Selfless Service Over Self-Centered Desire: Homily for the 5th Sunday of Lent in the Orthodox Church

Hebrews 9:11-14; Mark 10:32-45

            Human beings have an amazing capacity to miss the point, to become blind to truths that should be obvious.  We often do that because we become so preoccupied and distracted with our own agendas and desires that we ignore everything else.  That is especially the case when the truth goes strongly against our inclinations by telling us what we do not want to hear.

That is what James and John did when they asked for choice positions of honor right after Jesus Christ had told them that He was to suffer, die, and rise from the dead.  They were apparently so consumed by their desires for prominence and power that they refused to hear the Lord saying that He was nothing like an earthly king.  They boasted of being prepared to follow the Savior without having any idea of what that would mean.  He responded by making clear that the path to true greatness was to follow His way of selfless service.  “For the Son of man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.” 

As we begin the last week of Lent, it should be clear to us all that we have not earned a place of honor in God’s reign.  If we have practiced the spiritual disciplines of Lent with any integrity and honesty, we will know primarily our own weakness and brokenness.  By revealing how easily we are distracted and how enslaved we are to our self-centered desires and habits, they show us that we cannot heal our own souls.  And if we have not devoted ourselves to prayer, fasting, and almsgiving at all in the previous weeks of Lent, we should confess that in humility and thus gain a greater awareness that we stand in constant need of the Lord’s gracious mercy. “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” 

Regardless of how we have approached Lent so far, we must not become paralyzed with a sense of obsessive guilt for not living up to a standard of perfection, for not making ourselves worthy of the mercy of Christ.  To do so is simply a form of self-centered pride, for it is impossible to earn grace as a reward for good behavior.  Becoming great among the Lord’s servants means laying down our lives for others, lowering ourselves by placing the needs and interests of others before our own.  That is the opposite of a self-centered obsession to prove that we are worthy of anything. 

Today we remember St. Mary of Egypt, who had lived a grossly immoral life, but then gave herself up in repentance for decades in the desert, where she became a remarkably holy saint.  Instead of continuing to gratify her addiction to sexual pleasure, she died to self by rejecting everything that was a hindrance to the healing of her soul through incredibly rigorous repentance for the rest of her long life.  She knew that such disciplines did not somehow put God in her debt, but were ways of opening herself to receive the gracious healing of the Lord, which we never deserve.   

St. Mary of Egypt was not like James and John in trying to use the Savior to get what she wanted.  Instead, she freely obeyed a divine command to turn away from fulfilling her obsessive desires by uniting herself to the One Who offered His life as a ransom to free us all from slavery to sin and death.  Our Lord’s disciples ultimately found victory over their passions in different ways, for they had to learn that greatness in the Kingdom comes through selfless service to the point of suffering and death, not by yearning after what the world calls power and success. 

In the remaining days of Lent, we all have the opportunity to embrace our Lord’s way of selfless service in relation to those we encounter on a regular basis in our families, in our parish, at work, at school, and in our larger communities.  We all have the opportunity to confess how we have enslaved ourselves to self-centered desires and then to take the steps we can to turn away from them.  We all have the opportunity to fill our minds with holy things and give less attention to whatever fuels our unholy passions.   We all have the opportunity to follow the example of St. Mary of Egypt in doing what it takes to find the healing of our souls.  If our Lord could make a great saint out of her, then how can anyone remain paralyzed in guilt?   Our great High Priest offered Himself on the Cross and rose in glory on the third day in order to save sinners, to restore all who bear His image and likeness.  Thanks be to God, that includes even people as broken as you and me. In the coming week, let us open the eyes of our souls to this glorious truth through selfless service, humble prayer, and genuine repentance.     

A Challenge that Reveals the Truth: Homily for the 4th Sunday of Lent and the Leavetaking of the Annunciation

Hebrews 6:13-20; Mark 9:16-30

We have all fantasized about what we would say or do in certain situations, and we probably all know that we often respond differently in real life than we do in our imaginations.  In fact, we never really know how we will act until we actually face the test. Reality has a way of revealing the truth in ways that surprise us.   

