Eucharist and Marriage

The Interrelation of Eucharist and Marriage:

The Mission of the Parish in Forming Communicants and Spouses in Holiness[1]

            Eucharist and holy matrimony are foundational practices of the Orthodox Church, obviously celebrated with great frequency.  Unfortunately, many communicants and spouses do not perceive their deep interrelation and profound spiritual significance.  In a time when popular practices and attitudes concerning marriage and sexuality reflect contemporary cultural trends far more than Orthodox teaching, a crucial calling of the parish is to draw on the resources provided by these sacraments to enable husband and wife to make their common life a sign of the salvation of the world. 

            The challenges in doing so are great.  It is widely accepted today in western culture that marriage and sexuality concern nothing more than the consent of autonomous individuals to order their intimate and familial affairs as they see fit.  The same may be said of religious affiliation, which serves the preferences of individuals for meeting their perceived needs in a spiritual setting that increasingly resembles a commercial marketplace. Trends in both areas underwrite an individualistic view of life for which God becomes irrelevant or an idol crafted in one’s own image.[2]

This paper makes three primary claims about the interrelation of Eucharist and marriage in response to these cultural dynamics.[3]  First, Orthodoxy understands Eucharist and marriage to enact covenantal communions that change the very identity of those who share in them. Together with these new identities come obligations to fulfill the calling that participation brings.  Second, Eucharist and marriage involve physical actions that transcend the merely physical in their significance.  They thus contradict the Gnostic tendency to separate “body” and “person” so common in both past and present cultural sensibilities, especially with reference to sexuality.  Third, both sacraments share a common motif of sacrifice, as husband and wife wear the crowns of martyrdom in holy matrimony as they offer themselves and one another to the Lord with whom they commune in the Eucharist.  The interrelation of these holy mysteries concerns the  fulfillment of the human person and, ultimately, of the creation itself in Christ.

  The first theme of covenantal communion, which is shared by Eucharist and marriage, is present from the beginning of the biblical narrative with reference to the relationship between man and woman.  The Genesis reference to marriage as a “one flesh” union concerns not merely the momentary joining of bodies, but the full personal union of two people, created as male and female in the image and likeness of God.  Jesus Christ interpreted this passage in Matthew 19:6 with reference to the permanence appropriate to marriage:  “So they are no longer two, but one flesh.  What God has joined together, let no one separate.”   References in the Old Testament to Yahweh as the husband of Israel, and of His faithfulness to her despite her infidelity, are surely more consistent with a view of marriage as an abiding covenant than as a merely legal contract easily dissolved when a party does not meet its requirements.  (Hos. 2:19ff.)

Since Christ compared the heavenly kingdom to a wedding feast with some frequency, and performed His first sign in John’s gospel at a marriage banquet, commonalities between Eucharist and marriage should not be surprising. The covenantal nature of marriage is not arbitrary, but reflects the intimate union of man and woman as “one flesh.”  For example, in his response to the sexual libertines of Corinth, St. Paul argues that even casual sexual encounters with prostitutes accomplish this one flesh union.  Sexual intimacy is so profound that he compares its gravity to joining oneself with Christ.   He asks rhetorically “Shall I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute?  Never!  Do you not know that he who joins himself to a prostitute becomes one body with her?  For as it is written ‘The two shall become one flesh.’   But he who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him.” (1 Cor. 6: 15-17)  For St. Paul, profound matters of identity are at stake in all acts of sexual intimacy, for they concern our participation in covenantal relations with the Lord and with another human being.  

            Likewise, St. Paul stressed to the Corinthians that the Eucharist enacts a deep personal union both with Christ and one another in His Body, the Church.  “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?  The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ.  Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” (10:16-18) Eucharistic communion with the Lord is so real that participating in it unworthily, “without discerning the body,” brings judgment and even death.  (11: 28-30)  Even as we can profane the martial nature of intercourse by relations with prostitutes or other forms of promiscuity, we can profane the Eucharist by not being rightly in communion with the Lord and other members of the His Body, the Church.  Such actions fall short of the covenantal nature of both sacraments.  Those who perform them disorient themselves from the fulfillment of the salvific purposes God seeks to accomplish through these holy mysteries.   

            Since St. Paul presents both marriage and the Eucharist as such profound acts of union, it is not surprising that he uses the marital imagery of “one flesh” in Ephesians 5: 31-32 as a sign of the relationship between Christ and the Church.  Likewise in 2 Corinthians 11:2, he states that he “I betrothed you to Christ to present you as a pure bride to her one husband.”  Various church fathers make similar connections between marriage, Eucharist, and the Church.  For example, after describing how the “one flesh” union of marriage includes husband, wife, and child, St. John Chrysostom notes that “Our relationship to Christ is the same; we become one flesh with Him through communion…”[4] St. Nicholas Cabasilas also affirmed also that, through the Eucharist and the other holy mysteries, “Christ comes into us and dwells in us, He is united to us and grows into one with us” such that we “become one flesh with Him.”[5]  Such references indicate that the marital union of husband and wife is so profound that it is a fitting image for both the sacramental and ecclesial dimensions of the Christian life.   As Vigen Guroian notes,

The Orthodox Church describes sexual intercourse as synousia, a term which means consubstantiality.  Husband and wife are joined together as one in holy matrimony.  They are an ecclesial entity, one flesh, one body incorporate of two persons who in freedom and sexual love and through their relationship to Christ image the triune life of the Godhead and express the mystery of salvation in Christ’s relationship to the Church.[6] 

            For man and woman to “express the mystery of salvation in Christ’s relationship to the Church” is to fulfill their primordial calling as those created in the image and likeness of God.  Their communion with one another is to become a sign of their communion with the Lord in the Eucharist and the Church.  They are no longer isolated individuals, but members of a “one flesh” union that joins them profoundly to the spouse, the Lord, and His Body.     

            A second theme connecting Eucharist and marriage is that they both involve physical actions which have a significance that extends beyond the merely physical.  As St. Paul instructed the Corinthians, even momentary physical joining with a prostitute results in a unity parallel in significance to one’s unity with Christ. The physical gestures of intercourse obviously have a decisive shaping role in the lives of people in so many ways, both for good and for bad.  Simply to describe such actions with biological precision does not convey their full significance—spiritually, morally, psychologically, or socially. Indeed, such disparate acts as adultery, rape, incest, and faithful conjugal union are not distinguished merely by descriptions of bodily actions.

            Likewise, an account of the physical movements involved in the Eucharist does not plumb the depths of their meaning.  As Fr. Alexander Schmemann taught, an absolute division of symbol and reality in sacramental theology is contrary to the experience of the Church, for the sacraments manifest, realize, and reveal what they symbolize.  It is through participation in them that human beings participate in the life of God in a way that is both real and mystical.[7]   Paul Evdokimov made the similar point that the Holy Mysteries “do not merely give, but contain, grace and are channels; they are at the same time the instruments of salvation and salvation itself, as is the Church.”[8]  While the Eucharist involves the same physical capacities for eating and drinking as are used at any meal, its significance is nothing short of “one flesh” union with Christ in the heavenly banquet.

