Prayer, Fasting, and the Good Life: Homily for the 10th Sunday After Pentecost in the Orthodox Church

1 Corinthians 4:9-16

Matthew 17:14-23

It’s easy to become annoyed by some of the distortions of Christianity that are so common in our culture.  Some preach on television and elsewhere that truly faithful Christians will become rich and have no problems.  Many seem to assume that following Jesus Christ is just a little religious icing on the cake of worldly comfort, part of an easy way to a happy marriage, a model family, perfect health, and whatever else we may want out of life.  It’s as though the Son of God came to make us really successful by conventional standards.   

            The irony is that even a quick look at the life of Jesus Christ, his Mother Mary the Theotokos, or apostles such as St. Paul shows how foolish such teachings are.  None of them lived what any mainstream culture thinks of as a happy or successful life.  Now don’t get me wrong:  they obviously lived the best and holiest of lives; they are models for us in how to live and to die.  But they put the Kingdom of God first and refused to put even their own happiness before God’s will and the humble service of others.  They all suffered greatly, but thereby participated in joy and peace that are not of this world.  

            The Son of God lowered Himself in the Incarnation, becoming one of us and even enduring death and descent to Hades in order to conquer them and bring us into His eternal life.  He was rejected by the leaders of His own people and brutally executed by the Roman authorities.  Mary the Theotokos accepted a scandalous pregnancy as the Lord’s virgin mother and saw her Son murdered by those He came to save.  St. Paul endured hardships of all kinds, beatings, imprisonment, and ultimately martyrdom for Christ.  These were not wealthy people; their lives didn’t follow conventional patterns; they weren’t in favor with the religious and political authorities of their land.   In some ways, there were outsiders and outcasts. But it was precisely through their difficult struggles and their faithful ministries that salvation has come to the world and we have inherited the blessings of life eternal.

            That’s an important truth to keep in mind when we hear the heart-broken father of the epileptic boy cry out to the Lord for healing for his son.  The poor man had probably done everything he knew for his son without success, even asking the disciples to cure him. They had failed to do so, however, because of their unbelief, which was shown by their lack of attention to prayer and fasting.  In other words, they lacked the spiritual strength to overcome evil, probably because they assumed that following Christ was an easy path to a privileged life.  After all, most Jews expected the Messiah to be a great king and military ruler who would presumably reward those who served Him.    In their hopes for that kind of savior, the disciples were part of a “faithless and perverse” generation that trusted in and served itself, rather than in the one true God.

            The epileptic boy was not healed because his father was wealthy, powerful, or popular—or because Jesus Christ was on His way to becoming an earthly king.  Instead, the boy’s father had true faith, trust and humility before the Lord, kneeling down before him and asking for mercy from the bottom of his heart.  He lowered himself before Christ, putting himself in the humble place of one who could receive the blessing of the most humble One of all.

            Unfortunately, some in the church of Corinth were nothing like that father; they were so full of pride that St. Paul had to set them straight on what it meant to serve Jesus Christ.  He wrote that true apostles lived “as men condemned to death,” as fools who are weak, dishonored, homeless, and treated as the filth of the world.   Well, you can’t get much lower than that or much further away from the lie that Christianity should be a means to wealth, success, and what the world calls happiness.   And the words used by St. Paul remind us of how the Lord spoke of the “least of these,” identifying Himself with the hungry, the stranger, the prisoner—those at the very bottom of any society. 

            The application to our lives is clear.  Instead of following today’s popular false prophets who worship money, power, and other forms of self-indulgence, we should follow the advice of the Lord Himself to the disciples on the centrality of faith, prayer, and fasting.  Instead of believing that success in any earthly kingdom or culture is the highest good, we must entrust our lives only to the One who has conquered death.  Instead of being constantly distracted by television, the internet, video games, work, sports, the demands of a busy schedule, or other earthly cares, we must carve out at least some time every day for quiet contemplation and spiritual communion with the Lord. Instead of satisfying every desire and wallowing in unrestrained indulgence and consumption, we must learn to say no to our addiction to pleasure through appropriate forms of fasting and self-denial on a regular basis.  Instead of making our faith a way to get what we want and gain the praise of others, we must learn the essential place of humility in the Christian life.  For it is only when we stop focusing on ourselves—our strengths, our virtues, our abilities, as well as our failures and weaknesses—that we will be able to kneel before Christ like that father who was at the end of his rope and  open ourselves  to the mercy and healing of the Lord.

            One of the many problems of popular, easy Christianity is that it makes us spiritually weak.  If the faith is basically about helping us get what we want, then we will always serve ourselves and become addicted to self-centered desires.  We will become so enslaved to our bellies, the love of money, popularity, and the endless pursuit of happiness that we will be just like the disciples:  powerless against the forces of evil and corruption in our own lives.  If we serve and please only ourselves, we will become so self-focused and self-centered that we will find it impossible to cultivate the humility required to serve God and our neighbor.  We will become so addicted to our desires that we will lack the ability to say no to ourselves for any reason, which is ultimately a recipe for nothing but misery.

