Homily for the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman in the Orthodox Church

 

Acts 11:19-30; John 4:5-42

Christ is Risen!

The good news of our Lord’s resurrection challenges our deepest assumptions about life in this world.  If the God-Man has entered fully into death and conquered it, making even the grave an entrance into eternal life, then reality is radically different from what we typically assume.  If death is not an inevitable and complete loss from which we need constant distraction in order to avoid being overcome by despair, then the basis for anxiety and misery driven by fear of the grave has been destroyed.  Life is no longer a zero-sum struggle of this group over against that for the fleeting and scarce resources of power and status.  By leading us back to Paradise through His resurrection, the Savior has destroyed the foundations of the enmity and resentment between people that first appeared when Cain murdered his brother Abel.   

Today we commemorate how our Lord’s salvation extended to someone who was on the wrong side of many such divisions in first-century Palestine:  a Samaritan woman who became the Great Martyr Photini.  In that time and place, she was a very unlikely candidate to become a great evangelist of the Messiah’s salvation.  Most obviously, she was a Samaritan.  The Jews viewed the Samaritans as heretics who had corrupted the faith and heritage of Israel, and they had nothing at all to do with them.  As well, Photini’s conversation with the Savior reveals that she had had five husbands and was then with a man to whom she was not married.  She had known great personal trauma and perhaps went to the well at noon in order to avoid encountering other women in her community who viewed her as an outcast. Moreover, a Jewish man would not strike up a conversation with a woman in public and certainly would not ask a Samaritan woman for a drink of water.  This scene is truly shocking and scandalous according to the sensibilities of the day.   

            How interesting, then, that the Lord’s talk with Photini is His longest conversation in any of the gospels. In it she showed far greater spiritual understanding than had the Pharisee Nicodemus, a man and a law-abiding Jew, in his conversation with Christ in the previous chapter of the gospel according to John.  And unlike most people, Photini had the humility to made no excuses about the brokenness of her life.  When the Lord told her that He knew about her five former husbands and current relationship, she said, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet” and then continued the conversation.  She did not become defensive or leave due to hurt pride or embarrassment.  Instead, she confronted hard truths about herself as her eyes were opened to behold the light of Christ. She refused to give in to the temptation to think that because she was a woman, a sinner, and a Samaritan that she could not or should not open her heart to the good news brought by the unusual Jewish man who spoke to her not as a hated foreigner or a bundle of impurity, but as a beloved daughter.   Photini was deeply transformed by this encounter with Christ to the point that she even preached to her fellow Samaritans, which must have taken tremendous courage, for her neighbors surely did not think of her as a spiritual teacher.  Photini found healing for her soul, becoming an evangelist and ultimately a martyr together with her sons and sisters.  

            We cannot tell the story of our Lord’s resurrection without mentioning the uniquely blessed role of the women who were the very first witnesses of the empty tomb.  Mary Magdalene was the first preacher of the resurrection, for she proclaimed the good news to the apostles.  Photini bore witness to her neighbors about this unusual Jewish Messiah so powerfully that many Samaritans believed and the Lord stayed with them for two days. The Church honors both Mary Magdalene and Photini as being “equal to the apostles” in proclaiming the good news.

            As St. Paul taught, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”  (Gal. 3:28) He rose in victory over all the corrupting influences of sin, including the domination, strife, and sorrow characteristic of the often-troubled relationship between men and women. In Him, the spiritual status of the sexes is the same; the differences between men and women concern the body, not the soul.  Male or female, the saints are examples for us all of how to share fully in the life of our Savior.  Absolutely nothing in the biological differences between males and females excludes or excuses anyone from the calling to become radiant with the divine energies as a living icon of God, for we all bear His image equally. We must not allow differences in the roles fulfilled by the sexes in any time or place, or in the life of the Church, to obscure that fundamental truth.  Even as that is true of the God-given distinction between male and female, we must be on guard against the temptation to allow divisions of any kind between groups of people to determine whether we treat each person as a living icon of Christ who is called, no less than we are, to enter into the joy of His resurrection.  The differences between races, ethnicities, and other groupings that seem so important in our world of corruption have no spiritual significance at all in our Lord’s Kingdom.

There was no small controversy in the early Church about whether Gentiles could become Christians without first becoming Jews. Today’s reading from Acts describes the establishment of the first Gentile church in Antioch, where the disciples were first called Christians.  Especially as Antiochian Orthodox Christians, we must remember that our faith is not the property or servant of any nation, ethnic group, or ideological faction.  Christ’s Kingdom subverts the categories of our fallen world and calls our social assumptions into question. He died and rose up in order to fulfill His gracious purposes for all He created to become like God in holiness as “partakers of the divine nature” by grace.  There is no ethnic or national test for sharing in His life.  He empowered the Myrrh-Bearing Women to behold and proclaim His resurrection and enabled a Samaritan woman with a broken personal history to become a powerful evangelist and martyr.  He has drawn Gentiles into His Body, the Church, as a sign of His fulfillment of the ancient promises to Abraham for the salvation of all peoples through faith in Him.  His great victory over sin and death destroys the basis of judging the spiritual prospects of anyone according to the conventional standards of this world.  In order to enter into the joy of Christ’s resurrection, we must refuse to think, speak, and act as though we were still held captive to the fear of death, which is at the root of our pathetic inclination to view and treat people, no matter who they are, according to worldly divisions that contradict the good news of our salvation.