            In a parallel fashion, it is impossible to separate with complete clarity the physical joining of husband and wife in intercourse from any other dimension of their shared life.  Their physical union is inextricably entwined with the various dimensions of their relationship, including parenthood and the multilayered aspects of their identity as a couple and members of a family.  The physical symbol of their union manifests the reality of their marriage as persons at a deep level.   Likewise, the eating and drinking of the Eucharist is an epiphany of true participation in the life of the Lord and His heavenly kingdom. This close identification is reflected in Christ’s teaching, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.”  (John 6:53)  In both marriage and Eucharist, physical gestures function as epiphanies of grace and full participation in the life of another.  To regard them as anything less than manifestations of covenantal communion is to degrade their significance.

            These claims reflect the Incarnational theology of Orthodoxy, as Jesus Christ is both fully divine and fully human.  Divinity, then, is not a stranger to physicality, but joined with it in the Person of Christ.  The God-Man performed many physical signs and gestures that conveyed the fullness of God’s kingdom for those enduring bodily struggles such as hunger, sickness, and even death.  In this light, salvation is not an escape from physicality, but its fulfillment, restoration, and ultimate transformation in the heavenly reign.

As St. Paul taught, the Lord’s bodily resurrection is the “first fruits” of hope for the blessing of the entire creation, including its material aspects, in the eschatological Kingdom.  (1 Cor. 15:20)  In arguing that “the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord,” he appeals to Christ’s resurrection as the basis of our hope to also be raised up by God.  In contrast to the Gnostic inclinations of his libertine opponents, St. Paul reminds the Corinthians that their bodies are both members of Christ and temples of the Holy Spirit.  (1 Cor. 6:15, 19).  Since God intends whole human beings—body, soul, and spirit-- to participate in heavenly glory, how one lives in the physicality of the body plays a decisive role in one’s faithfulness to the incarnate Son of God, now risen and ascended bodily into heaven.

In this context, the body is neither intrinsically evil nor spiritually irrelevant.  And given Christ’s use of the wedding feast as an image of the heavenly banquet, as well as the marital imagery of Revelation (e.g., 19:7-9, 21:2) for the consummation of all things, it is certainly not merely coincidental that the fulfillment of the relationship between man and woman has figured so prominently in the eschatological hope of Christianity from its origins. From the “one flesh” language of Genesis to the marriage banquet of the Lamb in Revelation, God brings those created male and female in His image and likeness more fully into communion with Him and one another. Their “one flesh” union finds its fulfillment in the heavenly banquet in which husband and wife participate already as they wear the crowns of the Kingdom.  They stand together in the unfolding narrative of the fulfillment of God’s gracious intensions for human beings to become participants in the loving communion of the Holy Trinity.        

            God’s salvation is the fulfillment, not the annihilation, of His good creation, including the physical dimensions of our existence. Especially with reference to marriage, Chrysostom taught that the desires of husband and wife for one another are not simply evil, but a dimension of human nature “still basically good after the Fall.”[9]  Because “Marriage is honorable and the bed undefiled,” Chrysostom chided husbands for excusing themselves from services after intimate union with their wives.  His affirmed that God has created man and woman as “ontologically ideal counterpart[s].”[10] Indeed, “husband and wife are one body in the same way as Christ and the Father are one.” [11] Marriage provides a “safe haven” for the fulfillment of desire and the most intimate union of man and woman “to be a living image, or icon, of the marriage of Christ the Bridegroom with His Bride, the Church.”[12]  Here the “one flesh” union of husband and wife finds its natural and eschatological culmination.

Physical hunger and thirst, together with the social and communal dimensions of table fellowship, also find their completion in the heavenly banquet in which communicants participate mystically in the Eucharist.  Even as marriage plays a key role in the biblical drama, so do meals. The Passover seder is the Jews’ ongoing participation in the salvation of the Hebrew people from slavery and death in Egypt at the time of the Exodus. In the context of Passover, Christ reveals that He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.  To eat His flesh and drink His blood is to participate in a new covenant of deliverance from death itself.   The requirement of nourishment for physical existence becomes the basis for profound spiritual imagery which underwrites the importance of bodily actions for matters beyond what they typically signify in this world.  In the context of historic Christian faith, marital union and table fellowship both become channels of participation in God’s reign.

The third theme of commonality for the Eucharist and marriage is that of sacrifice.  The connection is obvious with reference to the Eucharist in which communicants receive the Body and Blood of the true Passover Lamb.  Participation in the spiritual sacrifice of the Eucharist calls and enables communicants to join themselves to the one offering of the Son as they lift up  every dimension of their lives to the Holy Trinity for blessing and fulfillment. 

Perhaps less explicit are the sacrificial themes of marriage, though they are also profound.  For example, St. Paul teaches that spouses should “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ” and that husbands should love their wives “as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”  (Eph. 5:21ff)   In becoming “one flesh,” both spouses sacrifice the identity of autonomous individuals and enter into a joint ascetical struggle of dying to their self-centeredness out of love for the other.  In this sense, Chrysostom notes that “it is possible for us to surpass all others in virtue by becoming good husbands and wives.”[13]

 The challenges of offering their common life to the Lord-- in all its interpersonal, economic, and physical aspects—presents a myriad of a opportunities for spiritual growth to the man and the woman, both as unique persons and as a couple.   Faithful marriage places their erotic love in a context directed toward the Kingdom, to the fulfillment of all human desire in union with the Holy Trinity.  From the marriage service itself, in which husband and wife wear martyrs’ crowns of the Kingdom, their union is directed toward theosis, the fulfillment of their primordial calling together in the image and likeness of God.  As Guroian comments,

God has intended from all eternity that she [the Church] and Christ should be united as Bride and Groom so that the world might be saved from sin and death.  Christian marriage is a sign and foretaste of a world reconciled in Christ to God.  That is no mere analogy, but belongs to the deepest symbolism that God has built into the fabric of his creation.  God created and constituted man and woman as complementary beings who in union constitute a single humanity, a single Adam-Eve existence.  In marriage, man-and-woman-together is a sacramental sign of the union of Christ and the Church.[14]

Christian marriage is an ongoing participation in the Eucharist, in the heavenly wedding banquet that manifests God’s salvation.  The humble physical elements of bread and wine find fulfillment as the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist and become our participation in the life of heaven.  Likewise, the intimate personal union of man and woman becomes in holy matrimony their entrance to the heavenly realm, their participation by grace in the life of the Holy Trinity as distinct persons sharing a common life and love.  For human beings to do that requires profound asceticism as they become more fully communicants and participants in Christ’s sacrifice for the life of the world.

Their ascetical offering helps to restore man and woman to their natural state in God’s image and likeness. St. John of Damascus taught that “Repentance is the returning from the unnatural to the natural state, from the devil to God, through discipline and repentance.”[15]  The return to the natural state is a process of the healing of the soul from slavery to the passions, which requires in marriage a sacrificial offering of both spouses in accordance with God’s salvific purposes.  There certainly is a difference between desire in accord with humanity’s God-given nature and the passions that disorient and distort those desires. For example, Chrysostom observed that “The body has a natural desire, not however for fornication, or for adultery, but simply for sexual intercourse.  The body has a natural desire not for gluttony, but simply for nourishment, and not for drunkenness, but simply for drink.”[16] The sacrificial offering of marriage directs those innate desires to their proper end of bringing man and woman more fully in union with one another and with the Lord.   