            Well, that’s certainly no way to live the Christian life; better to look to Christ who came not to be served, but to serve, and who gained strength for the many challenges of His ministry by intensive prayer and fasting.  The Theotokos grew up in the Temple and was sustained throughout her life by these spiritual disciplines, as was St. Paul.  Our Savior and His Saints call us to follow them in humility, obedience, and self-denial.  Yes, there is hard work involved, but should that really be surprising?  Physical rehab after an injury requires discipline and the same is true of making progress in any line of work or in maintaining healthy relationships within a family or marriage. And if we are in the process of dying to self so that we may become holy and share in eternal life, should we be surprised that the struggle is even greater?         

               The good news is that Christ is with us in that struggle.  He endured the agony of the cross for us, and we will grow in faith by bearing our crosses patiently, by accepting the difficulty of prayer, fasting, selfless service, and all the other disciplines of the Christian life.  No, they will never make us rich and famous, but they are tools for helping us become like the father of the epileptic boy who, in his humble faith, received the mercy of Christ.  Then we will learn in our own lives that what looks like weakness by worldly standards is actually the greatest strength of all.    

             

                 

           

             

                 

           

       

Walking on the Water: Orthodox Homily for the Ninth Sunday After Pentecost

I Corinthians 3:9-17

Matthew 14:22-34 

Our family visited the Grand Canyon a few years ago.  It is magnificent and awe-inspiring,  but  when hiking a trail or standing on an overlook, I recall that you have to pay careful attention because you are often just a few feet away from a very steep drop off.   Unfortunately, people have fallen to their deaths in the canyon simply because they didn’t pay attention to what they were doing. 

                St. Peter made a similar error.  As he walked on the water with Jesus Christ, Peter let himself be distracted by the wind and the waves of a stormy sea.  Instead of focusing his attention and trust in the Lord Who miraculously enabled him to walk on the water in the first place, Peter let doubt and fear fill his mind.  So he began to sink; but when he called out in terror for help, the Lord reached out to Peter and saved him from drowning.

                The story is even more profound when we remember that Peter had asked Christ to let him walk on the water.  Peter actually tested Him, “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.”  As was often the case, Peter spoke before he thought, for he was the one who would be put to the test, the test to see if he really had faith; and he fell short.

                I imagine that we can all understand Peter’s situation.  We may think that we have a lot of faith and even put ourselves in situations where we know we will be tested, but then we let temptations, fears, and our passions take over.  We pay more attention to the dangers that threaten us than to the Lord Who gave us life in the first place and continues to enable us to walk by faith even through the most difficult challenges that the world presents.   And when we do so, we sink like a stone thrown into the sea or a careless tourist who falls into the Grand Canyon.

                For as St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, our one true foundation in life is in the Son of God.  Our entire life is built on Him, the One by Whom all things were made, the One Who became the second Adam to heal our corrupt humanity,  the One who conquered death in His third-day resurrection, the One Who has brought us into the eternal life of the Holy Trinity.

                When we turn away from Him, we turn away from our true selves.  We cut ourselves off from the truth, reality, and power that are necessary to sustain a life fitting for those created in the image and likeness of God.  That’s why Peter started to descend to the deep when he gave more attention to his fears than to trust in the Lord.  And it’s why we all experience the weakness of slavery to our habitual sins, our passions that seem almost second nature to us.  We may believe with our hearts that Christ is the Savior, but our faith shows its weakness when we are confronted with a difficult challenge, when the waves seem so big and the winds seem so strong:  and we feel like someone who all of a sudden realizes that he’s trying to walk on the water in the middle of a storm.

                Yes, fear, panic, and anxiety will likely then seem more real to us in that moment than will faith, hope, and love.  The key question, however, is what do we do then?  For we have freedom, we are God’s fellow workers and He never forces us to love and serve Him.  We may give in to our temptations and allow our lives to be controlled by our self-centered desires and fears.  We may live as though there is no God, as if it’s simply up to us to figure out how to cope as best we can with whatever happens to us.  That may sound noble, but it’s still the path to continued slavery to sin and to the grave.  For even our best efforts can’t enable us to walk on the water, much less conquer death.

                St. Peter shows us a better way of responding to the sudden awareness that we are sinking.  He simply calls out, probably at the top of his lungs, “Lord, save me!”  This is surely a genuine acknowledgement that he knows his life is collapsing under its own weight, that on his own he’s headed to the bottom of the sea.   In crying out for Christ’s help, Peter shows that he does have some level of  faith, but it’s not the strength of his faith that saves him.  Instead, it’s the mercy of the Lord.

                And even though none of us walks on water, we all stand in constant need of the mercy of Jesus Christ.  That’s why we sing “Lord, have mercy” so many times in our services.  It’s why the Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner” is at the heart of spiritual vision.  We focus on the Lord’s mercy so much because, like Peter, we are constantly tempted to turn our attention elsewhere, to think that what is really important, necessary, and urgent in life is something else of our own creation.   

