How Not to Sink Like a Stone in the Raging Sea of Life: A Homily for the 9th Sunday After Pentecost in the Orthodox Church

1 Corinthians 3:9-17

St. Matthew 14:22-34

              If you are like me, you are often easily distracted from what is really most important in life.  It is so easy to worry obsessively about matters beyond our control and to waste our attention on fantasies of what the future may hold.  With all of the bad news in the world today and our own personal struggles, we may face powerful temptations to fill our minds with fear.  When we do that, however, we sink into a deep abyss, just like St. Peter in today’s gospel reading.  

            As he walked on the water with Jesus Christ, St. Peter let himself be distracted by the dangerous wind and the waves of a stormy sea.  Instead of focusing his attention and trust in the Lord Who miraculously enabled him to walk on the water in the first place, St. Peter let doubt and fear fill his mind.  So he began to sink, to be consumed by the turbulent sea that scared him so much; but when he called out in terror for help, the Lord reached out to St. Peter and saved him from drowning.

            The story is even more profound when we remember that St. Peter had just asked Christ to let him walk on the water.  St. Peter actually tested Him, “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.”  As was often the case, this disciple spoke before he thought.  Indeed, he was the one who would actually be put to the test to see if he really had faith; and he fell short.

            We can all understand St. Peter’s situation, for we have all been like him at one time or another; indeed, we may be like him this very minute.  With pride, we like to think that we have a lot of faith and even put ourselves in situations where we know we will be tested, but then our fears, passions, and weaknesses take over.  When that happens, we pay more attention to the dangers that threaten us than to the Lord Who gave us life in the first place and continues to enable us to walk by faith even through the most difficult challenges that the world presents.   And when we do so, we sink like a stone thrown into the sea or someone who has jumped off a tall building.

            For as St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, our one true foundation in life is the Son of God.  Our entire life is built on Him, the One by Whom all things were made, the One Who became the second Adam to heal our corrupt humanity,  the One Who conquered death in His third-day resurrection, the One Who has brought us into the eternal life of the Holy Trinity.

            When we turn away from Him, we turn away from being truly human in His image and likeness.  That is why St. Peter started to descend to the deep when he gave more attention to his fears than to trust in the Lord.  And it is why we all experience the weakness of slavery to our habitual sins, to our passions that we know all too well.  We may believe with our hearts that Christ is the Savior, but our faith shows its weakness when we are confronted with a difficult challenge, when the waves seem so big and the winds seem so strong:  and then we feel like someone who all of a sudden realizes that he is trying to walk on the water in the middle of a storm.

            Fear, panic, and anxiety will then seem more real to us in than will faith, hope, and love.  The key question, however, is what do we do then?  For we have freedom, we are God’s fellow workers and He never forces us to love and serve Him.  We may give in to our temptations and allow our lives to be controlled by our self-centered desires and fears.  Out of pride, we may live as though it were simply up to us to figure out how to cope as best we can with whatever may happen. That may sound noble, but it is a path that leads only to continued slavery to sin as surely as trying to walk on water by our own power leads only to drowning.  Despite our best efforts, we cannot conquer sin and death by ourselves.   

            Thankfully, St. Peter came to his senses about his situation and called out, probably at the top of his lungs, “Lord, save me!”  In crying out for Christ’s help, St. Peter showed that he did  have some level of  faith, but it was not the quality of his faith that saved him.  It was the mercy of the Lord.  Like him, we all stand in constant need of the mercy of Jesus Christ.  That is why we sing “Lord, have mercy” so many times in our services.  It is why the Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner” is at the heart of spiritual vision.  We focus on the Lord’s mercy so much because, like St. Peter, we know that we are sick and weak, constantly tempted to turn our attention and trust elsewhere, especially to ourselves.    

            No matter what our personal challenges are and no matter what problems the world faces, no one has to be distracted from humble trust in the Lord’s mercy.  Remember that He endured and conquered even death and Hades for our salvation.  He came to the same corrupt and scary world in which we live with wicked people trying to kill Him even as an infant.  He is no stranger to even our worst problems.

            So instead of being paralyzed by fear and worry, we must call to Christ with confident hope no matter what, keeping our attention focused on Him.  We must do our part each day in order to grow in humble faith. As we stand before our icons at home in daily prayers, we should ask for God’s mercy upon our loved ones, those who suffer around the world, and on ourselves as we meet whatever challenges the day holds.  Whenever we are tempted to sinful words, deeds, or thoughts of any kind, we should call upon the Lord’s aid, whether silently or aloud.  And we can all do many things in our daily routines while offering short prayers, such as the Jesus Prayer, from our hearts. 

