Getting Ready to Get Ready: Preparing for the Nativity Fast in the Orthodox Church

Hebrews 2:2-10

Luke 8:41-56

            Some good things are a long time coming.  We know that in our own lives, relationships, and accomplishments at work, school, or elsewhere.  The best things in life are worth waiting for and require our patience and preparation.  

            That is true of how salvation has come to the world through our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ.  The many generations of the Hebrew people in the Old Testament prepared His way.  God’s messengers, the angels, instructed them through the Law and other announcements and actions.  His prophets called the people to faithfulness in anticipation of the Messiah, the One anointed for the fulfillment of all the promises to Abraham both for his descendants and all the people of the world who respond with faith to the Lord.

            Today we are one week away from the beginning of our time of preparation for the coming of the Messiah, for the birth of Jesus Christ.  Neither merely an angel nor a prophet, He is truly God in the flesh. The Nativity Fast, which we often call “Advent,” begins on November 15, forty days before the great feast of Christmas.  The weeks leading to the Nativity of the Savior do not have the bright sadness of Lent, as they are a joyful time of getting ready to celebrate Christ’s birth by receiving Him anew into our lives as we take our place with angels, shepherds, prophets, and generations of righteous people from all over the world who have rejoiced that the Son of God has become one of us, bringing broken and suffering human beings into the very life of God, Who made us in His image and likeness.   

            We will fast, pray, confess our sins, give to the needy, and forgive our enemies during the coming weeks so that we will have the spiritual strength to celebrate Christmas properly, which means welcoming the Savior into our lives at His birth.  Of course, anyone can make a cultural observance of Christmas.  But something as profound as the Incarnation, the joining of divinity and humanity in the Person of Jesus Christ for our salvation, requires more than putting up a tree or going to a party.  It requires that we unite ourselves personally with the One Who comes to save us, that we prepare the way of the Lord in our own souls.    That is what the Nativity Fast is all about as a season of joyful anticipation, a time of getting ready to enter more fully into the salvation of the world.

As we all know, the world in which Christ was born was not a place of perfection where all was sweetness and light.  Some sought to kill Him from His birth, and St. Joseph had to lead the infant Jesus and the Theotokos to Egypt for their physical safety.  Christ was born as a vulnerable baby in the same world of suffering and pain that we know all too well.  It is the world experienced by Jairus in his grief and by the woman with the flow of blood in her chronic illness.  It is the same world filled with war, terrorism, hatred, strained marriages, broken homes, and every sort of depravity, decay, and loss.  And in a season when our culture tells us to shop, eat, drink, be merry, and pretend that all is well, many will experience these pains even more powerfully than usual.  We will soon be in what many people find to be the most stressful and difficult time of year.  

There is, of course, no magic solution to the problems of the world or our own personal struggles.  But the weeks of Advent lead us back to today’s epistle reading:   “As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to Him.  But we see Jesus, Who for a little while was made lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone.  For it was fitting that He, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the Pioneer of their salvation perfect through suffering.”

 The Savior entered fully into the corruption and danger of our world, voluntarily suffering so that our path of struggle would not be in vain, but become a blessed entrance to eternal life.  His unimaginably profound love is manifested through the humility of His birth, life, and death—through which He conquered all the corruption and pain of our fallen humanity in His glorious resurrection.  That is how He brings us into His glory when we endure suffering faithfully and obediently.  That is how we participate in His glory as we share in His life, which requires dying to sin, taking up our crosses, and serving Him in our neighbors, especially “the least of these.”  

Who in the Church would not praise this way of living?  Talk, however, remains cheap; truly to prepare our hearts and souls to receive Him at Christmas requires much more than pious words and warm feelings.  It requires actions that grow from a courageous mind and a humble heart.  The woman with the flow of blood certainly had the courage to confess openly that she had touched the hem of Christ’s garment and found healing for her illness, which had made her unclean and isolated for many years.  She fell down before Him trembling and said out loud what she had done and revealed the deep pain and embarrassment of her life. The Lord said that her faith had made her well and then she left in peace. Courage is not the absence of fear, but doing the right thing in spite of our fears.  And sometimes the greatest courage is shown not by superheroes, but by perfectly ordinary people who simply reach out to God for mercy and healing as best they can one day at a time.

  We must be courageous in refusing to be overcome by the fears and doubts that may fill our minds this Advent.  Perhaps difficult circumstances of whatever kind seem more real to us than the new life of Christ.  Maybe we despair of ever finding health for our bodies, healing of broken relations with others, the strength to reorient our lives toward God, or hope for a world with so many problems.   When done with humility, the spiritual disciplines of the Nativity Fast help us to remain focused on our Savior, Who entered into more suffering and pain than we can possibly imagine for our salvation.  Because of Him, even our most difficult struggles may become pathways to share more fully in His victory over all evil and corruption. He was born to sanctify every aspect of human existence.  No dimension of our life in the world is a stranger to Him or His salvation.  We must have the courage not to despair because He is born truly to save and bless us in our much less than perfect world.

In addition to courage, we also need humility as we begin to prepare for Christmas.  Did you notice the humility of Jairus in today’s gospel reading?  This upstanding leader of the Jewish community humbled Himself by falling before the Lord and asking for His help in healing his daughter.  And even when all was lost and others were laughing at Christ, Jairus and his wife had humble faith and were amazed at the miracle.

