"Go and Do Likewise" as Our Response to Evil: Homily for the 8th Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

2 Corinthians 9:6-11; Luke 10:25-37

            In a world of mass shootings, terrorism, and constant strife between nations and competing groups of all kinds, it is tempting to narrow down the list of people we care about.  By limiting our concern only to those we think deserve it, we try to protect ourselves from going beyond the easy habit of loving only those who are like us and love us in return.  The problem, however, is that shortening our list of neighbors in this way is a complete rejection of the good news of our salvation.

            When a lawyer tried to find a loophole to limit the requirement to love his neighbor as himself, Jesus Christ told the parable of the good Samaritan in response.  After having been attacked by robbers and left half dead by the side of the road, a Jewish man was ignored by religious leaders of his own people.  But a Samaritan, whom the Jews certainly did not view as a neighbor, stopped to help him, bound up his wounds, took him to an inn, and paid for his lodging, even promising to return in order to pay for any additional costs as the man recovered.  In response to the Lord’s question concerning who was a neighbor to this fellow, the lawyer answered rightly: “The one who showed mercy on him.”

In other words, the true neighbor was the hated Samaritan.  Christ concluded the parable by saying “Go and do likewise,” which meant to become like that Samaritan.  In other words, He told the lawyer to love as himself even those who hated and rejected him, even members of ethnic and religious groups he had learned to view as his enemies.  Not only did the lawyer fail to find a loophole in the requirement of love for all his neighbors, he found himself facing a much more demanding standard than he had ever considered. For the Lord responded to his question in a way that made clear his obligation to treat as a neighbor even those usually thought of as despised strangers and enemies.

The Savior used this parable to call us to participate personally in His merciful love for all corrupt humanity, for the Samaritan is surely an image of our Lord coming to heal us from the deadly ravages of sin.  Stripped of the divine glory like Adam and Eve cast out of paradise and bearing the wounds of our own transgressions, we have become slaves to death, the wages of sin.  Religious rituals and laws were powerless to restore the spiritual health of those who bear the image and likeness of God.  So the One Who was rejected as a blasphemer and even accused of being a Samaritan (John. 8:48) became one of us in order to conquer death and make us participants by grace in His eternal life.  The oil and wine of the parable represent the Holy Mysteries through which Christ nourishes and heals us.  His Body, the Church, is the inn where we regain our strength to grow in holiness. He will return in glory to raise the dead and fulfill His Kingdom.

“Go and do likewise” is not an abstract legal or moral command, but a truthful statement that those who are in Christ will manifest His mercy in their own lives.  Those who participate already in His eternal life will become living icons of His love even to those who hate and reject them.  The point is not to reduce our relationship with God to being nice to others, which usually means little more than helping our friends and trying to have warm feels about humanity in general.  It is, instead, that those who are being healed by the ravages of sin through the mercy of Christ will no longer be blinded by the passions and fears that make it so appealing to limit our list of neighbors to those who measure up to our standards.  Christ died and rose again for the salvation of all people, including those who called for His crucifixion and literally nailed Him to the Cross.  He enables those who are truly in personal union with Him to become radiant with the divine glory in a way that overcomes the darkness that so easily separates people, and groups of people, from one another.

That is why St. Paul reminded the Corinthians that “God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that you may always have enough of everything and may provide in abundance for every good work.”  There are no limits to the merciful love of our Savior.  We must relate to our neighbors not on the basis of how we happen to feel about them or how much moral virtue we can muster, but instead on the basis of the boundless grace we have received.  The Apostle knew that “he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.”  The more fully we open our lives to the healing mercy of His grace, the more He will work through us to bless the world.  So instead of limiting our list of concerns out of fear that we will run out of steam, we must unite ourselves so fully with the Savior that His merciful holiness becomes characteristic of our lives.  Then we will say with St. Paul “It is no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me.”

Some people today find it hard to believe in God in light of all the problems of the world, the divisions between people, and especially horrible acts of wickedness like mass murder in churches and other public places.  It is understandable why, in the face of such suffering, some will ask “Where is God?”  Here we must remember that Jesus Christ came to a world of sin and death to heal our wounds and grant us the spiritual strength to manifest His love to all who suffer.  He did not rain down wrath upon evildoers, but as the God-Man entered into our brokenness and pain to the point of death, burial, and Hades, over which He triumphed gloriously in His resurrection.  The same hateful wickedness that led people to crucify Him wounds human beings to this day, and none of us is yet fully healed from its malign effects.  Surely, every form of human depravity imaginable will remain in this world of corruption until He returns and fulfills His Kingdom.  But until then, He works through His Body, the Church, to bind up the wounds of those He died and rose again to save.   

