Offering our Few Loaves and Fishes for the Salvation of the World: Homily for the Eighth Sunday After Pentecost & Eighth Sunday of Matthew in the Orthodox Church

 

1 Corinthians 1:10-17; Matthew 14:14-22

            It is easy to fall into despair before our own personal problems, the challenges faced by loved ones, and the brokenness of our society and world.  It is tempting to refuse to accept that we remain responsible for offering ourselves to Christ as best we can for healing and transformation in holiness, regardless of what is going on in our lives, families, or world.   We would usually rather avoid accepting that responsibility like the disciples did when the Lord said concerning the thousands of hungry people who had followed Him into the wilderness, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” Since it had been obvious to the disciples that they did not have the provisions to feed all those people, they had asked Christ to “send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves.”  The disciples had only five loaves of bread and two fish, an absurdly small amount of food for a large crowd.  But they still obeyed when “He said, ‘Bring them here to Me.’”  The Savior then “blessed, and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.  And they all ate and were satisfied.  And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over.  And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.”

 

            The Lord revealed His identity as the Messiah by miraculously supplying food for hungry Jews in the desert like manna from heaven in the Old Testament.  The five loaves remind us of the five books of law in the Hebrew Bible, while the two fish recall the two tablets of God’s commandments received by Moses.  From these small amounts of food came such an abundance that twelve basketsful were leftover, which reminds us of the twelve tribes of Israel.  Five thousand men and their families were fed, which again recalls the five Old Testament books of law. The Lord miraculously satisfied the hunger of a multitude in a way that showed He is the Messiah Who fulfills the promises to Abraham, which are now extended to all who respond to Him with humble faith. 

 

Christ taught the disciples and us that we must offer ourselves and our resources to become instruments of His salvation in this world, regardless of our weaknesses and inadequacies.  Adam and Eve did the opposite by disobeying the Lord’s command and indulging their self-centered desires. They thus refused to fulfill their vocations as living icons of God and pursued a path leading only to despair and death.  The Savior offered Himself on the Cross in order to liberate us from such a depraved state through His glorious resurrection on the third day.  We unite ourselves to His offering when we lift up our hearts and offer bread and wine for the celebration of the Eucharist in the Divine Liturgy.  He has restored and fulfilled the original purpose of food and drink in order to bring us into the eternal communion of love shared by the Persons of the Holy Trinity. He nourishes us with His Body and Blood such that His life becomes ours as participants in the Wedding Feast of the Lamb. 

 

When “He looked up to Heaven, and blessed, and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds,” the Savior provided an image of the Eucharist.  The disciples did not know that when they handed over their bread and fish to the Lord on that particular day.  But had they not offered what little food they had collected to Christ, the crowd would have gone hungry.  If no one offers the bread and wine for the celebration of the Divine Liturgy, no one is nourished by the Eucharist.  By miraculously satisfying so many with so little, Christ revealed what it means for us to live eucharistically as we offer ourselves and our resources for the fulfillment of His gracious purposes for the world.  We must not offer only bread and wine or think that communion with Christ concerns only what we do on Sunday morning.  Far from it, we must live every day as those who share in His life, offering every aspect of our existence in the world for His blessing and fulfillment.  No matter how tiny or inadequate we may think our offerings are, He multiplies them to accomplish His gracious purposes for us, our neighbors, and our world.

 

As we continue to celebrate the Dormition (or “falling asleep”) of the Theotokos, let us marvel at how an obscure Palestinian Jewish girl freely offered herself to become Christ’s virgin mother when she said, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord.  Let it be to me according to your word.”  By offering herself fully in that moment, she became the Theotokos, the first to receive Christ into her life and, upon her death, the first to follow Him—body, soul, and spirit-- into the heavenly kingdom.  No one forced her, even as her Son did not force the disciples and does not force us.  It is tragically possible to continue instead in the way of our first parents, enslaved to sin and the fear of death.  They did not offer themselves in obedience, but became consumers of the creation, using God’s blessings only to satisfy their own desires.   Their self-centered obsession is at the root of our corruption and we must constantly be on guard against returning to the popular path that leads to the despair of the grave.  

 

As the Theotokos’ example shows, we must never despair of the importance or the possibility of offering ourselves to Christ, regardless of the apparent insignificance of our actions or how we have weakened ourselves by our sins.  Her obedience was not limited to a one-time event but continued throughout the course of her life, even as she saw her Son rejected and condemned and stood by the foot of the Cross as He died.  Likewise, the disciples’ offering was not limited to the small amount of food they handed over on one day, for they had already obeyed His command to leave behind their occupations and families in order to follow Christ.  Had they refused to abandon their fishing nets in order to do so, Peter, James, and John would not have been on Mt. Tabor where they beheld the divine glory of the Lord at the Transfiguration.  The only way to participate in Christ’s transfiguration of the human person in holiness and to follow the Theotokos into the eternal life of the Kingdom is to persist in offering ourselves to Him in obedience each day as best we can, no matter how insignificant or difficult the particular offering may seem.  We never know how God will multiply our small offerings to bless the world. We must simply obey and leave the rest in His hands.     

 

            We will gain the spiritual strength to do so only if we are obedient in embracing the basic spiritual disciplines of the Christian life, including keeping a rule of daily prayer, mindfully keeping a close watch on the thoughts of our hearts, and fasting in a way appropriate to our health and life circumstances. We must forgive those who have wronged us, ask forgiveness from those we have wronged, and give generously to help the needy and support the ministries of the Church.  We must repent of our sins as we embrace Christ’s forgiveness in Confession, which we should all do regularly.  And we should receive our Lord’s Body and Blood as often as we can with proper spiritual preparation.

