Humble Service and Beholding the Resurrection: Homily for the Sunday of the Myrrh-Bearing Women, Pious Joseph of Arimathea, and Righteous Nicodemus

Christ is Risen!

            Sometimes gaining knowledge requires more than than sitting around and thinking; sometimes we actually have to do something.  There is much in life that we must learn by experience, not simply by pondering ideas or memorizing facts.

            The good news of Pascha is like that, for after several weeks of intensified prayer, fasting, and repentance, we followed Christ to the agony of the Cross and then to the joy of His Resurrection.  As we continue in the season of Pascha, our celebration of the new life that the Lord has brought to the world has only begun.  Instead of thinking that we already know well enough the concept of His Resurrection, our Savior calls us to grow daily in our participation in His victory over sin, death, and all that separates us from life eternal.  He did not die and rise again in order to give us abstract theological ideas, but to raise us from death to life, from corruption to holiness, and to make us partakers by grace of the divine nature.       

            Those who were at the empty tomb on Easter morning as the first witnesses of the Resurrection show us how to embrace the good news of this season.  They heard the word of the angel: “He is Risen.  He is not here…Go tell His disciples—and Peter—that He is going before you to Galilee; there you will see Him, as He said to you.”

            Notice that these first witnesses of our salvation were women who went to the tomb with oil and spices to anoint the dead body of Jesus Christ.  They obviously did not expect the tomb to be empty.  They were heart-broken, afraid, and terribly disappointed that their Lord had been killed.  But they had the strength to offer Him one last act of love:  to anoint His body properly for burial.  Just imagine the risks that they took, publically identifying themselves with the Lord at His crucifixion and then going to the tomb of One executed as a traitor in the wee hours of Sunday morning.  With a courage born of love, they put aside concerns about their personal safety. And as they did so, these women-- Mary the Theotokos, Mary Magdalen, two other Mary’s, Johanna, Salome, Martha, Susanna and others whose names we do not know--received the greatest news in the universe, the resurrection of our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ.  Yes, the angelic proclamation of Pascha came first to the Theotokos, even as she was the first to hear from the Archangel the good news of the Incarnation.

            The male disciples did not believe their testimony at first, even as St. Joseph the Betrothed was at first skeptical of the circumstances of the Lord’s virgin conception. But with the balance between man and woman that we see throughout the unfolding of our salvation, we remember two men today along with the blessed women:  Sts. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, prominent Jewish leaders who were also secret followers of Jesus Christ.   This Joseph risked his position and possibly his life by asking Pilate for the Savior’s body, even as Joseph the Betrothed had risked his life during the flight to Egypt to escape the persecution of the wicked King Herod.  Nicodemus, who had understood the Lord so poorly in a conversation recorded near the beginning of St. John’s gospel, came to faith and joined Joseph of Arimathea in wrapping the Lord in linen with spices and placing Him in a tomb.  

            Like the myrrh-bearing women, these men must have been terribly sad and afraid.  Their hopes had been cruelly crushed; their world turned upside down.  Not only had their Lord died, He was the victim of public rejection, humiliation, and capital punishment.  Nonetheless, these women and men did what needed to be done, despite the risk to themselves from the authorities and their own pain.  They served their Christ in the only way still available to them by caring for His body.

            Before Jesus Christ’s death, He washed the feet of His disciples in order to show them what it meant to serve in humility as He did.  The myrrh-bearers were not present that evening, but they followed the Lord’s example of service better than anyone else. Perhaps they were not there because they had already learned the centrality of humble service in how they cared for the Lord throughout His ministry.  Regardless, their selfless devotion put them in the place where they would be the first to receive the good news of the Resurrection, the first to share in the joy of Pascha.  We have a lot to learn from them, for if we want to experience our Lord’s victory over death and corruption in all its forms, we must do as they did by serving Him in humility.

            Fortunately, we have no lack of opportunities to serve Christ, in His Body, the Church, by doing the thousand small tasks that need to be done for the flourishing of our parish.  We may serve Him also in every needy and miserable person we encounter, as well as in our own families when we put the needs of our spouses, children, parents, and other loved ones before our own.  We will know and experience the new life of our Risen Lord by serving Him in ways already available to us.  We usually do not have to look far at all in order to find them or to find Him.

            Today’s reading from Acts also shows the importance of humble service through the deacons ordained to oversee the distribution of bread to the needy widows.  The word deacon means “servant” and we read that, after the deacons began their ministry, “the word of God spread, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem and a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith.”  The passage shows the centrality of humble service for the flourishing of Christ’s Body.    