            That was surely the case for the father of the demon-possessed boy in today’s gospel reading.  Since the disciples had not been able to deliver him, the father said to the Lord “But if you can do anything, have pity on us and help us.”  Those are the words of someone who had learned the hard way not to get his hopes up.  Perhaps that is what he had said to healers many times in the past who had not been successful.  But then Christ challenged him by saying ‘“If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.” Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”’  That was obviously not what he had planned to say, for the words came spontaneously from his heart in response to Christ’s challenge.  The Lord led the father to a remarkable level of spiritual honesty and clarity.  Through his painfully honest faith, the man’s son was healed.   

            Today we continue to celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation in which a young woman was challenged through the message of the Archangel Gabriel to respond to the outrageous news that she was to become the Theotokos, the Mother of the Son of God.   Mary had obviously not expected this strange calling and asked how such a thing could happen, as she was a virgin.  When Gabriel explained that the pregnancy would be a miraculous work of the Holy Spirit, she said “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”   In response to this astounding and unique challenge, her sense of identity and calling were focused, clarified, and transformed.   With her words, she revealed to herself and to us all what it means to be fully receptive to Christ.  It is through her humble obedience that the Lord became incarnate for our salvation.  

            During this season of Lent, we seek to open the eyes of our souls to God’s challenging message to each of us.  It will surely be different from what we might fantasize about God calling us to do.  It is different from an imaginary religion that serves only the self-centered desires to which we are all tempted in one way or another.  Instead, through prayer, fasting, generosity, and repentance, the Lord calls us to gain the spiritual clarity to see the truth about ourselves like the father in our gospel lesson who confessed in humility the weakness of his faith.  He calls us to crucify our passions and turn away from our sins so that we will gain the strength to become more like the Theotokos in simple, trusting obedience.   

            There is really no mystery about how to do this. We must attend Liturgy faithfully on Sundays and weekday services whenever possible.  We must keep a daily rule of prayer and Bible reading.  We must fast and practice other forms of self-denial.  We must give of our time, energy, and resources to others who need them.  We must forgive our enemies and ask forgiveness of those we have offended.  We must turn away from our sins and toward the Lord.  We must prepare honestly for the holy mystery of Confession, and strengthened by the assurance of Christ’s forgiveness, press on in faithfulness. Whenever we fall down, we must get back up as we offer the Jesus Prayer from the depths of our souls.  

The Savior wants to heal each of us fully from all the ravages of sin, but we must confess our brokenness from the depths of our hearts in order to open ourselves to receive His mercy.   He wants us to discern and obey His calling in the midst of all the challenges and problems of our lives in the “real world” as we know it.  Any other type of spirituality is a fantasy.  But in order to do so, we must turn away from our usual excuses in order to be fully present to Him.   Otherwise, it will be impossible even to hear His message, much less to obey it.

            The more that we pursue this simple path, the more the words of the man in today’s gospel lesson will become our own: “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.”  The more that we pursue this simple path, the more we will be able to say with the Theotokos “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”  The more that we pursue this simple path, the greater spiritual clarity and strength we will have to hear and obey God’s challenging message, not as some kind of fantasy, but in reality as the ultimate truth of our lives.  That is the Lord’s calling to each and every one of us in this blessed season of Lent.  Let us use it for our salvation.       

              

Killing the Fear of Death: Homily for the Third Sunday of Lent (Adoration of the Cross) in the Orthodox Church

Hebrews 4:14-5:6; Mark 8:34-9:1

Today we do something that goes against the strongest inclinations of fallen humanity:  We adore and celebrate the Cross.  Absolutely no one rejoiced about crosses in the first century, for crucifixion was the most horrible form of execution the Romans could devise.  When the Lord told Peter plainly that He would be killed, the head disciple was horrified and tried to correct Him.  That is when Christ said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.”  In order words, Peter was thinking like any other human being enslaved to the fear of death.

            That, of course, is precisely why Jesus Christ offered Himself on the Cross:  to set us free from captivity to the grave.  He did not breathe life into us so that we would disappear into the earth, but so that we would be united eternally with Him in holiness. If we believe our fate is simply for the decay of the tomb, we will go to great lengths to distract ourselves from the pointlessness of our existence.  So we end up worshiping power, pleasure, possessions, and anything else that staves off the dread of death.  We will make this world a false god in one way or another in a failed effort to save ourselves on our own terms.  

