Homily for Saints Athanasius and Cyril, Patriarchs of Alexandria & Twelfth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

Hebrews 13:7-16; 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 brought to the world as we regain the “robe of light” repudiated by our first parents.  Baptism demonstrates that the God-Man did not come to make only one group of people participants in eternal life.  As St. Paul wrote, “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 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. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”  (Gal. 3: 27-29)            

 

The Messiah fulfilled the ancient promise to Abraham and extended it to the Gentiles, which was contradictory to all the religious and social assumptions of first-century Palestine.  The same is true of our Lord’s healing of the Samaritan leper in today’s gospel reading.  Among the ten lepers the Lord healed, the only one who returned to thank Him was a hated Samaritan, someone considered a foreigner and a 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 interaction with this man shows that His gracious blessing extended even to those understood to be obvious foreigners, sinners, and enemies.  That is good news for us who have no ancestral claim to the spiritual heritage of Israel.  As recipients of divine love that transcends all human boundaries, we must never accept that nationality, race, or any such distinctions somehow exclude anyone from the same mercy that we ourselves have received.  Having received the high calling to become living epiphanies of His salvation through baptism, we must never fall into the spiritual blindness of viewing and treating anyone as less than a living icon of the One Who has born and baptized for the salvation of the entire world.   

 

Remember that the Savior praised the faith of a Roman centurion, an officer of the pagan Roman army that occupied Israel.  That surely scandalized religious nationalists who wanted a Messiah to bring political power to their people over against others.  (Lk 7:9) The people of Nazareth even 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 compassion 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 foreigners and enemies are any less called to become brilliant epiphanies of salvation than we are.   

 

Another shocking detail of our gospel reading is that the Samaritan alone returned to give thanks for receiving healing from the Messiah of Israel.  He knew that, in the eyes of the Jews, he was considered a complete outcast.  Nonetheless, he obeyed the Lord’s command to head toward the temple in Jerusalem to show himself to the priests.  That must have been a very difficult instruction for a Samaritan to obey, for the Samaritan temple was not in Jerusalem, but on Mount Gerizim.  The Jewish temple was no place for a Samaritan; he would not have been welcome there.  Nonetheless, he set out toward Jerusalem with the other lepers.  When he realized that he had been healed, he was the only one to return to thank the Savior for this life-changing miracle. He reminds us in this regard of the “Good Samaritan” who, unlike the Jewish religious leaders who continued on their way, stopped to show overwhelming concern for the healing and wellbeing of a Jewish man who had been beaten by robbers and left for dead by the side of the road.  And even as the Samaritan cleansed from leprosy surpassed his Jewish companions in gratitude, the Samaritan Photini had understood Christ far better than had Nicodemus the Pharisee.

 

It remains tempting today to distort the way of Christ into agendas that are contradictory to His teaching and ministry, especially when we convince ourselves that we may define people according to the categories of our fallen world instead of seeing ourselves and our neighbors in light of the glory of His Kingdom.  Those who have put on Christ like a garment in baptism must not prefer the nakedness of slavery to passions that lead to hatred, fear, and abuse of anyone who bears the image and likeness of God, regardless of their nationality, political opinions, religious beliefs, or other characteristics.  If we corrupt the way of the Lord into a project that inflames our passions against any neighbor or group of people for any reason, we will most definitely not fulfill our calling to become living epiphanies of His salvation.  Instead, we will become like the self-righteous hypocrites who rejected Christ because He challenged their dreams of earthly power.   

 

Today we commemorate Sts. Athanasius and Cyril, Patriarchs of Alexandria who played crucial roles in resisting heresies that gravely obscured the good news of Jesus Christ. Athanasius combatted Arianism, which denied the full divinity of the Savior.  Cyril repudiated Nestorianism, which denied the unity of divinity and humanity in the Person of Christ.  They both focused on matters that strike at the very heart of the Faith, for only One Who is truly the God-Man can make us “partakers of the divine nature” by grace.  Their focus was not on superficial differences between people but on the most basic questions of how Christ brings salvation to the world.  They did not worship earthly power for they knew that “here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city, which is to come.”  They clarified that our calling is to “continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge His Name.”  They warned us “not [to] be led away by diverse and strange teachings; for it is well that the heart be strengthened by grace,” not by attachment to anything that hinders the healing of our souls.  They reminded us to live as Christ taught and “not [to] neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”

 

That they were Egyptians who lived in a time and place very different from our own is irrelevant, for we are members together with them of the one Body of Christ.  We celebrate their memories and ask for their prayers not out of earthly kinship but with the same spiritual gratitude that we have for the Samaritan leper, St. Photini, and all the other “strangers and foreigners” with whom we have become “fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” by the grace of the One born in Bethlehem and baptized in the Jordan for our salvation. Let us follow their teaching and example to the life of a kingdom that remains not of this world and in which all who respond to Christ “with the fear of God and faith and love” are welcome.

 

 

 

 

           

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

 

Hebrews 13:7-16; Matthew 4:12-17

In this season we celebrate the great feast of Theophany, of Christ’s baptism by St. John the Forerunner 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 truly 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.

By entering into the water, the Lord made it holy, which means that He restored and fulfilled its true nature.  We need water in order to live.  The earth needs water in order to become fertile, bearing fruit and giving life to animals of all kinds.  We wash with water and use it to maintain cleanliness and health.  Without water, we become weak and die, as would other creatures.  And in the world as we know it, water kills many through floods and storms. Since the creation has been subjected to futility through our fall, the water through which God gives us life may become the means of our death. But when water is blessed, God restores it to its natural state of fulfilling God’s gracious purposes for the flourishing of the creation.  And since our homes are where we and our families live each day, we want His blessing on the physical space in which we offer ourselves to Him.  In opening our homes to the Lord’s blessing, we find strength to make our daily lives a liturgy, an entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven. 