Our response to horrific acts of evil is to obey Christ’s command “Go and do likewise.”  His Kingdom comes not through the coercive powerbrokers of the world as we know it, but through the healing of human souls and communities in which broken, imperfect people extend to others the same mercy we ask for ourselves.  His divine mercy is not limited to people we like or admire or to any nation, race, or group.  Even as the Lord offered Himself on the Cross for the salvation of the entire world, we must refuse to live as though anyone in His image and likeness is not a neighbor whom He calls us to love and serve, even as He has loved and served us. 

At the end of the day, our answer to those who doubt God’s presence in the world is primarily practical, not abstract or theoretical.  It is to love our neighbors as ourselves in a way that foreshadows the blessedness of a Kingdom in which there are no hated foreigners.  It is for our common life to become a sign of our Lord’s merciful love for everyone He came to save.  It is to become living icons of the indiscriminate love of our Savior, for He came to bless us all who like the man in the parable have been beaten, stripped, and left for dead by the side of the road.

For that to happen, we must invest ourselves in the abundant grace of our Lord such that His life becomes present in ours.  When that happens, our lives will be living proof that He is still at work binding up the wounds of suffering humanity.  By treating everyone as a beloved neighbor, we will provide the world a much needed sign of hope for an alternative to the pointless strife and divisions that so easily blind us to the humanity of our enemies. Yes, God is with us in Jesus Christ as the Samaritan was with the man who was victimized in the parable.  The only question is whether we will be with Him in refusing to narrow down the list of neighbors whom we are to love as ourselves.

Showing Others the Mercy We Have Received: Homily for the 22nd Sunday After Pentecost and the 5th Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

Galatians 6:11-18; Luke 16:19-31

          In Paris in the 1930s and early 40s, there was an unusual Orthodox nun whose ministry was focused on showing the love of Christ to destitute and broken people who lived on the streets in misery.  During the Nazis occupation of Paris, she and her companions risked their lives to save Jews from the Holocaust.  Eventually, they were arrested and sent to concentration campus.  That is where Mother Maria Skobtsova, now known as St. Maria of Paris, died for the Savior Whom she served in her neighbors on Holy Saturday in 1945 only a few weeks before the liberation of the camp, by some accounts taking the place of another prisoner in the gas chamber that day.

St. Maria of Paris comes to mind as the complete opposite of the rich man in today’s gospel lesson.  That man was such a slave to self-centeredness that he spent his time and resources buying the finest clothing and funding great banquets for himself every day.  His needy neighbor Lazarus was at most a nuisance to him, a diseased beggar in front of his home whose only comfort was when the dogs licked his open sores.  The rich man, however, ignored Lazarus, and at most stepped over or around him whenever he went into his house.  His heart was hardened and he had no compassion even on a fellow Jew living in such squalor.  He must have denied him even the crumbs from the table on which he enjoyed his fine meals.

By disregarding his poor neighbor, the rich man showed that he worshiped only himself, not the God of Israel.  The Old Testament makes quite clear the obligation of the Hebrews to care for their needy neighbors, but this man lived as though he were his own god.  So after he died, he experienced the brilliant glory of God as a burning flame, which reflected how he had been overcome by darkness to the point of becoming totally blind to the dignity of Lazarus as one who bore the image and likeness of God.  It is no small thing to live that way, for those who treat the living icons of the Lord as worthless creatures also reject Him and bring condemnation upon themselves.

That is why Father Abraham said in this parable about the brothers of the rich man that “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.”  In other words, those who have ignored what has already been clearly revealed have made themselves so blind that they will be unable to recognize even the greatest miracle of all, the resurrection of One who rises from the dead.

This parable points, of course, to the spiritual blindness of those who rejected Jesus as the Messiah of Israel.  Those who had disregarded the clear teachings of the Law and the Prophets to the point that they had ignored meeting the most basic needs of their neighbors lacked the spiritual clarity to see much at all of God’s truth, including the profundity of the Savior conquering death through His glorious resurrection on the third day.   Those so wedded to the idolatry of serving only themselves and ignoring the needs of others were in no position to recognize and receive their own Messiah.

