Grace Overcomes Shame: Homily for the 12th Sunday After Pentecost and the 12th Sunday of Matthew in the Orthodox Church

1 Corinthians. 15:1-11; Matthew 19:16-26

We all need a good wake-up call from time to time.  It is easy to shut our eyes to the truth and to become blind to what is actually going on in our lives.  On the question of where we stand in relation to God, it sometimes takes a real shock to wake us up.  And once our eyes are opened a bit to truths we do not particularly like, we have to be careful not to run away in shame and despair.

            The rich young ruler in today’s gospel text had apparently fallen into the illusion that he had perfectly obeyed God’s requirements.  He must have had a very superficial understanding of them, of course, to say that he had already mastered them.  We know from Christ’s interpretation of the commandments in the Sermon on the Mount that they call us to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect.  And who can claim to have achieved that?  The Lord shocked this fellow out of his illusions of holiness by giving him a commandment that he would find impossibly hard to obey.  “Sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”  The Savior gave him this test because the man loved his wealth so much.  He went away in sorrow because his eyes had been opened to how he was devoted more to himself and his money than to God and his neighbors.  The Lord did not condemn him, but told the surprised disciples that “with God all things are possible,” even the salvation of someone so strongly tempted to the idolatry of wealth.

            St. Paul had something in common with the superficial righteousness of the rich young ruler, for he had been a Pharisee who had persecuted the Church.  He had been an expert in the kind of self-righteous, hypocritical legalism that Christ so clearly rejected.  The Lord opened his eyes to the truth by blinding him on the road to Damascus, and He then empowered Paul for a ministry no one could have anticipated for a former Pharisee as the apostle to the Gentiles. The Lord had made Paul an apostle by miraculously appearing to him, even though Paul knew that he in no way deserved such a high honor.  Indeed, he referred to himself as the chief of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15). But instead of being paralyzed by shame, Paul accepted that “by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain.”  He knew that whatever he accomplished was not somehow his own achievement, but the grace of God working through him.

            St. Paul recognized that the grace he had received was not something he had earned or deserved in any way.  Grace is a divine energy of our Lord; it is His healing mercy that we receive through faith, repentance, and love.  To receive grace is to share in His life as much as is possible for human beings.  When we think of our salvation in those terms, the focus moves from what we can accomplish by our own power and toward what our Lord is doing through us.  Of course, we must cooperate with His gracious presence in our lives, but we must never fall into the fantasy of thinking that the healing of our souls is simply or even primarily about what we can accomplish by trying really hard according to our own designs.

            St. Paul learned that decisively when the Lord appeared to him in blinding light on the road to Damascus.  How could he have taken credit for such a miracle?  And Paul must have wondered often how he had been blessed to move from being a persecutor of the Church to one of its greatest leaders.  In today’s epistle lesson, he reminds us to have the humility to accept the reality of our lives as he did.  “But by the grace of God I am what I am” writes Paul.  He knew that his life in Christ was not a reward for perfect behavior, but a sign of the Lord’s great mercy even for the chief of sinners.  Perhaps that is why, unlike the rich young ruler, Paul did not go away in sorrow when he recognized the weakness and brokenness of his soul.  Instead, he used this awareness to open himself in humility to the Lord Who died and rose again in order to save people who could not save themselves.   

            If we pay attention at all to the prayers, services, teachings, and readings of the Orthodox Church, we will know that we are nowhere near mastering what God requires of us.  Our vocation to holiness is infinite, for we are called to become radiant with the transforming energies of our Lord, shining like an iron left in the fire of the divine glory.   And since the fullness of that transformation means being perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect, this is obviously not a goal that we can ever say that we have met. Whenever we need a guard against self-righteousness, we do not have to look very hard in order to find it.

            Many of us, however, do not struggle so much with self-righteousness as with despair.  When we hear such high descriptions of a holy life or learn about the good example of the Saints, we may be overcome with shame at the brokenness of our lives and with a sense of hopelessness that we could ever become pleasing to God.  We may become just like the rich young ruler who could not accept the severe tension between Christ’s command and his own desires and habits.

To do so reflects a subtle form of pride, for shame is essentially the hurt pride of not being able to get over ourselves.  It is a form of distorted self-love that cannot humbly accept that we all stand in constant need of the Lord’s mercy as the chief of sinners.  It is a refusal to forgive ourselves for not being perfect on our own terms.  It is the obsession of judging ourselves by our own standards.  And since the focus remains squarely upon us and not on Christ, it is not surprising that this kind of shame leads to despair.  As long as we are paralyzed by self-love, we will never open ourselves to the healing mercies of our Lord.  And there is no way that we can conquer the power of sin and death in our lives by our own ability.

            St. Paul shows us a far better way to respond to our deep regret about our sins and personal brokenness.  If anyone had reason to despair of finding healing in Christ, it would have been this former Pharisee and persecutor of the Church.  But instead of judging himself by his own standards, Paul used the awareness of his grave sins to open himself to receive the unfathomable mercy of the Lord, which extended even to the likes of him.  He gave up self-righteous illusions about making himself worthy and instead relied on the mercy of the One at work through him.

“With God, all things are possible,” even for someone like St. Paul to become radiant with holiness by grace. The same is true for the rich young rulers of the world, for those who have had their illusions of perfection shattered, and for those who cannot imagine how God’s mercy could ever extend to them.  To become like Paul, we must crucify our shame and despair, confessing with that “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). That is really the only way to get over ourselves and in humility to become participants in His great victory over sin and death.  If we choose obsession with our own failures instead of humble faith in the Lord’s mercy, we turn away from the healing of our souls that the Savior extends to those who come to Him with faith, repentance, and love. How tragic it would be for us to reject Him out of the wounded pride that is our shame.  How truly blessed it is to say with Paul that “by the grace of God I am what I am,” even as we trust in the divine mercy that we definitely do not deserve.  That is the only way not to walk away in sorrow when we see the truth of where we stand before the Lord.

