Forgiveness Sunday
Sermon to the children.
Children, we’re about to enter into the holy season of lent. This afternoon, we’ll have vespers, and at vespers, we’ll all ask each other for forgiveness, and we’ll all give each other forgiveness, and then we’ll begin the Great Fast. When we use the word fast, then it sounds like all we’re going to do for forty-six days is suffer. But it’s not like suffering. See, the word that’s used in most Orthodox languages, at least around the Slavs and the Romanians, is the word “post.” It comes from the word “postinia” which means “the desert.” We’re going into a desert. When Jesus was baptized, when the voice of the Father spoke from Heaven, the Spirit descended upon Him in the Jordan, and the voice cried out, “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,” then Jesus went out into the desert, and for forty days he prayed and fasted. The devil tried to test him there, didn’t he? He tested him with three things, and I’m going to talk to you first about those three things, then I’m going to talk to you about the prayer that we always say during Lent. It’s a prayer that many people here don’t know. Why? Because we never do it on Saturday or Sunday, and they’re only here on Sunday. Maybe sometimes on Saturday night.
But the devil tested Jesus first by saying, “If you are the Son of God, turn these stones into bread.” In other words he tempted Jesus to satisfy His own hunger. And Jesus said, “Man does not live on bread alone.” Okay? Also, later on by the way, after Jesus had fed the Jewish people with bread and fish by the seaside, he multiplied five loaves and two fish and he fed five-thousand, they came to him and they said, “We’ll make you king if you give us free bread.” And what did Jesus do? He said, “I am the true bread that came down from Heaven. My flesh is truly food, my blood is truly drink. Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you.” Do you know what the Jews did? They got grossed out, and left right away. All that was left was the twelve. The whole five thousand said, “How could this man give us his flesh to eat?” We know how He does it, don’t we? He gives us bread and wine in which His living body is – not dead flesh, not Jesus-meat – but Jesus’ life. And so, He was tempted by the devil to turn stone into bread.
The second thing, according to Matthew, that He was tempted with, was He was tempted to jump off the top of the temple. What does the mean? It means the devil wanted Him to do some stupid stuporific act, some kind of show off thing, some kind of big miracle, and everybody would say, “Oh, He must be the Messiah. He jumped off the top of the temple and angels caught Him in their hands.” And Jesus said, “You shall not test the Lord your God.”
And the third test he gave Him was this: He took Jesus to a mountain and he showed Him all the kingdoms of the earth. And the devil didn’t lie to Him when he said, “These all belong to me.” Because the devil got the world. How did he get it? Who did God give it to in the beginning? Who did God give His world to? … The two people whose icon’s up there? … To Adam and to Eve. And what did Adam and Eve do? They sold the world to the devil. They sold it for an apple, and they were ashamed to go and tell God they were sorry, so they just said, “Okay, we’ll take care of ourselves now, God.” And when God found them, the man blame God; he said, “The woman you gave me made me eat!” The woman blamed the serpent, “The serpent who you made, by the way God – silly fool – made me eat.” So what happened is the man made war against the woman; the woman made war against nature; and they both made war against God. So the whole world became a mixed up stupid mess. Because of Adam and Eve’s sin. But the devil got possession of it. He said, “I will give you all these kingdoms. No cross, no nails, no whip, no crown of thorns, no humiliation. Everybody will worship you. You just be my messiah. You be the devil’s messiah.” Jesus said, “Thou shall worship the Lord thy God, and serve Him only.”
And so for forty days, and then for the six days of Holy Week, we go into post, into the desert. But we don’t go into the desert sad. Adam and Eve are saints, they are saints of the Church. Why? Because after they finally saw what they had done, after their robes of light had been turned into fleshly bodies, and they saw the ugliness of them; after they had seen that they’d lost paradise, and that the man had to eat his bread by the sweat of his brow and that the woman had pain in childbirth, and that they would return to the dust from which they were taken, they wept outside of Eden. They wept at the gate as the seraphim with the flaming sword that you can see on the icon was turning all ways to guard the door. And God said to them, he said, “The seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent.” Now that’s a funny thing to say. The adults will understand when I say the word seed is semen, it means literally the sperm of the woman. We know that women don’t have seed. The seed comes from the father, doesn’t it? But He says, “The seed of the woman” because Mary was to give birth without a human father, right? “… will crush the head of the serpent,” and He also said that He would trample the gates of hell, and break down the bars of iron, and that the flaming sword would withdraw from paradise, and the people would return to Eden. So Adam and Eve went down to their graves hoping, rejoicing. That skull that you see down at the bottom of that cross over there – did you ever notice the skull? That skull represents Seth, who was Adam’s son, who took three seeds from the tree of life and put them on the tongue of his father when he buried him. And from those seeds grew the pine, and the cedar, and the Cyprus from which the cross of Jesus was made.
So, we’re going into the desert, but we want to be back in Eden, and so what are we doing right now? We’re eating like Adam and Eve in the garden. Now they didn’t have to eat bad stuff, they got to eat every plant that came up from the earth, they got to eat every fruit that grew on the trees, right? And those are the things we’re given for food during the post – good food, sweet food. In the old days when your grandparents were around, all they had around was some cabbage and potatoes, and some dried fruit because they couldn’t fly stuff in from all over the world. But you can have all kinds of fresh fruit and vegetables, healthy things, okay? We had a cardiologist here once named Darya, she was the choir director, and you know what she told me they found? If a person follows the Orthodox fast for forty days during lent, all of the plaque goes out of their veins.
So now I’m going to talk to you about a feast of fasting; being happy during lent. It’s a time to be quiet, not to think about food, not to always be nagging at your mother, not always thinking about candy and ice cream and what’s for dessert. It’s a time to think about God. About Adam and Eve who lived in the garden, and who were thrown out of the garden by their own selfishness.
And here’s the prayer that we say everyday during Lent except on Saturday and Sunday. It has three parts, like everything in Orthodoxy, it’s three. Why is everything three? Because of what? (Child answers, “because of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”). The Father, Son and Holy Spirit! Three persons! One undivided Trinity. The holy, consubstantial, life creating trinity, one essence and undivided. And so this prayer has three parts:
“On Lord and Master of life.” The word Lord is the word “kurios,” it’s the word that took the place in the Old Testament of the name of God. So “Oh God, Master of my life, take from me three things.”
“Sloth.” Now you can remember what sloth is because you know those animals that move really slowly in the trees? Sloth is laziness: not doing my work at school, not doing my homework, not doing my chores, lying around, being a couch potato. Sloth.
“Despair.” Despair is feeling down in the dumps. Now let me tell you, you can feel despair when you’re a kid. Father Joe was not a very good speller in school. I used to teach spelling – I could spell the words when I gave the kids a spelling test, but when I wrote them out, I’m the kind of guy who would spell “pharmacy” with an “F.” And every Wednesday I’d have a trial test and I’d miss the words, and I would go home and I’d be in despair. I’d say every Thursday night, “Oh God, maybe the world will end tomorrow and I won’t have to take that spelling test.” That’s what happens when we give up trying. But let me tell you: God doesn’t judge the outcome of your actions. He only judges what you’re trying to do and how hard you’re trying. And God wants you to have good intentions. Despair is giving up. There are demons that attack you at night. They say, “Tomorrow you’ve got a test you didn’t study for. Tomorrow that girl who’s mean to you is going to be at school. Tomorrow something bad is going to happen.” But then there’s the noonday demon. And that’s when in the middle of the day, for no reason at all, the devil whispers in your ear, “Life is just a bunch of trouble.” That’s because he knows that you now belong to God and he wants to make you not trust God.
Sloth, despair – there’s actually four parts –
“Lust of Power.” Lust of power means wanting to control other people. Now, at school, some of us want to be bossy. But there’s other ways of controlling people. For example, you know that your mother doesn’t have a lot of patience about some things. So she says, “Get ready. It’s time to go to soccer practice.” And you continue watching TV. “Come on get your soccer clothes on.” … “We’re gonna be late!” Now that’s power, isn’t it? You get to torture your mother; you get to get her upset. But it says in the bible, “He who troubles his own house will have the wind for his inheritance.” So what you want to do is to bring peace at home. If your sister gives you trouble, forgive her, love her, and be nice to her. If your brother picks on you, be good to him. Lust of power is want of control. We want who to be in control? Us or… who should be in control?... You’re right… Yes! God! So you want the power, but the power belongs to God.
And “Idle talk.” Now idle talk is not talk about idols. I remember once, my son right there, when he was little, he and I used to read the Psalms every night. And I read, “The idols of the pagans are vain things. Eyes they have that see not. Tongues they have that speak not. Ears they have that talk not, and no breath comes from their nostrils.” And I took him too a Chinese restaurant, and he stood up and said, “There are a lot of idols here!” And he preached a sermon to the Chinese. He said, “Idols have eyes, but they do not see! Idols have ears, but do not hear. Idols have mouths, but they don’t talk.” I don’t know what the Chinese thought, but I was very proud of him. But in this case, “idle talk” is not talk about idols. “Idle” in this case means stupid gossip. It’s just talking about people. Did you ever have a friend, and another friend, and you and the other friend talk about the friend and say bad things about her? … No!? But has it happened to you? Did they get together and say bad things about you? [An anecdotal joke here that was overwhelmed by baby chatter]. Anyway, idle words are things you say that have no meaning. They’re just chitter-chatter to be chittering and chattering.