The spiritual disciplines of the Nativity Fast are tools to help us grow in the humility that we need in order to be amazed at the birth of our Lord in a world that often laughs at those who view Christmas as anything other than a mere cultural celebration or a season of shopping and socializing.  Fasting from the richest and most satisfying foods is a way of humbling ourselves before God, gaining some strength in resisting self-centered desires, and freeing up resources to share with the needy in whom He is present to us.  Confessing our sins is at the heart of humble repentance, of acknowledging how we have fallen short and receiving the strength to heal from our self-inflicted wounds.  What could be more fundamental to true humility than taking the time each day to call to Him from the depths of our souls?   That is the discipline of prayer.  And there is surely no greater opportunity for humility than forgiving our enemies and asking forgiveness of those whom we have wronged.

For many of us, life will soon get very busy all the way to New Year’s and Theophany. Now, in this week before Advent begins, is the time to prepare to cultivate the courage and humility that we need to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ by welcoming Him anew into our lives. Now is the time to get ready to enter more fully into His life, for He is the salvation of the world.  

Neither Pharisee Nor "Legion": On Becoming our True Selves in Jesus Christ--Homily for the 21st Sunday After Pentecost and the 6th Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

Galatians 2:16-20

Luke 8:26-39

            We all know what it is means not to feel like ourselves.  We can become so out of sorts for all kinds of reasons that we do not think or act like we usually do.  Sometimes we do not even recognize our thoughts, words, or deeds as our own, and wonder where certain impulses or behaviors come from. And we rightly fear what would happen if we accepted those inclinations and let them shape our souls.

            St. Paul recognized that human beings do not become their true selves simply by trying to obey a code of conduct.  The Old Testament law, about which he was an expert as a Pharisee, made clear to him how far he was from holiness, for he constantly fell short of it.  But he found a new identity in dying and rising with Christ.  He found his true self in God’s image and likeness, for “it is no longer I who live, but Christ Who lives in me.”  Instead of being defined as one who inevitably fell short of the law and was captive to sin, he became through faith one who participates in the righteousness of Christ, one who has risen in Him from sin and death to the life of holiness for which God created us in the first place.  By faith in Jesus Christ, St. Paul became his true self.

            If that was a struggle for St. Paul, imagine what an ordeal it was for the Gadarene demoniac, the man in today’s gospel reading.  He was so filled with demons and consumed by evil that he called himself “Legion,” which meant a division of the Roman army containing thousands of soldiers.  His sense of personal identity had disintegrated into a mass of a great many demons.  Like Adam and Eve who stripped themselves of the divine glory by their sin, he too was naked and without the dignity of a child of God.  He lived among the tombs, held captive by corruption and cut off from everyone else. He was such a terror that he broke the chains that bound him and fled alone into the desert.  This poor man is an icon of our alienation from ourselves, others, and life itself that evil so easily works in us. He was very far from his true self. And even the best code of behavior would not have helped him.  He did not need just a bit of instruction; no, he needed the healing and cleansing of his soul—the restoration of his humanity.   Like St. Paul, he needed to die to sin and rise to a new life in Christ.   

            That is what the Lord gave him by casting the demons into a herd of pigs, which then stampeded into the lake and drowned.  The locals were so astonished by what had happened, and especially by seeing this fellow in his right mind, that they were terrified to the point of asking Christ to leave their region.  Understandably, the man whom Christ delivered wanted to go with Him, but the Lord told him to stay there and proclaim all that He had done for him.  He was to do the difficult job of bearing witness to the good news among people who knew him, and his horrible past, all too well.

            Both St. Paul and the Gadarene demoniac  remind us that we must accept a kind of death in order to become our true selves.  It is a death, first, to our efforts at self-justification, to our attempts to make ourselves perfect simply by our own abilities.  There is often no one more anxious and depressed than a perfectionist, for we never reach that high goal.  If that is our approach, then we will be like St. Paul in gaining only slavery to a sense of imperfection and brokenness by obsessively trying to justify ourselves in doing everything right all the time.  Though we may think that we are serving God in this way, we are actually serving only ourselves by doing all that we can to hide our sickness and corruption even from ourselves.  At the root of our efforts at self-justification is pride, which blinds us from seeing the truth about ourselves, others, and God.  We need to die and rise with Christ, not simply a list of rules against which to judge ourselves and others.  Our justification is in Him, not in our own attempts to master a code of conduct.    

            Like the demon-possessed man, we must also die to accepting our distorted condition as normal, natural, or who we truly are.  There is some pain in doing that, for we get used to living on our own terms, giving in to temptations that are all too familiar, and excusing any behavior by saying we are being true to ourselves.  The problem is that the self so comfortable with sin is not our true self, but a form of “Legion”—of a distorted identity that we take on due to our acceptance of corruption in our hearts and lives.  The Gadarene demoniac asked Christ not to torment him, and we may feel the same way when we realize that we must do the hard work of repenting and reorienting our lives according to God’s purposes for us.  But like him, we must do so in order to become our true selves in the image and likeness of God.   That is never a reward for legalistic perfection, but a way of dying and rising with Christ as we become more fully human in God’s image and likeness.

