did not fit
their expectations either at His birth or throughout His public ministry. On this feast day of St. Matthew the Apostle
and Evangelist, we remember that He called Matthew, a tax collector, to be His
disciple. As we remember from the story
of Zaccheus, tax collectors were Jews who worked for the Romans, collecting more
than was required from their own people and living off the difference. Their fellow Jews hated them as traitors and
thieves. No one would have expected the
Messiah of Israel to call a tax collector to follow Him as a disciple, but that
is precisely what the Lord did. If that
were not shocking enough, He also ate with tax collectors and sinners, which in
that time and place was seen as participating in their uncleanness. In the eyes of the Pharisees, Christ
defiled Himself and broke the Old Testament law by doing so. For
the Messiah to act in such ways was worse than foolishness; it was blasphemy
and a sign that He was not a righteous Jew, let alone the one anointed to
fulfill God’s promises to Abraham.
In response, the Lord made clear
that His apparent wickedness demonstrated a much higher righteousness than that
of His critics. He said that sick
people, not healthy ones, are in need of a doctor’s care. He said
that He came to call not the righteous, but sinners, to repentance. Who requires healing, the sick or the
well? Who needs to repent, those who are
already faithful or those who are not? Christ
quoted the Old Testament to remind His opponents that God desired mercy and not
sacrifice. In other words, He related to
others in ways that embodied the divine compassion toward corrupt and broken
people. He came to heal every infirmity
and to restore the fallen image of God in us all, which is why He offered
Himself fully on the Cross for the salvation of the world and conquered death through
His glorious resurrection. As so many
of the Old Testament prophets had proclaimed, religious ceremonies and rules
are worthless for those who refuse to manifest God’s mercy to the human beings
they encounter every day. In conveying
the divine compassion to those considered God’s enemies, Christ appeared to be
a sacrilegious fool in the eyes of those who had so terribly distorted the
faith of Israel.
Saint Paul wrote about the ministry
of the apostles that they were fools for Christ’s sake. Before Christianity was popular, established,
or well-known anywhere, they left everything behind for a ministry that led to
poverty, persecution, and death. Like
the countless martyrs of Christian history throughout the centuries, the
apostles certainly appeared as fools to the vast majority of people in their
time and place. Why risk your life for
the memory of an obscure Jewish rabbi?
Why not burn some incense to Caesar, become a Muslim, or join the
Communist Party? Why lose your own life for
saving Jews from the Holocaust, as did St. Maria (Skobtsova) of Paris?
Those of us who face no real
persecution for our faith must recognize that Christ still calls us to be fools
for His sake in our lives every day. He
scandalized the self-righteous by calling St. Matthew to follow Him and by
associating with people of bad reputation.
Christ did not endorse their sins, but He endured criticism in order to draw
them to repentance and healing. He
showed them the mercy of God by building loving relationships with them that made
it possible to invite them to recover the beauty of their souls. If we are
truly sharing in the life of the Savior, we must not become like those who
judged Him for treating tax collectors and sinners with compassion. We must not demonize and condemn our
neighbors whose ways of life are not the paths to holiness that we seek to
pursue as Orthodox Christians. Doing so
will not draw anyone to the blessedness of the Kingdom, but it will bring
judgment upon us for our pride and self-righteousness. We will then be just like the Pharisees who
criticized the Lord for keeping company with disreputable people.
Our calling is to remain faithful to
the teachings and practices of Orthodox Christianity as exemplified by the
saints across the ages. It is not to accept
the lie that all behaviors and beliefs are somehow equally good and holy. That would
not be the way of the Lord, Who told His disciples that “Unless your
righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will certainly not
enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Matt. 5: 20) Such righteousness requires that we
are so transformed by His grace that we do not abandon our loved ones, friends,
and acquaintances when they lose their way and make disastrous decisions about
how to order their lives. Our calling is
to treat others as the Lord treats us, who are each “the chief of sinners.” Our Savior looked like a fool to many when He
kept company with people known to be sinners, and we should not be afraid to
follow His example in maintaining relationships that serve as a signs of God’s
steadfast love to broken and confused people whose burdens we never know fully.
If they do not experience a measure of
the love of Christ through us, then how will they be drawn to the life of the Kingdom? If they experience Christians as people who want
nothing to do with them, why would they ever want to have anything to do with Christ?
We sometimes
forget that those who responded best to the Lord were those who were completely
shocked to receive His care, for they knew that they appeared to be lost causes.
That was surely the case for both St.
Matthew and St. Zachaeus as tax collectors, thieves, and traitors. The
same was true for St. Photini, the Samaritan woman at the well with a very
broken person life, who became a great evangelist and martyr. The Canaanite woman with a demon-possessed
daughter understood that God’s blessings were not only for the Jews far more
clearly than did the disciples, and her daughter was set free. The only one of the ten lepers who returned to
Christ to thank Him for his healing was a Samaritan. The Lord said that the faith of the Roman
centurion, whose servant He had healed, surpassed that of any of the Jews. He said of the sinful woman who anointed and
kissed His feet in the house of Simon “her sins, which are many, are
forgiven, for she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves
little.” (Lk. 7:47) Their examples show that it is not our place
to declare anyone as a lost cause before the mercy of the Lord.
In order to have the spiritual
strength and clarity to discern how to build relationships with neighbors that convey
the healing mercy of Christ, we need the spiritual disciplines of the Nativity
Fast, such as prayer, fasting, repentance, generosity to the needy, and
reconciliation with those from whom we have become estranged. These practices also appear foolish in our
culture, especially this time of year with its focus on self-indulgence and consumerism.
The great irony is that this season is one
of preparation to receive Christ Who, both at His birth and throughout His
ministry, looked like a fool according to the conventional standards of His
day. But through what appeared to be
foolish, He made—and continues to make-- saints out of tax-collectors, prostitutes,
adulterers, murderers, Gentiles, and
other unlikely characters. So in the
weeks before Christmas, let us embrace our calling to live in what seem to be
foolish ways that will draw others to the celebration of the birth of the
Savior not only on December 25, but in their hearts and lives every day of the
year—no matter who they are and no matter what they have done. Christ was born
because our only hope, like theirs, is in His mercy for sinners.
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