The Thoughtful Orthodox Blog

Physically Significant - Sermon for the Afterfeast of Dormition

2010-08-23T21:32:00.001-04:00

In the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

I’m going to begin this sermon with a statement that will probably surprise most of you, because it is a statement that appears to be true, yet it is not. And that statement is this: We celebrated the Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos last Sunday.

Why is this an untrue statement? Because it is put in the past tense, as something that is over and done with. The majority of the Great Feasts of the Orthodox Church, however, are not events that are commemorated and celebrated on one single day, then put on the shelf again until the following year. Rather, they are followed by a period - of varying length, depending on which Feast it is - called the Afterfeast, culminating on the day known as the Leavetaking (Apodosis) of the Feast. During the period of the Afterfeast, hymns for the Feast continue to be sung at the services: Vespers, Matins, and Liturgy. On the Apodosis, pretty much all of the hymns which were sung on the day of the Feast itself - with a few exceptions - are repeated, causing the commemoration of the saint who is set in the calendar for that day to be bumped to another.

The Feast of the Dormition has a particularly long period of Afterfeast... not counting the day of the Feast itself, it is a period of eight days, so that the Church will be celebrating the Leavetaking tomorrow. In a very real sense, then, we are still celebrating the Dormition of the Theotokos even now.

This is an especially long period of Afterfeast, over a week, and particularly so when it is measured against the preparatory period which preceded it. There must be meaning in this, something especially significant about this Feast which has much importance for us.

There are several significant points that can be discerned from this, but one of the most significant lies in what was found, or rather not found, in the grave of the Mother of God. At the time of her death, all the apostles were gathered on clouds from all the ends of the earth where they were preaching the gospel and evangelizing the nations. All, that is, save Thomas. He arrived a week late and, sorrowful at having missed her funeral, asked to see the body. When they opened the tomb, however, there was no body. It was gone, taken up from the earth into heaven. That this is an extremely significant point is made by the fact that the following hymn is repeated on three separate occasions during the Afterfeast: In the aposticha for Vespers on August 17th and August 21st, and in the aposticha for Matins for August 22, that is, today. And this hymn goes: “Your body was not touched by the dust of the tomb; although it was buried in keeping with nature and its laws, nevertheless it remains incorruptible.”

When we all recite the Creed we confess that we believe “in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the age to come.” That her body was taken up from the grave is an assurance of this. It shows that she partakes of the first-fruits of theosis, of deification which encompasses the whole human person, both soul and body. In the Feast of the Transfiguration we are shown the reality of the hypostatic – that is, personal - union of the divine nature and the human nature in the one Christ which makes this possible, the glorification of our human nature and bodies through intimate communion with the divine. The post-Resurrection appearances of our Savior Christ recounted in the Matins gospels show us what our glorified bodies will be like, that is, truly physical... He could eat fish, could be touched... “A spirit has not flesh and bones, as you see I have.” He said.

The absence of her physical body from the tomb, then, is a great sign to us, the promise to us that this selfsame physical flesh and bone and body which we have now will not remain dead; we too will have such glorified physical bodies, in the transfigured New Creation after the final judgment, that we may live the life humanity was intended to live in Eden, ever growing into the likeness of God as human persons, soul-body unities. Amen.

Understanding the Miracle of Euphemia and the Fourth Oecumenical Synod

2010-07-18T17:15:00.002-04:00

In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

“On the eleventh of this month we commemorate the holy Great Martyr, the all-famed Euphemia, who through a supernatural wonder upheld the Orthodox Tome of faith at the Holy Fourth Oecumenical Council..”

As the Wikipedia article for the holy one relates, “Eupehemia lived in the 3rd century and was the daughter of a senator named Philophronos and his wife Theodosia who lived in Chalcedon. From her youth she was consecrated to virginity. The governor of Chakcedon, Priscus, had made a decree that all of the inhabitants of the city take part in sacrifices to the pagan deity Ares. Euphemia was discovered with other Christians who were hiding in a house and worshipping the Christian God, in defiance of the governor’s orders. Because of their refusal to sacrifice, they were tortured for a number of days, and then handed over to the Emperor for further torture. Euphemia, the youngest among them, was separated from her companions and subjected to particularly harsh torments, including the wheel, in hopes of breaking her spirit. It is believed that she died of wounds from a wild bear in the arena under Emperor Diocletian, between 304 and 307. Eventually a cathedral was built over her grave.”

The Fourth Oecumenical Council of the Eastern Orthodox Church took place in that city in the year 451, and met in the cathedral dedicated to her. It was called to combat the Eutychian doctrine of monophysitism, which said the Christ’s humanity was swallowed up by His divinity. The council repudiated that, and set forth the Chalcedonian Decree (in Greek, Oros), which affirms “...one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body, of one substance (homoousios) with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood, ... recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation, the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person...”