            Our spiritual journeys will surely not be as flamboyant or famous as those of St. Paul and the Gadarene demoniac, but the challenges we face are very similar.  Too many have turned Christianity into a self-righteous system of legalism in which it is all too easy for self-appointed judges to separate the sheep from the goats, as though they were the Lord as the Last Judgment.   Instead of a vocation to shine with heavenly light and participate personally in God’s gracious Divine Energies, some water the faith down to a simple list of “do’s” and “don’ts” that usually fits with popular cultural notions about who is good and who is bad.  Of course, there are paths that lead to holiness and paths that do not; the Church provides many clear and steadfast resources to guide us in the right direction.  But the difference between true and false paths is not mere legalism.  The key factor, instead, is whether a path leads to fuller participation in the life of Christ, which requires both faith and faithfulness and forbids the self-righteous condemnation of others.  Saul, the great persecutor of Christians, became St. Paul by faith and repentance in response to the gracious calling of the Risen Lord.  St. Paul called himself the chief of sinners and knew that he was made right with God by mercy, not his own accomplishment.  “It is no longer I who live but Christ Who lives in me.”  He gave up all attempts at self-justification. That is how he became his true self in God’s image and likeness.

            On other hand, many others have turned Christianity into a kind of spiritual self-indulgence that requires very little of anyone.  Some water the faith down to acceptance of virtually any belief, behavior, or inclination in what amounts to little more than religious sentimentality.  Remember, however, that Christ did not simply help the demon-possessed man to feel better about himself and otherwise do as he pleased; no, he cast evil out of him, gave him his life back, and commanded him to stay in that region and bear witness to how God had delivered him.  The Lord empowered him for a challenging life of holiness and changed him in a way that astonished everyone who knew him.  That fellow could then say with St. Paul, “It is no longer I who live but Christ Who lives in me.”  Like the Apostle, he surely knew that his salvation was not somehow his own accomplishment or just a nice feeling, but the gracious gift of a Lord “Who loved me and gave Himself for me” in ways that infinitely surpassed what even the best legal code could ever achieve.  

            Like St. Paul and the Gadarene demoniac, we will become our true selves in God’s image and likeness by participating in the grace and mercy of our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ.  Like them, we must die both to self-righteous legalism and to the sinful corruptions that have become second nature to us.  We must have faith in Christ even as we pursue a faithful life, turning away from all that distorts our beauty as the living icons of our Lord.  The more closely we unite ourselves with Him, the more fully we become our true selves.  For He made us to be neither Pharisees nor “Legion,” but His beloved sons and daughters who become ever more like Him in holiness.  That is the calling of each and every one of us; and through repentance, faith, and love, we may answer it to the glory of God.                    

The Holy Apostle and Evangelist Luke: The Perfect Patron for a Small Orthodox Parish in West Texas!

Colossians 4:5-11, 14-18

St. Luke 10:16-21

Today is the Feast Day of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist Luke, the patron saint of our parish.  Our small community is named in his honor and memory, and we ask him to pray for us in virtually every service.  In many ways, St. Luke is an especially appropriate saint for our parish.  He was a Gentile, a physician, an iconographer, and one of the 70 Apostles sent out by the Lord to proclaim the good news. (Our members include a physician, an iconographer, and a bunch of Gentiles!) Author of both a gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, St. Luke died a martyr’s death at the age of 84.

          He was the only Gentile to write one of the gospels of the New Testament.  Like St. Matthew, he includes the family tree or genealogy of Jesus Christ.  St. Luke traces the Lord’s lineage all the way back to Adam, the first human being who lived before the distinction between Jew and Gentile.  Thus he showed that Christ is the Savior of all, that He came to bring all peoples and nations into the glory of His Kingdom.  As a Gentile, St. Luke’s own family tree did not place him in the house of Israel, and his gospel especially emphasizes the mercy of Christ for those then thought of as strangers and outsiders to God’s blessings.     

           The Lord rejoiced in today’s gospel reading that the Father hid His truth from the wise and prudent, but revealed Himself to babes, to humble and simple people with little standing in the eyes of the world.   Gentiles, the poor, the sick, and women got little respect in that time, but St. Luke presents the ministry of our Lord in a way that makes clear that the blessings of the Kingdom extend to all, and that the lowly and despised are often the ones most ready to receive the good news of Christ, precisely due to their humility.

          For example, it is from Luke’s gospel that we know of the Virgin Mary’s obedient acceptance of the calling to become the Theotokos, the Mother of the incarnate Son of God.  She sings the Magnificat in response, praising Him for regarding the low estate of His handmaiden; for henceforth all generations will call her blessed.  She sings of a God who has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted the lowly, who has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.  A simple, unknown virgin girl miraculously became the living Temple of God; through her, the Savior came to the world; and in purity of heart, she accepted a shocking pregnancy that put her own life and reputation at risk. 

            The physician Luke even tells us of a meeting between the pregnant Theotokos and the pregnant St. Elizabeth in which St. John the Forerunner leaped in the womb in the presence of the not-yet-born Jesus Christ.  What an amazing detail that probably only a physician would have recorded in that time and place.

          It is also from St. Luke’s gospel that we learn of the astounding humility of Jesus Christ’s birth in a barn.  The Son of God used the feeding trough of a farm animal as His crib.  And the shepherds—poor, dirty, and generally looked down upon-- were the first group notified of this event.  They were blessed to be the first to know that the Messiah had been born.

          And when the Savior preached His first sermon in St. Luke’s gospel, He chose an Old Testament text that showed His love for the outcasts, the suffering, and those on the margins of society.  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor…to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.“  Though the worshipers at the synagogue that day had liked the beginning of Jesus Christ’s sermon, they hated the ending.  For the Lord reminded them that God sometimes worked through the great Old Testament prophets Elijah and Elisha to help Gentiles instead of Jews.  When the people heard of God’s concern for the hated Gentiles, they literally tried to kill Christ by throwing Him off a cliff.  They wanted a Savior only for themselves on their own terms, not this surprising kind of Messiah Who came to save even their enemies.