Transfigured in Humility: Homily for the 10th Sunday After Pentecost and the 10th Sunday of Matthew in the Orthodox Church

1 Corinthians 4:9-16; Matthew 17:14-23

It is always easier to identify other people’s weaknesses than to take a close look at our own.  That is primarily because of our pride, our addiction to self-centeredness that makes us not want to give up whatever exalted illusions about ourselves have taken root in our souls.  It is perhaps the most subtle of temptations, for we can become proud even of how well we think that we confess and repent of our sins. 

            St. Paul blasted the pride of the factions in Corinth by reminding them what a true apostle looked like.  Instead of basking in religious glory, true servants of the Lord looked like fools, weak and dishonored by earthly standards.  Just think for a moment about St. Paul’s life, from his astounding conversion to Christianity to his constant suffering for the Church and ultimately his death as a martyr.  He must have appeared insane to most people in his time and place.  But it was because of the true humility of putting faithfulness to Jesus Christ first in his life that St. Paul could say with integrity to the Corinthians that they should imitate him.     

            In our gospel reading today, the Lord challenged the wounded pride of the disciples, who were disappointed that they had lacked the spiritual authority to cast out the demon and heal the boy.  Imagine how humbling it must have been for them to hear the Messiah say, “O faithless and perverse generation, how long am I to be with you?  How long am I to bear with you?”  He set them straight by saying that they had no faith, not even as much as a tiny mustard seed.  Instead of wondering why they could not work miracles, they needed to humble themselves through prayer and fasting if they were to be transfigured such that they would gain authority over the powers of evil.  

            As we conclude our celebration of the Transfiguration of the Lord today, our Scripture readings remind us of the dangers of presuming that we already shine brightly with the light of Christ.   Too often we assume that success according to some worldly standard is the same thing as holiness.  But when we take a close look at the lives of the saints, we do not see merely a good life according to passing cultural expectations of whatever kind.  Instead, we see people who embody humility in ways that should make us all earnestly confess and repent of our pride.

Since we are preparing through fasting to celebrate the Feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God, it is especially fitting today to remember her extraordinary example of humility and obedience.  The Theotokos agreed to become the Virgin Mother of the Son of God, something that made absolutely no sense according to normal ways of thinking in our world.  She became His Temple in a unique way when Christ was in her womb, and then she loved and served Him throughout His life and ministry, including through His death and resurrection. She is the first and model Christian.  At the end of the Mother of God’s earthly life, the Apostles were miraculously assembled in her presence. St. Thomas, however, arrived three days late.  When her tomb was opened for him to pay his last respects, her body was not there.  Even as she was the first to accept Christ into her life, she was the first to follow Him as a whole, complete person into the Kingdom of Heaven.  She leads the way for us as Christians in this world and in the world to come.

We pray and fast in preparation for the Feast of the Dormition because we want to become more like her.   There is surely no better way to become transfigured by the gracious divine energies of our Savior than to imitate His Mother.  She grew up in purity in the Temple at Jerusalem, where she was fed by angels.  She is the epitome of the prayer and fasting that the Lord said His disciples needed in order to open themselves to His divine power.  That is how she developed the spiritual clarity and strength to say “yes” to the astounding message that she was to become the Virgin Mother of the Son of God.  Of course, her story makes no sense according to the conventional standards of the world.  Even more so than St. Paul, the Theotokos is a “fool for Christ’s sake” because many people then, as now, scoff at her virgin conception of the Savior.   The same is surely true about the miraculous characteristics of her Dormition.

 The question that we all face is whether we will proudly cling to our own illusions about ourselves and our place in the world as we stand before the holy mystery of Jesus Christ, the Son of God Who shines eternally with brilliant light that we do not yet have the eyes behold.  His glory is not yet obvious to us.  That is why it requires faith to fall before Him in humble repentance as we open ourselves to His gracious healing power from the depths of our souls through prayer and fasting.

In order to turn away from self-centeredness to Christ-centeredness, we must become fools who devote time and energy each day to commune with a Lord we do not see with our eyes in the world as we know it.  So we must pray.  We must go against society’s expectations and our own desires by regularly refusing to indulge our taste buds and stomachs with the richest and most satisfying foods. In other words, we must fast.   We must act in ways that will appear crazy in the eyes of many people today, such as reserving sexual intimacy only for marriage as blessed in the Church and refusing to consume pornography or any other media or entertainment that inflames our passions.  We must give generously to the poor, forgive our enemies, welcome the stranger, and refuse to allow stupid distinctions between people—such as politics or race-- to keep us from treating every human being—from the womb to the tomb-- as one created in God’s image and likeness.  No matter what may be popular or appealing, we must sacrifice to live as those being transfigured in holiness by God’s grace.

We must come to terms with the fact that doing so is never easy and will always be a struggle.  There is much in all of us that prefers the darkness of sin to the light of holiness.  We would often rather be miserable in prideful isolation than embrace the healing mercy of Christ in humility.  We would often prefer forms of religion accommodated to worldly success and well-being than to the kind of sacrificial obedience that we see in the Theotokos, St. Paul, and all the saints.  But at the end of the day, we have to decide whether we would rather be part of a “faithless and perverse generation” that cowers in fearful weakness before the corruptions of evil in our lives or like the young Palestinian Jewish girl who changed the history of the universe by bravely saying “yes” to a calling that seemed, and still seems, insane by the standards of the corrupt world.

Let us conclude our celebration of the Transfiguration by opening ourselves to the strength and holiness of our Savior, which shone so brightly throughout the life of the Theotokos.  In order to do that, we must humbly focus on uniting ourselves to Christ as we disregard temptations to self-centeredness in any form and to worrying about the conventional wisdom of our society.  If we want, by God’s grace, to shine with holy light, we must first become fools who, through prayer and fasting, simply want to love and serve our Lord with every ounce of our being.  In other words, we need to become like His Mother, the first and model Christian who has shown us how to welcome the Savior into our lives and to follow Him into the glory of the heavenly Kingdom.  Remember this:  To follow her example is to be transfigured.  

