On Not Escaping the World, But Being Holy in It: Homily for the Sunday After the Ascension in the Orthodox Church

Acts 20:16-18, 28-36

John 17:1-13

            It is so easy to diminish ourselves by serving the false gods of pleasure, power, and pride.  It is so tempting to allow our pursuit of these passions to obscure the holy calling that we have as those created in the image and likeness of God.  Our Lord’s Ascension into heaven, forty days after His resurrection, makes clear that we find true fulfillment as human beings by participating in His blessed, eternal life. Anything else falls well short.

            Jesus Christ has fulfilled our ancient calling to grow in the likeness of God, for in Him humanity and divinity are united in one Person.  In His Ascension, He goes up into heaven as the God-Man, sharing in the glory that He had with the Father and the Holy Spirit from eternity.  Rising with His body and bearing the wounds of His crucifixion, He brings us with Him into the divine glory.  Here is a brilliant icon of our salvation that makes clear that our Lord has raised us, not only from the grave and Hades, but into the eternal life of the Holy Trinity.  Here is a clear sign of the completion of our vocation to become partakers of the divine nature by grace.

            Today we commemorate the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea, who proclaimed that the One Who brings human beings into the eternal life of God is Himself truly divine and eternal:  the only begotten Son of the Father. They recognized that even the best angel, prophet, or teacher could not do that, for only One Who is divine and eternal can bring us into the divine, eternal life of the Holy Trinity.  That is a key reason why the Council of Nicaea rejected the teaching of the heretic Arius, who did not think that the Son was fully or eternally God.  That is why the Orthodox Church has always disagreed with those who seek to reduce Christ to a great religious teacher or moral example, or who view the Kingdom of God as a mere extension of an earthly kingdom of whatever kind.  Our salvation comes not merely through instruction or social change, but through the New Adam Who conquers death and ascends to heavenly glory as the God-Man.

            Even if we know the words of the Nicene Creed by heart, we may still be tempted to turn Christ into a Savior who fits with our preconceived notions about what we would like from a religion.  After all, it is much easier to follow a Lord Who serves our own pursuit of pleasure, power, and pride than it is to embrace One Who calls us to holiness in every dimension of our existence.  Even as He is fully divine, He is also fully human.  He went up into heaven with a glorified human body.  To share in His life is to share in His holiness in ways that make us shine with the divine glory in body, soul, and spirit in the world as we know it.  That does not mean becoming less human, but becoming more truly ourselves in God’s image and likeness.

Some think that salvation will come to the world through changes of this or that kind in politics, culture, or economics.  Others focus their hopes on changing how people think, feel, or otherwise adjust themselves in relation to various challenges in life.  Some ways of addressing such matters are clearly better than others, but none of them fulfills our vocation to be in God’s image and likeness.  None of them conquers death and makes us participants in the eternal life of our Lord.  None of them can ascend to heaven.

Contrary to some popular notions, ascending with Christ to heavenly glory is not about escaping or abandoning the world, its people, or its problems.  The Lord said to His Father concerning His disciples: ”I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one.” (John 17: 15) He prayed for their holiness:  “Sanctify them by Your truth.” (John 17: 17)  Christ’s prayer shows that we find the fulfillment of our humanity when we unite ourselves with Him through a holy life, when we become radiant with the divine brilliance in how we live in this world in tangible, practical ways.

St. Paul is a good example of what such a life looks like.  He obviously did not place his own personal tranquility above the needs of others or the ministry of God’s Kingdom.  He was beaten, imprisoned, shipwrecked, and ultimately killed for his faith in Christ.  He dealt with difficult challenges of all kinds in the churches that he founded and oversaw. In today’s reading from Acts, he warned the elders “that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.  Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish everyone with tears.”   That is certainly not the way of life of someone who thought that religion was a way to escape from problems and difficulties. 

St. Paul also said that he “coveted no one’s silver or gold or apparel.  You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities, and to those who were with me.  In all things I have shown you that by so toiling one must help the weak, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” This apostle manifested his union with Christ by living in a Christ-like way, taking up his cross and serving others, regardless of the cost.  That is how he was sanctified in God’s truth and came to know the holy joy of true participation in the divine life to the depths of his soul.

St. Paul’s background as a fierce persecutor of Christians before his conversion did not keep him from ascending to holiness in Christ Jesus.  Neither was he held back in this regard by the multitude of grave and even life-threatening challenges that he faced throughout his ministry. After the Lord told him, “My grace is sufficient for you: for my strength is made perfect in weakness,” St. Paul wrote “I take pleasure in weaknesses, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.” (2 Cor. 12: 9-10)

Like the apostle, we will ascend with Christ in holiness as we offer our weaknesses, failings, and challenges to Him, struggling as best we can to be faithful as we call on His infinite mercy.  Unlike some commercialized forms of spirituality, genuine Christianity is not about making us happy on our own terms or somehow convincing ourselves that all is well when it is not.  Instead, it is about being sanctified, becoming holy, by uniting every dimension of our life to Christ, including those which we find so hard to offer to Him for healing.      