            Of course, it takes effort to guard our thoughts and to pray with humility when we are tempted.  How much easier it is in the moment simply to welcome anger, pride, lust, fear, despair, and hatred than to reject them.  That is surely why our epistle passage today refers to us as fellow workers with God, for we have to exert effort to do God’s will.  And, no, we will not do this work perfectly.  But the more we struggle and perhaps fail, the greater awareness we will have that our situation is like that of St. Peter.  Apart from the mercy of Christ, we will sink and drown.  Apart from Him, we are like a building without a foundation which will collapse under its own weight. 

As St. Paul wrote, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”   A temple must be holy and dedicated to God.  For us to be a temple requires vigilance and perseverance to ground our lives in the mercy of Christ, for we are so often tempted to worship the false gods of our own devising.  All the more is the reason is to maintain a daily rule of prayer and to pray the Jesus Prayer as much as we can.  For if we are not intentionally welcoming, inviting, and cooperating with the Holy Spirit each day of our lives, how on earth are we going to be able to live as holy temples in the midst of a corrupt and dark world?

The basic point is very simple:  The more we turn our attention to Christ and His salvation, the better we will be able to walk with Him on the water through the storms of our own lives and of our fallen world.  The more mindful we are, the closer watch we will keep on our thoughts, the more strength we will have to reject the lies that we so often tell ourselves—and instead to open our hearts to the mercy of the One who is our foundation, our Savior, and the victor over sin and death.  Apart from Christ, we will sink like stones.  But in Him, we become fellow workers with God for our salvation.

We cannot stop the world’s storms from raging or even calm the seas of our own lives very well.  But we can keep our eyes and our hearts centered on Christ and call out to Him with humble trust that He will hear our cry, “Lord, save me!” just as He did St. Peter’s. Let us focus our lives and attention on Him, and not on our fears, worries, or other temptations.       

Ancient Faith Radio Interview on The Forgotten Faith

The Forgotten Faith

August 01, 2014 Length: 25:15

Bobby Maddex interviews Fr. Philip LeMasters, Dean of the School of Social Sciences and Religion at McMurry University and an occasional AFR podcaster, about his new book The Forgotten Faith: Ancient Insights for Contemporary Believers from Eastern Christianity, published by Cascade Books.

Direct link Play in Popup Download
 Send Feedback

http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/features/the_forgotten_faith

"You Give Them Something to Eat": Homily on the Importance of Offering Ourselves to the Lord During the Dormition Fast in the Orthodox Church

             

I Corinthians 1:10-17 (8th Sunday after Pentecost) 

Matthew 14:14-22 (8th Sunday of Matthew) 

             Even as some of us are enjoying the last weeks of summer vacation, things are very busy in the life of the Church.  For the first two weeks of August, we are in the Dormition Fast which leads to the Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos on August 15.  “Dormition” means “falling asleep” and every year at this time we commemorate the end of the earthly life of the Mother of God, after which she followed her Son body and soul into the Kingdom of Heaven.  We fast during this time just as we do in Lent, for we all need to humble ourselves and fight self-centered desires if we are to follow her example of complete obedience and receptivity to the Lord.  As we did this past Friday evening we will pray the Paraklesis service to the Theotokos this coming Friday at six o’clock, for there is no better intercessor with the Son of God for us than His Mother.  We need her prayers now especially, with so much violence and hatred around the world and so many in our own parish who have health problems. 

           

            This Wednesday we celebrate another great feast of the Church, the Transfiguration of our Lord.  The eyes of Sts. Peter, James, and John were opened on Mount Tabor to behold the divine glory of Christ as He shined with heavenly light.  We will serve the Divine Liturgy for this feast Wednesday at six o’clock, and all who are able to attend the service should do so.  Of course, we want our spiritual eyes to be opened also so that we can know and experience the glory of the Lord as did those apostles on Mount Tabor.  We want to be transfigured so that we will also shine with uncreated light, reflecting the brilliant holiness of our Savior just as an iron left in the fire manifests the heat and light of the flames. 

            We must be careful, however, to resist the temptation of thinking that participating more fully in the life of Christ is simply a passive matter of asking Him for a miracle or otherwise to help us out according to our own preferences.  In other words, we have to take responsibility for doing our part in actually obeying His commandments.  The point is to become the kind of people who actually do His work in the world; it is certainly not to manipulate Him somehow into following our preferences. For example, in today’s gospel lesson the disciples understandably did not want to take responsibility for feeding thousands of hungry people.  They asked Christ to send the people away to buy their own food, for they had collected only five loaves and two fish. But the Lord did not let them off the hook so easily.  He told them to bring Him their few loaves and fish, which they did.  Then the Savior blessed the food, had the disciples distribute it, and everyone had more than enough to eat.  I bet that the disciples were as shocked as everyone else at how well things turned out that day.  