  

           

Seeing is Believing: Homily for the Transfiguration in the Orthodox Church

2 Peter 1:10-19; Matthew 17:1-9

           Seeing is believing.  It is one thing to hear an interesting story or to entertain a bright idea. It is far different, however, to encounter an event or to participate in a situation such that we know its truth and are changed as a result.  That is precisely what the apostles Peter, James, and John experienced on Mount Tabor when they were enabled to behold the divine glory of Jesus Christ, Who shone brightly with light as the voice of the Father identified Him as His beloved Son.

St. Peter writes in today’s epistle reading that he did not proclaim “cleverly devised myths” about Christ, for those who beheld the Transfiguration “were eyewitnesses of His majesty.”  The gospels make clear that the disciples were not looking for a Messiah Who was truly divine, but for a righteous national leader like King David.  Peter famously rejected the Lord’s prediction of His crucifixion and denied Him three times.  He was restored as the chief apostle and went to his death as a martyr, not because he had made up stories about a crucified and risen Lord, but because the Savior had revealed Himself to Peter as truly the Son of God.  And he surely did not understand the full meaning of the Transfiguration when it occurred, as it was not until after the resurrection that Christ “opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.” (Lk 24:27)   Indeed, the Lord said to Peter, James, and John, “Tell no one the vision, until the Son of man is risen from the dead.”  It was only from the perspective of the resurrection, which no one anticipated, that the disciples could understand what it meant for Christ to be the Son of God.

The truth revealed at the Transfiguration may not be conveyed simply in words or ideas.  It had to be seen, heard, and experienced in a way that made Peter, James, and John participants as whole persons in the divine glory. The Lord graciously opened the eyes of their souls, filling them with the divine energies such that they could catch a glimpse of His holy majesty.  He enabled them to hear the voice of the Father, and like Moses before the Burning Bush, they fell on their faces “and were filled with awe.”  As is shown by the disappearance of Moses and Elijah, He enabled them to see His superiority to the Law and the Prophets of the Old Testament. They did not simply have thoughts or feelings about Christ; no, they truly experienced Him from the depths of their souls as the Son of God.

The change that occurred that day was not in the Lord Himself, Who is eternally radiant with the divine glory in a way beyond our comprehension.  The change was in the disciples, for Christ opened the eyes of their souls to behold His infinite holiness, to the extent that they were able as human beings.   If we observe this feast simply by celebrating the doctrinal teaching of Christ’s divinity or the great mystical experience of the apostles, we will have excluded ourselves from the full meaning of this event.  For as in all feasts of the Church, the point is not simply to look back at what happened long ago.  It is, instead, to enter into the eternal truth that is revealed.   And on this great day of the Transfiguration, the only appropriate way to celebrate is to cooperate with the gracious divine energies of our Lord so that we also will behold His divine glory.  That means that we too must become transfigured through personal union with the Son of God such that His eternal majesty permeates our existence, making us shine brightly like an iron left in the fire.

As with Peter, who rejected the Lord’s prediction of His death and then denied Him three times, we might well prefer another kind of religion with expectations not quite so high.  Shining with the uncreated light may be more than we want to pursue.  It may be more appealing to follow an imaginary King David in waging war against those we consider our enemies and to set up a social order that rewards those we think are righteous like ourselves.  Maybe we would prefer someone pretending to be Moses or Elijah who would provide instructions that we think good people like us can easily follow on how to live differently from those we like to condemn.  Such sentiments are terrible misinterpretations, of course.  These Old Testament saints never pointed to some easy kind of self-serving religion, but were misinterpreted in first-century Palestine by those who worshiped an earthly kingdom or their own self-righteousness.  If we go down that path, we will end up repudiating Christ as surely as did those idolaters.

The only fitting way to celebrate the Transfiguration is by embracing as fully as possible the countless opportunities that we have to grow in holiness as we open the eyes of our souls to participate in the glory of God by grace.  I have a warning for you, however.  If the thought ever occurs to you, “Gosh, I’m becoming really holy now,” pay it no attention at all and instead say the Jesus Prayer or at least focus your mind on something other than your own deluded thoughts until it goes away.  The more transfigured we are in holiness, the more aware we will be of our sinfulness and the infinite distance between our current spiritual state and the perfection to which our Lord calls us.  The path to shining with light begins with a humble, honest acceptance of the darkness in our lives.  The path also continues along that route.  That is precisely why we need to be transfigured so that we, who are filled with darkness, will become radiant with the brilliant light of the Lord.  But we must be prepared:  the more you step into His light, the more obvious the spots of darkness will be.  The better focused the eyes of our souls are, the more we will be aware of our need for His healing and strength.

A very common temptation, then, is to give up.  Why pray, when our minds wander?  Why fast, when we become obsessed with food?  Why come to Confession, when we fall right back into our familiar sins?  Why try to do anything pleasing to God, when it does not give us what we want?  Well, that is the problem.  As long as we think about getting the spiritual results that we want on our schedule and in our own way, we will not be transfigured in holiness.  We will, instead, remain captive to some form of idolatrous spiritual pride that will blind us to the truth of where stand before the Lord.

If we want to enter into the joy of this great feast of our salvation, we must persistently walk into the light by opening the eyes of our souls to the blinding glory of our Savior.  We will often not like what we see in ourselves as a result, but by stumbling forward as best we can, constantly calling out for His mercy, the Lord will change, strengthen, and purify us.  In ways that we cannot yet understand, He will make us “a lamp shining in a dark place” that gives light and hope to a world that so desperately needs to be healed by union with His gracious divine energies.  The message of this feast is not to lose heart, but to press on in faithfulness.  For the darkness is simply the absence of light and a sign that we have yet more room to embrace the blessed life of Christ.