          Do you see the common theme of these examples?  St. Luke demonstrated clearly that the Lord does not operate accordingly to conventional human standards of who is important, powerful, worthy, or holy.  In contrast with the ways of the world, our Savior taught that the last will often be first in the Kingdom of Heaven and the first will be last.  The “least of these,” the babes, will often respond to Christ with a pure heart while those who trust in themselves, their riches, their social status, their power, or their respectability will often refuse Him. 

          As a small parish in a part of the world with very few Orthodox Christians, we should be glad that St. Luke is our patron saint.  Like those common people in Luke’s gospel, our little community has no special prominence or power.  We are not wealthy or large or well-known.   We all have friends, neighbors, or family members who, until they met us, had never even heard of the Orthodox Church.  We certainly cannot rely on a common ethnicity or any other human characteristic to hold us together and build up our church.  In some ways, we are probably the most diverse congregation in Abilene; sociologically, our very existence probably makes no sense.  No, our very existence as a parish is a sign of God’s abundant grace and mercy.  We should all thank the Lord for creating and sustaining this blessed community through which we share in the life of Christ and have become members of one another in Him.  

          St. Luke also wrote of the original Christian community in similar ways in the Acts of the Apostles.  By the power of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, people of different nationalities who spoke different languages were united in a common faith in Jesus Christ.  They were persecuted by both Jews and Romans; there were tensions in the church between different ethnic and cultural groups; arguments raged over whether Gentiles had to be circumcised and obey the Jewish law before becoming Christians.  The early church as described by St. Luke was not wealthy or large or well-known.  To follow Jesus Christ under those conditions was a difficult struggle that literally made many saints and martyrs.  In their weakness, the first Christians found God’s strength.  In their humility, they were lifted up by His power.  In their obedience, they became victors over their enemies by sharing in Christ’s conquest over sin and death.

          The Book of Acts has many of the same themes as the Gospel of Luke.  St. Luke describes the early Church as a rare place of reconciliation for Jew and Gentile and a community in which financial resources were shared so that no one was in need.  The Church was born at Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit empowered Christ’s followers to proclaim the good news such that people from all over world could understand and call on the name of the Lord.  As in those days, it remains the case that it is often the babes, the least of these, the outsiders, those who know trouble and pain all too well, who call upon Him with the purest of hearts.

          On this feast day of St. Luke, our challenge is to remember that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are that Church that began on Pentecost.  And like the first generation of Christians, we will find our salvation in the obscure place in the world that God has given us.  We have learned from St. Luke that lowliness and humility are actually favorable characteristics in the Christian life.  And we grow in these Christ-like virtues by patiently serving one another and our neighbors as Christ has served us.  That is why—even though we have not yet repaired our hall from the fire and have limited resources-- we are sponsoring a reception this week in support of IOCC’s relief work for refugees from Syria and Iraq, even as our members have given generously over the years for several campaigns to help our suffering brothers and sisters in the Middle East. It is why we assist our own members and others who are in need and support Pregnancy Resources of Abilene.   Even as St. Luke described the Theotokos welcoming the unexpected birth of the Savior, we want to help women today welcome their own children, regardless of the difficulties that they face.  As Christ said, “In that you have done it unto the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me.”  That includes those who leap in the womb today, as well as their mothers in the most challenging of circumstances.

          From a worldly perspective, all that we do in our parish is small scale and out of the cultural mainstream.  That is no problem at all, of course, because St. Luke has shown us a Savior Who works through weak and unlikely people to establish His Kingdom, which is surely not of this world.  As hard as it is to believe, that is precisely what the Lord is doing through us in this place by the prayers of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist Luke, our patron. 

Flourishing and Bearing Fruit in the Lord's Garden: Homily for the Sunday of the Holy Fathers of the 7th Ecumenical Council and the 4th Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

Titus 3: 8-15

Luke 8:5-15

     Last Sunday, we focused on the importance of sowing abundantly, of investing ourselves in the life of Christ in order to reap bountifully, in order to bless others as we open ourselves to the holy joy of the Kingdom. Today’s gospel reading reminds us that that will not happen simply by throwing lots of seed on the ground and hoping that they will somehow grow to maturity as beautiful plants and bear fruit.  Birds, rocks, thorns, and lack of moisture easily keep many—if not most—seeds from taking root, flourishing, and producing a good yield.  No, we must tend and care for the seeds and the growing plants of our souls if they are to have any realistic hope of producing a good crop.

     Imagine a gardener who simply puts a bunch of seeds in his backyard, but does not prepare the soil, pull the weeds, guard against pests, or provide adequate water.  He is not really gardening, but more likely just feeding the birds and the squirrels.  Now, why would someone do that? Maybe he became distracted and thought that he had better things to do than to invest the time and energy necessary to help the seeds grow to maturity; but as a result, his garden would be a failure.

     As Christians, there is a parallel truth for us in the spiritual life. No matter how sincere our beginning may be, no matter how much we initially filled our hearts and minds with holy things, we can easily end up giving so little time and attention to growing in union with Christ that we suffer a similar fate spiritually.  Few of us will do that because we intentionally decide to turn away from God or formally renounce our faith.  Usually, it is not nearly as dramatic as that, for we simply get distracted and make other things higher priorities than maturing in the Christian life.  As a result, subtle temptations and worldly cares sicken and weaken us spiritually to the point that our souls seem to dry up and blow away.