 

That is how we will gain the strength to live eucharistically.  That is how we will be able to obey His command: “You give them something to eat.”  If we refuse to live in communion with the Savior in the small and unremarkable ways that are available to us each day, what will we ever  have to share with others?  How will we gain the spiritual clarity to know how He calls us to serve Him?  We must offer ourselves to Christ daily through the most basic spiritual disciplines in order to become transfigured in holiness.  That is not a calling for a select few, but the Lord’s command to each and every person who bears the divine image and likeness.  In ways beyond our full understanding, the free obedience of an obscure Jewish girl was necessary for the coming of the Messiah.  In her Dormition and translation to heaven, the Lord has given us a radiant sign of our salvation.  We must each bow before the mystery of how her obedience, and ours, plays a unique role in making the world brilliant with the Lord’s holiness and drawing others into the life of the kingdom.  So let us now lay aside all earthly cares, lift up our hearts, offer bread and wine, and commune as guests at the Messianic Banquet.  And then let us live accordingly each day of our lives, as we make the unique offerings that literally no one else can make. 

 

Homily for the 7th Sunday After Pentecost and the 7th Sunday of Matthew in the Orthodox Church

 

Romans 15:1-7; Matthew 9:27-35

Today we continue to celebrate the Transfiguration of the Lord on Mt. Tabor, when the spiritual eyes of Peter, James, and John were opened to behold His divine glory.  They saw Him shining brilliantly and heard the voice of the Father proclaiming “This is my beloved Son with Whom I am well pleased; listen to Him.”  We also continue to prepare to celebrate the Dormition (or “falling asleep”) of the Theotokos, when she became the first to follow her Son as a whole embodied person into the eternal life of the heavenly kingdom.  This spiritually rich season calls us to become transfigured in holiness like the virgin mother of the Savior, who received Christ into her life without reservation and lived faithfully as His holy temple all her days.  Regardless of our sex, marital status, or personal history, she remains the model for us all of obedient receptivity to Christ.  Our hope to follow her into heavenly glory is in the healing mercy of her Son, Who shares His victory over death with all who unite themselves to Him in humble faith and obedience.    

That is precisely what the blind men did in today’s gospel lesson.  They sat by the road and begged, for that was all that they could do in that time and place in order to survive.  We do not know the mental state of the man who was possessed by a demon and unable to speak, for others had to bring Him to the Lord for deliverance. The blind beggars were Jews who asked for mercy from the Son of David, a Jewish term for the Messiah.  Even though their faith was far from perfect, as symbolized by their blindness, the Lord had mercy on them and restored their sight.

The man who was unable to speak was a Gentile, which is why the people responded, “’Never was anything like this seen in Israel,’” while “the Pharisees said, ‘He casts out demons by the prince of demons.’”  Due to their idolatry, the mouths of the Gentiles had been shut to the glory of God, and the Jews at that time expected a Messiah who would bless them, not the other peoples of the world.  But Christ’s mercy restored the man’s speech, cast out the demon, and provided a sign of how He came to bring salvation to the entire world.  In today’s epistle reading, St. Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome, both Jews and Gentiles, that “together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  We Gentiles may now know and glorify Him every bit as much as the descendants of Abraham, for the ancient promises extend to all who have faith in the Messiah.  The Holy Spirit has united the divided tongues of the tower of Babel such that people of all cultures, ethnicities, and nationalities may join together in the praise of God as full members of the household of Christ in faith.

It should be no surprise that the Lord restored the abilities of sight and speech to these suffering men.  To see is to know and experience in ways that transcend rational description.  The spiritual eyes of Peter, James, and John were opened to behold the divine glory of the Lord, to the extent that they were able, at His Transfiguration, when they saw Him radiant with brilliant light.  We know God through the eye of the soul, the nous, not as a symbol or idea, but by true participation through His grace or divine energies.  Christ’s restoration of the sight of the blind men provides an icon of what He has done for fallen humanity blinded by sin, wandering in the darkness of those enslaved to the fear of death, and unable to share in the eternal life of God.  In Him, the eyes of our souls are restored, cleansed, and healed so that we may know the Lord not in images and ideas, but as a Person in Whose life we truly participate as His living icons.

Likewise, our ability to speak has profound spiritual significance, for the Lord taught that “A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.”  (Luke 6:45) The Scriptures contain many warnings about the dangers associated with mindlessly running our mouths.  We read in the Psalms, “Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips.” (Ps. 141:3)   Christ taught that we will have to give an account for every idle word that we speak, “For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”  (Matt. 12:36) It is not what goes into our mouths, but what comes out of them that defiles us. (Matt. 15:11) As St. James wrote, the tongue is small, powerful, and very difficult to control: “It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.” (Jas. 3:6) The uncomfortable truth is that how and what we speak reveals the true state of our souls, for which we must give an account to the Lord at the last day.  Whether we are currently embracing Christ’s healing is not an inscrutable secret, but is plain for all to hear in the words we speak and in the actions we perform every day.  We must remember what the Lord said, “Judge not, that you be not judged.  For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.” (Matt. 7:1-2)