We celebrate the Transfiguration of our Lord already knowing of His resurrection, by which He has illumined even the tomb.  Let this sink in:  There is no darkness in our souls or in our world that our crucified and risen Lord cannot make radiant with His gracious divine energies.  We must, however, do our part by opening the darkness in our lives to His healing light.  Even as we stumble and fall, we must continue to do so with abiding trust in His mercy for blind sinners such as ourselves.  For though we do not yet have the eyes to see it, that is how our gracious Lord will make us shine with holy light for our salvation and that of the entire world.  Let us join St. Peter, then, in living as “eyewitnesses of His majesty.”  For seeing is believing.

The Eucharistic Context of Pastoral Response to Contemporary Challenges in Marriage, Family, and Sexuality

 [Introductory Note:  The short paper below was my presentation at a recent symposium on contemporary pastoral issues in sexuality held in the Netherlands.]  

          The celebration of the Eucharist provides a necessary context for understanding the pastoral response of the Orthodox Church to contemporary challenges in marriage, family, and sexuality.  As St. Nicholas Cabasilas commented on the Eucharist, “its aim is the sanctification of the faithful.”[1]   Likewise, the aim of the union of husband and wife is their sanctification, their participation in the Wedding Feast of the Lamb. Even as the Church enters mystically into the eschatological reign in the celebration of the Divine Liturgy, the married couple become participants in the heavenly banquet through their common life in Christ.  Through both Eucharist and marriage, human beings participate in the fulfillment of their ancient vocation to become like God in holiness.

Themes of offering, sacrifice, blessing, and communion are intrinsic dimensions of both sacraments.  These holy mysteries also manifest the fulfillment of basic human desires and needs for life and love.  Bread and wine become nourishment for eternal life, while conjugal union becomes an entrance into the heavenly bridal chamber.  Due to the physical dimensions of each practice, communicants and spouses share as whole persons in the restoration of their humanity as they direct their hearts for fulfillment in God. Since the “one flesh” relationship between husband and wife serves as a sign of the relationship between Christ and the Church, their union is to become nothing less than an icon of the salvation of the world. (Eph. 5: 31-32)

After describing how the “one flesh” union of marriage includes husband, wife, and child, St. John Chrysostom notes that “Our relationship to Christ is the same; we become one flesh with Him through communion…”[2] St. Nicholas Cabasilas also affirmed that, through the Eucharist and the other holy mysteries, “Christ comes into us and dwells in us, He is united to us and grows into one with us” such that we “become one flesh with Him.”[3]   These points of commonality reflect how the conjugal union of the couple is taken up into their communion with Christ in the Eucharist.  This is how their “one flesh” union with one another becomes an entrance into the messianic banquet, for they are also “one flesh” with the Bridegroom. Hence, their embodied common life is to become a radiant sign of the fulfillment of the relationship between man and woman, for they wear together the crowns of the heavenly kingdom as they orient themselves together toward Paradise. The Church does not view this marital path as an extraordinary calling for a few exceptionally pious people, but as God’s intention for married couples in fulfillment of the ancient vocation to become like God in holiness.   

The Eucharist has played a prominent role in how the Church has blessed marriages across the centuries.  At first, a marriage was blessed by the bishop when the couple communed together in the assembly.  By the fourth century, there is evidence of couples being crowned in the eucharistic liturgy.  A marriage rite separate from the celebration of the Eucharist developed in the ninth and tenth centuries in response to an imperial demand that only marriages solemnized in the Church would have legal standing.  In this context, a non-eucharistic rite of marriage developed for those canonically prohibited from receiving Communion.  The connection of marriage and Eucharist remained, however.  A marriage rite in which “worthy” couples received the reserved Sacrament continued in some places until the fifteenth century, while the “unworthy” received simply a common cup of wine.  These practices are clearly reminiscent of the Eucharistic liturgy, as are many other dimensions of the contemporary wedding service.[4] 

Due to the intersection of Eucharist and marriage, pastoral challenges abound.  Even as prayers of preparation to receive Communion stress the communicant’s unworthiness, spouses inevitably stumble in fulfilling their sublime calling.  When adultery gravely wounds a marriage or when divorce ends it, the Church responds pastorally by helping the spouses heal through repentance.  Exclusion from the Eucharist for a time is part of that process as a way of acknowledging that a break in marital communion is also a breach in communion with Christ.  This practice gives spouses time to gain the spiritual strength necessary to approach the chalice with a clear conscience and a renewed commitment to live a life in communion with the Lord. The Church’s blessing of a second or a third marriage is a merciful act of economia that enables those who have endured the brokenness of previous marriages, whether through divorce or widowhood, to bring another marital relationship into eucharistic union with Christ.  Even with the penitential prayers of the rite for second marriages, the bridal couple wears the crowns of the Kingdom.[5]  Through the wedding service, whether for first or subsequent marriages, the couple offers their physical union for blessing, most obviously in the prayers for fertility.

A common pastoral challenge today concerns parishioners who engage in sexual intimacy without being married. Sex for the unmarried typically occurs without the intention of permanence and lacks the sanctifying context of marriage.  Consequently, such relationships are not compatible with the “one flesh” union of the Eucharist. Those who repent of these actions require spiritual therapy to help them gain the strength to reorient their desires for intimate union toward God as they struggle to reserve sexual expression for the blessed state of marriage.  That may include exclusion from the Eucharist for a time as a sign of the need for healing from the damage done to one’s communion with Christ through sexual activity in a context of gratifying passions as opposed to pursuing sanctification with a spouse with whom one is united in the Lord.

In such situations, some parishioners will end their relationships, while others will begin the process of entering into marriage. Some clergy instruct cohabitating couples to cease living together for a time before blessing their marriages, while others advise only a period of sexual abstinence.  Such circumstances present opportunities for pastors to guide couples in confession, prayer, fasting, and other spiritual disciplines for the healing of their passions as they reorient their love and desire toward fulfillment in God.  Through such therapeutic processes, they may gain the spiritual health to offer themselves to the Lord and one another in a marriage oriented to the Kingdom.

