How to Become "Fishers of Men" in the Context of our Daily Work: A Homily for the 13th Sunday After Pentecost in the Orthodox Church

          

St. Luke 5:1-11; 1 Corinthians 16: 13-24

                  I am sure that every one of us has felt at some point in our lives just like the frustrated fishermen did when Jesus Christ found them washing their nets.  They had fished all night and caught nothing at all.  As happens so often in our own lives, things had not turned out as they had hoped despite their best efforts.  They were disappointed and frustrated to the point of giving up.   But then the Lord told them to get back to work and let down their net.   They did so and somehow caught so many fish that their net was breaking; then they hauled in so many fish that their weight almost sank two boats.

            That must have been quite a scene, and it was so astonishing that St. Peter recognized this tremendous abundance as a miracle.  He fell down before Christ and said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” But the Lord responded said, “Do not be afraid.  From now on you will catch men.”  Then the disciples left behind their boats and nets and followed Jesus Christ.

            That day probably began like any other day in the family fishing business that they had always known.  The men were busy with their work and did not expect anything unusual to happen.  Over the years, there had surely been many times before when they had caught nothing.  So it was time to wash their nets and hope for the best the next time.  But in the midst of their disappointment and resignation, the Lord blessed them in a way that helped them see their lives, and calling in life, in a new way.  Their work would no longer be catching fish, but bringing people into the eternal life of the Kingdom of God.

            The details are different, but Jesus Christ says something very similar to us all.  No matter what we do every day, no matter how satisfied or disappointed we may be with our circumstances, the Lord invites us to participate in bringing the blessings of His Kingdom to the world and all its inhabitants. 

            Of course, the disciples were called to a special ministry in the founding of the Church; they had to leave their old occupations and serve the Lord full-time as evangelists, apostles, bishops, and ultimately as martyrs.   Some continue to hear similar callings to this day. But most of us will remain right where we are for the foreseeable future, in the familiar circumstances of our families, neighborhoods, workplaces, and schools with all their strengths and weaknesses.

            Familiarity often breeds contempt, and we may be tempted to think that because we do not have our “dream job” or live in a setting more to our liking that we are somehow failures.  When we think in those says, we forget that the measure of our lives is not in success according to the standards of the world or even to our own preferences.  The fishermen did not expect a miraculous haul or a new calling in the midst of their frustration.  We cannot place limits on what God is doing through us and with us even when we are disappointed, frustrated, and unfulfilled.    

            Likewise, we may think that really holy people are all in monasteries, seminaries, and mission fields, not in the mundane circumstances in which we find ourselves.  We may doubt that what we do each day could be truly pleasing to God and what we are really called to do.  We must remember, however, that every bit of our life and work is called to become holy.  Everything that we do provides an opportunity to be stewards of God’s creation and to offer our lives and the fruits of our labor to the Lord for blessing and fulfillment. 

            For Jesus Christ is present to us in every human being whom we encounter at work, school, or elsewhere since we all bear His image and likeness.  Every human being and the entire creation are called to shine with the light of our Lord’s glory.  In our daily lives, we are all to become priests who offer the world back to God for His blessing.  We are all to become iconographers who bring out the beauty of the creation so that it manifests the life of our Lord, so that it becomes an image of His Kingdom.   That is as true for every one of us as it is for the monks on Mt. Athos and our bishops and patriarchs. 

            In order for us to accept this high calling, we must learn from St. Paul about how to work every day as priests and iconographers of the creation.  We need to obey his teaching to “Watch, stand fast in the faith, be brave, be strong.  Let all that you do be done with love.”  Some have claimed that Christianity is a religion for the weak, for wimps who want to feel better about being the doormats and losers of life.  But those who take up their crosses and follow Jesus Christ know that this is not a way for the weak and timid, but for those who boldly step out in faith to resist the temptation to do what is easy and popular and satisfies our self-centered desires.  

            In contrast, the true Christian life requires discipline, self-sacrifice, and the sort of dogged commitment characteristic of athletes, soldiers, and others who do the hard work of sacrificing for a good higher than themselves.  Opportunities to grow in this kind of life are available to us all in whatever set of circumstances we face today.  

            Some in our parish care for the sick and troubled; some take on the great burdens of defending our nation or protecting us from crime; some provide jobs by running a business or provide goods and services that people need in order to live a decent life; others teach; some take care of a home or a family; some go to school; and some are retired.   At times, we all get discouraged and frustrated; we have conflicts with others or feel neglected or mistreated by them.  At times we may wonder if there is any point at all to what we do every day.  When we feel this way, we must remember that the Son of God has entered into our world and blessed every bit of it.  He wants to sanctify every human being, every relationship, every responsibility, task, and assignment that we have—and every word that we speak.  Nothing is foreign to Him; nothing is outside of His love and salvation.

            When we live and work faithfully in our present circumstances, we have the opportunity to transform a portion—no matter how small-- of God’s good creation for His glory.  And we are reminded that salvation is not a matter of the spiritual experience of isolated individuals, for we all journey together toward a new heaven and a new earth.  Jesus Christ’s ministry of feeding the hungry, healing the sick, restoring sight to the blind, and proclaiming good news to the poor shows that His salvation concerns the real-life challenges that people continue to face in the world as we know it.  He showed God’s love for the hated Gentiles and Samaritans, for people who had fallen into great sin and were shunned by respectable people.  In His Body, the Church, all peoples and nations are to be reconciled and united in the life of the Kingdom.

            Whether we see it or not, the circumstances we face each day provide an opportunity to play a role in bringing salvation to the world and all its inhabitants.  Everything that we do and say at work, school, or among family and friends should be sign of God’s blessing to those we encounter. We all have the opportunity to forgive; to work toward reconciliation with those from whom we have become estranged; and not to let greed, ambition, or power get in the way of relating to others with honesty, kindness, and decency.           Of course, our work must support us financially if we are to live in the world, but there is a difference between meeting our legitimate needs and selfishly worshipping comfort, convenience, and “the almighty dollar.”

