The 8th Sunday of Pentecost

August 3, 2008

The 8^th Sunday of Pentecost

You know the gospels were written down for a specific purpose. It wasn’t because the Church didn’t know the story. The gospel was orally transmitted, held, memorized, repeated. But at a certain point in the Church’s history, when it was realized that the apostles would not be around forever, and as the Church gradually developed its forms of worship in the first century, it was felt necessary to have a new testament Torah to be read at the Divine Liturgy that would fulfill the Old Testament Torah that were read each day in the Hebrew Synagogue or on certain days of the week – Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. And so the Church put together from the memoirs of the apostles, the four Gospels and the fifth gospel which is the Acts of the Holy and Pure Apostles, which is, if you will, the Deuteronomy of the New Testament Torah, specifically to be read at the liturgy. That’s why, when Daniella went to school and they sang songs about the Bible, she said she loved the Bible very much and the people at her protestant school liked the bible very much, and I said that it’s very nice of us to let them use our Bible.

We do because it was put together to be used by the Church as a liturgical text. Not everything that Jesus did or said could possibly be written there. St. John said, “The world could not contain the books that would be written.” But the apostles’ epistles – the letters of the apostles – are so much different we know that the Gospel of St. Mark is the memoirs of St. Peter as he preached in Rome, and Matthew recalled and wrote what he had been aware of as he had been one of the 12, that St. Luke used recollections of those who had been present as well as of our Lady in writing his gospel, and John late in his life, after having done perhaps 2 or 3 redactions of his gospel, finally gave us the gospel that is figured by the eagle that flies above and looks down on everything.

But the epistles, the letters, were written as circumstances arose. They were written to deal with situations that developed in the Church. And it may be hard for us to think this way, but whereas the Gospels didn’t even begin to come into existence till the 6^th decade of the Christian century, the epistles began to be written some 20-25 years earlier. And on the one hand, we’re very grateful that we have these letters of the apostles because they teach us practically how to deal with circumstances that arise in the Church on the basis of the advice that the apostles, especially St. Paul, gave to the Church as they encountered their trials and as they experienced their difficulties.

We know that St. Paul, in his instructions, differentiated: some things he would say, “This is from the Lord” meaning, this is what Christ taught as absolutely commanded; on the other hand he would say, “This is not from the Lord, this is from me, it is my practice,” and that meant that these were things that St. Paul thought were best and that he offered on good authority, but did not have rabbinical authority behind them, rather the power of his own reflections on God.

And there is perhaps, no church that shows the difficulties that the early Christians encountered more than the church in Corinth. Corinth was a place where everything in the world came: all that was good, and beautiful, and wise, and all that was ugly, and nasty, and perverse. It was the San Francisco of the ancient world. St. Paul had come to Corinth and he had made converts there; he remained a while and then went on to continue his apostolic work. But the Corinthians gave him fits; they immediately became arrogant and they became proud, and they became divided. They started to choose sides and to engage in feuds.

One would say, “I speak on the authority of Paul.”

Another would say, “Oh, I’m a partisan of Cephas, of Simon Peter.”

Another would say, “I’m just a Christian, I belong to the party of Christ.”

And then they would argue about how things ought to be done, or how things ought to be staged, or how people ought to live.

There were those who said, “We should follow the Jewish Law because there’s a whole lot of commandments there and if we do them we can earn a more likely salvation.”

And others who said, “Oh no, there’s no law at all. In fact, we can do whatever we want to, because once saved always saved. There’s no danger of our being lost, so let’s just enjoy this life in anticipation of the life to come.”

Legalists and gaulless, greedy people, people who would show up for a church supper, bring their own meal with them and then put out their caviar and roast beef and watch their neighbor sitting next to them without so much as a crust of bread. Perhaps they supposed that this is what they deserved; that that person did deserve it.

And when St. Paul criticized them, they dared to say, “Who does he think he is anyway?” They challenged his authority.

Some even said, “You know, Paul wasn’t one of the apostles. He wasn’t one of the 11, he wasn’t even the one chosen to replace Judas. He just says he’s an apostle, but he wasn’t really an apostle like those other apostles. And so, we don’t really have to listen to what he said.”

And other people said, “Have you ever heard him preach? Why, when he preaches, his oratory is weak. He’s not a great speaker, a powerful deliverer. He’s not a _____, he can’t look proud. In fact, we like to hear other people preach better than him. Listen when he comes. He may sound brave in his letters, but he’s really weak in his oratory.”