           

            Notice that Jesus Christ required the apostles to bring the offering, to give what they had, and to take responsibility for their role in feeding the people.  The very same thing is true for you and me.  We are all tempted at times to ask the Lord for this or that, to solve a problem, or to get something done according to our own desires.  We may think that we have done our part then; of course, there are some circumstances in life about which we can do little other than pray.  But most of the challenges we face daily are not like that.  What we think, say, and do really does matter; we need to grow in our ability to fulfill the role to which God calls us in the circumstances we face.  To let ourselves off the hook by asking for God’s help and then continuing life as usual with no changes on our part is irresponsible and a sign that we view Him more as magician than as our Lord.  We will never develop the spiritual eyes to behold the divine glory by living like that.  

            Jesus Christ fed thousands of people miraculously, but the disciples had to do their part of offering what little they could find for the meal.  He required them to provide the material for the project, you might say.  Imagine what the story would have been like had the disciples refused to bring the loaves and fish to Him.  What if they had been offended at His command and walked away or simply did not follow through?  What if they had decided to eat all the food themselves in place of bringing it to Him?  Instead, they obeyed the command:   “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.”  And through their obedience, the Savior worked a miracle that fed thousands of hungry people and fulfilled so much imagery from the Old Testament.

            No, the disciples did not earn or deserve anything as a result of their obedience.  But their obedience surely changed them at least a bit.  It made them stronger spiritually and helped to solidify in them the good habit of doing what Christ said and offering what they had to Him.  They got many things wrong during the time that they followed the Savior during His earthly ministry, but that day they got it right and played their intended role in fulfilling God’s will for their lives.

            Though our lives and circumstances are very different from theirs, we all need to become more like them in learning that the point of our faith is not to get Christ to do more of what we want Him to do. Instead, it is for us to gain the spiritual clarity and health both to recognize what He calls us to and then actually to carry it out.  In order for that to happen, we must be transfigured or changed from people who basically want God to do our will into those who want to do God’s will.  We want to become like the Theotokos in her simple, honest, and pure response to the Archangel Gabriel:  “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord.  Let it be to me according to your word.”  That was how she received Christ into her life in a truly miraculous way as His virgin mother:  through humble obedience.

            In the last few weeks, our parish showed humble obedience by giving generously to help our suffering brothers and sisters in Syria. Our parish is blessed by those whose obedience includes giving of their time and talents to chant, to serve at the altar, to teach Sunday School, to work in the yard, and to attend services regularly, even when it is inconvenient and requires sacrifices.  We all have the opportunity to offer our lives to Christ in humble obedience when we observe the Dormition Fast, pray and read the Bible daily, come to Confession, mend broken relationships with others, and refuse to worship the false gods of money, pleasure, and power that are so loved in our corrupt world.  If we are not making a serious effort to offer our lives to the Savior in obedience to His command, we really cannot expect to grow in our participation in His life or the joy of His kingdom.

            In a sense, Christ says to each and every one of us:  “You give them something to eat.” Everyone we encounter is hungry for the Bread of Life.  Everyone needs to be fed. And we sometimes feel like idiots with our few loaves and fish in the face of such overwhelming need.  Yes, we can refuse responsibility and tell God that it is all His business and we have better things to do.  We do not want to go down that road, of course, for we know that it is a dead end. Far better to be like the disciples and offer our meager resources to Him, trusting that He will do with them what we cannot. In ways that we cannot fathom, He will use us—and heal and transform us—to accomplish His glorious purposes for our parish, our neighbors, our families, our enemies, and for those at home and abroad who bear burdens far too heavy for anyone to bear.  So in this busy season of the life of the Church, let us all be like the Theotokos and the disciples, offering ourselves to the Lord in humble obedience as best we can.  At the end of the day, that is what it means to be a Christian. 