            Christ said, “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” (Luke 5:32) No one other than the Savior would have looked at Photini and seen a future saint who would shine with the light of holiness. Her transformation shows that there truly is hope for us all in the mercy of Christ.  Nothing but our own pride can keep us from humbly opening our souls to the Lord for healing, as she did.  Even as we must entrust ourselves to the Lord’s mercy as “the chief of sinners,” we must not view anyone else as a lost cause before God.  Christ warned the self-righteous religious leaders who rejected Him, “Tax-collectors and prostitutes are entering the Kingdom of God before you.” (Matt. 21:31) Even as we pray for the Lord’s mercy on our sick souls, we must pray for His blessings for our neighbors, especially those we are inclined to despise and condemn.    If our Risen Lord can make a great saint out of the Samaritan woman at the well, there is hope for us all to be set free from the enslaving ravages of sin.  We must place no limits on the saving power of the One Who conquered death itself for our salvation.  If we do so, then we will have failed to appreciate the radically good news of the resurrection, which extends literally to all, calling us to embrace our restoration and fulfillment as human persons in the image and likeness of God who are not blinded by the divisions of our world of corruption.   

St. Photini has shown us what that looks like, and she invites us to follow her into the life of a Kingdom that remains not of this world.  She was an unlikely evangelist in that time and place, but her courageous and steadfast faith did not allow fear of any kind to stop her.  Let us embrace the joy of the resurrection so profoundly that we put aside all worries driven by the fear of death and bear witness to the Lord Who has liberated us from slavery to sin and the grave through His glorious resurrection on the third day, for “Christ is Risen!”    

Homily for the Sunday of the Paralytic in the Orthodox Church

 

Acts 9:32-42; John 5:1-15

Christ is Risen! 

 

            During the season of Pascha, the Church calls our attention to how particular people responded to our Lord, Who rose from the dead as a whole embodied person on the third day. Thomas did not believe until he saw and touched the wounds of the Risen Savior.  Joseph of Arimathea took Christ’s body down from the Cross and, with the help of Nicodemus, buried Him.  The Myrrh-Bearing women became the first witnesses of His resurrection when they went to the tomb very early in the morning to anoint the Lord’s body as a final sign of love.  

 

The gospel reading on this Sunday of the Paralytic is different, for it focuses on the Savior’s healing of a man who had been paralyzed for thirty-eight years.  The man, whose name we do not know, was in the tragic situation of being right by a pool of water where he could be healed, but due to his paralysis he was unable to enter it before someone else received the miracle.  At first glance, we may wonder what these events, which happened before the Lord’s Passion, have to do with celebrating Pascha. Those who view the Cross in legalistic terms about satisfying justice or paying a debt will be especially confused about why we are commemorating today the healing of the paralyzed man. But when we focus on how our Risen Lord heals and delivers us from the corruption, weakness, and despair of slavery to the fear of death, which is the wages of sin, we will see the connection clearly. Before His resurrection, we lacked the strength to embrace our restoration as beautiful living icons of God’s holiness and certainly could not overcome the ultimate paralysis of the grave.  During Pascha, we enter into the joyful blessedness of the One Who makes us participants in His victory over death and liberates us from the paralysis of sin in all its degrading forms.     

 

The paralyzed man was near the Temple in Jerusalem, right by the pool that provided water for washing lambs before they were slaughtered. The scene occurs at the Jewish feast of Pentecost, which commemorated Moses receiving the Law, which had been given by angels. The Old Testament Law and the sacrificial worship of the Temple foreshadowed the coming of Christ, but they could not provide healing from the ravages of sin, including bondage to the grave.   The Savior fulfilled both as the Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world.  Our Great High Priest offered Himself on the Cross as He entered fully into death itself, from which He liberated us by His resurrection to become “partakers of the divine nature” by grace.  He did so in order to restore and fulfill us in God’s image and likeness as He set us free from the paralysis of sin and death in all their manifestations.  We were powerless before them and in need of the merciful care of the Great Physician.    

 

The plight of the paralyzed man shows us the common condition of fallen humanity.  None of us took the initiative in bringing salvation to the world and this fellow did not ask Christ to help him or even know His name.  The Lord graciously reached out to him, nonetheless, asking the seemingly obvious question, “Do you want to be healed?”  The Savior’s words should challenge each of us because we often become so comfortable with our weaknesses, desires, and habits that we do not think that we need healing.  If we do not even want to be healed, we will never open ourselves to receive the Lord’s gracious therapy.   We so easily accept the lie that being “true to ourselves” means claiming an identity shaped by our passions.  To do so, however, is to deny the truth of our Lord’s resurrection, for He has destroyed the enslaving power of sin and death, making us participants in His healing, restoration, and fulfillment of the human person.  As “the resurrection and the life,” He is the New Adam.  We can only become our true selves in Him.  Instead of embracing personally His great liberation, we too often make the tragic choice of living as though He were still in the tomb and we had no higher calling than to indulge our distorted desires as those still enslaved to the fear of death.

 

Apart from uniting ourselves to Christ, we all lack the ability to find healing for our souls every bit as much as the paralyzed man who found himself in the tragic position of never being able to move himself into the nearby pool of water.  In order to accept the Lord’s merciful healing and strength, we must confess the painful truth about ourselves as we take intentional, albeit faltering and imperfect, steps to obey His command: “Rise, take up your pallet, and walk.”  No matter how great the struggle, how weak we feel, or how scared we are of an uncertain future, we must persistently rise up in obedience as best we can in order to participate personally in His victory over the paralysis of sin and death.