When doing so reveals our weakness, we will be in the position to receive the strength of the One of Who created us in His image and likeness, and Who has united humanity and divinity in His own Person.  To ascend in holiness in Him is the fulfillment of what it means to be a human being.  It not to escape the world, but to enter into the holy glory for which He made us by turning away from evil and corruption.  An angel, a prophet, a political leader, or any mere creature could not do that for us sinners.  No, that is something only God can do, and something that we can participate in only if we, like St. Paul, offer ourselves to the Lord in humble obedience amidst the pains and challenges of life in the world as we know it, including our own personal brokenness.  That is how we may ascend in Christ to heavenly glory, not by escaping the world, but by opening our weakness to His strength.   

Orthodox Witness in a Post-Christian Culture

It is time for Orthodox Christians to be realistic and not panic about life in an increasingly post-Christian culture.  We are a tiny minority in the West and have never had much direct impact in shaping how the larger society in which we live has addressed any issue, controversial or otherwise.  It would be strange for a miniscule Orthodox minority to expect a privileged position in our time and place.  If current trends have opened our eyes to points of tension between God’s Kingdom and the present order, we should be thankful for the wake-up call.

Our calling is surely not to become yet another interest group that competes with others through conventional political means, or even to think of success in those terms.  Instead of pursuing what the world recognizes as power or affirmation, our vocation is basically the same that Christians have always had:  to be a distinctive, holy community with a way of life that shines in brilliant contrast to the ways of the world and draws others to the life of the Kingdom.  But in order to have any hope of becoming such an icon of salvation, we must actually live out what we say we believe.  Ethnic food bazaars and mouthing slogans about the culture wars will not suffice.

As hard as it is do so, we must actually embrace the spiritual disciplines of our faith in ways that are very much in tension with the dominant trends of the larger culture.  We must live our lives in stark contrast to the current societal celebrations of violence, hatred, gluttony, vanity, greed, sexual immorality, and pornography—just to name a few examples of the challenges that we face.  The greater the distance between what we say we believe and how we actually live, the more ammunition we will give to “the cultured despisers of religion.”  The more coherence others see between our creeds and our deeds, the more seriously they will take our way of life as a realistic alternative to the darkened patterns of the world.   

Even as athletes must take their disciplines seriously and follow the guidance of those more skilled in their sport in order to play well, we must embrace prayer, asceticism, generosity to the poor, forgiveness, self-denial, and other spiritual disciplines according to the teaching and example of the Saints and our spiritual fathers and mothers.  Through the catechism of converts and ongoing education in the parish, all Orthodox must be taught about the challenges of living faithfully in our culture.  We must model faithfulness for one another and provide accountability and support to our brothers and sisters.  The larger society supports athletics and education (usually in that order and often not very well), but we cannot expect it to help us in forming people whose character and actions should be so different from those celebrated by the dominant ethos. To say the least, it will appear increasingly odd in our culture: to see Christ in the unborn child, the terminally ill patient, the refugee, and the immigrant; to deny ourselves in order to be outrageously generous with the poor and needy; to refuse to let race, class, politics, ethnicity, or any other human division blind us to the humanity of our neighbors; to love even our fiercest critics; to pursue chastity in the relationship between man and woman; to see marriage as a sign of the complementarity of the opposite sexes in God’s image and likeness; and generally not to make the world into a false god.    

If we bear witness in these and other ways, we should not be surprised at charges of bigotry and fanaticism for being so out of step.  Perhaps such charges are simply reflections of a truth that we have too often refused to see.  Despite the very positive dimensions of American culture, both historically and in the present day, it is not and has never been the Kingdom of God.  Like all societies, it presents temptations and tends to serve its own interests rather than the Lord.  It would certainly be a clearer path to immediate popularity simply to go along with social trends at all costs, but to do so would require worshiping a false god, namely, the world.  Here we must remember the Lord’s warning:  “Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets.” (Luke 6:26) Of course, harmony is not always a bad thing.   If it is the result of spiritually healthy beliefs and practices permeating the larger society, then there is cause for rejoicing.  If, however, that harmony is the result of Christians accommodating their beliefs and practices to those of the larger society in an effort to gain power or simply make life easier for themselves, then it is time to mourn.  Too much American Christianity fits—and, as best I can tell, always has fit-- into the latter category, regardless of whether it passes for “liberal” or “conservative,” for “mainline,” “evangelical,” or anything else.  This is an equal opportunity temptation, and all the more subtle and dangerous for that very reason.     

Amidst our current challenges, we must remember that Christ’s Kingdom is not of this world, as the example of the martyrs from the origins of the faith to today makes quite clear.  Nonetheless, faithfulness is not the same as abandoning the world or those who live in it.  There is no need to fall into a Manichean-like dualism that would see everything outside the visible boundaries of the Christian community as simply evil.  There is no need to fall into a Gnostic escapism that would flee the broken realities of life in the world as we know it for an illusory realm of spiritual perfection.  There is a great need, however, for Orthodox Christians soberly to remain faithful amidst the strong points of tension between our way of life and dominant trends in contemporary culture.

As mentioned earlier, that should not be surprising because Orthodoxy has had no direct impact on the West for centuries.  And at least since the Enlightenment, a grave temptation of western culture has been to make the world its god with, at best, a watered-down “religion within the limits of reason alone.”  Our culture increasingly knows no higher standard than recognizing the rights of isolated individuals to pursue well-being however they may define it.  Freedom is a good thing, and I personally would rather live in the current cultural climate than in one characterized by crusades, pogroms, and witch hunts; the present order certainly provides far more religious liberty than life under Communism or ISIS.  We should want as much religious liberty as reasonably possible so that people may believe, worship, and live in accordance with their faith, whatever that may be.   