          

Reflections on a Retreat and Mission Trip to the Hogar of San Miguel del Lago in Guatemala

             

             The news is full of stories about impoverished children from Central America making the dangerous trek across Mexico to Texas, Arizona, and California.  Less noteworthy for the media was the journey of nine Orthodox Christians from Texas, California, Wisconsin, Illinois, New York, and Ohio to the Children’s Residence or “Hogar”  of San Miguel del Lago in Guatemala in July 2014.  Groups of “missionaries” like ourselves arrive monthly to assist the nuns and staff in caring for Guatemalan children whose parents cannot take care of them.  Yes, we were of some help to the children with the extra attention our group provided, especially through games, arts and crafts, and by taking them swimming and to a few other activities.    We also did yard work and a few other chores, but for me it was primarily a most blessed retreat for several reasons.

             First, we displaced ourselves simply by traveling to the Hogar, which is both a home for children and a women’s monastery.  We rose early for prayers and went to bed not long after it was dark each night.  Evening prayers occurred right before dinner in the common dining room.  At the tables designated for visiting missionaries, we ate three times each day the same simple, satisfying food as the nuns, staff, and kids.  We became so used to standing for prayer before and after meals that a few members of our group jumped up quickly when I rose slightly to reach the peanut butter near the end of breakfast one day.  (It was like a scene from a monastic reality show!) In so many ways, we left the busyness and worries of our usual schedules behind—even wifi was scarce.  In ways small and large, our lives were reoriented for several days around a schedule shaped by the needs of the children and the routines of a monastic community.   In this context, our group bonded quickly with one another as we entered into a different style of life.

            Second, we did not really know in advance what we would be doing from one day to the next.  We had a general idea of the schedule, but the particulars of yard work and activities with the kids (ranging from swimming to arts and crafts and spontaneous play sessions) evolved from day to day in light of what pressing needs arose in the community.  As someone normally addicted to a routine, I found it both a challenge and blessing simply to go with the flow.  “The Spirit blows where He wills” and it was good for our group of busy, goal-oriented Americans to accept that we were not in charge of the schedule.  We learned not to measure a day by what we accomplished, but simply to be grateful for the opportunity to pray and be present with children whose stories are so different from our own.   The experience reminded me of caring for our own daughters when they were small, for good days then had little to do with achieving pre-established goals.  They had much more to do with simply with being there.

            Third, the services reminded us that the language in which we pray is irrelevant.   With only one fluent Spanish speaker on our team, most of us did not follow every prayer word for word.  But that did not hinder our worship, for we all knew the familiar gestures, smells, and patterns of the daily services.  The highest form of prayer is without words anyway.  Since I am certainly not there yet, the simple words of the Jesus Prayer helped to still my wandering mind more than once.   Speaking of language, a bit of practice enabled me to intone a few litanies in apparently understandable Spanish.  The first Sunday I served by myself, but  my good friend Fr. Chad Hatfield of St. Vladimir’s Seminary presided at the Divine Liturgy on our second Sunday in Guatemala.  As he said afterwards, “For two gringos serving in Guatemala, we did pretty well.”  As in previous liturgies in Greece, Romania, and Syria, I was reminded of the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit overcame linguistic boundaries.

            Fourth, we dressed and worked differently than we usually do at home and not according to our own will.  As visitors to any monastic community know, modesty is the watchword.  And with boys and girls who are expected always to dress modestly, missionaries must set a good example and not become stumbling blocks.  So in warm weather that usually calls for shorts and sandals in the US, we wore long pants and tennis shoes.  With the exception of time spent doing yard work, I wore my cassock and sometimes a clerical hat.  Being hot natured to begin with, I did not mind the cold showers as a way of cooling off. (One day I took three!)  Since I make my living as a professor and do as little yard work as possible at home, it was a change of pace to cut grass on a hill with a non-motorized push mower and to spend a few hours pulling weeds.  But the spiritual benefits of manual labor and of restraining our own desires about summer clothing just a bit for the sake of others were undoubtedly positive dimensions of our experience.   Thank God for circumstances where our own preferences do not always prevail.

            Yes, it was a mission trip.  According to the nuns, our group did its job very well.  But as with all things done for the Kingdom, we cannot calculate the results with precision, at least not in this life.  That is up to God, not us.  What we can do is simply to be thankful for a wonderful retreat in a community of children who, despite their poverty and broken family backgrounds, are blessed by the care of holy nuns and staff members in ways that made us all stand back and give thanks.  At the end of the day, they were the missionaries to us. Thank God! 

A Kingdom Not of This World: The Jewish Messiah and the Roman Centurion

Romans 6:18-23 (4th Sunday after Pentecost)

Matthew 8:5-13 (4th Sunday of Matthew)

            In some ways things have not changed much in the Middle East since the time of Christ.  Religion and politics are often closely connected there, and some believe that God wants them to hate and kill those whose beliefs and ancestry differ from their own.  To this very day, many innocent people—including Orthodox Christians and others—suffer in Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Palestine, Israel and elsewhere for being the wrong kind of human being in the eyes of someone with a gun, a bomb, or some other weapon.  Whether a government, a terrorist group, or some kind of militia, the result is often the same for those unfortunate enough to fall into their hands.