There was even a suggestion, when Paul had taken up a collection to deliver to the church in Jerusalem - because a famine had placed the people there in jeopardy, so he suggested that from all the churches money should be sent to support the church there, especially the widows and the orphans – he was really going to divert that money into his own bank account, that he was really going to steal it. Some people suggested that. In one place, Paul speaks of himself as a prisoner at the end of a procession.

He says, “You know how the Romans - when they conquer people – they have a triumphant procession through the city and the conquering general rides in a chariot and behind his chariot are chained captives and they’re brought to the city to be slain in the arena,” he says, “ I think that we apostles are like captives chained behind a chariot condemned to die.”

In fact he referred to himself and the other apostles as the “off-scouring of the universe.” Depending on how you translate, it could mean, either what you scrub off of a man or what you flush down a toilet. But this is how they felt they were being treated. And you understand, you know those who think about the problems the church has today – not so much this church as the universal Church in many places and in general – that when we look at these, we say, “Oh for the good old days, for that old time religion when everybody was holy and pious.” But in St. Paul’s day it wasn’t that way. People were fighting, feuding, arguing; calling their leaders names, disrespecting them, failing to show charity, justifying themselves by their works, or justifying their lack of morality by their supposed purity. It was a rough time. But we must remember this: We proclaim that we believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, and those four words – one, holy, catholic, and apostolic – are a pretty good definition of the word “Orthodox” – that Church which worships in the right way and believes the right things. And if the Church herself is without flaw, or blemish, or any such thing – the pure Bride of Christ – that evil does not adhere to the Church; that it is the people of Christ who in their weakness, their frailty, their self indulgence, bring evil into the Church. They bring in their selfishness and their self-justifications; they bring in their greed and their petty anger and quarrels, their divisiveness, their judgments. But these are brought by all the other sins that we carry to the foot of the cross, not so we can stand their and boast in them, but so they can be laid down at the feet of Christ so they also can be washed away. Saint Paul dealing with his churches was a father dealing with his children. And as he dealt with them, he didn’t abandon them; he didn’t pass them off; he didn’t condemn them to Hell.

Even one man in Corinth whom he had to excommunicate – he says of that man, “I am handing his body over to Satan with the prayer with his soul may be saved.”

In other words, the man, looking at himself now standing outside of the church, might flee back into the arms of salvation and attain salvation. And so the man did repent, and he undid the evil he was doing. Do you know what to the people of Corinth said?

They said,“Who does he think he is to come back to church? Why, Paul excommunicated him; he’s a bad man.”

Paul said, “You welcome him back and you forgive him, for I, absent in body but present in spirit, have forgiven him.”

Now this church was a divine institution filled with defective and fallible human beings, just as the body of Christ is today.

Brothers and sisters, if we persevere in grace; if we struggle to let God rule our hearts, our communities, our communal life, then such power will exist within each parish, within each jurisdiction, within each national church, within the whole Orthodox Church throughout the world, then it will be irresistible. Then we will not have to exert great effort to bring the nations to Christ; but that the light of our good works shining before men will be seen like a city on a hilltop and that men seeing, they will be drawn to it from East and West, from North and South; and drawn to it they will glorify the Father who is in heaven. So we thank we God for the defectiveness of the Corinthians because it is a paradigm of our own defectiveness. But we thank God for the lessons that St. Paul taught them because they are taught to us. Strive, brethren, to be of one heart and one mind.

Last week, he told us to bear one another’s burdens – the strong ought to act on behalf of the weak. That those who have troubles ought to be borne on the shoulders of those who have fewer troubles. Why? Because the icon of the church, its image, that which is the sacrament of the church, is that it is the body of Christ, both universally and individually. We are members, organs of that body, and when one organ suffers, the whole body suffers; when one member is injured, the whole body is injured; when one member is weaken, the whole body is weakened. That, like the immune system of the human body, the ability of the body of Christ to heal itself through the mysteries of confession, of holy communion, through the mysteries of warm tears of repentance, to bring health and restoration not only to the individual members but to the whole body. To those who are living and those who have gone on before us, we pray and offer sacrifices.

So brethren, let their not be divisions among us: neither of heart, or of mind, or of faith. Does that mean that everybody in the whole church has to be somebody who you relate to and identify with and have warm fuzzy feelings toward all the time? No it doesn’t. Feelings are like all the other passions – they are deceptive, they are delusional, they become idols. It does mean you have to care about everyone else. Some of the members of the body you will walk with holding hands, embracing, carrying or being carried by. Others will simply walk behind you. But it is that we walk the same direction, that we follow the same pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night, that we are being led to the same kingdom, that we are not being stumbling blocks, hazards, or scandals for one another that makes us all mutually supportive, and mutually united. That as one community we may enter into the kingdom that Christ promises.