     We may wonder how it is that we so easily fall prey to such distractions. Perhaps part of the reason is that we so often forget that life itself is a blessing from God that bears good fruit only when we offer it back to Him.  In other words, we are not our own creators or saviors, and we cannot bless, redeem, or save ourselves or anyone else by our own power.  The things and people which we tend to make into false gods are actually the blessings of the one true God.  Like the rest of His good creation, they are certainly not intrinsically evil—no matter how badly we abuse them.  No matter what joys or difficulties we face in His world, we may use them in accordance with His purposes for our spiritual healing.  But when our own pride leads to such anxiety about anything in life that we forget to offer it to the Lord, we commit the idolatry of trying to fulfill the creation on our own terms.  We want to make the world, ourselves, our neighbors, and even God Himself in our own image.  That is a heavy burden to bear and an invitation to be so overcome with anxiety that, when we fall prey to it, we will actually think that we have better things to do than to tend our spiritual gardens and bear good fruit for the Kingdom.  The truth, of course, is that nothing in creation flourishes unless it is firmly rooted in the garden of the Lord and tended in ways that help it serve the purposes for which He created it. Adam’s original vocation was to be a steward of the Garden of Eden, to be the priest of creation; but ever since he and Eve refused to do that, we have found it all too easy to follow their unfortunate example. And as bitter experience has taught us all, trying to live in this world on our own terms usually does not turn out well at all.

     Of course, we all have our excuses for whatever it is we want to do or do not want to do.  Perhaps we like to think that our particular circumstances are so special that we are somehow justified in neglecting the way of Christ, Who offered Himself in free obedience on the Cross for the salvation of the world. But that way of thinking is simply a reflection of our pride.  Regardless of the particulars, we inevitably make ourselves spiritually weak and vulnerable whenever we do not offer ourselves for the healing of the Lord on a regular basis through prayer, Bible reading, fasting, forgiveness, and service toward those around us.  When we put off taking Confession so long that we never get around to naming our sins in humble repentance, we suffer the weakness of struggling in spiritual isolation and depriving ourselves of the audible assurance of forgiveness. When we welcome into our eyes, ears, minds, and hearts those things that inflame our passions and distract us from holiness, we invite weeds into our garden and make it much harder for us to grow in the divine likeness.   Just as a lazy or inattentive gardener or farmer cannot expect a good crop, we cannot expect to flourish in the Christian life by allowing ourselves to be distracted habitually from the kind of life to which Jesus Christ calls us.

     St. Paul warned in his letter to St. Titus against letting foolish disputes, pointless arguments, or anything else get in the way of what is most important in life:  good works, meeting the urgent needs of others, and bearing fruit in the Christian life.  In this warning, St. Paul reminds us to turn away from all our senseless obsessions and excuses that tempt us to become so distracted from the Lord and the service of His Church that we end up turning away from the very source of life.  Whether in the first century or today, it is so easy for us to take our faith and our blessings for granted and to find just about anything else much more interesting than God.

     The problem is not with Him, of course, but with us, for we often simply disregard prayer, repentance, and serving others in the name of Christ.  We become content with making our spiritual life a low priority to the point that we become sick and weak because we are too lazy or distracted to fight our passions and accept the healing and strength which the Lord gives us through the ministries of His Church.  Too often, we rest content with bearing no fruit at all for the Kingdom.  The problem is that, when we live like that, we become as weak and vulnerable as a plant in an un-watered and un-weeded garden; and then we have very little hope of thriving or being of benefit to anyone.

     But if we follow St. Paul’s advice to become so busy with good works that we have no time or energy for foolish arguments or other pointless distractions, we will then become like the seed that landed on good soil, got proper nutrition, and produced a bumper crop.  And despite the trials, tribulations, and brokenness of our lives, we will know already the joy of the Kingdom of Heaven.

     That is the will of the Lord for each and every one of us, no matter the particular set of burdens that we bear or how faithfully or unfaithfully we may have lived so far.  Through His Body, the Church, Christ has revealed to us all the mysteries of the Kingdom of God, and we all have the ability to respond to our Lord’s great mercy with repentance, love, and faithfulness each day.

     So even if our souls presently look more like a bed of weeds than a beautiful garden, we still have hope because Christ has made us all participants in the blessing and fulfillment that He has brought to our world of corruption.  He has conquered sin and death, and invites us to join our broken lives to His great offering through which our ancient vocation to become like God is fulfilled.  The first Adam made a mess of the garden of the Lord, of the world as we know it, while the Second Adam has set right the creation for its fulfillment in the Kingdom of Heaven.  He calls and enables each of us to live faithfully each day in His blessed garden, playing our role in bringing all that He created to participate in His holiness.  In doing so, we will become more truly ourselves as those who bear His image and likeness.  And through our faithfulness daily, the world will become more fully what God created it to be. May we all become healthy plants in the Lord’s garden, and bear good fruit a hundred-fold.  For that is why He breathed life into us in the first place.  As Christ said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Investing in Mercy by Loving Our Enemies: A Homily for the 18th Sunday After Pentecost and the Second Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

2 Cor. 9:6-11

               Luke 6:31-36               

               It is true in everything we do:  the more we put into something, the more we get out of it.  No matter what we say or think, if we do not invest our time, energy, and attention in something, it is not very important to us and we should not expect much from it in return.  Many people have learned that lesson the hard way in marriage, family, work, and school. Above all, we need to ask ourselves if we are really investing ourselves in the life of Christ. How we treat our enemies is a good test of whether we are truly doing so. 