Like the men in today’s gospel reading, we all need the gracious healing of the Lord for our eyes, our mouths, and every aspect of who we are.  Though physical and spiritual sight are different, what we fill our eyes with certainly impacts our hearts and how we think, speak, and act.  There is great danger to our souls in pornography, in any type of entertainment that glorifies sex, violence, and the love of money and power, and also in the many images of superficial happiness found on social media. Much of what passes for news or entertainment today is designed to inflame our passions in order to bring power and money to the sponsors, whoever they may be.   We may want only to be entertained or informed, but what we see and hear can easily keep us so wedded to spiritual darkness that we will become blind to the brilliant light of Christ.  The less that we fill our physical eyes and ears with what inflames our passions, keeps us from seeing ourselves and our neighbors as living icons of God, and otherwise weakens us spiritually, the more we will be able to open the eyes of our souls to experience and know the Lord from the depths of our hearts.  Keeping a close watch on our eyes, ears, and mouths is not a calling only for other people, for none of us is so advanced spiritually that we can safely let our own guard down before such powerful temptations. 

Especially in today’s culture, we must be careful not to fall prey to self-centeredness in our words and deeds.  As St. Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome, concern for the wellbeing of our neighbors must take precedence over our own desires: “Brethren, we who are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each one of us please his neighbor for that which is good for his edification.”  We must not speak and act as though our will must always be done or think that we have some personal characteristic that makes it necessary for us to always have the last word.  In the family, the life of the Church, and in any other setting, we must embrace the humility of blind beggars who know that they must cry out, “Have mercy on us, Son of David.”  Such humble trust is necessary for us to learn to see our neighbors as living icons of Christ whom we must serve with selfless love.  To see and speak about others in the light of our passions is a terrible form of blindness that will make it impossible for us to behold the glory of the Lord.

During the Dormition Fast, we all have the opportunity to reorient the desires of our hearts toward their true fulfillment in the love of God and neighbor.  Our transfiguration in holiness is a matter of following the example of the Theotokos in doing precisely that.  Like her, let us gain the spiritual clarity to lift up our hearts in humble obedience and receptivity to her Son, Who has conquered death and opened the gates of Paradise.  It is only through Him that our spiritual eyes will be opened and our tongues will be loosed to offer praise and glory to God.   

 

 

 

Transfigured in Holiness Like the Theotokos: Homily for the Sixth Sunday After Pentecost & Sixth Sunday of Matthew in the Orthodox Church

 

Romans 12: 6-14; Matthew 9: 1-8

We are certainly in a spiritually rich time of year in the life of the Church.  Having begun the fast in preparation for the Dormition of the Theotokos, we are now also anticipating the Transfiguration of the Lord, when Peter, James, and John beheld His divine glory on Mount Tabor.  As with all the feasts of the Church, the point is not simply to remember what happened long ago, but instead to participate personally in the eternal truth made manifest in these celebrations.  And that means nothing less than being transfigured ourselves by our Lord’s gracious divine energies as we come to share more fully in His restoration and fulfillment of the human person as a living icon of God.  

In order for that to happen, we must become like the Theotokos in saying, “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord.  Let it be to me according to your word.”  In other words, we must follow her example of holy receptivity and obedience to Christ, for she said “Yes” to God with every once of her being as the first and model Christian who also became the first to follow Him as a whole embodied person into the Kingdom of Heaven.  Looking to her uniquely blessed example, we pray, fast, and give alms in order to open our souls in humility to receive the divine grace necessary to gain the strength to rise up from our comfortable beds of self-centeredness and move forward into a life of holiness.  She shows us how a human being—living in a fallen world, subject to temptation, and facing the reality of the grave –may become transfigured in holiness through union with her Son.

Today’s gospel reading provides another example of what such personal transformation looks like.  When the paralyzed man was brought to Christ, He refused to be constrained as a mere faith healer or miracle worker, for He actually forgave the sins of the paralyzed man.  In doing so, He showed His divinity in a way that scandalized the religious leaders, for only God could do that and they did not believe that He was divine. The man’s paralysis is a vivid icon of the state of humanity cast out of Paradise, corrupted and decayed by our refusal to pursue the fulfillment of our calling to become like God in holiness.  By rejecting our true vocation and looking for fulfillment in gratifying our self-centered desires, we have diminished ourselves to the point of becoming as weak as the man unable to get up off the ground.  Christ responded to him with healing mercy, granting the poor man strength and restoration beyond what he could ever have given himself, no matter how hard he tried.  In response to the Savior’s gracious therapy, the man obeyed the command to stand up, pick up his bed, and walk home.  Apart from this personal encounter with the Lord, the man would have remained enslaved to debilitating weakness and despair, but the Savior’s healing restored his ability to move forward in the life of one who bears the image and likeness of God.

When we open our souls to receive the Lord’s mercy through prayer, fasting, and generosity to our neighbors, we receive the same therapy that He extended to the paralyzed man.  We ask Him to heal our wounds, restore our strength, and help us become participants in the eternal joy for which He created us.  We ask Him to deliver us from the wretched, corrupt state of being so weak before our passions that we feel helpless before our familiar temptations, no matter how much we despise them. We ask Him to help us gain the wherewithal to put behind us the ingrained habits of thought, word, and deed that serve only to make us and our neighbors miserable.  We even dare to ask Him to make us “partakers of the divine nature” who share by grace in His victory over death, which is the wages of sin.  