            It may be tempting, of course, to think that going out of our way to serve our Risen Lord in the Church, our neighbors, or even our families is for those with money, time, and health to spare—those who have no problems and just need something to do with their spare time.  But on this Sunday of the Myrrh-Bearing Women and Saints Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, we simply cannot use that excuse.  They served Christ when their world was falling apart and they had more problems than we can imagine; as they mourned and despaired, they literally risked their lives and safety to do what needed to be done, even though they did not expect to find an empty tomb.  And in doing so, the women opened themselves to receive the greatest blessing imaginable as the first witnesses of their Lord’s victory over death and sin.

             If we want to enter into the glory of this season, if we want to embrace a power and strength that conquers even the grave and our darkest fears, we must follow the example of those courageous and loving women and men who left behind their comfort zones in order to serve our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ.  No, a life of courageous love for our Savior—however we encounter Him-- is not easy, but it remains the only path that will enable us to know, and participate personally in, the good news of His resurrection on the third day.  If we want Pascha to be more than a cultural celebration or the reminder of an idea, we must enter into the Savior’s great triumph by living lives that bear witness to His victory over all the ways of sin and death, including the self-centeredness and laziness that we all use to excuse ourselves from serving the Lord in His Church, our families, and in the people around us every day of our lives.    

            In Lent, we fasted, attended additional services, prostrated ourselves in prayer, gave to the needy, mended broken relationships, and otherwise did what we could to repent, to reorient our lives toward Christ in preparation to follow Him to His Cross.  Now that we are celebrating this glorious season of the Resurrection, something is also required of us:  that we actually live the new life that the Risen Lord has brought to the world.  That is how we will know by personal experience the joy of Pascha, even as the Myrrh-Bearing Women heard the message of the angel and saw that the tomb was empty.  We too must celebrate this glorious season by serving our Savior with practical acts of humble love, if we want to behold the wonder of His Resurrection and to know Him, not as an abstract idea, but as the Redeemer of the world and the Victor over death.  If we follow the example of those holy women and Sts. Joseph and Nicodemus, we will surely be headed in the right direction.     

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The Risen Lord Is Truly With Us! Homily for Thomas Sunday in the Orthodox Church

Acts 5:12-20; St. John 20:19-31

Christ is Risen!

On this Sunday of St. Thomas, we have only begun our celebration of Pascha, of our Lord’s victory over death through His glorious resurrection on the third day.   Since we are all too well adjusted to the darkened world of sin and corruption, it takes time for us to enter into the joy of the empty tomb, to adjust our spiritual vision to the brilliant light of our Savior’s triumph.  Thankfully, the season of Pascha provides us with forty days to grow in our personal participation in the blessed truth that Christ is risen from the dead—and, in Him, we are too.

Jesus Christ is risen with His Body as a whole, complete human being who is also God.  That is why Hades and the tomb could not hold Him captive and also why His resurrection is such good news for us. We share in His resurrection already through our participation in His Body, the Church.  His Body and Blood strengthen us to participate more fully in His glorious, eternal life in every Divine Liturgy. When we receive “the medicine of immortality,” the One Who has conquered the grave nourishes, heals, and transforms us more fully for the life of heaven even as we live and breathe on the earth.

Of course, the holy mystery of the Eucharist is a miracle and beyond human explanation. We were baptized into His death in order to rise with Him into the true life for which He originally created us. Through all the holy mysteries of His Body, the Church, we share ever more fully in the good news of this season.  We call the celebration of His resurrection “Pascha,” which means Passover, because Jesus Christ is our Passover from death to life.  Our entire life in His Body, the Church, is an ongoing participation in the new day of the Kingdom that He has begun, which should transform every dimension of our lives, seven days a week, the whole year round.

There is certainly something new in Christ’s followers in our readings today from the Acts of the Apostles.  In the gospels, the disciples so often misunderstood the Lord and were not able to minister effectively in His name.  They doubted the testimony of the women who heard of the resurrection from the angel at the tomb and generally abandoned Christ at His arrest and crucifixion.  But in Acts, they perform so many signs and wonders that the sick trust that they will be healed by the mere shadow of St. Peter falling on them.  Multitudes of sick and demon-possessed people sought out the apostles, who healed them all. What on earth has happened to that formerly confused and doubting group?