The council’s sessions were very contentious, and it was hard to reach a consensus… so it was decided to appeal to God through the saint. One of the stichera sung at the service of Vespers for this day succinctly describes the “supernatural wonder”: “O wondrous Euphemia, the assembly of the holy fathers placed at the head of your coffin the Symbol of the Faith; you took the document into your hand, having faultlessly kept the faith, thus overthrowing all false doctrine and confounding the defenders of heresy. Thus, we glorify you and call you blessed.” According to the story, the members of the council put the stated beliefs of both parties into the coffin with the saint’s relics, and three days later the Chalcedonian Definition was found in her right hand while that of monophysitism was found under her feet.

The hymnography paints a rosy picture… heresy defeated and the truth wins out. But the reality was a whole lot messier. Metropolitan Kallistos Ware of Dioklea in his book *The Orthodox Church* remarks that the Council was “a rock of offence.” Sizable portions of the ancient Christian world – honest, devout Christians – refused to accept the decision of Chalcedon, nor recognize it as ecumenical. These are the Churches known today as the Non-Chalcedonians or the Oriental Orthodox, including the Coptic, Armenian, and Syrian Churches. The situation, however, has changed for the better, owing to – as Fr. John Erickson, retired professor and dean of St. Vladimir’s Seminary notes in his article “Beyond Dialogue: The Quest for Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Unity Today”, which is well worth reading and available on the St. Vladimir's website – the modern ecumenical movement and modern historical scholarship. Unofficial consultations between the two church families were held in Aarhus (Denmark) in 1964 and in Bristol (England) in 1967, attended by leading theologians from the two sides; there were further meetings in Geneva (1970) and Addis Abbaba (1971). The results were unexpectedly positive. It became clear that on the basic question which had led historically to the division—the doctrine of the person of Christ—there is in fact no real disagreement. The divergence, it was stated in Aarhus, lies only on the level of phraseology. The delegates concluded, “We recognize in each other the one Orthodox faith of the Church... On the essence of the Christological dogma we found ourselves in full agreement.' In the words of the Bristol consultation, 'Some of us affirm two natures, wills and energies hypostatically united in the one Lord Jesus Christ. Some of us affirm one united divine-human nature, will and energy in the same Christ. But both sides speak of a union without confusion, without change, without divisions, without separation.' The four adverbs belong to our common tradition. Both affirm the dynamic permanence of the Godhead and the Manhood, with all their natural properties and faculties, in the one Christ.” In other words, what was held to be a refusal to accept the Orthodox Faith actually was not… rather, both sides failed to hear that the same Faith was being expressed in different ways.

The two church families are not yet in communion; there remain practical considerations which must be addressed. We heard some of these in the stichera for Orthros this morning, when Dioscoros and Severus – considered by the Oriental Orthodox to be saints – are condemned and anathematized by Chalcedonians. Another can very well be the event we commemorate today, an event strategically placed in the church calendar since next Sunday we celebrate the Fathers of the first six Oecumenical Councils, but especially the Fourth.

The question for us, then, is how we understand the miracle of St. Euphemia in light of the movement, guided by the Holy Spirit, towards the reconciliation and reunion of the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches? Do we have to reject the miracle of St. Euphemia?

No, we do not. Instead, we need to understand it more inclusively.

First of all, we have to remember that for us Orthodox, stories and myths – whether in the Bible, as for example the two Genesis accounts of Creation, or in hagiography or the service books – can convey absolute truth without necessarily being completely literally or historically true. Metropolitan Kallistos makes this point in his introduction to the Festal Menaion, when speaking of the stories that are recounted concerning the Nativity of the Theotokos. Christ Himself spoke in parables… stories which were quite obviously made up, yet presented truths by which men and women should live. In this way we can understand that the story we remember today need not be a literal historical recounting, nor that its interpretation need be set in stone. It can be saying that the Holy Spirit indeed affirms the central tenets of the *same* Christology that is shared by both families, the four common adverbs found in the saints hand, rejecting Eutychianism (which the Non-Chalcedonians also reject) while not necessarily excluding diverse but legitimate ways of expressing those tenets.

Another thing to remember, and I will close with this, is that the stories of hagiography are not meant to be bludgeons with which to attack other Christians, whether in the Church or outside of the Church. They are not proof-texts to use as weapons to score points in debates, as fundamentalists are wont to do with scripture. They are meant to edify and upbuild Christians in their daily lives and struggles, that every human person soul and body united may be saved and deified. Amen.

"Changeless Change" - Sermon for the Sunday of the First Ecumenical Synod

2010-06-01T19:51:00.004-04:00

CHANGELESS CHANGE

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

There’s a common little joke floating around that seems to fit the Orthodox to a T. It goes like this: “How many Orthodox does it take to change a light bulb?" The answer is, "None - we don’t *change* the light bulb.” While certainly funny, this joke illustrates a very crucial point for us as we work to explain the Orthodox Faith to inquirers. As Metropolitan Kallistos Ware writes, “The thing that first strikes a stranger in encountering Orthodoxy is usually its air of antiquity its apparent changelessness,” Now this changelessness is certainly the case, particularly when the Orthodox Church is contrasted with church bodies which have departed from any understanding of the actual existence of the historical Jesus, or of the literal reality of His resurrection from the dead, or of other basic truths of Christianity.

