Preparing to Welcome Christ with Joy Through Humility: Homily for the Twenty-fifth Sunday After Pentecost & Thirteenth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

Ephesians 4:1-7; Luke 18:18-27 

            As we continue to prepare to welcome Christ at His Nativity, we must keep our focus on becoming like those who first received Him with joy.  That includes the Theotokos, whose Entrance into the Temple, where she prepared to become His Living Temple, we celebrated last week. That includes unlikely characters like the Persian astrologers or wise men, certainly Gentiles, who traveled such a long distance to worship Him.   What better news could there have been than that the Prince of Peace was coming “to preach good news to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord”? (Lk. 4:18-19) As we sing during these weeks of Advent, “Dance for joy, O earth, on hearing the gladsome tidings; with the Angels and the shepherds now glorify Him Who is willing to be gazed on as a young Child Who before the ages is God.”  

            We must remember, however, that there were those who did not welcome the birth of the Savior at all, such as the corrupt King Herod who slaughtered many young boys when his plot to kill the young Christ unraveled. He was interested only in his own power as a vassal of the Romans and saw the Savior simply as a threat to be destroyed.  In today’s gospel reading, we encounter a figure not nearly as bloodthirsty as Herod, but who also did not welcome the Messiah, at least once he caught a glimpse of how different He was from what he had expected.  

The rich man expected to find a teacher who would praise him for his record of good behavior.  In response to his question about how to find eternal life, the Lord challenged the man to confront his spiritual weakness. This fellow claimed to have kept all of God’s commandments from his youth, for he thought that he had already mastered everything that God required.  He assumed that he needed no repentance or divine mercy, presumably having already achieved perfection.  That is when the Lord said to him, “Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” This was a command that he lacked the spiritual strength to obey, for he was enslaved to the love of money and the comfort and power that it brings.   Upon hearing this command, the rich man did not receive Christ joyfully, but “was sad at this word, and went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.” (Mk. 10:22)  

The Savior then shocked everyone by saying, “How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!  For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”  The common assumption then was that wealth was God’s reward for those who were righteous. Since the man was one of very few rich people in that time and place, he and his neighbors surely assumed that his possessions were due to his exemplary behavior.  Their true spiritual significance was very different, of course, for they showed that he had come to love his wealth more than God and neighbor and, thus, obviously had failed to fulfill the greatest of the commandments. As St. Basil the Great wrote of the rich young ruler, “Those who love their neighbors as themselves possess nothing more than their neighbor; yet surely, you seem to have great possessions!  How else can this be, but that you have preferred your own enjoyment to the consolation of the many…For the more you abound in wealth, the more you lack in love.”[1]   Even though this fellow departed in sadness, the Lord did not condemn the man, but concluded with the statement: “What is impossible with men is possible with God.”  In other words, there remains hope for those who come to see clearly where they stand before the Lord and humbly offer themselves to Him for healing.

 If we want to prepare to welcome the Savior into our lives and world more fully this Christmas, then we must turn away from shallow religious self-justification and addiction to our money and possessions.  Instead of wanting a Lord to congratulate and reward us for our imagined success and virtue, we must follow the guidance of St. Paul to the Ephesians “to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all lowliness and meekness, with patience, forbearing one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”  He probably wrote from prison in Rome, where no one would have confused him with a paragon of earthly achievement. 

Paul had received Christ rather traumatically when the risen Lord appeared to him on his way to persecute Christians in Damascus.  After being blind for three days, he was baptized, received his sight again, and took up his long and difficult ministry, which ultimately led to martyrdom.  Paul described himself in ways that remind us of the rich young ruler: “My manner of life from my youth, which was spent from the beginning among my own nation at Jerusalem, all the Jews know...that according to the strictest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee.”  (Acts 26: 4-5)   Despite the many sufferings he endured, Paul never walked away in sadness from the Lord, but proclaimed that “This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.” (1. Tim. 1:15) 

Paul is the complete opposite of those who think that they have somehow put God in their debt by their good behavior or that wealth and power are necessary, or even likely, signs of a person’s righteousness. Instead of proudly celebrating ourselves, he calls us to humility, patience, and mutual love that manifests Christ’s peace.  There is, of course, no true peace in those whose sense of wellbeing is dependent upon showing themselves to be better than their neighbors, defending themselves from criticism that reveals their imperfection, or hoarding wealth.   That lack of peace is precisely what led the rich man to walk away in sadness, for he could not bear to open his soul in humility to see how desperately he needed the mercy of Christ.  To do so would have required acknowledging that he was by no means perfect, for he needed healing far beyond what he could ever give himself.     

There remains, nonetheless, hope for the rich young rulers of this world, for all is “possible with God.”  Likewise, there remains hope for us all, for as Paul wrote, “grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift.”  The only way to prepare to receive the Savior with joy at His Nativity is to cultivate the humility of those who know that they lack the spiritual strength to master the greatest of the commandments to love God with every ounce of our being and our neighbors as ourselves.  We pray, fast, give, confess, repent, and forgive during these blessed weeks in order to prepare our hearts to welcome the Savior, the God-Man Who comes to restore and fulfill us as His living icons, making us nothing less than “partakers of the divine nature.” The point is not simply to enrich our private spirituality, of course, put to enter into the blessed peace of Christ, providing the world a sign of its salvation as we learn to love our neighbors as ourselves, to pursue reconciliation with our enemies, and to share with the needy in whom He is present.  Let us continue to prepare to receive Him with the joy of the Theotokos, the wisemen, the shepherds, and angels as the Prince of Peace.  His Nativity is good news for the entire world from which we must never walk away in sadness. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           

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[1] Basil the Great, “To the Rich,” as quoted in Andrew Geleris, Money and Salvation (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2022), 54.