More difficult pastoral situations arise in circumstances in which parishioners intend a permanent relationship that will not be blessed by the Church, including situations in which they have contracted a civil marriage.  In addition to familiar impediments such as the number of previous marriages or differences in religious affiliation between the spouses, today we face the challenges posed by members of the same sex who are civilly married or who cohabitate with the intention of permanence.  What such cases have in common is the reality of parishioners in marriages or other relationships not blessed by the Church and which exclude them from full participation in its life. For example, His Eminence Metropolitan Joseph of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America issued a directive on October 29, 2015, that Orthodox who marry outside the Church “voluntarily separate” themselves and may not receive Communion, serve as sponsors at baptisms, or hold any parish office.  His Eminence notes that “this applies in all cases,” whether marriage to persons of the same or the opposite sex.[6]

 Parishioners in some civil marriages may have their marriages blessed in the Church and return to the Eucharist.  Without that blessing, however, their marriages are not oriented to the Kingdom through crowning, the common cup, or other dimensions of the service that make marriage an entrance to the messianic banquet.  The spouses’ exclusion from the chalice reflects that their unions remain as water not turned into wine, for their “one flesh” union has not been brought into communion with Christ.[7]

We must be honest about the difficulty today of providing pastoral care to persons in marriages and relationships that will not be blessed in the Church.  Whether heterosexual or homosexual, parishioners in these circumstances may well have children and comprise a family together with their spouse or partner.  In light of changes in sexual mores in the recent past, alternative marital and familial relationships are now quite public, often having the legal recognition of civil marriage and being championed by activists and affirmed by popular culture. It is one thing to guide a parishioner who struggles, in ways not known publicly, with desires, actions, and relationships that fall short of the canonical standards of the Church in sexuality or other areas.  It is quite different, however, to respond pastorally to a parishioner who is in a legally sanctioned same-sex marriage or other civil marriage that cannot be blessed in the Church for whatever reason, especially in light of hierarchal directives that set very definite boundaries, for example, concerning reception of the Eucharist.    

Pastors should be proactive in helping parishioners understand and accept the importance of entering only into those marriages that may be oriented toward the Kingdom through the blessing of the Church.  They should guide them to bring every dimension of their interpersonal relationships into communion with Christ, which will require turning away from those that would exclude them from the Eucharist. They should patiently encourage those who remain in relationships that separate them from the chalice to pursue the healing of their souls as fully as they presently have the strength to do.   In “The Sacrament of Marriage and Its Impediments,” the Council of Crete taught that “The Church exerts all possible pastoral efforts to help her members who enter into… [same-sex unions or any other form of cohabitation] understand the true meaning of repentance and love as blessed by the Church.”[8] 

The goal of pastoral ministry is to equip the members of the Body to commune as “one flesh” with Christ in the Wedding Feast of the Lamb.  The communion of husband and wife with Christ in the Divine Liturgy should manifest His blessing upon their conjugal union as a sign of their vocation to enter the heavenly Bridal Chamber. Priests should guide their parishioners to pursue the healing of their souls in a way that accords with the profound intersections of marriage and Eucharist in the Orthodox Church.  Otherwise, they risk underwriting an unhealthy separation between the spouses’ union with one another and with Jesus Christ.

---

[1] St. Nicholas Cabasilas, A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy, J. M. Hussey and P. A. McNulty, trans.,  (Crestwood, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002), 25.

[2] St. John Chrysostom, “Homily 20,” On Marriage and Family Life, Catherine P Roth and David Anderson, trans., (Crestwood, NY:  St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997), 51.

[3] St. Nicholas Cabasilas, 60-61.

[4] See Fr. John Meyendorff, Marriage:  An Orthodox Perspective (Crestwood, NY:  St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984), 20-29; and Fr. John Chryssavgis, Love, Sexuality, and the Sacrament of Marriage (Brookline, MA:  Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2005), 45ff.

[5] Meyendorff, 44-47.

[6] “Metropolitan Joseph’s Archpastoral Directive on So-called ‘Same-Sex Marriage,’” accessed June 2, 2017,  http://antiochian.org/metropolitan-josephs-archiepiscopal-directive-so-called-same-sex-marriage.

[7] See Fr. Philip LeMasters, Toward a Eucharistic Vision of Church, Family, Marriage and Sex (Minneapolis, MN:  Light & Life Publishing Co., 2004), 79 ff. for “An Orthodox Response to ‘Same-Sex Unions.’”

[8] “The Sacrament of Marriage and Its Impediments,” Official Documents of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, I/10, accessed June 2, 2017,  https://www.holycouncil.org/-/marriage.

Offering Ourselves Despite our Inadequacy: Homily for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost and the Eighth Sunday of Matthew in the Orthodox Church

1 Corinthians 1:10-17; Matthew 14:14-22

Most of us are pretty good at finding ways to avoid acknowledging uncomfortable truths about ourselves, such as our weaknesses and failings.  We know how to distract ourselves from focusing on them in order to preserve our illusions of self-sufficiency and perhaps even perfection. The problem with that approach, however, is that avoiding the truth inevitably weakens us and those around us.

            In today’s epistle lesson, St. Paul corrected the very confused Christians of Corinth by calling them to confront the uncomfortable truth that they were consumed with fighting with one another as members of competing factions.  They were more interested in dividing themselves over which spiritual leader was the most impressive than in being at peace through their unity in Christ.  If the Church were simply a club of people with similar ideas, it might make sense to argue over who taught those truths in the best way.  But since the Church is the Body of Christ, the Corinthians had to confront the unpleasant truth that they were ignoring that the Church is one.  St. Paul called them to stop thinking of themselves as members of rival factions and instead to recognize that they are united as members of one Body.  Their salvation would be found by humbling themselves to embrace their common life in Christ, not by trying to prove that they or their spiritual heroes were better than others.