Nonetheless, many temptations lurk beneath the surface of the increasingly popular assumption that questions of religion and moral decency are necessarily matters of arbitrary personal preference that have no place in the public sphere and nothing to contribute to conversations about the common good of a social order.  There is grave danger in societies privileging an anemic civil religion that completely relaxes the tension between God’s kingdom and the kingdoms of the world. That is true of both right and left-wing versions of political idolatry.

Granted, there is great variety across the US in how these matters are handled in practice.  Where I live In West Texas, Christianity is certainly not in hiding.  Indeed, some versions of the faith are so public that some feel that they need to hide from them—and perhaps sometimes for good reason.  Such Christianity is often a domesticated civil religion that serves agendas that have more to do with preserving idealized manners and morals than with enabling people actually to grow in holiness as they take up their crosses.  Too often in my region, what passes for Christianity merely provides a thin veneer of spiritual or moral respectability to political and social projects that have little direct connection to the salvation of the world and which obscure vital dimensions of Christian belief and witness.   As such, increasing numbers of people recognize that such versions of the faith require nothing of substance from them and offer even less in return.  As a result, they do not take religion seriously at all, for it seems like a matter of irrelevant personal preference often associated with hypocrisy.  Or they reject Christianity because they disagree with whatever political or social agenda has been uncritically identified with it.    

In our current cultural context, the true witness of Orthodox Christianity has an opportunity to become more clear, distinctive, and compelling.  There are advantages in not bearing the burden of sustaining a religious ethos for an increasingly irreligious and decadent society.  No one is asking us to guide the legislative process, propose policies, or otherwise take on the responsibility of articulating an ethic for a deeply fragmented and confused social order.  Consequently, we are able to focus our energies on being salt and light.  Our witness is not to pretend that the Church or the larger culture is something that it is not; instead, it is to be deliberately and intentionally faithful as Orthodox Christians in the areas of our lives that are up to us and to discern prayerfully how to navigate the challenges posed by areas that are not. The rest we leave in God's hands.  

Light Shines Even in the Dark Prison of Death: Homily for the Sunday of the Blind Man in the Orthodox Church

Acts 16:16-34

John 9:1-38

            It is so easy for people to be blind to the truth about themselves.  It is not hard to notice when others do not see the truth about what they do, but it is often quite difficult to notice our own blindness.  If we are honest, we will acknowledge that we are quite skilled in shutting our eyes to uncomfortable truths.  That should not be surprising, for we are inhabitants of a world darkened by sin and death.  Like the man in today’s gospel lesson, we are all blind because we lack full spiritual clarity; and we cannot simply give ourselves the ability to behold the truth perfectly.  Unfortunately, we often prefer the darkness of our impaired vision to the brilliant light of Christ’s empty tomb.   

              The blind man in today’s gospel did not even know that Jesus Christ was the Son of God at the time of the miracle.   He apparently did not even ask Him for healing.  Instead, the Savior was simply doing the work of His Father as the Light of the world when He restored his sight.  The healing of the blind man is an icon of Who Christ is, a sign of what happens when the Son of God shares His life with us.  Christ spat into the ground, anointed the man’s eyes with the clay, and told him to wash.   These details reflect that the Lord in His Incarnation truly entered into our life as the God-Man, becoming in His humanity one of those created from the dust of the earth even as He remains fully divine. It is through the washing of baptism that we put Him on like a garment and enter into His death in order to rise to the new life for which He created us in the first place.  His glorious resurrection on the third day is the fulfillment of His restoration and healing of humanity in the divine image and likeness.  In Him, our blindness dies that His words may be fulfilled in us:  “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” (Matt. 5:8)

            Remember how dark it was at the Pascha service when one candle was lit with the words:  “Come receive the Light from the Light and glorify Christ, Who is Risen from the dead.”  And then after we sang the Lord’s resurrection outside in candle light, we returned to a brilliantly lit church all decked out in white.  Not only is Pascha a celebration of Christ’s resurrection, but also of ours through Him.  And that resurrection is not simply a future hope, but already a present reality when we find healing from the blinding power of sin and death in our lives.  His resurrection has made it possible for us to participate in the light-filled joy of holiness for which He breathed life into us in the first place.  It has opened the eyes of our souls to His glory.  

            Our epistle reading provides us with another icon of what it looks like when the darkness is overcome by light.   The jailer was ready to kill himself rather than endure the penalty that awaited him for letting his prisoners escape after the earthquake.  In the brutal world of the Roman Empire, a cruel death awaited him for losing his captives.  The man was so shocked when St. Paul assured him that they were all still in their cells that he asked how to find salvation. Christ’s resurrection destroyed the prison of Hades, opened its doors, and set its prisoners free.  Now in this miracle, a man who was literally a slave to death had the eye of his soul opened to the light.  He was set free from despair, received the washing of baptism, and began a new life. 