            Our calling is to use the challenges and blessings of our daily grind to grow in holiness as we play our role in making this world an icon of God’s salvation.  That’s how we will become fishers of men in our daily work.  For salvation is not an escape from the world, but its fulfillment.  Spirituality is not about separating ourselves from others, but about serving one another in Christ-like humility.

            Human labor has fashioned wheat into bread and grapes into wine.  By the power of the Holy Spirit, they will soon become the Body and Blood of Christ, our salvation, our Communion with the Holy Trinity.  The same will be true of our daily life and work in the world when we offer ourselves and all our labors to Him.  Then like the first disciples, we will move from frustration to amazement at God’s blessing to become fishers of men.    

    

           

   

              

The Way of the Cross and the Crisis in Syria: Homily for the Feast of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos and the Sunday Before the Elevation of the Holy Cross in the Orthodox Church

           

            We have a lot going on today in the Church with our liturgical calendar, parish activities, and response to world events.  I am wearing blue because it is the Feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos, the birthday of the Virgin Mary.  Since this coming Saturday is the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, our epistle and gospel readings focus on that theme.

            In addition, His Eminence Metropolitan PHILIP has urged us to ask our senators and congressman to oppose authorizing a military strike on Syria, which is the home of our Antiochian Orthodox Church. His Beatitude Patriarch JOHN X requests that we take up a special collection next Sunday for the “Antiochian Day of Solidarity” which will go toward humanitarian relief in Syria. And today we resume Christian Education classes after our summer recess.

            Yes, that seems like a lot, but it is not that much different from life as usual in the world as we know it.  The situation in Syria is certainly terrible and we should all pray, give generously, and do whatever else we can to ease the burdens there of everyone.   Unfortunately, the innocent have suffered ever since Cain murdered his brother Abel.  The bloodshed and misery of wars and exiles described throughout the Old Testament are well known.  Wicked King Herod tried unsuccessfully to kill the infant Jesus, but then succeeded in slaughtering thousands of young boys in the region of Bethlehem.  The Church has survived centuries of persecution in various times and places; there are still martyrs who die for their faith to this day in Syria, Egypt, and many other countries.

            It is tempting to think that worldly power is the solution to such difficult situations.  But as anyone who has studied history even a bit knows, one war often sows the seeds that lead to the next and none of it is holy. Regardless of who has a better claim to being justified in killing, the blood of the victims cries out from generation to generation, often inspiring revenge and vengeance. No matter the details, “the wages of sin is death” and the spiritual damage of taking life under any circumstances is profound. When we “cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war,” all hell is liable to break loose in ways that no one is able to control, whether in the soul of one person or the collective life of the world.  For example, our nation is only beginning to come to grips with the psychological, spiritual, and moral trauma endured by so many of our veterans in the last decade.    

            Perhaps that sober recognition will help us see how important it is that God did not save the world through a conquering king or a powerful army, but through a Suffering Servant Who hung on a cross at the hands of the most powerful empire on earth.  He defeated the powers of sin and death not by shedding the blood of others, but by allowing His own blood to be shed.  Purely out of love, Jesus Christ entered fully into horrific torture and the black night of the grave as one of the world’s countless victims and then rose victorious, bringing all the departed with Him.  Our hope is in our crucified and risen Lord, in the selfless, forgiving, humble way of the cross that remains a scandal to the rulers of this age.

            Unfortunately, there are times when the use of deadly force to protect the innocent is a tragic necessity in our fallen world.  But even then, the Church provides spiritual therapy for the healing of the soul of those who have blood on their hands for whatever reason.  Whether through movies, television, video games, a sensationalistic news media, or our own passions, we have become desensitized to the profound gravity of using violence against those created in the image and likeness of God.  Much of our entertainment and news has become a celebration of graphic violence and almost another form of pornography, a way of taking perverse pleasure in the horrible distortion of what it means to be a human being called to a life of holiness.  We do not have to be vampires or zombies in order to lust for blood, especially the blood of those we feel justified in hating.

            The way of Jesus Christ is, however, totally different.  And it should not be surprising that He took His humanity from a mother who was not corrupted by the ways of the world.  Today we celebrate her birthday, when the infant Mary was born to the old, righteous, and barren couple Sts. Joachim and Anna.  They prayed for a child whom they dedicated to the Lord.  Mary grew up in the Temple in prayer and purity.  And when she could no longer remain there, St. Joseph was chosen as her guardian.  Then she became the Theotokos, the virgin mother of our Savior, and had the unique and amazing role of giving human life to the incarnate Son of God.  She did not abandon Him, even at the foot of His cross.

            In every war-torn country, there are old people who like Sts. Joachim and Anna have hope only in God.  There are completely vulnerable babies and young girls whose lives and safety are at risk in ways too numerable to count and often too horrible to describe.  The brokenness of life in our corrupt world is such that civilians--such the old and the young--are often among the most vulnerable victims of war.  Sts. Joachim, Anna, and their daughter lived in a time of Roman occupation and the threat of terrible violence against anyone who dared challenge the powers that be.  That is why the Romans crucified traitors and rebels, which is what they did to Jesus Christ.

            The Roman Empire eventually fell apart in both the West and the East.  Such will be the fate of all the kingdoms and nations of the world, including our own, no matter what weapons we have. As much as we love our country, we know that it is not the Kingdom of God or “the life of the world to come.”  Like Sts. Joachim, Anna, and the Theotokos, we are called to embody the ways of the heavenly Kingdom even as we live amidst the broken realities of earthly kingdoms.  We cannot pretend as though we have escaped the dynamics of this life or that the world will somehow become a perfect place if we simply call for peace or advocate for other high minded ideals.  Instead, we must humbly do what we can in order to become livings icon of God’s salvation in a world where people hate and disregard one another and look for their salvation just about anyplace else than the cross of Christ.