 

Embracing His healing will never be as easy in the moment as resting content with whatever forms of corruption we have allowed to dominate our hearts and become second nature.  After a lifetime of not moving, the paralyzed man could not have found it easy to obey Christ’s command to stand, pick up his bed, and walk.  He had learned how to survive for decades as an invalid, but the Savior called him to a very different life, the challenges of which he could not have known or predicted.  He must have been at least a bit afraid about what would lie ahead. We can become paralyzed with fear when we come to see our spiritual infirmities, and the grip that they have upon us, more clearly.  It may then seem unimaginable that we could ever truly find healing and be set free from their grasp.   

 

When we are tempted to such fearful despair, we must remember that the man in today’s gospel reading would never have been able to walk had he insisted on remaining as he had been for thirty-eight years out fear, habit, or any other motivation. Lying still for a long time inevitably makes us weak and unable to move.  The same will remain true of us spiritually if we do not undertake the struggle to receive the healing of the Lord by serving Him as faithfully as we presently have the strength to do. The more accustomed we become to any sin, and especially the more we accept the lie that embracing that sin is somehow part of becoming our true selves, the weaker we will become before it.  The longer we insist on remaining enslaved to our passions, the less inclination we will have to offer the deepest desires of our hearts for purification through the Savior Who died and rose again.  As the God-Man, Christ Himself is the healing, restoration, and fulfillment of every dimension of the human person. Entrusting ourselves to Him requires that we refuse to remain paralyzed before our sins and instead take the tiny steps that we can today to open ourselves to the divine strength that has overcome even death itself.

 

Instead of obsessing about fear of the unknown, bemoaning our weakness, or attempting to justify ourselves, we must mindfully entrust ourselves to the mercy of the One Who heals and strengthens us in ways we do not fully know whenever we take up the struggle to reorient our lives to Him, even in very small ways.  We must also take to heart the Lord’s words to the man after his healing: “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse befalls you.” He calls us not simply to stop doing this or that, but to enter into the holy joy of Pascha as a truly eternal journey, sharing ever more fully in His healing mercy as we become more like Him in holiness.  The only way to do that is to rise, take up our beds, and walk each day of our lives in obedience as best we can.   That is the only way to participate personally in the liberation from the paralysis of sin and death that He has brought to world.  He calls and enables us to become nothing less than truly human as beautiful living icons of God’s holiness.  That is what we must do in order to celebrate this glorious season of Pascha with integrity, for “Christ is risen!”

 

 

 

 

Homily for the Sunday of the Myrrh-Bearing Women, Pious Joseph of Arimathaea & Righteous Nicodemus in the Orthodox Church

 

Acts 6:1-7; Mark 15: 43-16:8

           Christ is Risen! Indeed, He is Risen!

             As we continue to celebrate our Lord’s glorious resurrection on the third day and victory over Hades and the tomb, we should admit that all too often we live as though death still reigned. We do so especially when we somehow convince ourselves that fear, anger, and resentment of those we perceive as our enemies are somehow Christian virtues.  Had Christ not risen and death still reigned, it would be inevitable that we would distract ourselves from despair over the meaninglessness of our existence by inflaming our passions against our neighbors.  We would then always be on the prowl to prove our superiority against this or that person or group as a diversion from facing our own weakness as those with no higher calling than to return to the dust of the earth.  That is nothing but the misery of living in slavery to the fear of death and it has no place at all in the Christian life.  As in every generation, there is tragically no lack of such depravity in today’s world.  If we are truly entering into the joy of Pascha, however, our lives and character will become completely different as we radiate the divine mercy that shines brightly even from the grave. As we chant in Orthros for Pascha, “It is the day of Resurrection; let us be radiant for the festival, and let us embrace one another. Let us say, O brethren, even to those that hate us: Let us forgive all things on the Resurrection.”  

 

Today we commemorate people who refused to live as individuals dominated by the passions of fear, hatred, or revenge in the midst of terrible sorrow, but who instead became persons united to Christ in a communion of love and selfless service. With broken hearts and in deep shock and grief, the Theotokos, Mary Magdalen, two other Mary’s, Johanna, Salome, Martha, Susanna, and others whose names we do not know went early in the morning to the Lord’s tomb in order to anoint Him for burial.  They had seen Him die a horrific public death and expected to find His disfigured body lying in the grave.  By somehow acquiring the strength not to become paralyzed by fear, anger, or grief, they did what they could to perform one last act of selfless loving service for the Savior.  That is how the Myrrh-Bearing Women became the first witnesses of the empty tomb as they received the good news of His resurrection from the angel. 

 

            We also remember today Joseph of Arimathea, who bravely asked Pilate for the dead body of the Lord and took Him down from the Cross with his own hands.  Imagine how difficult that must have been for him.  Nicodemus, the Pharisee who had previously not understood Christ at all, helped Joseph bury Him.  These were both prominent Jewish men who risked a great deal by associating themselves with One Who had been rejected by their own religious leaders as a blasphemer and crucified by the Romans as a traitor. Like the women, they refused to allow inflamed passions of any kind to prevent them from showing self-emptying love for the Savior in the only ways still available to them.   