Becoming Living Temples of Christ, Who Is Our Peace: Homily for the Twenty-fourth Sunday After Pentecost & Ninth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

Ephesians 2:14-22; Luke 12:16-21

 Having begun the Nativity Fast on November 15 in preparation to welcome the Savior at Christmas, today we anticipate the Feast of the Entrance into the Temple of the Most Holy Theotokos. Her elderly parents Joachim and Anna offered Mary to God by taking her to live in the Temple in Jerusalem as a young girl, where she grew up in prayer and purity as she prepared to become the Living Temple of the Lord in a unique and extraordinary way as His Virgin Mother.  This feast directs us to the good news of Christmas, as it is the first step in Mary’s life in becoming the Theotokos who gave birth to the Son of God for our salvation. 

Joachim and Anna had a long and difficult period of preparation to become parents, as they had been unable to have children for decades until God miraculously blessed them in old age to conceive.  They knew that their daughter was a blessing not simply for the happiness of their family, but for playing her part in fulfilling God’s purposes for the salvation of the world   Their patient faithfulness throughout their years of barrenness helped them gain the spiritual clarity to offer her to the Lord.  They knew that their marriage and family life were not simply about fulfilling their desires, but were blessings to be given back to God for the fulfillment of much higher purposes. 

Joachim, Anna, and the Theotokos are the complete opposites of the rich man in today’s gospel reading.  His only concern was to eat, drink, and enjoy himself because he had become so wealthy.  He was addicted to earthly pleasure, power, and success, and saw the meaning and purpose of his life only in those terms.  When God required his soul, however, the man’s true poverty was revealed, for the possessions and accomplishments of this life inevitably pass away and cannot save us.  This man’s horizons extended no further than his dreams of the large barns he planned to build in order to hold his crops.  Before the ultimate judgment of God, he was revealed to be a fool who had wasted his life on what could never truly heal or fulfill one who bore the divine image and likeness.  He had laid up treasure for himself, but was not rich toward God in any way. The problem was not simply that the man had possessions, but that he had made them his god, which is another way of saying that he worshipped only himself and surely was not concerned about the needs of his neighbors.  His barns were a temple of the greed to which he had offered his entire existence in a vain effort to satisfy his self-centered desires.   

In stark contrast, the Theotokos followed the righteous example of her parents.  She was prepared by a life of holiness to agree freely to become our Lord’s mother, even though she was an unmarried virgin who did not understand how such a thing could happen.  When she said, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word,” this young Palestinian Jewish girl bravely made a whole, complete offering of her life to God.  She did not ask what was in it for her in terms of money, power, or any kind of earthly success.  Unlike the rich fool in the parable, she was not blinded by passion and had the purity of soul to put receptivity to the Lord before all else.

The world is full of tragic circumstances today that are caused by people who are so enslaved to their self-centered desires that they think nothing is more important than doing whatever it takes to gratify their lust for possessions, power, and pleasure.   But even if they succeed in gaining the whole world, they will lose their souls because they have offered themselves to false gods which lack the power to heal people from the ravages of sin, let alone to raise anyone up from the tomb.   Those who serve such idols inevitably lack peace within their souls and act in ways that make peace with their neighbors, especially those they consider their enemies, impossible.   

In today’s epistle reading, St. Paul taught the Ephesians that “Christ is our peace, Who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in His flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that He might create in Himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the Cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end.”  That is why Gentile Christians are now also part of the holy temple “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone…”  Though we had been “strangers” to the blessed heritage of the Hebrews, we are now built into the living temple of Christ’s Body, the Church, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Too many people today insist on preserving whatever “dividing wall of hostility” they can use to promote their vain desires for power, wealth, and other signs of worldly success.  Doing so  enables them to justify in their own minds how they refuse to pursue reconciliation with those who pose real or imagined threats to their dreams of earthly glory.  There are ways to “eat, drink, and be merry” that have nothing to do with food and beverage, but everything to do with impoverishing our souls by indulging in self-centeredness to the point that we cannot even imagine living according to the good news that Christ “has broken down the dividing wall of hostility” and brought peace to those “who were far off, and peace to those who were near.”

The Jewish Messiah Whose ministry extended to Samaritans, Roman centurions, Gentiles, the poor, the sick, the demon-possessed, and those viewed as hopeless cases of depravity has brought all with faith in Him into His Body, the Church, the living temple of God by the power of the Holy Spirit.  He worked that reconciliation through His great Self-offering on the Cross by which He has released us from bondage to the fear of death through His glorious resurrection on the third day.  If we want to pursue reconciliation with those we consider our enemies concerning any matter in this world, we must embrace our true identity as “fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone.”  We must find healing for our souls as we embrace our identity as a holy temple of the Lord.  We must reorient the desires of our hearts toward His Kingdom and away from any version of worldly glory.  In other words, we must become like the Theotokos who offered herself fully and without reservation to receive the Savior.  We enter into His peace not by gaining wealth, power, or victory over enemies, but by offering ourselves to Him with complete receptivity, as she did.  

We are now in the Nativity Fast, the 40-day period during which we prepare to celebrate the birth of the Savior at Christmas.   The weeks of Advent call us to wrestle with the passions that threaten to make us so much like the rich fool that we become blind to the healing and peace brought by our Lord.  Far from obsessing about earthly cares and indulging in the richest and most satisfying foods, this is a season for fasting, confessing and repenting of our sins, giving generously to the needy, and intensifying our prayers.  It is a time for preparing to open our hearts to receive Christ more fully into our lives at His Nativity.  