But it is also obviously true that the Orthodox Church of today is in many ways different than what she was during the first centuries of her life, the Apostolic and sub-Apostolic periods. For but one example, the Divine Liturgies we celebrate today are very much changed from the Eucharistic service as given in the Didache, an early second-century writing. The question, then, which will be addressed now in the ongoing task of equipping the saints is how to understand change in the context of the Church’s unchanging Tradition, and how this understanding can be applied in our lives as Orthodox Christians today.

The event the Church sets forth for our rememberance today provides us with an answer. On this day we commemorate the Holy First Oecumenical Council which met in the city of Nicaea in the year 325. This council was convened by the emperor St. Constantine to combat the teaching of Arius, who denied the divinity of Christ and made of Him a creature. We all know the outcome of that council: his teaching was condemned, Christ was confirmed to be truly God, and the Council drew up the Symbol of Faith which - along with the additions made by the Second Council - we all proclaim during every Liturgy. But what is relevant to the question we are addressing today is how the Council safeguarded the Orthodox understanding of Christ as God and His relationship to God the Father. How it did so was by introducing into the life of the Church one word: homoousios.

This is the Greek word we translate as “one in essence.” For us, looking back on it from the perspective of 1700 years later, it is easy to forget just how radical was the Council’s decision to use this word. First of all, it was an innovation in that it was completely unscriptural. In the beginning the Council had tried to limit itself only to language used in the Scriptures, because the holy fathers felt – and rightly so - that there must be continuity with what the holy apostles said, with what God said in the words of the Old Testament, and with what was written in the Gospels. This was an important point for them; just how important may be seen from a ruling of St. Constantine’s son Constantius which came later on during the period of reaction after the Council: “I do not want words used that are not in Scripture.” Pretty blunt, but it serves to make it very clear that Scripture was very important to the Fathers of the Council. And so to use this word which was not in Scripture was a very bold step, but a very necessary step. Because for all its importance, it was a point that the Council could not keep to, because the Arians could take many passages of Scripture and interpret them to support their own views.

Secondly, the word homoousios was radical because it did not originate within the Church; its origin came from outside the Church. It was first used by the Gnostics, and it was connected with the Manicheans. Gnostics were those who particularly denied the goodness of the material world and the created order. And Manicheans were a sect very similar. Again, they were very dualistic, spirit is good, matter is evil. It was also associated with the explicitly condemned teachings of one Paul of Samosata, who taught an adoptionist Christology - that is, what he said was that Jesus was a man upon whom God the Logos descended and indwelt at the Baptism in the Jordan, and only after that was He considered Christ and God.

And so the word not only was unscriptural, but also had a lot of baggage which would appear to make it unusable in the life of the Church. But these things were known to the Fathers at Nicaea; nevertheless they introduced that word while refining its meaning. They did this because they knew this: that the Church had always lived with the experience that Jesus Christ is God even if the ways used to express that experience were not entirely unambiguous nor entirely adequate. So we have “the truth”, and “the expression” of the truth. They knew that that unchanging truth, of Christ as God, needed a new expression so that the Church could remain true to itself, true to the Tradition she received and in turn handed down. That is what it means to have change in the Church: it is not that we change the eternal truths and dogmas of our Faith; they are set. But the ways those truths are expressed in each and every generation quite possibly need to be renewed so that we can take those truths into ourselves, make them one with us, make ourselves one with God in the Truth. That is the meaning of changeless change in the Church. Now an image that is often used for the Church is that of the body. If we think of human bodies, we know that bodies grow and develop, while still quite obviously remaining the same person, the same body. They develop while remaining true to themselves.

Now, what are the expressions of the Truth that we have in the Church? There are many ways in which the Church expresses her unchanging truths. We have of course preeminently the Symbol of Faith, the Creed. We have iconography, which expresses in pictorial form the truths of the saints, the feasts, the dogmas of the Church., and in we can discern different schools of iconography – one iconographic tradition, but different and developing schools within that tradition. These schools and their ways of approaching the saints and divine events do change and do develop over time.

The liturgy is another - we have already mentioned how the present liturgies have developed from and are very different than that one which is given in the Didache. And for those who have not read the Didache, this part at least is well worth reading because it gives a glimpse into the Eucharistic life of a second century Christian community. It is still the Liturgy of the Church, but it is the Liturgy before it developed into the form and the expressions we have today. So even in the Liturgy, there is room for development and change, when needed to better express Christian truths. On such Christian truth… well, we call the liturgy “LEITOURGIA” because it is “The People’s Work.” It is not just the work of the priest, but of both the priest and the people in SYNERGEIA, in cooperation. And, unfortunately, for a long time the sense of that was lost, a sense we are only now rediscovering, first of all in the efforts to recapture congregational singing, which we all know about because we have already been working on that here… the efforts of the people to contribute to and participate in the Liturgy in that way.