So we want God to take away laziness, giving up hope, wanting to be in control, and speaking stupid words. And then we say, “But grant unto me the spirit of chastity” – that means purity, not thinking about dirty things – “humility.” The humility comes from the word humus. Does anyone know humus is? It’s a kind of soil. It says remember that we’re taken from the earth, right? Meekness, that’s humility is.
“… chastity, humility, patience.” That means waiting for things to happen when they’re supposed to and not trying to make them happen. Patience is waiting on God. Patience is not nagging your parents. Patience is not wanting to open your birthday presents on Wednesday when your birthday’s on Saturday. I saw a bumper sticker that said, “Lord, give me patience and give it to me right now.” Yeah! Patience.
“… chastity, humility, patience, and love.” Love is the most important part of that. Love is a divine attribute. Love is what God is. Love is wanting the best for everyone, even your enemies. You may not want your enemy to win the millionaire, neither do a lot of people. But you want him not to go to hell too, don’t you? So love means praying for your enemies.
“… chastity, humility, patience, and love give unto me.” Then we have the third paragraph: “Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own transgressions…” In other words, to know what’s wrong with you so you can learn to tell God your transgressions in confession. “… to see my own transgressions.” Do you talk to your priest at confession? Not really. There’s a Jesus icon right there so you can talk to Him, right? The priest just listens to help you out in case you think something’s wrong that’s not, or you think something’s right that’s not, or to ask you some questions.
“Help me to see my own transgressions, and not to judge my brother” - or sister – “For blessed art thou unto ages of ages.” Now, I don’t know if they’ve got that prayer for you in Sunday school, but if they don’t, I’ve got it on my desk and they can copy it for you, and I’d like you when you’re not here at a weekday service, to say that prayer at least once a day. Alright? And hope you all have a great Lent, and at Pascha it will be wonderful, and grandpa will shoot rockets over the church and we’ll have roast lamb, and we’ll sing “Christ is risen,” and we will be very happy because we will have gone through the desert and we will have come to the Promised Land.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, glory to Jesus Christ!
Glory forever!
Monday, May 18, 2009
Friday, May 15, 2009
The Sunday of the Last Judgment
Sunday of the Last Judgment
It is unusual, at least it has been, in Orthodox tradition to emphasize the sufferings of hell and eternal damnation. This thought, this image provides the sum and substance of much evangelical preaching, where accepting Jesus as one’s savior is sold as fire insurance. We don’t mention it much. The reason is because the emphasis of the ancient faith was not on how you could crawl up out of the pit and escape from the fires of hell. It was how you could be united to God and be joined to his resurrection through grace and participation in the life of his body. Our liturgy is not simply an immolation of a victim as the Roman Mass had been for many, many, many years. It’s not so much anymore. It is rather, a celebration of the resurrection of Him who was the Paschal victim.
And yet today, the church directs us – on a Sunday, on a day of the Resurrection – to place our thoughts on the awful and dreadful possibility of eternal damnation, of everlasting death, of pain without remission, without amelioration, unending. And that is because the Church wants us on this day, this week before we enter into the Great Fast, to contemplate that our faith, our religion, is not a hobby, not a prejudice, not a particular choice we’ve made of several possible choices, but that our faith is real, actual, and has consequences.
We are not here today to rejoice in the thought that some might enter into eternal damnation, but to contemplate the worst pain we’ve ever experienced in our lives and then to multiply that pain to every organ, every limb, every inch of our bodies, and then to anticipate that pain growing worse and worse, but never ceasing, never remitting, without hope. Even for the person who is suffering unto mortal death, there is the hope that death will come and put the physical pain to an end. But the pain of everlasting damnation is physical as well, for it is in our resurrected bodies that we are threatened with the awful possibilities of eternal suffering.
And who are they who will be the recipients of this suffering? Will it be the Hindu, or Buddhist, who have never had Christ preached to them in a way that makes it possible for them to accept Him? One certainly doubts that. Of course we’re told that if you accept the Lord Jesus Christ, and believe that God raised Him from the dead, you’ll be saved, right? But that doesn’t meant that everybody who says that “Jesus is Christ, and God raised Him from the dead” is saved. Certainly, the devil now knows who Jesus is. He believes that God raised Him from the dead, to his eternal consternation for he thought when he had captured Him in hell, that it could hold Him captive. He thought he could possess, he could digest God in the belly of hell, but God gave him a bellyache. To paraphrase what John Chrysostom says, Hell swallowed up a body, and it gave it a terrible case of indigestion. He broke the bonds of death.
And so it’s not just simply believing something, it’s believing in Jesus Christ and that means living according to Jesus Christ’s commandments, His law and His teachings. You know there are many people for whom Orthodoxy is not a faith at all, it’s simply their chosen superstition. They turn to their icons when life is rough. In the breach they observe the fasts, and they go to confession once a year because it’s expected of them. They drag out their Orthodox clothing – their wedding garment – and put it on on Sunday morning and go to church for awhile, and maybe they can even stay in church for half the liturgy. Then they go home and take it off and go back and live the way they’ve lived all the other days of the week. It’s simply a magical charm, simply a token to them. These people experience what it was that Marx spoke of when he said, “Religion is the opiate of the people.” He didn’t mean that religion is a drug that puts you in a hallucinatory state. He meant, Marx believed, religion is what killed the pain of the people so that they didn’t know that life was rough. And Marx is absolutely right. He’s right about that because if anyone really thought about the nonsense of human existence without God having planned it, without God intervening into it, without God easing our suffering, giving meaning to our meaninglessness, if they ever thought of themselves as what they would be without God as their creator and redeemer, that is to say, very intelligent animals who unlike the other animals are able to be aware of their present predicament and of their future sufferings, as condemned men and women sentenced to death by a slow and painful death or a quick and sudden death, but ultimately grinding their way to death.
T.S. Eliot said, ‘I was a communist in the 1920s and then one day I woke up and said, ‘Why would anyone believe in a doctrine that offers the promise that a thousand years from now, one’s ancestors would look back on him as some lemur in the line of his evolution?” that’s the only meaning that can be offered by life without God intervening into it. And so these people who allow themselves to be doped up, they’ll accept the opiate part of Christianity. They say, “Oh well, if I die” – not “when I die” by they – but “if I die, I believe I’ll go to heaven.” But if you ask them, “What about going to hell?” “Oh, you know, you don’t really believe that do you,” or, “That’s for really bad people. Hitler and Stalin and those guys.” But let me tell you that it’s the same Lord who told us about Heaven – about the many orders of angels, about the many mansions in His Father’s house, and who promised us that we could be with Him where He is at the right hand of the Father – who also described the lake of fire, the place of destruction where the worm does cease and the fire is not quenched.
Brothers and sisters, if there’s a sin that makes a person worthy of losing the grace God has given him, it’s handling lightly the gift of the blood of God. It’s taking Christ’s cross on our shoulder and then putting it in the closet for the rest of our lives because it really is not an attractive ornament and a pretty heavy burden for us. It is pretending to be a believer. It is making believe that we are Orthodox, holding in the back of our minds some silly thought like, “Well, maybe I will win the lottery and there really is a heaven.” That is the really dangerous position. It is not being an adulterer, a murderer, a fornicator, or a homosexual pervert that is the most terrible thing. It is the sin against the Spirit of God. It is calling good “evil,” and evil “good.” It is embracing Jesus, not with tears like Mary Madgalene, not wiping His feet with our hair, but it is approaching Jesus like Judas – giving Him a kiss and then saying, “Now go away. I’ll put you aside for a while God because I can’t really enjoy life with you in the middle of it. I can’t do the things I wanna do if I see your face looking at me while I do them.”
Remember the Grand Inquisitor, I believe in Brothers Karamazov, the Grand Inquisitor in Spain. Christ comes and He appears, and He’s brought to the Grand Inquisitor. And he says, “I know you can’t say anything because you can’t add any words to what you’ve already said. So let me tell you, I know who you are, but you have to die again. You’re inconvenient. You get in our way. Remain a plastic Jesus on our dashboards, or an icon in the corner, but don’t get in the middle of our lives.”