            Today we adore the Cross because through it our Lord has conquered death, making even the tomb and Hades pathways to the eternal life of the Kingdom through His glorious resurrection.  It is because of His great Self-offering as our High Priest that we may depart this life with the hope of resurrection and life eternal.  But in order to share in the glory of the empty tomb, we must first follow Him to the Cross by taking up our own crosses.  That means dying to the corrupting power of sin in our lives as we crucify the addiction to self-centered desire that arises from the fear of death.  For if we seek to save our lives by the standards of our fallen world, we will end up losing our souls.

Fortunately, there is still time to live as those who are not ashamed of the Cross.  We have the remaining weeks of Lent to prepare to enter into the deep mystery of the Lord Who caused death to die.  And we do not have to look hard for opportunities to do so.  They are all around us. For example, we should turn our attention away from our favorite distractions (e.g. cell phones, video games, social media, news, sports, and movies) and toward the Lord in daily focused prayer, Bible reading, and studying the lives and teachings of the Saints.  We should sacrifice a small part of our usual routine by attending Lenten services each week. If our physical health and life circumstances allow, we should fast as best we can according to the guidelines of the Church. If we cannot fast from food due to illness, we should learn to accept our struggles with patience, perhaps finding another area of life where we can practice self-denial.  We should give generously of our resources, time, and attention to others, especially the poor, sick, and lonely.  We should serve our family members, friends, and fellow parishioners instead of simply ourselves. We should pray for our enemies and do what we can to heal broken relationships.  We should stay on guard against anything that inflames our passions.  We should shut out our dark and tempting thoughts with the Jesus Prayer.  We should confess our sins honestly this Lent, and be vigilant against sliding back into unholy habits.   

It is through such everyday acts of faithfulness that we will take up our crosses and follow the Savior Who offered Himself on the Cross for our salvation.  That is how we will be set free from the fear of death and all its corrupting effects on our souls.  That is how we will adore and celebrate the Cross as the great sign of our hope, as the only true answer to the tragic brokenness of our humanity.  The God-Man offered Himself on it in order to save us.  Now we must offer ourselves to Him in humble repentance by dying to sin in order to open ourselves to the glory of His resurrection.  That is the Lord’s calling to each and every one of us for, through the Cross, He has filled all things with joy.

Overcoming Paralysis Through Humility: Homily for the Second Sunday of Lent in the Orthodox Church

Mark 2:1-12

If we were not aware already that we have much in common with the paralyzed man in today’s gospel reading, the first two weeks of Lent have surely opened our eyes a bit to that truth.  The struggle to embrace spiritual disciplines quickly shows us that we typically do not control ourselves very well at all.  We find it so hard to turn away from our usual self-centered habits when we seek to give more attention to prayer, fasting, and generosity.  We are so weak in our ability to stay focused in opening our hearts to the Lord and guarding them from evil thoughts.  We have so little strength to resist our addiction to our stomachs and taste buds, and basically to indulging our desires for pleasure in whatever form we want it.   We often feel powerless in our struggle to forgive others and mend broken relationships.  Taking even small steps to reorient our lives to God through spiritual disciplines should open our eyes to the paralysis of our souls.

            If that is the case for you today, then give thanks that the Lord has shown you a truth that is necessary for your healing. Jesus Christ said “It is not the healthy who need a physician, but the sick.  I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2:17) We must know our own disease in order to receive His healing.  We must know our own weakness in order to find His strength.  The disciplines of Lent are tools for helping us see that we do not simply need a new set of rules or a list of things to do or believe.  No, we need to be restored, to be transformed, to be enabled to rise up from our slavery to decay in order to walk, to move forward in a blessed life of holiness from the depths of our souls.  

            The salvation to which Christ calls us is not simply a matter of having ideas or feelings about Him, but of participating personally in the divine nature by grace.  Today we commemorate St. Gregory Palamas, a great bishop, monastic, and theologian of the 14th century.  He is known especially for defending the experience of hesychast monks who, through deep prayer of the heart and asceticism, were enabled to see the Uncreated Light of God that the Apostles beheld at the Transfiguration of the Lord on Mount Tabor.   Against those who denied that human beings could ever experience and know God in such ways, St. Gregory taught that we may truly participate in the divine energies as whole persons. He proclaimed that knowing God means being united personally with Him by grace.  It is to become radiant with the divine glory like an iron left in the fire in ways that permeate a person’s body, soul, and spirit.