 

In contrast, the disciples acted more like cowards in this moment of crisis.  Peter, the head disciple, had denied Christ three times.  John was the only one of the twelve to stand at the foot the Cross, for the others had run away in fear.  They were more focused on saving their own skins than on faithfully serving their Lord. The Myrrh-Bearing Women, along with Sts. Joseph and Nicodemus, certainly knew bitter grief and disappointment every bit as much as the disciples.  They all saw the Lord’s crucifixion as a complete disaster and their hopes for Him, and for whatever they had hoped to gain through Him, were completely destroyed.  Nonetheless, how they acted during this terrible tragedy revealed that they had already become persons united to Christ in self-emptying love. They transcended the anxieties and fears of individuals concerned only with preserving their lives and status in this world in order to do the difficult and dangerous tasks necessary to give their departed Lord and friend a decent burial, which was the only way left for them to love and serve Him.  That is how they accepted the grave risks of being identified even further with One Who had just been condemned as a blasphemer by corrupt religious leaders  and crucified as a traitor by the ruthless Roman Empire.    

 

What they did was not the result of calculation about what was in it for them or how to seek vengeance against those who had killed their Lord.  Had they not, even before His resurrection, already begun to unite themselves to Christ in selfless devotion, the women would not have had the spiritual strength to be in the position to see the Lord’s empty tomb and to hear from the angel the good news of His resurrection.  That news was shocking to the point of absurdity, as shown by their reaction, for “they went out quickly and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”  To see and hear what they did was not to receive confirmation that they had somehow been right all along, for they had no expectation of His resurrection and went to the tomb in order to anoint a dead body.  To see and hear what they did was not a result of using religion to build themselves up over their neighbors or to achieve any earthly goal.  Their eyes were opened to behold the joy of the resurrection because they were so closely united to Christ in love that they had overcome the fear of death that so easily turns people away from following a Lord Who calls His disciples to take up their crosses, love their enemies, turn the other cheek, and go the extra mile. To see and hear what they did was to encounter God from the depths of their souls in a way that called their deepest assumptions about life, death, and themselves into question.  Even when all seemed lost and there was literally nothing left to do but anoint His dead body, the Myrrh-Bearing Women acted not as insecure individuals driven by passions of any kind but as persons radiant with Christ’s selfless love, for that is who they had become.     

 

The devotion of the Myrrh-Bearers, Joseph, and Nicodemus shows us what true faith looks like, and it has nothing to do with trying to use religion or morality to serve our agendas in a pathetic attempt to distract ourselves from slavery to the fear of death. Instead, their example calls us to unite ourselves to Christ in self-emptying love so that we may acquire the spiritual strength to embrace the good news of His resurrection from the depths of our souls.  That is the only way to enter into the joy of Pascha as persons who find their life in Him together as members of His Body, the Church, with all of the struggles and difficulties that doing so entails.  Today’s reading from Acts describes how the Church flourished when the first deacons, or servants, took on the task of meeting the practical needs of distributing food to widows in a context of ethnic division.    

        By offering our time and energy to attend to the mundane matters necessary for the wellbeing of the Church, which includes the flourishing of all her members, we grow in love for Christ in His Body as we serve one another, even as He has served us.  We grow out of our illusions of self-sufficiency and self-importance when we embrace the calling to serve even in the unremarkable ways that are necessary for the wellbeing of our small parish.  No opportunity for serving our Lord and the members of His Body is beneath any of us. By embracing the most humble forms of service we become more like the Savior who came not to be served, but to serve. As the Lord taught, “he who is greatest among you shall be your servant.  And whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”  (Matt. 23:11)    

 

 Like the Myrrh-Bearing Women and Sts. Joseph and Nicodemus, we will not enter into the joy of the Lord’s resurrection by carefully calculating what is in it for us when we do this or that for the Body of the Savior.  Instead, we must simply do what needs to be done out of selfless love, no matter how hard we find that to be.   That is how those blessed and righteous women put themselves in the uniquely glorious position to hear the unbelievably good news of the angel.  And that is how, by the grace of the One Who conquered death through His glorious resurrection on the third day, we too may embrace and become radiant with the wonderful news of this season, which destroys the fear of the grave that is at the root of so much of our insecurity, anger, and resentment, for “Christ is Risen!”

 

 

 

 

Homily for the Sunday of Thomas the Apostle, Called “The Twin,” in the Orthodox Church

 Acts 5:12-20; John 20:19-31

Christ is Risen!  Indeed, He is Risen!

            Today we continue to celebrate the most fundamental and joyful proclamation of our faith:  Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!  He is our Pascha, our Passover, from death to life, for Hades and the grave could not contain the God-Man Who shares with us His victory over corruption and decay in all their forms.  In a world enslaved to the fear of the grave, He has illumined even the dark night of the tomb with the brilliant light of heavenly glory.  As Christ said to Martha before He raised Lazarus, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.” (John 11:25) Because death did not have the last word on our Lord, it will not, by His grace, have the last word on us or on any who call upon His Name. As St. John Chrysostom proclaimed, “Let no one fear death, for the Savior’s death has set us free. He that was held prisoner of it has annihilated it.”[1]

          When the Savior rose from the dead, He did so as a whole Person Whose glorified body still bore the physical wounds of His crucifixion.  He was born, lived, and died with flesh and blood every bit as much as we do.  He was as dead as anyone else lying in a tomb.  Thomas doubted the news of the resurrection because he was not present when the Risen Lord first appeared to the disciples.  He said that he would not believe unless he saw and touched the marks of His torture and death.  When Christ appeared again eight days later, He told Thomas to do precisely that.  Thomas responded by recognizing Him as “My Lord and my God!”