            Likewise, in the time and place of Jesus Christ’s earthly ministry, many saw a close connection between their religion and their politics, their faith and their nationality. They wanted a savior, a messiah, who would be a political, military ruler who would free their land from the control of the pagan Roman army of occupation who believed that their gods protected their empire.  By the end of the first century, they persecuted Christians who would not worship the gods of the Rome because they were considered traitors who would not do their part to serve the empire.  They crucified the Lord as though he were a rebel, one who challenged the authority of Caesar.  That is why the sign at the top of the cross identified Him as the King of the Jews.  The Romans used His death to remind the Jews what would happen to anyone who dared question their authority.   The leaders of the Jews and the Roman authorities rejected and killed the Son of God because he was perceived as a threat to their particular combinations of religious and political power.

            So imagine how strange it must have seemed to everyone when a Roman centurion asked Jesus Christ to heal his sick servant.  A centurion was a Roman soldier with a hundred men under his authority, but this centurion had so much humility that he knew immediately that he was not worthy that Christ should enter his home.  And he had so much faith that he knew that the Lord did not need to enter into order to heal his servant.  “Only speak a word, and my servant will be healed,” the man said.  Our Savior marveled at his faith, which surpassed that of anyone in Israel, of any of the Jews.  This humble, faithful Gentile (who was a hated foreigner and an officer in a brutal army of occupation) was a sign that “many will come from east and west, (from all over the world), and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.”

            In other words, this gospel passage shows that God’s promises to Abraham and his family from the Old Testament apply to everyone with faith in Jesus Christ.  He is the Messiah of the Jews in Whom God’s promises are extended also to the Gentiles, to the entire world, to all people regardless of nationality, culture, or politics.  That is how a Roman centurion became the model of faith, the great example of a stranger, even an enemy, who will join in the heavenly banquet with the saints of the Hebrew people.

            He is a sign of hope for us all, for we are Gentiles whose ancestors were not Jews, but who have become heirs of the promises to Abraham in Jesus Christ.  In Him, our ethnic heritage does not matter; our nationality and politics are irrelevant in the Kingdom of God; they do not determine whether we share in the blessings of life eternal.  For as we see in the Lord’s encounter with the Roman centurion, true humility and faith are not the exclusive possessions of any nation or interest group.  People from all over the world will enter God’s Kingdom not because of the passport that they hold, the party to which they belong, or their ethnic heritage, but because they have become participants by grace in the eternal life of the Holy Trinity.

            It was dangerous to say in first-century Palestine and it is still a bit uncomfortable to hear in twenty-first century America, but it is the truth:  God’s reign is not limited by national boundaries or political ideologies.  We love, honor, and serve our country, and pray that God will continue to bless America, but our nation is neither our salvation nor our god.  And whatever our political views may be, they must not become our religion; for if we worship even the best earthly powers, we will end up hating our enemies, serving a false god, and shutting ourselves out of the true Kingdom, which is not of this world. 

The distinctions between Jew and Greek, between Hebrew and Roman, are broken down in Christ Jesus.  The same is true for all the national, ethnic, and political distinctions that divide people today in our own country and around the world.  There are no political parties in the Kingdom of God, no nations at war with one another, and no rival ethnic groups.   No earthly country or faction is “the chosen people” or the savior of the world.  Our kingdoms, empires, and nations come and go, regardless of how good or evil they may be. God’s reign alone is eternal and we must always be on guard against the idolatry associated with the love of earthly power.  

Did you notice that Christ did not call upon the centurion to resign from the Roman army, become a Jew, or oppose any of the policies of the empire?  Instead, He simply praised the faith of that humble man, healed his servant, and used the occasion as an opportunity to prophesy that many foreigners will join the great patriarchs of the Old Testament in the Kingdom of heaven, while many Jews will be excluded.

What an amazing and shocking thing for the Jewish Messiah to say! Do not forget that the centurion was an officer in the army that brutally occupied our Lord’s homeland.  Contrary to what everyone expected, Jesus Christ apparently had nothing against him on that account.  He was not concerned with kicking out foreign invaders.  He did not treat the centurion as an enemy soldier to be defeated or a political foe to be overthrown, but instead as a child of God in whom He saw faith superior to that of His own people.

