Patient, Humble Faith for the Healing of our Souls: Homily for Hieromartyr Charalampos, Bishop of Magnesia and the 17th Sunday of Matthew in the Orthodox Church

2 Timothy 2:1-10; Matthew 15:21-28

            Good parents know that, while it may be easier to do things for our children, it is often best to let them learn by doing themselves.  They will not do everything well the first time, but neither did we. Children whose parents make everything easy for them will not become mature, capable, or self-confident.  Part of growing up is learning to handle the frustration of not getting it all right immediately.

In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus Christ responded to the request of the Canaanite woman for the healing of her daughter in a way that she surely found frustrating.  When she, as a Gentile, called on Him as the Jewish Messiah or “Son of David” to cast out the demon, He did not answer her at all.  Then the disciples made the situation even more tense by begging Him to send her away.  That is when the Savior said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  In response to those words, she knelt before Him and said, “Lord, help me.”  Christ then truly put her to the test by saying, “It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”  In other words, He was reminding her that she was not a descendant of Abraham and, according to the conventional assumptions of the day,  had no claim on the blessings brought by the Messiah.

That is when the Canaanite woman uttered a profound theological truth:  “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”  She acknowledged that, if those promises applied only to those of Hebrew heritage, she had no more claim on them than dogs had to the food of their owner.  Those dogs would not have been beloved pets, but more like scavengers that the Jews viewed with caution.  Nonetheless, even dogs could lick up the crumbs that fall from the table.  In other words, she knew better than our Lord’s disciples that the ancient promises were for the benefit of all.  The Lord praised her great faith and healed her daughter when she put the request in those terms.

We probably find it hard to understand why Christ responded to this woman’s pleas as He did.  Had He immediately granted her request and not referred to her as a dog, we would be more comfortable with the story.  In order to understand this conversation, we have to remember that He was guiding a particular person to grow in her faith.  Like a good parent or teacher, He did not do all the work for her or make things too easy.  Instead, He challenged her to face head-on who she was in relation to Him.  He prodded her to grow into a mature understanding of how the blessings of His ministry could extend to her and her fellow Gentiles.  That was not only a truth she needed to learn, but that His disciples needed to see enacted before their very eyes as He praised the faith of a despised foreigner and delivered her daughter.

The Savior put this woman to the test and she responded with humble faith.  She did not take offense due to hurt pride when He seemed to ignore her and then gave the impression that she should go away and stop bothering Him.  She did not deny that, as a Gentile, she had the standing of a dog, an unclean animal that was not really part of the family, in the eyes of the Jews.  Indeed, her great expression of faith is based on the acceptance of that lowly designation.  The Savior’s response enabled her to see clearly who she was in relation to Him and how shocking it was that His mercy extended even to the Gentiles.  Christ surely spoke to her in this way because He knew she had the spiritual strength to respond as she did for her own benefit and that of her daughter and the disciples.  And since we are focusing on her story today, the account of this woman’s humble faith benefits us also.

It is tempting for any group of people to forget or ignore the truth about where they stand before the Lord.  The Roman Empire persecuted the early Christians because the Romans believed that they were civilization itself.  They charged those who refused to worship their gods with treason and hatred of humanity, for they believed that those gods protected their realm.  There was no higher good for them than to preserve their way of life.  How tempting it remains for nations and other groups hypocritically to identify themselves with all that is good and to use that identification to justify hating and condemning others.

We commemorate today the Hieromartyr Charalampos the Wonder Worker, a bishop who endured terrible tortures at the hands of the Romans at the advanced age of 113 before being beheaded at the beginning of the third century.  His example and miracles brought many to believe in Christ.  St. Charalampos embodied the humble faith shown by the Canaanite woman, for he did not abandon the Lord when loyalty to Him resulted in horribly brutal treatment and even death.  Like other martyrs, he accepted being viewed as an enemy by his own rulers for the sake of the Savior, Who Himself had been executed by the Romans as “the King of the Jews.” They carried out such executions in order to make clear what happened to people who dared to challenge their authority and unique place in the world.

Obviously, St. Charalampos and the other martyrs faced difficult trials through which they demonstrated their faith.  Their path was certainly not easy and required profound patience, as well as the humility to accept being treated much worse than a dog.  Through their suffering, they bore witness not only to how the Lord’s salvation extends to Gentiles with faith in Him, but also to His great victory over death in His resurrection on the third day.  The Savior’s resurrection was not a mere concept to them, but the ultimate truth of their lives, which they embraced by literally taking up their crosses and following Him through the grave to the empty tomb.