 The Theotokos entered the Temple, living there for years in preparation to become the Son of God’s Living Temple through whom He took on flesh. The Nativity Fast provides us blessed opportunities to become more like that obscure Palestinian Jewish girl who said “Yes!” to God with every ounce of her being.  It calls us to become more like Joachim and Anna in the patient trust in God that enabled them to offer their long-awaited daughter to Him.  They show us how to enter the Temple by embracing the difficult struggle of learning to offer ourselves and all our blessings fully to the Lord. It is only by following their righteous example that we will gain the spiritual clarity to provide the world a much-needed sign that the Savior born at Christmas truly “has broken down the dividing wall of hostility” that we know all to well.   Let us use these weeks to find healing for our passions as we embrace our true identity as “fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, in Whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in Whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”

 

    

Those Who Have Received Christ's Merciful Generosity Must "Go and Do Likewise": Homily for St. John the Almsgiver, Patriarch of Alexandria & the Eighth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

2 Cor. 9:6-11; Luke 10:25-37

             It is terribly tragic when people fall into the delusion of thinking that they love God and neighbor, when in reality they are using religion to serve only themselves and the false gods of this world.  One symptom of doing so is to narrow down the list of people who count as our neighbors to the point that we excuse ourselves from serving Christ in all who bear His image and likeness.  When we do so, we disregard not only them, but our Lord Himself, the God-Man born for the salvation of all.  Our actions then reveal that we are not truly united with Him because we seek to justify ourselves by serving nothing but our own vain imaginations.

            That is precisely the attitude that the Savior warns against in today’s gospel reading. After describing how the Old Testament law required loving God “with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself,” the lawyer wanted to justify himself by limiting the people he had to love.  That is why he asked, “And who is my neighbor?”  He wanted to limit what God required of him in a way that served his convenience and prejudices.  That way, he could assume that he was a righteous man as he went through life serving only himself and the few he deemed worthy of his concern.   

            The Lord’s parable does not allow us, however, to place any limits on what it means to love our neighbors.  He tells us about a man who was robbed, severely beaten, and then left on the side of the road to die. Surely, anyone who saw him in that condition would have an obligation to help him.  All the more is that the case for the religious leaders who were going down that same road.  They knew that the Old Testament law required them to care for a fellow Jew in a life-threatening situation.  Like the lawyer, however, they must have come up with some excuse not to treat him with even an ounce of compassion.  We do not know exactly what they were thinking, but they somehow rationalized passing by on the other side without helping him at all. 

            Ironically, a Samaritan—a hated foreigner, a despised heretic-- is the one who treated the unfortunate man as a neighbor.  The Samaritan did not limit his concern to his own people.  He did not restrict the demands of love in any way.  Even though he knew that the Jews had nothing to do with Samaritans, he responded with boundless compassion and generosity to this fellow’s plight.  He did not figure out how little he could do and still think of himself as a decent person.  Instead, he spontaneously offered his time, energy, and resources to bring a stranger back to health. Even the lawyer got the point of the story, for he saw that the one who treated the man as a neighbor was “The one who showed mercy to him.”  

            The Lord used the story of the Good Samaritan to show us who we must become if we are truly united to Him in faith.  Purely out of compassionate, boundless love, Christ came to heal us all from the self-imposed pain and misery that our sins have worked on our souls.  He came to liberate everyone, Jews and Gentiles alike, from slavery to the fear of death, which is the wages of sin.  Like the Samaritan, He was despised and rejected as a blasphemer.  In the parable, the religious leaders were of no help to the man who was robbed, beaten, and left to die.  They passed by and left him to suffer in the state in which they had found him.  Likewise, the legalistic, hypocritical religious leaders who rejected the Messiah were of no benefit to those who needed healing from the ravages of sin.   They interpreted and applied the law in order to gain power in this world and were powerless to heal anyone. We must be on guard against the temptation to become like them by distorting our faith in ways that would excuse us from seeing and serving Christ in every suffering neighbor.    

Christ has brought salvation to the world, not by giving us merely a religious or moral code of conduct, but by making us participants in His divine life by grace.  By becoming fully human even as He remains fully divine, He has restored and fulfilled the basic human vocation to become like God in holiness.  Only the God-Man could do that.  If we are truly united with Him, then His boundless love must become characteristic of our lives.  Among other things, that means gaining the spiritual health to show our neighbors the same mercy we ask for from the Savior.  Doing that even for those we love is difficult because our self-centeredness makes it hard to give anyone the same consideration we want for ourselves. 

The challenge of conveying Christ’s love to people we do not like for whatever reason may seem impossibly hard. Remember, however, what the Samaritan in the parable did for the robbed and beaten man.  He administered first aid, took him to an inn, paid the innkeeper to care for him, and promised to pay for any additional expenses when he returned.  Christ does the same for us in baptism, the Eucharist, and the full sacramental life of the Church, which is a hospital for our recovery from the ravages of sin. He also calls us to spiritual disciplines—such as prayer, fasting, and almsgiving—through which we will prepare to welcome Him during the Nativity Fast as we open ourselves to receive the healing necessary to convey His mercy to our neighbors.  He enables us to pursue a life of faith and faithfulness through the ministries of His Body, the Church, as a sign of the salvation of the world.    