So to Him that is able to bring us to one mind and one heart, through the prayers of His holy apostles, be glory and dominion now and ever and unto ages of ages.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

The 6th Sunday of Pentecost

July 27, 2008

The 6^th Sunday of Pentecost

And He said unto him, “Son, be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven.”

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Glory to Jesus Christ!

Glory forever!

We are prone to forget, or to sublimate, or push to the back of our minds that the principle gift granted unto us by our Savior’s incarnation and His passion is the forgiveness of sins. That it is by the forgiveness of sins that all the other accoutrements and all the other graces that accompany our appearance to Christ are made available to us. Our Lord, when He instituted the holy liturgy, said, “This is my body which is broken for you, for the forgiveness of sins. This is my blood which is shed for you, for the forgiveness of sins. We acknowledge in the symbol of Nicea, Constantinople, in the Creed, “I acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.”

When our Lord Jesus Christ stood upon earth and he saw this man who was afflicted with a palsy, a man who had some disease that crippled him, that made him incapable of using his limbs in a healthful and appropriate way, and the Lord said to the man, “Be of good cheer. Do not be sad; do not be despondent: thy sins are forgiven thee.” The Jews who heard this bravery, they said, “No one has power on earth to forgive sins except God.” And they were right, they were absolutely correct. Either, the Lord was presenting to them a clear sign of His divinity, that He was the Word of God walking on earth; or else He was a blasphemer. And the Lord, knowing that these people were mocking in their hearts, said, “Which is easier to do: to forgive sins, or to heal palsy?” Well, we have physicians and today we’ll pray in the liturgy for the physicians, the researchers, the nurses, the therapists, the people of our parish and our families who work in the medical profession; they’re able either to heal, or to mitigate, the effects of many diseases. But to forgive sins, that’s for God only.

In our service book, in the tryptics, there is a prayer that was written by Peter Vogila (?), or collected by him, that I choose because I memorized it - it was the prayer given to me when I was ordained. It says, “I, his unworthy servant, through the power given unto me by Him who absolves me of all my sins.” And we have similar prayers we say over the dead body of the departed Orthodox Christian: “I absolve thee, my spiritual child.” But there are qualifying words, “In so far as I have been given power.” For it is more appropriate on the other hand, although avoided by the Slavic church because it stinks a little bit of Protestantism, to use the prayers that the Greeks use, which says, “My child, no man on earth has power to forgive sins. Only God forgives sins. But I, as a witness here to your repentance, declare to you that your sins are forgiven.” It is probably a better way to understand the mystery. Jesus Christ, after all, is the only Priest. He is the Priest of every mystery. We are icons, images, of Him. We are the way that He is visibly made present to you. That’s why, as I’ve said before, we don’t stand behind the table like Roman Catholic priests do at the Eucharist, because that’s the place where Christ stands invisibly. The only person who even sits behind that table is the bishop, who in that particular occasion becomes the image of God the Father on the throne in heaven. You probably didn’t realize that when the bishop takes off and puts on the omophorion, when he has the omophorion on it shows him as Christ, bearing the lost sheep, when he has it off it shows him as God the Father. In other words, he represents to us two persons of the trinity.

What is necessary though, to obtain the remission of sins? It’s very simple. The first thing is repentance, and I’ve told you this before. The word repentance means to fall down on your face, to stop going the wrong direction, to turn around and to go the right direction. The Greek word is metania, or as we used we used to say in that awful Greek we learned in the Western seminary, metanoia. Metania. It is that we recognize that we’re running away from God, and we’re so anxious to stop that we skid our feet out from under us, that we fall down on our faces, we rise up, and we go back to where we came from. Back to our Father and say, “I have sinned against heaven and against You.” That is repentance. It requires contrition. And I have also told you before that contrition is a broken heart; it is a heart that is wounded not because we got caught doing bad things, not even because we’re afraid we’re going to be caught doing bad things, or because we’re grateful we escaped getting caught doing bad things; but it is a heart that is broken by the knowledge of how our evil deeds have wounded the loving heart of our compassionate Father. This is maturity in Christianity; it is understanding that the fear of God is not the fear of lightning bolts coming down and striking us. The fear of God is the fear that a loving child has of bringing pain to a parent who that child knows has only his wellbeing in his concern. So that’s contrition. Attrition is the other stuff. That’s when you say, “Gosh I wish I hadn’t done that. I’ve really gotten myself in trouble. I’ve really made a mess of things. I’ve gotten trapped, or I caused harm.” That can be the call to contrition, but it is not contrition; it is not broken-heartedness, it’s just enlightened self-interest.