While God does not call us all to become martyrs in that sense, He does call us to cultivate the humble faith which they and the Canaanite woman so clearly possessed.  In order to do so, we must reject the temptation to think that we stand before God on the basis of any worldly characteristic or accomplishment, whether as particular people or as members of a group of any kind.  Making power and success in this world the highest good was the basis of the idolatry of the Romans.  By refusing to deny Christ even to the point of death as traitors to Rome, the martyrs obviously did not worship the false gods of this world.  By accepting that she was an outsider to the people of Israel even as she begged for Christ to heal her daughter, the Canaanite woman showed that the ultimate meaning and purpose of her life was not defined by conventional distinctions between people, nations, or religions.  Instead of building themselves up over against others by the corrupt standards of earthly power, these holy people embraced the selfless way of Christ, Whose Kingdom is not of this world. Their examples demonstrate that how we stack up according to human standards does not give anyone a greater or lesser claim on the Lord’s mercy than anyone else.

Like them, we must not give up when difficult circumstances test our faith.  It is precisely through our disappointments, struggles, and persistent challenges that we will grow in our understanding that the life in Christ is not about getting what we want on our own terms or schedule or achieving any earthly goal.  It is, instead, about finding the healing of our souls as we share more fully in the eternal life of the Savior as the particular persons He created us to be.  Our paths will not be identical to those of St. Charalampos or the Canaanite woman, but we must look to them as examples of the persistent, humble faith in Christ through Whom “many will come from the East and the West to share the banquet with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.”  (Matt. 8:11)

Presenting Our Talents in the Heavenly Temple: Homily for the 16th Sunday After Pentecost and 16th Sunday of Matthew in the the Orthodox Church

2 Corinthians 6:1-10; Matthew 25:14-30

            Today we continue to celebrate the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple, when the Theotokos and St. Joseph the Betrothed took the forty-day old Savior to the Temple in obedience to the requirements of the Old Testament law.  This is a feast in which we celebrate how the Child born at Christmas has fulfilled the hopes of the children of Abraham and extended them to all people with faith in Him.  Righteous Simeon held Christ in his arms and proclaimed, “Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.”  The elderly Prophetess Anna also “spoke of him to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.”  The Old Testament temple and priesthood were preparatory signs of the coming of the Great High Priest Who offers Himself for the salvation of the world.  He has fulfilled the law and the calling of every human person to become like God in holiness, for He has joined humanity to divinity in Himself as the God-Man.   

            In order to celebrate this feast properly, we must go beyond speaking words about what Christ has done, as true as those words are.  We must present and unite ourselves to Him personally, making every dimension of our life an entrance into the heavenly worship of the Kingdom.  For our Savior is the One “Who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, and Who serves in the sanctuary, the true tabernacle set up by the Lord, not by a mere human being.” (Heb. 8:1-2)  Everything that we think, say, and do in this world may participate already in heavenly glory through Christ, when we unite ourselves to Him in holiness.  In order for that to happen, we must obey St. Paul’s instruction:  “We entreat you not to accept the grace of God in vain…Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”  If we are not offering ourselves to the Lord today, then we are refusing the only opportunity we have to share more fully in His life.  The past is gone and we have no idea what the future will hold.  We must be good stewards of the opportunities available to us right now, if we want to find the healing of our souls.

            As the parable in today’s gospel reading makes clear, we must invest ourselves more fully in the life of Christ. The point is not what particular challenges and opportunities we have on a daily basis, but whether we are responding to them in a way that serves God’s purposes for us, our neighbors, and our world. The servants who invested their talents such that they produced more were exalted.  The servant who, out of fear, buried his talent in the ground and produced nothing lost what he had and was cast out.  The point was not how much they began with, but what they did with what they had.  Regardless of the circumstances of our lives, we all face the same challenge to enter more fully into the blessed life of the Kingdom.  “Now is the day of salvation” for us all because the ultimate question is whether we are uniting ourselves to Christ in the present reality of our lives.  If we are doing so, then we are becoming more fully the people God created us to be in His image and likeness through the eternal ministry of our Great High Priest.  If we are not, we are refusing to cooperate with our Lord’s gracious invitation to share in the life of the Kingdom. That is a path that leads only to greater spiritual weakness. 

            In the parable, the man with one talent hid it in the ground because he was afraid of his master. Notice that the master said that the servant, at the very least, could have put the talent in a bank and produced a little bit of interest for him. We may be tempted to refuse to give our time, energy, and abilities to serve Christ because we are afraid that He will not accept our offering. We may think that we will fail at what we have set out to do or perhaps somehow look foolish in the eyes of others.  We may feel weak or guilty or otherwise believe that opening some area of our lives to the Savior will result only in harsh condemnation. 

            Remember, however, that the master in the parable would have accepted even a small amount of interest from one talent put in the bank.  He told the unfortunate servant that the proper response to his fear was at least to do something productive, not to be paralyzed by anxiety or shame.  On the one hand, it could be understandable why we would hesitate to unite ourselves to the Lord.  It can be painful and embarrassing to acknowledge the truth about our own brokenness and need for healing.  Since God is infinitely holy and we most surely are not, the temptation not to expose ourselves to Him is powerful.  We like to think that it would be better to avoid the pain of condemnation, failure, or hurt pride by keeping the Lord—and a recognition of the truth about our lives-- at arm’s length.  Consequently, we bury our talent in the ground as we refuse to offer and open ourselves to Christ.   