            The jailer may have known nothing about Jesus Christ before the earthquake, even as the blind man did not know that Jesus Christ was the Son of God until after his sight was restored.  One said, “What must I do to be saved?” and the other asked “And Who is, He, Sir, that I may believe in Him?”  Here we see that true spiritual knowledge of Christ is Christ Himself.  By His merciful initiative, He enables us to participate in Him, to experience and know Him by grace.  The Lord gave neither of these men mere ideas, rules, or feelings.  No, He made them true participants in life-changing spiritual truth, in His own divine energies.  He is the Light that they beheld.  He released them from the dark prisons they had known.   

            In these last days of the season of Pascha, we must learn from their examples to open the eyes of our souls as fully as possible to the healing light of the Savior.  None of us has perfect knowledge of our sins, of course, but can we all name some fairly obvious ways in which blindness has remained in us.  By virtue of putting on Christ in baptism and being filled with the Holy Spirit in chrismation, we all have the spiritual clarity to know generally in what ways we have chosen to remain in the dark prison of the tomb.  The good news of Pascha is that Christ has shattered the doors and chains of that prison.  He has opened the eyes of us who have always been blind.  He has become one of us so fully that He has made even death itself a passageway to life.  He has made even the darkest night radiant with His divine glory.

            As hard as it may be to believe, the Lord enables each of us to behold and shine with His holy Light.  The more that we embrace Him through faith, love, and repentance, the clearer vision we will have of the remaining spots of darkness in our lives.  Keep in mind that great saints do not pat themselves on the back about becoming more holy; to the contrary, they are all the more aware of their sins and  their constant need for mercy.  They know the truth about themselves more clearly before the infinite holiness of God, which inspires them to deep humility.

            We must not fall prey, then, to the temptation to discouragement when we catch a glimpse of the darkness that is still in us.  Due to our pride, we may want to abandon the serious pursuit of the Christian life when growing spiritual health enables us to see our own sinfulness more clearly.  That is the problem with better vision:  we may not like what we see.  Due to our sloth and laziness, we may want to put aside prayer, fasting, forgiveness, serving our neighbors, or other spiritual disciplines because they require effort and we do not do them particularly well.   And the more we advance in them, the more we will see how much room we have for growth.

            When such temptations arise, we must remember that our goal is not to accomplish anything that can be measured according to the standards of this world, for we seek to experience something different from anything else in this life.  To behold the divine glory as we share in the life of Christ is an eternal goal, a transcendent reality that cannot be compared with anything else.  It is true, real, spiritual experience and knowledge. The full opening of our spiritual eyes is another way of speaking of the purity of heart that, as Christ said, enables us to see God.          

            Our awareness of the darkness in our lives is simply a realistic reminder that we have an infinitely long way to go in the journey to theosis.  Instead of giving up, we must use our failings and struggles as inspirations to press on in obedience to the only One Who has conquered sin and death, the only One Who has united divinity and humanity in His own Person.  He is the Light shining in the darkness of this world and of our own sick and weak souls.  Though it is not easy, we must continue to do what it takes to open ourselves more fully to His brilliant light.  As those who have beheld the glory of His resurrection, returning to the dark prison of the tomb is simply not an option.   Instead, we must keep moving further into the Light, into Him, trusting that He is still at work giving sight to the blind and setting free the prisoners of sin and death.  And, yes, that includes you and me.  

Overcoming Hate and Division Through the Resurrection: Homily for the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman in the Orthodox Church

Acts 11:19-30

John 4: 5-42

Christ is Risen!

We all have our assumptions about who are our friends and who are our enemies.  For all kinds of reasons, we probably feel more comfortable associating with some people as opposed to others. Fortunately for us all, Jesus Christ has overcome such divisions.  He died and rose again in order to bring all peoples and nations into the blessed glory of His Kingdom, which is not of this world.  And if we associate ourselves with Him, then our lives must bear witness that His resurrection is good news for all.

In order to understand how revolutionary His way of living was in the first century, recall that the Jews despised the Samaritans because they had mixed the ethnic heritage and the religion of Israel with that of other peoples.  Jews would have nothing to do with Samaritans, and certainly would not eat or drink anything handled by them.  The idea of a good Samaritan was a contradiction in terms.  Nonetheless, Christ did the unthinkable by asking a Samaritan woman for a drink of water. Through the unlikely conversation that followed, she came to recognize Him as the Messiah, to believe in Him, and to lead many of her own people to Christ.  We remember her in the Orthodox Church as Saint Photini, an evangelist and martyr with the title “Equal to the Apostles.”

In that culture, Jewish men simply did not strike up conversations with women they happened to encounter in public places.  Nonetheless, the Lord spoke to Photini with just as much concern and respect as He had shown in an earlier conversation in John’s gospel with Nicodemus, who had misunderstood Him entirely.  We cannot overestimate how astounding it would have been in that time and place for a Samaritan woman to respond more faithfully to the Jewish Messiah than had a Pharisee.

To make things even more complicated, this particular Samaritan woman had been married five times and was then living with a man outside of marriage.  Both Jews and Samaritans would have considered her to have fallen into an immoral lifestyle of routinely going from one man to another.  She may have gone to the well at high noon because she had been rejected by the other women from her village.  Though they did not want to treat her as a neighbor, Christ related to her in a different fashion.  He knew all about her failings, but did not condemn or ignore her as a result.  Perhaps because He treated her in such an unexpected and welcoming way, she was remarkably open to His message.