            That is precisely what we see in the healing of the paralyzed man.  Christ raised him up from weakness and misery, enabling Him to move forward in a life of holiness, a life in which he had the strength to live as one created in God’s image and likeness.   Today we celebrate that the Savior does precisely the same thing for each of us.  Through His glorious resurrection, He raises us all from slavery to sin and death.  Left to our own devices, we would always be servants of our own corruption.  But when we confess from our hearts our own brokenness and take the steps necessary to open ourselves to His healing, He mercifully raises us up to participate personally in the blessed life that He came to bring to sinners like you and me. 

            The more that we truly humble ourselves before the Lord this Lent, the more open our hearts will be to the infinite healing power of His grace.  He does not rest content with forgiving us in a legal sense, but calls us to be permeated by His divine energies, to radiate His holiness as we live and breathe in this world.  He strengthens and commands us to manifest His victory over sin and death in our own lives.  Perhaps that is just another way of saying that He calls us to “rise, take up your pallet and go home.”  There is no way to receive His merciful healing without true humility.  And there is no way to acquire true humility other than to learn to see ourselves in that paralyzed man whose only hope is in Jesus Christ. Let us use the remaining weeks of Lent to embrace this deep truth through prayer, fasting, generosity, and repentance.  That is how we will unite ourselves more fully with the Lord Who came to raise us up with Him into eternal life.  That is how we too will be healed.

Restoration, Not Escape: Homily for the First Sunday of Lent in the Orthodox Church

Hebrews 11:24-26, 32-40; John 1:43-51

We are all tempted at times to think how nice it would be to run away from all our problems.  We would like to leave behind our jobs, annoying people, or difficult circumstances of whatever kind.  We would like to escape all that weighs us down in order to find peace and happiness.   In one way or another, we have all fantasized about that. And that, of course, is precisely the problem.  Such an escape is a fantasy because we cannot escape ourselves.  No matter where we go, we bring along our own personal brokenness, which is at the root of our lack of peace with others and within ourselves.

            The way to find joy is not by imagining that we can run away from our problems.  It is, instead, to find healing for our souls, which means becoming more beautiful living icons of Christ in the midst of life as we know it.  The word “icon” means “image,” and God has created us male and female in His image and likeness.  The ugliness of sin, in all its forms, mangles and distorts our beauty as those whose nature is to be an image of the Lord, to be like Him. Whatever makes us more like God in holiness makes us more truly ourselves.  And whenever we justify any form of sin as “just being who I am,” we deny the most basic truth of our humanity.

            As we celebrate the restoration of icons to the Church several centuries ago after the period of iconoclasm, we call ourselves to restoration in holiness, to return to our true identity as those called to be like God in every aspect of our lives. Our epistle reading reminds us that that is a difficult task, for those who looked forward to Christ’s coming in the Old Testament suffered and sacrificed greatly in anticipation of the fulfillment of a promise that they did not live to see.  We, however, have experienced the fulfillment of the promise in Jesus Christ.  And that is why we will make a procession around the church with our icons at the conclusion of Liturgy today, for we celebrate that the Eternal Word of God has become one of us, entering fully into our fallen world and humanity in order to restore us to the great dignity for which He breathed life into us in the first place.  The icons reflect the truth of the Incarnation.  They provide signs of hope that people like you and me, with all our problems and limitations, may enter into the holiness of God from the depths of our souls even as we live and breathe in the world as we know it.

With flesh and blood like anyone else, and in the midst of great threats, difficulties, and temptations, the Savior offered Himself fully in free obedience.  Through the mystery of His death and resurrection, He has made it possible for us to share personally in His eternal life.  In this season of Lent, we open ourselves more fully to His gracious healing of the human person through humble prayer, acts of mercy toward the needy, fasting, and repentance.  As we embrace His holiness, we become more like Him as His true icons. That happens not by trying to flee from our bodies, relationships with others, or any aspect of the creation, but offering them to the Lord for healing and blessing.