            St. Paul made precisely this point to the Corinthians:  “He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.”  Gardeners who plant only a few seeds cannot expect much of a crop, while those who plant more can expect a better outcome.  Likewise, we enter more fully into the life of our Lord when we bless others with the mercy that God has shown us.  That is how those who share with others “will be enriched in every way for great generosity, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God.”   Becoming a blessing to others is the way to be blessed ourselves.

            Jesus Christ gave His disciples this message in today’s gospel passage, for He called them to demonstrate the mercy of God to their neighbors, even those whom it is very hard to love.  He told them to treat everyone as they would like to be treated.  He said that they should love not only their friends, but also their enemies.  They were to do good even to those who had treated them poorly.  They were to lend to those unlikely to pay them back.  By doing so, their “reward will be great” and they “will be sons of the Most High.”  That is what it means to “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.”

            With these words, the Lord calls us to enter fully into His life and thus to manifest personally the mercy that He has shown to the world.  He calls us to become like Him, to be so closely united to Him that His holy love becomes characteristic of who we are, even as we relate to those we do not like and who do not like us.    That is an important dimension of what it means to become His sons and daughters, to be “partakers of the divine nature” by grace.

            As with so many of Christ’s hard teachings, we may find it impossible to believe that we could ever fulfill these commandments.  If you are like me, you fall into anger and judgment toward others very easily and find it more appealing to hold grudges than to forget past wrongs. We may say that this is simply human nature and excuse ourselves, but the Lord reminds us that this is simply the way of sin.  Even terrorists and gangsters are good to those who are good to them.  We must not rest content with being like them.

            It may seem normal and natural to us in our world of corruption to hate our enemies, but that is not the life for which we were created in the image and likeness of God.  Christ is the Second Adam Who restores our fallen humanity, and He expects and enables us to live in a way that is different from business as usual. But if we are to grow in obedience to Him, we must not view His teaching as simply another set of rules to follow according to our own ability.  The Savior called His followers to be more righteous than those who thought of God’s commandments as a long list of requirements that could be satisfied by going through the motions.  He reinterpreted the Old Testament laws in ways that called for a transformation of our hearts and souls as we become more like Him.  That is a fulfillment so profound that no one can achieve it as some kind of accomplishment gained merely through will power.  

            If the goal is truly to become like God, truly to share in the divine life, love, and holiness that have conquered sin and death, it should be clear that we will not reach it simply by trying really hard. To become the sons and daughters of the Most High, we must be born again for the life of the Kingdom. We must be empowered for a new life beyond our ability by the presence of the Holy Spirit.  We must put on Christ and participate to the depths of our being in a blessing and healing well beyond our own ability. That blessing is always God’s gracious gift, never a reward that we have deserved.

            The good news is that members of Christ’s Body, the Church, already share in His life and have the spiritual strength to hear and obey His commandments.  Here is where we must remember St. Paul’s words on the importance of sowing bountifully, of investing our lives deeply in practices that open us to participate more fully in blessedness. If we have not done so, then it is no wonder that we so often fall short of loving our enemies, giving to those who cannot pay us back, and treating everyone as we ourselves would like to be treated. Our failure and frustrations are reminders that we have not sowed bountifully, that we have not invested ourselves diligently in the practices of mercy and forgiveness, and that we have not produced much fruit for the Kingdom as a result.  We have not been good stewards of the spiritual strength and power He has given us.   

            If that is where we are today, then we must use our weakness for our salvation, humbling acknowledging that we are in constant need of the mercy and grace that we so often refuse to show others.  We have wanted blessings for ourselves that we will not share with our neighbors.  We have sown sparingly and greatly limited our own participation in the healing and blessing of Jesus Christ.  Of course, we can never earn His grace, but we can put ourselves in the place where we are open to receive and participate in His mercy, where we will be “enriched in every way for great generosity, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God.”  In other words, we can do what we have the spiritual strength to do in helping, forgiving, and otherwise being reconciled with our enemies.  We must sow as bountifully as we can.  When we fall short, we must ask for God’s forgiveness as we rise up again to do what we can to bless those we find it hard to love.  In other words, we must continue the journey in humility, investing ourselves in the ways of the Kingdom as we plead for greater strength to become more beautiful icons of God’s mercy for the world.     

            Through this process, we will be blessed as we become blessings to others.  If we extend to our neighbors the same mercy that we humbly ask of God, we can trust that we are becoming more faithful sons and daughters “of the Most High; for He is kind to the ungrateful and selfish.”  Yes, that includes sinners like me and you who struggle, often unsuccessfully, to “be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.”  What does it mean to invest ourselves in the life of Christ?  It means to keep up the struggle to love, forgive, and serve each day, and never to give up.   

                

An Orthodox Christian Argument Against Physician-Assisted Suicide

          I heard something on National Public Radio during my morning run the other day that got my attention . A report on a physician-assisted suicide bill in California stated that the proposed legislation would let  terminally ill patients end their lives.  That way of putting it totally obscured the fact that such legislation would implicate physicians, and presumably other health care professionals, in taking steps intentionally to end the lives of their patients.  Doing so would fundamentally distort the practice of medicine from pursuing the health of patients to pursuing their death in the name of ending suffering.  At  times, ending suffering requires ending the sufferer, which is simply not part of the practice of medicine as we know it in western culture.