            For example, we all have room to grow in showing the love and mercy of the Lord in our own families, friendships, workplaces, schools, and other familiar settings.  We all have ways of thinking, speaking, and acting that need to be purified and redirected according to the ways of God’s Kingdom.  We all need to take up our crosses and die to self in how we relate to those whom we view as enemies in our personal lives.  If we want peace and reconciliation in the world at large, we must begin with our little bit of the world, with our own souls and the neighbors we encounter on a daily basis.

            In addition, we must give as generously as we can in efforts to relieve the suffering of refugees and other victims of the civil war in Syria.  I know that our parish has already been remarkably generous in earlier drives to raise funds.  But now our Patriarch, who lives in the midst of this crisis in Damascus, has asked us to open our hearts again to our suffering brothers and sisters.  So if you are at all able to share from what God has given you to bless those who have lost everything in this cruel conflict, I hope that you will put an offering in the collection plate for Syria either today or next Sunday.  And regardless of whether you can donate, pray intensely for those who suffer there.   

            Heeding the call of our Metropolitan, we should also urge our government to refrain from taking steps that will only make a bad situation worse—and instead do what it can to help refugees, promote stability and reconciliation, and protect Christians and other vulnerable groups from persecution.  None of this is about conventional politics between groups that compete for power.  All of it is about living out the selfless love shown on the cross by Jesus Christ. Like Sts. Joachim and Anna, as well as the Theotokos, let us look to Him as our only hope.  Let us play our small role in making His life present in a world that desperately needs forgiveness and peace, for we have already had more than enough vengeance, contempt, and the shedding of blood.   Our Lord has already conquered death; let us live accordingly.

Marking Time: Homily for the Ecclesiastical New Year in the Orthodox Church

           

             Have you ever noticed the ways we mark the passage of time in our lives?   Since my “day job” is in a university, I usually think in terms of semesters and academic years.  Many of us may look back to “the good old days” when we remember life being better or look ahead to a time when we are done with school or able to retire.  Perhaps family life was better or worse for us in the past or the economy or the world situation was more or less to our liking.  One way or another, we will find a way to make sense of how our lives fit into a larger scheme of time.

            Jesus Christ began His ministry by announcing that a new phase of time had begun.  No, He was not talking about a new season of the year or the rule of a new emperor.  Instead, the Lord proclaimed that He Himself is the fulfillment of all the hopes and dreams of the Old Testament prophets for the fullness of time, for the presence of God’s Kingdom.  The word “messiah” means “anointed one,” and He is truly the One anointed to preach the good news of salvation to poor, brokenhearted, blind, and captive humanity.  This Second Adam has come to set right everything set wrong by the first Adam, to usher us into a new life in which our self-inflicted spiritual wounds, and all their unhappy consequences, are healed.  By restoring us to the dignity of the children of God in the divine likeness, the Lord’s salvation strikes at the heart of why people fear, oppress, abuse, and violate one another in the world as we know it.  By making us participants in His life, Christ enables us to live out personally the blessedness of the Kingdom in a world still mired in the ways of slavery and death.    

            That is precisely why St. Paul wrote that Christians should pray for everyone, especially for those with power and authority in the world, that we may live “a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence.  For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”  Have you noticed how we pray so often in our services for the peace of the world, the union of all people, and favorable conditions for all those created in the image and likeness of God?  Because we believe that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the entire world, we want literally everyone to participate in the blessings of His Kingdom.  We want literally everyone to be set free from captivity to sin and death and all their ill effects.  As those who live in the new day of God’s reign, how could we want anything less?

            While it is true that some become saints in situations of persecution, war, and disease, God did not intend us for suffering.  He is not the author of evil, and we should not want difficult circumstances for ourselves or others.  Instead, we pray for situations favorable to the flourishing of the Church and of every human being.  No, good times are not the same as the fullness of the Kingdom, but every good thing is the work of God and provides at least a faint glimpse of heavenly glory for which we were created.  Christ has come to heal and restore our fallen selves such that we will be able recognize our blessings for what they are and to offer them back to Him through a life of holiness.  We are then able to play our proper role in fashioning the world into an icon of the Kingdom, a foretaste of heavenly peace even now.  The Kingdom will not be completed through different arrangements of worldly politics and power, but by humanity united with divinity, drawn into personal union with Christ through the faithful witness of a Church whose life shines so brightly with eternal joy that the sick, poor, blind, and downtrodden will be drawn to Him like moths to a flame.

            Today begins a new year in the Church and presents us all with much a needed reminder that, if we claim to be Christians, we must live according to the new day that our Savior has brought to the world.  If we are truly united personally with the Lord, then our lives must manifest good news to the poor, sight for the blind, and liberty to the captives—no matter what kinds of poverty, blindness, and captivity they experience.  We must become living witnesses that something new and holy has begun upon the earth, that God’s reign has truly dawned, and is good news for everyone.  But if we are so pathetically weak from the ravages of sin, if we are blinded spiritually or totally enslaved by our passions, we will hardly be in a position to bear witness to others of the new life of the Kingdom.  If we are not living proof that a new era has begun in which death is slain and evil is vanquished, then we will have nothing to offer the world in either word or deed.  Why should anyone believe that something new has begun if we keep living according to the old standards of the corrupt world?