                Of course, we must give attention to our work, our education, our family, our friends, and many other significant things in the course of a day.  But these objects of our attention don’t have to distract us from the Lord.  In our daily prayers, we should ask for God’s mercy upon our loved ones and in our daily responsibilities and undertakings.  Whenever we are tempted to sinful words, deeds, or thoughts, we may call upon the Lord’s aid silently.  And we can do many things in life quite well while offering short  prayers, such as the Jesus Prayer, whether  spoken aloud or not.

                Now let’s be honest, it takes effort to guard our thoughts and to pray from the heart when we are tempted.  It’s usually much easier for us simply to embrace anger, pride, lust, fear, despair, and hatred than it is for us to reject them.  That’s again why our epistle passage today refers to us as fellow workers with God.  Effort is required and it’s not easy.  But the more we struggle and perhaps fail, the greater awareness we will have that our situation is like that of St. Peter.  Apart from the mercy of Christ, we will sink and drown.  Apart from Him, we are like a building without a foundation which will collapse under its own weight. 

 And as St. Paul wrote, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”   A temple must be holy and dedicated to God.  For us to be a temple requires vigilance and perseverance to ground our lives in the mercy of Christ, for we are so often tempted to worship the false gods of our own devising.  All the more is the reason is to maintain a daily rule of prayer and to pray the Jesus Prayer as much as we can.

You see, the more we turn our attention to Christ and His salvation, the better we will be able to respond to Him with faith, to walk with Him on the water through the storms of our own lives.  The more mindful we are, the closer watch we will keep on our thoughts, the better able we will be to reject the lies that we so often tell ourselves—and instead to open our hearts to the mercy of the One who is our foundation, our Savior, and the victor over sin and death.  Apart from Christ, we will sink like a stone.  But in Him, we become fellow workers with God for our salvation.  Let us keep our eyes and our hearts centered on Christ, for He is our only true foundation.   

        

Fast Food or Fasting?: Holy Eating and Drinking Instead of Self-Centered Indulgence

Have you ever noticed that food is often at the center of controversies?  Whether it’s eating meat sacrificed to idols in Corinth, figuring out how early Christians from Jewish and Gentile backgrounds could eat together, or even responding to the current hubbub about a chicken chain, what we put in our mouths and stomachs can easily involve us in disputes.  Leaving those celebrated cases aside, our diets and eating habits have profound spiritual and moral significance, as they shape who we become as people and how we relate to others and to the Lord.

Unfortunately, mindless overindulgence in the pleasures of the table is all too common among Christians.  In our land of cheap and plentiful highly processed foods, we usually give ourselves a pass on gluttony and don’t really take it seriously as a temptation.  Of course, eating too much doesn’t put us at risk only for spiritual problems. Too many people are fat, really fat, in the USA.   Junk food, fast food, too much food—they’re all around us.  Modern conveniences and transportation have cut our rates of physical activity drastically over the last generation.  Despite the existence of so many gyms, hardly anyone gets enough exercise. Obesity is an epidemic and only getting worse, which is bad for our bodies and our souls, as well as our families and other relationships.   

We’ve probably blotted it out of our memory, but the Bible tells us that sin came into the world together with an unholy attitude toward food.  Everything changed when Adam and Eve could not control their appetites.  They ate the fruit in violation of God’s command, and we’re still following their bad example.  Food is good stuff; there’s nothing evil about it at all.  The problem is that we use it for purposes other than those for which God created it.  We consume food and drink in ways that do not help us grow in the divine likeness and instead make us addicts to satisfying our disordered desires.  No wonder all-you-can-eat is so popular.   And portion sizes at restaurants are so huge that often an individual’s serving could sustain a small family.  That’s sadly ironic in a world where so many in developing nations starve to death or are malnourished. 

The scary truth is that how we eat and drink reveals a great deal about how we relate to God, our neighbors, and ourselves.  We commit idolatry when we choose satisfying our self-centered desires instead of living as partakers of the divine nature.  With the rise of cheap and plentiful fast food, we are more likely to eat alone, quickly, and without being mindful of what we’re doing.  And we do this so routinely that most of us don’t even notice it.  What should be a blessed sign of our shared life with others before God too often becomes a lonely exercise in self-gratification that harms our bodies, our souls, and our families.      

 In contrast, Jesus Christ often used the wedding feast—yes, a celebratory meal-- as a sign of the Kingdom of God.  He transformed the Passover dinner into the Eucharist, our participation in the heavenly banquet.  He restored the fruits of the earth to their original purpose of sustaining our life in God when He fulfilled them as His Body and Blood. Consequently, those nourished by Holy Communion should view all their eating and drinking in a new light.  Self-centered indulgence should give way to a Eucharistic life in which our meals are truly a blessing, a sign of our salvation, and an offering to the Lord of our bodies, our relationships, and the earth’s bounty.  We should eat and drink in a way that bring us more fully into the life of the Holy Trinity and into the lives of our families, friends, and neighbors.  Pigging out in isolation won’t do that and neither will a diet that provides so much fat and sugar that we probably won’t be with our loved ones much longer.    