To rise up, take up our beds, and walk home is to freely obey Christ, even as the Theotokos accepted her extraordinary calling to become the virgin mother of the Son of God.  Since one dimension of being in the divine image is to have freedom, God never forces us to fulfill our vocation to become more like Him in holiness.  As we affirm in so many of our prayers, we are responsible for how we use our freedom as those who will stand before the dread judgement seat of Christ.  God wants all to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4), but we must not blithely assume that our beliefs or membership in the Church somehow guarantee us the blessedness of the Kingdom.  Christ said that to whom much is given, much will be required.  (Lk. 12:48)   As He taught, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.”  (Matt. 7:21) True transfiguration in Christ is not merely a matter of having certain ideas or emotions about God, for as St. James wrote, “faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” (Jas. 2:17) The standard of eternal judgment in the Lord’s parable in Matthew 25 is how people treated Christ in their most miserable neighbors.  That is not a matter of legalistic self-justification, but of becoming so transfigured in holiness that we spontaneously convey His gracious mercy to those in whom we encounter Him every day.       

Christ alone is the Savior Who has united divinity and humanity in His own Person, conquered death through His glorious resurrection, and ascended in glory to heaven.  He alone will come to judge the living and the dead, Whose kingdom will have no end. As the God-Man, He is our restoration and fulfillment as living icons of God.  His commandments are not arbitrary or superficial, but go to the heart and require our transformation as whole persons.  St. Paul described the chief characteristics of such a life in today’s epistle reading: “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with brotherly affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Never flag in zeal, be aglow with the Spirit, and serve the Lord. Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints, practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.”

Such a life requires the purity of heart necessary to see God, which we will never acquire by lying comfortably in our beds of self-centered desire.  True transfiguration in holiness has nothing to do with judging ourselves and others according to superficial checklists of piety or morality, for it is entirely possible to congratulate ourselves for going through the motions of religious or legal observance while remaining enslaved to pride, anger, lust, greed, vengeance, and other passions that will keep us spiritually paralyzed.  In the Sermon on the Mount, the Savior taught that Old Testament laws on murder and adultery go to the heart in ways that call us to become holy as God is holy, not merely to refrain from grossly immoral behaviors. True transfiguration in holiness is an infinite goal and we will not progress toward it by viewing the Christian life as an exercise in justifying ourselves in our own minds by our good behavior.  Instead, we must obey the Lord in humility according to the level of spiritual clarity and strength that we currently possess, even as we use our ongoing struggle to do so as a reminder of our constant need for the healing mercy of the Lord for overcoming the paralysis that remains with us.    

In this spiritually rich time of year, let us unite ourselves in faith and faithfulness to the Lord Who was transfigured in glory on Mt. Tabor, for He alone makes it possible for us to be transfigured in holiness as “partakers of the divine nature” by grace.  Let us look to the Theotokos as the great example of a merely human person who did precisely that and has now followed her Son into the life of heaven.  She used her freedom to say “Yes” to God with every once of her being.  Let us follow her blessed example, for that is the only way to receive His gracious healing of the ongoing paralysis of sin in our lives. 

 

Homily for "Saint Timon Sunday," the Fifth Sunday After Pentecost, & the Fifth Sunday of Matthew in the Orthodox Church

 

Romans 10:1-10; Matthew 8:28-9:1

Today is “Saint Timon Sunday” in our Diocese of Wichita and Mid-America, when we make an offering in support of our brothers and sisters in the Archdiocese of Bosra-Hauran in Syria. That Archdiocese does all that it can to show the love of Christ to those who suffer from years of violent conflict and social disruption. Millions of people remain displaced or in severe need in Syria, where 90% of the population now lives below the poverty line.  The support provided by our Diocese over the years has helped to fund a medical clinic, a pharmacy, and other desperately needed forms of humanitarian aid. 

            We commemorate St. Timon today as one of the seventy apostles sent out by the Lord and one of the original deacons mentioned in Acts (Acts 6:5).  He was the first bishop of what is now the city of Bosra, and he died as a martyr for Christ.  He played a key role in evangelizing a region where our Lord Himself often ministered (Matt.4:25) and where St. Paul took refuge after he escaped from Damascus following his conversion. (Gal. 1:15-18)   Especially as Antiochian Orthodox Christians, we must give thanks for how St. Timon’s ministry enabled the Church to flourish in ways from which we benefit to this very day.  We read in Acts that it was in Antioch that “the disciples were first called Christians” and where the first Gentile church was established. (Acts 11: 20-26) Across the centuries, the Church of Antioch has embodied St. Paul’s teaching that “there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.” (Col. 3:11) Antioch is not a nation or ethnic group, but a Church which manifests the unity in Christ of people of many different cultures and languages. Antioch’s witness in doing so is all the more powerful due to its many centuries of suffering, beginning with the persecution of the pagan Roman Empire.  Since the rise of Islam in the 7^th century, Christians in the region have carried a heavy cross as a “tolerated” minority community typically enduring persistent discrimination mixed with periods of brutal oppression. Throughout history and in our own time, many Middle Eastern martyrs and confessors have refused to deny Christ, regardless of the cost.   