            This encounter demonstrates how essential Christ’s bodily resurrection is for our faith.  Simply put, there would be no Christianity and no Church without it.  The Savior died through a public form of capital punishment on the Cross at the hands of Roman soldiers who knew their grim trade all too well.  It was literally just another day’s work when they broke the legs of the two thieves in order to get them to die more quickly. They did not break the Lord’s legs, however, for those seasoned professional killers knew that He was already dead.  The Roman Cross had apparently made its point yet again about what happened to anyone perceived as a threat to the Empire.  It is hardly surprising that the disciples had fled in fear at the Lord’s arrest with Peter denying Him three times, for they had no expectation of His resurrection.  They had wanted a military Messiah to crush the Romans and establish an earthly kingdom, not a Savior Whose great victory would come through public torture and execution by a Gentile army of occupation. Of course, it would be absurd to think that those who had denied and abandoned their Crucified Lord would have later made up a story about His resurrection and then died as martyrs for Him.  The women disciples, who showed greater love and courage by going to the tomb in order to anoint Christ’s dead body when all seemed lost, obviously had not anticipated His resurrection either. 

      St. Paul taught, “[I]f Christ has not been raised, our preaching is worthless, and so is your faith.” (1 Cor. 15:14) The Savior proclaimed His divinity by forgiving sins and saying that He and the Father are one (John 10:30) and that “before Abraham was, I am.” (John 8:58) The high priest asked Him at His arrest, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” Christ responded, “I am. And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.” (Mark 14: 61-62)   If One Who had claimed to be God was wrong in predicting His resurrection and had simply decayed in the tomb like anyone else, there would be no reason for anyone to remember Jesus Christ today as anything but a failed Messiah with grandiose delusions.    

            Orthodox Christian faith is not grounded in sentimental memories or warm feelings about an inspiring personality who lived a long time ago, but in the joyful proclamation that “Christ is Risen!” in victory over death as a whole Person.  His bodily resurrection is our hope for “the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come,” as we confess in the Nicene Creed.  To quote Saint Paul again, “[I]if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Cor. 15: 17-19) If Christ did not rise from the dead as an embodied Person, then St. Paul and all the martyrs wasted their lives for nothing.  Remember that he became a Christian only after the Risen Lord miraculously appeared to Him in blinding light on the road to Damascus   Apart from the reality of the Savior’s resurrection, the conversion of St. Paul from a persecuting Pharisee to the apostle to the Gentiles makes no sense at all. 

            St. Thomas believed only when he touched the wounds of the Risen Savior’s glorified body.  In our reading from Acts, the apostles healed the suffering bodies of many sick people.  The Lord’s resurrection reveals the great dignity of the human body, which is destined for heavenly glory. Salvation is not an escape from the physical dimensions of our lives, but requires our purification and fulfillment as whole persons united to Christ. True faith in the Savior demands that we offer every aspect of our existence to Him for healing and transformation, holding nothing back.  Even as He healed the sick and fed the hungry, the most obvious practices of faithfulness involve caring for people in their bodily weaknesses and infirmities.  By showing tangible signs of mercy for our neighbors, we also touch the wounds of Christ, for He is present to us in everyone in need. In light of His resurrection, the bodily sufferings and struggles of others appear not as irrelevant distractions from genuine spiritual concerns, but as invitations to manifest a foretaste of “the life of the world to come.” Regardless of any context or circumstance, to refuse to abandon our neighbors in their bodily sufferings and to provide whatever care we can is to provide a sign of God’s gracious purposes for all who bear His image and likeness.  If we refuse to do so, then we live as though the Savior’s bodily sufferings, death, and resurrection had no great importance.  Because “Christ is Risen!,” we must care for our neighbors in practical, tangible ways that convey the divine mercy that shines from the empty tomb.

            In order to follow our Risen Lord into the joy of the resurrection, we must also open our deepest personal struggles and wounds to Him for healing.  The problem is not that we have bodies, but that we have allowed the fear of death to fuel our passions in ways that corrupt every dimension of who we are in this world.  Because God creates and saves us as whole persons, we must embrace the Savior’s victory over death by living as those who are in a “one flesh” communion with Him in every dimension of our existence.   We are living members of His Body, the Church, and nourished by His Body and Blood in the Eucharist.  We must live accordingly with our bodies every day of our lives, for Christ’s resurrection has glorified the human body and calls us to holiness.  All our relationships, actions, and desires must be healed and reoriented to the Kingdom in order for us to enter into the joy of our Lord’s resurrection as whole persons.  That is not a disembodied or abstract vocation, but a tangible and practical calling that impacts every dimension of our lives as embodied persons.

            Because “Christ is Risen!,” we must not use the fact that we have bodies as an excuse to remain enslaved to corruption in any form.  We fall into hatred, greed, sloth, gluttony, drunkenness, lust, vanity, and other sins not because we are flesh and blood, but because we have not yet entered fully into the joy of the resurrection of Christ.  The season of Pascha calls us all to embrace our Risen Lord as the restoration and fulfillment of every dimension of our personhood.  We cannot become truly human apart from Him, for only He has conquered the fear of death that is at the root of all our corruption.  The more fully we unite ourselves to Christ in joyful obedience, even as we remain flesh and blood in this world, the more truly we will  be able to say with St. Paul: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20) The struggle to do so is ultimately one of joy as we enter more fully into the gloriously good news of this radiant season of Pascha.  It is a struggle that we must all undertake if we are to respond in faith like St. Thomas to the God-Man Whom death could not destroy, for “Christ is Risen!”