Maybe I hang out with the wrong crowd, but I don’t know anyone who just loves to fast.  Nonetheless, we do well to abstain periodically from the richest and most satisfying foods as a way of humbling ourselves before God and of learning to resist self-centered desires.   We need some discipline, some restraint, in order to heal our unhealthy relationship with food and drink, as well as with other sources of pleasure. As the saying goes, gluttony is the mother of adultery. When we get in the habit of satisfying our self-centered desires, we find it hard to control any of our appetites.  Is it surprising that in a culture of fast food, obesity, and few family dinners that we have so much sexual immorality, love of money and power, and broken homes?  Should we be shocked that immediate gratification, impatience, and lack of consideration for others are epidemic?  The sad truth is that we have become all too comfortable with deeply rooted habits that distort and disfigure us as those created in the image and likeness of God.   

            So let’s do something countercultural by cooking, eating, and socializing with others in ways that are good for all concerned.  Our kitchens and dining rooms should become icons of the heavenly banquet; our table fellowship should become an extension of the Eucharist.  We should eat and drink our own salvation—and that of our families and friends—every day.   Let’s make food a blessing in our lives, not a curse.

           

             

St. Timon Sunday: Homily for the Eighth Sunday After Pentecost in the Orthodox Church

1 Corinthians 1:10-18

St. Matthew 14:14-22   

http://www.antiochian.org/hauran  

St. Luke Orthodox Church, Abilene, TX

          

             We sometimes get so caught up with our own schedules and problems we forget who we are, where we came from, and how closely we are connected spiritually even to people whom we have never met.  Today is “St. Timon Sunday Day” in our Diocese, when we remember Timon, one of the seventy apostles sent out by Jesus Christ and one of the original deacons mentioned in the book of Acts.  He became the bishop of Bosra in Syria and eventually became a martyr.  All Christians are in his debt as a pillar of the early Church.   He converted many Arabs to the Christian faith , and especially we Antiochian Orthodox should remember him with great appreciation.  For he played a crucial role in building the mother church of which we are a part and of evangelizing the part of the world where our faith began.

                So it is fitting that in the last few of year s our Diocese has established “the Hauran connection,” a way for us to help our impoverished Orthodox Christian brothers and sisters in southwestern Syria.  I actually visited there briefly when I was in Syria for a conference a couple of years ago.   Life was very hard then, with few economic opportunities and a Christian population of no more than 10%.  Life is impossibly hard now for everyone in Syria.  In a revolution or civil war, it doesn’t matter what you call it, everyone’s life is at risk.  The situation is especially complicated for Christians who have been protected by the Assad regime and typically fear what the future will hold for them.  Along with people of other faiths, many of our Orthodox brothers and sisters are now refugees.  

                I am obviously not a politician and none of us has much influence over world events.  If anyone has a good solution for Syria’s problems, I’ve not heard it yet.  So it may not seem like there is much that we can do.  The collection that we take up here at St. Luke each summer for “the Hauran Connection” may seem small.  We are a sister parish to the parish of the Dormition of the Theotokos, a community of twelve families whose church temple was under construction when last I heard.   They sound a lot like us.  We pray for them every Sunday and make a small monetary donation to them each year.   We do what we can to make life a little easier for them.  I hope that you will prayerfully consider putting an offering designated for the Hauran Connection in the collection plate in the next week or so. 

                Our little parish’s connection to  another little parish in Syria reminds us of the five loaves and two fish that the disciples collected to feed thousands of hungry people in a deserted place at the end of a long day.  It seemed crazy to think that such a small amount of food could have any importance at all in that situation.  It was enough food for one person, not for a big crowd.  And the disciples knew that, so they asked Jesus Christ to send the people away to buy their own food.  But He challenged them to feed the people instead with what they had.

                Looking up into heaven, the Lord blessed, broke, and gave the loaves back to the disciples, and they in turn gave them to the crowd.  And everyone had more than enough to eat; twelve basketsful of bread were leftover after several thousand people had had dinner.  What seemed so small, so insignificant, so inadequate, was more than enough because of the blessing of our Savior.

                So much in our lives is like that, a seemingly insignificant offering such as a little bit of money and weekly remembrance in prayer for a small parish in Syria.  From time to time, our parish gives a few dollars or a bus ticket to a needy family.  We donate to “Food for Hungry People” during Lent and to Pregnancy Resources of Abilene.  Our members make offerings through their commitments to teach Sunday School, chant, serve at the altar, clean the church or the yard, host a coffee hour, bake holy bread, visit someone in a nursing home, or give someone a ride to church.   We set aside time and expend the energy to pray, to fast, to come to church, or to mend a broken relationship.  In the larger scheme of things, all of these acts seem small and incapable of meeting the great needs of those around us.  Perhaps they seem barely worth mentioning.

                But we have to remember that the point is never whether we have the power or ability to feed thousands or fix the world’s problems.  We’re not that great.  We’re neither God nor the rulers of the world.  We probably struggle enough just to deal with our own problems, much less to set the world right.  All that we are called to do is to be like the disciples, to offer what little we can to the Lord for His blessing and trust that He’ll do the rest.