What was it, today, that the Lord spoke to those people who are called the goats, who are placed on His left hand and who are told to depart to the place that was never prepared for human beings – it was prepared for the Devil and his angels? He didn’t say, “Depart from me because you hated, or because you stole, or because lied, or because you committed adultery, or you didn’t honor your father and mother , or didn’t keep the Sabbath holy.” He says, “Depart from me because you didn’t do the good things you were supposed to do. Because, when I was hungry, you didn’t care if I starved to death. When was thirsty, you didn’t care if I dehydrated and died by the road. When I was naked, you didn’t care if exposure caused me to experience frostbite or if I succumbed to the elements. When I was sick, or I was in prison, you ignored me.” And they said, “Lord, we wouldn’t have done that. How can you say such a thing? If we’d gotten a personal note from you, ‘Jesus S. Christ says, “I’m hungry, bring me some food,”’ we would have brought it to you. We certainly would have brought you water. We would have given you clothing. We would have visited you.” And the Lord says, “In as much as you did not think to do it to the least of my brethren, then you failed to do it to me.” It is in our complacency that is found the possibility, the awful possibility, of our damnation. It is in handling lightly the sacred things of God. We have been ordained, everyone of us as priests, anointed with Holy Chrism, made kings and high priests in Jesus’ kingship and high priesthood, and when we throw that aside like a bunch of old rags, we place our souls in danger.
And so, brothers and sisters, let’s understand that every human being who leaves this life – except for God’s mother – every human being, even the saints whom we commemorate, has to pass through the grave into Hades and behold the terrors of hell, and see the fire and the pre-damnation suffering of those disposed to hate God and who deny his love, before they enter into paradise. That’s why we pray on the third and ninth day, and on the fortieth day, because, although they are outside of time, in our temporal way of thinking of things, we know there are ordeals that they endure beholding the terrors of hell, beholding the delights of paradise, making choices, not of their own but by the grace of our prayers.
And so today, on this Sunday of the Last Judgment, I want you to be scared for just a minute, I want you to contemplate for a moment that your time has come. The Son of Man has come on the clouds of heaven, the trumpets sound, we’ve all been caught up and we’re standing before Him. The six psalms that are read at the beginning of Matins are being read by the archangel, and in the brief time, the twinkling of an eye, each of us is passing in front of Him, and you look into His eyes, and what you see there is corruption reflected in His eyes, and hypocrisy on your part – that you pretended to be a disciple; that you claimed to be a believer, that you even wore the token of His passion on your body, but that really you were a worshiper of possessions, of power, of prestige, of comfort, and of human pleasure. You were really, one of those donkeys, one of those animals who having an angel’s soul in a physical body despised the joys of heaven. And you hear from Him, “Depart from me evildoers,” and you find yourselves now anticipating, not surgery in which the doctor’s going to pierce your body and cause you pain, not a disease that’s going to cause your flesh to weaken but from which you can gain relief through medication, surgery, and prosthesis, but you’re going to receive pain that’s going to start bad and never end. Contemplate that. Turn with fear away from hypocrisy. Quit pretending to be an Orthodox believer. Quit lying about what you are and what you do. Turn your face steadfastly toward God, like the children in the desert following the pillar of fire; not like later when they turned their back toward the rising sun and walked away from paradise because they were afraid of the difficulties of entering into it. As the psalms say, “Their bones were dried up in the desert, their bodies were left in the sand.” Hear the words, then, of David. Hear the words God speaks, “If today you hear My voice, harden not your heart in the time of tribulation, in the time of testing. In the desert for forty years Israel tested Me, they tried Me, and saw My ways.” If today you hear His voice, soften your heart, let Him enter into it, embrace Him in spirit and truth, turn your life around, cast from it all doubt, all fear, all anxiety, embrace His saving love and turn your back on the fires of hell.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, glory to Jesus Christ!
Glory forever!
It is unusual, at least it has been, in Orthodox tradition to emphasize the sufferings of hell and eternal damnation. This thought, this image provides the sum and substance of much evangelical preaching, where accepting Jesus as one’s savior is sold as fire insurance. We don’t mention it much. The reason is because the emphasis of the ancient faith was not on how you could crawl up out of the pit and escape from the fires of hell. It was how you could be united to God and be joined to his resurrection through grace and participation in the life of his body. Our liturgy is not simply an immolation of a victim as the Roman Mass had been for many, many, many years. It’s not so much anymore. It is rather, a celebration of the resurrection of Him who was the Paschal victim.
And yet today, the church directs us – on a Sunday, on a day of the Resurrection – to place our thoughts on the awful and dreadful possibility of eternal damnation, of everlasting death, of pain without remission, without amelioration, unending. And that is because the Church wants us on this day, this week before we enter into the Great Fast, to contemplate that our faith, our religion, is not a hobby, not a prejudice, not a particular choice we’ve made of several possible choices, but that our faith is real, actual, and has consequences.
We are not here today to rejoice in the thought that some might enter into eternal damnation, but to contemplate the worst pain we’ve ever experienced in our lives and then to multiply that pain to every organ, every limb, every inch of our bodies, and then to anticipate that pain growing worse and worse, but never ceasing, never remitting, without hope. Even for the person who is suffering unto mortal death, there is the hope that death will come and put the physical pain to an end. But the pain of everlasting damnation is physical as well, for it is in our resurrected bodies that we are threatened with the awful possibilities of eternal suffering.
And who are they who will be the recipients of this suffering? Will it be the Hindu, or Buddhist, who have never had Christ preached to them in a way that makes it possible for them to accept Him? One certainly doubts that. Of course we’re told that if you accept the Lord Jesus Christ, and believe that God raised Him from the dead, you’ll be saved, right? But that doesn’t meant that everybody who says that “Jesus is Christ, and God raised Him from the dead” is saved. Certainly, the devil now knows who Jesus is. He believes that God raised Him from the dead, to his eternal consternation for he thought when he had captured Him in hell, that it could hold Him captive. He thought he could possess, he could digest God in the belly of hell, but God gave him a bellyache. To paraphrase what John Chrysostom says, Hell swallowed up a body, and it gave it a terrible case of indigestion. He broke the bonds of death.
And so it’s not just simply believing something, it’s believing in Jesus Christ and that means living according to Jesus Christ’s commandments, His law and His teachings. You know there are many people for whom Orthodoxy is not a faith at all, it’s simply their chosen superstition. They turn to their icons when life is rough. In the breach they observe the fasts, and they go to confession once a year because it’s expected of them. They drag out their Orthodox clothing – their wedding garment – and put it on on Sunday morning and go to church for awhile, and maybe they can even stay in church for half the liturgy. Then they go home and take it off and go back and live the way they’ve lived all the other days of the week. It’s simply a magical charm, simply a token to them. These people experience what it was that Marx spoke of when he said, “Religion is the opiate of the people.” He didn’t mean that religion is a drug that puts you in a hallucinatory state. He meant, Marx believed, religion is what killed the pain of the people so that they didn’t know that life was rough. And Marx is absolutely right. He’s right about that because if anyone really thought about the nonsense of human existence without God having planned it, without God intervening into it, without God easing our suffering, giving meaning to our meaninglessness, if they ever thought of themselves as what they would be without God as their creator and redeemer, that is to say, very intelligent animals who unlike the other animals are able to be aware of their present predicament and of their future sufferings, as condemned men and women sentenced to death by a slow and painful death or a quick and sudden death, but ultimately grinding their way to death.
T.S. Eliot said, ‘I was a communist in the 1920s and then one day I woke up and said, ‘Why would anyone believe in a doctrine that offers the promise that a thousand years from now, one’s ancestors would look back on him as some lemur in the line of his evolution?” that’s the only meaning that can be offered by life without God intervening into it. And so these people who allow themselves to be doped up, they’ll accept the opiate part of Christianity. They say, “Oh well, if I die” – not “when I die” by they – but “if I die, I believe I’ll go to heaven.” But if you ask them, “What about going to hell?” “Oh, you know, you don’t really believe that do you,” or, “That’s for really bad people. Hitler and Stalin and those guys.” But let me tell you that it’s the same Lord who told us about Heaven – about the many orders of angels, about the many mansions in His Father’s house, and who promised us that we could be with Him where He is at the right hand of the Father – who also described the lake of fire, the place of destruction where the worm does cease and the fire is not quenched.
Brothers and sisters, if there’s a sin that makes a person worthy of losing the grace God has given him, it’s handling lightly the gift of the blood of God. It’s taking Christ’s cross on our shoulder and then putting it in the closet for the rest of our lives because it really is not an attractive ornament and a pretty heavy burden for us. It is pretending to be a believer. It is making believe that we are Orthodox, holding in the back of our minds some silly thought like, “Well, maybe I will win the lottery and there really is a heaven.” That is the really dangerous position. It is not being an adulterer, a murderer, a fornicator, or a homosexual pervert that is the most terrible thing. It is the sin against the Spirit of God. It is calling good “evil,” and evil “good.” It is embracing Jesus, not with tears like Mary Madgalene, not wiping His feet with our hair, but it is approaching Jesus like Judas – giving Him a kiss and then saying, “Now go away. I’ll put you aside for a while God because I can’t really enjoy life with you in the middle of it. I can’t do the things I wanna do if I see your face looking at me while I do them.”
Remember the Grand Inquisitor, I believe in Brothers Karamazov, the Grand Inquisitor in Spain. Christ comes and He appears, and He’s brought to the Grand Inquisitor. And he says, “I know you can’t say anything because you can’t add any words to what you’ve already said. So let me tell you, I know who you are, but you have to die again. You’re inconvenient. You get in our way. Remain a plastic Jesus on our dashboards, or an icon in the corner, but don’t get in the middle of our lives.”