But there is another way to recover and renew the participation of the people in the Liturgy, and this gets back to what was mentioned a couple of weeks ago in the Teaching Liturgy concerning the Eucharist, the fact that the Eucharist is the center of our Christian life, and – again, that the Eucharist is not the sole action of the priest, bit is accomplished through the co-operation of the priest and the people. And this is expressed in the Liturgy, probably the most concretely, in the epiclesis, when the priest calls down the Holy Spirit. If you listen carefully, he calls down the Holy Spirit not only on the gifts on the Altar, but also on the “people here present”, so that the gifts may become the real Body and Blood of Christ *and* that we may become the Body by participating in them.

And so that prayer… as Fr. Tom Hopko said, there are no private prayers in the corporate worship of the Church, everything is communal prayer. So even that prayer, the epiclesis, is not just the prayer of the priest but is also the prayer of the people. And the people respond to it with their affirmation, “Amen!” Such that, when the priest is calling down the Holy Spirit and says, “And make this bread the precious Body of Your Christ.” It is not just the priests and deacons serving in the Altar that say Amen, but ideally it is *all* the people because it is all of our prayers, all of our joint work. “And make this bread the precious Body of Your Christ.” – everybody: “Amen!” “And that which is in this cup the precious Blood of Your Christ.” – everybody: “Amen!” And then, “Changing them by Your Holy Spirit.” - everybody: “Amen! Amen! Amen!” Because, as St. John Chrysostom says, “The prayers of the Anaphora are common.” He stresses that, that it is communal. There is distinction, obviously. The priest is the one celebrating, the people are the ones affirming… there is distinction, but there is no division within the leitourgia, the people’s work.

So this, too, is an area in which a new expression can reflect an ancient and unchanging truth: that all the People of God are One Body, participating in One Eucharist, and affirming the coming of the Kingdom of God. Amen.

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This sermon may be heard as well, at the following link:http://stphilothea.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=619698#

Written material which accompanied this sermon may be found at:http://constans_wright.tripod.com/insert.doc

Doubt in the Christian Life: Sermon for Thomas Sunday, April 18, 2010

2010-04-25T23:44:00.001-04:00

In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.

When speaking of the Christian life, people usually set belief and doubt against one another: Belief is the good thing, which all should unquestioningly have, but doubt the evil thing which should always be beaten down whenever it surfaces, without ever giving the mind a chance to examine it at all. Belief is always positive, doubt negative. Belief always builds up the Christian life, while doubt destroys it. But is this really the case, or is it rather that this is a simplistic view of a more complex dynamic. That is, is unquestioning belief always a good thing? Is there a place for healthy doubt and skepticism in the Christian’s journey in theosis?

An answer is provided to us in the event the Church commemorates today, the first Sunday after Pascha. The Gospel reading which we just heard a short while ago told us of two appearances of the Risen Lord to his apostles, the first without St. Thomas present, the second with him there. Now, why Thomas was not there we don’t know – it has been said that it was perhaps by divine oikonomia, heavenly dispensation, that he was not there, that Thomas’s personal reacting to and cooperation with God’s providence in synergeia nudged him to another place precisely so that truth might be revealed and a powerful point made… which it was. What we do know is Thomas’s response to the cry of the other apostles, “We have seen the Lord!” Thomas said that unless he saw Him with his own eyes and felt Him with his own hands, he would not believe it. He was going to be absolutely sure before assenting.

You know, something that is often overlooked and which people do not give much thought to is just why Thomas doubted the way he did, and made the demand for proof that he did. The Gospel passage today doesn’t say anything about that, and in that absence it’s easy to say that he was just being obstinate and to judge him negatively. But it is also quite probable that Thomas was remembering – and heeding – Christ’s own words when, as recorded in Matthew chapter 24, He said, “If anyone says to you, ‘Look! Here is the Christ,’ or, ‘There He is!’ do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect – if that were possible. See, I have told you ahead of time. So if anyone tells you, ‘There He is, out in the desert,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it.” Granted, these words were spoken in response to a question about the end times… but with the events of the previous week and with the disciples huddling behind closed doors for fear of persecution from a howling mob incited by the religious establishment of the time, Thomas can be forgiven for thinking, perhaps, that the end had indeed come.

In any case, there words are a command from the Savior to doubt. Nor are they the only such example found in the New Testament. In the first epistle of St. John the Theologian, chapter 4, we read: “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the spirit of God: every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God.” This too, is a command to doubt, one which is probably rooted in the same words of the Lord quoted before, which John would have paid attention to as much as Thomas. And so the question for us is, why must we doubt? What is the purpose of healthy doubt?