The ministries of the Archdiocese of Bosra-Hauran extend benevolence to anyone in need, as is typical of philanthropic efforts of the Orthodox Church, such as International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC).  True Christians are not tribalistic and concerned only with the needs of people like them, either religiously or in other ways.   Even as God’s love extends to all, those who are truly in Christ share His love with everyone, especially those they are inclined for whatever reason to view as enemies and strangers.  That is one of the major reasons that our Lord’s ministry was so shocking, as today’s gospel reading describes.  The two demon-possessed men were Gentiles who had no ancestral claim on the ministry of the Jewish Messiah.   They had lived a miserable life in the tombs and no one, not even their pagan relatives and neighbors, would come near them out of fear.  Nonetheless, the Savior had mercy on the men, casting out their demons and restoring them to a recognizably human existence.  By the conventional standards of that time and place, they were strangers and enemies of the sort to be destroyed by the expected nationalistic Jewish Messiah.

Christ, of course, was a very different kind of Savior Who delivered even demon-possessed Gentiles from their sufferings as a sign of His love for all who bear the divine image and likeness.  His doing so was so shocking that the people of the area actually asked Christ to leave as a result.  Surely that had something to do with the drowning of the herd of pigs into which He cast the demons and the astounding transformation of the two men.  Christ’s crossing of the division between Jew and Gentile must have also been unsettling to them.  They only asked him to leave, however, unlike the people of Nazareth, who tried to throw the Savior off a cliff after He reminded them that God had at times blessed Gentiles through the prophets Elijah and Elisha while disregarding Jews. (Lk. 4:25-30)

Unfortunately, the temptation remains to use religion to make ultimate distinctions between groups of people.  Even as St. Paul criticized his fellow Jews for “seeking to establish their own” righteousness by outward obedience to the Old Testament law, it is possible to imagine that we are uniquely pleasing to God simply because we do this or that or have some standing or characteristic that we take to be a sign that God loves us more than people who are different in that regard.  The more that we build ourselves up in our own eyes for whatever reason, the easier it becomes to condemn our neighbors as being worthy only of contempt.  If we persist in thinking that we stand before God on the basis of the good deeds that we have done, the opinions we hold, or our affiliation with any group or society, we will make ourselves unreceptive to the healing mercy of the Lord Who delivered the demon-possessed Gentiles.  They were well beyond the possibility of establishing their own righteousness by any standard; nonetheless, the Savior delivered them.  We must learn to see ourselves in them.

St. Paul knew that “Christ is the end of the law, that everyone who has faith may be justified.”  He teaches that “the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.” (Gal. 3:24-25) More fundamental than the law of Moses was the promise to Abraham, who “’believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.’…And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, ‘In you all the nations shall be blessed.’ So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham.” (Gal. 3: 6-9)  These passages show that we will not find the healing of our souls by mere legal observance or morality, and certainly not by any cultural or ethnic identity.  Those who have faith in and confess Christ pursue an eternal journey of union with Him as “partakers of the divine nature” which requires turning away from all forms of self-justification in order to become radiant with His gracious divine energies.

Christ taught that the great test of whether we are uniting ourselves to Him is how we treat the most miserable and inconvenient people who need our care, especially when they are our enemies. He practiced what He preached by delivering the demon-possessed Gentile men who lived in the tombs.  St. Timon and the ongoing witness of the Church of Antioch demonstrate what it means to be faithful to a Lord Whose love for suffering humanity transcends the petty divisions that we use to justify condemning, or at least ignoring, those who are not like us according to some earthly standard or who have wronged us in some way.  We simply cannot pursue the life in Christ if we insist on grounding our identity in our accomplishments or characteristics in comparison with those of others.  Instead, we must embrace the true unity of the Body of Christ, in which all such worldly distinctions are irrelevant, and together convey His love to our suffering neighbors, no matter who they are.  Let us do that, not only by making generous offerings today for our brothers and sisters in Bosra-Hauran, but also by refusing to allow self-justification of any kind to compromise our faith in and faithfulness to Jesus Christ.             

 

 

The Roman Centurion with Humble Faith in the Jewish Messiah: Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Matthew in the Orthodox Church

 

Romans 6:18-23; Matthew 8: 5-13

Our Lord’s ministry violated many of the religious and cultural sensibilities of first-century Palestine in shocking ways.  Contrary to all expectations for the Jewish Messiah, He asked for a drink of water from a Samaritan woman with a broken personal history, engaged in an extended spiritual conversation with her, and then spent two days in a Samaritan village.  He invited Himself to the home of Zacchaeus, a corrupt tax-collector for the Roman army of occupation.  And as we read today, He not only healed the servant of a Roman centurion, but said of this man, “Truly, I say to you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”  This encounter is truly astounding because the Jews expected a Messiah to defeat the Romans by military force, not to praise the faith of their officers.

The Lord’s statement that the faith of this Roman soldier was superior to that of any of the Jews surely struck just about everyone in that time and place as being not only foolish but also blasphemous.  By doing so, He made clear that God’s blessings are not defined by nationality or cultural heritage, for “many will come from east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness…”  Though it was commonly overlooked at the time, God’s promises to Abraham were for the blessing of “all the nations,” not merely one group of people.  These promises have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ such that all with faith in Him are now His beloved sons and daughters.  (Gen. 22:18; Gal. 3:8-9) 

Our Lord’s fulfillment of the ancient promises had nothing at all to do with setting up an earthly kingdom in Palestine or anywhere else.  Remember that before the Savior began His public ministry, “the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to Him, ‘All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.’  Then Jesus said to him, ‘Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.’” (Matt. 4:8-10) The crowds welcomed Christ to Jerusalem as a conquering hero on Palm Sunday because they thought He was their military liberator from Roman rule.  When it became clear that He was an entirely different kind of Messiah with no interest in launching an armed rebellion, they yelled, “Crucify Him!  Crucify Him!” a few days later (Lk 23:21).   The Savior then told Pontius Pilate that His kingdom was not of this world, which is why His followers would not take up arms to defend Him. (Jn. 18:36)