What was it, today, that the Lord spoke to those people who are called the goats, who are placed on His left hand and who are told to depart to the place that was never prepared for human beings – it was prepared for the Devil and his angels? He didn’t say, “Depart from me because you hated, or because you stole, or because lied, or because you committed adultery, or you didn’t honor your father and mother , or didn’t keep the Sabbath holy.” He says, “Depart from me because you didn’t do the good things you were supposed to do. Because, when I was hungry, you didn’t care if I starved to death. When was thirsty, you didn’t care if I dehydrated and died by the road. When I was naked, you didn’t care if exposure caused me to experience frostbite or if I succumbed to the elements. When I was sick, or I was in prison, you ignored me.” And they said, “Lord, we wouldn’t have done that. How can you say such a thing? If we’d gotten a personal note from you, ‘Jesus S. Christ says, “I’m hungry, bring me some food,”’ we would have brought it to you. We certainly would have brought you water. We would have given you clothing. We would have visited you.” And the Lord says, “In as much as you did not think to do it to the least of my brethren, then you failed to do it to me.” It is in our complacency that is found the possibility, the awful possibility, of our damnation. It is in handling lightly the sacred things of God. We have been ordained, everyone of us as priests, anointed with Holy Chrism, made kings and high priests in Jesus’ kingship and high priesthood, and when we throw that aside like a bunch of old rags, we place our souls in danger.
And so, brothers and sisters, let’s understand that every human being who leaves this life – except for God’s mother – every human being, even the saints whom we commemorate, has to pass through the grave into Hades and behold the terrors of hell, and see the fire and the pre-damnation suffering of those disposed to hate God and who deny his love, before they enter into paradise. That’s why we pray on the third and ninth day, and on the fortieth day, because, although they are outside of time, in our temporal way of thinking of things, we know there are ordeals that they endure beholding the terrors of hell, beholding the delights of paradise, making choices, not of their own but by the grace of our prayers.
And so today, on this Sunday of the Last Judgment, I want you to be scared for just a minute, I want you to contemplate for a moment that your time has come. The Son of Man has come on the clouds of heaven, the trumpets sound, we’ve all been caught up and we’re standing before Him. The six psalms that are read at the beginning of Matins are being read by the archangel, and in the brief time, the twinkling of an eye, each of us is passing in front of Him, and you look into His eyes, and what you see there is corruption reflected in His eyes, and hypocrisy on your part – that you pretended to be a disciple; that you claimed to be a believer, that you even wore the token of His passion on your body, but that really you were a worshiper of possessions, of power, of prestige, of comfort, and of human pleasure. You were really, one of those donkeys, one of those animals who having an angel’s soul in a physical body despised the joys of heaven. And you hear from Him, “Depart from me evildoers,” and you find yourselves now anticipating, not surgery in which the doctor’s going to pierce your body and cause you pain, not a disease that’s going to cause your flesh to weaken but from which you can gain relief through medication, surgery, and prosthesis, but you’re going to receive pain that’s going to start bad and never end. Contemplate that. Turn with fear away from hypocrisy. Quit pretending to be an Orthodox believer. Quit lying about what you are and what you do. Turn your face steadfastly toward God, like the children in the desert following the pillar of fire; not like later when they turned their back toward the rising sun and walked away from paradise because they were afraid of the difficulties of entering into it. As the psalms say, “Their bones were dried up in the desert, their bodies were left in the sand.” Hear the words, then, of David. Hear the words God speaks, “If today you hear My voice, harden not your heart in the time of tribulation, in the time of testing. In the desert for forty years Israel tested Me, they tried Me, and saw My ways.” If today you hear His voice, soften your heart, let Him enter into it, embrace Him in spirit and truth, turn your life around, cast from it all doubt, all fear, all anxiety, embrace His saving love and turn your back on the fires of hell.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, glory to Jesus Christ!
Glory forever!
Sunday of the Prodigal Son
Sunday of the Prodigal Son
Children’s sermon
Okay, I’m going to tell you the story again that you heard in the Gospel, and while I’m telling the story what I’d like for you to do is for you to be thinking also about some story you know where someone ran away – and hopefully where they came back.
Jesus tells about two brothers, and we are assuming from the way that he tells it that they are about 18, 19, 20 years old. You became an adult in the Jewish world, when you were 12 or 13, you could get married then. But you didn’t become on your own till you were thirty. It’s a pretty good system actually – you’ve got some of the privileges but your dad can still swat you upside the head if he needed to. Now one of these boys went to his dad and said, “I want you to divide up everything I’m going to get when you die. Everything I’m going to get when you die, I want that part now. Half of everything you’ve got.” It was the same thing as saying to his dad, “You’re not dying fast enough.” And so, the dad – he had no obligation, by the way; this boy had no right to anything until his father had passed away, but he claimed it. He just couldn’t wait to be king, right? And so when the dad divided up the money – he had to probably sell half the farm, and half of the farm equipment, and half of the livestock, half of the barns, and when he had done that, then he gave his son his half of it. And then, when he gave him half of it, the boy waited three or four days. He’d probably been planning this a long time. He wanted to party on, dude. He wanted to have a good time. He wanted to let his hair down. He wanted to rock and roll. He wanted to bar hop. He wanted no rules – no one telling him what time to get up, or what time to go to bed. He couldn’t do this near home. You see, his buddies, the guys he grew up with, they liked to have a good time too, and they worked on farms too. But they were Jewish kids. They knew the rules. They knew you didn’t mess around with girls. They knew you didn’t get drunk; you didn’t eat pork, right? Those were the rules. So, he had to go to a place where he didn’t know anybody and no one knew him. A far off country where they worshipped idols. Now I don’t know whether he went to where they worshipped Marduk, or where they worshipped Baal, or whether he went to where they worshipped Molek. All those gods, by the way, were worshipped by having babies killed and their blood poured on the statues. Isn’t that awful? And you know, in most places in the world, there’s nothing you do at all that’s not religious. Even a party is religious, so if you had a party, there was always a statue of a pagan god there – a great big idol with a golden head. Every party he went to was offered to a demon. It said that matins this morning: “He paid his money to the demons.” Also, when you bought meat in another country, that meat didn’t come from the butcher shop, it came from the temple of the Gods. The priests of Marduk, and of Isis, and Osiris, and of Baal, they cut up the meat, and sold it in the temple so it was a religious act to eat that meat – it was a sacrifice to an idol. And this is what this kid did for a long time, and he could do it for a long time because he had a lot of money, right?
Meanwhile, his dad and his brother are back their trying to make a living off half the farm. And the dad somehow knows where the boy is, but he doesn’t go and bring him back. He can’t, because the dad in this story represents God and the boy represents you. And God can invite us, and he can long for us, but he can’t force us because the greatest gift God gave you is his image, and that is the ability to make choices. The longer you stay away from him, the harder your heart gets. I worry when anybody misses church for three weeks because I have found, and I later found that the fathers found, that after three weeks of not going to church, most people don’t miss it as much anymore. The devil lets them think, “See, you missed three weeks and nothing bad happened to you. What would happen if you missed four?” And it takes something really big to get you back, doesn’t it?
Anyway, the kid spent all his money and he thought, “I’ll get a job. I can still live here in pagan land.” His money went pretty fast because all his friends let him throw the parties for him. But he couldn’t get a job because there was a recession, an economic crisis. And nobody was hiring, and there was a famine and food prices went up, and he had to go out and be a pig feeder. Even the pigs weren’t getting slop. They were just getting these buds that grew on trees – coriander seeds, okay? Pods. Because they were trying to keep the pigs alive, they couldn’t make them fat because there was no extra food. And you know what? He would have liked to have eaten those pods that grew on the tree, but they were for the pigs. They weren’t for him. He was starving. And he said, “I will get up. I will go back to my father and I will say to my father, ‘I’ve sinned against heaven and against you and I am not worthy anymore to be called your son. Let me be a hired servant.’” His father saw him coming a long way off. Once he saw him turned around – that word we use “metanoia,” or some us say “repent,” means stop going the wrong way, turn around, and start going the right way, backward. Turn around and go home. And so, once his dad saw him coming back he was able to run to him a long way off, threw his arms around his neck. He didn’t say, “You see, you nasty kid! You took this money, you wasted it, you wasted our lives!” He simply said, “Go get my most beautiful clothing for him. Get some nice soft slippers and put them on his feet. Put a ring with the family initial with it on his hand because we’re bringing him back into the family, and kill the fatted calf. We’re going to have a big celebration, a party. Because my son was dead and he is alive again. He was lost and now he’s found.”
Now who was sad in the story, by the way? His brother! He said, “Dad, you never had a party for me. And now this son of yours is back, and you’ve killed the fatted calf.” And his father said, “You don’t understand, it’s not just because I’m having a good day. It’s because your brother was dead. He wasn’t completely dead, but he was dying. His soul was dying, his heart was dying. And now he’s alive again! I had lost him, and I’ve found him again.” That’s how Jesus feels when a person who’s done something bad turns around and comes back to him.