          No, that is not an abstract philosophical claim, but something that arises from what doctors, nurses, and other healers do every day.  For example, when I go to my physician, I trust that he is single-mindedly focused on my health.   If he would just as soon help me commit suicide, I would no longer trust him because his moral identity and our relationship would change profoundly.   When physicians prescribe lethal drugs or otherwise act intentionally to facilitate the death of their patients, even upon the patients’ request, they no longer practice medicine as we have known it.   

           Physicians do not administer lethal injections for capital punishment, for example, because doing so is antithetical to the healing art.  If our society loses  the unique moral identity of medical doctors, we will lose a great deal.  A serious vocation requires developing a distinctive character through a distinctive practice.  Contrary to popular trends, not everything and everyone may be reduced without remainder to autonomous individuals serving the desires of other autonomous individuals.  The customer is not always right, except in a depraved materialistic society in which persons become little more than anonymous economic units or faceless bundles of rights that serve nothing more profound than their own immediate desires.  And if the customer is not always right, surely that is even less the case with the patient who enters into a practice oriented toward health, not necessarily whatever the patient desires.

            As well, physician-assisted suicide invites abuse of the elderly, sick, and dying by those who stand to inherit their estates.   Those are often the very people playing the dominant role in influencing the treatment decisions of debilitated patients.  Likewise, it should surprise no one that government entities, insurance companies, and health care institutions will likely be inclined to find ways of reducing their expenditures for patients at the end of life by encouraging lethal efforts to end their suffering and save money from their budgets.  Larger societal expectations will likely follow such developments, causing a social expectation for our weakest neighbors to exercise their freedom to kill themselves.    Our most vulnerable citizens will be deemed inconvenient and encouraged to end their suffering by ending their lives.  The skills of patiently caring for the aged and infirm will consequently diminish.  The cult of the young and healthy will flourish in the name of liberation  to the detriment of the old and sick. No, it is not a pretty picture.

            The hospice movement, practitioners of palliative care, and others intimately involved in the care of the sick and dying know that treatment to make terminally ill patients as comfortable as possible is underdeveloped in American medicine.  We are fans of high tech life-sustaining treatment, even if it is quite burdensome and makes a patient’s entire existence revolve around medical procedures.  Surely, many patients who want physician-assisted suicide would not do so if they received appropriate palliative care to help them live as comfortably as possible during their last days.    And if they were at home, sustained by loved ones in familiar settings, they would be much more likely to embrace the struggles of this last segment of their journey than they would in an institutionalized setting with priorities other than comfort. 

            Perhaps at the heart of these debates is the meaning of suffering.  The dominant attitude today seems to be that suffering is a pointless affront to one’s dignity.  Well, for those formed in our increasingly individualistic and hedonistic culture, that is not a surprising conclusion.   In stark contrast, Orthodox Christians do not seek suffering for its own sake, but know that living faithfully in a world of corruption will often require pain and struggle of various kinds.  These challenges give us opportunities to grow in dependence upon God, in humility, and in love for our neighbors, including those who care for us when we are sick and weak.  They are opportunities to take up our crosses, follow Christ, and grow in holiness. 

            Even as we should refuse medical treatment that makes our existence simply a function of that treatment as a false god,  we should accept care that helps us offer our lives to the Lord and our neighbors as best we can under the circumstances that we face.  For those who worship a Lord Who healed the sick, raised the dead, and rose victorious over Hades on the third day, that will never mean choosing death as an end in itself.  It will mean, however, refusing overly burdensome and ultimately pointless forms of treatment in order to prepare for a peaceful, painless, and blameless  departure from this life.
              The more that our family members and physicians know our intentions in this regard, the better for all concerned. And the less that the practice of medicine becomes corrupted by the intentional pursuit of death, the better for all concerned, especially the patients. 

What Catching Fish and Beholding the Divine Glory Have in Common: Homily for the 17th Sunday After Pentecost and the 1st Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

Luke 5:1-11

2 Corinthians 6: 16-7:1

            One of the great blessings of children is to have a sense of wonder.  Those of us who have been around the block a few times, however, easily fall into the mindset of taking things for granted, of thinking that we have seen it all before, and allowing nothing to shake us up.  Consequently, we often shut our eyes to the great blessings all around us and even to the presence of the Lord in our lives.

            Whether St. Peter had lost his sense of wonder before he countered Jesus Christ, we do not know.  But like any professional fisherman, he certainly thought that putting out his nets one more time after a night of catching nothing would be a waste of time.  That is basically what he told the Lord, but in obedience to Him, he did so nonetheless.   And all of a sudden, the nets were breaking and the boats were sinking due to the huge catch of fish.

            St. Peter’s surprise is shown by what he did next.  He fell down before Christ and said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” In other words, he knew that he had seen nothing like this before.  His eyes were opened to the wonder of the situation and his own inadequacy before it.  He knew in his soul that what had happened was not simply about nets, fish, and boats, but about what it means to encounter the Lord as someone unworthy to do so.  Despite all his failings and weaknesses, St. Peter had the spiritual clarity of the Prophet Isaiah when he had a vision of God in the heavenly temple (Isa. 6:5): “Woe is me, because I am pierced to the heart, for being a man and having unclean lips, I dwell in the midst of a people with unclean lips; for I saw the King, the Lord of hosts, with my own eyes.”  Before the glory of God, they both responded with humility.