                That kind of offering is at the very heart of our worship in the Orthodox Church, for our spiritual fathers have always seen the Lord’s miraculous feeding of thousands with the loaves and fishes as a sign of the Eucharist, of Holy Communion.  A couple of loaves of bread and a cup containing wine and water.   By themselves, they might make a decent snack, but not even a full meal.  They couldn’t satisfy those of us gathered here today as dinner, much less a crowd of thousands. 

                But in the Divine Liturgy, we pray for God’s blessing upon the bread and wine.  By the power of the Holy Spirit, they become the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, the menu of the heavenly banquet.  We receive more than a mere meal, but the forgiveness of sins and life eternal in our communion.   We are nourished with heavenly food and raised to the life of heaven in the Eucharist.  That’s far more than we could expect from even the finest gourmet dinner.

                But have you ever noticed that human beings have to supply the bread , wine, and water for the Liturgy?  God works miracles upon the small gifts we offer Him , but these offerings are essential.  He requires that we do our small part; we have to make the offering.  And then He does the rest, which makes of our tiny gifts far more than they could have been on their own.

                We often say in the Church that we are not simply to attend the Divine Liturgy, but to live it.  All of our life should be an offering to God.  We should participate in heavenly worship with every thought, word, and deed.  But sometimes we honestly wonder how we can ever do that.  We have a thousand things going through our mind at once.  Our thoughts, words, and deeds often seem out of control.  Very often we would rather do just about anything else other than pray, worship, or serve God and our neighbors.   

                When we feel this way, we should remember that small offering of loaves and fish.   The Lord blessed this tiny gift and miraculously multiplied it to feed thousands.  Perhaps we are barely able to offer God anything.  Perhaps we wonder if our offering of prayer or fasting or service of whatever kind really matters.  Maybe we are tempted to think that it’s so insignificant that we shouldn’t even bother. 

Yes, that is a temptation, for our Lord has always worked through what is small and seemingly insignificant to bring salvation to the world.  If we’ve read the Bible, we know that God has always used imperfect, conflicted people like us to do His work.  He calls us, like He called them, to be as faithful as we can right now.  He accepts whatever offering of time, energy, and other resources we able to make.  And how He blesses it is more His business than ours.  So in the spirit of the loaves and fishes, let us continue offering our lives and resources to the Lord as best we can, trusting that the same God who make much from  St. Timon’s ministry in an obscure corner of the world will do the same with ours to His glory.  And let us remember all the people of Syria in our prayers and do what we can to ease the suffering especially of those in the Diocese of Hauran.    

                  

St. Mary Magdalene and the Shooting in Aurora, Colorado: Homily for the 7th Sunday After Pentecost in the Orthodox Church

St. Matthew 9: 27-35

Epistle to the Romans 15: 1-7

There are times when terrible tragedies occur that no one can explain or make sense of.  The shooting in the movie theater in Colorado is one of those senseless, unbelievably bad events.  Though far removed from us geographically, the graphic reports of this crime have surely impacted us all.  They remind us that we do not have the luxury of living in a world that is all sweetness and light or even basically humane or secure.  When such things happen, we may feel the darkness bearing down upon us and fear threatening to overtake us.  It can be hard to find a way out.

            St. Mary Magdalene knew the darkness of despair, grief, and loss all too well.  She had been possessed by seven demons which Christ cast out of her, and then she became one of His women disciples.  She helped support Him from her own resources and stood at the foot of cross as the Lord died.  We can only imagine how devastated and traumatized she must have been to see the One who had delivered her from evil executed in such a gruesome way.  Her world was surely turned upside down as she saw her Savior killed before her very eyes.

            But after resting on the Sabbath day, Mary Magdalene went very early on Sunday to anoint Christ’s body for burial.  That’s why she is called a myrrh-bearer.  And that’s when she was the first to see the empty tomb, the first to see the Risen Lord, and the first to proclaim the good news of the resurrection, which she did to the doubting apostles.  She has the title of Equal to the Apostles because she actually evangelized them and then continued spreading the gospel throughout her life. Despite her fear and pain, Mary Magdalene refused to abandon the Savior, even when He was dead.  And because of her steadfast faith, love, and courage in going to anoint His body, she was blessed with the greatest news of the universe.  She continued sharing that good news, traveling with the apostles as an evangelist and even proclaiming Christ’s resurrection to the Roman Emperor.  We celebrate her memory today, ask for her prayers, and strive to be like her.    

            But it’s hard to follow Mary Magdalene’s example because we are too much like the men whom Christ encountered in today’s gospel reading.  Two of them were blind and one of them was mute, which means that he could not speak.  In a world of senseless shootings, and ongoing wars and worries about terrorism, not to mention our own personal problems, we have become too well adjusted to the darkness that is all around us.  We may find it hard to see the light of the Kingdom in a world of death and decay.