I know a story about down here in Globeville. Almost a hundred years ago – maybe about 80 years ago – there was a girl named Mary, and there was a boy named Bill. And Mary and Bill were talking and they were about 9 years old. And Mary said, “Every Wednesday night my mother makes piroshki. I hate piroshki.” And Bill said, “Every Wednesday my mother makes fried potatoes and onions, and I hate fried potatoes and onions.” See, people really fasted then. Don’t tell me they didn’t keep the fast, but they did. This is the way I heard the story. So they said, “Let’s go tell our parents, ‘You’re going to have to stop this, or we’re going to leave.” So Mary went to her mom and she put her hands on her hips, and she said, “Dorothy” – that’s her mom; she called her by her first name! – “Dorothy, this business of piroshki every Wednesday, it’s gotta stop.” And Bill went and told his mom something like that. And Mary’s mom took some bread and put some butter on it, and she took two dimes and a little bandana, and she wrapped it up and put it on a broken broomstick. And she said to her, “Okay, when you get where you’re going, you call me and let me know that you’re safe.” And so the two kids went across the railroad tracks. They went all the way from Globeville to Pollock Valley and they laid down there in the weeds, and the looked, and they said, “They’re gonna come after us. They’re gonna come get us. We know they are. They’re gonna get scared. They’re gonna be sorry.” But it got cold, and the day went on, and the grass was wet, and nobody came from the houses. And finally it got to be dark, and the kids said, “What are we going to do?” So they went back, and they didn’t say, “Mom, Dad, we’ve sinned against heaven, and against you.” They said, “We hope you’ve learned your lesson,” but that was because they were nine, right?
Any of you know a story about somebody who ran off from responsibility, or ran away but got in trouble, or ran away to get in trouble? Anyone know a story like that? (Silence). How about a little lion, who said, “I just can’t wait to be king”? And then his dad got killed – right. Did he go back for his dad’s funeral? Did he cry with his mom and his family? Did he help take over and run the pride? (Kids – “No”) What did he do? He ran off and met a big fat hog and a little kind of rat, and the lived together, and they said – what did they say? How do you say that phrase? – Hakuna Matata. He had no worries, no worries man. We have everything here in the forest. And he forgot about everything he loved, and everybody he cared for. And his father couldn’t come and get him, and his father wouldn’t have because that’s impossible. But somebody did come looking for him. It was Nala, and also his priest – that baboon, right? Conked him on the head with a stick. Now if I did that to you, what would you do? I have a stick too. Better than his… Anyway, he went back and did what he was supposed to do.
You see, all kinds of stories are like the Bible stories. As one writer tells us, there’s only two spiels, only two stories, people tell: The Devil’s story, and God’s story. The Devil’s story is about everybody doing their own thing, ripping off each other, being irresponsible, mean, bad, evil, going to the dark side, and getting away with it. And God’s story is that someday, sooner or later, you’ve gotta answer for what you do.
When did – Luke Skywalker’s father, his first name is… Anakin. Anakin means “again.” It means “family again” – ana – again in Greek, kin – family. When did Anakin become Anakin, when did he come back to his family? At the last minute of his life, right? It’s too bad he didn’t enjoy it earlier. He started out as a good man. But he got tempted didn’t he? He left his church, he killed some of the children of that church, didn’t he? And he became Darth Vader – which means Dark Invader – the dark man, the dark intention that invades our hearts. But he came back, right?
And how about… Let’s see, do any of you know the story of Pinnochio? Okay, tell me that. (Child speaks). Yes, his father made him didn’t he? Like God made you – not to boss around, but to love. But Pinnochio wanted to play, didn’t he? He wanted to party instead of going to school. He ended up at a big fair, a carnival, where all the kids ate candy all day and they went on rides, but it was actually the devil’s trap, wasn’t it? They were turning them into what? Yes. Donkeys. It shows that when you follow the devil, you are a donkey, an ass, a fool, because the Devil pays only one kind of salary: pain, suffering, and eternal damnation. The wages of sin is death.
I was thinking these people. I thought about Anakin, and about Simba and Pinnochio, even Adam and Eve in the garden, who, when they had sinned, if they’d gone to God and said, “God, we ate the apple! We ate the fruit! We’re sorry!” They still would have had to be punished, but it wouldn’t have been the same punishment, would it? But instead, they ran off into the trees, the forest, and said, “We can hide from God here right?”
Well, we’re about to start Lent, that’s why we have these stories. Jesus tells us three little short stories together:
He says a man who was a shepherd lost a lamb, and what did he do when he lost his lamb? Who can tell me? Did he say, “Oh well, the lamb can find it’s way back home or wolves can eat it? What did he do when he lost his lamb? (Child answering). He went and got it, didn’t he? (Yes). He put it on his shoulders and brought it back. That stole the Bishop wears represents the lost sheep that the good shepherd brings back. It’s always made out of wool to show that.
And then he tells about a woman who lost one of her dowry coins that her husband had given her – or that she’d given to him and he’d given back to her when they got married. Well, she got down in the dirt on the floor of her house till she found her coin.
But both those people went out and looked, didn’t they? Cuz the good shepherd is Jesus, and he’s always calling us back. And the woman with the coin is the Holy Spirit who’s always trying to beat on your heart and open it up to him again. But in the third story, it’s God the Father. He’s not going to come after you, you after to come back to him
Here’s the point: That each one of us, when we sin, has two choices: We can either right at that point tell God that we’re sorry and then come and stand in His house, the church, and say before the priest to God in the icon, “This is what I’ve done,” and have God forgive us and welcome us back, put our clean shoes back on our feet, our clean robe back on us, the ring back on our hand, and feed us with his life. We can either do that, or we can run off and hide. We can go hide in the woods like Adam and Eve. We can go into another country and say, “Who needs God anyway?” You know, the people who turn away from religion then say bad things about their faith because they’re trying to convince themselves and they’re trying to convince other people as well. They become not only the prey of the Devil, they become the tools of the Devil. So, come to lent, remember, whenever anything’s on your heart, a bad thing you’ve done, don’t let it sit there because then you’ll get used to it. You won’t be sorry about it. You’ll even decide it’s not really so bad. But confess it immediately to God, and when you come to church you confess it.
Now, I’ll tell you one more story to help you probably remember part of this. There was a Sunday school class once and the teacher told the story of the Prodigal Son that I just told you: How the boy went off and lived in the country, how he lived a riotous life, how he lost his money, how he had to feed pigs, how he came back and his father welcomed him and had a party for him. At the end, the teacher asked the same question I asked you, “Who was sad at the end of the story?” And you said, “The older brother.” When this teacher asked the question, “Who was sad at the end of the story?” one girl raise her hand and said, “The fatted calf.”
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Glory to Jesus Christ!
****Before Communion, Father interrupted the liturgy with an addendum to the sermon. I didn’t get to record it, but I did talk to him later and I’ll try to get the gist of it here***
One of the children asked why the boys in Pinnochio were turned into donkeys, and I gave him a stupid answer. It’s important not to brush off kids questions like that, it was a good question and it deserves a better answer that I gave. The boys were being transformed into the image of the carnal desires they were chasing after. When we chase after those desires, we become more and more like our animal part. You see, we have an angel part, and an animal part. Samboli turns the boys into donkeys so that he can sell them as beasts of burden which is a like how Satan turns us into slaves by tempting us with things we desire.
Children’s sermon
Okay, I’m going to tell you the story again that you heard in the Gospel, and while I’m telling the story what I’d like for you to do is for you to be thinking also about some story you know where someone ran away – and hopefully where they came back.
Jesus tells about two brothers, and we are assuming from the way that he tells it that they are about 18, 19, 20 years old. You became an adult in the Jewish world, when you were 12 or 13, you could get married then. But you didn’t become on your own till you were thirty. It’s a pretty good system actually – you’ve got some of the privileges but your dad can still swat you upside the head if he needed to. Now one of these boys went to his dad and said, “I want you to divide up everything I’m going to get when you die. Everything I’m going to get when you die, I want that part now. Half of everything you’ve got.” It was the same thing as saying to his dad, “You’re not dying fast enough.” And so, the dad – he had no obligation, by the way; this boy had no right to anything until his father had passed away, but he claimed it. He just couldn’t wait to be king, right? And so when the dad divided up the money – he had to probably sell half the farm, and half of the farm equipment, and half of the livestock, half of the barns, and when he had done that, then he gave his son his half of it. And then, when he gave him half of it, the boy waited three or four days. He’d probably been planning this a long time. He wanted to party on, dude. He wanted to have a good time. He wanted to let his hair down. He wanted to rock and roll. He wanted to bar hop. He wanted no rules – no one telling him what time to get up, or what time to go to bed. He couldn’t do this near home. You see, his buddies, the guys he grew up with, they liked to have a good time too, and they worked on farms too. But they were Jewish kids. They knew the rules. They knew you didn’t mess around with girls. They knew you didn’t get drunk; you didn’t eat pork, right? Those were the rules. So, he had to go to a place where he didn’t know anybody and no one knew him. A far off country where they worshipped idols. Now I don’t know whether he went to where they worshipped Marduk, or where they worshipped Baal, or whether he went to where they worshipped Molek. All those gods, by the way, were worshipped by having babies killed and their blood poured on the statues. Isn’t that awful? And you know, in most places in the world, there’s nothing you do at all that’s not religious. Even a party is religious, so if you had a party, there was always a statue of a pagan god there – a great big idol with a golden head. Every party he went to was offered to a demon. It said that matins this morning: “He paid his money to the demons.” Also, when you bought meat in another country, that meat didn’t come from the butcher shop, it came from the temple of the Gods. The priests of Marduk, and of Isis, and Osiris, and of Baal, they cut up the meat, and sold it in the temple so it was a religious act to eat that meat – it was a sacrifice to an idol. And this is what this kid did for a long time, and he could do it for a long time because he had a lot of money, right?