The answer is clear:  Christ has conquered sin and death in their lives.  He empowers them to manifest the glory of His resurrection when He says:  “Peace be to you.  As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.”  They share in their own lives in the salvation of the Lord. He lives in them and they live in Him.  Christ is the vine, and they are the branches.  They are members of the Body of which He is the Head.  His victory over sin, the grave, and all human corruption is now theirs; the change in their lives is clear and evident for all to see.

We may wonder, however, if the same is really true of us. Does Christ’s victory over sin and death really transform our lives?  Is the Risen Lord just as present for us as He was to the disciples?   We would probably find that hard to believe for we have not seen the Risen Jesus as the apostles did, miraculously present with a glorified body that still bore His wounds.   No, we were not there then, but He is here now. Remember what the Lord said to St. Thomas, “Because you have seen Me, you have believed.  Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Just as doubting and fearful disciples became faithful, bold preachers and wonderworkers, the Savior calls and enables us to know personally the healing and transforming power of His resurrection.   In the holy mystery of the Eucharist, Christ is truly present with us just as He was when He showed St. Thomas His wounds.  We commune with the Risen Lord when we receive Communion.  We unite ourselves to the glory of His resurrection when we receive His Body and Blood, offered for our salvation and raised in glory.  If we receive Him in this way, we must also live with Him and shine forth with the glorious victory over sin and death revealed on the day of Pascha.  He wants us not only to celebrate this joyful season with services, songs, and feasting, but most profoundly with holiness, with a newly empowered life that shines with heavenly light.

We may want to excuse ourselves from this high calling, of course.  In contrast with the brilliant light of Pascha, we may see the darkness and brokenness in our lives all too well.  Christ has conquered sin and death, but we all still bear their wounds in so many ways; and sometimes we wonder if this glorious news of life eternal really applies to us with all our struggles, pains, weaknesses, and failings.

We may have a romanticized and unrealistic view of what living the life of the resurrection actually means.  Some think that true holiness means escape from all pains and problems, from involvement in anything that is not totally separate from life in the world as we know it, or a kind of perpetual retreat from reality.  But notice, for example, that when the risen Lord appears to His disciples, He still bears His wounds.  He was not raised as a ghost or a spirit, but as the God-Man, a whole human being with a body that bore the consequences of the battle He fought for us.  His horrible wounds were part of Who He freely chose to become for our sake, and He arose victorious with them.  He took these wounds upon Himself purely out of love for us and has used them to defeat death itself, the wages of sin and our ancient foe that has brought human beings misery and despair from generation to generation.

There is more to sharing in the glory of eternal life than simply acknowledging or singing about Christ’s resurrection.  To participate fully in the Lord’s great victory is an eternal journey, a process of growing in holiness, and none of us is anywhere near completing it.  Nonetheless, we must recognize that Christ rose again to bring the dead to life, to heal our wounds, to save sinners, and to transform all who bear His image and likeness.  He rose to heal the world, not to escape it.  No matter how weak, sick, and corrupt we are, His divine mercy extends to us personally.  He intends to bless and save us all.  The good news of Pascha is that we are no longer the slaves of sin and death.  Now evil only has the power in our lives that we allow it to have; the same is true of the fear of death, violence, suffering, and all the other works of darkness that can so easily dominate, distort, and destroy us.  These harsh realities are part of the world as we know it, but our Savior’s empty tomb shows that they too are essentially empty, that they too have been conquered, and that our calling is to becoming living witnesses of this blessed freedom each day of our lives in every thought, word, and deed.

So no matter how difficult our struggles are or how weak we feel before them, let us rejoice in the resurrection of Christ.  No matter how far short we have fallen from faithfulness in any way, let us embrace the new life brought to the world by the empty tomb.  And let us also embrace one another, forgive all offenses, and pray for and bless our enemies, for Christ’s resurrection has conquered death and sin, which are the very roots of all estrangement, hatred, and brokenness in our relationships with other people.

Through the holy mysteries of His Body, the Church, our risen Savior enables us all to pass over from death to life.  Now the challenge is for each of us to live in the righteous joy of Christ’s resurrection, to make His victory ours, and to recognize that nothing separates us from His holiness other than our own stubborn refusal to share in His great triumph.   So let us celebrate Pascha not by only singing “Christ is Risen,” but also by actually living and experiencing the new life that His empty tomb has brought to the world.  For He is with us just as truly as He was with the St. Thomas and other disciples, and He wants to make as big a difference in our lives as He did in theirs.  That is the good news that we celebrate during the season of Pascha.

Christ is Risen!