That recognition is a reminder of why St. Paul was so critical of the Judaizers who would have required Gentile converts to Christianity to be circumcised in obedience to the Old Testament law.  As he put it, “For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.”  Something as minuscule as the requirement to obey a particular command for a surgical procedure pales before the need of humanity for healing, transformation, and fulfillment in God.  Other rules involving diet or the kind of activities done on a certain day cannot conquer death, the wages of sin.  They cannot turn corrupt human beings into living icons of holiness.  As St. Paul knew as a former Pharisee, their scrupulous observance easily leads to a prideful self-reliance in which people believe that they are made right with God simply by doing this or that by their own power.   Such an attitude is nothing but glorying in oneself, in rejoicing at how holy we think we have become simply by following the rules.

How completely different, however, is the attitude of those who look not to themselves for justification, but to the Cross.  “But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.”  By recognizing that the ultimate healing of our humanity comes through the Self-offering of the God-Man on the Cross, St. Paul destroys the rationale for thinking that Gentile converts must first obey the Jewish law before becoming Christians.  Instead of self-justification, the basis of our relationship with Christ is His gracious mercy available to all who respond to Him with humble faith and repentance.  The focus here is not on ourselves or what we can accomplish in any way, but on His holy love that stops at nothing, not even the Cross, to bring us into right relationship with Him through grace.

As Orthodox Christians who confess that we have received the fullness of the faith through His Body, the Church, how should we live in relation to the Lazaruses of our world and lives?  If the Hebrews of old had an obligation to bless their needy neighbors, how much more do we as the new creation in Christ Jesus have an obligation to become living icons of His love and care for every human being we encounter?   We must not do so with a self-centered spirituality that would view helping others as a way for us simply to fulfill a religious obligation or build up credit with God.  No, we must do so as a new creation, as simply a natural outgrowth of being those who take “glory…in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  He offered Himself on the Cross for the salvation of the entire world.  If we are truly in communion with Him, then Christ’s outrageous love for fallen, broken, corrupt people like us must come characteristic of our lives.  We who have received His mercy must show His mercy to others.

If we do not, then we are more spiritually blind than the rich man in today’s parable.  He was held accountable to the Old Testament Law and Prophets, but we have received the fullness of the promise in the God-Man Who rose from the dead on the third day for our salvation.  He offered Himself “on behalf of all and for all,” and if we are in communion with Him, then we must also be in communion with our needy, annoying, and frustrating neighbors, and ultimately all those to whom we may become a sign of His salvation in any way.  The point is not to view other people as an opportunity for us to perform our spiritual duties, but to offer ourselves to them in sacrificial love.  Like St. Paul, we should take glory only in the Cross of our Lord, which we do by joining ourselves to His great Self-offering on behalf of all who bear His image and likeness.

The One Who has risen from dead invites us to participate in His way of living in the world for its salvation, its fulfillment, and its ultimate good.  Those who answer that invitation will look something like St. Maria of Paris as they give themselves away for the sake of others.  They will not disregard the Lazaruses of this world out of selfishness, but will instead learn to love and serve them as Christ has loved and served us.  If we are truly a “a new creation” in Him, how could our lives be otherwise?  If we claim to have received the Lord’s gracious mercy, how can we not show that same blessing to others?   So let us offer ourselves to our neighbors even as He has offered Himself for us.

Finding Healing Through the Humble Faith that Overcomes Shame: Homily for the 21st Sunday After Pentecost and the 7th Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

Galatians 2:16-20; Luke 8:41-56

The lives of many people are shattered by the burdens that they carry due to their own sufferings and those of their loved ones.  When those closest to us are troubled, we are troubled also.  When our lives come to revolve around persistent problems that strike at our hearts, it is easy to lose our hope and trust in God.

            The woman who had been bleeding for twelve years had spent all her money on physicians who could not heal her.  Because of her condition, she was considered unclean, which meant that she could not enter the Temple or have a normal social life.  Anyone who touched her would also become unclean.  She was chronically ill, impoverished, and isolated.  After twelve years of such problems, it would not have been surprising for her to have lost all hope for the healing of her body and her relationship with others, as well as with God.

            Somehow, however, she had both the courage and the faith to reach out and touch the hem of Christ’s garment as He passed through a crowd of people.  She was understandably too embarrassed to walk straight up to the Lord, explain her condition, and ask for His healing.  So she did what she had the strength to do, hoping she could secretly be relieved of her affliction.  When she did that, her bleeding stopped immediately, so she got what she wanted.  But because Jesus Christ is not merely a human being with healing powers but the Son of God, He knew what had happened.  By saying “Who touched me?,” He challenged her to grow in faith by recognizing that the point of this miracle was not simply to get what she wanted.