            The problem, of course, is that the assumptions driving the fears that  keep us from being good stewards of our talents have no basis in reality.  The Master Who calls us to offer our lives to Him is Jesus Christ, Who endured crucifixion, death, burial, and descent into Hades for our salvation.  Purely out of love for us, He offered up Himself in order to conquer the grave in His glorious resurrection on the third day.  In His earthly ministry, the Savior had mercy on every repentant sinner who came to Him, including St. Peter who denied Him three times before His crucifixion.  He healed diseases of all kinds, cast out demons, and even raised the dead.  There is no reason to let fear of rejection deter us from humbly offering ourselves to Him for the service of the Kingdom.

            If we wonder what it would mean for us to be good stewards of our talents, all that we need to do is look around us.  Christ said that He “came to serve, not to be served” (Matt. 20:28) and there is no shortage of ways to serve Him in our parish, in our families, and in our neighbors, friends, and acquaintances.  To the extent that we help even the lowliest person, we serve our Lord.   We must also be good stewards by devoting our time, energy, and attention to prayer, reading the Bible, studying the lives and teachings of the saints, and gaining strength in resisting our self-centered desires by fasting and other forms of self-denial.  We must deliberately invest ourselves in daily practices that enable us to offer ourselves to Christ.  If we do not, our focus will remain simply on ourselves, and especially on fulfilling our passions in ways that further enslave us to them.

At the end of the day, we must offer ourselves to something or someone.  Remembering how Christ has fulfilled the ancient prophecies of the Old Testament, let us unite ourselves to Him as our Great High Priest by making each moment of our lives a point of entrance into the eternal liturgy of the Kingdom of Heaven.  Righteous Simeon and the Prophetess Anna waited decades for the Messiah.  Since He has already come, let us give our whole lives to Him.   That is the only way to be good stewards of our gifts as we refuse “to accept the grace of God in vain,” but instead do all that we can to cooperate with Him for the healing of our souls.  Anything less amounts to burying our talents in the ground and refusing to invest ourselves in the service of the Kingdom.   

Tangible Holiness Through Personal Encounter with Christ: Homily for the Translation of the Relics of John Chrysostom and the 15th Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

Hebrews 7:26-8:2; Luke 19:1-10

It is fair enough for people to ask why the Orthodox Christian faith inspires our loyalty.  There are so many other religions available to us, as well as non-religious perspectives according to which we could live our lives.  We are free to believe and live as we choose, so why should we identify ourselves with Jesus Christ and His Church?

From the earliest years of the faith, the example of how personal encounter with the Savior changes people has been a powerful witness.  The early Christians laid down their lives for Him as martyrs.  They shared their possessions such that the needs of every member of the community were met.  They crossed ethnic boundaries in shocking ways that manifested their unity in Christ. They cared for the sick during plagues and rescued children who had been abandoned by their parents.  In contrast to a decadent culture, they embraced chastity in a way appropriate to their vocations as married people, monastics, or widows.

Profound personal transformations certainly occurred during our Lord’s earthly ministry. Today’s gospel reading tells the memorable story of Zacchaeus, who responded to the Savior’s initiative by repudiating his dishonest, greedy way of life as a tax collector.  After Zacchaeus welcomed Christ into his home, others complained that “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.”  In that time and place, it was scandalous for the Messiah to identify himself with such a corrupt person by accepting his hospitality.  In response to that charge, Zacchaeus spontaneously repented by giving half of his possessions to the poor and restoring what he had stolen four fold. We do not know the details of the Lord’s conversation with Zacchaeus, but it had such an impact on the tax collector that Christ proclaimed, “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham; for the Son of man came to seek and to save the lost.”

The shocking transformation of Zacchaeus serves as testimony to the healing power of Christ in relation to some of the most powerful temptations that we experience.   Recall what St. Paul wrote to St. Timothy about the dangers of loving money:  “Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” (1 Tim. 6:9-10)  It is one thing to be content with having the physical necessities of life, but quite another to seek the meaning of our lives in the comfort, status, and security usually associated with wealth in this world.

Personal experience teaches that possessions easily become our false gods, but they cannot ultimately satisfy us.  Wealthy and famous people may live in misery, while the humble poor may experience great joy. Those whose lives revolve around money and what it can buy will never be at peace, for there can be no guarantee about what tomorrow will bring. No matter how much or how little we have, worrying about keeping it and acquiring more often enslaves us to self-centered desire and obscures our vision of the needs of others.  It turns our trust away from God and toward an imaginary vision of ourselves as being self-sufficient. When, like Zacchaeus, we open our disordered relationship with money to Christ, we will turn away from self-centeredness to embrace generosity toward others. To live that way in the midst of such a materialistic culture will bear witnesses to the power of the Savior to make us already participants in a Kingdom not of this world.