We Must Enter into Christ's Death In Order to Rise with Him: A Homily Near the End of Great Lent in the Orthodox Church

          We go to great lengths to insulate ourselves from the realities of suffering and death.  Consequently, people who experience profound loss and sorrow often find themselves alone.  Surely, it is difficult to be in the presence of those in great pain of any kind, especially those who are dying, for we often feel helpless before them and are reminded of our own mortality.  At some level, we know that something similar is in store for us.   

            Perhaps these tendencies have at least something to do with why so few of our Lord’s followers stood at the foot of His cross as He suffered and died.  The Theotokos, the other women, and St. John refused to abandon Him, but the rest of the disciples fled in fear.  Surely, they had good reason to be afraid for it had to be dangerous to be associated publically with someone who was crucified as a traitor to the Romans after being rejected as a blasphemer by the leaders of the Jews. But the Theotokos, the other righteous women, and St. John did not flee.  They refused to allow their shock and sorrow to cause them to abandon their Savior, even in the midst of His horrible suffering and death.

            The season of Great Lent gives each of us blessed opportunities to become like those who remained at the foot of the Cross, who endured the agony of beholding our Lord’s self-offering for the life of the world.  We will soon enter quite profoundly into the mystery of our salvation in as we journey with Christ from the raising of Lazarus to His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, where in a matter of days He is rejected and condemned by those He came to save. We will chant “Today is hung upon the tree He who hung the earth upon the waters.”  We will not merely remember His crucifixion as a past historical event during the services of Great and Holy Friday; no, as we read the Passion Gospels and place Christ on the Cross, we enter into the eternal present of the divine love that stops at nothing, not even death, the tomb, and Hades, in order to bring us—and the entire creation—into the eternal blessedness for which He breathed life into us in the first place and for which He spoke the universe into existence.   

            So we are not only figuratively in the place of those who stood at the foot of the Cross.  We really are there, even as we are really guests at the heavenly banquet in every Divine Liturgy. Is it surprising, then, that we need several weeks of preparation in order to have the spiritual strength and clarity necessary to abide with the God-Man as He suffers and dies for us?  “The King of Angels...Who wrapped the heavens with clouds” humbles Himself to the point of accepting hatred, torture, and cruel public execution purely out of love for all of us who have rejected Him time and again.  He even asks the Father to forgive His tormenters for “they know not what they do.”  This is not the death of a mere teacher or example,   but the slaughter of the true Passover Lamb, the Incarnate Son of God Who is fully divine and fully human.  If we shy away from the suffering and death of those we encounter daily, how much more will we shake with holy fear before the death of the Alpha and Omega of the universe? How much more will we say “This is no place for me!” and run away from the Cross? 

            Perhaps we feel justified in doing so because we have the benefit of knowing the rest of the story. Our Lord will rise victorious on the third day.   Who does not want to shout “Christ is Risen!” as soon as possible? The problem, of course, is that we cannot enter into the great mystery of His resurrection unless we first participate in His death.  Even as our Savior tramples down death by death, we too must die to death, to the corruption and decay that our following in the way of Adam and Eve has brought about in our own lives.  That means death to sin however it has taken root in us, however it has distorted and disfigured us as living icons of our Lord.   A once beautiful painting loses nothing but its ugliness from an expert restoration that reveals its original beauty.  The same is true for us when we turn away from all that separates us from growing evermore like God as partakers of the divine nature.  That is the fulfillment of the ancient, true, and beautiful vocation to which Lent calls us.

The Christian life begins with baptism into the Lord’s death as we die to sin and rise with Him into newness of life.  We put on Christ in baptism and regain the robe of light that Adam lost.  That is, of course, only the beginning of the journey to become radiant with the divine energies like an iron left in the fire.  Unfortunately, we so easily return to the ways of the first Adam, preferring the darkness of our own corruption to the brilliant light of God’s glory.  

  As Christ taught, we must persevere in dying to death by taking up our crosses and losing our lives in order to save them.  We must struggle each day to die to the corrupting effects of sin and embrace more fully the holy joy which our Lord’s cross has brought to the world.  As St. Paul writes, “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” (Gal. 5:24)  Slavery to self-centered desires is never a path to joy, but only to addiction to self-imposed misery which will never satisfy us.  God did not create us for the tomb of slavery to ourselves, but for the eternal joy appropriate to those who join themselves to His self-offering in free obedience as beloved sons and daughters of the Most High.