St. Gregory Palamas describes insightfully the ascetical struggle of sacrifice: 

Will not the passionate part of the soul, as a result of this [ascetical] violence, be also brought to act according to the commandments?  Such forcing, by dint of habituation, makes easy our acceptance of God’s commandments, and transforms our changeable disposition into a fixed state.  This condition brings about a steady hatred towards evil states and dispositions of the soul; and hatred of evil duly produces the impassibility which in turn engenders love for the unique Good. Thus one must offer to God the passionate part of the soul, alive and active, that it may be a living sacrifice.[17]

Such asceticism is neither an escape from nor a repudiation of the body, but instead the participation of the body—as well as the whole person-- in holiness.  As Palamas noted, “so, too, in the case of those who have elevated their minds to God and exalted their souls with divine longing, their flesh also is being transformed and elevated, participating together with the soul in the divine communion, and becoming itself a dwelling and possession of God; for it is no longer the seat of enmity towards God, and no longer possesses desires contrary to the Spirit.”[18] While this statement arises from a monastic context, it is certainly applicable to those who live in the world, including married couples. Marital asceticism does traditionally concern restraint in matters of intimacy, but it is surely not limited to them. Through the many struggles of their shared life, husband and wife possess an almost limitless number of opportunities to deny themselves out of love for one another, their children, and family members.  For example, Chrysostom advised married couples to

Pray together at home and go to Church; when you come back home, let each ask the other the meaning of the readings and prayers.  If you are overtaken by poverty, remember Peter and Paul, who were more honored than kings or rich men, though they spent their lives in hunger and thirst.  Remind one another that nothing in life is to be feared, except offending God.  If your marriage is like this, your perfection will rival the holiest of monks.[19]   

Fr. Stanley Harakas observes that marriage and family provide the context “in which most Orthodox Christians…grow toward theosis.”  Given the great challenges presented to holiness by difficulties encountered in family life, he notes that a relationship which images the loving union of the Holy Trinity is possible only when the spouses intentionally offer themselves to God as the “third partner” in the marriage. In such a context, husband and wife may “contribute to making the home—for parents and children alike—a workshop for growth toward theosis.”[20]

The common Orthodox ascetical practice of periodic abstinence from marital relations must be seen in proper context, for it does not imply that sexual union is sinful or should be repudiated by all married couples.  Fr. John Chryssavgis notes that the petitions of the wedding service itself present chastity as “the integrity of the human person” open to the couple, not simply as physical virginity.  In prayers that recall fertile married couples from the Old Testament and pray for similar blessings for the bride and groom, the service “shows no reservation towards sexuality, no trace of despicability, or even suspicion.”[21] From its first centuries, the Church has rejected Gnostic and Manichean condemnations of the goodness of the physical body, as well as of sexual union in marriage.  St. Gregory the Theologian affirmed marriage with great rhetorical force:    

Are you not yet wedded to flesh?  Fear not this consecration; you are pure even after marriage.  I will take the risk of that.  I will join you in wedlock.  I will dress the bride.  We do not dishonor marriage because we give a higher honor to virginity.  I will imitate Christ, the pure Groomsman and Bridegroom, as He both wrought a miracle at a wedding and honored wedlock by His presence.  Only let marriage be pure and unmingled with filthy lusts.  This only I ask:  receive safety from the Gift and give to the Gift the oblation of chastity in its due season, when the fixed time of prayer comes around.[22]

  Marital fasting is a tool for directing the desires of husband and wife to God and for the healing of unhealthy passions.  When couples agree to abstain from relations in order to devote themselves to more focused prayer for a period of time, they direct their desire for communion ultimately to the heavenly banquet of which their marital union is a sign.  They recognize that even the most blessed marriage on earth does not manifest fully the “one flesh” union with one another and with God to which they are called.  As H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., notes, the marital fast enables spouses to “seek enjoyment without being distracted by a self-indulgence that turns one’s heart from God…The goal is to delight in God’s creation without being mastered by this delight, to find in this enjoyment rightly taken an opportunity through which to pass beyond this enjoyment to His Kingdom…”[23] The point is not legalism, but eschatological hope for greater participation in the life of God by the man and woman who wear the crowns of the Kingdom.  Evdokimov notes on these matters that “the Church offers only elements for a basis of judgment.  She exerts no constraint; her task is to free man [and woman] from all forms of enslavement in order to make him [and her]… free citizen[s] of the Kingdom.”[24]

 A parallel with the Eucharist is helpful here.  Fasting from food does not imply that the fruits of the earth are evil.  The problem is that corrupt human beings typically have unnatural attachments to food, drink, and other sources of pleasure.  Fasting provides an opportunity to reorient one’s desires for fulfillment from the stomach to the Lord and to keep the blessing of physical nourishment in its proper place. Moreover, the innate human desires for food and drink are not evil in themselves.  But they certainly are corrupted and play a paradigmatic role in the disintegration of humanity from the beginning of the biblical narrative.  In the Eucharist, however, the very purposes of physical nourishment are fulfilled and restored as bread and wine become our participation in the life and fellowship of heaven.    

In order to feast rightly at the heavenly banquet, we must fast at times from lesser ones. Self-restraint with reference to physical appetites is necessary for the celebration of the Eucharist.  The servers must certainly refrain from consuming the gifts before the service begins.  The self-restraint of fasting from other food and drink in preparation for the Eucharistic feast does not imply that the desire to satisfy daily hunger and thirst are somehow sinful, but instead reorients our appetites toward communion with God and one another.  As with marriage, some level of sacrifice is necessary in order to participate in the fullness of the blessings already foreshadowed in the world as we know it.  While Eucharist and marriage do not call those who participate in them to abstain completely from the bodily pleasures of nourishment or intimacy, they do call for spouses and communicants to join their lives more fully to the one offering of the Son, which requires ascetical struggle in various forms.  In both holy mysteries, humble human gifts become our true personal participation in the heavenly banquet. 

The greatest challenges in integrating Eucharist and marriage are not theoretical, as the texts of the services and the writings of ancient and contemporary teachers describe them clearly.  In our ever changing world, however, it is difficult to form men, women, and youth in ways that enable them to embrace the deep connections of these holy mysteries.  Perhaps a first step in that direction is to resist the division between “religion” and “real life” so commonly assumed in modern western culture. The conventional wisdom, adopted at least in practice by many Orthodox, is that the distinctive teachings of the faith amount to little more than sectarian idiosyncrasies that must be relegated to the private sphere, where they become matters of mere personal preference that have little to do with fulfilling the nature of the human person.[25]  If Orthodox Christians are to make a credible witness to the new life of the Kingdom, they must be formed through their parishes and families to embrace a distinctive vocation.  They must do so, not as a matter of arbitrary sectarian preference or escape from reality, but as a persuasive sign that the path they pursue is truly the salvation of the world. Parishioners must show in their own lives that Eucharist and marriage serve the healing of human brokenness, not simply religious ceremonies or antiquated customs.

In order for the laity to live out this vocation with integrity, clergy, catechists, and other teachers must instruct them on the deep interrelatedness of Eucharist and marriage.  Since these holy mysteries are frequently celebrated and quite familiar to parishioners, there is no shortage of opportunities to challenge the laity to grow in their understanding of how they impact daily life.   It is also necessary to identify and reject popular ideas and practices that corrupt the beliefs and behavior of so many parishioners on questions of marriage, sexuality, and family.  If the Church does not address these matters explicitly and effectively, it should not be surprising when the dominant ethos of our times influences parishioners profoundly and negatively.