These commands to doubt are given us for a reason: our protection. They are meant to insure that we do not give ourselves over to false ideas about God and Christ, about humanity and the world. The goal of the Christian life is theosis, becoming gods by grace. God – capital G – is relational: three persons in the most intimate communion each with the others. We too are called to that intimacy, communion with the Trinity, with our spouses, with our children for those who have them, and with our fellow members of the People of God. But intimate communion can only be such when we know in truth those with who we desire to be in relationship. For us, the doctrines of our faith aren’t mere intellectual propositions to be assented to; they are the data of relationship with God and with each other. They are revelations of the inner beings of the persons of God and of each other, what we know of them and what they know of us. The so-called rules of our faith aren’t legalistic laws binding us but instead the physical and spiritual means of effecting that intimate union in theosis. Knowledge of persons must be real knowledge; if it isn’t, one is not really in communion with that person but with a false image of that person. We must doubt, then, in order to be assured of the truth of what we know of God and of each other.

St. John the Theologian was writing against the Gnostics, who were promoting false ideas about the physical world and Christ’s relationship to it… that is, the created, material world is evil and so Christ could not have a real body, real flesh. The Church, on the other hand, always affirmed the intrinsically good nature of creation and matter, though fallen and in need of salvation and regeneration in Christ. And this truth, that Christ indeed came in the flesh, sanctifying it and everything about it, is also that which is affirmed by Thomas’s confession recounted in today’s Gospel. The Tradition of the Orthodox Church explains that his cry, “My Lord and my God!” is an affirmation of the two natures of Christ, the human and the divine. Because such a confession came from his questioning, the Church in her hymnography calls Thomas’s stand “believing unbelief” – a phrase used, for example, in one of the Vespers stichera for this day.

Brothers and sisters, let us always practice this “believing unbelief” when we are confronted with strange ideas which seem to run contrary to the core of our faith in a loving and merciful God, especially if these ideas have their origin outside the Church even if they are subsequently taken up and championed by leaders in the Christian community – remember, Arius was a clergyman of the Church. We must doubt them at first to discern what we should know and live in order that we all, as whole persons both soul and body, may be saved and deified. Amen.

"On Serpents and Scorpions" - Sermon for the Feast of St. Luke

2009-10-19T09:35:00.001-04:00

In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit:

Today’s Gospel reading is set within the context of the appointment and sending of the Seventy Apostles which, because one strand of tradition within the Church records that the Apostle and Evangelist Luke - whose feastday we celebrate today - was one of the Seventy. That tradition also records that he was the companion of Cleopas when the two of them encountered the Risen Christ on the road to Emmaus, as we hear in the fifth of eleven Resurrection Gospel passages which are read in a cycle during Orthros on Sunday mornings. These Resurrection accounts are read since each Sunday is what the Church calls a “Little Pascha” and the service of Orthros is that service which contains by far the majority of the hymns and readings which explain the meaning of the particular day’s celebration.

The Seventy were sent out to every city and place just as we all are in order to do the work of Christ, to “heal the sick that are there and tell them, ‘the kingdom of God is near you.’” And this they did. We hear today that the Seventy returned rejoicing, saying, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.” Now we might find such rejoicing strange, since we today don’t usually see demons everywhere acting as openly as they are described in the scriptures or the lives of the saints. But all that means is that they’ve gotten a lot more subtle, and they work quietly to manipulate us into sin and separation from God and from each other, playing upon the sick and diseased human nature we have inherited as the result of Adam’s sin. Instead of outright possession, they whisper suggestions into our ears, catering to the particular weaknesses of each individual.

But we do have a defense against them. Christ gives all of us the same promise he gave to the Seventy: “I have given you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy.”

Now it’s interesting that St. Theophylact of Ochrid, in his commentary on this passage, says that Christ is denoting two different ranks or types of demons when He says ‘serpents’ and ‘scorpions.’ He writes, “Those demons which strike openly and visibly are called serpents. For example, the demons of ... murder are serpents which incite a man to sin openly.” Or, to use another example well-suited to a college town, the demon of drunkenness is a serpent which incites men and women to sin openly. But a scorpion is a demon which would incite a person to a series of events which would lead up to one’s sinning openly. “For its sting is not visible,” St. Theophylact writes, “But instead in secret it urges a man to groom and pamper his flesh in order to cast him into a great fall.” Encouraging one’s despondency over something, or instead overly encouraging one’s mirth in something, such that one goes beyond the number of drinks that is proper use in moderation, well, that is the work of the scorpion. And if one listens enough to the scorpion, one finds him or herself face to face with the demon of drunkenness... and that demon makes a very bad back-seat driver. And the same principle applies in the case of other sins. Moreover, it is important to note that the scorpions’ attacks come through things which are not necessarily sinful in and of themselves, but are only so when taken to excess or for the wrong reasons.

So how do we fight these demons’ whispers, how do we take advantage of that power and authority Christ has said that He has given us? We’ve said that the demons prey upon our sick and diseased human nature. Well, how does a person fight a sickness and infection... swine flu, say, since that has been in the news so much of late? He or she fights it with good nutrition and medicine. The application of these things keeps the body sound and hale and drives out the disease.