And that is what Great Lent is for.  By devoting ourselves to prayer, by fasting from rich food and anything else to which we have an unhealthy attachment, by sharing our resources and attention with the needy, by forgiving our enemies and healing broken relationships, by humbly confessing our sins and reorienting our lives toward Christ, by embracing the practices of this season, we crucify our passions and desires.  We advance in putting to death the morbid distortions of sin in our lives.  We open ourselves at least a bit more fully to the victory over sin and death that Jesus Christ has accomplished through His Cross.  We take up our crosses and follow Him one step at a time.  We participate in His trampling down death by death when we use the spiritual disciplines of Lent to trample down the pernicious power of the passions in our lives.  The more we unite ourselves to our Lord’s Cross in these ways, the more we will  know the Cross as victory, not as a defeat--as the path to joy, not to despair. 

The disciples surely fled the crucifixion in large part because they had no hope.  They thought that it was all over for Jesus Christ and for them as His followers.  Perhaps we are tempted to abandon our friends and loved ones in their final years or hours, or in other times of great pain, because we see no future for them or ultimately for ourselves.  That may be the way it is with the first Adam, but it is surely not with the Second Adam Who brings life from the very depths of Hades, light from the darkness of the tomb, and unspeakable joy from the worst despair.       

            Here is the key point:  If we do not enter into the reality of our Savior’s crucifixion, we will find it impossible to celebrate Pascha as much more than a cultural festival with rich food. If we do not make progress in  crucifying our passions this Lent, we will lack the spiritual clarity to see our Lord’s Cross as much more than an unwelcome reminder of our own pain and suffering in the world as we know it.  In effect, we will abandon Him in fear like the disciples who fled and miss the entire meaning of this penitential season, as well as of Pascha.

But those who take up their crosses and die to the ways of death in their lives will do something very different.  They will abide at the foot of the Cross and participate in the deep mystery of salvation in ways too profound for words.  They will not then run away in fear, but with the Most Holy Theotokos and all the Saints, will enter personally into the joy before which even Hades and the tomb are powerless.  That is the great promise of this blessed season of Great Lent.  If we will join ourselves to our Lord’s self-offering on His Precious and Life-Giving Cross, if we will truly enter into His death, then we too will know the indescribable joy that comes on the third day.    

             

                             

Jesus Christ Makes Great Saints Out of Even the Worst Sinners:Homily for the 5th Sunday of Great Lent in the Orthodox Church

Hebrews 9:11-14

Mark 10:32-45

            We have all had the experience of falling short of our own goals, our hopes, and our values.  We have all said, done, and thought the wrong thing on more than one occasion.  We all know what it is to be embarrassed and disappointed about our failings, and to be ashamed to acknowledge what we have done.

            So we can imagine how James and John felt when Christ corrected them for asking to be His favorites in the coming Kingdom.  The Lord had just told the disciples that He would suffer and die, but these two disciples would not hear the Lord’s message.  They insisted on thinking in terms of a worldly, political kingdom on this earth, and they wanted really good positions of authority when Jesus Christ came into power, not unlike the politicians of our day.    

            “You do not know what you are asking,” our Savior said to them.  For to follow Him into the Kingdom will require that they drink the cup and undergo the baptism of suffering and death.  This is the way of complete self-sacrifice for the Kingdom, not of grasping for earthly authority and status. The other disciples were understandably angry when they heard that James and John were jockeying for position, and the Lord reminded the whole group that humble service, not domination, is the way to life eternal.  “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”  On that day, James and John surely had to face up to their failure to live up to the teaching and example of Jesus Christ, and then to make things right both with the Lord and their fellow disciples.

            On this fifth Sunday of Great Lent, we remember St. Mary of Egypt, someone who also came to see that she had fallen short of the Lord’s expectations.  Mary was a nymphomaniac and a prostitute, totally enslaved to her own perverse sexual passions.   Her life was truly an obscene scandal, but everything changed when an invisible force prevented her from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.  She then asked humbly for the help of the Theotokos , entered the church to venerate the Holy Cross, and obeyed a divine command to spend the rest of her life in repentance and strict asceticism as a hermit in the desert.  When the monk Zosima stumbled upon her almost 50 years later, he was amazed at her holiness.  But like all the saints, she was aware only of her sins and her ongoing need for God’s mercy.

            When Mary of Egypt prayed before the icon of the Theotokos, she acknowledged for the first time the sad truth about her life.  She had heard in the past that Jesus Christ came to save sinners, and now she knew that she was one.  And that humble confession was the beginning of a life of such holiness that we devote a Sunday in Lent each year to her memory.  Have you ever noticed that we do not hide repentant sinners in our church? Instead, we put them on icons and sing about them for they are such wonderful examples of the kind of people we hope to become by God’s mercy.