The kingdom which Christ proclaimed may well appear just as foolish today according to our conventional standards, for it has no geographical boundaries and is not a nation-state; it does not require any particular ethnicity, culture, or language for its citizens.  Even as the promises to the descendants of Abraham have been extended to all with faith in Christ, the ancient hope for an earthly realm in a particular part of the world has been fulfilled in the Body of Christ in which all may participate even now as a foretaste of the blessedness of the kingdom of heaven, regardless of where they live.  As St. Peter wrote to the early Christians, “You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.” (1 Pet. 2: 9-10)

We rightly pray for God’s blessings upon our nation and all the nations and peoples of the world.  And like Christians of all times and places, we must resist the temptation to view the positive dimensions of our collective life as ends in themselves to be worshiped as false gods that distract us from faithfulness to Jesus Christ.  Remember that the chief priests told Pilate “We have no king but Caesar!” as they called for the Messiah’s crucifixion (Jn. 19:15).  The pagan Romans later killed Christians because they would not worship the gods believed to preserve their empire.  Our Lord and His martyrs looked like fools, or worse, to those obsessed with their own political interests.  We are certainly not immune today from the temptation to reject our Lord and His Cross by giving our primary allegiance to our desires for power, domination, and vengeance toward our enemies and rivals.  This temptation, which is rooted in the fear of death, is made all the more worse when we convince ourselves that we are actually serving Christ as we pursue the nationalistic path that He so clearly rejected.     

Obviously, our Lord did not view the Roman centurion according to conventional earthly terms, even though He was well aware of the man’s role in serving the empire under the authority of which He would be crucified.  By all outward appearances, they would have been sworn enemies, but Christ did not see him that way or require him to quit the Roman army or become a Jew.  He simply marveled at the centurion’s faith, granted his request, and noted that “many will come from east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.”  

Our hope is to be among those “from east and west” who are gathered into the kingdom of heaven by our Lord’s gracious mercy, which we receive through faith in Him, regardless of our national, ethnic, or political identity.   Even as not all the descendants of Abraham fulfilled their calling to receive the Messiah in faith, we cannot blithely assume that being Orthodox Christians somehow guarantees us the blessedness of the kingdom or makes us justified in condemning anyone.  The greatest obstacle to the healing of our souls is pride, which often manifests itself in the belief that we are somehow better and more deserving of God’s favor than others for whatever reason.  Such pride is the deadly enemy of true faith, but the centurion somehow managed to avoid that trap, despite the high standing given to him by his rank in the armed forces of the mighty Roman Empire.  He humbled himself before the Lord, saying, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only say the word, and my servant will be healed.”  Even as Christ did not see him as a Roman enemy, he did not see Christ as either a threat to the empire or someone inferior by worldly standards.  Quite the contrary, the centurion had somehow acquired the spiritual clarity to know where he stood before the Lord Who would heal his servant in such a miraculous fashion. Even as the centurion, tax-collectors, prostitutes, Samaritans, demon-possessed Gentiles, and other outcasts received Christ in faith, we must never presume to declare that anyone is beyond His love or cannot find healing through faith in Him.    

Like that blessed man, let us entrust ourselves to Christ with such humility that our passions do not keep us from knowing that we stand before Him in need of constant mercy, as do all people.   Instead of fueling the pride, domination, and vengeance that so easily blind us spiritually and lead us to idolatry, let us unite ourselves so fully to Christ that His character becomes evident in us.  When that happens, we will manifest in our own lives His mercy and forgiveness in ways unconstrained by devotion to any of the false gods of this world to the point that we will love even our enemies as God loves us.  No, that is not the easy, popular, and conventional way of living in our time or in any other, but it is the way of the Savior Who conquered death itself through His Cross and glorious resurrection on the third day.  It is only by uniting ourselves to Him in faith and faithfulness that we may hope, along with the centurion, to be among those who “come from east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven.”  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Homily for the Sunday of the Holy Fathers of the Fourth Ecumenical Council in the Orthodox Church

 

Titus 3:8-15; Matthew 5:14-19

              We live in a time when many people water down and distort the Christian faith however it pleases them.  Some do so in support of their favorite political or cultural agendas, while others simply want a little spirituality to help them find greater peace of mind or success in their daily lives, which do not differ at all from those of people who do not identify themselves as Christians.  Regardless of their church membership, or lack thereof, those who do so neither understand nor respond to the true calling of the Savior, Who came to make us nothing less than “partakers of the divine nature.”   Were Jesus Christ merely a human teacher of a moral code or an example of a virtuous life, then perhaps it would make sense to take from Him only that which helps us get whatever want in this world and to disregard the rest. Because He is the God-Man, however, the point is not for us to make Him in our own image but instead to become more like Him as His living icons, radiant with grace as “the light of the world.”  

            The Savior is fully God and fully human:  one Person with two natures, as the 630 holy and God-bearing fathers of the Fourth Ecumenical Council in Chalcedon declared in the year 451.  The point is not simply a lesson in Church history, but the proclamation of the Gospel, for Jesus Christ must be both fully God and fully human in order to make us “partakers of the divine nature” who shine with His holy light.  He must truly be one of us in order to restore and fulfill us in the image and likeness of God such that we may become “the light of the world.”