            We also too easily lose the ability to speak a word of blessing, comfort, or hope in times of pain and loss. There seem to be perfectly good reasons in life to be fearful and worried and to think that that’s just the way things are.  So we build walls between ourselves and others and trust in nations or politicians or medication or own resourcefulness to help us make it through.  The problem is that moving around the deck furniture on the Titanic has never worked.   We need more than a better means of coping with the night.  We need our eyes opened to the light that is never overtaken by night, to the light of Christ, which shines even from an empty tomb.

            Now let’s be clear:  Our Savior did not try to hide the dark and painful dimensions of life in the world as we know it.  He died on a cross and told His disciples that they could expect the same.  He came not to bring peace, but a sword that would cut through our ties to the false gods of this world that we have come to love and serve.  Our calling as Christians is not to pretend that all is well, but instead to open the eyes of our souls to the brilliant light that Christ has brought to a world of crucifixions and wars and terrorist attacks and mass murders.  We won’t pretend that there is a secret explanation or answer as to why innocent people suffer.  But we know that in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, God has entered into our world of pain and death.  Our Savior suffered with us that we might rise with Him and share in the life of an eternal day that knows no night, no darkness at all. 

            Mary Magdalene did not behold the Risen Christ because she denied that He had died.  She went to the tomb to anoint a dead body; yes, she accepted the reality of the situation.  Despite her grief, fear, and bitter disappointment, she went to offer the one last act of love that she could to her Savior by preparing His body for a proper burial.  And that’s when, like those blind men, her eyes were opened to His glorious resurrection.  That’s when, like the mute man, her mouth was opened to proclaim the news that He is risen.  Christ delivered those men from their infirmities and he did the same for Mary Magdalene.  She was with Him in the misery of the crucifixion and He made her a participant in the joy of the Kingdom.

            Joy in this sense is not having all our problems go away, getting what we want, or going around like we are on some kind of spiritual painkiller.  Instead, it’s a foretaste of heavenly peace, a confident hope that God’s purposes will be fulfilled for us, that we will become more truly ourselves as we grow in the divine likeness.  We can’t stop tragic world events or even our own personal crises; there’s no telling what life in our fallen world will send our way.  But like Mary Magdalene, we may respond to those challenges in ways that bring us more fully into the peace that passes understanding, into the blessings of a Kingdom not of this world.  It’s not about denying harsh realities, but about how we react to them.

            Keep in mind here St. Paul’s advice to the Romans:  Bear with the weak and don’t please yourself.  Let each of us please his neighbor for his good.  Be likeminded toward one another according to Jesus Christ.  Receive one another just as Christ also received us to the glory of God.  In other words, treat others as the Lord has treated you.  Become a living icon of His mercy, comfort, and patience in a world that falls so easily into hatred, despair, and fear.  That’s what the myrrh-bearer Mary Magdalene did when she went to anoint the body of the Lord.  And it’s what we must do in a world of scared, sick, lonely, and needy people.  Instead of wallowing in our own problems and being paralyzed by own fears, we can all follow her example of extending the love of Christ to someone else.  A visit, a phone call, a card,  help with a practical project, a simple expression of friendship—whatever it might be—can become an icon that God has not abandoned them and that there is at least a spark of light in the darkness.

            We know that darkness all too well and we can’t click our heels and make it go away.  But by God’s grace, we may open our lives to the One who transformed the blackest night into the glorious light of the Kingdom.  He went to the cross for us.  He understands our pain and fear. So following the example of Mary Magdalene and all the saints, let us commend ourselves and one another and all our life unto Christ our God.  At the end of the day, that’s how we respond as Christians to even the worst that our corrupt world has to offer.  We proclaim the good news of His resurrection and show His love to others.      

              

                    

                   

Eastern Orthodoxy and Environmental Stewardship

Many Orthodox Christians would  be surprised to learn that their faith calls them to be good stewards of the environment.   We are used to worrying about dishonesty, anger, and adultery, but when we think about the life in Christ, we rarely think of conserving energy, recycling, and composting–or of viewing the world as an icon.   Perhaps that is because we imagine that worship is only about what we do in the church temple.  Or maybe we assume that faithfulness to the Lord is a purely spiritual matter that aims toward escape from the world, not taking care of it.  And if the truth be told, many dismiss any sort of environmental concern out of fear that it would lead them  to question a comfortable, materialistic American lifestyle.  That last one hits a bit too close to home for most of us.

            I am on solid ground, however, in writing that stewardship of God’s creation is a fundamental dimension of the Orthodox faith.  One way of showing that is a brief glance at Psalm 104 (103 LXX), which is read at the beginning of every Vespers service.  It describes the glory and goodness of God’s creation, for the Lord has “set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be shaken.” He has established seas, mountains, and valleys, and provides water and shelter for wild beasts.  The food of the cattle, and our wine and oil, come from the hand of the Creator, Whose bounty extends to mountain goats, badgers, and lions.  “O Lord, how manifold are Thy works.  In wisdom hast Thou made them all.”  These works include even Leviathan, the sea-monster created for the sport of it, merely to play in the oceans.  All these creatures look to God, find life in Him, and die when He removes their breath.  After describing the creation so poignantly, the Psalmist exclaims, “May the glory of the Lord endure forever, may the Lord rejoice in His works...”   