           Mary of Egypt, like James and John, had to acknowledge the truth about her failings.  These disciples had wanted only power and she had wanted only pleasure.  But they all eventually accepted the Lord’s correction of their faults and became saints, people whose lives shine brightly with holiness.  As we near the end of Lent, let us follow their example by honestly confessing our sins both in the Sacrament of Confession and in our daily private prayers.  For nothing that we have thought, said, or done is beyond forgiveness by the mercy of Christ.  No damage that we have done to ourselves or others is beyond His healing.  No human being is beyond repentance; and, yes, that includes people like you and me.

            So take heart and keep hope alive.  The same Lord who patiently corrected power-hungry disciples and who made a great saint out of a grossly immoral woman has plans for us also.  And they involve a life of righteousness which we will find by repentance, by humbly setting right what has gone wrong in our lives, by accepting His correction and finding healing for the self-inflicted wounds that we all bear.  Yes, in Christ Jesus there is hope for us all, no matter what we have done or left undone.  

            Now, so near the end of Lent, it is time to get over our pride and embarrassment, our slavery to our self-serving illusions, and to take the medicine of confession and repentance as we  get ready to follow our Savior into the deep mystery of His cross and empty tomb.  He drank that cup because of our sins, and we will only be able to follow Him on that blessed journey if we open ourselves in humility to His merciful healing and strength.  

Healing through Humble Repentance: Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Great Lent in the Orthodox Church

Hebrews 6:13-20

Mark 9:17-30

         We often have more doubt than belief, more despair than hope.  Our worries and fears so easily increase, and then joy vanishes.  Our health, the problems of our loved ones, stress about a busy schedule, or challenges at home, at work, or with our friends—these often leave us at the end of our rope.

            If you feel that way today or ever have in your life, you can begin to sympathize with the father of the demon-possessed young man in today’s gospel reading.  Since childhood, his son had had life-threatening seizures and convulsions. With the broken heart of a parent who has little hope for his child’s healing, the man cries out, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.”  Christ’s disciples had lacked the spiritual strength to cast out the demon, but the Lord Himself healed him.  We can only imagine how grateful the man and his son were for this blessing.

            And imagine how embarrassed the disciples were.  The Lord had referred to them as part of a “faithless generation” and asked how long He would have to put with them.  He told them that demons like this “can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting,” spiritual exercises designed to strengthen our faith and to purify our souls.  Not only were the disciples unable to cast out the demon, they could not even understand the Savior’s prediction of His own death and resurrection.   At this point in the journey, they were not great models of faithfulness.

            In fact, the best example of faithfulness in this story is the unnamed father.  He wants help for his child, and he humbly tells the truth about himself.  His faith was imperfect; he had doubts; his hopes for his son’s healing had surely been crushed many times before.  He said to Christ, “If you can do anything, have compassion on us.”  In other words, he wasn’t entirely sure if the Lord could heal his son.  All that he could do was to cry out with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.” 

            And in doing so, he showed that he had the spiritual strength and clarity that the disciples lacked, for he knew the weakness of his faith.  Still, with every ounce of his being He called to the Lord for mercy.  He received it and the young man was set free.

            If we have taken Lent seriously at all this year, we will have become at least a bit like this honest father when our struggles with spiritual disciplines have shown us our weakness and corruption.  When we pray, we are distracted and often find excuses to do something else instead. When we set out to fast from food or something else to which we have become too attached, we become angry and frustrated.  If we succeed in fasting, we may be tempted to pride and judgment toward others.   Our good intentions to heal broken relationships and give generously to the needy often do not lead us to act on them.  When we wrestle with our self-centered desires just a bit, they become stronger and we feel weaker.   We do, think, and say things that aren’t holy at all, often without even thinking.   We put so much else before loving God and our neighbors.  The spiritual disciplines of Lent are good at breaking down our illusions of holiness, at giving us a clearer picture of our spiritual state.  If we are honest, we will not like what we see.   

           If that’s where you are today, rejoice and be glad, for Jesus Christ came to show mercy upon people like the father in our gospel lesson.   That man knew his weakness, he did not try to hide it, and he honestly threw himself on the mercy of the Lord.  He made no excuses; he did not justify himself; he did not wallow in self-pity. He did not hide his doubt and frustration before God.   He was not stifled by wounded pride, and did not obsess about his imperfections, worry about what someone else would think of him, or judge his neighbor. Instead, he simply acknowledged the truth about his wretched situation and called upon Christ with every ounce of his being for help with a problem that had broken his heart.