Today we commemorate the recovery of the relics of St. John Chrysostom, who had died in exile in Armenia thirty years earlier due to the persecution of the Empress Eudoxia.  His casket would not be moved until a letter of apology from Emperor Theodosius the Younger was placed on it.  St. John’s body was found to be incorrupt and was placed on the patriarchal throne in Constantinople, where he was miraculously heard to say, “Peace be to all.”

The life of any saint is a brilliant icon of what happens when a human being becomes radiant with the holiness of God.  Since our basic human calling is to become like God in holiness, we should think of the saints simply as true human beings, not as a special class somehow separate from the challenges of life in the world as we know it.  It is by responding faithfully in the midst of those challenges that they become “partakers of the divine nature” by grace.  The ancient practice of honoring the relics or physical remains of a saint reflects our belief that the body of a Christian is a temple of the Holy Spirit and destined for resurrection into eternal life.  In the Old Testament, contact with the bones of the prophet Elisha raised a man from death. (2 Kings 13:21)  In Acts, handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched St. Paul worked miracles. (Acts 19:12)  It should not be surprising, then, that God continues to do great things through the relics of the saints.  These are signs that His salvation concerns the whole person and conquers even death itself.

In commemorating the translation of the relics of St. John Chrysostom, we must not simply marvel at the great events of past centuries.  Instead, we must recognize that God calls us all to the same holiness present in the lives and relics of the saints.  Like Zacchaeus, they were all imperfect people living in a world of corruption.  They all endured temptations and had to struggle for healing from self-centered desire in various forms.  At some point and in some way in their lives, they also repented like Zacchaeus in reorienting their lives to God as they did their best to set right what they had done wrong.  Like him, they responded to Christ’s gracious initiative in welcoming His healing and strength for charting a new course.

The change in Zacchaeus was profound and obvious.  It involved what he did with his money and power, and definitely impacted the people he encountered every day in practical ways.  He did not abandon the world, but began to live faithfully in it and to bless his neighbors.  The holiness of the saints is similarly tangible.  Chrysostom’s teaching, preaching, and prophetic service of the Church, for example, were clearly evident throughout his faithful ministry.  If we unite ourselves to Christ in holiness, we must also become living icons of what happens when a human person encounters the Savior.   He has held nothing back from us and gives us all countless opportunities to find the healing of our souls as we share more fully in His life by responding faithfully to our daily challenges.   Our calling, then, is to respond like Zacchaeus, Chrysostom, and all the saints in offering even the deeply disordered dimensions of our lives to Him for healing.

That is how we may provide a witness to the power of Jesus Christ to transform broken people like you and me into “partakers of the divine nature.”  We must become living relics of His salvation, living proof of what happens when people with all the weaknesses and problems common to humanity unite themselves in holiness to Him.  Ultimately, that is how we will give an account of our loyalty to Christ as the Savior.  It is only when we follow in the practical path of the saints that our lives will become signs of the good news heard by Zacchaeus:  “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham; for the Son of man came to seek and to save the lost.”

The Savior’s Healing of Whole Persons: Homily for the Twelfth Sunday of Luke and the Venerable Euthymios the Great in the Orthodox Church

2 Corinthians 4:6-15; Luke 17:12-19

            Our generation is not alone in finding it difficult to appreciate the spiritual significance of the human body. Across the centuries, an abiding temptation for many is to believe that physical things simply cannot become holy.  Of course, that perspective often serves as an excuse to justify living as we please in daily life while giving God only our thoughts and feelings.  Whatever such a spiritual path may be, it is not the genuine Christian faith and lacks the power to heal us as the whole persons God created us to be.

Today’s gospel passage describes our Lord healing ten men who suffered from the dreaded disease of leprosy.  Christ’s healing ministry showed that His salvation encompasses every dimension of the human being:  body, soul, and spirit.  He demonstrated how His gracious love restores broken, weak people to their dignity in the image and likeness of God.  Were our bodies spiritually irrelevant, intrinsically evil, or otherwise not integral dimensions of who we are, the Savior would surely not have devoted Himself to blessing the sick.  But since we are creatures of flesh and blood in a world of death and decay, He restored people to health as an enacted icon of His gracious purposes for us all.  For He did not come merely to teach or even to forgive, but to restore and fulfill us as sons and daughters who truly share in His eternal life. He came to heal us in every way possible.

Perhaps we have heard stories of the Lord’s healing mercy so many times that we take them for granted.  Today’s particular account has a couple of details that should focus our attention.  First, the men whom Christ healed had leprosy, a dreaded disease that separated its victims from anyone who did not have it.  Notice that the men stood at a distance when they called out for healing, for they were considered dangerously unclean.  Here we have a sign of how easily our sins can separate us from others, including those we love the most in this life.  We may become overwhelmed with guilt and shame to the point that we would rather withdraw from relationships than confront the painful truth of how we have harmed them.  Unless we embrace the healing of Christ, the causes of our separation from one another will simply fester and weaken all concerned.  If He could cleanse people of leprosy and restore them to a normal life in first-century Palestine, we must not place limits on how He can heal us and our broken relationships today.  For that to happen, we must respond to Him with the humble faith of the Samaritan leper.