            If we surrender to the popular distortions of Christian faith in our culture, we will set our sights so low to the point that we fit right in with the darkness that is all around us.  We will then think that we are faithful Christians even as we hate our enemies, place our ultimate allegiance to the false gods of this world, and otherwise devote ourselves to the service of pride, power, and pleasure. Our Christian witness will then not be worthy of the name, and we will do more harm than good both to our neighbors and to our own souls.   In today’s gospel reading, the Lord warns against misinterpreting His ministry as though He came to “to abolish the law and the prophets.”  That would have meant that He did not care how His followers lived and did not call them to a particular way of life that required constant repentance.   

Actually, the Savior made it very clear by saying: “I have come not to abolish them [i.e, the law and the prophets], but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”  He did not diminish or reduce the commandments, but intensified them by going literally to the heart of the matter.  No longer was it enough to refrain from murdering someone with our hands; now our hearts must be purified of the anger that leads to insult and deadly violence.  No longer was it enough to stop short of having intercourse with someone other than one’s own spouse; now our hearts must be healed of desire for intimacy outside the uniquely blessed union of husband and wife. No longer did it suffice to limit our desire for revenge to “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”; now we must turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, and love even our enemies as God loves us. 

Christ has fulfilled the prophecy spoken by Jeremiah: “I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” (Jer. 31:3) By the power of the Holy Spirit, so abundantly poured out at Pentecost, the Savior heals and strengthens us so that we may become radiant with the light of the gracious divine energies shining from our hearts like a city on a hill or a lamp on a stand such that people “may see your good works and give glory to your Father Who is in heaven.”  That is simply not possible apart from our personal participation in the Lord’s restoration and fulfillment of the human person as a living icon of God.  But instead of humbly and mindfully offering ourselves to Him for the healing of our passions every day, we too often want a religion that we can mold to serve whatever we find most appealing. That path leads not to brilliant light, but only to the spiritual darkness of worshipping ourselves and our vain imaginations as we become ever more complacent with our corruption.  Instead of struggling to take up our crosses, we will then become so spiritually degraded that we will congratulate ourselves for our presumed virtues and think that we are somehow justified in condemning anyone who questions or resists our will.   The darker our spiritual vision becomes, the less able we will become to see our neighbors as living icons of Christ and to treat them accordingly.      

In today’s culture, there are many secular and religious versions of this temptation.  It is an equal opportunity temptation for people of every political stripe, ethnic identity, social class, or other affiliation.   No matter what form it takes, it cannot heal the soul and make us radiant with the light of Christ.  We must be very careful not to allow it to corrupt our pursuit of the Christian life, for we cannot manipulate the God-Man, as proclaimed by the Holy Fathers of Chalcedon, Who alone can make us brilliant with heavenly glory.    If we attempt to do so, we will never become transparent to the uncreated light, but instead will become, as St. Paul wrote, “self-condemned” by our devotion to “foolish disputes…and contentions, and controversies … [that] are unprofitable and vain.” 

Instead, let us follow the Apostle’s advice to “learn how to preside in honorable occupations, so as to help in cases of urgent need…[and] not be unfruitful.”  That is simply a way of saying that we must devote ourselves to the basic spiritual disciplines of the Christian life as we turn away from anything that would distract us from our fundamental vocation to share personally in the healing and restoration brought to the world by the God-Man Jesus Christ.  By His grace, we may become the light of the world, a beacon drawing others into the brilliant new day of the Kingdom of God.  In order to do so, we must embrace the daily struggle:  to pray to God from our hearts; to fast in a way appropriate to our spiritual and physical health and life circumstances; to give generously to the needy and in support of the Church’s ministries without drawing attention to ourselves; to forgive and pray for those who wrong us; to refuse to praise ourselves or to condemn anyone else; and to confess and repent of our sins on a regular basis.  Whenever we start to think that following this path has become easy or that we have somehow mastered it, we must intensify our efforts in order not to become content with watering down the demands of obedience to our Lord, Who calls us to nothing less than acquiring the purity of heart necessary to see God.  That high calling should roust us out of our spiritual delusions pretty quickly, for who can claim to have mastered it? 

The next time that we catch ourselves watering down what it means to share in the life of the God-Man in any way, we should remember this story from the Desert Fathers:   

Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, “Abba as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?” Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, “If you will, you can become all flame.”[1]

 

 

 

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[1] See Give Me a Word:  The Alphabetical Sayings of the Desert Fathers (SVS Press, 2014), 152.

Homily on the Great-Martyr Kyriaki of Nicomedia & Second Sunday of Matthew in the Orthodox Church

 

Galatians 3:23-4:5; Matthew 4:18-23

            After our Lord’s victory over death at Pascha, He ascended into heaven and sent the Holy Spirit upon His disciples and apostles at Pentecost.  Last week on the Sunday of All Saints, we commemorated all those who have participated personally in the holiness of God through the power of the Holy Spirit.  Pentecost and All Saints remind us that doing so is not a calling for a select few, but the common vocation of all who bear the divine image and likeness as unique, irreplaceable icons of Christ.  He calls us all to obey His commandment to the first apostles: “Follow Me.”