Indeed, she was transformed by their conversation.  Photini showed bravery in telling the men of her village that Jesus Christ is the Messiah.  Not only would they have been shocked for a woman, especially one of her reputation, to speak to them about God, they would probably also be astounded to hear that a Jewish rabbi was a Messiah for them as Samaritans.  Being inspired by the shocking ways in which Christ had reached out to her, she reached out in surprising ways to her own people.  The name Photini means “enlightened one.”  This Samaritan woman was enlightened through her unlikely conversation with the Lord and then enlightened others.   Consequently, the Samaritans invited the Jewish Messiah to stay in their village for two days, which also would have been totally unheard of in that time and place.

Our reading from Acts has a similar theme in describing how Gentiles came to believe in the Lord at Antioch, where the disciples were first called Christians.  It was no small thing for the originally Jewish Christian community to accept Gentile believers, to be comfortable eating, drinking, and sharing a common life with them.  Those viewed as the worst of enemies, as the most depraved human beings, became brothers and sisters.  The distinction between Jew and Gentile became irrelevant in Christ in Whom the promises to Abraham are fulfilled and extended to all who have faith in the Savior.

No doubt, different groups of people fear and hate one another because of the power of sin and death in the world as we know it.  What group cannot cite some plausible reason that it is justified in getting even with another group?   The same is surely true in our personal relationships.  It apparently makes us feel better about our own failings and inadequacies when we build ourselves up even as we put others down.  At least we are better than that person or group, we like to think.  We like to blame scapegoats for our problems, instead of looking ourselves squarely in the eye.  We like to take revenge rather than to forgive.  We like to hide our own brokenness and weakness by denigrating anyone who poses a threat to our prideful illusions. Of course, that simply perpetuates a cycle of resentment, as it gives some other group or person an excuse to feel justified in condemning us.

In this glorious season of Pascha, we celebrate that Christ has set us free from slavery to the sin and death that are at the heart of the division and enmity that make people feel completely justified in hating one another.  The more that we participate in His great victory, the more our souls will be freed from the compulsive desire to secure our well-being by destroying the character of others.  The more we will see that the blessed life of the Kingdom is not a zero-sum game in which we have to beat others in a contest for a scarce resource.  Life in a world captive to death is a scarce resource.  And if it all ends with the grave, then why not do what it takes to exalt ourselves over the competition for as long as possible?  But Christ has truly emptied the tomb and made it possible for Jews, Gentiles, Samaritans, and everyone else—including each of us as the “chief of sinners”– to participate in the life of heaven.

If we are truly to embrace His resurrection, then we must stop distracting ourselves from our own brokenness and pain by demonizing other people, whether individually or collectively. As sinners ourselves whose only hope is in the abundant mercy of Jesus Christ, Who died and rose again for us all, we have no right to exclude anyone from the possibility of embracing the new life of the empty tomb through faith and repentance. If we respond with hatred, condemnation, or stony silence to those we deem unworthy, we turn away from Christ’s ministry of bringing new life to the whole world.  We must treat all our neighbors as Christ treated the Samaritan woman.  To do anything less is to place our own limits on the great joy of His resurrection.  It is to remain in the tomb of sin and death when the Savior invites us to share in the great wedding feast of heaven.

In the remaining days of this glorious season of Pascha, let us keep a close watch on our thoughts, our words, and our actions, and replace fear, revenge, and condemnation with hope, reconciliation, and blessing.  Let us refuse to define ourselves over against any group or person, and instead become full participants in the joy of a Kingdom where the divisions that have plagued humanity since the fall of our first parents are healed and overcome.  If we will live that way, then we, like St. Photini, will truly become living witnesses that death has died and that light now shines even from the darkest tomb.

Embodied Persons, Male and Female: Thoughts on the Body and Personal Identity

             

          I find it hard to understand why some claim today that it is bigoted and mean-spirited to think that the biological complementarity of males and females provides an important clue to the personal identity of human beings. When someone speaks of men and women, it is certainly reasonable to assume that those terms reflect basic biological realities.  It is hard to see how we may think of mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, etc., without reference to the physical bodies of those who are male or female.  If we try to do so, we will quickly find ourselves supporting a disembodied view of personhood that presents grave challenges for human dignity and is antithetical to the Christian faith.

“The facts of life” are such that it takes the bodies of two persons of opposite sex to conceive children.  As any physician or scientist will affirm, there are distinctive and biologically defined roles for men and women in this process.  It is also the nature of human beings to inherit physical and other traits from their parents.  In other words, the difference and complementarity of biological males and females stands at the heart of what it means to exist as a human being.    

No doubt, throughout human history there have been men and women who would have preferred to have been born as members of the opposite sex.  It is one thing to acknowledge that, but quite another to conclude that their preference means that there is no abiding biological reality to the distinction between males and females.  It is one thing to hope that people who struggle with these issues will find peace in accepting the implications of the physical reality of their bodies for their personal identity.  It is one thing to reach out to them with compassion, as Christians should to all people with profound personal challenges.  It is quite another, however, to say that only vicious, ignorant oppressors would dare to think that someone’s physical body manifests whether that person is a man or a woman.      