            At this point, it is easy for us all to despair because we know that we are not yet fully healed from the ravages of sin; we know that we do not yet have perfect sight and remain shackled by our self-centered desires and addictions in many ways.  Here we must be brutally honest that God’s Kingdom has yet to come in its fullness in our own lives.  That is not His fault, of course, but ours.  And no matter how faithful we may be, we still await the great mystery of our Lord’s second coming, of His glorious return to judge the living and the dead and to establish the life of the world to come.  The question, however, is how we await that great future fulfillment as people who have much room to grow in holiness.  In other words, what kind of life is appropriate for those who know that our only hope is the mercy of the Lord?

            Well, it is certainly not a life characterized by despair.  It is certainly not a life of abandoning the way of discipleship because we stumble and fall.  It is certainly not a life so filled with pride that we refuse to persevere along a path where we are in constant need of the Savior’s healing and help.  No, we have not yet arrived; but our only hope of growing in union with Christ is to follow Him as best we can, gratefully accepting whatever glimpses of the new life of the Kingdom we have the spiritual strength to see.  In Him, a bright new day has begun and all God’s promises have been fulfilled.  He is infinitely holy, but we all have a long way to go.

            So let us all use the new church year as a time to receive as fully as we can the good news He has proclaimed, to participate as much as we can in the freedom from sin that He has brought to humanity, and to open the eyes of our souls as fully as possible to the One Who brings sight to the blind.  And as we do so, let us show His mercy to others, treating them with love, forgiveness, and generosity in ways that demonstrate that something new really has begun in Jesus Christ, Who wants all to be saved, to come to the knowledge of the truth, and to share in the great blessings of His Kingdom. 

The Cappadocian Fathers on Almsgiving and Fasting

The Cappadocian Fathers on Almsgiving and Fasting

by Rev. Fr. Philip LeMasters | August 19, 2013

Not only a prominent theme in the Bible, concern for the poor is a common point of emphasis in the writings of the Fathers of the Church, and the Cappadocian Fathers—St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian and St. Gregory of Nyssa—are no exception.

Consider, for example, the teaching of St. Basil the Great:

“When someone strips a man of his clothes we call him a thief. And one who might clothe the naked and does not —should you not be given the same name? The bread in your board belongs to the hungry; the cloak in your wardrobe belongs to the naked, the shoes you let rot belong to the barefoot; the money in your vaults belongs to the destitute. All these you might help and do not—to all these you are doing wrong.”

St. Basil’s exhortation cuts to the quick of the situation of many Orthodox believers, as well as others, in North America. Though we did not steal our money and possessions from others, we have more than we need. When that is the case, we have an obligation to share from our overabundance with those who lack basic necessities. If we fail to do so, we incur the guilt of a thief. Indeed, we have a greater guilt, for we have ignored the needs of the Lord Jesus, Who identified Himself with “the least of these.”

Likewise, according to James Thornton, St. Gregory the Theologian understood charity as “an absolute obligation for all Christians.” In St. Gregory’s own words:

“[N]ow if following Paul and Christ Himself, we have to maintain that charity is the first and greatest of all commandments, the sum of all the laws and prophets, I suggest that the main part of charity is the love for the poor and mercy and compassion for our fellow brethren.” He admits to being “frightened by the possibility of being numbered among the goats on the left hand of the Sovereign Judge … not … because they have done something forbidden; nothing of the sort attracts condemnation on them, except their having failed to care for Christ Himself in the person of the poor.”

Appealing directly to the gospels, St. Gregory stressesthe urgency of ministry to the poor:

[W]hile there is yet time, visit Christ in his sickness, let us give to Christ to eat, let us clothe Christ in his nakedness, let us do honor to Christ, and not only at table, [or] with precious ointments [or] in his tomb [or] with gold, frankincense and myrrh, … but let us give him this honor in his needy ones, in those who lie on the ground before us this day…

Furthermore, St. Gregory of Nyssa teaches that fasting is “an extension of Christ’s requirement to give alms” and should turn us away from a host of passions. His exhortations on the topic are worth quoting at length:

There is a kind of fasting which is not bodily, a spiritual self-discipline which affects the soul; this abstinence [is] from evil, and it was as a means to this that our abstinence from food was prescribed. Therefore I say to you: Fast from evil-doing, discipline yourselves from covetousness, abstain from unjust profits, starve the greed of mammon, keep in your houses no snatched or stolen treasure. For what use is it to touch no meat and to wound your brother by evil-doing? What advantage is it to forgo what is your own and to seize unjustly what is the poor’s? What piety is it to drink water and thirst for blood, weaving treachery in the wickedness of your own heart? Judas himself fasted with the eleven, but since he did not curb his love of money, his fasting availed him nothing to salvation…

St. Gregory calls Christians to a genuine fast:

“Loosen every bond of injustice, undo the knots of covenants made by force. Break your bread to the hungry; bring the poor and homeless into your house. When you see the naked, cover him; and despise not your own flesh.” The Lord has given His dignity to the poor, who “are treasurers of the good things that we look for, the keepers of the gates of the kingdom, opening them to the merciful and shutting them on the harsh and uncharitable… [T]he Lord beholds what is done towards them, and every deed cries louder than a herald to Him who searches all hearts.”

When we imitate God’s generosity by giving to the poor, St. Gregory says elsewhere, we grow in the divine qualities of “mercy and kindness,” which “inhabit a person, divinize him and stamp him with imitation of the good in order to bring to life our original, immortal image which transcends conception.”

Saints Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and Gregory of Nyssa are held in extraordinarily high esteem in the Orthodox Church as the men who guided the Orthodox formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity in the fourth century. In this light, no one may dismiss their common call for generosity to the poor as a fundamental dimension of the life in Christ. Not an optional undertaking for those so inclined, turning away from our greed to care for the needy is a requirement of the Christian life.