Instead, He gave her the opportunity to fall down before Him, confess in the hearing of a large crowd what her malady had been, and how she had been healed.  Of course, being put on the spot like that terrified the woman and she trembled with fear.  But through this difficult experience, she was transformed.  Not only her body, but also her soul, were healed.  She died to the damage that came from focusing only on her own problems and the need to protect herself from the rejection and ridicule of others. She was delivered from her shame at not having the life that she understandably wanted.  Shame is a form of pride that holds us captive to the illusion that everything is up to us.  When we cannot accept in humility that there are matters beyond our control and that we cannot solve our own problems, we easily become obsessed with doing all that we can to hide these truths from others and even from ourselves.

This blessed woman was not, however, totally paralyzed by shame, because she had the humility and faith to identify herself publically once she knew that the Lord was aware what had happened.  He did not directly command her to do that, but she knew that was the proper response to His question when “she saw that she was not hidden.”  Her secret was out, at least to the Lord.  The isolating power of embarrassment died in that moment, and she gained the strength and freedom of a truly humble person by telling the whole story in public.  That is when the Savior said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.” 

With these words, the Lord confirmed that she was no longer defined by her illness or her inability to heal herself.  She had died to her old life as an anonymous outcast suffering from a condition that cut her off from personal relationships with other people and from God.  Through humble faith, she embraced her true identity as a beloved daughter of the Lord who was dependent upon His mercy.  In order to do that, she surely had to muster every ounce of courage in overcoming her fear.  That is how she gained the spiritual clarity to see who she really was before God:  not simply a bundle of medical symptoms or an example of social isolation, but His beloved child and the recipient of His grace.

St. Paul refers in today’s epistle reading to a similar kind of death, for he writes that he “died to the Law, that I might live to God.”  Earlier in his life, Paul had thought that meticulous obedience to the Old Testament law, as interpreted by his fellow Pharisees, put observant Jews in right relationship with God.  But after the Risen Lord appeared to Him on the road to Damascus, Paul became a Christian and ultimately a great champion of God’s mercy extending to all who have humble faith in Jesus Christ.  St. Paul had to die to relying upon whatever righteousness he could earn for himself by legal observance, for that approach could never overcome the power of sin.  He had to die with Christ in baptism to his illusions of earning his own righteousness in order to rise up with the Lord into eternal life.  That is why he says “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ Who lives in me.”

If we think that we stand before God based on whether we perfectly obey a law simply by our own ability, we may easily become slaves to shame and guilt because we will never be at peace with how we never measure up to what we think God requires.  We will likely view Him as a harsh, impersonal judge who is eager to condemn and reject us.  We will likely become obsessed with how unclean we are before Him, and perhaps do all that we can to hide the truth of our corruption from others and even from ourselves.  We may become as miserable and isolated as the woman with the flow of blood.  Recognizing that some things are simply beyond our control can be quite scary.

The good news is that Jesus Christ taught us to view God as “Our Father.”  Through Him, we are not anonymous defendants before a court of law or individuals simply on our own, but beloved sons and daughters.  As much as I hope that we all love our own parents, they are not the models for our understanding of the Heavenly Father.  It is the other way round, for Christ has shown us the Father.  Recall the parable of the prodigal son, in which the father eagerly awaits the return of his wretched son and restores him fully to the household with great joy.  How sad it would have been if the self-absorbed shame of that young man had kept him from returning home to a right relationship with his father.  He was blessed by his father’s mercy well beyond anything that he deserved or could have achieved.

In Christ, we are all sons and daughters of such an outrageously merciful Father in heaven.  It will be tragic if any of us allows our problems, or those of our loved ones, to keep us from responding to His mercy with humble faith.   Shame or embarrassment that keeps us from doing so reflects the pride of not accepting the truth about who are in relation to Him.  It is impossible to earn the status of son or daughter, for that is a gift based on a relationship initiated by parents.  Christ calls us not to either measure up or run away in shame, but humbly to open even our deepest and most painful wounds to Him for healing with the recognition that we are not our own saviors.

That will not mean that every sickness will be cured, all broken relationships will be restored, or that we will simply get what we want.  It will mean, however, that our weaknesses will become opportunities to die to the misery that comes from the self-centered perspective that we relate to God and other people only in terms of what we achieve, earn, or deserve.  It will mean that, if we have only the faith to touch the hem of His garment, Christ will enable us to grow in the humble trust of sons and daughters for their Heavenly Father.  It will mean that He will grant us the strength to see that literally nothing other than our own refusal can keep us from knowing the holy joy of His beloved children.  As the woman healed from the flow of blood demonstrates, His healing mercy calls us to die to our pride, shame, and self-reliance. That is how we too will find healing for the deepest pains of our lives.