            Psalm 148 is similar in its call for all the creatures to praise God:

Praise the Lord, all creatures on earth.  Praise Him all creatures from the ocean depths.  Let fire, hail, snow, ice, strong winds obey His word.  The mountains and all the hills, fruitful trees and all cedars, the beasts and all the cattle, creeping things and winged birds, kings of the earth and all people, princes and all the judges of the earth, young men and women, old people and children–all praise the Name of the Lord together, for He alone is worthy of praise, above all other names.

            We must remember the place of God’s creation in our salvation.   It is within the world created by God–for there is no other world–that our whole life occurs.  The Son of God entered this world for our salvation, and our life in Christ will be lived in this creation.  We are, of course, part of it.  As Genesis 1 teaches, human beings are the crowning work of creation, and have been assigned from the beginning the role of stewards over the  rest of God’s world.  It should not be surprising, then, that Noah is commanded to preserve from the flood the lives of animals together with those of his family.  The ark is a foreshadowing of our salvation, and harmony with the animals is part of this picture of God’s blessing and protection.

            There are many other biblical images of salvation that include animals and the land.  For example, the prophet Isaiah described the Messianic Kingdom as a time when

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.  The cow and the bear shall graze; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.  The nursing child shall play by the cobra’s hole, and the weaned child shall put his hand in to the viper’s den.  They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. (Isa. 11: 6-9)

            The prophet Amos envisioned God’s Reign as a time when vineyards, gardens, fruit, and wine would be bountiful. (Amos 9:13-14)  The creation itself has borne the consequences of the sin of Adam and Eve.  No longer a peaceful realm for vegetarians, the big critters eat the little critters, and we often like our steak rare. Death, disease, famine, hurricane, earthquake, and other catastrophes threaten us all.  Such pestilence and strife were not God’s original plan for His world.  In His blessed Kingdom, peace and harmony will extend to all God’s creation.  So it is not surprising that the lives of many saints, such as St. Seraphim of Sarov, show “an unusual sympathy and compassion for animals, plants and in general every creature.”¹         

            These Old Testament themes find their fulfillment in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.  The incarnation of the Lord–as fully God and fully human–grounds Orthodoxy’s distinctive view both of the place of human beings in the world and of the world itself.  On the basis of the incarnation, everyone is called to become a priest and an iconographer of creation, offering the world to God so that it may become an epiphany or manifestation of the Kingdom of Heaven. This relationship to the natural world is essential for human beings to fulfill their vocation as those created in the image and according to the likeness of God, and for the world to fulfill its destiny in the working out of salvation.

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¹Anestis G. Keselopoulos, Man and the Environment: A Study of St. Symeon the New Theologian (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), 136.

*This post is an excerpt from Fr. Philip LeMasters, The Goodness of God's Creation (Regina Orthodox Press, 2008), 1-3.

"You Are the Light of the World" : A Homily for the Holy Fathers of Chalcedon in the Orthodox Church

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost and the Sunday of the Holy Fathers of the 4th Ecumenical Council

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

            We do a lot with lights in our church.  There are candles on the altar and in front of icons.  We turn up the lights at the beginning of the Divine Liturgy, and “Come Receive the Light” is the high point of the Pascha service when the light of our Lord’s resurrection shines in the darkness and spreads from the priest’s candle to everyone in the church. 
            So we shouldn’t be surprised that Christ told His followers that they were to be the light of the world, a city on a hill that cannot be hidden.  Imagine driving in the countryside at night, you will see the lights of even a small town from quite a distance; when light shines in the darkness, it is very hard to hide.  And we never turn on light in order to hide something; instead, we want to illumine it so that we can see it clearly. 

            The good news of our faith is that Christ has brought the light of heaven to our darkened world.  Indeed, He is the Light, the eternal Son of God who becomes fully human while remaining fully divine.  That’s how He brings us into His light, how he makes it possible for us to shine with His holy glory even as we live and breathe upon the earth.   He fulfills all the foreshadowing and preparation of the Law and the Prophets, for God was never primarily concerned with Old Testament rules about outward behavior or the sacrifice of animals.  Instead, those rules pointed the way to the true Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, to the One who triumphs over sin and death themselves.  And now He makes it possible for us all to share in His glorious, brilliant light, to become partakers of His divinity by grace. 
            Today we remember the 630 holy and God-bearing fathers of the Fourth Ecumenical Council in Chalcedon in the year 451.  They made clear this very point:  that Christ is fully God and fully human:  one Person with two nature, for if He were not, how could He save us who are fully human?  They rejected the views of the Monophysites who claimed the Lord has only one nature, a divine one.  If that were the case, we could not participate in His divine life—for we are simply humans--and it would be hard to see how Christ’s death and resurrection had much to do with us.  So today’s commemoration is not simply a reminder about ancient history; it is a proclamation of the Gospel, for Jesus Christ must be both God and man in order to be our Savior. 