They defined this requirement strictly, for “when the Cappadocians spoke of giving to the poor,” writes Justo Gonzalez, “they did not mean setting aside a small portion of one’s wealth for that purpose. They spoke of ridding oneself of all that was not strictly necessary.” Though they “retained some of their wealth,” these Fathers clearly put into practice what they preached, supporting “a large complex of buildings that provided shelter for travelers, medical care for the ill—especially those, such as lepers, whom society at large despised—food for the hungry and occupation for many who otherwise would be unemployed.” Though they did not literally give away everything they owned, they used their wealth generously, effectively and prudently to relieve the suffering of the poor, sick and needy, and thus showed the love of Christ.

Patristics scholar Susan R. Holman concludes that the Cappadocians “elevated” the poor “into the religious liturgy, that is, Christian practice and worship.” Their preaching raised people who were typically despised, rejected and thought to have no claim on anyone or anything, to the exalted status of members of Christ’s Body. Hence, those who encounter the poor encounter the Lord; and those who wish to find salvation will do so through a life characterized by generosity to those in need through both fasting and almsgiving.

Reflecting their shared Orthodox beliefs on the incarnation, the Cappadocians taught that the poor “hold a direct line of access to the highest realm of deity; their generate nature in no way limits this access and is in fact one of its most characteristic features.” In a faith that teaches that the Son of God became a human being with a real body, it should not be surprising that there is a profound spiritual significance to the unmet bodily needs of human beings.

“As the Cappadocians use traditional New Testament images to identify the poor with Christ,” Holman writes, “the body of the poor—in its most literal, mutable sense—gains social meaning. The rhetorical expression of this body gains a language and a voice of its own … as the body of the Logos.” It would be difficult to find a more radical transformation of the status of the poor than this one. Those thought to be “nobodies” by the world are now raised to the glory of the Body of Christ. We encounter and serve the Lord in them, and through this asceticism we ourselves—and our society—are transformed as well.

This essay is an adaptation of a section of Fr. Philip’s book The Goodness of God’s Creation (Salisbury, MA: Regina Orthodox Press, 2008).

 

ethikapolitika.org/2013/08/19/a-radical-transformation-of-the-status-of-the-poor-the-cappadocian-fathers-on-almsgiving-and-fasting/

Offering Loaves and Our Lives: Homily for the 8th Sunday After Pentecost and the Sunday After the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos in the Orthodox Church

            

             This Thursday we began celebrating a great feast of the Church, the Feast of the Dormition of Mary the Theotokos.    When we think of the Virgin Mary, we cannot help but marvel at the unique and glorious role that she plays in our salvation.  For the Son of God to humble Himself to the point of becoming a human being, He had to have a mother.   God entered into creation and became one of us through her.  She was truly the temple of the Lord in her miraculous pregnancy.  And Mary had the astounding role of raising Jesus Christ, of nursing, loving, and guiding Him as any mother does for a child.  She lived a life of great piety and purity all her days, and the tradition of the Church teaches that the Theotokos was a much loved and respected figure in the early Christian community in the years following Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven.

The icon of the feast of the Dormition shows that Christ came with the angels to receive Mary’s soul upon her death.  All the other apostles were present, but St. Thomas did not arrive until three days after her burial.  When the tomb was opened so that he could see her one last time, Mary’s body was gone.  The first one to receive Christ had become the first one to share in His resurrection, to follow Him body and soul into eternal life.  Through Mary, Christ descended to earth.  And now through Christ, Mary has ascended to heaven.  And as she said when she appeared to the apostles the evening of that third day, “Rejoice, I am with you all the days of your lives.”

Our Lady the Theotokos is herself an icon of our salvation.  She models for us what it means to accept Christ and to love and serve Him.  Her death and ascension are reminders of our destiny, of our hope, for the fullness of eternal life in the Kingdom.  And now she is with the Lord in heaven, praying for us—for the Church and the entire world-- interceding with her Son on our behalf with the boldness of a mother—the same boldness that she demonstrated in asking Christ’s to help with the shortage of wine at the wedding in Cana of Galilee.  That was His first miracle in John’s gospel, and He did it upon the request of His mother, even as He continues to respond to her prayers.  

No, we cannot fully understand the mystery of the eternal Son of God having a human mother or of their relationship to one another.  For these amazing truths are part of the great miracle of the Incarnation:  that Christ really did become one of us in order to make us partakers of the divine nature, in order to bring us into His eternal life.  And Mary the Theotokos is the prime example of one who is truly united with Christ, who shines with His holiness.  Throughout her life, she led the way in loving and serving Christ; and upon her death, she led the way into the life of the Kingdom.    

            If we want to follow her example of participating so fully in the life of God, we need to take our Lord’s miraculous feeding of the Five Thousand as a model for our lives.  A hungry multitude needed to be fed and all that the disciples could collect were five loaves and two fish.  That was not very much, but it was all that they had and they offered it to the Savior for Him to bless.  He did so and there was so much food that twelve basketsful were left over.

            Of course, this story reminds us of the Last Supper, when Christ took bread and blessed, broke, and gave it back to His disciples as His own Body.  And now He does something similar, taking a humble offering and miraculously making it more than it would have otherwise been. 

            Because of her prominence in our faith, we sometimes forget how humble, obscure, and seemingly unimportant the Theotokos was in her time and place.  Even though she grew up in the Temple, she was just a young girl without much standing or significance in her society.  She was an unmarried virgin when the Archangel Gabriel was sent to convey the news that she was to become the mother of the Messiah.  She did not fit with the conventional expectations for women to become wives and mothers and to play their role in the ongoing life of the Jewish people.  Her miraculous pregnancy was viewed as a scandal and she could have easily been killed as a result.