The generosity of our Lord is truly infinite.  The more that we share in His life, the more His generosity will become characteristic of us.  As St. Paul wrote, “he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.”  This entails that those who offer themselves to serve Christ in their neighbors “will be enriched in every way for great generosity, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God.”  Today we remember two saints known especially for how they manifested the generous mercy of the Lord.  Saint John the Almsgiver, Patriarch of Alexandria, directed the church’s resources to help thousands of needy people, including paying ransom for the release of captives. He distributed alms on Wednesdays and Fridays, visited the sick three days a week, and brought those who had done wrong to repentance through his personal example of great humility and mercy.[1]  Saint Martin of Tours was a Roman soldier and a catechumen when he cut his cloak in two and gave half to a shivering beggar on a freezing night.  Then “Christ appeared to the saint wearing Martin’s cloak. He heard the Savior say to the angels surrounding Him, ‘Martin is only a catechumen, but he has clothed Me with this garment.’”  After his baptism and departure from the army, he became a monk and then a bishop.  “He is called the Merciful because of his generosity and care for the poor, and he received the grace to work miracles.”[2]  

Their blessed examples show that it is possible to be so fully united to Christ that His generous mercy becomes characteristic of us in relation to those who are robbed, beaten, and left for dead by the side of the road, whether literally or figuratively.  In the Good Samaritan, we see the boundless mercy of our Lord for all His suffering children. Today and throughout the coming weeks, we are receiving an offering for the suffering people of the Holy Land.  Let us not miss this opportunity to unite ourselves more fully to Christ as we invest ourselves in His compassion and generosity, for by doing so we “will be enriched in every way for great generosity, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God.”  As those who have received such infinite mercy from the Savior, how can we not obey His command to the lawyer, “Go and do likewise”?   

 

 

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[1] Saint John the Merciful, Patriarch of Alexandria - Orthodox Church in America (oca.org)

[2] Saint Martin the Merciful, Bishop of Tours - Orthodox Church in America (oca.org)

Loving Our Neighbors More than Our Money is Part of Being "A New Creation": Homily for the Twenty-second Sunday After Pentecost & Fifth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

Galatians 6:11-18; Luke 16:19-31

            There is perhaps no more powerful example of our need for Christ’s healing of our souls than that contained in today’s gospel reading.  A rich man with the benefit of the great spiritual heritage of Abraham, Moses, and the prophets had become such a slave to gratifying his desires for indulgence in pleasure that he had become completely blind to his responsibility to show mercy to Lazarus, a miserable beggar who wanted only crumbs and whose only comfort was when dogs licked his open sores.  The rich man’s life revolved around wearing the most expensive clothes and enjoying the finest food and drink, even as he surely stepped over or around Lazarus at the entrance to his home on a regular basis and never did anything at all to relieve his suffering.   

            After their deaths, the two men’s situations were reversed.  The rich man had spent his life rejecting the teachings of Moses and the prophets about the necessity of showing mercy to the poor.   He had diminished himself spiritually to the point that he became unable to recognize Lazarus as a neighbor who bore the image of God.  Consequently, after his death he was blind to the love of God and perceived the divine majesty as only a burning flame of torment.  When the rich man asked Father Abraham to send Lazarus to his brothers to warn them of the consequences of living such a depraved life, the great patriarch responded, “‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’” 

That statement applies to the corrupt nationalistic religious leaders who called for Christ’s crucifixion and denied His resurrection because they wanted only a warrior king who would slaughter their enemies and give them earthly power.  We must not rest content, however, with seeing how the Lord’s statement applies to others, for it should challenge us even more as those who have received the fullness of the mystery of God’s salvation.  Our responsibility is far greater than that of the Jews of old, for as members of Christ’s Body, the Church, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we have every spiritual benefit to strengthen us in serving our Lord in our neighbors.    Since every neighbor is an icon of God, how we treat them reveals our relationship to Him.  Christ taught that what we do “to the least of these,” to the most wretched people, we do to Him.  If we become so obsessed with gratifying ourselves or serving worldly agendas that we refuse to convey His mercy to our neighbors, then we will reject our Messiah and deny the truth of His resurrection, for we will not live in a way that reflects His victory over the corrupting power of sin and death.  Regardless of what we say we believe, we will bear witness through our actions that we have become blind to the good news of our salvation.  And like the rich man, we will exclude ourselves from the joy of the Kingdom.  Remember the words of the Lord: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.”  (Matt. 7:21)   

Lazarus, like everyone else, bore the image and likeness of God.  There is simply no way around the basic truth that how we relate to our neighbors reveals how we relate to our Lord.  What we do for even the most miserable and inconvenient people we encounter in life, we do for Christ.  And what we refuse to do for them, we refuse to do for our Savior.  Our salvation is in becoming more like Him as we find the healing of our souls by cooperating with His grace.  While we cannot save ourselves any more than we can rise up by our own power from the grave, we must obey His commandments in order to open our souls to receive His healing mercy as we become more like Him as “partakers of the divine nature.” If we do not do that, we will suffer the spiritual blindness of the rich man in today’s gospel lesson, regardless of how much or how little of the world’s treasures we have.  

Our calling is not to any form of religious legalism, but to embrace the healing and restoration that the God-Man shares with us.  In our epistle reading, St. Paul strongly opposes fellow Jewish Christians who required Gentile converts to be circumcised in obedience to the Old Testament law.  In contrast to those who would insist that Gentiles become Jews before becoming Christians, Paul writes that, “neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.”   We enter into the life of the New Adam by being reborn in baptism as we put on Christ like a garment.  Being united to Him from the depths of our souls by the power of the Holy Spirit, we may become radiant with the gracious divine energies, manifesting the fruit of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness.” (Gal. 5:22) The contrast between the plight of the first Adam, miserably enslaved to the fear of death in our world of corruption, and the holy glory that Christ shares with us is so great that Paul describes our salvation as nothing less than “a new creation.”  Our risen Lord raises us from death to life, making it possible for us to participate in the new day of His Kingdom even now, which is something that even the most exacting obedience to the best set of religious laws could never achieve.      