 Of equal importance is the need to present the ascetical dimensions of the Eucharist life and of marriage in ways that are not reduced to legalism or rote traditionalism.  Since the matters at stake very much concern bodily appetites, parishioners will find strength in fighting their passions and reorienting their natural desires in holy ways through appropriate forms of self-denial with food and other sources of pleasure.    

The Eucharistic theology of Schmemann is helpful at this point, for he teaches that

the world to come in which we participate in the Divine Liturgy is our same world, already perfected in Christ, but not yet in us.  And since God has created the world as food for us and given us food as means of communion with Him, of life in Him, the new food of the new life which we receive from God in His Kingdom is Christ Himself.  He is our bread—because from the very beginning all our hunger was a hunger for Him and all our bread was a symbol of Him, a symbol that had to become reality….and all food, therefore, must lead us to Him.[26]

Christ did not obliterate hunger, food, or the body.  Instead, He fulfilled them, making them more real as channels of participation in the blessedness of the Kingdom. It is incumbent upon those who receive the Eucharist to display a life in this world which bears witness to Christ’s divinization of the human being. Our participation in the Eucharistic offering is not limited to the service of the Divine Liturgy, but must permeate every dimension of our life in the world, including what secular society thinks of as the “real life” matters at stake in sex, marriage, and family. Otherwise, we have failed to embrace the truth that “Christ has offered all that exists…We are included in the Eucharist of Christ and Christ is our Eucharist.”[27] Hence, Schmemann claims that the calling of the priesthood is “to reveal to each vocation its priestly essence, to make the whole life of all men the liturgy of the Kingdom, to reveal the Church as the royal priesthood of the redeemed world.”[28]

Schmemann teaches that the same is true of holy matrimony, for the entrance of bride and groom into the Church “does not merely symbolize, but indeed is the entrance of marriage into the Church, which is the entrance of world into ‘the world to come’, the procession of the people of God—in Christ—into the Kingdom.” The glory of humankind as the king of creation in Genesis finds fulfillment in each new family blessed as “a kingdom, a little church, and therefore a sacrament of and way to the Kingdom.”[29]  The spouses’ crowns of martyrdom reject the idolization of the family—and of romance, sex, social respectability, personal happiness and of other worldly values—and serve as signs of the ultimate reality in which their marriage enables them to participate.[30] The common vocation of human beings is also that of married people: “to follow Christ in the fullness of His priesthood:  in His love for man and the world, His love for their ultimate fulfillment in the abundant life of the Kingdom.”[31]  

In a world with very different understandings of what marriage is about, Orthodoxy calls husbands and wives to live eucharistically. The Church today must discern how to form communicants and spouses who recognize and embrace the deep interrelation of Eucharist and marriage as signs of the salvation of the world.  To do so is not only for the extraordinarily pious or merely a charming idiosyncrasy of a particular religious or ethnic heritage.  It is, instead, an imperative that arises from our very nature as human beings in the image and likeness of God, who invites man and woman to dine at the heavenly banquet and to wear the martyrs’ crowns of those who find new life in His Kingdom.                      

                   

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[1] This paper was presented at the International Symposium on “The Mission of the Parish and the Monastery in a Continuously Changing World,” Faculty of Orthodox Theology, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, November 3, 2015.

[2] Christos Yannaras, The Freedom of Morality (Crestwood, NY:  St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984), 224, observes that “People do not gather in the churches to constitute the body of the Church, to manifest and realize the true life of the communion of persons; they come to satisfy their individual religious needs and pray as individuals, in parallel with the rest of the congregation, more alone perhaps than on the sports-ground or at the cinema.”

[3] This paper draws on earlier treatments of these themes in Philip LeMasters, Toward a Eucharistic Vision of Church, Family, Marriage, and Sex (Minneapolis, MN:  Light & Life Publishing Co., 2004), 52ff.  For discussions of the relationship between Eucharist and marriage, see also John Meyendorff, Marriage:  An Orthodox Perspective (Crestwood, NY:  St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984), 20-24; and John Breck, The Sacred Gift of Life:  Orthodox Christianity and Bioethics (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000), 93.

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

[5] St. Nicholas Cabasilas, The Life in Christ (Crestwood, NY:  St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998), 60-61.

[6] Vigen Guroian, Incarnate Love (Notre Dame, IN:  University of Notre Dame Press, 1987), 87-88.

[7] Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World (Crestwood, NY:  St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998), 135ff., 140-141.

[8] Paul Evdokimov, The Sacrament of Love (Crestwood, NY:  St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995), 124.

[9] David C. Ford, Women and Men in the Early Church:  The Full Views of St. John Chrysostom (South Canaan, PA: St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 1996), 47.

[10] Ford, Women and Men in the Early Church, 51-54. See also Lawrence R. Farley, One Flesh:  Salvation Through Marriage in the Orthodox Church (Chesterton, IN:  Ancient Faith Publishing, 2013), 93ff.

[11] St. John Chrysostom, “Homily 20,” On Marriage and Family Life, 52.

[12] Ford, Women and Men in the Early Church, 67-68.

[13] St. John Chrysostom, “Homily 20,” On Marriage and Family Life, 57.

[14] Guroian, Rallying the Really Human Things:  The Moral Imagination in Politics, Literature, and Every Day Life (Wilmington, DE:  ISI Books, 2005), 127.

[15] St. John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Bk. 2, Ch. XXX in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 9, 43.

[16] St. John Chrysostom, Homily V on Ephesians as quoted in Ford, Women and Men in the Early Church, 131.

[17] St. Gregory Palamas, The Triads (Mahwah, NY:  Paulist Press, 1983), 55, II.ii.20.

[18] St. Gregory Palamas, The Triads, 47-48, I.ii.1.

[19] St. John Chrysostom, “Homily 20,” On Marriage and Family Life, 61-62.

[20] Stanley Harakas, Living the Faith (Minneapolis, MN:  Light & Life Publishing Co., 1993), 241-242, 245, 254.

[21] John Chryssavgis, Love, Sexuality, and the Sacrament of Marriage (Brookline, MA:  Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2005), 25-26.

[22] St. Gregory the Theologian, “Oration 40,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2^nd series, Vol. 7, 365, as cited in Ford, Women and Men in the Early Church, 32-33.  This discussion of marital asceticism draws on an earlier treatment of these themes in LeMasters, The Goodness of God’s Creation:  How to Live as an Orthodox Christian (Salisbury, MA:  Regina Orthodox Press, 2008), 25ff.

[23] H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., The Foundations of Christian Bioethics (Lisse:  Swets & Zeitlinger Publishers, 2000), 243-244.

[24] Evdokimov, 176.

[25] The practices and trends of the larger society present temptations too strong to be resisted by simple appeals to preference or the curious habits of religious groups.  It is one thing to affirm religious liberty in the social sphere out of respect for the freedom of persons to believe and worship as choose. It is another, however, to make secularism normative in a way that obscures the urgency of the Church’s vocation to call human beings to become more fully who God created them to be in His image likeness.

[26] Schmemann, For the Life of the World, 43.

[27] Schmemann, 36.

[28]Schmemann, 93. 