            We might find it hard to see how the Lord’s calling of Peter, Andrew, James, and John has much to do with us.  We certainly do not somehow have to repeat their unique roles, but definitely must learn from their examples how to become fully receptive to the healing mercy of the Lord as we discern and obey His calling in our lives. Doing so is completely different from trying to use God to meet our personal needs or desires for anything in this world.  It has nothing to do with impressing other people or making us feel better about ourselves.  The Savior’s Cross demonstrates that following Him is in no way a path to conventional earthly power or glory. 

As living members of Christ’s Body, the Church, we have received the fullness of truth by the power of the Holy Spirit, poured out richly at Pentecost.  We are filled with the Spirit personally in Chrismation and nourished by the Savior’s Body and Blood in the Eucharist. He has called and empowered us to live each day of our lives as those who participate by grace in the life of the Holy Trinity.  To confront these truths is to know immediately how unworthy we are of such blessings and how far short we fall of living accordingly.  When we recall the Lord’s teaching that “to whom much is given, much will be required,” we should fall on our faces in repentance because of the great responsibility that is ours. (Lk 12:48) The Savior said, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.” (Matt. 7:21) He also said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” (Jn. 14:15) As the Lord told His disciples, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 5: 20) Struggling to obey the Lord through daily prayer, regular fasting, generosity to those in need, and constant mindfulness are necessary for us to gain the spiritual clarity to discern and follow our path of obedience to the heavenly kingdom.  To identify ourselves as Orthodox Christians without embracing this difficult and humbling journey is nothing but self-righteous religious hypocrisy by which we will condemn only ourselves.  We will do the opposite of obeying the Lord’s command “Follow Me” if we entangle ourselves in the nets of spiritual pride, self-righteous judgment of our neighbors, and the idolatry of seeking first any kingdom other than that of our Lord.  Instead of attracting others to Christ like a beacon in the darkness, we will turn them away by our bad example and reveal how we have shut the doors of our hearts to the healing presence of the Holy Spirit. 

A shining example of someone who heard and obeyed Christ’s command is the Holy Great Martyr Kyriaki, who gave the ultimate witness by refusing to worship pagan gods and giving up her life after suffering brutal persecution by the pagan rulers of the Roman Empire.  A beautiful young virgin, Kyriaki came from a wealthy family, but she refused the offer of marriage to the son of a magistrate who wanted their money.  The magistrate then denounced the family as Christians to the Emperor Diocletian.  Even when offered great riches and marriage to one of the emperor’s relatives if she would worship the pagan gods, Kyriaki refused and miraculously survived horrible tortures from four different rulers.  The Lord appeared to her and healed her wounds.  The next day her prayers destroyed a pagan temple, and the wild beasts to which she was later thrown would not attack her. Kyriaki gave up her soul right before she was to be beheaded.

As we discern what it means to respond faithfully to the Lord’s calling in our lives, the example of St. Kyriaki should remind us that our hope for the healing of our souls does not lie in the pursuit of earthly possessions or success.   She had wealth from her family, great beauty, and a way to become powerful, prominent, and even wealthier by worshiping false gods.  The eye of her soul was so pure, however, that she knew Christ not as a mere religious figure from the past to be manipulated however she found useful, but instead truly as God.  Because she was filled with the Holy Spirit and radiant with the divine light, she saw clearly that the blessings of this life must not become idols that would turn her away from the Lord.  Because they are His gifts to us, she knew that we must offer them and ourselves faithfully to Christ, recognizing that there is nothing more important than seeking “first His Kingdom and His righteousness,” even to the point of enduring torture and death, as did her Lord. 

St. Kyriaki faced a clear choice between obeying the Lord’s calling to “Follow Me” and seeking first the power and glory of this world.  Where we tend to fall into trouble is when our choices are less clear, when the contrast between faithfulness and idolatry is not as stark.  It may seem unlikely that someone will promise us great wealth and power if we will deny Christ and worship another god.  Something very similar happens, however, when we confuse obedience to Christ with the service of conventional political or national agendas, as though His Kingdom would come when one faction imposed its will on another through whatever means necessary to save a nation or even the world.  Such false presentations of Christian mission are especially dangerous because they identify the way of our Lord and His Cross with the powerful temptation that He faced and clearly rejected:  to become a conventional political Messiah who would rule over an earthly kingdom by overthrowing the Romans with military might. He called the first apostles and Kyriaki to become martyrs who bore witness to His salvation by loving and forgiving their enemies as they remained faithful to their Lord, even to the point of death.  Their hope was not in some rearrangement of the powers that be, but in a Kingdom not of this world.   

 

Before their shining examples, we must bow in humility as we humbly embrace the basic spiritual disciplines that help us hear and discern how to obey His call to “Follow Me” in the particular circumstances of our lives.  We will find our salvation not by giving ourselves to any of the false gods of this world, but by taking up the crosses that are so obviously present in our lives each day.  We must not be distracted by idealistic dreams of any kind that divert our attention from faithfulness in the opportunities for obedience that are right before us.  For example, no one else is married to your spouse, is the father or mother of your children, or is the particular friend, worker, or parishioner that you are.  No one else has the vocation to serve Christ in those around you in the unique way that you do. No one else can resist your temptations or keep a close watch on the thoughts of your heart. The present circumstances of our lives present limitless opportunities to become fully receptive to the presence and peace of Holy Spirit.  None of us lacks anything at all that is necessary to grow in holiness, obey Christ’s calling, and draw others into the life of the Kingdom.  We are all without excuse in obeying our Lord’s command: “Follow Me.”