For us as Orthodox Christians, the services and the sacraments of the Church are our food and medicine. To be healthy enough to combat the disease of the demons, the serpents and scorpions, we need to participate in them all the more often, as they are offered to us in the life of the parish. After all, how healthy would a person be who ate a meal only once a week? How much good would the medicine prescribed by the physician do if a person used it only sparingly? The hymns and readings for each day provide us with the spiritual nutrients and vitamins we need to keep us fit, and these are present in far more abundance in those services outside the regular Sunday liturgy... in Orthros, in Vespers, in Compline. Our participation in them strengthens us in communion one with another, so that we can help each other fight the battles with the demons. Let us then all fortify ourselves with this food, that we may all as human persons, body and soul, be saved and deified. Amen.

"Had They But Waited" - Sermon for the 13th Sunday after Pentecost

2009-09-08T08:45:00.001-04:00

In the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

On this the thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost the Church presents to us Christ’s parable of the wicked tenants in the vineyard. Now historically, this story refers to the Old Testament kingdoms of Judah and Israel and how they behaved - or, rather, misbehaved - over the course of their covenantal relationship with God. The people were supposed to show forth in themselves the good fruit which God expected of them, but they did not. And when God sent his servants the prophets to them to call them to account for that lack and to recall them to the path which would produce such fruit, well, they were - as St. Theophylact Archbishop of Ochrid in Bulgaria notes in his commentary on this parable - “abused in various ways by the husbandmen, that is, the false prophets and false teachers of those times. One they beat, as they did to Micah when Sedek struck him on the jaw; another they killed, as they did to Zechariah [the father of the Forerunner St. John the Baptist] between the temple and the altar; another they stoned, as they did to Zechariah the son of Jodae the high priest.”

Metaphorically, however, the meaning of this parable extends to each and very one of us since we too live in a covenantal relationship with God; we too often fail to develop within ourselves and to show the good fruits of the Christian life - joy in living kindness, in giving selfless service to others (and in that giving receiving back multitudes of blessings). And while we don’t go around maiming or killing the people God sets in our path to call us back to the righteous life, we do what is perhaps worse, which is to make them of no account at all. For the persecution and the slaying of the prophets indicated that at least they were noticed. But how often do we, on the other hand, simply choose to ignore or to not take advantage of the people and the opportunities that God sends our way as our reminders and means to return to a fulfilling life and the producing of good fruits within it.

There are many different ways in which we can fall short of the mark and fail to produce this good fruit in our lives. I’ll focus on one particular way that is given us in the context of this parable. When the householder sent his son to the wicked tenants they said, “Come, let us kill him, that we may receive his inheritance.” What makes this reason truly astounding is that the whole goal of human existence in the life of God’s covenanted communities, the Old Testament Church and the New, is precisely to share in the inheritance of the Son of God. Theosis, deification, the sublime calling of humanity, means nothing else but that we are to become - as the Fathers say - by grace all that God is by nature, except in identity of nature. We are called to become gods by adoption, sons of God by adoption. So the irony is that the wicked tenants killed the Son for something they were already going to receive, had they but waited. And that’s the key to their mistake and ours as well, many times. We are impatient; we push for something way too soon, for which we are not yet ready. Because we jump the gun, we often end up seriously compromising or even ruining that good thing for which we should have waited.

Scripture records other stories of this: in the parable of the prodigal son, when he asks for his half of the inheritance, he was not stealing or taking anything that wasn’t already coming to him. But while Christ never says in that parable just why the prodigal wasted his substance in riotous living, it’s not hard to imagine that it was because he was immature, unable to contain his desires and manage his resources... he was not prepared to receive the inheritance he had claimed.

We see this very thing in the fundamental, primordial sin of all humanity. In the story of Creation and the Fall in Genesis, Adam and Eve are told not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge, Now that Tree was right there in the middle of the Garden, in which everything had been created good and uncorrupt. So it too was good. And it can be presumed that they would have been given to eat of it when they were ready, since they were created to become exactly what Satan said they would when they ate of it: “You will become like God, knowing good and evil.” But they were not ready, and so striving for that godhood far too soon led to separation from God and enmity with each other, spiritual and physical death which was the result of - not a punishment for - their sin.

This is perhaps the hardest and most difficult way in which we can fall short of the mark and fail to produce good fruit in our lives. Things which are truly wrong and sinful are often easy to see, even if its not so easy not to do them nevertheless, But situations in which the goal itself is good but the timing is not right, that is hard because too often we let our desires for them get in the way of discerning when the time is truly right and when it is not. We need to pray earnestly to God, then speak with others, whether a spiritual father or mother, Christian brother or sister, or close and trusted friend, to take advantage of our personal prophets whom God sends our way and to share our situations, that we may gain wisdom and temperance along our path to living well and producing good fruit, that we may each of us as human persons body and soul be saved and deified. Amen.