            During our Lord’s earthly ministry, there must have been those who looked down upon her as the mother of that crazy rabbi who threatened the established religious order.  Since Christ was crucified as a traitor and a blasphemer, she was surely guilty by association in the eyes of many.  Her life was extraordinarily difficult and she was never one of the powerful and privileged of her society.

            But what the Theotokos did do in her humility, obscurity, and weakness was to say “yes” to God with every ounce of her being.  She obeyed the Lord without reservation, offering every dimension of her life to Him with a pure heart.  And through her complete obedience, the Son of God became a human being and salvation has come to the world.  Mary is not a goddess, but a human being.  She also needed a Savior, for she could not conquer death or unite humanity and divinity by her own power.  And her offering of herself to Him plays a crucial role in our salvation.

            As we continue to celebrate the Dormition of the Theotokos, we are called to follow her example of making a full offering of our lives to the Lord.  It does not matter that her life circumstances are different from ours or that most of us have had years or decades of practice in saying “no” to God’s will in various ways.  All that we need to do is to say “yes” as best we can, offering who we are in obedience to our Lord and trusting that He will use us according to His will in ways that far exceed what we could have accomplished on our own.

            We know from the gospels that Christ’s disciples did not fully understand Him and very often fell short of His expectations for them.   The Savior did not reject them, however, and in the Feeding of the Five Thousand used their pathetically small offering to meet the needs of others in a miraculous way as a sign of the Kingdom. 

            The same Lord who worked that miracle took His human nature from an obscure Jewish virgin through a set of circumstances that was unbelievable by normal human ways of thinking.  Likewise, it is crazy to say that five loaves and two fish could feed thousands of people with a lot left over.  But ours is a faith that is not controlled by worldly ways of thinking, by what is normal and conventional in the corrupt existence to which we have all become too accustomed.  For the Lord Who conquered death through a cross and an empty tomb invites us all to participate fully in a Kingdom not of this world by offering ourselves to Him like the loaves of bread we bake for the Divine Liturgy. 

            In the normal course of things, bread is simply bread.  But by the power of the Holy Spirit, the bread offered in the Liturgy becomes the risen and ascended Body of Christ, “the medicine of immortality” that nourishes us for eternal life.  No, we cannot transform bread by our own power, but someone has to bake it and someone has to offer it.

            You and I are just like that bread. We have to become an offering of humble obedience, as did the Theotokos.  If we follow her example, there is no telling what God will do with us, no limit to what He will accomplish through us.  So let us continue celebrating the Dormition of the Theotokos by becoming more like her as we freely obey Christ and welcome Him into our lives by offering ourselves to Him. If we do so, we will follow our Lord and His Mother into the brilliant glory of the Kingdom of God.

Humility and Mercy as Opposed to Condemnation: An Eastern Orthodox Interpretation of Pope Francis' Comments on Whether to Judge Gay People

     

        It has been interesting to see all the attention given to Pope Francis’  “Who am I to judge?” comment on how he responds to gay people.  His reaction indicates that it is one thing to maintain Christianity’s historical—and apparently unanimous at least before the 1960’s—teaching that physical intimacy between persons of the same sex is sinful and quite another to judge particular people as though “we” are the sheep and “they” are the goats.  Jesus Christ was very clear that His followers were not to judge others.  He warned that they would be judged by the same standard they applied to their neighbors.  No, putting oneself in the place of God is never an especially good idea.

            As a priest of the Orthodox Church, I am not the judge of anyone and strive to concern myself chiefly with my own sins.  Even when I hear confessions, I do so not as a judge in a legal sense, but as an advocate for the healing of my parishioners.  Sins are not so much legal offenses to be judged as self-inflicted wounds for which we need therapy if we are to recover from their ill effects.  Priests apply the disciplinary canons of the Church pastorally and prayerfully for the healing of the soul of a particular person at a particular point in his or her recovery.  The priest is an unworthy icon of Christ and His salvation to the penitent. That is a very different role from being a self-appointed judge with the authority to impose a penalty.  When it comes to sin, we do not need more penalties, but forgiveness and transformation.  The priest is there to heal, not to pronounce a sentence.

            The spirituality of the Jesus Prayer is at the heart of our faith: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Orthodoxy is not fundamentally about moralism or judging anyone by a legal standard.  Indeed, we are not the judges even of ourselves; that’s God’s business.  But we are all sinners in need of the Savior’s mercy and grace if we are to find healing for the myriad ways in which we have diminished ourselves as those created in the divine image and likeness.  That is why pious Orthodox go to confession regularly to be assured of the Lord’s forgiveness and to receive guidance on how to gain strength in holiness in relation to their particular challenges and spiritual maladies. People confess sexual sins in confession, as they do other sins.  Spiritual fathers provide guidance for healing in relation to whatever sins are named and do not assume that sexual inclinations are necessarily the defining issues of one’s life.  One step in the healing of many penitents is to place sexual passions in the larger context of the vocation to holiness and not in the driver’s seat of one’s identity.   

            Barring the truly extraordinary case of a scandal in the parish that has to be addressed for the salvation of all concerned, Orthodox clergy should come nowhere near judging others for anything.  For example, when I learn through the media that someone has been convicted even of murder, I do not know the person’s heart or repentance or how the Lord will judge him at the last day.  After all, King David was a man after God’s own heart and the good thief followed Christ into paradise.  If someone I know celebrates greed, disregard of the poor, racist attitudes, or the love of violence, I pray for them and am concerned for their well-being, but that is not the same as judging them as though I am God and they are simply sinners.  No matter what people reveal about their inclinations, relationships, and activities, condemning them personally is simply not the business of any Christian. 