With whatever level of spiritual clarity we possess, with whatever amount of faith in our souls, with whatever doubts, fears, weaknesses, and sins that weigh us down, we should all follow his example of opening the deep wounds of our hearts and lives to the Lord for healing this Lent.  Jesus Christ heard this man’s prayer; He brought new life to his son.  And He will do the same for us, when we fall before Him in honest repentance, knowing that our only hope is in the great mercy that He has always shown to sinners like you and me with weak faith.

If we need a reminder of the importance of taking Confession this Lent, this gospel passage should help us.    Christ did not reject a father who was brutally honest about his imperfect faith, but instead responded to his confession with overwhelming grace, healing, and love.  He will do the same for each of us as we kneel before His icon with a humble plea for forgiveness, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.”  Now is the time to stop suffering in isolation, to repent from the depths of our hearts, and to embrace the divine strength and healing for even our worst wounds.  There is no repentance without truthful acknowledgement of our weakness and pain.   And there is no better time to repent than during Great Lent as we prepare to follow our Savior to the agony of the cross and the joy of the empty tomb.  

Time to Get Out of Bed: Homily on the Healing of the Paralyzed Man for the Second Sunday of Great Lent in the Orthodox Church

             

            St. Mark 2:1-12

               We all know what it’s like to want to stay in bed in the morning.  We’re sleepy, comfortable, and warm; we would like to turn off the alarm clock and go back to sleep.  Now it’s fine to do that every once in a while when we really don’t need to get up and get going.  But if we get in the habit of sleeping in, we’ll probably lose our jobs, neglect our families, do poorly in school, and be less than the people God wants us to be.

            And if we’re tempted to stay in bed sometimes, imagine how the paralyzed man in our gospel reading felt.  He had probably stayed in bed his whole life; he could move only if people carried him.  But Jesus Christ not only forgave his sins that day, He gave him the ability to stand up and walk.  In fact, He commanded Him to “arise, take up your bed, and go to your home.”  He was to get on with living the new life that Christ had given him.

            We don’t know how this man felt; he was probably profoundly grateful to the Lord for changing His life.  But think for a minute about how hard it may have been for him to obey Christ’s command.  He knew how to live as a paralyzed person, how to be dependent upon others.  That’s probably the only life he had known and all of a sudden that changed.  I imagine that that could be pretty unsettling and scary.

            Sometimes even people who know that they have ruined their lives are often terrified by the possibility of living differently.  They may not like how they’ve lived so far, but at least they know how to live that way, they know what to expect. They’ve become comfortable with their lifestyles at some level, no matter how miserable they are.  The same may have been true of this paralyzed man. So it was probably with fear and trembling that He got up, picked up his bed, and walked home.

            In this season of Great Lent, we are all called to see ourselves in this paralyzed man.  For we have become too comfortable with our own sins, our own habits of thought, word, and deed, even though they have weakened and distorted us.  Despite our best intentions, we live like slaves to our self-centered desires:  pride, envy, anger, lust, self-righteousness, fear, laziness, and gluttony so easily paralyze us.  Sin has put down roots in our bad habits of how we think, act, speak, and relate to others and to God. We often can’t even imagine what it’s like to live free from the domination of our own passions and sins.   And we certainly can’t heal ourselves of these spiritual sicknesses by will power.  At a deep level in our souls, we find it almost impossible at times to practice self-control.  

The good news is that we can all still do what so many truly repentant sinners did when they encountered Jesus Christ:    In humility, they opened their lives to His mercy.  They touched the hem of His garment and fell down before Him; they cried, “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief” from the depths of their hearts; they left their nets, gave their goods to the poor, and literally gave up their lives to be His disciples and apostles.   Like us, they were weakened by their sins and afraid of what the new life in Christ would entail.  But they still obeyed—with fear and trembling-- our Lord’s command to:  “Arise, take up your bed, and go to your house.”  Despite their fears and weaknesses, they moved forward, they stepped out, they pressed on in the journey to the Kingdom.

In Lent, we pray, fast, give to the needy, and mend our broken relationships with one another; as we prepare to celebrate the joy of Christ’s resurrection, we should turn away from any sin, bad habit, or unhealthy relationship that isn’t pleasing to God.  If we take Lent seriously, we will often feel like someone recovering from paralysis or in physical therapy.  We will struggle, become uncomfortable, and wrestle with fears, frustrations, and doubts.  Often we will be tempted to stay in bed, to give up and take it easy.  How tragic it would have been for the man in our gospel lesson to have done that, to have disobeyed the Lord’s command to embrace His healing and move forward into a new life.  And how tragic it will be for us if we choose the false comfort of our sins and passions over the glorious freedom of the children of God.