In the midst of our materialistic and consumeristic culture, it is easy to overlook St. Paul’s warning that “Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”  (1 Tim. 6: 9-10)   It was surely the love of money that led the rich man in today’s parable to become so enslaved to gratifying self-centered desire that he closed his heart completely to concern for his neighbors, even those so obviously suffering right before his eyes. Because he would not show love for poor Lazarus, he degraded himself to the point that he could not love God.   St. John wrote, “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?” (1 Jn. 4:20) The Lord Himself taught that love of God and neighbor are the greatest of the commandments. (Matt. 22: 37-40).   It is no surprise, then, that the rich man experienced the torment of bitter regret after his death, for he was in the eternal presence of the Lord Whom he had rejected throughout his life.  He had turned away decisively from God’s love and was capable of perceiving the divine glory as only a burning flame.  

If we have become “a new creation” in Christ, then we must live as members of His Body, manifesting His love and mercy for our suffering neighbors each day of our lives.  We must do so in relation to people in our own city, as well as to those who suffer around the world, including the living icons of God who are currently undergoing such horribly tragic circumstances in the Holy Land.    His Eminence, Metropolitan SABA, has directed all the parishes of our Archdiocese “to collect aid for our brethren at the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, and to partake in the relief of their suffering while demonstrating the Christian communion of humanity in times of affliction…”[1] Beginning today and throughout this month, please put offerings marked “Holy Land” in the collection plate, which we will then send to the Archdiocese.  We must remember to place our almsgiving in the context of intensified prayer, especially for peace and blessing for those now suffering so terribly, and in renewed spiritual struggle to purify the desires of our hearts from self-centeredness in all its forms.  That is the only way that we will learn to respond to the “poor Lazaruses” of our day in light of the “new creation” of the God-Man, in whom “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3:28)       

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] https://www.antiochian.org/regulararticle/1812

Entrusting Ourselves to Christ with Truly Humble Faith: Homily for the Twenty-first Sunday After Pentecost and Seventh Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

Galatians 2:16-20; Luke 8:41-56

            It is worth asking what we want to achieve by practicing our faith.  Why do we come to church, pray, fast, give to the needy, forgive our enemies, confess our sins, and otherwise struggle to reorient our lives toward God?  Perhaps we do these things because we want to put God in our debt so that He will do our will.  Maybe we want to become socially respectable, making ourselves look virtuous in our own eyes and in those of our neighbors.  It could also be the case that we want to distinguish ourselves from our neighbors, especially those we do not like, presenting ourselves as more pious and moral than we think they are.  Of course, these are all distortions of true Christian faith, but the real test of our faith is not simply in what we generally want from religion, but especially in how we relate to the Lord when we face deep challenges that break our hearts and threaten to lead us into despair.   

             In today’s gospel reading, Jairus and his wife were put to the ultimate test when the Lord said of their daughter, “Do not fear; only believe, and she shall be well…[and] “Do not weep; for she is not dead but sleeping.”  Jairus was an upstanding Jewish man who was responsible for the good order of a synagogue.  He was surely respected by his neighbors and thought to be righteous, but we have no idea what Jairus had thought about Christ other than that he knelt before Him and asked Him to come to his house, where his daughter was dying.  After she had died, whatever faith he had was surely stretched to the breaking point.   

             We also do not really know how Jairus and his wife responded to the Lord’s challenge to believe that their daughter would return to life and health.  Nonetheless, they had enough faith to go into their house with the Messiah Who had promised to save their daughter if they believed and did not fear.  Mourning and weeping had already begun, and others laughed at the Savior for saying, “Do not weep; for she is not dead but sleeping.”   In the midst of their despair, Jairus and his wife somehow found the strength to trust in Christ’s promise, which enabled them to receive a miracle well beyond all expectations.

             Something similar occurred with the woman who had been bleeding for twelve years.  She had impoverished herself by spending all her money on physicians who could not heal her. There was no medical cure for her condition, which also made her ritually unclean.  She was isolated, poor, and miserable.  Her religious and social standing were completely different from that of Jairus, who was at the center of the Jewish community, for she was very much on the margins.  All that we know about her attitude toward Christ is that she reached out and touched the hem of His garment in the midst of a large crowd.  She probably did not want to draw attention to herself by asking for healing and or to risk rejection from Him, for anyone who touched her would have been considered unclean also.     

             When the woman reached out for the Lord’s garment, she was healed immediately, but Christ knew that someone had touched Him; her secret was out.  Instead of running away in fear or becoming defensive or angry, the woman then “came trembling, and falling down before Him declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched Him, and how she had been immediately healed.”  Then the Lord said, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.”      

             As different as Jairus and this woman are, they have in common that they were both at the end of their rope and tempted to fall into despair.  It did not matter that one was an admired example of religious piety and that the other was an outcast.  Questions of how observant they were of the Jewish law or of what people thought about them had become irrelevant, for they knew no way out of the tragic circumstances they faced.  To their credit, they did not look for scapegoats to blame for their grave problems; neither did they do anything self-destructive.  Instead, they humbly offered the deepest pains of their lives to Christ for healing beyond what they could expect or even understand.  They entrusted their brokenness to the Lord without reservation and, thus, opened themselves to the healing of the human person that He has brought to the world. 

            The woman did not say anything at all until after her healing, which came through the only gesture of faith that she had the strength to make:  reaching out to touch the hem of the Savior’s garment in the middle of a crowd.  She was healed instantly, but spoke only after she had been found out.  She did so with fear and trembling, falling down before the Lord and stating publicly why she had reached out for healing.  That was likely the most difficult and embarrassing moment of her life.  In response, the Lord said, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.”  The Savior did not relate to her as a bundle of impurity, but simply as a beloved child of God who had opened her heart to Him as best she could.   