This is the second noteworthy detail:  The only one of the lepers who returned to thank Christ for healing him was a hated Samaritan, considered a foreigner and a heretic by the Jews.  After the man fell down before Him in gratitude, the Lord said, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”  This shocking detail reminds us that the Savior’s therapeutic ministry extended to those very much on the margins of society, to those outside the class of people considered neighbors.  Because He came to bring all people and the entire creation into the blessedness of the Kingdom of God, however, Christ’s mercy for suffering humanity extended also to him.  The Samaritan’s physical and social disability were signs of his need for healing and restoration that he could not give himself.  Out of deep gratitude for this completely unexpected and shocking blessing, the Samaritan alone returned to give thanks.  Consequently, he was healed that day in a way that extended beyond the merely physical.  His example should remind us of the importance of expressing gratitude to the Lord for His mercy and of extending that same mercy to the suffering people we are tempted to view as strangers and enemies.

Saint Paul knew that even a great apostle received the healing of Christ like an earthen vessel, like a container made of clay.  The great “transcendent power belongs to God and not to us,” for we are weak in so many ways.  He writes of “carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our bodies. While we live we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.”  Through his many sufferings as an apostle, Saint Paul became a living icon of the Savior’s victory over corruption in all its forms, including the grave.  By enduring abuse, imprisonment, and ultimately martyrdom, he gave testimony with his own flesh and blood to the One Who both rose from the dead and shares His eternal life with those who unite themselves to Him in humble faith.  By such a ministry, St. Paul became an instrument for others to receive grace and give thanks to God.

The apostle’s teaching and example remind us of the necessary place of the body for the healing of our souls.  We celebrated at Christmas the birth of our Lord as a human infant with the same physical characteristics as any other baby.  He had to become fully one of us in order to fulfill our vocation to become like Him in holiness as “partakers of the divine nature” by grace.   We commemorated His baptism at Theophany, for His physical immersion in the Jordan restored the entire creation to holiness and was the occasion for the revelation of the Holy Trinity.  As those who have been baptized into Christ’s death, we have died to sin and risen up with Him into a new life of holiness.  (Rom. 6:3-4)  It is simply impossible for us to respond faithfully to this high calling in a way that is somehow separate from our actions each day in our own flesh and blood.

There are different callings in life that point us on distinct pathways to the Kingdom.  Today we commemorate St. Euthymios the Great, an exemplary monastic who worked miracles, embraced rigorous asceticism, taught and led others wisely, and defended the Orthodox faith.  Much discipline and self-denial are required for such a way of life, for so many desires are rooted deeply within us and disoriented by our self-centeredness.  It would be a grave error, however, to think that only monks and nuns should undertake such struggles.  For example, to shut our eyes and ears when media and entertainment threaten to inflame our passions for sexual pleasure and hatred toward real or imagined enemies is a necessary form of spiritual vigilance for people in our culture today. To fast moderately serves the health of our souls and our bodies, as it gives us strength in controlling our desires for immediate satisfaction on our own terms.  And limiting our self-indulgence in food and drink just a bit should free up resources to give to the poor and needy in whom we encounter the Lord.

Since we are earthen vessels, we are weak and unworthy of the promise of healing that is ours in Jesus Christ.  That is why we must attend to how we are offering ourselves to Him practically so that we may gain the strength to turn away from everything that hinders us from sharing in His life as fully as possible.  We cannot separate our bodies from our souls; and in light of our Lord’s birth and baptism, the physical dimensions of life certainly do not have to separate us from Him.

Recall that through His healing of people suffering with leprosy, a Samaritan became an example of faith and gratitude.   Through the offering of the Eucharist, bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ.  Through the blessing of holy matrimony, the intimate relationship of man and woman is oriented toward the Kingdom as husband and wife become an icon of the relationship between Christ and the Church.  The Savior comes to heal us all in every dimension of our life as embodied persons who bear the divine image and likeness.  Remembering that we are flesh and blood, let us fall down before Him in thanks as we accept this great blessing for the healing of every dimension of our humanity:  body, soul, and spirit.

Joseph the Betrothed, a Model of Obedience: Homily for the After-Feast of & Sunday After the Nativity of Christ in the Orthodox Church

Galatians 1:11-19; Matthew 2:13-23

Christ is Born!  Glorify Him!

As we continue to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ for the salvation of the world, we should acknowledge that we are probably so familiar with the Christmas story that we often imagine it happened in a world quite different from our own.  We tend to make His Nativity a sentimental event that we celebrate yearly with various cultural customs before going back to life as usual.  When we do so, however, we miss the point of how this great Feast challenges us to live faithfully in the very same world in which the Savior was born as a vulnerable Child.