As hard as it is for us to understand, in Jesus Christ the usual worldly distinctions that divide people are irrelevant.  He is the second Adam Who heals our common corruption and conquers death, which is the wages of sin for all human beings. The blessings of life eternal are available in Christ to all who have the humility and faith shown by that most unlikely believer, the Roman centurion.

Unfortunately, it continues to be tempting to ignore St. Paul’s advice to live as “slaves of God” and not as “slaves of sin.”  The difference between serving God and serving the corrupt ways of the world is not always easy to discern.  Powerful forces in every society want us to worship at their altar and to make God in their own image.  To figure out how to respond to them in our given time and place, we need to follow St. Paul in asking what fruit they produce in us.  No matter how virtuous we believe our opinions and actions are, we must ask whether they lead us to greater holiness.  In other words, hatred and self-righteousness in our hearts are simply symptoms of our slavery to sin, no matter how right we may think we are (or how right we may be) about anything.  “The wages of sin is death” and we must be on guard against the temptation to turn the merciful and life-giving way of Christ into just another version of the fatal lust for earthly power and self-justification that has dominated corrupt humanity ever since the fall of Adam and Eve. 

As Orthodox believers, we know that it is nothing but pagan idolatry to put the ways of any earthly kingdom before the demands of the Kingdom of God.  For our hope is not in nations, armies, or politicians, but in our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ who calls all humanity to the eternal blessedness of a kingdom not of this world.   And, yes, all really does mean all who like the Roman centurion receive Him with humble faith.  So let us now follow the example of this righteous Gentile as we join those who come from East and West to sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, in the heavenly banquet already available to us in the Body and Blood of our Lord.  Let us lay aside all earthly cares that we may receive the King of all, for He is truly the Savior of the world.

     

There Is Hope for Us All: Homily for the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul in the Orthodox Church

           

            None of us can tell the story of our lives without pointing to particular persons we have known and who have shaped us.  In our families and friendships, people are not interchangeable, for we are all unique in our relationships with one another and with God.  We play particular roles that are colored by our character, personal history, and distinctive blend of strengths and weaknesses.  That is also how it is in the life of the Church.  Particular people matter.   

        Today we celebrate two of the most glorious Saints of the Christian faith.  They are both pillars of the Church, apostles, and martyrs whose unique personalities and experiences have made decisive and permanent contributions to the Body of Christ.  Saint Peter was the head disciple whose confession, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” is the rock on which Christ, our true foundation, has built His Church.    The gospels describe Peter’s presence at so many crucial moments in the ministry of the Lord, including at His arrest when Peter, who had so clearly confessed Him earlier and vowed never to abandon Him, denied Him three times.  Of course, the risen Christ restored Peter by asking him three times if he loved Him and giving him the command to feed His sheep as a shepherd of the flock of Christians.  And in the book of Acts, we see Peter boldly proclaiming the good news, performing miracles, and playing a key role in welcoming Gentiles into the Church.   After serving as the first bishop of Antioch, where the disciples were first called Christians, then he went to serve in Rome.  Peter was crucified there upside down for his faith in Jesus Christ, for by Peter’s own request he was unworthy to die in the same way as His Savior.

        That St. Paul plays a glorious role in the formation of the faith is obvious to anyone who knows the New Testament, for he wrote so much of it.   He traveled for decades founding and supporting churches, especially among Gentiles.  Paul himself was Jewish and had been a strict Pharisee who had persecuted Christians.  But on the road to Damascus, the risen Lord appeared to Him in a blinding light and called him to repentance and the shocking ministry of bringing Gentiles into the Body of Christ through faith, not circumcision and obedience to the Old Testament law.  Perhaps more than anyone else, Paul made clear that the Christian faith is not a sect of Judaism primarily for people of a particular ethnic and religious heritage, but instead good news for all people, regardless of their ancestry. 

        As today’s epistle passage reminds us, Paul’s ministry was not easy by any stretch of the imagination.  He was beaten, imprisoned, humiliated, and ultimately martyred in Rome for his faith in Jesus Christ.  He knew both the heights of spiritual ecstasy and the chronic challenge of a “thorn in the flesh” that God did not remove, despite his three-fold request.  Whatever that thorn may have been, Paul learned through his sufferings the sufficiency of God’s strength for him.  God’s “strength is made perfect in (Paul’s) weakness.“  As the apostle said of himself, “For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

        When we study the lives of these two great saints, we do not see people who made no mistakes or who were rich, famous, or without problems.  These were real human beings who fell short, repented, grew over time in their understanding, and faced such opposition that both suffered capital punishment at the hands of the pagan Romans.  They gained absolutely no worldly advantages by their faithful ministry, but their selfless service strengthened the Church in ways too numerous to count.  We are here today as Orthodox Christians because of what God did through them and so many other lesser known apostles, martyrs, and evangelists across the ages.