            St. Peter’s day probably had begun like any other day, full of hard work with no expectation for anything out of the ordinary.  Like all of us, those fishermen went about their familiar routines with their usual responsibilities and concerns.   Everything seemed perfectly normal, but then the Lord blessed them and enabled them to see that their work was not simply about fish, but about bringing people into the eternal life of the Kingdom of God.  Something as ordinary as catching fish became a heavenly vision.  Imagine that.   

            When St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, he was dealing with other matters.  He had to remind a bunch of confused Gentile converts to separate themselves from evil, cleanse themselves from defilement, and “make holiness perfect in the fear of God.” He told them to turn away from sexual immorality, idolatry, and other corrupt practices.  Many today face similar challenges, perhaps in part because we have lost our sense of wonder at God’s presence in our lives.  In other words, we think of our routines, our relationships, our temptations, and our blessings as simply the way things are.  We adjust to them, take them for granted, and do not open the eyes of our souls to what God may be calling us to do and to become in relation to them.   Consequently, we lose hope that He will transform our seemingly futile struggles into abundant joy.  We despair of finding healing for our souls.  We think that our nets will always be empty and that each day will be like the one before.  And because we so easily lose hope, we are not inclined to obey the Lord like St. Peter did in letting down our nets down just one more time.

            If you think about it, that is all that the Lord ever asks of us.  One day at a time, to be faithful.  One day at a time, to say “no” to our self-centered desires.  One day at a time, to recognize that we always live in the presence of the burning bush of His divine glory, that we are always on holy ground.

            This past week we celebrated the Feast of the Conception of St. John the Forerunner.  Even though his father Zacharias was a priest serving in the Jerusalem temple, he had apparently lost his sense of wonder before the holiness of God.  So when the Archangel Gabriel told him that he and Elizabeth were to conceive a child in their old age, he responded with doubt—apparently forgetting about Abraham and Sarah, who also miraculously conceived late in life. Even as he was burning incense in the temple, he had shut his eyes to the divine glory.  Perhaps not being able to speak again until after birth of John helped to set him straight and to see his long-awaited son as God’s gracious gift which he did not deserve.

            His example shows us that the Lord is at work in our lives in ways that have nothing to do with what we deserve.  The Bible is filled with other similar stories. Not long after being blessed by God to be the father of a great nation, Abraham gave away his wife Sarah to Pharaoh out of fear.  That could have stopped the story of the Hebrew people even as it began, but God worked through him anyway. Right after being called through the burning bush, Moses thought of every excuse imaginable to get out of leading the Hebrews away from Egypt.  Nonetheless, God still used him. Even after the Lord explained His identity and ministry quite clearly to St. Peter, the chief disciple denied Him three times and abandoned Him at His crucifixion.  Regardless, Christ still called him. The great Apostle Paul was a dedicated persecutor of Christians until the Risen Lord miraculously appeared to Him in a blinding light on the road to Damascus.  That horrible past did not, however, keep St. Paul from becoming a great saint and missionary.

            The lesson for us is clear:  We must not use our sins, failings, weaknesses, or life circumstances as excuses to say that God is not present and active in our lives.  He always has and continues to call sinners like me and you to serve Him.  His blessing is not for a select few, but for all He creates in His image and likeness, for all who are called to faith in Jesus Christ, regardless of our ancestry, the nature of our personal struggles or temptations, or the history of our own personal brokenness.

            If we will only open the eyes of our souls, we will behold His glory and blessing shining as brightly as a burning bush in ways that may be as surprising as a huge catch of fish that threatens to break our nets and sink our boats.  If we only have the eyes to see, we will know His presence so powerfully that we will fall before Him like St. Peter with a sense of our own inadequacy before His holiness and abundant mercy.

            Granted, all this might seem easier to accept if God worked an obvious miracle in a spectacular fashion.  But if that happened, would our faith really grow and mature?  Would we ever learn to view God as anything other than a genie that grants our wishes?  He is not the one in this relationship who needs to change.  We must patiently do our part to clarify our spiritual vision, to open the eyes of our souls to what the Lord is already doing.  Very often the point is not for God to change an outward circumstance, but for us to find the spiritual strength to recognize the wonder of His presence already in our lives.  For as with the Prophet Elijah, God usually does not speak to us through earthquake, wind, and fire, but through the still small voice of a gentle breeze. (3 Kingdoms 19:11ff./ 1 Kings 19:11ff)   

            We will never hear His voice, however, if we do not listen, which requires praying from our hearts on a regular basis.  If we do not shut out the distractions of our own thoughts and the pointless chatter of our culture each day, we will not be able to hear Him tell us to let down our nets just one more time, to take the next small step of faithfulness, or to resist a seemingly insurmountable temptation.  We will never fall before the Lord in humble gratitude for His countless blessings unless we gain the spiritual clarity necessary to recognize His gracious presence already in our daily lives, even in what is most familiar, routine, and taken for granted.  If we will only develop the eyes to recognize His blessing and calling, then each and every one of us will acquire a new sense of wonder that will bring us to our knees in thanksgiving and humility.  That is how we, like so many other unworthy people before us, will find a power and peace in our lives that we do not deserve, but that we will wonder how we ever lived without.