            Yes, the good news is that we are called to become radiant and illuminated by the light of Christ such that we become the light of the world, shining so brightly with good works that all will give glory to God.   The point is not to relax the laws of the Old Testament, but to bring their purpose to completion.  In other words, it’s not enough to refrain from murder; we are to overcome the passion of anger, which is at the root of murder.   It’s not sufficient to avoid the physical act of adultery; we are instead to be free from bondage to lust in all its forms.  Instead of getting back at our enemies in accordance with “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” we are to turn the other cheek, blessing them with the same love that we have received from the Lord.  The ultimate goal of these commandments is our perfection, “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.”  If we ourselves lived that way, imagine what a blessing we would be to the world, for we would be living proof that human beings may become partakers of the divine nature in Him.    
           Well, most of us aren’t there yet, but the fundamental good news of the gospel remains:  The God-Man Jesus Christ is our perfection, our salvation, our theosis.   He has already worked the unfathomable miracle of joining humanity to divinity, of conquering sin and death, of making us participants in His life. Our on-going task is to cooperate with Him, to open the dark corners of our lives to His light, to stop corrupting and diminishing ourselves and instead to start living as the icons of divine glory that we were created to be. 
            And in order to make progress in the Christian life, we need our Church, which speaks the truth about how we participate in this great salvation—not as an emotional experience, a one-time event, or a reward for good behavior--but as members of a living Body in which our passions are healed, our hearts are purified, and our souls are illumined as we grow in union with Christ and one another.   Any relationship is a process, a journey, and a relationship of communion with the Holy Trinity is no exception.  By God’s grace, we hope to grow in holiness throughout eternity.  We may put no limits on what it means for us as creatures to share in the life of the Creator. 
            And perhaps that’s why the Lord sets the standard so high.  Those who are great in the Kingdom of Heaven are not the ones who break God’s laws and teach others to follow their bad example, those who teach and live out a low standard.  They are not those who bring confusion and division into the Church.  No, they are those who keep God’s commands and teach others to do so as they shine every more brightly with light.    
            You know, it’s unfortunately always been easy to find religious groups that don’t shine with light all, who sound just like the one St. Paul addressed in his letter to St. Titus.  Apparently, some people preferred to spend their time in foolish, unprofitable, and useless arguments which led to nothing but division in the church.  St. Paul teaches that it is much better to use such wasted time and energy in actually doing good works, meeting the urgent needs of people, and bearing fruit for the Kingdom.  In other words, it is better to focus on living the basic Christian life than it is to distract ourselves with nonsense. 
            If Jesus Christ had been just another rabbi, then it wouldn’t have mattered if people argued on and on about His teachings and lived as they pleased.  But that is not our faith.  Jesus Christ is truly God and truly human, the Risen Lord in whom we share in the life eternal of heaven.  He is the true Light “never overtaken by night” who calls us to become the light of the world, to manifest the glory of His salvation in even the small details of our lives.  There are no secret mysteries or hidden teachings that require endless debate, for Christ did not come to save a few select philosophers.  There is no code for figuring out when He will return or for identifying people we don’t like as the Antichrist and other such craziness.  And there is no reason for each succeeding generation to attempt to redefine basic Christian teaching about theology and morality in light of what’s popular or easy in their particular time and place.
            Christ has brought light and life to all, to the entire world, and in His Body, the Church, we all learn how to grow in relationship with Him.  Basically, if we actually do what we know we should be doing, we will grow in holiness.  That means simple steps, such as:  coming to church; receiving the Holy Mysteries with proper preparation; praying, fasting, and taking confession on a regular basis; repenting of any wrong that we do; giving to the needy and for the support of the church; forgiving those who have wronged us and asking forgiveness of those we have wronged; fighting our passions; being mindful, which means to watch our thoughts, your mouth, and whatever else we have trouble controlling.  Like St. Paul said, we should focus our energy on living the basic Christian life and we will find that we have much less time for pointless disputes and other spiritually unhealthy endeavors.  Do all of this with sincere faith, hope, and love, and you will grow in Christ and be a light and blessing to the world. 
           But don’t be surprised if you still don’t glow in the dark, at least not in your own eyes.    Truly holy people don’t think that they are holy at all.  In contrast with the brilliant light of the Lord, they see their own dark spots with greater clarity than the rest of us see ours.   The closer we are to the Lord, the more aware we will be of how far we have to go to be perfect as He is perfect. 
           So if you are aware of more darkness than light in you at the moment, don’t be surprised and don’t despair. Do what you can to welcome the light that is in you, no matter how dim it appears; focus on it, fuel it, do everything within your power to help it grow and overtake the night. Our Lord has conquered the darkness of death, the tomb, and hades; and He wants to do the same in our lives—and He will, if we will continue the process of growing in union with Him; and as we do our good works and our personal transformation will bring at least a glimpse of the glory of heaven to earth.  And that’s a good thing because it is our calling:  to be the light of the world so that others will glorify God and be drawn to the new life of our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ.  For He is truly the light that shines in the darkness, illuminating even people like you and me.