Meanwhile, his dad and his brother are back their trying to make a living off half the farm. And the dad somehow knows where the boy is, but he doesn’t go and bring him back. He can’t, because the dad in this story represents God and the boy represents you. And God can invite us, and he can long for us, but he can’t force us because the greatest gift God gave you is his image, and that is the ability to make choices. The longer you stay away from him, the harder your heart gets. I worry when anybody misses church for three weeks because I have found, and I later found that the fathers found, that after three weeks of not going to church, most people don’t miss it as much anymore. The devil lets them think, “See, you missed three weeks and nothing bad happened to you. What would happen if you missed four?” And it takes something really big to get you back, doesn’t it?
Anyway, the kid spent all his money and he thought, “I’ll get a job. I can still live here in pagan land.” His money went pretty fast because all his friends let him throw the parties for him. But he couldn’t get a job because there was a recession, an economic crisis. And nobody was hiring, and there was a famine and food prices went up, and he had to go out and be a pig feeder. Even the pigs weren’t getting slop. They were just getting these buds that grew on trees – coriander seeds, okay? Pods. Because they were trying to keep the pigs alive, they couldn’t make them fat because there was no extra food. And you know what? He would have liked to have eaten those pods that grew on the tree, but they were for the pigs. They weren’t for him. He was starving. And he said, “I will get up. I will go back to my father and I will say to my father, ‘I’ve sinned against heaven and against you and I am not worthy anymore to be called your son. Let me be a hired servant.’” His father saw him coming a long way off. Once he saw him turned around – that word we use “metanoia,” or some us say “repent,” means stop going the wrong way, turn around, and start going the right way, backward. Turn around and go home. And so, once his dad saw him coming back he was able to run to him a long way off, threw his arms around his neck. He didn’t say, “You see, you nasty kid! You took this money, you wasted it, you wasted our lives!” He simply said, “Go get my most beautiful clothing for him. Get some nice soft slippers and put them on his feet. Put a ring with the family initial with it on his hand because we’re bringing him back into the family, and kill the fatted calf. We’re going to have a big celebration, a party. Because my son was dead and he is alive again. He was lost and now he’s found.”
Now who was sad in the story, by the way? His brother! He said, “Dad, you never had a party for me. And now this son of yours is back, and you’ve killed the fatted calf.” And his father said, “You don’t understand, it’s not just because I’m having a good day. It’s because your brother was dead. He wasn’t completely dead, but he was dying. His soul was dying, his heart was dying. And now he’s alive again! I had lost him, and I’ve found him again.” That’s how Jesus feels when a person who’s done something bad turns around and comes back to him.
I know a story about down here in Globeville. Almost a hundred years ago – maybe about 80 years ago – there was a girl named Mary, and there was a boy named Bill. And Mary and Bill were talking and they were about 9 years old. And Mary said, “Every Wednesday night my mother makes piroshki. I hate piroshki.” And Bill said, “Every Wednesday my mother makes fried potatoes and onions, and I hate fried potatoes and onions.” See, people really fasted then. Don’t tell me they didn’t keep the fast, but they did. This is the way I heard the story. So they said, “Let’s go tell our parents, ‘You’re going to have to stop this, or we’re going to leave.” So Mary went to her mom and she put her hands on her hips, and she said, “Dorothy” – that’s her mom; she called her by her first name! – “Dorothy, this business of piroshki every Wednesday, it’s gotta stop.” And Bill went and told his mom something like that. And Mary’s mom took some bread and put some butter on it, and she took two dimes and a little bandana, and she wrapped it up and put it on a broken broomstick. And she said to her, “Okay, when you get where you’re going, you call me and let me know that you’re safe.” And so the two kids went across the railroad tracks. They went all the way from Globeville to Pollock Valley and they laid down there in the weeds, and the looked, and they said, “They’re gonna come after us. They’re gonna come get us. We know they are. They’re gonna get scared. They’re gonna be sorry.” But it got cold, and the day went on, and the grass was wet, and nobody came from the houses. And finally it got to be dark, and the kids said, “What are we going to do?” So they went back, and they didn’t say, “Mom, Dad, we’ve sinned against heaven, and against you.” They said, “We hope you’ve learned your lesson,” but that was because they were nine, right?
Any of you know a story about somebody who ran off from responsibility, or ran away but got in trouble, or ran away to get in trouble? Anyone know a story like that? (Silence). How about a little lion, who said, “I just can’t wait to be king”? And then his dad got killed – right. Did he go back for his dad’s funeral? Did he cry with his mom and his family? Did he help take over and run the pride? (Kids – “No”) What did he do? He ran off and met a big fat hog and a little kind of rat, and the lived together, and they said – what did they say? How do you say that phrase? – Hakuna Matata. He had no worries, no worries man. We have everything here in the forest. And he forgot about everything he loved, and everybody he cared for. And his father couldn’t come and get him, and his father wouldn’t have because that’s impossible. But somebody did come looking for him. It was Nala, and also his priest – that baboon, right? Conked him on the head with a stick. Now if I did that to you, what would you do? I have a stick too. Better than his… Anyway, he went back and did what he was supposed to do.
You see, all kinds of stories are like the Bible stories. As one writer tells us, there’s only two spiels, only two stories, people tell: The Devil’s story, and God’s story. The Devil’s story is about everybody doing their own thing, ripping off each other, being irresponsible, mean, bad, evil, going to the dark side, and getting away with it. And God’s story is that someday, sooner or later, you’ve gotta answer for what you do.
When did – Luke Skywalker’s father, his first name is… Anakin. Anakin means “again.” It means “family again” – ana – again in Greek, kin – family. When did Anakin become Anakin, when did he come back to his family? At the last minute of his life, right? It’s too bad he didn’t enjoy it earlier. He started out as a good man. But he got tempted didn’t he? He left his church, he killed some of the children of that church, didn’t he? And he became Darth Vader – which means Dark Invader – the dark man, the dark intention that invades our hearts. But he came back, right?
And how about… Let’s see, do any of you know the story of Pinnochio? Okay, tell me that. (Child speaks). Yes, his father made him didn’t he? Like God made you – not to boss around, but to love. But Pinnochio wanted to play, didn’t he? He wanted to party instead of going to school. He ended up at a big fair, a carnival, where all the kids ate candy all day and they went on rides, but it was actually the devil’s trap, wasn’t it? They were turning them into what? Yes. Donkeys. It shows that when you follow the devil, you are a donkey, an ass, a fool, because the Devil pays only one kind of salary: pain, suffering, and eternal damnation. The wages of sin is death.
I was thinking these people. I thought about Anakin, and about Simba and Pinnochio, even Adam and Eve in the garden, who, when they had sinned, if they’d gone to God and said, “God, we ate the apple! We ate the fruit! We’re sorry!” They still would have had to be punished, but it wouldn’t have been the same punishment, would it? But instead, they ran off into the trees, the forest, and said, “We can hide from God here right?”
Well, we’re about to start Lent, that’s why we have these stories. Jesus tells us three little short stories together:
He says a man who was a shepherd lost a lamb, and what did he do when he lost his lamb? Who can tell me? Did he say, “Oh well, the lamb can find it’s way back home or wolves can eat it? What did he do when he lost his lamb? (Child answering). He went and got it, didn’t he? (Yes). He put it on his shoulders and brought it back. That stole the Bishop wears represents the lost sheep that the good shepherd brings back. It’s always made out of wool to show that.
And then he tells about a woman who lost one of her dowry coins that her husband had given her – or that she’d given to him and he’d given back to her when they got married. Well, she got down in the dirt on the floor of her house till she found her coin.