And after contrition, then comes confession. It’s best to confess immediately to God what it is that troubles you. Do it immediately. Every evening you ought to, in your evening prayers, examine your day and bring before god any evil deeds you’ve done and ask his forgiveness. Then when you come to the priest for confession, you say it to him simply, as I have told you before. Some people have learned what I was telling you – there’s pastoral counseling, and there’s confession. In confession, you just say the words. In every mystery, there are people who are changed by, or things that are changed, by the mystery. In baptism, our sins are taken away by water; in the Eucharist we receive God’s body and blood for the forgiveness of sins; in confession, we bring to God our sins and God obliterates them. He makes them no longer to exist; He consigns them, in the words of the prayer of absolution at the funeral service, consigns them to oblivion. He is not the God of Calvin, who says “Yeah, you’re guilty, but I beat up my Son, so I don’t have to beat you up. I’ve still got all your sins here in front of me, but I choose to ignore them.” No, He is the God who has the power to take away the sins of the world; and He does. They’re gone. Their consequences are often not gone, but if we repent and are forgiven, the consequences of our sins, even horrific consequences, can become by God’s grace means for good for someone. So, you have repentance, contrition; you have confession. You must then make every effort you can to repair whatever damage is reparable that you have committed by your sins. If you’ve stolen, you should return it; if you’re unable to return it to the person who was defrauded, then give it away to somebody else, because you should not profit from your sins. And finally, you must have a fixed intention, a good will, to seek God’s grace not to sin again. You know you probably will, unless you walk out of here after confession and communion and with a pure intention, and you fall down the stairs and crack your head and die. Then you won’t sin again. Otherwise, you probably will because every day you’re going to have opportunities, and great sins and little sins are the same things – whether you want to call them stones, or pebbles or gravel, they are all the same things. They are sins, the things that destroy our relationship with God. They’re hands full of dirt that we throw in God’s face. They’re spitting in God’s face. They’re the denial of God’s love. And so you have to intend, and ask God’s help sincerely, not to sin anymore. If you don’t intend to attempt not to sin anymore, then you’re sort of mocking God, aren’t you? Then, when you struggle not to sin again, if you find yourself sinning in that same way, don’t say, “Oh well, it’s just a habit I have, or the way I am. I can’t help it,” or, “I really blew it, I failed,” and then go back to your old vile disgusting evil habits. No! Just say, “I failed, God. I did it again. Forgive me again.” And then try again. Because our struggle to be holy is a life long struggle. We achieve it, and then we lose it. We get it back again, and we lose it. We get it back again. We try to hold on to it. We try to develop the habit of cultivating it, and we hope that when the hour of our death comes, we’ll be found abiding in it. That’s why we pray for a Christian ending to our life - painless, unashamed, and peaceful - so we’ll have opportunity to securely offer to God our final confession, to make our final repentance, and to hand our soul over to our loving master.

So remember this: It is by forgiveness of sins that entrance into the kingdom of heaven is possible. Once we have had our sins forgiven, we have restored to us the image and likeness of God. Then we become capable of being acceptable to God. And being acceptable to God, we become capable of being filled with God’s spirit. And being filled with God’s spirit, we become capable of deification, of theosis, of becoming one with God Himself, of being made divine. For certainly, the divine is not going to take into itself anything that is evil. Matter will not absorb into itself antimatter. A thing cannot adhere to its opposite, it expels its opposite. Let us then hear from our good God now today these words: “My child, be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee.” And let us say, “Glory to Christ our God and our Hope, that has forgiven our many and compounded transgressions, and has made us, evil as we have been, acceptable unto Thee.”

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Glory to Jesus Christ!

Glory Forever!

The 5th Sunday of Pentecost

July 20, 2008

The 5^th Sunday of Pentecost

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit Glory to Jesus Christ!

I was a little worried today because every year for all the time I’ve been here we’ve prayed on St. Elias’ day for rain, and we’ve gotten a lot of rain every year, and we don’t want a lot of rain most of today, but we do want rain. Then God solved my problem: I can’t find the prayer. So we would all ask God to give us just showers, and seasonable weather, beginning about six o’clock.