Granted, there are very rare cases of ambiguous genitalia or persons with a disparity between their chromosomes and the outward structure of their bodies.  Barring those conditions, it is hard to see how someone could even come close to making a coherent claim that he or she is “really” a member of the opposite sex.  Such an assertion would entail that the characteristics of one’s physical body are simply irrelevant to his or her personal identity.  The details of gender roles have varied throughout human history and do vary today in different settings, but the physical distinctions between the anatomy of males and females have remained.  Those who do not recognize that biological sexual identity is an abiding dimension of personal identity have taken a large step away from reality and the broad scope of human experience in the world as we know it.   

It is not yet clear how far the agenda of deconstructing maleness and femaleness will go, but to make gender identity simply a matter of subjective self-definition should deeply trouble us all, and especially advocates of the rights and equality of women.  If our society comes to view physical bodies as irrelevant for the definition of who is a woman, then matters involving women’s bodies—such as pregnancy, motherhood, or violence against women-- will be taken even less seriously than they are today.  If a simple declaration by a biological male makes him a woman, then the unique interests and cultural significance of those with female bodies must not matter that much.  Indeed, any claim that male and female bodies are even truly distinctive would become incoherent. The definition of who is a woman would then have no connection with the physical characteristics of the human body; those characteristics would then have only trivial significance.  The less standing the bodies of our neighbors have in our eyes, the less of an obligation we have to help them as embodied persons.  No, this way of thinking is not good news for the orphan, the widow, the stranger, or the rest of us.  The classic feminist phrase “our bodies, ourselves” would be replaced by a dangerously disembodied vision of personhood. 

For Christians, the deconstruction of biological sexual identity is yet another manifestation of the ancient heresy of Gnosticism.   We cannot tell the story of the good news of our salvation without referring to biological men and women, for our salvation is the fulfillment of our identity and vocation as those created male and female in God’s image and likeness. (Gen. 1:27)   Just try to make sense of the story of the Hebrew people from generation to generation without such a perspective.  Contrary to those who think that Jesus Christ was uninterested in these matters, He specifically cited our creation as male and female in speaking about marriage. (Matt. 19:4; Mark 10:6)  Against the libertines who thought that what they did with their flesh sexually had no spiritual significance, St. Paul stressed that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit that will participate in eternal life.  (1 Cor. 6:12ff.)  Christ’s resurrection manifests God’s gracious intensions to sanctify every dimension of who we are:  body, soul, and spirit.    And since He is the Eternal Word Who spoke the universe into existence, breathed life into us from the dust of the earth, and told us to “be fruitful and multiply” as men and women (Gen. 1:28), it should not be surprising that His salvation is the fulfillment, not the repudiation, of our embodied personhood. 

                In this light, Christians must show true compassion toward people who struggle with gender identity without encouraging them to adopt self-definitions that ignore the physical realities of human personhood.  Christ invites us to the healing of every dimension of our humanity, which includes embracing the truth about who we are as embodied male or female persons.  For all of us, that is a struggle in one way or another.  Healing comes through the difficult task of offering every dimension of our lives to the Lord in humility.  We become more truly the people He created us to be when we reorient ourselves to Him in body, soul, and spirit. Our faith calls us to give more—not less—attention to the role of our bodies in sharing in the eternal life of the Lord Who made us men and women in His  image and likeness. 

The Disorienting Shock of an Empty Tomb: Homily for the Sunday of the Myrrh-Bearing Women in the Orthodox Church

Acts 6:1-7

Mark. 15:43-16:8

We all know what it is like to receive shocking news.  Sometimes it is simply impossible to be prepared to hear an astounding message that we did not expect at all. Today we commemorate the people who received the most shocking news of all time from the angel:  “Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, Who was crucified. He is Risen.  He is not here…Go tell His disciples—and Peter—that He is going before you to Galilee; there you will see Him, as He said to you.”

            These first witnesses to our salvation were all women who expected to find the dead body of Jesus Christ in the tomb.  They saw Him die on the Cross and now went to anoint Him properly for burial.  Like the disciples and everyone else, these women did not expect the resurrection. We can only imagine how sad, scared, and terribly disappointed they must have been as they rose very early on Sunday morning to take their sorrowful journey to His tomb.   When they got there, these women--the Theotokos, Mary Magdalen, two other Mary’s, Johanna, Salome, Martha, Susanna and others whose names we do not know--  were the first to receive the shocking news of the resurrection of our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ.   

            We also remember today Sts. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, prominent Jewish leaders who were also the Lord’s secret followers.   Joseph “took courage” and risked his position and perhaps his life by asking Pilate for the Savior’s body. He took Him down from the Cross and, with Nicodemus’ help, wrapped Him in a linen shroud and put Him in a tomb. 

            Not only must the women and the men we remember today have been torn apart with grief at the death of Christ, they were surely afraid to be identified with One Who had been rejected, condemned, and publically executed as a blasphemer by the Jews and a traitor by the Romans.  Nonetheless, they found the courage to do what devotion to their Lord required, regardless of their pain and fear.  They served Christ in the only way still available to them by providing Him a decent burial.

            There is a powerful realism about this story, for it certainly does not read like something made up after the fact.  The Lord’s disciples are not even present in it, for they had run away in fear at His arrest.  St. Peter, the chief disciple, had denied Him three times before His crucifixion.  The first witnesses of the resurrection are all women, whose testimony had no authority in that time and place. Moreover, they went to the grave in order to anoint His dead body, not to find an empty tomb.  Like them, Sts. Joseph and Nicodemus viewed Christ simply as one of the dead at that point.  If someone were trying to make up a story to support the truth of the resurrection and to build up the credibility of the first Christians, this would not be the way to do it.  It is, however, the perfect way to bear witness to the shocking truth of what no one expected, of what makes no sense according to our usual ways of thinking, and of what truly happened on that great and holy day when Life first dawned from the tomb.