        In order to celebrate worthily the feast day of Sts. Peter and Paul, we must go beyond praising them with our words.  We must participate personally in the holiness so evident in them.  In other words, we must become like them in a way appropriate to our particular calling and location.  For just as God used a fisherman and a Pharisee with given sets of strengths and weaknesses to His glory, He intends to do likewise with each of us.  The first century is long gone, but there is plenty of time left in the twenty-first century for us to hear and respond to the same risen Lord who called Peter to feed His sheep and Paul to become a missionary to the Gentiles.  Like the Ephesians to whom Paul wrote, we too have become “fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone…” (Eph. 2:19-20)

        Each generation is like a new story added to the building or a new branch growing on a tree.  Even as we find our personal history in the previous generations of our families, we take our spiritual life from the living history of what the Holy Spirit has done through each generation in the life of the Church.  We are called to make present in our day the same faithfulness that we see in those who have gone before us, but we do so as unique, unrepeatable persons called to grow in the divine likeness and to find the fullness of our identity through union with the Lord like an iron left in the fire.  Just as a fisherman and a Pharisee became radiant with the divine energies through their repentance and steadfast dedication to Christ, the same can be true of us.

        We may think, however, that we are simply too sinful to achieve such spiritual heights.  We know that we fall short and may be ashamed even to think of becoming like these great saints.   Remember for just a moment, however, that Peter denied Christ three times at His arrest and Paul persecuted Christians to the point of death.  If they can repent, follow Jesus Christ faithfully, and have such exalted roles in the life of the Church, who are we to excuse ourselves from whatever God wants of us in our families, our parish, our work, or whatever it might be?  In all likelihood, we will live and serve in obscurity and face obstacles much smaller than the brutal persecution these great saints endured. 

        As well, we may be tempted to think that they were so much stronger than we are.  Remember that St. Paul found God’s strength precisely in his weakness, in his infirmities and pains that opened his life to the gracious power of God.  St. Peter must have felt weak when the Lord said “Get behind me, Satan” to him when he tried to explain to Christ that He would not be rejected and killed.  And could there be any greater moment of weakness than when the disciple who boasted that he would never abandon the Savior did so at his arrest by denying Him three times?

        Our moments of weakness are probably less dramatic, but they are no less real.  We find it hard to do the basics of the Christian life: forgive our enemies; pray each day and fast regularly; attend the Divine Liturgy and other services of the Church whenever possible; take Confession on a regular basis and especially when we have a guilty conscience about a grave sin; give generously to the poor; visit the sick and lonely; and guard our hearts and minds from the moral decay that permeates our culture. 

        When we are aware of our weaknesses, we are in the perfect place to follow in the way of the fisherman and the Pharisee who in humble repentance found a strength that makes up what is lacking, heals infirmities, and even conquers sin and death.   Let us not use a false sense of humility to excuse ourselves from true discipleship as we celebrate the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul.  Instead, we must follow their example as the unique people we are, with all our strengths, failings, and peculiarities, for from the very beginning of the faith, that is the only way that anyone has become a saint.           

Fast, Pray, and Leave Behind Your Nets:Homily for the Apostles Fast on the Second Sunday After Pentecost in the Orthodox Church

           

           The services, practices, and calendars of the Orthodox Church can be hard for people in our time and place to understand.  Some will use their confusion as an excuse to disregard them and suffer spiritually as a result.  So it is a good to get to the heart of the matter, to speak plainly and openly about what the rhythms of the Church mean for our lives.  For the mission of the Body of Christ is not to preserve a set of esoteric rituals and rules, but to bring the entire world into the great salvation worked by our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ.  

            As I hope everyone knows by now, we are currently in the Apostles Fast, one of the most ancient fasting periods in the Church that extends from the Monday after All Saints until the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul on June 29.  The Sunday of All Saints comes a week after Pentecost, which reminds us that we are all enabled to share in the holiness of God by the active presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  Yes, the very purpose of our lives is to acquire the Holy Spirit.  But in order to do that, we have to become like our Lord’s apostles, who left behind their nets in order to become fishers of men.  Sts. Peter and Paul, along with all the disciples except John the evangelist, died as martyrs, making the ultimate witness for the Savior’s victory over death.  They were prepared to do so by decades of self-denial in putting God first in their lives.  They left all that was comfortable and familiar to obey the command of the Lord “Come follow Me.”   And if we are to develop the spiritual strength and maturity necessary to respond faithfully to His will for us, we must also die to self and gain a measure of freedom from the nets in which we are entangled, whatever they may be.