Today is St. Elias day, and St. Elias is a wonderful, wonderful great saint of the church. The forerunner, as it were, of the forerunner. The one who came before John the Baptist, was the pattern of John the Baptist. And there were many things that Elias did, but I want to speak to you primarily about one of them. We understand how he confronted King Ahab when Ahab had stolen the ground of Naboth the Jezreelite, and had had Naboth tried on phony charges and put to death so that he could own it. We understand how he rebuked also that same king, Ahab, for having built altars to the fertility god Baal in honor of his wife Jezebel, and we know how he at various times stood in the very midst of the royal courts surrounded by the kings guards who could have slain him and was fearless.

I want to talk to you about one episode in Elias’ life. Having rebuked Ahab, and having prayed to God and cause the rain to stop for three and a half years – and why did he do that? To punish the Israelites? No. It’s because they had come to believe that Baal, who was the rain god of the Canaanites, was the one responsible for the rain. So then Elijah said “Okay then, I’ll show you. My God’s not going to let any rain fall. So you go call on Baal all day long and all night long and see what happens. Well, after three and a half years, Elijah summoned the priests of Baal to Mt. Carmel, and there on that mountain engaged them in a sacrificing contest. First, they prepared a bull and put it on an altar and cried out to Baal from early morning till past noon, and the people stood by because they had liked the cult of Baal. The cult of Baal, the fertility god, and Asherah, the fertility goddess, had really good parties. It was a religion that allowed you to do a lot of licentious things and to call them religious acts. And then Elijah took the twelve stones and piled them up and he built an altar and he prepared his bullock, and he dug a trench around the altar and he filled it with water three times, which is a figure of the Holy Trinity. Then he raised up his hands to heaven and called on God to send down rain, and immediately, God sent lightning that struck the sacrifice and ignited it, and consumed not only the bull, but the stones and licked up the water in the trench underneath. Now you would have thought at this point that the people of Israel would have had their hearts permanently turned back to God. And Elijah ran back to the city, outrunning the horses of the king and his charioteers, he entered the city to receive a message: Jezebel was angry. The people had slain the idolatrous priests and the lascivious priestesses of Asherah, and she had said to him, “By this time tomorrow, you will be dead.”

Elijah was desperate because she offered a big reward. The Israelites, who a few hours earlier had said, “The Lord, He is God! The Lord, He is God!” now were trying to figure out how to collect the ransom.

And so he ran off and he stayed in the wilderness and he prayed to God to die. And he slept, and then God woke him and fed him, the food brought to him in the wilderness by ravens. Again he prayed, and he saw upon a stone, bread and a cup of water and he ate again. And God said, “Go on the strength of this food to Mt. Horeb, to Mt. Sinai. There I will meet you.” So he runs to Mt. Sinai, he comes up onto the mountain where Moses had spoken to God. And what does go there to do? To tell God, “I want to die.” He felt abandoned, deserted; he thought he was a failure, he thought faith had been discredited and the God of Israel and been shown to be weak, and he wanted to die. And God speaks to him, and here’s what God says, “I am preserving for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed a knee to Baal; seven thousand pairs of lips that have not kissed his evil sacrifices.” In other words, “You think you’re the only believer, Elias. You think it should be on your terms, but it’s on my terms. I’m God, and I have 7000 followers in Israel who are as good as you are. Now get up, go back to your prophet’s job until I am ready to take you.”

And Elijah went and he anointed a king for the Syrians, and he anointed a king for Israel, and a king for Judah. He anointed Elisha to be a prophet in his own place. And when the time came, God took him up into the clouds in what appeared as a chariot of fire. And it is said of Elijah that he will return before our Lord’s second coming. But there is a question about this, because when they questioned Jesus about it and said, “Is not Elijah supposed to return before the Messiah?” He said, “Elijah has returned, for the spirit of Elijah, the Holy Spirit that rested on Elijah, and upon his disciple Elisha, has come upon John the Baptist.” So he came in the spirit of Elijah. Which is the correct interpretation? I’m not going to tell you because I don’t know. I will tell you that God has reserved for himself more than 7000 men who have not bowed a knee to Baal; more than 7000 pairs of lips that have not kissed his evil sacrifices, and that we are not alone in the world. So let us not despair; let us be of good cheer, let us be hopeful, for the kingdom of heaven is powerful, and our God is the king of that kingdom, and he has set up many many pillars among whom is Elijah the prophet, who support that kingdom on their shoulders, and lift it up to heaven as a living sacrifice.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Glory to Jesus Christ!

Glory Forever!