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[1] https://www.oca.org/fs/sermons/the-paschal-sermon

Homily for Palm Sunday in the Orthodox Church

 

Philippians 4:4-9; John 12:1-18

The Desert Father Saint Antony the Great once tested a group of monks by asking them, beginning with the youngest, the meaning of a certain passage of Scripture.  In response to their answers, he said, “You have not understood it.”  Finally, he asked Abba Joseph, who said, “I do not know.”  Then Abba Antony said, “Indeed Abba Joseph has found the way, for he has said: ‘I do not know.’”[1] As we celebrate our Lord’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, we must resist the temptation to think that we understand the full meaning of this extraordinary day that begins the week in which the God-Man will enter into the dark and disorienting despair of death and then rise gloriously in triumph.  Before the Passion of the Lord, we must all have the humility to say, “I do not know.”   

We can certainly all understand the crowds on Palm Sunday welcoming their anticipated liberator from the oppressive rule of foreigners as they cheered, “Hosanna! Blessed is He Who comes in the Name of the Lord, the King of Israel!”  Throughout His earthly ministry, the Savior faced and rejected the temptation to become an earthly ruler out to take vengeance on His enemies. When, by the end of the week, it had become clear that He was not going to settle the score with the Romans, the crowds called so boisterously for His death that even Pilate, the Roman governor, went along with their desires.  In tragic irony, it was in the aftermath of the Lord’s raising of Lazarus from the dead after four days, by which He showed that He is “the resurrection and the life,” that the chief priests and Pharisees decided that they had to destroy Him.  “Crucify Him!  Crucify Him!” they said cynically to Pilate, for “We have no king but Caesar!” 

Every generation includes some so obsessed with dominating others that they recognize no truth beyond whatever serves their lust for power.  Perhaps we are not shocked by villains who take the lives of those who oppose them, but it is more difficult to accept how the Savior’s own disciples betrayed, denied, and abandoned Him.  As their rabbi and friend, He withheld nothing from them, explaining the parables and performing many miracles in their presence.  He served them in humility, stooping down to wash their feet and patiently teaching them by word and deed.  But they too abandoned their Lord when they saw that, instead of conquering the Romans, He would be killed by them.     

Were Jesus Christ merely a religious teacher of good character, His public torture and execution after being betrayed, denied, and abandoned by those closest to Him would be terribly tragic, but life is full of such tragedies.  Since He is the Eternal Word of God Who spoke the universe into existence, however, His Passion is simply incomprehensible.  The Lord Who said that His Name is “I AM” when He spoke to Moses through the burning bush “emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant…He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”  (Phil. 2:7-8) Who can claim to understand such mystery?  The only begotten Son of the Father offered Himself in free obedience on the Cross, the Tree of Life, to disappear into the pit, the opaque abyss of death, as fully as any other human who has departed this life. His cry from the Cross, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” shows that He experienced the depths of human helplessness and horror.  He felt as alienated and abandoned as any victim of sadistic abuse, as anyone rejected and abandoned by those He loved most, as anyone struggling to breathe His last in the midst of unbearable physical and psychological pain. 

 Our Savior experienced all of that as the God-Man.  In ways that we must not imagine that we can even begin to comprehend, the fully divine Son of God suffered, died, was buried, and descended into Hades, the shadowy place of the dead.   Only One Who is truly human could do that.  Since He is also fully divine, we dare to confess the unfathomable mystery of a Person of the Holy Trinity freely experiencing the negation, weakness, despair, abandonment, and suffering that is our common lot in this world of corruption.  Our Savior, the God-Man Jesus Christ, is the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world.  He is the Lord Who reigns from the Cross.  His death does not change the eternal nature of God but manifests divine sacrificial love beyond all human understanding.  “For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." (John 3:16) The Son does not pay a ransom or debt to appease the Father’s anger or sense of justice but freely offers up Himself to the Holy Trinity (including Himself) out of love for the salvation of the world.  His sacrifice is not that of a mere human satisfying a religious or legal obligation, but of the God-Man who walks with us “through the valley of the shadow of death.”  Because of His Cross, we know He is with us when we cry, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”  Because His suffering love extends even into the darkest corners of the loss and despair suffered by even the most wretched of His children, we may say with the Psalmist, “If I should descend into Hades, You would be there.” (Ps. 138:8)   

  Today we commemorate the triumphal entry into Jerusalem of the Savior Who emptied Himself in sacrificial love for our salvation beyond all human comprehension.  Even as we entrust ourselves to Him, we must have the humility to say “I do not know” in recognition that the deep mystery of His Passion is infinitely beyond our understanding. He does not conquer the corrupting power of sin and death with brute force, but by selfless love that knows no bounds and extends even to those who betrayed, denied, abandoned, tortured, and crucified Him.  And He does so as One Who is fully human and fully divine.   He reveals Who God is, for He is God.  The divine nature is completely beyond our comprehension, but the God-Man has graciously shared His life of infinite love with us.  We know Him not by even the best words, thoughts, or feelings, but by opening the eyes of our souls to behold His glory, the glory of One Who died on the Cross because He loves us and refused to abandon us to the corruption and decay of the tomb.  

Holy Week is a time for entering personally into the deep mystery of the love of our Lord, of the great “I AM” Who remains infinitely beyond our full comprehension.  Today He rides into Jerusalem on a humble donkey as the crowds welcome Him as a conquering hero.  But they do not really know what they are doing or what kind of Savior He is.  As we begin this Holy Week, let us have the humility to recognize that we are not that different from them.  We too tend to reject or at least ignore Christ when His Cross does not serve our agendas and preferences.   We too have our preconceived notions about what kind of Savior we want and what earthly goals we want Him to accomplish.  We too cannot make sense of a Lord Whose Kingdom comes through what appears to be complete and shameful failure according to any conventional standard.