 But how truly wonderful it will be for us to use Lent as a time to wake-up, to recognize that it is through the challenges of repentance that we open our lives to the healing and peace of the Lord.  Let us use these few weeks to turn from the weakness and slavery of sin to enter more fully into the strength and blessedness of life eternal that shines so brightly at Pascha.  For the Lord’s command also applies to us:  “Arise, take up your bed, and go to your house.”   In other words, accept and live the new life that Christ has given you.  This was good, though difficult, news for the paralyzed man to receive; now it’s our turn to follow his example, to trust that the Lord really can heal us, and to obey His command to get on with our lives to the glory of God.  

Choose the Joyful Beauty of the Second Adam over the Ugly Misery of the First: Homily for the First Sunday of Great Lent in the Orthodox Church

Hebrews 11:24-26, 32-40

John 1:43-51            

            It is all too easy to find evidence that we human beings are not living as God originally intended in His image and likeness.  Whether it is the horrible persecution of Christians in the Middle East or the challenges posed by our own health or other difficult life circumstances, we have good reason to join Adam in his sorrow about what sin, suffering, and mortality have done—and continue to do--to us all. 

            God created us as His icons, in His image with the calling to become ever more like Him, to grow in the divine likeness.  But we have all followed Adam and Eve in repudiating that calling, stripping ourselves naked of the divine glory, and choosing the misery of lives driven by self-centered desire over the joy of holiness. 

            The good news of our faith, of course, is that Jesus Christ is the Second Adam Who has come to restore the fallen image and to enable us to participate personally in the divine glory for which He created us in the first place.  On this first Sunday of Great Lent, we recall that we are all living icons of Christ, made in His image and likeness, and enabled by His mercy to be healed of the disfigurement and decay that our sins have worked on our souls. That is why we pray, fast, confess, repent, forgive, and give to the needy during this season, for we want to cooperate as fully as possible with our Savior’s gracious intentions to bring us into the holiness for which He breathed life into us.  

            Today we commemorate the restoration of icons to the Church after the period of iconoclasm in the Byzantine Empire, which I know may seem like ancient history.  But it actually speaks to the very heart of our faith; for the icons show us what Christ has enabled us to become.  Visibly and tangibly, using paint and wood, the icons make clear that Jesus Christ became one of us with a real body in the world as we know it.  Icons of the saints display particular people glorified in the holiness of God.  Their example calls and inspires us to become like them.  Icons teach that salvation is not something invisible, totally out of this world, or somehow separated from what we think of as real life.  Christ did not come to save people who live in a fantasy world without evil, pain, or death.  No, He entered fully into the great mess that we and countless generations have made of our lives.  He came to call not the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.  Of course, that means us all.  As the Second Adam, our Savior clothes us with a robe of light and our original dignity in the image of God is fulfilled as we become ever more like our Lord.  Yes, He makes that possible for even the most wretched person.  By His mercy, we may all become unspeakably beautiful icons of His salvation.

Today we rejoice because we are no longer shut out of Paradise.  Today we celebrate because through our Savior we “will see the heavens opened and angels ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”  Today we process around the Church joyfully with icons because we have received the fulfillment of the promise for which the Saints of the Old Testament hoped “since God had foreseen something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.”  Imagine that.

So as we continue our Lenten journey in preparation to follow our Lord to His Cross and the joy of His glorious resurrection, let us do everything that we can to embrace as fully as possible this high calling to become holy, pure, and righteous icons of Christ.  The disciplines of Lent are not about legalism or punishment; no, they are simply tools for opening our lives to the healing power of the One Who wants to make us all uniquely beautiful and blessed in holiness.  As your priest and spiritual father, I urge all of us to use these tools for our salvation. All that we have to lose by using them is the misery that fallen Adam brought upon himself and that we have brought upon ourselves.  What we have to gain is the divine glory for which we were created and by which Christ has conquered sin and death.  When we think of it that way, our choice should be clear for the joy of the Second Adam over the despair of the first.  Remember that the Savior said, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”  He wants to make us all shine with the light of heavenly beauty and glory.  At the most fundamental level, what could be more natural than for us to become who we are created to be, living icons of our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ?