Monday, February 16, 2009

The 26th Sunday After Pentecost

Excerpts from a sermon to the kids

When I was your age, not only did the Christmas lights go on at Thanksgiving, we had the plaza that had lots of lights, thousands of lights, almost as many as Antonina put up in the hall. It’s very beautiful. But we also in school had Christmas programs and sang Christmas songs. We sang “O Come All Ye Faithful” and “Little Town of Bethlehem” and “Silent Night” – songs that go to the very heart of the way that the Western Church understood the birth of Jesus – which, by the way, is the most Orthodox part of the Western Church because for a long time they celebrated Christmas with a great deal of respect for the fact that it was God becoming a human being. But now you can’t do that in schools anymore. What are some of the holiday songs you sing at school?
Kids: Jingle Bells, Silent Night
Fr. Joe: You get to sing Silent Night? Oh that’s nice. We’ll have to remember that. I used to have a principal – I taught at a school where there were only two kids in the whole school who were not African American. He said, “Mr. Hirsch, put together a program for us to celebrate the holiday.” And I said, “The Supreme court says you can’t do that in public schools.” And he said, “This ain’t religion. This is culture. We’re Christians, that’s our culture.” And so I did it.
A long time ago in England, in fact two times in England, children weren’t allowed to celebrate Christmas the way that they ought to. One was when the protestants took over and they wouldn’t let the kids who were Catholics – who at that time were, and still are, the closest thing to Orthodoxy – they wouldn’t let them have their mass. Even though they called Christmas “Christmas” – Christ Mass – which we’d call it Christ Liturgy, wouldn’t we? They wouldn’t let them celebrate it. Then the second time was when this terrible terrible dictator took over – Cromwell – and he sent people through the streets ringing bells saying, “No Christmas this year! No Christmas this year!” But people found secret ways to celebrate Christmas. They sang songs that people thought were just silly songs, but they all had a real meaning to them.

How many of you have heard the twelve days of Christmas? Most Americans think the twelve days of Christmas start twelve days before Christmas. The twelve days of Christmas are the twelve days between 25th of December and Holy Theophany on the sixth of January. Those are the twelve days of Christmas. During that time, except on the 5th of January there’s no fasting – you can eat meat all those days even if you fast normally in your home. But, this song sounded like it was silly and people hear it and they think it’s silly. But the people who were singing it knew what it meant.

“The first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me a partridge in a pear tree.” A partridge is a bird that if its children, its babies, are attacked, will throw itself in the face of the enemy and allow itself to be killed in order to save its babies. Who do you think was the partridge in the pear tree? (Child Answers: Jesus) What was the pear tree? (Child Answers: the cross) The cross, the tree of life. “On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me a partridge in a pear tree” – that is the sacrificial who came to die so that we could live, and came to die on a cross and changed the cross into the tree of life.

“On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me two turtle doves.” What are two turtle doves? How many of you have a bible at home? How many of you have four bibles at home probably? Archie Bunker used to say on television that he kept his bible on his TV cause it kept sliding of his refrigerator. Anyway, we keep bibles, we don’t very often read them, but there’re two main parts to the bible? What are they?.... I’ll give you a hint: one of them starts with “old.” Yes! The old testament and the new testament. That is the two turtle doves. Now, you probably don’t know what a turtle dove is its – just a name for a certain kind of dove. So the old and new testaments

“On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me three French hens.” Now those stand for 3 virtues that St. Paul says last forever. What are they? (Child answers: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) That’s the Holy Trinity, and that would be a good answer. In fact, that’s what I told somebody once, but it’s not, it’s what? It’s the three vthings that St. Paul says last forever and they’re the names of three girls who died with their mother St. Sophia. Who were the three girls who died with their mother St. Sophia? Faith, hope and love; and so the three French hens are faith, hope, and love. St. Paul says they last forever.

“On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me four calling birds.” Now in the New Testament there’s one kind of book that there are four of. What are they? Okay Julia. The gospels. What are the four gospels, according to Saints.. (together) Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They tell us the words of Jesus.

“On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me five gold rings.” Those represent the first five books of the Old Testament that told about Jesus – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Now, the Old Testament came first but the song mentions the New Testament first because it’s more important.

“On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me six geese a-laying.” How many days did it take God to make the world? (child answers) Six days! And on the seventh day God rested. And so each of those geese was sitting on an egg and when the egg hatched it was like a day of creation.

“On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me seven swans a-swimming.” It refers to – you probably don’t know about these – the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. I’m going to read them to you: wisdom, understanding, council – that’s good advice, fortitude – that’s courage, knowledge, piety – that’s being holy, and the fear of the Lord. Now the fear of the Lord’s not “I’m so scared God’s going to zap me with lightning.” The fear of the Lord is this kind of fear. Do you have somebody you love a whole lot? Your mommy, your daddy, your grandma or grandpa? (Child answers) Your dog? Would you want to kick your dog? (No) Why wouldn’t you kick your dog? (answer) Because she bites. I wouldn’t kick my dog a) because she might bite b) because I might hurt her. When you don’t do what God wants you to do, what do you do to God? You hurt his heart, don’t you? You hurt his feelings. You break the father’s heart and you put nails in Jesus hands when you’re bad. So, the fear of the Lord is not wanting to do anything to hurt God’s love of you.
“On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me eight maids a-milking.” And that reminds us of the eight beatitudes. You hear that almost every Sunday here: Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. There are ten words that go together, ten sentences in the beatitudes. They’re like the new commandments, but there’s eight blessed and that’s what the number eight stands for.

The nine things are nine ladies dancing, and those stand for the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit. That’s nine things that God causes to grow in us when we love and serve him: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, (child) gentleness – who said that? Good for you! – and self control. That means having a handle on yourself so you can keep from doing bad things.

On the tenth day he gave ten lords a leaping. What are the ten things in the bible? Ten commandments. Right! That we should live by.

On the eleventh day he gave eleven pipers piping. Now this is going to be a little hard for you. There were twelve of these and then one of them turned bad and there were eleven. Yes? (Child: 12 apostles). And who was the one who turned bad? Yes? (Child: Judas)! So then there were eleven. Then the apostles filled in the twelfth again.

Now here’s the last one: twelve drummers drumming stand for the 12 points of belief in the creed. I’m going to give each a copy of the creed. We say it every Sunday but you need to learn it, and when your Sunday school teacher tells me – no matter how young or old you are – that you can recite it without looking at the paper, Fr. Joe’s going to give you a cross. Can anybody do it now? (kids shake heads) Yeah.

Now, these people had to keep their belief and their worship secret because they could have been hanged and drawn and quartered if the people had found out they were believers. They could have been torn into three pieces; had their hearts and vitals taken out of their bodies. They could have been tortured. But, they kept their faith alive. And this is the twelve days of Christmas. Someone told me once that under the communists there was going to be a baptism and somebody said, “We’re going to have a secret baptism at the church at midnight.” When the got to the church at midnight, guess who was there? Everyone in town. It was a secret everybody kept. They were all believers and remained believers but they had to do it at that place, at that time, in darkness. Other people I know in communist countries were baptized in monasteries. They would say, “I’m going to go visit this old building” and then they’d go in and get baptized. Normally monasteries don’t baptize people but when the communists were in control, they did. Other people went to embassy churches – churches run by the Antiochians, or by the Greeks, so that the government in their country wouldn’t know they were baptized. But they kept their faith alive. You don’t have to hide your Christianity, do you? So you be open about it okay? You be open. Don’t be obnoxious. Don’t make your teachers mad at you by telling people what your religion is, but if they ask, “What did you do over the holiday?” I want you to say “I went to liturgy and celebrated the birth of Jesus Christ” Okay?

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

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

The 25th Sunday after Pentecost

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

Glory forever.