Today we remember a crucial, and often overlooked, figure in the real life drama of Christmas:  Joseph the Betrothed, an elderly relative of the Virgin Mary who reluctantly became her guardian when she had to leave the Temple where she had grown up.  One of the verses chanted at vespers last night states that “a strange betrothal fell unto his lot,” and that is surely an understatement.

Betrothal was an arrangement in which a man became the guardian of a woman; it did not imply the intimate relations of marriage.  As an 80 year-old widower, Joseph did not want to take on this responsibility for the teenaged Virgin Mary, but he obeyed God’s command nonetheless.  That is how he came to play a key role in the salvation of our world of corruption.

The story of Joseph connects with so much of the heritage of the Old Testament.  An evil ruler wanted to murder the young Savior because He viewed Him as a threat.  Pharaoh had ordered the deaths of Hebrew male infants long ago in Egypt, and now a wicked king like him reigned in Israel.  Herod slaughtered the young boys in and around Bethlehem when he realized that the wise men had tricked him.

In the Exodus, the Hebrews had fled Egypt on the night of the Passover.  Now the young Messiah flees Israel to go to Egypt at night.  Once the danger had passed, Joseph brought the family back to the Promised Land, just as the Hebrews eventually returned after wandering in the desert for forty years. Recall also the story in Genesis of another Joseph.  He went to Egypt unwillingly, as a slave, but eventually saved his whole family from a famine by bringing them there.

Matthew’s gospel describes Joseph’s role in the Lord’s early life with obvious Old Testament symbolism.  The point is not simply to glorify Joseph, of course, but to show how Christ fulfills God’s promise of a Savior to the Hebrews and to all people.   Joseph’s story is a clear reminder that God calls people to cooperate with His gracious plans to bring salvation, blessing, and healing to the entire world. No, that world is not one of imaginary sentimental perfection, but the very same one inhabited today by those who suffer from persecution, abuse, and war.  There are still many Herods among us.

The necessity of our free response to God’s calling in such a world should be obvious at Christmas.  The Theotokos freely chose to say “yes” when the Archangel Gabriel visited her with the good news that she was chosen to be the Virgin Mother of the Son of God.  Despite his reluctance to become her guardian in the first place, old Joseph accepted the responsibility.  And then after being horrified to discover her pregnancy, he had the faith to believe the message of the angel that the Child was conceived of the Holy Spirit.  Despite his advanced age, Joseph successfully guided his family to Egypt as they fled the murderous Herod.  He had not anticipated involvement in such a dangerous set of circumstances in his latter years, but he did what had to be done for the safety of his family, as so many parents struggle to do today in life-threatening circumstances around the world.

The example of Joseph reminds us that God uses our cooperation to accomplish His gracious purposes in the world.  That was certainly the case in the Old Testament:  Abraham, Moses, David, and countless others responded to God’s initiative, and He worked through them, despite their many failings.  The same is certainly true of the Theotokos, for through the free response of a teenaged Palestinian Jewish girl came the Messiah in Whom the ancient promises to the descendants of Abraham are fulfilled and extended to the entire world.

The details of our Lord’s conception, birth, and infancy show that God does not force people to obey Him.  It is entirely possible to disregard God and refuse to live as those created in the divine image and likeness.  Herod provides a shockingly clear example of where the choice to turn away from truth and goodness leads.  Doing so does not simply weaken us as particular people, but also frustrates the accomplishment of God’s blessing and healing of the world.  Just look at the pain and brokenness that violence, hatred, and lust for power still bring to people today.  Unfortunately, Herod remains an all too familiar figure whenever the lives of the weak and innocent become inconvenient and expendable before the dominant forces of the world as we know it.

Our calling is not simply to avoid becoming like Herod, but to become as much like the Theotokos and Joseph the Betrothed as we possibly can.  Though there is obviously a uniqueness in how she freely agreed to contain the Son of God in her womb as His Mother and Living Temple, we may all become better temples of the Holy Spirit as we welcome God’s sanctifying presence more fully into our lives.  Her life plans changed at the Annunciation, and we must recognize that the healing of our souls likely will not occur according to our own preferences.   That was certainly the case for old Joseph, who took on responsibilities that he did not want because He knew that was God’s calling in his life.  Because this unlikely couple freely obeyed God, salvation has come to the world.

Let us celebrate Christmas by growing in our cooperation with God’s good purposes for us in the broken world we inhabit.  That means rejecting the lie that we are isolated individuals who will find fulfillment in getting what we want on our own terms in any area of life.  It means learning to see and serve Christ in neighbors, family members, and coworkers, in the lonely, sick, and suffering, and especially in anyone we are inclined to view as an enemy.  It means turning off nonstop media and disregarding intrusive thoughts as we open our hearts to God in the stillness of the Jesus Prayer.  It means undergoing a change of mind such that fulfilling our role in the salvation of the world becomes what is most important to us, even when that is difficult and we would rather be doing something else.  The next time that you feel that way, remember Joseph the Betrothed, the old man who put aside his preferences in order to become a refugee with his unlikely family.   Knowing how God used his faithfulness, how can we set any limits on what He will do with ours?  All that we have to do is to listen and cooperate. The rest is in God’s hands.