[29] SChmemann, 89.

[30] Schmemann, 91.

[31] Schmemann, 94.

Clothing the Naked Adam with a Robe of LIght: Homily for the Sunday after Theophany (Epiphany) in the Orthodox Church

           Today we continue to celebrate the season of Epiphany, of Christ’s baptism in the Jordan when He is identified as the Son of God by voice of the Father and the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. It is a festive time of holy water and house blessings, of reveling in the good news that the Savior has appeared and illumined our world of darkness.  In doing so, He restores us, and the creation itself, to the ancient glory for which we were created.   Unfortunately, our first parents turned away from that glory and ushered in the realm of mortality and corruption that we know all too well.  The great feast of Epiphany makes clear that Christ Himself is the path to healing from their and our disease.  He appears in order to raise us up from the low estate to which we had fallen.               Remember that God gave Adam and Eve garments of skin when they left paradise after turning away from Him.  Through their disobedience, they had become aware that they were naked and were cast into the world as we know it.  Their nakedness showed that they had repudiated their calling to be in the image and likeness of God.  Having stripped themselves of their original glory, they were reduced to mortal flesh and destined for slavery to their passions and the grave.   Because of them, the creation itself was “subjected to futility…” (Rom. 8:20)

            As we prepared for Theophany last Sunday, we heard this hymn:  “Make ready, O Zebulon, and prepare, O Nephtali, and you, River Jordan, cease your flow and receive with joy the Master coming to be baptized. And you, Adam, rejoice with the first mother, and hide not yourselves as you did of old in paradise; for having seen you naked, He appeared to clothe you with the first robe. Yea, Christ has appeared desiring to renew the whole creation.”   If it seems strange to think of Christ being baptized in order to clothe Adam and Eve, remember St. Paul’s teaching that “as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”  (Gal. 3:27) In the Orthodox baptismal service, the priest puts a white garment on the newly baptized person immediately after he or she comes out of the water with the words “the servant of God is clothed with righteousness…”   Then the chanter sings “Grant to me the robe of light, O Most Merciful Christ our God, Who clothes Yourself with light as with a garment.”

            In baptism, Jesus Christ clothes us with a garment of light, restoring us to our original vocation in the image and likeness of God.  He saves us from the nakedness of being reduced to mortality and the vulnerability of being enslaved to our own passions.  He is baptized in order to save Adam and Eve, all of their descendants, and the entire creation, fulfilling the glorious purposes for which He breathed life into us in the first place.   Through His and our baptism, He makes us participants in His divinized humanity.

That does not mean, however, that the rest of our lives after baptism will be perfect in every way without pain, disease, sin, or death.  Recall that, in the aftermath of Christ’s birth, the wicked Herod had all the young boys in the region of Bethlehem murdered. Today’s gospel text begins with a reference to the arrest of St. John the Baptist for his prophetic denunciation of the sins of the royal family.  St. Matthew tells us that the Lord’s going to “Galilee of the Gentiles” to begin His public ministry fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy that “’the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.’” 

Those who suffered under the oppression of Herod and the Roman Empire knew all too well about darkness and death.  The countless victims of war, terrorism, persecution, and other crimes around the world today certainly do also.  We are not strangers to them either when we mourn lost loved ones and broken relationships or struggle with illness and pain. And if we will acknowledge the truth about our own dark thoughts, words, and desires, and how our actions have harmed others, we will see that in many ways we still prefer the darkness to a robe of light.  When we do so, we prefer the ways of the old Adam to those of the New Adam.  We follow our first parents in choosing nakedness and weakness over divine glory and strength. 

St. John the Forerunner called people to repent in preparation for the coming of the Messiah.  Interestingly, Christ’s preaching after His baptism focused on repentance also:  “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”  We usually do not like being told to repent, perhaps because it offends our pride and we associate it with punishment. True repentance is a very different undertaking, however, fundamentally positive in nature, that focuses on reorienting ourselves toward truth and reality, of walking out of the darkness and into the light, of leaving behind the sorrow and anxiety of naked vulnerability for the joy of being fully clothed as the sons and daughters of God.

True repentance requires offering every dimension of our life to Christ for healing and transformation.  That is one of the reasons that we bless houses with holy water in the weeks following Theophany.  By being baptized in the Jordan, Christ made water holy by fulfilling its original intended purposes to give life, cleanse, and satisfy our deepest thirst.  Holy water manifests Christ’s blessing of the entire creation, extending even to the small details of our daily lives.  In light of our Lord’s baptism, we are always on holy ground; now nothing is intrinsically profane, evil, or cut off from God.  All reality is called to shine forth with holiness.

 Our challenge, then, is to play our role in showing forth the holiness of our bodies, our words, our relationships, our actions, and every aspect of the creation for which we are responsible.  Christ calls each and every one of us uniquely to offer ourselves to Him and to play our distinctive roles in fulfilling His purposes in the world.  By baptism, we already participate in the divinized humanity of Jesus Christ.   We wear the garment of light that He has given us, and  now each of us must actually turn away from sneaking around naked in the garden like Adam and embrace the glory of our salvation personally and intentionally.  That is what repentance is all about, and no one else can do that for us.  Others may pray for us and help us in so many ways, but they cannot repent for us.  Only we ourselves may do that.   

Epiphany is a great feast of our salvation in Jesus Christ.  The eternal Son of God has made a way for us to participate in His divine glory by humbling Himself to be baptized in the waters of the Jordan.  He does so to save Adam and Eve, all their descendants, and the entire creation.  He clothes us in a garment of light in order to cover our nakedness, which had degraded us as slaves to our mortal flesh in a world of death and decay.   So let us joyfully celebrate our Lord’s baptism by remembering that He has already clothed and restored us to our ancient dignity in His image and likeness.  Let us drink and sprinkle holy water as a sign that we must play our unique roles in making every dimension of our lives an icon of God’s holiness.  In other words, let us behave each day as those who have put on Christ.  Let us shine with the great glory that He has given us both through His birth and His baptism. There is no better way to bear witness that the prophecy really has been fulfilled:  “[T]he people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.” Yes, the good news of this feast extends even to you and me. That is surely cause for celebration. 

Time to Straighten What is Crooked: Homily for the Sunday Before Theophany (Epiphany) in the Orthodox Church

Today is the Sunday before the Feast of Theophany or Epiphany, when we will celebrate Christ’s baptism in the river Jordan and the revelation that He is truly the Son of God.  His divinity is manifest, is shown openly, when—at His baptism-- the voice of the Father declares “You are my beloved Son” and the Holy Spirit descends upon Him in the form of a dove.  Epiphany shows us that Jesus Christ is not merely a great religious teacher or moral example.  He is truly God—a member of the Holy Trinity-- and His salvation permeates His entire creation, including the water of the river Jordan.  Through His and our baptism, we become participants in the holy mystery of salvation.    

Think for a moment how stunning these statements about Jesus Christ as God would be to those who knew Him before He began His public ministry.  St. Luke records that the Theotokos and St. Joseph were shocked to find the12-year-old Savior discussing the Law in the Temple in Jerusalem with the elders.  The witness of the angelic choirs, the visit of the wise men, and all the wonder of the events surrounding His birth were apparently forgotten or unknown by the disciples and the religious and political leaders of the day.  The gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke record these events, but do not tell us that they figured prominently during His earthly ministry.