I’ve been reading papers that my college students have written, and there was a group of women who were writing a report on Roman Catholicism and death – the name of the course is “Death and Dying.” A little bit lugubrious. And they quoted from a Roman Catholic catechism that said that people who died in mortal sin immediately go to hell, where they experience the torments of the last days. And as I read this, “No, well it’s not quite that simple.” For one thing, we don’t believe in venial sins and mortal sins. Sin is a condition, it’s not a collection of acquired guilts. But on the other hand there is truth to the statement and there has to be because I was thinking about this: What if you were one of those ten lepers who was healed and you realized when you were only a few steps away from our Lord that, not only had the sores on your body disappeared – the corruption, the death, that was gradually taking hold of your flesh, vanished – but that your appearance was normal and you could now again move and talk among human beings, and be restored to a state of being clean according to the Jewish understanding. And so you said, “Hey! Aren’t I lucky?” And you went on and did what you needed to do to get the certificate of cleanness, and then went home. If we saw that happen, wouldn’t we think these were dreadfully ungrateful people? They were people who did not have even the normal human sensitivity. What you do if you were in great agony and parts of your body were rotting and falling off because the nerves had gone away, and you couldn’t even tell when you burned yourself or hit yourself with a hammer? If you were all white and crusty, and everyone who saw you kept at a distance because they were afraid they would receive contamination from you, and then you were healed? Would you not return and fall down on your face, and cry with sweet tears, tears of thanksgiving for the one who had been responsible for your restoration to health?

And yet, the Lord in this parable is talking, not only about the leprosy of the body which ends with physical death, he’s talking about the leprosy of the soul. Everyone of us were born corrupt. We were born not only to physical, but to spiritual death. We were born deserving nothing but destruction. We were born enemies of God – hating and despising the good things, loving and embracing the evil. And to each one of us, God has come and through water and oil and his own precious blood which he shed in bitter agony on the cross he has healed the leprosy of our bodies and of our souls. And he has set us on the right path. And how many people accept that, put it away in their promise book, and then fail to respond in any way to it? How many people who are counting on Jesus Christ, on His Church, on His precious blood, on His promises to forgive them their sins are sitting at home today too tired or preoccupied, or lazy, or self-possessed to come and to give thanks?

The very liturgy we celebrate is called eucharistos. I’m afraid of any foreign language because I’m not that good at English, but the Greek people I believe (Nick can tell me if it’s true) when you say “Thank you,” you say “Eucharistou?”
Nick: Eucharisto
Fr. Joe: Eucharisto
Thank you. The Liturgy is our thanksgiving. It is our coming, our bowing down before God, it is our saying how grateful we are that he has given us life, and then it is receiving more from him – more life. It’s not just coming and doing obeisance. It’s not bowing down like people to some Oriental potentate. It’s receiving from God grace upon grace when we hold up to God our broken hearts and our thanksgiving he pours out on us a super abundance of more grace. And yet how many of us spend our Sundays and the Holy Days of the Church, on which we’re not obliged to be at work, entertaining ourselves or just plain sleeping? You know, I believe the Church, being the body of Christ and also the ship of salvation, has the ability through the prayers of the faithful to drag into heaven a whole lot of people who only kind of half way show any kind of gratitude to God. If there’s a spark of the love of God, if there’s a flickering wick lighted by the Holy Spirit, the prayers of the Church can fan that into a flame and ultimately bring that person to salvation. But for those who have received forgiveness, and grace, and healing, and who then so despise the Good Physician that they fail even to return to give thanks – for the nine lepers – there is also the danger that in the hour of their death, in the moment of their trial they will not turn their eyes toward the Risen Lord but will turn their eyes toward the bodily life that is being taken from them. And they will hear from that angel the words that the rich man heard in the gospel two weeks ago: “This night will thy soul be required of thee.” So, even though we don’t believe in purgatory per se, we don’t believe in the accumulated merits of the saints that the bishop of Rome is able to access by unlocking the merit bag and giving out indulgences, even though we don’t believe in that, even though we don’t believe in the categorizing of sin as mortal and venial, still we do believe this: That there is an awful danger that for those who do not return to give thanks, who don’t return love to God for his love of them, there is the dreadful danger that at the moment of the separation of their souls and bodies they will find themselves surrounded by ceaseless flames.