It is a hard struggle to reorient our desires toward the Lord and in the service of our neighbors.  There is much in us that wants to find fulfillment on our own terms, not by entering into the deep mystery of the Cross and the empty tomb from the depths of our souls.  But as the witness of the Saints has shown, there is no other way to become more beautifully ourselves in holiness.  There is no other way to “see the heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man” than to become who He created us to be in His image and likeness.  There is no other path to the Kingdom than to become a better icon of the Lord.          

             

           

             

Putting on the Armor of Light for Lent: Homily for Forgiveness Sunday in the Orthodox Church

Romans 13:11-14:4; Matthew 6:14-21

            There are some lines of work in which people who are on duty have to dress in distinctive ways.  The uniforms of police officers, firemen, and members of the military, for example, reflect their unique vocations, responsibilities, and authority.   Athletes, employees in many businesses, and some students must wear clothes that identify them in terms of the larger organization of which they are a part.  Whether we like it or not, the clothes we put on our bodies say something to others, and also to ourselves, about who are and what we should be doing.

              We begin our Lenten journey with the reminder that we must be properly dressed spiritually.  That is a challenge because we are the children of Adam and Eve, who were cast out of Paradise after they stripped themselves of the glory that was theirs as those created in God’s image and likeness. The garments of skin that God gave them at that point showed their weakness and mortality, their slavery to the ways of death.  The good news is that Jesus Christ, the New Adam, has conquered our corruption and restored us to our ancient dignity as those who wear a robe of light.  We have put Him on in baptism like a garment.  In His mercy and love, He has made it possible for each and every one of us to fulfill our original vocation to become ever more like God in holiness as partakers of the divine nature.  Yes, that is truly what it means be a Christian and a human being.

Unfortunately, there is much in us that prefers the nakedness of Adam and Eve to the glory of the robe of light.  Corruption and decay root deep within our souls, and we so easily repudiate our glorious attire and turn away from our calling, preferring darkness and weakness to the brilliant holiness which the Savior has shared with us. For each of us in one way or another, there are strong temptations to strip ourselves of such great dignity and to disappear into the dark night of sin.  Not to do so requires a struggle, a battle, that goes to the depths of our souls. Perhaps that is why St. Paul said to “put on the armor of light,” for armor is strong and designed to protect those who wear it from deadly blows from their enemies.

During the season of Lent, we will be engaged in a difficult struggle to “cast off the works of darkness,” to strip ourselves of the ugly rags of sin that distort and hide our true identity as God’s beloved sons and daughters.  Instead of making sure that we give enough time and attention to serving our self-centered desires, we will invest ourselves in prayer, fasting, and serving others.  Instead of doing our best to ignore the truth about who we are before God and in relation to others, we will open the eyes of our souls to shining light that will reveal some very uncomfortable truths about each of us.  And even as we are tempted to take the focus off our own brokenness and to judge others, we will have to struggle mightily to see that the only failings to concern ourselves with are our own.  

Ever since Adam and Eve stripped themselves naked of the divine glory, people have wronged one another and often refused to extend forgiveness, to ask for and accept forgiveness, and to be reconciled with one another.  Despite the infinite mercy we have received from the Lord Who went to the Cross and rose from the dead to restore us, we so easily fall back into the old ways of resentment and division.  The Church calls us to forgive one another today as a way of taking a first step of repentance, of repudiating the passion-driven separation of God’s children from one another that has plagued humanity ever since Cain murdered his brother Abel.

The Son of God entered into our world of sin and death and took upon Himself the full brunt of its corruption.  He shed His blood in order to reconcile us to Himself, for we had separated ourselves from Him by slavery to sin in all its forms.  In humility and love, the eternal Word submitted to death, burial, and descent to Hades in order to raise us up with Him into eternal life through His resurrection.  That is the ultimate healing of a relationship, and we have only our Lord to thank for it.