"Putting on Christ" - Sermon for the 26th of July, St. Parascevi

2009-07-28T16:15:00.000-04:00

In the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit:

When it comes to crafting a sermon, I begin with a lot of prayer. I read the epistle and gospel selections, look at the saint commemorated on this day, consider the specific part of the yearly liturgical cycle that we are in, and then pray to God to give me the right words to give to you His people. Then it’s a matter of waiting until He motivates me in a particular direction. This is usually by a “still small voice,” a quiet certainty of what to say. Usually, but not always, and today is a prime example of when God pretty much hits one over the head with a two-by-four, saying: “Deliver this message!”

We’re celebrating a Baptism today, and the epistle reading for today (which is the one for St. Parascevi and hence tied specifically to this date) has a great deal to do with what baptism means for us. In preparing for this sermon I was utterly blown away by the complete appropriateness of what we heard to what we are about to do, yet it just goes to reinforce the fact that for us as Orthodox and Christians, there really aren’t any such things as mere coincidences. God is in charge, and He guides all events – whether we’re talking about small things such as the week-long process of developing a sermon or large things such as the million-years-long course of evolution on this planet – so that we are presented with the opportunities to choose to cooperate with Him on the path to our deification, theosis of both body and soul.

St. Paul tells us today, “As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” This verse has special use in the liturgical services of the Church. It replaces the Trisagion – the Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal – in special Feastday Liturgies: the first Paschal Liturgy the morning of Holy Saturday, which in the ancient Church used to be the most common time for catechumens to be baptized; in the Theophany Liturgy celebrating Christ’s Baptism; and in the Liturgy for Christmas. It also occurs in the Baptismal Service right before the prokeimenon and epistle – which if you look closely you will see that it’s actually doing the same thing there, replacing the Trisagion, for Baptisms in the ancient Church were always done during the Liturgy, as entrance into the Church is perfected in Communion, and the service of Baptism pretty much retains the form of the ancient Baptismal Liturgy.

But what does it mean for us, to put on Christ?

St. Paul tells us today that “we are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus,” and that we are “heirs according to the promise.” An heir is one who will share in what his or her parents are and possess. Therefore, we are all of us called to, as St. Peter puts it, become “partakers of the divine nature.” This is theosis, deification. St. Athanasius the great explains it very forcefully in his work, On the Incarnation: “God became man so that human beings might become gods.” Theosis is the doctrine that is unique to the Orthodox Faith and which sets Orthodoxy apart from every other form of Christianity. Now it may seem to be an over-the-top claim, that we are all to be gods, but it really isn’t. There is a way to understand it which preserves the sovereignty of the One God while acknowledging that we are called to be gods. The committee of Orthodox scholars who put together the Orthodox Study Bible expressed this important point: “St. John of Damascus, writing in the eighth century, makes a remarkable observation. The word ‘God’ in the Scriptures refers not to the divine nature or essence, for that is unknowable. ‘God’ refers rather to the divine energies – the power and grace of God which we can perceive in the world. The Greek word for God, theos, comes from a verb meaning ‘run’, ‘see’, or ‘burn’. These are energy words, so to speak, not essence words.” Or, to phrase it another way, the title “God” does not just refer to what He is – which we will never know or become – but also refers equally to what He does, a co-participant in which we are each one of us called to become.

Energies are the qualities of God which flow out from Him, from His essence (though they are not the essence), His love, compassion, mercy… His creativity – an important one, that, since when we first meet God in Genesis He “created the heavens and the earth – qualities which permeate the whole of the created universe. “Putting on Christ” is our appropriation of these energies in our life in the Church, our part in synergeia – cooperation with God – that we may actualize our intimate communion with Him and with each other. The potential for that intimate communion is given us in the Incarnation, when the divine essence and the human essence were inseparably united in the one person of Jesus Christ… which is perhaps another meaning to be found in the use of the hymn, “As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”, in the Liturgy for Nativity. It is the restoration of that intimate communion – expressed in the story of Genesis by Adam and Eve’s walking with God in the cool of the evening and which they lost for us by sin – that is our salvation, rather than the wiping out of a juridical debt or the appeasing of an angry God, the ever-deepening of it that is our deification.

It is that potential which we must appropriate and realize through participation in the Church, her life and mysteries. That is what little Lola will be called to do in just a little while; that is what we all have been called to do in our own baptism or chrismation, that our whole persons, body and soul, may be saved and deified. Amen.

"Don't Worry; Be Happy" - Sermon for the Third Sunday after Pentecost

2009-06-28T17:42:00.000-04:00

In the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

There’s a phrase, which comes from a popular song, which goes like this: “Don’t worry; be happy.” It’s a phrase very much in vogue in thw world’s society today, so much so that it was pretty much the centerpiece in a slogan war which took place in England recently. Atheists there had taken out these huge ads on the sides of London buses, saying, “There is no God. Don’t worry; be happy and enjoy life.” And in a move led by the Russian Orthodox Church in Britain, Christians responded by taking out ads that said, “There is a God. Don’t worry; be happy and enjoy life.”