We have today so many saints who I wanted to talk about, but I’m not going to because I was moved to say that, but I will mention simply one. I won’t mention Philotheia this year. Ambrose of Milan. He was a catechuman, and man who had put off his baptism. His mother had been a Christian, his father wasn’t. He was governor of the city of Milan. He had come to the back of the church and he had said he wanted to gather into the Holy Orthodox Church with all his heart, but then he had remained a student into his adult years. He had, like those of our Protestant brethren, despised baptism in his youth thinking he needed to put it off till the right time. I always tell parents who say, “I think my child needs to grow up enough to understand what he’s doing before he’s baptized” – I say – “Yes, I agree. And don’t feed him until he is old enough to understand digestion.” Anyway, this man was called to the cathedral because the Arian heretics – the people who denied that Jesus Christ was true God – were trying to pull a coup. They were the ACORN people – they were trying to steal the ballot box, they were trying to rig the election and they were saying they wanted their Arian candidate to be bishop. They probably even said, “Isn’t it fair? Shouldn’t we Arians get a turn? It’s time for a change!” Ambrose came into the church when it was almost a riot, and he stepped up onto the _____ - the platform in the middle of the church – to tell the people to “Shut up!” And he was wearing his golden armor of a Roman Equestrian. As he stood there, the sun – which, in churches in Italy, tends to shine down from the East toward the altar in the West – showed down the aisle on Ambrose in his golden armor, and a dove descended from the ceiling of the church and rested on his head. And a child there in the church shouted, “Ambrose is bishop!” The whole crowd acclaimed Ambrose as bishop. I will tell you the election of Metropolitan Jonah was almost as remarkable. It was an acclamation that came by a movement of the Holy Spirit. And this man had to be baptized the next day. Then he had to be ordained as a deacon, and a priest, and a bishop, and installed as the Bishop of Milan. But he was one of the greatest bishops the church ever knew.

Three times he opposed the emperor by the grace of the Spirit. A retired Arian bishop wanted one of the little, unused churches in Milan as his headquarters when he came back from working as a missionary, teaching falsehood to the people of the north. And the emperor said, “You know, we can be generous, ecumenical.” And Ambrose said, “The altar of God is not the altar of heretics” and the emperor withdrew. Secondly, the Senate, left at Rome when Constantine went to Constantinople, wanted to keep in the middle of their assembly the altar to the god Nike, the god of victory – not the god of shoes. And, Ambrose said, “How can we put a pagan God in the heart of a Christian kingdom?” Now look around your house sometime and see how many pagan statues you’ve got around there and ask yourself what St. Ambrose would have thought about that. How many icons do you have? And the third thing was this: The emperor Theodosius got upset because a mob in Thessalonica, kind of like that mob of Greek anarchists yesterday who were burning police cars and throwing fire bombs at people, the mob in Thessalonica rioted and they killed the governor. And the emperor called them all to the Hippodrome, and he had soldiers there disguised as plain folk and on a signal they drew their swords and killed a few thousand citizens of Thessalonica. He was emperor. He was going to show them who was boss. And then he showed up the next Sunday, which was Christmas, in Milan. And he came to the church to receive Holy Communion, and Ambrose met him at the door. Ambrose wasn’t even the bishop of Rome, he was just the bishop of Milan, the bishop of the church where the emperor had gone for communion. He said, “You will not enter this church. You will not defile this temple of God, you whose hands are stained with the blood of so many.” And Theodosius stood, with his imperial robes removed, and his crown off of his head, in sackcloth for three days and three nights in the snow barefooted in front of that church, and on the third day Ambrose absolved him and received him into communion. He said, “Even emperors have to do penance for their vicious sins.”

So we honor this man today who teaches us that when God calls us, whatever position we’re in, whatever we think our lives are supposed to be, what ever ends we think we’re pursuing, whatever are our plans for tomorrow, when God calls us to carry out His plans that we say yes, and if we do so, you know he’ll give us the grace to do it well.