Moreover, no one expected a Messiah who was both God and man.  The word “messiah” means “anointed one,” and most Jews were looking for a leader who would deliver them from Roman oppression and lead Israel to political power and independence.  Christ’s own disciples thought of Him in those terms until after His resurrection.  Even those closest to the Lord had great difficulty accepting that He was not an earthly king, the kind of Messiah they had grown up expecting.  How difficult it was for anyone to accept that Jesus Christ is truly the Son of God, the incarnate second Person of the Holy Trinity, the divine Word Who spoke the universe into existence.    

Perhaps that is part of the reason that God sent a prophet to prepare the way, to begin opening the hearts and minds of the people for a coming Messiah Who did not fit their preconceived notions.  Of course, few people would be comfortable around St. John the Baptist and Forerunner.  He was a strict ascetic, living in the desert, eating bugs and honey, and wearing camel skin.  Like many of the Old Testament prophets before Him, St. John was outrageously bold.  In addition to his shocking appearance and lifestyle, his message was severe to the point of being insulting.  He proclaimed God’s truth and did not care who might be offended.  Instead of gently welcoming the Pharisees and Sadducees into his movement, St. John mocked them as a brood of vipers—a bunch of slimy snakes.  He told the rich to share with the poor, soldiers to stop abusing their authority, and tax collectors to stop stealing from the people.  He went beyond offending those powerful groups by criticizing the immorality of the royal family and lost his head as a result.

God began to shake up Israel with St. John the Baptist, the Forerunner of our Lord.  He began to open their eyes to a Messiah Whom they did not expect.  Gentle words from a respectable rabbi would not cut it; everyone had seen and heard that before.  They needed a call to repentance from a wild and holy man who was absolutely fearless in calling the people to repent, to change the direction they were going in relation to God and neighbor.  They were to make straight whatever crookedness there was in their lives.  They were to stop violating God’s requirements for how to live.  No one was to say, “But I am a child of Abraham or a religious leader or a well-respected person, so repentance is not for me.”  He called everyone to greater holiness, to serving God more faithfully than they had done before.

As we prepare for the Feast of Theophany, St. John’s message should ring loudly in our ears today, right here and now.  For even more than the Jews of old, we must bring our lives in line with God’s salvation in Jesus Christ because we have already received the fulfillment of the promise, the fullness of the blessing.  Having celebrated His birth as Orthodox Christians, we already know that our Savior is the Son of God.  The Holy Spirit dwells in our hearts and we are members of the Christ’s own Body, the Church.  Nonetheless, every single one of us has much room to grow in living according to the great truth that we have received, for our lives have not yet become perfect epiphanies of what Christ’s salvation means for human beings. 

It would be different if the Epiphany of Jesus Christ as the Son of God were merely an idea or concept to be grasped as an abstract truth, like a mathematical equation.  Perhaps then we could be satisfied with giving the correct doctrinal answer.  The spiritual life is not like that, however, because this feast calls us to be in right relationship with the One who unites humanity and divinity in Himself.    In order for our Lord’s epiphany to occur in us, every dimension of who we are as we live and breathe in this world must be transformed by His divine glory.  His life must become ours.  Like an iron left in the fire, we are to participate in Him fully, sharing in a communion ultimately beyond words and radiating the glory of His divine salvation.  

The hard truth is that repentance is essential for opening ourselves to the life of Christ.   No, this calling is not to a self-righteous legalism that allegedly earns salvation or somehow impresses God.  That would be impossible. We must do our part, however, cooperating with the great mercy of Christ, actively receiving and responding to Him in ways that make straight what is crooked in our lives.  Like those who first heard the Forerunner, we have  become too comfortable with life on our own terms, perhaps thinking that our religious, ethnic, or national heritage lets us off the hook as God’s favorites, as those who are respectable and decent and therefore do not have to worry about repentance.   “At least we are better than those groups we love to hate,” the Jews thought of the Gentiles and we might think of whomever we do not like or whom we fear for whatever reason.  St. John would have no patience with such foolishness, of course.  As he did to the Jews of the first century, he would tell us to wake up, abandon our excuses, and stop trying to turn God into an idol that pats us on the back and serves our agendas.  He would call us, instead, to become true icons of our Lord, to participate as fully as we can in the divine healing and transformation of Jesus Christ.  Those who have died to sin and been raised to new life in Him, those who have put on Christ in baptism, must live in a manner that manifests the holy union of God and humanity that our Savior embodies.  

So let us prepare for the great feast of Christ’s baptism by straightening the crooked areas of our lives.  Instead of finding ways to ignore the Forerunner, let us take his sobering message to heart.  For the Messiah is born and is on His way to the Jordan where His divinity will be made clear.  Will we have the eyes to see His glory?  Will we be ready for Him?  There is only one way to prepare and that is to repent, to turn away from everything that hinders our full participation in the divine glory that He brings to all who bear His image and likeness and to the entire creation. That is what His baptism makes possible for us, but we must prepare by repentance in order to share personally in this great mystery of our salvation. 

Celebrating Christmas in a World that Still Needs the Prince of Peace: Homily for the Protomartyr Stephen the Archdeacon and the Sunday After the Nativity of Christ

Acts 6:8-7:5, 47-60

Matthew 2:13-23

Christ is born!  Glorify Him!

            With all the beauty, glory, and majesty of the birth of the Son of God that we celebrate in this blessed season of Christmas, it is easy to overlook aspects of the story that are quite disturbing.  It is tempting to view His appearance as the Babe of Bethlehem through rose-colored glasses in a sentimental way, as though all were sweetness and light in the world that He came to save.  Today’s gospel and epistle readings will not let us remain in that naïve state for long, however, for they remind us powerfully of the tension between the our Lord’s Kingdom and the kingdoms of the world.  In doing so, they show us why the world needed, and still needs, a Savior Who is the Prince of Peace.

             For even as an infant, He was perceived as such a threat by the wicked King Herod that he wanted to kill Christ.  Herod ruled Judea under the authority of Rome, and he was certainly not looking for a Messiah to threaten that arrangement. Like most everyone else, he must have thought of the Messiah as a political and military leader who would deliver Israel from Roman occupation.  He was surely terrified to hear that Persian astrologers had traveled so far to worship a newborn King of the Jews. When St. Joseph took the Theotokos and the infant Christ to Egypt in order to protect them from Herod, the bloodthirsty tyrant had all the young male children of the region of Bethlehem slaughtered.  He reminds us of the Egyptian Pharaoh who ordered the midwives to kill all the newborn Hebrew boys in Exodus.  

            That is a horrible and shocking detail of the Christmas story, but also a note of realism that the Savior was born in a world every bit as dangerous as the one in which we live, as dangerous as at even the worst moments of human history.  In contrast with the Prince of Peace, Herod’s furious rage of murder serves as an icon of the bitter depravity from which Christ came to save us.  Even from His birth, some rejected Him and would stop at nothing to protect their power. If we ever need a reminder of how far human beings can fall away from our calling to become like God, we need only to remember Herod’s crime of mass murder in response to the news of the Incarnation.