As He taught in today’s gospel lesson, we must forgive others in order to be forgiven, in order to be restored to right relationship with God.  To put on Christ like a garment is to participate in His life, to be transformed and healed by personal union with Him.  If we claim His forgiveness and then refuse to forgive others, we strip ourselves of the divine glory as surely as did Adam and Eve.  For those who want His forgiveness without forgiving others do not really want anything to do with the Lord other than to get what they want from Him at the moment.  That was the problem of our first parents, who placed self-centered desire over obedience.  They fell into the idolatry of serving themselves instead of God.  And if we abuse our Lord’s mercy by proudly claiming His forgiveness while refusing to forgive others, we show ourselves to be guilty of the very same thing.  That path leads only to further weakness, darkness, and decay.  

Lent calls us, of course, to do the very opposite by taking every opportunity to participate more fully in the Savior’s healing of our fallen humanity.  We do that by extending forgiveness to those who have wronged us, by asking for and accepting forgiveness from those we have wronged, and otherwise doing what we can to mend broken relationships. These matters strike at the heart of the healing of our souls, and we should not be surprised when we struggle along this path.  So struggle we must, focusing on our own unworthiness when we are tempted toward anger and resentment toward anyone for any reason.  Like all spiritual disciplines, forgiveness teaches us humility because we do it so poorly. When our eyes are opened to that truth, we will know more fully our dependence upon the Lord’s mercy, as well as our constant obligation to extend that same mercy to others.

For the same reasons, we struggle to fast from the richest and most satisfying foods during Lent, as well as to give generously to the poor and needy.  Again like our first parents, we are more interested in making “provision for the flesh,” in satisfying self-centered desires than we are in obeying God.  Even small steps in fasting and generosity this Lent will help us catch a glimpse of our weakness, and thus serve as reminders that we need the merciful strength of our Lord to heal us from slavery to deeply rooted temptations.  The more that we struggle to live faithfully as those who have put on Christ, the more we will recognize our dependence upon His grace and love.   The more our eyes are opened to our reliance on His mercy, the more genuine the forgiveness we show to others will be, and the less we will try to impress anyone by our piety.  

If we approach Lent this way, we will remain robed securely in “the armor of light” as we gain the strength to live faithfully as those called to become ever more like God in holiness. We will strip ourselves of darkness and decay as we embrace the healing and restoration of our souls, our relationships, and the entire creation, in the New Adam, Who stopped at nothing, not even the Cross, the tomb, and Hades in order to bring us bring us into His blessed, eternal life.  If we approach Lent this way, we will be dressed spiritually in the most fitting way possible to enter into the joy of our Savior’s glorious resurrection on the third day.

Needy Neighbors and Strangers as Icons of Christ: Homily for the Sunday of the Last Judgment in the Orthodox Church

Matthew 25:31-46

It is easy to think that we have been successful in any endeavor before we are tested.  Students in college classes, for example, often think that they are doing just fine until they take the first examination.  Athletes may think that their team is the best until they lose the first game.  Cooks do not know how good a recipe is until someone actually eats the dish. And sometimes the challenges that reveal how well we have done are not those that we would have expected. 

            In today’s gospel reading, everyone was surprised that how they treated the sick, the hungry and thirsty, the stranger, the naked, and the prisoner—“the least of these” in society—was how they treated Jesus Christ.  The ultimate standard of their relationship to God, of their spiritual health, was shown in how they responded to the everyday challenge of caring for those in need.  By serving Christ in their wretched and miserable neighbors, some demonstrated that they were in union with the Lord, that His holy mercy had permeated their souls.  Others, by disregarding those same neighbors, had shown that they had rejected Christ, that they did not share in His life.  Some opened themselves to the life of the Kingdom in which they already participated in this world, while others shut themselves out of an eternal blessedness they had rejected bit by bit throughout their lives.  The judgment of the Lord in this parable is not some random decree, but a confirmation of who people had chosen to become through their actions.

            If we have been paying attention at all, we will know that Great Lent begins very soon.   The Church calls us to weeks of intensified spiritual struggle in which we devote ourselves to prayer, abstain from the richest and most satisfying foods, give generously to the needy, turn away from our sins, and extend and ask for forgiveness from those from whom we have become estranged.  We all need the spiritual disciplines of Lent for the healing of our souls as we prepare to follow our Lord to His great victory over death.