Shocking, Holy, and Humble Love for the Whole World: Homily for the Feast of the Nativity of our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ (Christmas) in the Orthodox Church

Christ is Born!  Glorify Him!

Galatians 4:4-7; Matthew 2:1-12

      We gather today to celebrate the birth of our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ for our salvation.  The details of His Nativity are important and shocking.  The Child Who was born in a cave that functioned as a barn and had an animal’s feeding trough for His crib is fully divine and fully human.  He did not appear with worldly power or wealth, as we might expect, but as the Son of a transient Jewish couple who lived under the military occupation of the Roman Empire.  When a wicked king wanted to kill Him, the family became refugees in Egypt.  From infancy, the life of the Savior was at risk at the hands of those who played by the rules of how politics and religion often function in the world as we know it.

In order to celebrate Christmas properly, we must refuse to make God in our own image.  Instead, we must allow ourselves to be called into question by the Lord Who became fully one of us as a vulnerable baby born in very dangerous circumstances.  The eternal Word Who spoke the universe into existence humbled Himself beyond our understanding in order to heal every dimension of the human person, in order to make us participants in His life by grace.  He is born of His Virgin Mother to make us sons and daughters who shine brightly with the divine glory and find complete fulfillment as we become like Him in holiness.

This is certainly not the celebration of the birth of yet another false god designed to give some worldly power over others or of a sadist out to make us miserable with fear and self-loathing.  No, this great feast is about a Lord Who lived as He was born:  with humble, self-sacrificial love purely for our sake.  We must be careful how we define “our sake” because we usually define “us” over against “them.”  In Christ, however, that division dissolves, for all people stand equally in need of the healing that He brings.  He is the New Adam Who sets right all that has gone wrong with the children of our first parents.  There is no competition between groups of people when it comes to the good news of the God-Man born in Bethlehem.  Gentile astrologers and lowly shepherds both played their roles at His birth.  He is the Jewish Messiah Who ministered to a Samaritan woman, cast demons out of Gentiles, and praised the faith of a Roman centurion.  He showed mercy to public sinners and outcasts, and identified Himself with “the least of these” in society.  He turned the other check to His enemies and prayed that the Father would forgive them.

If we celebrate Christmas truly, we will see that every human person is someone for whom the Savior was born.  He took on the same humanity that all people share so that all of us would be united with Him in holiness.  In every condition and circumstance, and at every stage of life, everyone bears the dignity of a living icon of God.  He has made that clear by becoming one of us.  We must treat neighbors, strangers, and enemies accordingly, if we claim any part in Him.

In His birth, the God-Man lowers Himself to take on all the brokenness of life in our world of corruption in order to heal us.   He is born to share His divine life with us as He restores and fulfills every dimension of who we are as human persons in the image and likeness of God.  That is the gloriously good news of this great feast, and it extends literally to all. Let us celebrate His Nativity by uniting ourselves to Him as fully as possible from the depths of our souls.  That is really the only fitting way to welcome the Child born in Bethlehem for the salvation of the world.

Born to Fulfill the Hope of the Righteous and to Save Scandalous Sinners: Homily for the Sunday before the Nativity of Christ (The Genealogy) in the Orthodox Church

Hebrews 11:9-10, 32-40; Matthew 1:1-25

Now that the great feast of Christmas is almost here, the Church directs our attention to the family tree of Jesus Christ. Today’s gospel reading from St. Matthew is our Lord’s genealogy, which traces the Savior’s human ancestry back through many generations to Abraham.  It shows that He has the correct heritage to be the Messiah, the Anointed One in Whom the ancient promises are fulfilled. The great saints of the Old Testament looked forward to the completion of their hope for the fullness of the blessing, which we have now received in Christ.  As our epistle passage from Hebrews states of them, “And all these, though well attested by their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had foreseen something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.”

            As we prepare to celebrate our Lord’s Nativity, we do well to consider our relationship to the many generations through whom God prepared for His Son to become the God-Man born in Bethlehem.  If we know the stories of the people of the Old Testament, we should know that we have a lot in common with them.  The Bible makes clear that they suffered from the same forms of pain and brokenness that people do today in their families, in social strife and war, and as exiles and refugees.  They often fell short of what God required of them and committed idolatry by worshiping false gods, including their own desires for power and pleasure. Like King David, many sinned greatly and repented greatly.  Even the most righteous of them, however, did not experience the fulfillment of the human person in God’s likeness, for it is only through the God-Man that we are able to become “partakers of the divine nature” by grace.  He alone has healed every dimension of our humanity by becoming one of us. 