            Perhaps the Corinthians had fallen into their divisions because they did not want to give up the illusion of their own superiority.  A common temptation is to hide our own weakness and imperfection by building ourselves up as we put others down.  We identify with this or that faction, party, group, race, or class so that we can pretend that we alone are virtuous and powerful, and thus justified in getting our own way.  That is a very popular coping mechanism because it is more appealing to fallen human beings than accepting that, like everyone else, we are broken, weak, often wrong, and in need of healing that we cannot give ourselves.

                 In today’s gospel lesson, we encounter a memorable portrait of a much better way to handle our own inadequacy.  Jesus Christ had compassion on a large crowd of people and healed those among them who were ill.  At the end of the day, the disciples wanted the Savior to send the people away to get their own food.  He turned the responsibility back to the disciples by instructing them to give the people something to eat.  Since they had only five loaves of bread and two fish, the disciples must have felt very inadequate to that task.  But before they could start blaming one another about who was most at fault for failing to find more food, the Lord told them to bring Him the bread and fish.  Then, in a way that foreshadowed the Eucharist, He blessed their small offering, which provided far more than enough for five thousand men and their hungry families. 

            The disciples certainly had their squabbles over who was the greatest, but on that day there seems to have been no argument about who could take credit for this miraculous feeding.  In the face of such an astonishing event, they did not even try to hide their own inadequacy by building themselves up and putting others down.  Their example shows us a far better path than that of the fighting Corinthians.  Instead of trying to make themselves feel more powerful by attacking one another, they simply obeyed Christ by offering Him what they had, even though they could not imagine how that little bit of bread and fish would be sufficient to the task.  They left the rest in the Lord’s hands and were not disappointed.  Indeed, they were astounded at the abundance that He provided.

            The challenge that we all face is to become more like the disciples in today’s reading and less like the Corinthians.  It does not take much insight to see that we constantly face situations that reveal our own weaknesses and failings.  The uncomfortable truth is that we are beset with thoughts and emotions that show we have a long way to go in finding healing for our souls.  We routinely wound others with our words and find it so hard to control what we say.  We have many habits that weaken us and harm others.  Whether in our families, marriages, friendships, or at work, we are all in strained relationships that we cannot easily heal. And if that were not enough, just think about the ongoing strife in our nation and around the world, which reflects problems far too large for any of us to think that we can solve.

            If we take a close look at our lives, we will see that we are just like those disciples facing a crowd of thousands of hungry people with five loaves and two fish.   The needs are far greater than our resources.  We can always try to distract ourselves from stressful situations and hard realities by blaming others or shutting our eyes to the truth.  We may try to ignore problems or hope that they somehow fix themselves.  If we are honest, however, we will recognize that as a false hope.  St. Paul told the Corinthians that they actually had to take action by abandoning their political battles and embracing their unity in Christ.  The Lord would not let the disciples send the crowd away to buy food, but told them to give the people something to eat.  And it was through their obedience in what appeared to be a hopeless situation that He miraculously fed thousands of people.

            It is a very dangerous, and strangely appealing, temptation to think that what we have to offer the Lord is so small and insignificant that there is no point in even trying to obey Him.  In the face of great need and intractable problems, it is much more appealing to blame someone else or to convince ourselves that we can handle things on our own terms.  And that is the problem; namely, that we want to avoid doing the work of obeying the Lord.  When we live like that, we refuse to offer ourselves to Him.   In every Divine Liturgy, we unite ourselves to His unique Self-Offering on the Cross.  “Thine own of Thine own, we offer unto Thee on behalf of all and for all.”  In order to share in the life of Christ, we must give ourselves to Him, including our anxiety and fears about our own inadequacy and brokenness.  Otherwise we will inevitably fall into the idolatry of serving only ourselves.

We all know that we cannot conquer death and sin by our own power.  But we can obey our Savior as best we can each day in the challenges that we face, refusing to accept our usual excuses to hide from reality.  We must open the eyes of our souls to the truth of where we stand before Him.  And then when we know our own inadequacy, it will be possible to offer ourselves truthfully—with all our brokenness, imperfection, and pain—to Christ for Him to bless and heal. 

            The Savior does not call us to fix all our own problems or those of others or of our world.  If we could do that, we would not need a Savior.  Those who think in those terms usually end up doing more harm than good, and then blaming others for their failings.  Christ simply calls us to accept the truth about who we are before Him and to live accordingly.  That will mean a life of humble obedience in which we do not have to keep up the illusion of being powerful, important, or always right.  He fed thousands with five loaves and two fish, and He will use our small offerings—each day of our lives—to accomplish His purposes for the salvation of the world.  All that we have to do is to obey by giving Him what we have, namely, ourselves.   

Mercy Beyond National Boundaries: Homily for the 7th Sunday of Matthew and "St. Timon Sunday" in the Diocese of Wichita and Mid-America

       

Romans 15:1-7; Matthew 9:27-35

        So much of what passes for religion in our culture is very self-centered.  Some develop a spirituality to help them feel a certain way, while others want to use God to promote political and moral agendas in their own image.  Their nation or their people then becomes the highest good. Regardless of the particulars, those who make their faith all about themselves will end up worshiping a false god of their own creation.

         One of the reasons that our Lord’s ministry in first-century Palestine was so shocking is that He blessed not only His fellow Jews, the chosen people of the Old Testament, but also the Gentiles.  That is what He did in today’s gospel reading.  The blind men were obviously Jews who called to Him using a traditional title for the Messiah, “Son of David.”  But the crowds said “Never was anything like this seen in Israel” because the demon-possessed man He enabled to speak was not a Jew, but a Gentile.  The Jews of that time had overlooked the clear teaching of the Old Testament that God would bless the entire world through them and draw all nations to Himself.  That is why the crowds were so surprised, for they did not expect the Jewish Messiah to help anyone outside their own community.