Tragically, our first parents refused their high calling to offer themselves and the world for blessing and ushered in the unnatural realm of corruption that we know all too well, both in the brokenness of our hearts and in our relationships with one another.  God gave Adam and Eve garments of skin when they left paradise after disregarding Him.  Through their disobedience, they had become aware that they were naked and were cast into the world as we know it.  Their nakedness showed that they had repudiated their vocation to become like God 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)

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
Him 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 to save Adam and Eve, all their descendants, and the entire creation, fulfilling the gracious purposes for which He brought us into existence.    

Life after baptism is not, however, without pain, disease, death, sorrows, and temptations.  In contrast with the divine glory of the appearance of our Lord, the darkness of sin within us and our world of corruption 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. St. John the Forerunner, who prepared the way for “the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world,” was arrested and ultimately beheaded by Herod Antipas for prophetically denouncing the king’s immorality.  After the Baptist’s arrest, 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) 

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 darkened lives, He calls us to become radiant with the divine glory He shares with us as the New Adam.  To do so, we must find healing for the passions that have taken root in our hearts and have distorted our relationships even with those we love most.  In how we treat everyone from those closest to us to complete strangers, we must find healing from the corruptions of pride, hatred, anger, resentment, and the desire to dominate or condemn others.  It does not matter whether we are at home, work, school, or other settings, or whether we think we are in private or in public. If we have put on Christ in baptism, we must become living epiphanies of Christ’s salvation and mercy to all we encounter.

We must also be on guard for the ways in which we remain inhabitants of “the region and shadow of death.”  Because the Savior has hallowed the water and the entire creation through His baptism, absolutely nothing is intrinsically evil or profane.  No dimension of God’s good creation requires us to return to the nakedness of passion in any way.  We are without excuse for doing so, for 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 the goal each day, we must always strive to manifest our Lord’s healing of the human person in every thought, word, and deed.  We must become like holy water restored to its natural place and blessing the world as a sign of its salvation.

            If we are to do so in a world still enslaved to the fear of death, we must embrace the full meaning of baptism.  As St. Paul wrote, “Do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?  Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” (Rom. 6:3-4) We must, then, be always vigilant against allowing self-centered desire to distort our vision of ourselves, our neighbors, and our world. We must turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, and treat others as we would have them treat us, especially when we are tempted to respond in kind to those who have wronged us or whom we consider our enemies.  We must take up the struggle to purify the desires of our hearts and offer them for true fulfillment in God. The more deeply attached we are to any source of temptation, the more mindful we must be concerning it.

            Like people of every generation, we do not have to look very closely at ourselves or at the state of the world to know that Isaiah’s prophecy still rings true: “[T]he 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.” “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever,” and His Epiphany calls us to become radiant with His holy light.  In the waters of the Jordan, “Christ has appeared desiring to renew the whole creation.”  So let us now lift up our hearts to receive the great blessing that He is baptized to share with every single one of us in every dimension of our lives in the world as we know it.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Homily for the Sunday Before the Theophany of Christ in the Orthodox Church

 

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

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

At the time of His earthly ministry, however, people were looking for a very different kind of Savior.  The word “messiah” means “anointed one,” and the Jews wanted a leader who would deliver their nation from Roman oppression, not unlike how any people living under military occupation by the armies of another nation typically want their liberation and independence.  Christ’s own disciples thought of Him in those terms until after His resurrection, for even those closest to the Lord had great difficulty accepting that He was not the earthly king they had expected.  They were so focused on how Jesus Christ might fulfill their dreams for power in this world that they could not grasp His true identity as the Son of God, the incarnate second Person of the Holy Trinity, the divine Word Who spoke the universe into existence. His Kingdom is not of this world and stands in prophetic judgment over all our pathetic attempts to use religion to build ourselves up over our neighbors, no matter who they may be.

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

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

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

It would be different if the Epiphany of Jesus Christ as the Son of God were merely an idea to be grasped as an abstract truth. It would be different if Theophany were simply a calling to prove that we are right and others are wrong.  This feast is nothing like that, however, for it calls us to enter personally into the great mystery of our salvation by becoming radiant with the divine glory that the Savior has shared with us.  We must no longer live as those driven by insecurities and fears rooted in the fear of death, including the obsession to prove that we are right about religion or anything else.  Our focus must be on finding healing for our souls so that we will be able to live each day as those clothed with a robe of light.     

In order to share more fully in the eternal life of the God-Man, we must follow the path of ongoing repentance proclaimed by John, always seeing ourselves as those who must prepare the way of the Lord in our lives.  We must persist in cooperating with Christ’s healing mercy, actively making straight whatever remains crooked.  Like those who first heard the Forerunner, we have become too comfortable with life on our own terms, perhaps patting ourselves on the back for being Orthodox and thinking that repentance is only for others.  The Lord calls us to reject such foolishness, for as He taught, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” (Lk. 12:48)   Even as the Forerunner blasted the self-righteous hypocrites of first-century Palestine, he would excoriate us for daring to use our undeserved spiritual blessings as an excuse to distract ourselves from recognizing that we are each “the chief of sinners” in need of the divine healing and transformation graciously extended to us—and to all people-- in Jesus Christ.

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