            As we continue to celebrate the glorious season of Christ’s Passover from death to life, we must not lose the sense of disorienting shock that the myrrh-bearing women received when they saw the stone that had been rolled away from the door of the tomb and heard the message from the angel of the Savior’s resurrection. What happened was so amazing that “they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” 

            Too often, we take the good news of Christ’s victory over death for granted as part of a story that we know quite well.  Even as we are accustomed to the intensified prayer, fasting, and repentance of Lent, we get used to the joyful celebration of the season of Pascha each year.  A way to reopen the eyes of our souls to the unique and extraordinary nature of the Lord’s resurrection is for us to put ourselves in the place of the myrrh-bearers and of Sts. Joseph and Nicodemus by struggling to overcome anything that would hold us back from devoted service to Jesus Christ, even when it is not easy.  Nothing that these holy women and men did in the aftermath of Christ’s death was fun, popular, or safe.  We can be sure that they would have all strongly preferred to be doing something other than burying their friend and Lord. But they overcame those struggles and pressed on in serving Him in the only way available to them.  If they were to love Him then, they had to give Him a proper burial.  

            Our situation is obviously different, for we live well after the Lord’s resurrection.  Nonetheless, the spiritual challenge is the same.  No generation gets to pick the circumstances that it faces.  Human beings do not get to choose the illnesses, tragedies, or other problems that they encounter.  It is not entirely up to us what temptations and weaknesses challenge us, our marriages, and our families spiritually, morally, or in any other way.  Indeed, if we pretend that we get to pick how to serve our Lord in ways that suit us, we will likely ignore what He is actually calling us to do.  Our challenge is to be faithful in responding to the situation that is before us, in discerning how to bear witness to Christ’s victory over death in the here and now, even if we would rather be doing something else. 

            The Church in Jerusalem faced a similar situation when there was strife over the daily distribution of bread to widows of different ethnic backgrounds.  The apostles were too busy with their ministries to address that problem, so they ordained the first deacons to serve the practical needs of the community.  And as a result, the Church flourished.  We can be sure that the apostles would have preferred for such problems not to have arisen at all.  But that is not what happened.  When the problem arose, they had to find a way to address it.  To have ignored it because they did not like it would have been to ignore God’s calling to them and to have refused to serve Christ in His Body, the Church.

            We will grow in our participation in the Savior’s victory over sin and death by humbly accepting the opportunities for serving Him that our lives, and the lives of those around us, present.  Most of us need look no further than our own families, our parish, and our friends and acquaintances in order to discern quite clearly what God is calling us to do.  If we want a Lord Who fits our preconceived notions and calls us to serve Him only in ways that we find convenient, pleasing, or easy, then we will fall into the idolatry of worshiping our own self-centered delusions. Remember that our Lord’s empty tomb was an unexpected shock from which the women initially fled in fear.  But what was at first so terrifying turned out to be a blessing beyond anyone’s expectations.  Had the women not put themselves in the place of humble obedience and service, they would not have been the first witnesses of the resurrection. And our lives will not bear witness to the joy of Christ’s great victory unless we do the difficult work of serving Him in whatever circumstances we face, regardless of whether we especially like them or not.

            Pascha was truly disorienting for all our Lord’s followers.  It did not fit with any conventional expectations for religion in that time and place, and it still does not. In order to participate more fully in the life of our Risen Lord, we must follow the example of those blessed women and men who, in the midst of their fear and pain, did what needed to be done in order to love and serve Christ, even though they could not imagine what was to happen next.  Theirs was not a self-centered, sentimental, or culturally accommodated spirituality, but a way of living that opened them to the new day of a Kingdom not of this world.  The shock of the empty tomb was overwhelming, but that was necessary in order to open their eyes to news so good that nothing could have prepared them for it.  This Paschal season, let us follow their holy example so that our eyes will also be opened to the brilliant light that continues to illumine even the darkest grave. As the angel said, “Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, Who was crucified. He is Risen.  He is not here…Go tell His disciples—and Peter—that He is going before you to Galilee; there you will see Him, as He said to you.”

His Bodily Wounds and Ours: Homily for Thomas Sunday in the Orthodox Church

First Epistle of St. John 1:1-7

St. John 20:19-31

I was surprised a few years ago in one of my college classes when even the best students were surprised to learn that Christian hope for eternal life includes the resurrection of the body.  They were comfortable thinking of human souls experiencing eternal life, but doubted that our actual physical bodies would have any part in the Kingdom of Heaven.  Especially on this Sunday of St. Thomas, we celebrate how Christ’s bodily resurrection is the basis of hope for our own.   Today we proclaim that our Savior brings healing and transformation to whole, embodied persons, for that is how He conquered death on the third day.   

As we continue to celebrate the glorious good news of this season of Pascha, we recall how Christ called doubting Thomas to faith in His great victory.  “He said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here, and see My hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing.’ Thomas answered Him, ‘My Lord and my God!’”  Still bearing His wounds even in His glorified body as the God-Man, the Risen Christ brought Thomas to faith through the witness of His own deified flesh.