         This past week we celebrated the feast day of the Prophet Elijah.  The gospel reading for that day described the shocking scene of what happened when Christ reminded the people of His hometown that God had once sent Elijah to help a Gentile woman during a famine, which also affected many Jews.  He also mentioned that God sent the Prophet Elisha to heal a Syrian of leprosy when many Jews suffered from that disease.  Do you remember what the people of our Savior’s hometown did when He told those stories?  They tried to kill Him by throwing Him off a cliff, for they had no use for a Messiah Who cared about foreigners and enemies.  (Luke 4: 22-30) Here we have a clear and terrifying portrait of where the hatred and rejection of other people in the name of God leads:  to the hatred and rejection of the Lord Himself.

         Thank God, the Orthodox Church from her origins has recognized that our Lord’s mercy extends to all who call upon Him with faith, love, and humble repentance, regardless of their background or heritage.   We read in Acts of the founding of the first Gentile church in Antioch, where our Lord’s followers were first called Christians. (Acts 11:19-26) That same awareness that God’s salvation is not limited by nationality, race, culture, or any other human division remains characteristic of the Antiochian Orthodox Church to this day. Very few of the members of our parish are of Arab or Middle Eastern descent, yet we have all been welcomed as full members of the Body of Christ.  The very existence of Orthodox churches in unlikely places like Abilene reflects the same universal evangelistic spirit that we read about in Acts.  Regardless of human ancestry, we are all one in the Savior Who came to bless and heal the entire world.

As members of the Christ’s Body, we must not rest content with receiving our Lord’s mercy through the ministries of those who have shared the faith with us.  We must not fall into a self-centered distortion of religion in which we seek simply to please ourselves.  Instead, we must serve and strengthen those who suffer and struggle, especially in the homeland of our faith in Syria.  Today in our Diocese of Wichita and Mid-America we take up a collection for the relief of our brothers and sisters in the Archdiocese of Bosra-Hauran.  We do so as we remember St. Timon, one of the seventy apostles sent out by Jesus Christ and one of the original deacons mentioned in Acts (Acts 6:5).  St. Timon was the first bishop of what is now the city of Bosra, and he died as a martyr.  He played a key role in evangelizing a region where our Lord Himself often ministered (Matt.4:25) and where St. Paul took refuge after he escaped from Damascus following his conversion. (Gal. 1:15-18)     

In the very same region from which we have received the great blessings of the Orthodox Christian faith, hundreds of thousands have died and millions have become refugees due to six years of brutal armed conflict.  In Bosra-Hauran, many towns and parishes have been abandoned, and His Eminence Metropolitan SABA leads the Church in doing everything possible to care for those in need.  As with the relief programs of the Patriarchate of Antioch and IOCC, these efforts extend to all who suffer, regardless of religious affiliation or anything else.  Even as our Savior’s mercy extended both to blind Jewish beggars and to demon-possessed Gentiles, the Orthodox of Syria strive to show His love to all their neighbors as best they can.

It is surely impossible for us to understand fully how difficult it is to do so in a setting of ongoing war, sectarian strife, and humanitarian catastrophe.  Despite the problems of our own society and our own personal struggles, our hearts must go out to the people of Syria as they suffer in ways well beyond our own experience or knowledge.  In response to their plight, we must follow St. Paul’s advice “not to please ourselves” but for “each of us to please his neighbor for his good, to edify him.  For Christ did not please himself…”   If we are truly in communion with Christ, then His selfless love must become characteristic of us.  The healing of our souls is neither a legal transaction nor a storm of emotion, but our transformation in holiness as we participate ever more fully in the eternal life of our Lord by grace.   By offering a portion of our resources to help our brothers and sisters in the Archdiocese of Bosra-Hauran, we unite ourselves more fully to our Savior.  In the parable of the last judgment in St. Matthew’s gospel, those who enter into the Kingdom of Heaven are those who ministered to Christ in their needy neighbors.  “In that you did it to the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.”  (Matt. 25: 31-46) The application to St. Timon Sunday should be obvious.  Here is an opportunity to do precisely that for the very people from whom we have received the fullness of the Orthodox Christian faith.

Contrary to dominant perspectives in our culture, true religion is not about finding ways to feel better about ourselves.  Neither is it a means to gain worldly power and influence.    Instead, it is a calling to respond to the universal love of God by embracing a life of holiness, a life in full personal union with Jesus Christ.  He calls everyone to respond to His mercy in ways not limited by nationality, race, class, politics or any other human characteristic.  That is an important part of the reason that His ministry was so shocking to the Jews of first-century Palestine.  It is why true Christianity remains offensive to those who worship their own prejudices and agendas to this very day.  It is also why those who limit their list of neighbors to those who are like them in conventional human ways are at grave risk of turning away from Christ.  If they end up serving only themselves and those like them, they will be in the same position as those who thought they were justified in trying to throw the Lord off a cliff.

The way of Christ, and of His Church since her origins, is characterized by a holy love that wants to bless and save the entire world.  In our Savior, there are no foreigners and strangers.  And in His Church, even people who live on the other side of the globe are members of our own family.  We must support them by our constant prayers and generous offerings on their behalf.    When we do so, we show proper thanks to those who welcomed us into the Orthodox Church.  When we do so, we reject self-centered distortions of the faith that tempt us to the idolatry of putting culture, politics, and nationality before the way of our Savior.  When we do so, we follow the Lord Whose mercy extended both to blind Jewish beggars and to demon-possessed Gentiles.  For us all, that is the path to the Kingdom of God.

  

                                  

               

Shining with His Light: Homily for the Sunday of the Holy Fathers of the Fourth Ecumenical Council in the Orthodox Church

Titus 3:8-15; Matthew 5:14-19

              In just about anything we do in life, it is helpful at times to sit back and ask ourselves what we are trying to achieve.  Unless we have a clear purpose in mind, we are probably not going to get very far in anything.  By taking a hard look at ourselves, we may find that there is a disconnect between our goals and our actions.  If so, some adjustments are in order.