            The pain felt by Jairus and his wife was in no way lessened by their respectable position among the Jews.    Jairus had asked Christ to come to his house where his daughter was dying, but he and his wife surely struggled to believe that the Lord could actually raise her from the dead.  After He did so, “her parents were amazed; but He charged them to tell no one what had happened.” Their faith, however weak and imperfect, was all that the Savior needed to work an extraordinary miracle.  

 The Lord showed mercy throughout His earthly ministry to suffering people who offered their personal brokenness to Him for healing, regardless of where they stood in the religious and social pecking orders of the day.  He praised the spiritual understanding of a Gentile woman and cast a demon out of her daughter. (Mk 7:24-30) He said that no one in Israel had greater faith than the Roman centurion whose servant He healed. (Lk 7: 1-10) He restored the broken life of St. Photini, the Samaritan woman, by disregarding the prejudices of the time through His shocking conversation with her.  (Jn 4:1-42) The Savior did not treat them according to their social standing or level of religious observance, but according to His love for all the living icons of God.    

           Contrary to those who thought that obeying the Old Testament law would heal their souls, St. Paul taught that we are “not justified by works of the Law but through faith in Jesus Christ.” (Gal. 2:16) Only our risen Lord has delivered us from the corrosive fear of death through His glorious resurrection on the third day.  Even the strictest obedience to religious law could not resurrect Jairus’ daughter or anyone else; neither could it stop the chronic bleeding of the woman or deliver us from slavery to our self-centered desires.  It is only by opening our souls to Christ in brutally honest faith, no matter how weak or imperfect, that we may become participants in his restoration and fulfillment of the human person as a living icon of God.

 We must learn to see that we stand before Him just as did Jairus and the woman with grave, ongoing challenges that no level of religious observance, in and of itself, has the power of heal.  We must die to the pride that would make us think that we will become worthy of God’s favor if we will only accomplish this or that. The point of all our spiritual disciplines is not to attempt to put God in our debt, to achieve any earthly goal, or to distinguish ourselves from our neighbors in any way.    It is, instead, to help us gain the humility to have the faith necessary to entrust our deepest pains and fears to the One Who has conquered even death and Hades.  Acquiring that kind of faith is not easy and surely not a matter of simply going through the motions of religious practice.  It is, instead, a matter of allowing our illusions of self-sufficiency and self-righteousness to be destroyed as we come to see clearly where we stand before the Lord as those with broken hearts who often totter on the brink of despair.  He graciously accepts faith even the size of a mustard seed, such as that of an outcast woman who secretly touches the hem of His garment or of parents who can barely believe that death will not have the last word on their daughter.  If we can acquire the humility to entrust ourselves so fully to Christ, then His words will apply to us also: “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.”       

 

Becoming a Human Person Fully Alive to the Glory of God: Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

Luke 8:26-39

             St. Irenaeus wrote that “The glory of God is a man fully alive, and the life of man consists in beholding God” (Adv. haer. 4.20.7).”  To be a human person is to bear the image of God with the calling to become more like Him in holiness.  The more we do so, the more we become our true selves.  The God-Man Jesus Christ came to restore and fulfill us as living icons of God.  He enables us to become truly human as we participate personally in Him as the Second Adam.  As St. Paul wrote, “For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us.”  (2 Cor. 1:20)

            If we need a clear example of how the Lord has extended the ancient promises to Abraham to all people in order to restore the beauty of our darkened souls, we need look no further than today’s Gospel reading about a man so miserable that he was barely recognizable as a human person.  He had no illusions about himself, for he was so filled with demons that he called himself “Legion.”  His personality had disintegrated due to the overwhelming power of the forces of evil in his life.  That is shown by the fact that he was naked, like Adam and Eve who stripped themselves of the divine glory and were cast out of Paradise into our world of corruption.  He lived among the tombs, and death is “the wages of sin” that came into the world as a consequence of our first parents’ refusal to fulfill their calling to become like God in holiness.  This naked man living in the cemetery was so terrifying to others that they tried unsuccessfully to restrain him with chains.  People understandably feared that he would do to them what Cain had done to Abel.  But when this fellow broke free, he would run off to the desert by himself, alone with his demons.  The Gadarene demoniac provides a vivid icon of the pathetic suffering of humanity enslaved to death, stripped naked of the divine glory, and isolated in fear.  His wretched condition manifests the tragic disintegration of the human person that the Savior came to heal.   

            Evil was so firmly rooted in this man’s soul that his reaction to the Lord’s command for the demons to depart is shocking: “What have you to do with me?...I ask you, do not torment me.”  He had understandably abandoned hope for healing and perceived Christ’s promise of deliverance simply as even further torment.  By telling the Lord that his name was Legion, he acknowledged that the line between the demons and his own identity had been blurred.  He was in such bad shape that it was not clear where he ended and where the demons began.  The Savior then cast the demons into the herd of pigs, which ran into the lake and drowned.  In the Old Testament context, pigs were unclean, and here the forces of evil lead even them to destruction. 

            Perhaps there is no clearer image of how evil debases our humanity than the plight of this miserable man.    He is an icon of our brokenness and represents us all in many ways.  He did not ask Christ to deliver him, even as we did not take the initiative in the Savior’s coming to the world.   The corrupting forces of evil were so powerful in this man’s life that he had lost all awareness of being a person in God’s image and likeness.  We can also become so distorted by self-centered desire that we lose all sense of being a living icon of God.  When that happens, we would rather that Christ leave us alone to serve our passions than to set us free from them.  We can easily become overwhelmed with fear that His healing mercy will simply torment us, being so spiritually blind that we cannot even imagine a life without the corruption with which we have come to identify ourselves.  