But both those people went out and looked, didn’t they? Cuz the good shepherd is Jesus, and he’s always calling us back. And the woman with the coin is the Holy Spirit who’s always trying to beat on your heart and open it up to him again. But in the third story, it’s God the Father. He’s not going to come after you, you after to come back to him
Here’s the point: That each one of us, when we sin, has two choices: We can either right at that point tell God that we’re sorry and then come and stand in His house, the church, and say before the priest to God in the icon, “This is what I’ve done,” and have God forgive us and welcome us back, put our clean shoes back on our feet, our clean robe back on us, the ring back on our hand, and feed us with his life. We can either do that, or we can run off and hide. We can go hide in the woods like Adam and Eve. We can go into another country and say, “Who needs God anyway?” You know, the people who turn away from religion then say bad things about their faith because they’re trying to convince themselves and they’re trying to convince other people as well. They become not only the prey of the Devil, they become the tools of the Devil. So, come to lent, remember, whenever anything’s on your heart, a bad thing you’ve done, don’t let it sit there because then you’ll get used to it. You won’t be sorry about it. You’ll even decide it’s not really so bad. But confess it immediately to God, and when you come to church you confess it.
Now, I’ll tell you one more story to help you probably remember part of this. There was a Sunday school class once and the teacher told the story of the Prodigal Son that I just told you: How the boy went off and lived in the country, how he lived a riotous life, how he lost his money, how he had to feed pigs, how he came back and his father welcomed him and had a party for him. At the end, the teacher asked the same question I asked you, “Who was sad at the end of the story?” And you said, “The older brother.” When this teacher asked the question, “Who was sad at the end of the story?” one girl raise her hand and said, “The fatted calf.”
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Glory to Jesus Christ!
****Before Communion, Father interrupted the liturgy with an addendum to the sermon. I didn’t get to record it, but I did talk to him later and I’ll try to get the gist of it here***
One of the children asked why the boys in Pinnochio were turned into donkeys, and I gave him a stupid answer. It’s important not to brush off kids questions like that, it was a good question and it deserves a better answer that I gave. The boys were being transformed into the image of the carnal desires they were chasing after. When we chase after those desires, we become more and more like our animal part. You see, we have an angel part, and an animal part. Samboli turns the boys into donkeys so that he can sell them as beasts of burden which is a like how Satan turns us into slaves by tempting us with things we desire.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Sunday of Zaccheus
Sunday of Zaccheus
Zaccheus, the outcast, the publican, the Jew who had become a contract tax collector for the Roman occupying army, who not only served the foreign enemy but who also collected taxes and handled gentile pagan money, Zaccheus was a man who learned to take satisfaction in what it was that he had, but he mourned all that he didn’t have. His life was centered around the assignment of assessment, of levies and taxes, to various citizens so that the Roman government would be placated, so he could hand over what he had collected to the governor and then take out his share. And he lived in comfort, probably clothed in soft clothing and eating very well, but he found himself both out of communion with God and with his own people, both a traitor to his faith and to his nation, we would say a pretty deplorable person. But that’s not the way that he appears in the gospel.
He hears that Our Lord is coming to Jericho, and he has this little dream, this thought: Perhaps in some way, the fact that Jesus, who many said was the messiah, who some proclaimed to even be a divine oracle, perhaps this Jesus could say a word that he would hear that would show him the way out of his predicament. You see, when things are bad, when you feel threatened, when your strength fails, when the markets go down, when the person next to you is fired and you don’t know how long it will be till you’re fired, you do one of two things: You can eat, drink, and be merry – start celebrating the fore-feast of the Super Bowl on Sunday morning; or you can turn to God and allow him to comfort you, to relieve you of your burden, to give you joy and hope, and to provide peace for you so that you can say, “The Lord is with me, therefore I will not fear, I will not be afraid.” Well, Zaccheus had a hope that that was something he could receive, and so he came out to the street as Jesus was passing by.
Now we know that a lot of things happened on that entrance into Jericho. We know about the blind man who proclaimed our Lord to be the messiah, who saw with eyes of his soul what these people could not see with the eyes of their body. We know about the woman who later, with the issue of blood, touched the hem of His garment and was healed, and Jairus whose daughter was raised to life, but Zaccheus couldn’t get close enough to even see Jesus. He was small. The Romanian word for small is meek, and I remember that two years ago Andrew received an award at school. It said he received the Humility Award, and he said to me, “What is humility?” and I said, “It’s like being humble,” and he said, “But what does humble mean?” And I said, “You know, like ‘blessed are the meek,’” and he said, “Didn’t I tell you I was tiny?” Well, Zaccheus was tiny. He couldn’t see Jesus, and the big tall people wouldn’t move out of the way. They said, “Oh you tax collector, you jerk! Who do you think you are? We’re not going to give you fronts. You just get away from us.” So he got an idea: he figured out what road Jesus was going to come down and he ran ahead – down a side-street, up another one – and there, overhanging the road, was a sycamore tree. And he climbed up in the sycamore tree and he sat there on the branch and he said, “Now I can get a good look at him.” As Jesus comes by, Jesus looks up and he sees him there, and he addresses him by name. He had known his name since he was conceived in his mother’s womb; he had known about him since before creation, and he said, “Zaccheus, hurry up! Come down! I’m going to have supper at your house today!”
What does it mean that Jesus was going to have supper at his house? No good Jew would eat with a sinner, would they? They wouldn’t go into their house, they might become unclean. Especially not a tax collector – somebody who handled the coins and collected the taxes for the gentile dogs. No, you wouldn’t go near him. You were too good. But Jesus said, “I’m going to have supper with you today!” And the people, all around, instead of saying, “Hey! Zaccheus is being changed. The Rabbi is going to go to his house. Maybe he’ll stop sinning” – and by the way, it doesn’t say anywhere in the Gospel for today that Zaccheus was a sinner. He broke the rules of the Jewish nation, but it doesn’t say that he stole anything or cheated anyone. It’s the people standing around who decided, “He’s rich, so he must be a robber, right? We need to raise his taxes cuz he’s rich. He must have done something wrong to get that money.” So, they all start murmuring. They say, “Look! Jesus is going to be the guest of a man who’s a sinner.”
I remember one time we had a man in this church. He had not been born Orthodox. He was born a Uniate, and in college he had converted and he had become so Orthodox that he judged everyone else. He stood up at parish council once and said, “I move we outlaw all liquor at this church,” and one of the parish council members looked at him and said, “Are you a Protestant?” Anyway, this man told me I was a bad priest. Why? Because I’d go to the houses of people who were sinners. And I pointed out to him that was true, I had even come to his house.” And then I said, “Do you realize that two times in the bible when people reject Jesus, two times, the words they use are, ‘He’s gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner’? Do you understand what kind of judgment that brings down on your head, to use the same words the people who condemned Christ used to judge the people who were coming to him for mercy and forgiveness?”
Zaccheus stands up and he says, “Lord, I’m going to give half of everything I have to the poor.” Now this was not admission of any kind of guilt at all. It was an admission of a life that had been changed. All he had had before now was his money. It had been his idol; it had been his God; it had been is prepossession; it’s the only thing he had given any thought to. So how does he free himself from it? By giving it away. “I give half of all my possessions to the poor.” And then he says, “If I have defrauded any many, I will restore it four fold.” He didn’t say, “And the people I’ve defrauded, I will restore it four fold.” There’s no evidence at all that he cheated anyone, except to the extent that the Roman tax system itself was a fraud, like most tax systems are. He said, “If I have a cheated anyone, I will restore it fourfold.” Now this was the Jewish requirement, the law. If you took something by fraud, you had to pay it back four times. And so, this man puts himself, right now at this moment, in the context of being a good Jew, and Jesus said, “Today salvation has come to this man’s house. For this man who is a son of Abraham has received me, and the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was being lost.”
This is the lesson that we always have the Sunday before we begin the Triodion. Next week will be the Pharisee and the Publican. It’s the last lesson. Next week when I come to your house and I sprinkle, I always say, “Lord who was baptized by John in the Jordan and who entered into the house of Zaccheus, has brought salvation” because these are two points that we identify at this time that have to do with blessing. So today, climb down from your sycamore tree. Quit looking at Jesus from a distance. Run up to him. Let him embrace you. Let him into the house of your soul. Give up the things that enslave you. Turn way from the things that hold you back from God. Welcome the Lord into your house, and receive salvation from him who came to seek and to save that which was being lost.
Zaccheus, the outcast, the publican, the Jew who had become a contract tax collector for the Roman occupying army, who not only served the foreign enemy but who also collected taxes and handled gentile pagan money, Zaccheus was a man who learned to take satisfaction in what it was that he had, but he mourned all that he didn’t have. His life was centered around the assignment of assessment, of levies and taxes, to various citizens so that the Roman government would be placated, so he could hand over what he had collected to the governor and then take out his share. And he lived in comfort, probably clothed in soft clothing and eating very well, but he found himself both out of communion with God and with his own people, both a traitor to his faith and to his nation, we would say a pretty deplorable person. But that’s not the way that he appears in the gospel.