The Christian response to the atheists’ slogan is one very much on the spot, because the fact is that properly understood - and I stress, *PROPERLY* understood, the sentiment expressed in this snippet of song, this popular phrase, is very Orthodox, something which has a deep and profound meaning for us. And the way in which to properly understand it... that is the lesson given us in today’s Gospel reading.

DON’T WORRY

Christ tells us today, “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on.” And He gives us an example which is meant to show the truth of that statement: the lilies of the field. “They toil not, neither do they reap, yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these.”

Now I’ve sometimes wondered, and I’m sure this has occurred to others at some point in time, just how relevant this example is for us today. After all, science has revealed to us the inner workings of plants; any high school biology student is going to know that while lilies don’t toil nor reap, what they do is photosynthesize, They take sunlight, along with water and nutrients provided by the earth, and by that process provide energy for themselves while at the same time working to provide oxygen for the benefit of humans and animals on this planet.

But I would argue that our greater understanding of the biochemical processes at work within the lilies of the field actually makes the example far more relevant to us today, not less. For this complex biological process is something which God has set within each lily through the process of evolution. God has equipped them with the innate tools with which they can care and provide for themselves and their needs.

Now humanity is far higher in the scheme of things than lilies, yet the same principle applies. One of the important reasons we should not worry about our lives is precisely because God has set within each one of us various talents, gifts for doing particular things very well and with liking and joy, diverse callings for us to embrace. These are the innate things within us with which God has equipped us so that in the embracing of them we may work to care and provide for ourselves and our needs. This embracing of our innate gifts and our using of them is our cooperation with God’s grace and power - synergeia, working together - through which we accomplish God’s will in our lives and in the world.

That’s not to say that when we do the work which we enjoy and to which we are called everything will be coming up roses. All we have to do is pay attention to the news these days to see that, to see that unfortunately many people are unable to do the work which they enjoy and to which they are called. But even in these situations Christ’s exhortation, “Don’t worry” is applicable. Photosynthesis is an innate process which provides for the needs of the lilies, but it is not an isolate process, existing only within and unto itself. It uses sunlight, water and soil provided by God in creation. It cannot perform its function without those others. That principle applies to us humans as well, for the various talents we have and the work that we do should not only provide for our own needs but also serve for the aid of others, because we are ultimately not individuals but persons in community. I saw this demonstrated very forcefully in the Bread for Life program, particularly in the graduation this past week. All the people to whom has given the innate gift and love for the various aspects of the hospitality industry, with which they provide for themselves and their needs, also provided for five others, unlocking within those five their own innate gifts so that they may work and provide for their needs.

BE HAPPY

In the outside world Christianity, and Orthodoxy in particular, has often gotten a bad rep as a dour religion loaded with rules which prevent humans from realizing happiness. A popular song by Billy Joel has the line, “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints; sinners are much more fun.” Indeed, this misperception is what provoked the atheists in England to put up their ads in the first place. But it *is* a misperception.

“Happiness” is actually very much central to our faith. The Greek word “makarios”, which is usually translated as “blessed”, also has - maybe primarily has - the meaning “happy”. “Happy is the man who does not walk in the counsels of the wicked.” as we say in the kathisma sung at Great Vespers on Saturday evening.

Today’s Gospel sums up Christ’s exhortations with, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things [daily provision about which we shouldn’t worry] will be added to you.” But what is the Kingdom of God?

First of all, it is the community of the Church and of the world, the venues in which we use our gifts and talents to provide for our needs and those of others. Fundamentally, though, it is a state of mind, a way of looking at and living in those communities. St. Theophylact of Ochrid in Bulgaria, in his commentary on today’s Gospel, says, “The Kingdom of God is the enjoyment of all that is good. This comes through righteousness.”

It is the enjoyment of all that is good. This means the proper enjoyment of all the things of the world which God has created, and we should enjoy the world... for though there is evil in the world, the world itself is not evil. It was created good by God and remains that even though it too shares the effects of the Fall, that is, decay and death. In the creation story in Genesis, after creating Adam and Eve, God shows them the Garden and gives them everything in it (save the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil) for food, and by this shows them that they are to use and enjoy creation. We see examples of this as well everywhere in the Church, when sanctified matter is used in our enjoyment and feasting. Human relationships too are meant for enjoyment: Christ sanctified marriage and everything associated with it at the feasting in Cana of Galilee.

Proper enjoyment... the first part of today’s Gospel speaks of this, when it reminds us that we cannot serve two masters. When we forget that we are to enjoy the things of the world as part of our growing together in communion with each other and with God, when instead we make them our sole focus and absolutes in our lives, when we turn them into idols for which we sacrifice others and God – which in fact is what Adam and Eve did when they disobeyed God and partook of the forbidden tree - then that is sin. We are meant to be happy and to enjoy the world… but we must not be slaves to it.

So: “Don’t worry; be happy.” Let us enjoy life and enjoy the world knowing that it is God’s present to us, for which we return thanks to Him in serving and helping to provide for the needs of our brothers and sisters, that every human person, body and soul one and integral, may be saved and deified. Amen.