            After the spectacular drowning of the swine, the man in question was “sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.”  The one who had not been recognizably human returned to being his true self.  That was a very upsetting scene to the people of that region, however.  They actually asked Christ to leave out of fear at what had happened.  We may find their reaction hard to understand.  What could be so terrifying about this man returning to a normal life?  Unfortunately, we all tend to get used to whatever we get used to.  What we have experienced routinely in ourselves or from others, no matter how depraved, becomes normal to us.  The scary man in the tombs was afraid when Christ came to set him free, but his neighbors seemed even more disturbed when they saw that he had been liberated.

            It should not be surprising that the man formerly possessed by demons and still feared by his neighbors did not want to stay in his hometown after the Lord restored him.  He begged to go with Christ, Who responded, “Return to your home, and declare all that God has done for you.”  That must have been a difficult commandment for him to obey.  Who would not be embarrassed and afraid to live in a town where everyone knew about the wretched and miserable existence he had experienced?  It would have been much easier to have left all that behind and start over as a traveling disciple of the One who had set him free.

            But that was not what Christ wanted the man to do.  Perhaps that was because the Lord knew that the best sign of His transforming power was a living person who had been restored from the worst forms of depravity and corruption as a sign of the glory of God.   There could not be a better witness of the salvation that the God-Man has brought to the world.  When someone moves from slavery to personal decay to the glorious freedom of the children of God, that person has moved from death to life.  That person has become his or her true self as one who bears the divine image and likeness.  Such a radical change is a brilliant sign of the truth of Christ’s resurrection, for He makes us participants in His victory over death by breaking the destructive hold of the power of sin in our lives.   

The presence of the pigs in this story reminds us that the man to whom Christ restored his humanity was a Gentile. The Savior has fulfilled God’s promises to the children of Abraham such that all with faith in Him are “Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (Gal. 3:29) His Kingdom is not a nation-state, is not defined according to ethnicity or cultural heritage, and knows no geographical boundaries.  The Messiah repudiated the temptation to set up such an order, for His reign is the complete opposite of earthly powers so enslaved to the fear of death that they have become blind  to how their enemies bear the image of God every bit as much as they do.  People will never find the healing of their humanity by refusing to turn the other cheek and go the extra mile in order to break cycles of retribution and violence which have become second nature in our world of corruption.  No one will become more truly human by continuing to pour fuel on the fires that consume the lives of the living icons of God, regardless of their religion, nationality, or politics.   Those who do so degrade themselves and become more and more like the wretched man overcome with evil who lived naked in the tombs, a terror to himself and everyone else.

We must not reject Christ’s healing out of fear that He will only torment us.  Sin only has the power in our lives that we allow it to have, and we must all embrace the eternal journey of opening ourselves fully to the Savior’s restoration of our humanity.  Since we all bear God’s image and likeness, the path to such blessedness is open to us all if we will take the small steps of which we are capable each day through prayer, fasting, almsgiving, forgiveness, repentance, and the other basic spiritual disciplines of the Christian life.  We must cultivate the mindfulness that is necessary to resist the personal disintegration that comes from identifying ourselves with our passions.   That is not easy because often nothing is more appealing in the moment that wallowing in pride, anger, lust, resentment, and other distorted desires to the point that we have more in common with pigs at a trough than with the man after his deliverance, when he sat “at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.” 

  When we experience temptations, we must make them opportunities to embrace Christ’s healing of our corrupt humanity through His victory over death. We must die to sin in order to rise up with Him in holiness.  We must crucify the distortions of our souls that have become second nature to us.  When the struggle is hard and we cannot imagine being set free, we must remember the difference between a person disintegrated by the power of evil and one gloriously restored as a living icon of God.  That is precisely what is at stake whenever we face the choice between welcoming Christ’s healing presence in our lives or hiding from Him in fear as we cling to our passions.  May God grant us all the spiritual clarity to become fully alive and radiant with the divine glory.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bearing the Good Fruits of Peace for the Living Icons of God: Homily for the Sunday of Holy Fathers of Seventh Ecumenical Council & Fourth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

                                                Titus 3:8-15; Luke 8:5-15

         In the midst of the ongoing tragedy unfolding in the Holy Land, we must attend to the wisdom of our father in Christ, His Beatitude Patriarch John X of Antioch, who stated this week that “Peace does not come from the bodies of children, killed people, innocent people, and women. Peace comes when the decision-makers in this world realize that our people have dignity, as all the peoples of the world. We are not advocates of war, we reject violence and killing, and we are seekers of peace…” He writes that we pray “for peace in the entire world, for stability, and for the repose of the souls of those who have passed away. We pray that the wounds of the sick be soothed and they might recover, for the wounds of every hurting person, every bereaved mother, every brother, and every sister, for everyone’s wounds. We ask the Lord to protect us and grant us peace…”[1]

             His Beatitude’s words resonate so strongly with the many petitions for peace in the Divine Liturgy, such as our prayers “for the peace of whole world…and the union of all.”  We pray for “peaceful times,” “the sick and the suffering, for captives and their salvation,” and also for “deliverance from all tribulation, wrath, danger, and necessity…”  These and so many other petitions show that as we enter mystically into the blessedness of our Lord’s Kingdom in the Liturgy, we must not think that God’s peace is reserved entirely for the eschatological future.  We pray for reconciliation and blessing for all the living icons of God today, in the world as we know it, as a sign, no matter how dim, of the fulfillment of His gracious purposes for all who bear the divine image and likeness.   