            The Apostles Fast fulfills what the Lord said in response to the question about why His disciples did not fast during His earthly ministry:  “How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast.” (Matt. 9:15) Christ ascended into heaven forty days after Hi s resurrection, but then sent the Holy Spirit to His followers at Pentecost.  Now, after celebrating Pentecost, is when we fast in order to humble ourselves before God and to fight our passions so that we will gain the spiritual strength that we see so clearly in Sts. Peter and Paul, as well as in all the apostles.  Like them, we want to hear and respond to Christ’s command to us, whatever it may be.  We want to be able to turn aside from distractions, obsessions, and habits that hold us back from living the lives to which our Savior calls us.

            For Orthodox Christians, fasting is not reserved only for special seasons of the year, for outside of a few celebratory exceptions,  Wednesdays and Fridays are fast days on which those who are physically able abstain from meat, dairy products, fish, wine, and olive oil.  We fast on Fridays in commemoration of our Lord’s crucifixion and on Wednesdays in commemoration of His betrayal.  In the prayers and hymns of the Church, Wednesdays and Fridays are both associated with the cross, so it makes perfect sense that these are days on which we deny ourselves just a bit by taking up  the cross of self-denial and humility in remembrance of the unbelievably profound sacrificial offering made by our Lord Himself for our salvation.

            Just as we should not resist temptation only during Lent, we should not attempt to reserve fasting only for penitential periods, such as Lent, Advent (the Nativity Fast), the Dormition, or the Apostles Fast.  If we do so, we may find it impossibly hard to fast then from anything at all for several days or weeks at a time.  Likewise, may find it impossibly hard to reject any self-centered desire if we are used to making a god out of our taste buds, stomachs, and self-centered desires.  If we want to be faithful disciples, we have to leave our nets behind every day.  We have to take up our crosses all the time, often when we least expect to have to do so.  So we must always be prepared.  Two thousand years of experience has taught Orthodox Christians that regular fasting is a source of great strength for doing so.  This is not, of course, because God is impressed by hunger or dietary changes.  It is, however, because we all need to grow in humility and to turn aside from anything that weakens our ability to say “yes” to the Lord.  Especially if we find fasting difficult and frustrating, we must persevere in it every fast day.  It is precisely through struggles that reveal our weakness and spiritual sickness that we are able like all the repentant sinners who have become saints to open ourselves to the mercy and healing of Jesus Christ from the depths of our hearts and souls.  

            Too often in our culture, we think that we have done our religious duty simply by being present in a church service on Sunday.  If the service lasts more than an hour, we may think that we have really impressed God. As Orthodox Christians, we know that we should attend the Divine Liturgy on Sundays and major feast days whenever possible. (Of course, it is also beneficial to pray with the Church at vespers and orthros.) Doing so is the very first step of Christian faithfulness, for corporate worship constitutes the Body of Christ and enables us to enter into heavenly worship even now.  But coming to services is only the beginning of our journey.  God calls us to participate fully in the heavenly liturgy every day, every moment, with every thought, word, and deed, regardless of where we are.  That is why we must all devote time and energy each day of our lives to prayer in a regular, disciplined way if we want to become faithful Christians.  It is why even a few minutes of Bible reading, studying the life of a saint, other spiritual reading, or listening to recordings of Orthodox chant is so important for us all.  We are bombarded constantly by messages from our culture, as well as by our own thoughts and the words and actions of others, that are usually not spiritually beneficial. Unless we cultivate a regular habit of prayer and of focusing on the things of God in our daily lives, we will have little of hope of hearing, let alone responding faithfully to, our Lord’s calling.  

            Let us all take advantage of the remaining week of the Apostles Fast to humble ourselves before the Lord as we devote ourselves to prayer and fasting in ways appropriate to our health, age, and life circumstance.  Let us all leave the nets of our spiritual laziness and other excuses behind in order to cultivate just a bit of that spiritual clarity and devotion that shines so brightly in Sts. Peter and Paul and all the other apostles, saints, and martyrs who heard and obeyed the calling of our Lord.  He is surely calling each and every one of us to serve Him in some way.  The only the question is whether we have the ears to hear and the spiritual strength to leave behind all that keeps us from following Him.