            One of the saints we commemorate today is St. Stephen, who is first on the list of the deacons ordained in Acts for serving the poor in the Christian community.  He also preached so powerfully that opponents brought false charges of blasphemy against him.  St. Stephen did not back down and was stoned to death by those who, like Herod, were threatened and enraged by the good news of Jesus Christ.  We remember Him as the very first Christian martyr.  He made the ultimate witness for the Lord as he accepted a Christ-like death, saw Him in heavenly glory, commended his soul to Christ, and even prayed for the forgiveness of those who killed him.

            From the time of St. Stephen to this very day, God has called and empowered some to make the unique witness of martyrdom, of literally laying down their lives out of faithfulness to the Savior.  Throughout history, the martyrs have been charged with blasphemy of one form or another for refusing to abandon Christ and worship false gods of whatever kind.  In the 20^th century, millions of Christians died for their faith at the hands of the Ottoman Turks, Communists, fascists, and other oppressive groups in various countries.  As we know all too well today, Christians continue to die as martyrs in Iraq, Syria, and other places, especially in the Middle East and Africa, at the hands of extremist Islamic factions.

            Many others follow the example of St. Joseph in fleeing with their families to other countries simply in order to survive.  Some fear that before long there may be no Christians left in the Middle East at all, which would be a terrible tragedy for the part of the world in which Christ was born and where the faith has been present since its origins. We must pray for our brothers and sisters in these troubled lands, continue to give generously for their relief, and do what we can to call their situation to the attention of others who also can help them.  The websites of our Antiochian Archdiocese and of IOCC contain several articles, statements, and other resources on how to respond to the terrible crisis in Syria and the Middle East.  I commend them to you for your prayerful consideration.

            In a world in which many still suffer and die for the Lord, we must remember even during the glorious Christmas season that there remains severe tension between our Lord’s Kingdom and the ways of earthly kingdoms.  The ways of the first Adam are still too much with us, whether in our own souls or in corrupt social orders and political regimes. So when we celebrate the birth of the Second Adam, we are celebrating a new way of being in the world, a new way of living that challenges the hatred and division that come so easily to us.

            It is unlikely that many of us will be called upon to make the witness of actual physical martyrdom, but the God-Man born for our salvation calls us to make His life our own in stark contrast to ways that are comfortable, popular, and easy.  Our martyrdom surely includes bearing witness in our daily lives that something new and holy has come into the world with the birth of the Savior.  It includes fleeing from sin and corruption—in all their forms-- in order to unite ourselves as fully as possible to the One born for our salvation.  Too many in our society view Christmas as simply a quaint cultural festival that provides only an excuse for parties and days off from work or school without any deep spiritual meaning.  Too many think that the birth of the Savior requires nothing of us other than buying presents and visiting family.  It is a good thing to share the joy of the season by socializing and feasting, but we must never reduce the glory of the Incarnation merely to life as usual with a vague festive spirit.  If we do so, we will lose the reason for the season and become so weak spiritually that we will be unable to make a credible witness to the good news of  Jesus Christ.  

            In contrast, we will enter more fully into the joy of Christmas by being faithful in what we believe and how we live. We probably are not called literally to lay down our lives for Him as martyrs, but we must embody His love even for those with whom we are odds, even for those who have wronged us for no apparent reason.  Unlike Herod, we must not be obsessed with worldly power or politics to the point that we demonize those whom we perceive as threats to our agendas.  That is true both in our personal relationships and in our attitudes towards groups of people in our own country and around the globe.  The world already has more than enough of the ways of the first Adam, of those who turn religion, politics, or self-interest in any form into false gods.  We know where that path leads, and Jesus Christ is born to take us in a very different direction to a Kingdom in which martyrs, not blood-thirsty tyrants, receive crowns.  He is born to make us participants in that glorious Reign.   

            Of course, faithfulness to the Lord born at Christmas forbids throwing stones—literally or figuratively--at anyone who criticizes or disagrees with us about religion, morality, or anything else.  Remember that St. Stephen witnessed powerfully for the Savior by dying like Christ did, literally praying for mercy for those who were killing him.  Recall the Lord’s words from the Sermon on the Mount:  “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.…” (Matt. 5: 44-45)  Christ is born so that we may “be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48), so that we may radiate God’s holiness and love as those who are “partakers of the divine nature” by grace.  (2 Peter 1:4)   Let us celebrate the Christmas season by becoming living icons of our Savior’s love, mercy, and forgiveness.  That is why “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” (John 1:14)  He entered in our life so that we could enter into His.  That is why we celebrate this joyous season in a world still so desperately in need of a Savior.

A Gloriously Strange and Mysterious Feast: Homily for Christmas in the Orthodox Church

Christ is Born!  Glorify Him!

          Today we celebrate a feast that is gloriously strange and mysterious. For the Eternal Word of God, Who spoke the world into existence, becomes part of that very world as a helpless baby born in a cave used as a barn. As angels sing in His honor, the humble shepherds and the wise men from a foreign land worship Him.  A young virgin becomes a mother, not simply of a son, but of the Son of God.   She gives birth to a child both fully human and fully divine.

            Jesus Christ, an unusual and unexpected Messiah, is born this day to save and bless us.  He is the Second Adam in Whom all the corruption of the first Adam is healed.  He brings us into the life of God by entering into our life in this world of sin and death.  He is born to raise us to the holy, eternal life for which He created us in the first place in His image and likeness.

       The Savior comes to us humbly and peaceably.  He takes the lowest, most vulnerable place for Himself:  born to a Jewish family that lived under the oppression of the Roman Empire and the cruelty of King Herod.  Soon Joseph would take the Virgin Mary and the young Jesus to Egypt by night, fleeing literally for their lives. He was born like the children today whose families flee from war and persecution in troubled nations in the Middle East, Africa, and elsewhere. 

            He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, but in way totally different from the high and mighty of this world.   He is the Prince of Peace Who comes to restore and heal His creation without brutal domination or physical violence. He makes all who believe in Him the sons and daughters of the Most High—not as slaves, but as children and heirs who share in His divine glory by grace. That is something no earthly ruler or mere religious teacher could ever accomplish.  Only the Incarnate Son of God can make us participants in the divine nature, for He Himself is truly divine and human.   

            In the good news of Christ’s birth, we encounter the deep mystery of the Immortal One Who put on mortality.  Out of humble, selfless love beyond our understanding, the Son of God lowered Himself to become a human being, “born of a woman, born under the Law,” as St. Paul wrote to the Galatians.  He is not an idea to be defined or debated about, but a Person Who shares His life with us.   So that we could enter into Him, He entered into us, sanctifying every aspect of our humanity from the womb to the tomb that could not contain Him.  Nothing human is foreign to Him, and nothing is rightly human that is not healed, transformed, and fulfilled by His holiness and grace.

          Let us take the foreign wise men as models of how to respond to the great mystery that God has become a human being: namely, let us worship Him by uniting ourselves to Christ as fully as possible in faith and obedience.  That is how we will share personally in the wondrous transformation of the human being that the Incarnate Son of God has made possible.  Because Christ is born, the peace and joy of God’s kingdom may be ours even as we live and breathe in the world as we know it.  Because Christ is born, we may encounter Him in every human being, especially the poor, the needy, the stranger, and the outcast.  Because Christ is born, we may participate already in the eternal life for which we were created in God’s image and likeness. 