             To pray for peace in this way does not require us to become naïve or idealistic about how deeply the brokenness of the human person extends within our hearts or how it impacts our relationships with other people.  It does not demand that we pretend that Cain’s murder of his brother Abel is not repeated daily.  It does, however, require us to gain the spiritual clarity to see that, regardless of nationality, politics, or anything else, every human person remains a living icon of God and a neighbor to be loved. How we treat those we are least inclined to recognize as neighbors and most inclined to view as our enemies is precisely how we treat our Lord. (Matt. 25: 31-46) Nothing reveals the true state of our souls more than that.   

         Even as we mourn the horrible suffering of people in the Holy Land, today we commemorate the 367 Holy Fathers of the 7th Ecumenical Council, which met in Nicaea in 787.  The council rejected the false teaching that to honor icons is to commit idolatry, for it distinguished between the worship that is due to God alone and the veneration that is appropriate for images of Christ, the Theotokos, and the Saints.  The council’s teaching highlighted the importance of the Savior’s incarnation, for only a truly human Savior with a physical body could restore us to the dignity and beauty of the living icons of God.    

         The 7th Ecumenical Council addressed matters that strike at the very heart of how we embrace our fundamental vocation to become like God in holiness in a world of hatred and violence that so desperately needs the peace of Christ.  Too often, however, we think that iconography simply has to do with wood and paint, and is unrelated to the question of whether we are becoming more like Christ and gaining the strength to love our enemies as He loves us.   The icons are not merely religious art, but reminders that to become a truly human person is to become like Jesus Christ, who, according to St. Paul, “is our peace… and has broken down the middle wall of separation” so that “He might reconcile…both [Jew and Gentile] to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity.” (Eph. 2:14-16) The more that we become like our Lord, Who worked this reconciliation, the less we will see anyone through the darkened lenses of those who demand “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”  Instead, we will become more like the Savior, Who closely associated love of enemies with fulfilling the commandment to “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matt. 5:48)  

         Today’s gospel reading addresses these same questions with different imagery.  Christ used the parable of the sower to call His disciples to become like plants that grew from the seed that “fell into good soil and grew, and yielded a hundredfold.”  He wanted them to become “those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bring forth fruit with patience.”  Not all who hear the Word of God will do so, even as not all seeds will grow to fruition.   Some never even believe, while others make a good start and then fall away due to temptation or “are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature.” 

         This parable warns us about what happens when we fail to fulfill our potential as those who bear the image of God.  Our vocation is to become more beautiful living icons of the Savior, but we diminish and distort ourselves when we refuse to become who God created us to be.  Plants must grow and flourish as the kinds of plants that they are in order to become healthy and bear fruit.  Farmers must care for them accordingly.  The sun, soil, moisture, and nutrients must be appropriate for that particular type of plant in order for them to flourish.  In order for us to bear good fruit for the Kingdom, we must attend to the health of our souls with the conscientiousness of a careful farmer or gardener.  We must do so in order to become more fully who we are as living icons of Christ.  If, to the contrary, we become obsessed with the worldly political agendas that He repudiated and a desire for vengeance against our enemies, we will never bear good fruit for the Kingdom.   

         In today’s epistle lesson, St. Paul urged St. Titus to tell the people to focus on doing good deeds and helping others in great need.  He wanted them to avoid foolish arguments and divisions, “for they are unprofitable and vain.”  St. Paul did not want the people to waste their time and energy on matters that would simply inflame their passions and hinder them from attaining spiritual health and maturity.  He called them to care for their spiritual wellbeing with the conscientiousness of farmers who are single-mindedly dedicated to bringing in a bumper crop.  If they let down their guard to the point of being so consumed by pointless controversies that they ignored basic disciplines like loving and serving their neighbors, they would risk dying spiritually like a neglected plant overtaken by weeds. 

         If we are to become “those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bring forth fruit with patience,” we must refuse to allow hatred, vengeance, and obsession with worldly agendas to take root in our hearts and minds.  We must do the hard, daily work of denying ourselves and serving others, especially those whom the world encourages us to view as our enemies.  In order to bear good fruit for the Kingdom, we must refuse to focus on anything that will distract us from becoming more beautiful icons of Christ, Who loved and forgave even those who crucified Him.  Unless we struggle mindfully against this temptation, we can easily become obsessed with defining ourselves and our neighbors according to the standards of our world of corruption, which is driven by the fear of death.  Because our risen Lord has conquered even the grave through His glorious resurrection on the third day, we must refuse to become enslaved by such fears and must never allow anything to distract us from becoming more beautiful icons of His love, mercy, and reconciliation.  The Savior Himself refused to define His Kingdom in popular nationalistic terms against the Romans, the Gentiles, and the Samaritans, or in legalistic terms against those considered hopeless sinners by the religious establishment.   He came to restore everyone to the beauty of the living icons of God.  In Him, “there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.” (Col. 3:11)

         He alone is our peace and the peace of the entire world.  If we are truly becoming participants in His life, then we must refuse to define ourselves or anyone else according to divisive worldly agendas driven by the fear of death.  We must grow in His likeness as we pray for all who suffer and for an end to violence and oppression in all their forms, and as we give generously to meet the urgent needs of our neighbors in the Holy Land and around the world.  We must remember Whose icons we all are and refuse to live as though anything or anyone other than the God-Man were the true measure of our lives.  That is ultimately why we have icons in the Orthodox Church, for they proclaim who Jesus Christ is and who He enables every human person to become.   It is not by hating and killing people that the Savior’s peace comes, but by the love, forgiveness, and reconciliation that He has brought to the world through His Cross and empty tomb.  As the Lord said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

 

 

 

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[1] https://www.antiochian.org/regulararticle/1783