That is precisely why we need to pray and fast in stunned silence this week as we follow the Lamb of God to His great Self-Offering for the salvation of the world.  Let us resist the temptation to assume that we have His Passion all figured out.  Instead, like Abba Joseph, we should say, “I do not know” before the deep mystery of His unfathomable love.  Let us lay aside our earthly cares and refuse to be distracted this week from anything that would keep us from following the advice of St. Paul: “The Lord is at hand. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your petitions be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”    

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[1] St. Antony the Great, as cited in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Benedicta Ward, trans., (Cistercian Publications, 1975): pg. 4, para. 17.

Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Great Lent with Commemoration of our Righteous Mother Mary of Egypt in the Orthodox Church

 

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

            The more clearly that we see our personal brokenness, the more tempted we may be to think that there is simply no point in trying to reorient our lives toward the Lord. Perhaps we are simply too far gone to come to our senses and find our way home like the prodigal son, we may think.  Perhaps no amount of repentance could ever enable us to receive God’s healing mercy. On this last Sunday of Great Lent, the Church calls us to put such foolish and prideful notions out of our minds as we celebrate how our Righteous Mother Mary of Egypt became a glorious saint, despite her previously wretched way of life.  In her brutally honest account of her youth, St. Mary describes how she had from the age of twelve endured the miserable existence of a sex addict.  She had refused money for her innumerable encounters with men and said that she “had an insatiable desire and an irrepressible passion for lying in filth. This was life to me. Every kind of abuse of nature I regarded as life.”  Though we do not know why she left her parents’ home at a young age, she may well have been a victim of sexual abuse.  She confessed forcing herself on “youths even against their own will” as she sailed to Jerusalem and said that she was actually “hunting for youths” on the streets on the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross when she followed the crowds to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. 

When an invisible force prevented Mary from entering the Church in order to venerate the Cross, her eyes were opened to her wretchedness and she pleaded for the help of the Theotokos in finding salvation.  Thus began her almost 50 years of intense ascetical struggle in the desert.  By the time Father Zosima stumbled upon her, Mary had become so radiant with holiness that she walked on water, rose above the ground in prayer, was clairvoyant, and knew the Scriptures, even though she had never read them.  Pride and self-centeredness had no place in her soul, as she was aware only of her sinfulness and ongoing need for the Lord’s mercy.  Mary was not focused on achieving any earthly goal, but instead on doing whatever was necessary for her to find healing and restoration as a beloved daughter of the Lord, a living icon of Christ. 

So much religion in our world today is merely a smattering of pious platitudes intended to help people feel better about indulging their passions, including the desire to dominate and condemn people they fear or resent. That is not a new problem, for our Lord’s disciples betrayed, denied, and abandoned Him because they finally realized that He was not going to become a conventional political ruler who would satisfy their desires for earthly glory with victory over the Roman Empire.  As today’s gospel reading shows, even as the Savior predicted His Passion, the disciples James and John were jockeying for position by asking for places of prominence when He came into power.  They had no idea what they were asking, of course, for the path to our Lord’s Kingdom requires taking up our crosses in union with His great Self-Offering. Doing so has nothing to do with gaining power over anyone in this world but requires persistent, humble obedience whereby we open ourselves to receive the healing divine mercy of the Lord.  Through the struggle of reorienting ourselves to the blessedness of a Kingdom not of this world, we will learn not to entrust our hearts to the false gods of our passions and will instead gain the strength to manifest Christ’s merciful, selfless love for our neighbors, regardless of who they are.  As He said, “For the Son of man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”

The weeks of Lent teach us that prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and other spiritual disciplines are not tools to help us achieve an earthly goal.  Instead, they are simply ways of offering our lives to the Lord for healing.  Our great difficulty in embracing them shows how far we are from fulfilling our calling to become like God in holiness.  To recognize that truth and still persist in repentance will inevitably require suffering because we must then experience the inevitable tension between the corruption and weakness of our souls and the blessedness and strength to which the Lord calls us.  Such suffering is not a punishment but simply the consequence of enduring the struggle to accept personally our restoration through Christ as His beautiful living icons. 

St. Mary of Egypt did not allow the hurt pride called shame to keep her from facing the truth about her spiritual state or from taking up her cross in the way that was necessary for her salvation.  She did not accept the lie that she simply needed to accept and act on her inclinations, habits, and compulsions in order to be true to herself.  She did not distract herself from confronting her sins by condemning others or trying to distort religion in order to gain anything in this world.    Instead, she had the humble courage to entrust herself fully to the ministry of the “High Priest of the good things to come…[Who] through His own blood, entered in once for all into the holy place, having found eternal redemption.”  Her example shows that absolutely nothing we have done, said, or thought makes it impossible for us to find the healing of our souls through Him.  St. Mary of Egypt is a shining example of hope for us all.

Like her, we must confront truthfully how we have corrupted ourselves in order to open our hearts to Christ for His healing.  His own disciples betrayed, denied, and abandoned Him because they wanted a Messiah Who would serve their desires for earthly power and glory.  As Christ said, “the Son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn Him to death, and deliver Him to the Gentiles.  And they will mock Him, and scourge Him, and spit upon Him, and kill Him; and after three days He will rise.”  Acquiring the spiritual health to serve such a Lord does not come easily to people like us who are so weakened spiritually by slavery to our passions.  That is why we all need the holy mystery of Confession in Lent in order to gain the strength necessary to follow our Lord to His Cross and empty tomb.  Doing so has nothing to do with glorifying ourselves or achieving any earthly goal.  It does have everything to do with acquiring the persistent, humble obedience shown by St. Mary of Egypt.  Like her, we must refuse to let anything, including our own hurt pride, keep us from confronting our personal brokenness with brutal honesty as we take up our own crosses in faithfulness to the Savior Who offered up Himself for the salvation of the world. He alone is our hope for healing from the ravages of sin and the Victor over death.