          The only limits on the blessing of Christmas are those that we place on ourselves.  For the One Who appears as a baby in a manger never forces us or anyone else.  He is the Mystery of Love made flesh for our salvation.  We welcome Him into our lives by choosing to live in ways that reflect the deep truth of the Incarnation.  We welcome Him into our lives by becoming living icons of the good news of this season.   We welcome Him into our lives by becoming participants in the deified humanity that the God-Man Jesus Christ has brought to the world. 

          As we celebrate this great feast, let us live as those who have become the sons and daughters of the Father through Him, for now nothing but our own refusal can separate us from His love.  Yes, my brothers and sisters, that is the deep spiritual mystery of the Incarnation.  By uniting humanity and divinity in His own Person, Jesus Christ has fulfilled our original calling to become like God.  The door to the Kingdom is now wide open and leads through our own souls, through our own existence as human beings.  In Him, we find the holy joy for which we were made.  There could be no greater cause for rejoicing this day or any other.      

Christ is Born!  Glorify Him!

Perfect Members of a Scandalous Family: Homily for the Sunday Before the Nativity of Christ in the Orthodox Church

Hebrews 11:9-10, 32-40

Matthew 1:1-25

            Whether for good, bad, or somewhere in between, our families shape us all decisively. We cannot tell the story of our lives without them.  So many of our traits, quirks, and other characteristics reflect those who raised us and those who raised them.  Though we are free to make our own choices in how we live our lives, we cannot pretend that it all started with us.  There is always a back-story or a prequel about those who went before.    

            The Old Testament certainly provides a realistic account of the importance of family life in human history, as most of it concerns the many generations of the offspring of Abraham and Sarah.  So it is not surprising that Matthew begins his account of the good news of Jesus Christ with the family tree of the Lord, with His genealogy. He does so in order to show that He had the right heritage to become the Messiah, the anointed One in Whom all God’s promises to Abraham would be fulfilled. So Matthew traces the Lord’s ancestry back to Abraham; through David, the great king who was viewed as a model for the Messiah; and through all the generations up to Joseph, to whom the Virgin Mary was betrothed when she became the Theotokos, the one who carried the eternal Son of God in her womb and gave birth to Him in a cave used as a barn.   

            We usually tend to rush through genealogies in the Bible, for we think of them of them as unimportant lists of who begat whom.  But we will miss the point entirely if we pass over Matthew’s account of Jesus Christ’s family tree so quickly, for it is not what we would expect.  It contains surprises that prepare us for a Messiah quite different from the conquering hero most of the Jews expected.  They wanted a new King David to defeat the Romans and make their nation strong and free. Some, like the Pharisees, hoped for a Messiah to interpret the Old Testament law strictly and to bring blessing upon the righteous and condemnation upon the sinners, including Gentiles and also Jews who did not obey the law.    

            We would imagine that such a messiah would come from the most righteous and upstanding family imaginable, from one above suspicion or embarrassment of any kind.  But a careful reader of Matthew’s genealogy will notice the unexpected presence of women in what was conventionally a listing of fathers and sons.  Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and the wife of Uriah, Bathsheba, stick out like sore thumbs.    In addition to being women, they were Gentiles and involved in scandalous relations with Jewish men.  Tamar dressed as a prostitute and gave birth to the children of her father-in-law.  Rahab, who hid the Hebrew spies in her home in Jericho, was a prostitute.  Ruth was King David’s great-grandmother and a Moabite woman. The Old Testament repeatedly warned Jewish men not to marry Gentile women like Ruth.  King David committed adultery with Bathsheba and then murdered her husband.

            Let us be honest. We would never draw attention to such scandalous stories in our own families.  Just imagine how shocking these figures were in the genealogy of the Messiah, especially for those who thought in legalistic or nationalistic terms.  Jesus Christ was a very different kind of Savior than what was commonly expected in that time and place.  This unlikely cast of characters reminds us that God’s promises are not only for righteous Jews, but for everyone with faith, including foreigners and strangers,  repentant sinners, and those whose lives and families are profoundly broken.  Matthew introduces us through the genealogy to an unusual Messiah Who blesses the humble, the outcasts, the hated foreigners, and those who genuinely hunger and thirst for righteousness.  He came to call not the righteous, but sinners, to repentance and was not afraid to speak harshly to the Pharisees and others who trusted only in themselves.         

            Right after the genealogy, Matthew describes the Lord’s birth under circumstances apparently even more scandalous than those we have described so far. A virgin girl becomes pregnant by the Holy Spirit.  Her elderly guardian and protector Joseph was horrified by what he assumed was her immoral behavior, and was ready to end their betrothal.  But he believed when an angel told him of the miracle of the Child’s conception, and old Joseph became the adopted father of the Lord.

            The Christmas story is so familiar to us that we tend to ignore how shocking, embarrassing, and unconventional our Lord’s conception and birth were.  Many probably judged the Theotokos and St. Joseph and refused to believe.  It could not have been easy for the young girl or the old man to change the course of their lives, and to put their reputations and physical safety at risk, in order to play their unique roles in the coming of the Savior.   

            And when we remember that this is the story of the union in Jesus Christ of God and humanity, of the fulfillment of all God’s promises beyond even the greatest expectations of the Old Testament prophets, of the Incarnation of the Son of God for our salvation, it becomes even more shocking.  For we usually expect that God’s ways are like our ways, that His kingdom is like the kingdoms of earth, that He must love the respectable, wealthy,  and successful more than He does the scandalous, the poor, and the downtrodden.  We usually think that holiness is pleasant, respectable, and for people with whom we are comfortable, not embarrassing and scandalous.  

            Today’s gospel texts call us to accept that the mystery of our salvation in Jesus Christ is not an extension of the accomplishments of our families or of our own virtues or abilities.    It is not a reward or a punishment for anything that we have done or refrained from doing.  It is not about the politics, culture, or the strength of any nation, party, or group, whether past or present.  Instead, it is simply the fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham, now extended to all who have faith in the true Messiah, the One who is anointed to bring light and life to the world, to be the second Adam in Whom our fallen, corrupt humanity is brought into the very life of the Holy Trinity. 

            Those promises were not fulfilled in the lifetimes of even the most righteous people of the Old Testament.  As today’s epistle reading states, “since God had foreseen something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.”  As hard as it is to believe, we are all grafted into the family tree of the Messiah by faith.  He is the vine and we are the branches.   

            With all our sins and brokenness, we are unworthy and unlikely members of such a glorious family.  Like those who prepared for the coming of Christ and those who have served Him since, we are also scandalous sinners—even if we have learned how to hide the shocking details from other people.   Perhaps that is why the Son of God chose a family full of imperfect people who so often got it wrong; perhaps that is why He was born in miserable circumstances unfit for any human being, much less the Messiah; perhaps that is why the Old and New Testaments do not even try to conceal the sins of both the Jews and the early Christians.

            The Lord’s genealogy contains a lot of people who are a lot like us, for that is who He came to save.  In the coming days before Christmas, let us prepare to embrace more fully the promises made to Abraham and fulfilled in our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ.  He comes to make us—with all of our outrageous problems and imperfections-- members of own His family.  Our inclusion is part of the perfection of that ancient heritage of faith and expectation.  So let us kneel before Him in humility this Christmas with a profound sense of gratitude and joy. And let us never, ever give up in believing that His mercy extends to people like you, me, and the members of our less than perfect families.  That is precisely whom He came to save.