Today’s gospel reading, however, reminds us that the practices of Lent are not ends in themselves by any means.  If, like a prideful Pharisee, we believe that observing them fulfills what God requires and automatically makes us closer to Him than others, we will do ourselves more harm than good.  For the standard of judgment in today’s gospel lesson is not whose religious observance was the most austere or otherwise impressive.  No, the key issue in this passage is who we become in relation to the Lord as that is shown by how we treat others, especially those whom we are in no way naturally inclined to help.  Remember that all human beings bear the image of God, which means that we are all icons of the Lord.  How we treat an image of someone reflects what we think about that person.  So if we become the kind of people who ignore and disregard suffering neighbors and strangers, we turn away from Christ. Conversely, if we love and serve them, then we love and serve Him. 

The question is not simply what we say we believe or where we spend a couple of hours on Sunday.  It is whether we have truly become “partakers of the divine nature” by grace (2 Peter 1:4), whether “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” (Gal. 2:20) The test is whether we actually live as those who have died to sin and been born anew into a life of holiness.  As St. James wrote in his epistle, “Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this:  to visit widows and orphans in their trouble and to keep oneself unspotted from the word.” (Jas. 1:27) And as St. John taught, we are liars if we say that we love God while we hate our brothers and sisters. (1 Jn. 4:20) 

In the world as we know it, there is nothing naturally attractive about following Christ to His Cross, burial, and descent into Hades. And there is nothing naturally appealing about serving suffering human beings in their misery and need. But if we serve only ourselves and abandon them, we abandon Him.  If we are to become the kind of people who do not deny our crucified Lord and run away in fear, we must learn to bear our own crosses, including the challenge of caring for those whose crosses are much heavier than ours.  Our Lord’s sacrificial love must become characteristic of us; otherwise, we will reject Him because, regardless of what we say we believe, we will want no part of a Lord Who reigns from a Cross and an empty tomb.

From Judas Iscariot to today, there have always been those who betray Jesus Christ for money, power, pride, or some other false god.  There are those who, even as they call themselves Christians, identify our Lord’s Kingdom with the corrupt ways of worldly kingdoms, who associate the way of Christ with ways that He clearly rejected, such as worshiping wealth and earthly power, judging others self-righteously and hypocritically, or hating people of different ethnic, religious, or national backgrounds.   Of course, it is appealing in every generation to think that all we find to be familiar, comfortable, and desirable must be holy—and that whoever we think our enemies are must be God’s enemies. It is tempting to hate and condemn people or groups whom we see as a threat to whatever we may want in life. No matter how attractive that way of thinking is, it amounts simply to idolatry, to identifying our ways with God’s ways and rejecting Him without even recognizing it.

If we are to prepare ourselves for a journey that leads to the Cross, to the sacrificial slaughter of the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world, we must reject conventional and easy ways of thinking about religion that so easily lead us away from Christ.   Remember that no one expected a Messiah Who would associate with sinners, bless Gentiles and Samaritans, die on the Cross, and then rise in glory.  If we are to acquire the humility and faith necessary to follow such a shocking Lord, we cannot rest content with what is pleasing to us on our own terms.  No, we must open ourselves to His strength by humble repentance and obedience. 

This Lent, let us use our lack of enthusiasm for serving our neighbors as a reminder that we must pray daily for God’s strength and healing for our own souls.  Let us abstain from meat and other rich foods as a tool for learning to control our self-centered desires so that we may put the needs of others before our own.  Let us give money, time, and attention to bless those here and around the world who lack what we take for granted.   Let us take advantage of the opportunities all around us to serve our Lord in our neighbors.  The more that we embrace these disciplines with true humility, the more fully we will participate in the healing and restoration that Christ has brought to the world through His Cross and glorious resurrection. 

The Lord said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” (Jn. 14:15) If we call ourselves Christians, then we must obey Him.  If we dare to ask for the Lord’s mercy on us, we must show His mercy to others.  If we claim to be His followers, then we must learn to put others before ourselves, especially those we are not particularly inclined to help.  For as He taught, “In that you did it to the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.”  If we use the disciplines of Lent to gain the spiritual health necessary to serve Him more faithfully each day in relation to neighbors and strangers, then we will be prepared to go with Him to the Cross and to enter into the joy of Pascha, to “inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”  For as hard as it may be for us to accept, in our small efforts to help “the least of these,” we serve the Lord Himself Who died and rose again for our salvation.