 

       

 

 

 

Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Great Lent with Commemoration of Saint John Climacus, Author of “The Ladder,” in the Orthodox Church

 

Hebrews 6:13-20; Mark 9:17-31

             If we have embraced the spiritual practices of Lent with any level of integrity, the weakness of our faith has surely become apparent to us.  Our minds wander when we pray and so much else seems more important than being fully present before the Lord, both in the services of the Church and in our daily prayers at home.   We often make excuses not to fast to the best of our ability and, regardless of what we eat and drink, routinely indulge our self-centered desires for pleasure.  We justify being stingy in sharing our resources and attention with our neighbors, especially when we fear that doing so will compromise our dreams of self-sufficiency and comfort.  By this point in Lent, we have all gained insight into how we have failed to entrust ourselves to Christ to the point that we can say with the brokenhearted father in today’s gospel reading, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”

            In kneeling before the Lord and struggling to believe that Christ could deliver his son from a life-threatening condition, the father revealed the true condition of his soul.  He was bitterly disappointed that the disciples had not been able to help and did not fully trust that the Savior could do anything more.   Nonetheless, he could muster enough faith to offer the young man to Christ for healing, even as he pleaded for Him to “help my unbelief!”  That honest, humble, heartfelt plea was sufficient for his son to receive the Lord’s merciful healing. Despite his doubts, the father still had enough faith to receive healing for his son.  He entrusted himself and his beloved child to Christ as best he could, despite his imperfect faith. 

The word given by God to St. Silouan the Athonite applies to him as much as it does to us: “Keep your mind in hell and do not despair.”   On the one hand, we must not fool ourselves with an illusory, superficial spirituality that blocks us from experiencing the true state of our souls before God.  We must not lie to ourselves or make excuses for our failings. Instead, we must know from our hearts how far we are from fully embracing our Lord’s gracious healing and entrusting ourselves and all our earthly cares to Him.  On the other hand, even as we confront the tension between the infinite holiness of God and our corruption, we must refuse to despair by accepting the lie that there is no hope for us, our loved ones, and our neighbors in the mercy of the Lord.  Far better is the way of the father in today’s gospel lesson, for he confessed the weakness of his faith even as he paradoxically showed great faith in asking for Christ to save his son.   

He provides us a much better example than did the disciples, for they lacked the spiritual strength to deliver the young man from the demon.  The Savior told them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting.”  He said that because they were spiritual weaklings who had neglected the most basic spiritual practices for opening themselves to receive healing and strength. Not one of them got the point when the Lord said, “The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him; and after He is killed, He will rise on the third day.”  At this point, they had a superficial faith focused on acquiring earthly power for themselves and vengeance against their enemies, not on entrusting themselves to the God-Man Whose Kingdom remains not of this world.  It was only after the horror of the Cross, the complete shock of the empty tomb, and the appearance and teaching of the risen Lord that they acquired the faith necessary truly to believe. 

The deliverance of the young man did not come easily, for the demon convulsed him and most of the bystanders thought that he was dead.  It can seem impossibly difficult for us to embrace Christ’s healing, for in order to do so we must die to the power of passions that have taken such deep root in our souls that they have become second nature. Our life in Christ invariably requires denying ourselves, taking up our crosses, and following Him.   There is no other way truly to share in the life of our crucified and risen Lord.  

Today we commemorate St. John Climacus, a monk from the seventh century who wrote The Ladder of Divine Ascent, a spiritual classic that is said to be the second most read book in Orthodoxy after the Bible.  Written as a guide to other monks, the book presents the necessary steps for following the upward path to the Kingdom.  There is one passage in which St. John advises people “who are married and living amid public cares” to pursue this goal in the following way:

Do whatever good you may.  Speak evil of no one.  Rob no one.  Tell no lie.  Despise no one and carry no hate. Do not separate yourself from the church assemblies.  Show compassion to the needy.  Do not be a cause of scandal to anyone.  Stay away from the bed of another, and be satisfied with what your own wives can provide you.  If you do this, you will not be far from the kingdom of heaven.[1]

 The father in today’s gospel lesson obviously had a family and lived a conventional life in the world.  It was precisely through those circumstances that he was able to gain the spiritual clarity necessary to cry out “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” such that his son was healed.  Remember that the path to the healing of our souls is open to us all, regardless of our marital status, family responsibilities, and work.  Regardless of the circumstances of our lives, let us continue the Lenten journey by embracing the daily struggle necessary to intensify our prayers, to deny ourselves, and to give generously to our neighbors as we take the small steps that we presently have the strength to take in reorienting our lives to toward the Lord.   When the battle even to take those small steps reveals our weaknesses and seems like a lost cause, that is when we must obey the command: “Keep your mind in hell and do not despair.”  It is only by doing so that we may gain the spiritual clarity necessary to cry out from the depths of our hearts, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”  Indeed, it is really the only time in which we can begin to see the state of our souls clearly, which is necessary in order for us to follow our Lord to His Cross and empty tomb through humble confession and repentance of our sins. In the remaining weeks of the Fast, let us refuse to be distracted by anything that would keep us from entering as fully as possible into the holy mystery of our salvation, for “The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him; and after He is killed, He will rise on the third day.” 

 

 

 

 

           

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[1] St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Paulist Press, 1982: 78.