We have probably heard the story so many times that we have become deaf to its importance.  Nonetheless, it remains the case that the Savior’s resurrection is not an escape from the body or the physical world, but instead their healing and sanctification.  Likewise, St. John referred in his epistle to that “which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we saw it…”  The Apostles saw the Lord after His resurrection with their eyes, touched Him with their hands, heard His voice with their ears, felt His breath on their skin, and even saw Him eat food.  (Luke 24: 36-43)  The good news that “God is light and in Him is no darkness at all” comes from a resurrection in glory of a complete Person with a human body marked by the wounds of torture and crucifixion.  His resurrection is not an escape from the body, but its fulfillment. The Eternal Word Who created us by breathing into the dust of the earth now breathes physically on His Disciples as He empowers them to carry out His ministry of bringing salvation to the world, even to the point of forgiving sins in His name.  Here are powerful signs of what it means for human beings to be in the likeness of God and partakers of the divine nature by grace.    

These are not merely details of ancient history, but reminders that we participate in Christ’s Passover from death to life by how we live as whole, embodied persons.  We were baptized physically with water into Christ’s death in order to put Him on like a garment, in order to rise with Him into a new life of holiness.  To be blunt, the Christian life is not simply about our emotions, ideas, or opinions; it is not reduced to what we say we believe.  For those who are truly in Christ will live in ways that manifest the brilliant life of the resurrection, that radiate the holy light of the Savior’s great victory over sin and death.  As St. John put it,  “If we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not live according to the truth; but if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.”  

We participate in the new life of our Risen Lord by walking into His light, by embracing as fully as we can the blessed healing of the human being that He has brought to the world.  Christ’s Passion was not a matter simply of His feelings, words, or ideas, but of His complete Self-offering through crucifixion, burial, descent to Hades, and resurrection from the dead. He rises in glory with His wounds, and we cannot begin to make sense of His salvation without speaking of the most bodily of realities, such as torture, execution, death, and burial in a tomb that was later found to be empty.  

We are probably all tempted at times to think how much easier it would be to serve God if we did not have our particular set of bodily limitations and problems.  Some are challenged by physical or mental illness, while others wrestle with passions for the pleasures of food, sex, alcohol, or other substances.  Eating disorders and unrealistic expectations of what their bodies should look like ruin the health and well-being of some, while others struggle to accept that their male or female bodies are signs of who they are in God’s image and likeness. Many today ignore the sacredness of the intimate bodily union of man and woman, which makes two into one flesh.  The epidemic of pornography in our culture reflects a repudiation of the sacredness of the flesh and blood through which we encounter the living icons of Christ. Some refuse to honor the bodies of their neighbors by becoming blind to the humanity of children in the womb, of people with skin of a different color, or of terminally ill patients in chronic pain.  And whether it is greed, sloth, anger, or refusal to help the needy with our time, attention, and resources, there is no sin that does not show itself physically in some way in the lives of those who struggle with it.

No matter what someone’s particular struggles, weaknesses, or failings are, we must respond with compassion, for we too are among the sick who need the Physician. Nonetheless, no physical condition can ever make us sin or do evil.  The problem is not that we have bodies, but that we choose to remain in the tomb, that we would rather walk in the darkness than in the light.  For it is no sin to be ill or to be tempted in any way.  The Lord Himself suffered terribly on the cross and was tempted.  It is a sin, however, to let any of our wounds become excuses for not walking in the light as best we can.  It is a sin to let anything fill our lives with such darkness that we refuse to open our eyes—and our lives—to the good news of the resurrection.  It is a sin when we think that God must remove this or that problem in order to earn our faithfulness, in order to be worthy of our devotion.  As we celebrate Christ’s great victory over sin and death, we must not be afraid to expose our wounded selves to Him with humility as we say with St. Thomas “’My Lord and my God!’”

 Remember that the Savior has taken upon Himself even the worst bodily wounds.  It is through them that He has brought life out of death and brilliant light out of the darkest tomb.  He has conquered even death itself.  Do you see what that means?  Even our darkest inclinations ultimately do not stand a chance against His glory, if we will only expose them to Him, if we will only offer them to Him for healing.  And though it probably will not happen instantaneously, our wounds will find healing as we move step by step further into His light.  Darkness is simply the absence of light and it disappears when it is illumined.  The same Lord Who conquered Hades and the tomb for our salvation, and Who invited Thomas to touch His wounds, will bring us as whole, embodied persons into the new day of His Kingdom if we will only keep turning as best we can from the darkness as we struggle to live faithfully each day in the midst of the problems, pains, and weaknesses that beset us. We must all take that journey one day at a time.

The good news is that Christ does not ask us to conquer sin and death by our own power, for He has already done that.  But He does ask us truly to have faith, which requires a faithful life, even as we constantly ask for His mercy and strength to participate as fully as possible in the joy of His resurrection. We will not do that with a fake spirituality that relies purely on emotions or ideas, but as whole persons of flesh and blood enlivened by the One Who made us in His image and likeness and even died and rose again for our salvation.  So let us celebrate Pascha by walking in the light as best we can with all our wounds, for that is how we will open ourselves to the light that has made even the tomb radiant with the divine glory.  If He can do that to a grave, just imagine what He can do with us.