            At the same time, it is the business of Christians to maintain the teachings and practices of the historic faith, including the reservation of intimate relations to marriage between one man and one woman.  Orthodox Christianity knows of no other form of sexual union that is blessed by the Lord and a path to holiness. Anything else is a distortion of the calling of man and woman to find salvation together in God.  To speak the truth about these matters is not to judge particular people, but instead to invite everyone to follow paths that have and continue to make saints. Those not called to marriage have other paths to sainthood through celibacy, which may be pursued either through the monastic life or an unmarried life in the world.  None of these paths is easy, but they all provide countless opportunities to fight our passions, love our neighbors, and take up our crosses as we follow Jesus Christ.

          Contrary to increasingly popular opinion, to remain faithful to basic Christian teaching on these matters is not to fall into the self-righteous judgment of others or to have irrational obsessions or fears about sexual inclinations of any kind.  It is instead to maintain the clear teaching of the Body of Christ since its origins, as displayed in the Scriptures, liturgy, canon law, and lives of the saints. So I agree with Pope Francis, “who am I to judge” any particular person as though I am God?  But at the same time, faithful priests must point their spiritual children to paths that lead to the healing of the soul, regardless of what sins they confess.  That is simply a matter of truth-telling toward the end of a person’s salvation and growth in holiness. And it is also what I want when I go to confession.

So to sum up:  We look to the Church for healing, not a legal sentence.  When spiritual fathers and mothers help us stumble along a path that leads to greater freedom from the control of the passions in any area of life, we grow personally in the knowledge that Christ came to heal and save, not to judge and condemn.  That is the good news of the Gospel to us all, regardless of what our temptations or inclinations may be in any area of life.  

Christ Heals our Paralysis: Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Matthew During the Dormition Fast in the Orthodox Church

Matthew 9:1-8

             Romans 12: 6-14             

            I am sure that we have all felt stuck, trapped, or paralyzed in one way or another at some point in our lives.  Whether we were physically ill or caught in an unhealthy relationship or an unfortunate situation at work, life is full of circumstances where we seem to lack the strength to move forward in freedom.  The same is true when we think about the spiritual life and our own personal characteristics.  Learning to put others before ourselves, to restrain various appetites and desires, and to stop behaviors to which we have become addicted are all very difficult things to do.  Sometimes we fall into despair and simply give up because we have had so little success in overcoming our paralysis.  Sometimes we feel helpless before the problems and challenges that we face.

            The good news is that Jesus Christ gives us all solid grounds for hope in gaining strength, freedom, and salvation. This Tuesday is the great feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord, when we celebrate the revelation of His divinity to Peter, James, and John, for Christ was illumined brilliantly with light, and the voice of the Father proclaimed, “This is my beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased.”  At the same time, we continue in the Dormition fast as we prepare to celebrate on August 15 how the Theotokos shared in the resurrection of her Son-- body, soul, and spirit—and followed Him into the heavenly Kingdom upon her death.

            Taken together, these feasts remind us that God’s salvation liberates us from captivity to the brokenness of our lives in our corrupt world, for the Son of God has truly taken on every dimension of our humanity and transfused it with holiness.  He was transfigured before His disciples and we too may be changed by uniting ourselves as fully as possible with the Lord.  His divinity will be revealed through us as we shine with light even as the paralyzed man was enabled to get up and walk toward his house.  As for him, the process of healing begins with the forgiveness of sins which Christ mercifully grants to all who come to Him with humble repentance.  His mercy is such that He forgave this wretched man without the fellow saying anything at all due to the faith of his friends who literally carried him to Christ.  Perhaps his paralyzed state was also a sign of his humility and dependence upon the Lord and an image of our collective sickness and decay.  The Savior did not stop, however, with forgiving his sins, for He transfigured his life by enabling—indeed, by ordering—him to get up, pickup his bed, and walk home.

            The truth is that Christ says exactly the same thing to us all, for His forgiveness is not some kind of legal degree but a true participation in His life, holiness, and divinity which heals and transforms us into living icons of His salvation.  He calls and enables us all to live the kind of life described by St. Paul:  “Let love be without hypocrisy.  Abhor what is evil.  Cling to what is good.  Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another…Bless those who persecute you:  bless and do not curse.”  No, it is not easy to live that way, especially in relation to people who have wronged us or whom we do not find it easy to like or in situations where we have trained ourselves to see only the bad in others and what else can go wrong.  Likewise, it surely was not easy for the paralyzed man to transition from being an invalid to having an active life, for we tend to get used to whatever state of life we are in and find it stressful, frustrating, and scary to act differently.  No matter how miserable we make ourselves, we often prefer that to the difficult course of change for the better.   

            That is one of the reasons that the Church gives us periods like the Dormition fast in order to gain some experience struggling with our addictions, weaknesses, and bad habits.  As we remember the end of the earthly life of the Theotokos, we want to become more like her, able to say, “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word,” in response to God’s calling in our lives.  She said and did that in response to the totally outrageous and terrifying news that she was to be the mother of our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ.  We all struggle, however, to carry out much smaller and easier acts of faithfulness every day.  Too often, we are like a person who wants God’s forgiveness, but does not want His healing.  We are like the paralyzed man would have been had he said, “Thank you, Jesus, for forgiving my sins, but my legs are weak from lack of exercise and I would rather stay in bed than get up and walk.” 

            Even though we fall down like toddlers taking their first steps with some frequency, we must keep moving forward as best we can in the new life that Christ has given us.  Otherwise, we will end up rejecting Him because we will worship ourselves and attempt to make Him in our own image, to use Him simply to get what we want and disregard everything else to which He calls us.  Certainly, we are all inclined to do that because of our self-centeredness and pride, but that is precisely why we have to gain strength in denying ourselves so that we can refocus our energies on serving the Lord and our neighbors in whom He is present to us each day.