            What Jesus Christ told His followers in today’s gospel lesson certainly challenged them to take a hard look at themselves and change their expectations. He made clear that He was not calling them to join a nationalistic campaign for Israel’s liberation from the Romans, as most Jews then expected the Messiah to do. Instead, they would have to abandon their dreams of using Him to gain power.  They would not conquer with an army, a revolution, or a political party, but were to become the light of the world by becoming holy.  That holiness would not be the result of obedience merely to the externals of the law as interpreted by the Pharisees, but would instead reflect its fulfillment to the depths of their souls.

By teaching in the following verses that the commandment against murder extended to prohibit anger and insult, Christ showed that He called His followers to a purity of heart that would enable them to see God.  He did the same by insisting that the law against adultery also condemned lust.  He called the disciples to embody the fulfillment of the ultimate purpose of the law:  to become perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect.  It is in that context that the Savior taught that we must go beyond “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” and instead love, forgive, and bless even our enemies.   Whether in first-century Palestine or today, those who live this way will be a light to the world as they provide a vivid example of a holy life that stands in stark contrast to the usual ways of our age.  It will be as impossible to hide the brilliance of their souls as it is to hide a shining lamp in a dark room.

Today we commemorate the Holy Fathers of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, which met at Chalcedon.  This council taught that Jesus Christ is one person with two natures, being fully divine and fully human. It is only by confessing that He is both perfectly God and perfectly man that it is possible to give an account of how He is the Savior Who brings human beings into the eternal life of God.  For if He is not truly one of us, even as He is divine, how can He make human beings “partakers of the divine nature” who shine with holiness like an iron left in the fire?  Christ enables us to become the light of the world by becoming radiant with His light, by being illuminated with His gracious divine energies.  He is able to share His holiness with us because He is both fully God and fully human.  This is not simply a point from ancient Church history, but the bedrock of our faith and our hope. 

It is also the most basic reason that we must all take a hard look at ourselves and adjust how we think and live as Christians.  For if we truly believe that the eternal Son of God has become fully one of us and makes us participants in His eternal life, then His holiness must become characteristic of our lives.  Anything less than that is a distortion of what it means be a person in communion with our Lord. His true humanity enables us to become truly human as the fulfillment of our creation in His image and likeness.  That is why we speak so much of theosis in the Orthodox Church as the process of being united with God in holiness.

If we have made any progress at all in this journey of the healing of our souls, we will immediately be aware of how poorly we have answered this call.  The greater spiritual clarity we acquire, the more open our eyes will be to how far we are from shining brilliantly with the light of holiness.  So if our reaction to this high vision is along the lines of “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner,” we are in the perfect place to embrace more fully our identity as the light of the world.  That is the case because humility is absolutely essential to opening ourselves to the gracious divine energies of our Lord.  Consider again His interpretation of the laws against murder and adultery.  If they referred only to the physical actions of taking life or being unfaithful to a spouse, many could congratulate themselves for not breaking them.  But when they extend to condemn anger, insult, and lust, our illusions of self-righteousness immediately fall away.  The same is true about loving our enemies, for Christ calls us to go beyond limiting our vengeance to turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, and loving as our Father loves the just and unjust. We probably do not have to have much spiritual clarity to see that we are not there yet.

Were Jesus Christ simply another religious or moral teacher, these high requirements would probably lead us to despair and give up.  Rules tell us what to do, but do not give us the strength to obey them.  But because Christ is both divine and human, He provides more than a set of instructions.  For precisely through our awareness of how far short we have fallen from meeting these standards, He heals and strengthens us to serve Him more faithfully. The calling to holiness is not about meeting abstract rules by our own power, but about being united with a Person by grace.  Even as He has made great saints out of so many sinners who kneeled in humility before Him, His transforming mercy extends also to us.  That is a sign of hope for us all.  Who would have thought that Zacchaeus, a notorious tax collector, or Photini, a Samaritan woman of questionable reputation, would become shining lights of the world?   They did not do so because of perfect obedience to the law.  Far from it, they came to see their own brokenness through personal encounters with Jesus Christ.  Their humble acceptance of the distance between themselves and the Lord enabled them to grow closer to Him, to open their lives to a divine healing that they could never have given themselves.  

They show that, as we fall before Christ in humility, He will raise us up to participate personally in His holiness in ways that simply cannot be known except through repentance.  If we truly believe that Jesus Christ is the God-Man Who has come to make us participants in His healing of every dimension of our humanity, then we must follow the example of all the sinners who have become saints by opening themselves to participate in our Lord’s holiness. Instead of worrying about whether we will get our lives in perfect order according to our own standards, we must simply do what we have the sight and strength to do today in serving Him as we know we should.  St. Paul reminded St. Titus to tell the people to avoid foolish arguments, do good deeds, and meet urgent needs.  If we fill our lives with the things we know we should be doing and ignore the temptation to become distracted by nonsense, He will enable us to become light to the world.  Since He Himself is the Light, the more closely united we are to Christ, the more brilliantly our lives will become signs of the fulfillment of His purposes for the entire creation.    

Perhaps one of the reasons many people do not take the faith seriously today is that the lives of so many Christians do not manifest Christ’s healing and blessing of our humanity.  If we are not living icons of His fulfillment of the law and the prophets, then we are very poor witnesses to our Lord.  As Orthodox Christians who have received the fullness of the Church’s teaching about Jesus Christ as God and man, we have no excuse to accept distorted views of what faithfulness to Him means such that we excuse ourselves from the vocation to holiness.  Even as He did with His first disciples, He calls us to adjust our lives to be in line with His gracious purposes for those created in His image and likeness. As we turn away from all distractions, let us keep focused on shining the light of Christ so that others will give thanks to God and be drawn to the new day of His Kingdom. There is no other way to bear true witness to the Savior Who is both fully human and divine, for He came to enable us to shine with His holy light in our darkened world.