            The Old Testament presents our Lord’s ancestors as unlikely people to prepare the way for the coming of Christ.   For example, not long after God said that He would bless him as the father of a multitude, Abraham gave his wife Sarah away to Pharaoh, encouraging her to say that she was his sister (Gen. 12).  Later, when they were impatient about their inability to conceive, Abraham fathered a child by Sarah’s servant Hagar (Gen. 16). These were not the actions of people with perfect faith.  When God called Moses to lead the Hebrews out of Egypt in the Exodus, he made excuse after excuse to try to get out of it  (Ex. 4). Even after their liberation, the Israelites worshipped a golden calf (Ex. 32) and wanted to go back to Egypt as they complained about the hardships of wandering in the desert (Exod. 16).   That God remained faithful to His promises to the descendants of Abraham was a sign of His mercy, not that the people had earned or deserved any particular blessing.

            The family tree of Jesus Christ in today’s gospel reading certainly does not shy away from the scandalous truths about the people of the Old Testament.  The first of the women mentioned in the genealogy is Tamar, who became pregnant by her father-in-law Judah.  A widow, she disguised herself as a prostitute when he would not give her his youngest son in fulfillment of the requirements of levirate marriage (Gen. 38).  Judah, Tamar, and the twins they conceived are listed in the genealogy. The family tree includes Rahab, a Gentile prostitute who protected two Hebrew spies before the conquest of Jericho (Josh. 2).  She is listed as the mother of Boaz, a Jewish man who married Ruth, a Moabite woman, even though the Old Testament clearly prohibited such marriages (Ruth 4). Nonetheless, Boaz and Ruth are listed as David’s great-grandparents.  Then we read that “David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah.”  David had committed adultery with Bathsheeba, who became pregnant, and then had Uriah killed in battle in order to hide what he had done (2 Sam. 11). David composed Psalm 50 (51) as he repented of his great sin.

            Matthew’s account of the family tree prepares us for the kind of Savior we encounter in Jesus Christ.  Even as His ancestors sinned, He came to show mercy upon those who had fallen short of fulfilling God’s purposes for them.  Even as His family line included Gentiles, He makes all with faith in Him the heirs of the promise to Abraham.  Even as He is a descendant of many whose lives were scandalous, He brought salvation to the world in a fashion that was shocking and offensive to the religious leaders of His day. 

            The circumstances of His conception were outrageous, as His teenage virgin mother became pregnant by a miracle of the Holy Spirit.  Joseph, the older man to whom she was betrothed as her guardian, was horrified to find her pregnant.  Knowing that he was not the father, he planned to divorce her quietly, but did not after an angel told him in a dream of the virginal conception of the Savior.  We may have heard this story so many times that we are no longer shocked by it.  It is important to remember, however, that Christ was born in circumstances that were quite scandalous, for the idea of a virginal conception and birth was just as shocking in the first century as it is in ours.

            Think for a moment about how our Lord’s ministry was received.  He was charged with being a servant of the devil, a blasphemer, and one who disobeyed God’s commandments.  He showed mercy to Gentiles, tax collectors, prostitutes, and other public sinners and lowly people whom the religious establishment had rejected.  The Pharisees and Sadducees were scandalized by what He taught and did.  For a Messiah to die on a cross was considered an act of complete failure which no one expected.  When the tomb was empty three days later, a different kind of scandal occurred when the Crucified One rose in glory.  In a totally expected and unconventional way, He did what not even the most righteous people of the Old Testament could ever have accomplished, for He overcame death, the wages of sin.

            Is it surprising, then, that Church reminds us today both of the great faith of those who looked forward to the coming of the Messiah and of how they often fell short of what God required of them?  No, that is precisely what we should expect, for those great saints were human beings like us, living in a world of corruption as they bore the weight of their own sins and were  weakened by the failings of others.  They did not earn the promise made to Abraham by good behavior, and we have certainly done nothing to merit the merciful love of God that led to the incarnation of the Savior.  Though they did not yet have the fullness of the promise, they suffered greatly in order to be faithful to God and repented greatly when they disobeyed Him.  All the more, then, should we who have received the fullness of the promise unite ourselves to Christ in humble faith, regardless of how profoundly we sin or have sinned at any point in our lives. 

            Had we needed simply a code of conduct or a great teacher or example for the healing of our souls, the Son of God would never have been born to restore and fulfill us in His image and likeness. The Savior, born in so shocking a fashion at Bethlehem, alone is able to overcome the ultimate scandal of the grave itself, as well as all the ways in which we have diminished ourselves as His living icons.  In the short time remaining before the feast of Christmas, let us all embrace the outrageous blessing that is ours in the Messiah.  He came to save the scandalous sinners of past, present, and future generations, including you and me.   Now is the time to complete our preparation to receive Christ at His birth, for He came to fulfill His gracious purposes for all who bear His image and likeness. Not to be ready for Him would be the greatest scandal of all.