            As anyone who has tried to fast, pray, show generosity to the needy, and forgive others learns very quickly, we all suffer from some degree of paralysis.  It is often astonishingly hard to inconvenience ourselves even a little bit in order to give attention to God and our neighbors or to restrain our slavery to our taste buds, stomachs, and bank accounts.  When the Church calls us to undertake these spiritual disciplines, it is not as a punishment or because God likes us to see us suffer.  It is because we need help in getting up from our beds and moving forward with our lives.  We are all too comfortable with the misery of our weakness and paralysis.  Our feeble struggles to embrace the spiritual disciplines reveal to us the truth about ourselves and should lead us to call in humility for the Lord’s help in serving Him more faithfully.

            I hope that we are all doing our best to observe the Dormition fast so that we will be better prepared to respond obediently as the Theotokos did to the Lord’s calling upon her life.  I hope that we are all doing our best to be transfigured into the new life that Jesus Christ has brought to the world as the Second Adam in Whom our corrupt, fallen humanity is healed, restored, and blessed.  I hope that none of us will rest content to lie in the bed of our passions, weaknesses, and self-indulgent addiction to life as we have come to know it on our own terms.  For our Savior did not come to make us feel better about ourselves, to help us succeed by worldly standards, or even simply to forgive us.  He came to make us participants in the life of the Holy Trinity, to become by grace what God is by nature.  Yes, that means shining with light and holiness as He did at the Transfiguration.  Let us use these few days of the Dormition fast to take even the small, faltering steps of which we are capable to become more like Christ—to rise, take up our beds, and walk as best we can, trusting that His grace and mercy are healing us from our paralysis and weakness, and ushering us out of misery into a new and joyful way of living.

                         

Christianity in India Through American Eyes: A Complicated Religious Culture

             

            You cannot go to India without thinking about the relationship between Christianity and other religions, at least if you are a theology professor and an Orthodox priest.  The intersection of various spiritual traditions really slaps you in the face with sacred cows, temples, pilgrims, calls to prayer, and many other reminders that this is a part of the world where faith in so many forms is a lively presence.

            There have been Christians in India since St. Thomas the Apostle, but they remain a small minority.  Both the evangelical ministry which hosted our group from McMurry University and the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Christians whom I met were quite comfortable working with and serving people of whatever religion.  The evangelicals spoke of bringing people to Christ and the Orthodox maintained their traditional worship and sacramental life.  Both sponsor ministries to needy children of many different faith communities. The evangelicals run a school with a Sikh principal, Hindu teachers, and a tiny minority of Christian students.  They also minister to a colony of lepers that includes Hindus and Muslims.  The Orthodox mentioned that Hindus and Muslims sometimes come to services on major feast days.  A guide told us that most of the visitors to a famous mosque in Mumbai are Hindus who venerate the relics of an Islamic holy man.  The Orthodox also told me that one of their Indian saints is commonly venerated by both Muslims and Hindus.  To put it mildly, these interreligious dynamics are a bit more complicated than the ones I encounter in West Texas.

             Both evangelicals and Orthodox commented that conversion to Christianity is a complicated matter in India, but not impossible.  Though the general Christian experience there has not been one of persecution, since returning home I have read reports of an increase in anti-Christian violence in some parts of the country in recent years.  Some Indian states have passed anti-conversion laws in response to Hindu nationalist appeals.  I was told that it is virtually impossible to change one’s religion or caste in official government records, but that in practice conversions definitely do occur.

            “Preach the gospel at all times.  When necessary, use words.”  That quotation, attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, came to mind in observing Indian Christians of whatever stripe.  To bear witness to the good news of Jesus Christ is a fundamental Christian practice which may be carried out in a variety of ways dependent upon the circumstances.  Actions often speak louder than words and a picture (such as an icon) is worth a thousand words.  The Lord invited His first disciples to “Come and see.”  The emissaries of Prince Vladimir were drawn to Orthodox Christianity because the beauty of the Divine Liturgy was such that they did not know whether they were in heaven or on earth.  To offer the worship of the Church and to demonstrate Christ’s love to the needy are both ways of becoming a living icon of God’s salvation that invites others to enter into the joy of the heavenly kingdom.

            Too much focus on the abstract question of the eternal destiny of adherents of other religions leads us, however, to matters beyond our rational knowledge.  People find salvation as persons in relationship with the Lord and one another, not due to our knowledge of ideas, even when they are about God.  Jesus Christ is surely the only Savior of the world, but the parable of the Last Judgment in Matthew 25 provides hope that some serve Him well without knowing that they do so.  Created in the divine image and likeness, all human beings can do better or worse; and the more truth we have received, the greater the expectations.   The witness of Indian Christians reminds us to live out what we say we believe with integrity, even as we bow before the mystery of how others relate to Him. As Christ taught, we will be judged by the same standard we apply to others; so it is good to be careful to focus on taking the logs out of our own eyes first.

            St. Seraphim of Sarov said “Acquire the Spirit of peace and thousands around you will be saved.”  That is the Holy Spirit, of course, and it is by His presence in our lives that we may become living icons of God’s salvation and partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4).  If we want to live the kind of lives that point others to Christ by showing them His love and holiness, we must be transformed by the One to Whom we open ourselves in prayer, worship, and all the spiritual disciplines of the Christian life.  Whether in India, America, or elsewhere, Christians will be of no use if we are not enlivened by the same Spirit Who overcame national and linguistic boundaries on the day of Pentecost and even united Jews and Gentiles into one body.  Those whose lives manifest the presence of the Holy Spirit cannot help but be true evangelists as signs of what happens to human beings in whom God dwells.

            India is a complex and confusing place, at least for this recent visitor.  But the focus of Indian Christianity seems to be as clear as this admonition from St. James 1:27: “Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this, To visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.”  Surely, there is no better way to proclaim the gospel.