He hears that Our Lord is coming to Jericho, and he has this little dream, this thought: Perhaps in some way, the fact that Jesus, who many said was the messiah, who some proclaimed to even be a divine oracle, perhaps this Jesus could say a word that he would hear that would show him the way out of his predicament. You see, when things are bad, when you feel threatened, when your strength fails, when the markets go down, when the person next to you is fired and you don’t know how long it will be till you’re fired, you do one of two things: You can eat, drink, and be merry – start celebrating the fore-feast of the Super Bowl on Sunday morning; or you can turn to God and allow him to comfort you, to relieve you of your burden, to give you joy and hope, and to provide peace for you so that you can say, “The Lord is with me, therefore I will not fear, I will not be afraid.” Well, Zaccheus had a hope that that was something he could receive, and so he came out to the street as Jesus was passing by.
Now we know that a lot of things happened on that entrance into Jericho. We know about the blind man who proclaimed our Lord to be the messiah, who saw with eyes of his soul what these people could not see with the eyes of their body. We know about the woman who later, with the issue of blood, touched the hem of His garment and was healed, and Jairus whose daughter was raised to life, but Zaccheus couldn’t get close enough to even see Jesus. He was small. The Romanian word for small is meek, and I remember that two years ago Andrew received an award at school. It said he received the Humility Award, and he said to me, “What is humility?” and I said, “It’s like being humble,” and he said, “But what does humble mean?” And I said, “You know, like ‘blessed are the meek,’” and he said, “Didn’t I tell you I was tiny?” Well, Zaccheus was tiny. He couldn’t see Jesus, and the big tall people wouldn’t move out of the way. They said, “Oh you tax collector, you jerk! Who do you think you are? We’re not going to give you fronts. You just get away from us.” So he got an idea: he figured out what road Jesus was going to come down and he ran ahead – down a side-street, up another one – and there, overhanging the road, was a sycamore tree. And he climbed up in the sycamore tree and he sat there on the branch and he said, “Now I can get a good look at him.” As Jesus comes by, Jesus looks up and he sees him there, and he addresses him by name. He had known his name since he was conceived in his mother’s womb; he had known about him since before creation, and he said, “Zaccheus, hurry up! Come down! I’m going to have supper at your house today!”
What does it mean that Jesus was going to have supper at his house? No good Jew would eat with a sinner, would they? They wouldn’t go into their house, they might become unclean. Especially not a tax collector – somebody who handled the coins and collected the taxes for the gentile dogs. No, you wouldn’t go near him. You were too good. But Jesus said, “I’m going to have supper with you today!” And the people, all around, instead of saying, “Hey! Zaccheus is being changed. The Rabbi is going to go to his house. Maybe he’ll stop sinning” – and by the way, it doesn’t say anywhere in the Gospel for today that Zaccheus was a sinner. He broke the rules of the Jewish nation, but it doesn’t say that he stole anything or cheated anyone. It’s the people standing around who decided, “He’s rich, so he must be a robber, right? We need to raise his taxes cuz he’s rich. He must have done something wrong to get that money.” So, they all start murmuring. They say, “Look! Jesus is going to be the guest of a man who’s a sinner.”
I remember one time we had a man in this church. He had not been born Orthodox. He was born a Uniate, and in college he had converted and he had become so Orthodox that he judged everyone else. He stood up at parish council once and said, “I move we outlaw all liquor at this church,” and one of the parish council members looked at him and said, “Are you a Protestant?” Anyway, this man told me I was a bad priest. Why? Because I’d go to the houses of people who were sinners. And I pointed out to him that was true, I had even come to his house.” And then I said, “Do you realize that two times in the bible when people reject Jesus, two times, the words they use are, ‘He’s gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner’? Do you understand what kind of judgment that brings down on your head, to use the same words the people who condemned Christ used to judge the people who were coming to him for mercy and forgiveness?”
Zaccheus stands up and he says, “Lord, I’m going to give half of everything I have to the poor.” Now this was not admission of any kind of guilt at all. It was an admission of a life that had been changed. All he had had before now was his money. It had been his idol; it had been his God; it had been is prepossession; it’s the only thing he had given any thought to. So how does he free himself from it? By giving it away. “I give half of all my possessions to the poor.” And then he says, “If I have defrauded any many, I will restore it four fold.” He didn’t say, “And the people I’ve defrauded, I will restore it four fold.” There’s no evidence at all that he cheated anyone, except to the extent that the Roman tax system itself was a fraud, like most tax systems are. He said, “If I have a cheated anyone, I will restore it fourfold.” Now this was the Jewish requirement, the law. If you took something by fraud, you had to pay it back four times. And so, this man puts himself, right now at this moment, in the context of being a good Jew, and Jesus said, “Today salvation has come to this man’s house. For this man who is a son of Abraham has received me, and the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was being lost.”
This is the lesson that we always have the Sunday before we begin the Triodion. Next week will be the Pharisee and the Publican. It’s the last lesson. Next week when I come to your house and I sprinkle, I always say, “Lord who was baptized by John in the Jordan and who entered into the house of Zaccheus, has brought salvation” because these are two points that we identify at this time that have to do with blessing. So today, climb down from your sycamore tree. Quit looking at Jesus from a distance. Run up to him. Let him embrace you. Let him into the house of your soul. Give up the things that enslave you. Turn way from the things that hold you back from God. Welcome the Lord into your house, and receive salvation from him who came to seek and to save that which was being lost.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
St. Sava and the Sunday of the Syro-Phonecian Woman
Today is the Sunday of the Syro-Phonecian woman, this Sunday precedes the Sunday of Zaccheus that leads us to the preparatory Sundays before the Great Fast. Jesus, last week, had restored sight to a blind man who had recognized him in the eye of his heart, in his true mind, in his nous, to be what his own disciples did not know him to be – that is the son of David, the Messiah. And now, he goes into the coast of Tyre and Sidon. Why did he go out of Israel? Was it so he could insult the Syro-Phonecian woman? No, indeed. It was to show that the power that he exercised in Israel upon the Jewish people was also the power that he would exercise throughout the entire world.
So he comes, and this woman comes up to him, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” And he doesn’t answer her. He wants to hear from her more, what does she have to say? She says, “Lord help me.” The conversation that he has with her has been interpreted by some rabbis as a terribly insulting conversation. He said, “It is not proper to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” But is that what he really said? You know, in Greek there’s no question mark. As you read the conversation, it sounds not like a conversation between Jesus and the crowd, but an intimate conversation between Jesus and the woman. He is saying to her, “Is it proper to take the bread that belongs to the children – the house of Israel – and to give it to the dogs?” He’s not calling her a dog. In Jewish idiom, all gentiles were dogs. “Gentile dog” was a compound sort of like “Damned Yankee.” And so, when he says to her, “Is it proper – is it possible – to take the bread of the children of Israel, these people who don’t even understand what I’m doing and to give it to the gentile dogs?” She comes back with a very astute comment, “If the children are throwing their bread on the floor, then can’t the dogs take it?” That’s what she’s saying. “If the children of Israel aren’t accepting you, and I am, then shouldn’t I be able to benefit from what they’re not choosing?” The Lord says, “Great is your faith,” and He heals her daughter immediately, and He shows that His grace flows over, that even though he was sent first to the lost sheep of Israel, that His power, and His mercy, and His healing will extend to all the nations.
And so today, we are here, a gathering, a multitude of gentile dogs, of people who are not the descendents of Abraham after the flesh, but who have attained more than that, who have been grafted into the tree of Abraham, who have been made the true Israelites. But we come from a motley crowd. We are not a people who are monolithic in our culture, in our nationality, in our origin. God has taken us from many nations, from many cultures, from all of the colors of human flesh which was formed from the dust of the earth, and he has gathered us together in one assembly, in one ecclesia, one gather called out from among the nations to be a chosen generation, a royal priesthood.
So, today we celebrate St. Gregory the Theologian, who was an Archbishop of Constantinople, but at the same time we celebrate St. Sava of Serbia, the first archbishop, a holy man, a man who could have been the king of his own country, who was cultivated by his father to succeed to the throne but who exchanged that earthly glory of the robes of a monastic, and then brought back to the Serbian people and through them to the Russian and Ukranian people, the treasures of the Law of God translated into the Slavonic language, and also brought back to us our beautiful Typicon of St. Sava’s of Palestine – which is why our service is a little different from the Greeks, because ours comes from Jerusalem, not second hand from some Greek town. So, we celebrate all the saints, the new martyrs who have died in Russia, at the very same time. And Romanian and Serbian ladies work together to make a wonderful feast in honor of St. Sava. And we remember when St. Sava died – when he caught pneumonia blessing the waters of the lake – and then died a week later on the leave-taking, it was to resolve a conflict in Bulgaria – to bring peace to the Bulgarian people. And we understand that what we really in is not a diminution of our culture by bringing together and mixing all of these wonderful gifts that God has given, distributed to the many nations, gathered together here in one community; but we have is that Greeks can have St. Sava for their own now, and Serbs can have St. Gregory, and the Romanians can have both of them, and we can all have St. Philothea, and St. Dmitru Bazarabov because they have all become our relatives, our kin, our family. They have all become our protectors, our intercessors.
So, today we glory in God’s mercy but I wanted you to think for a moment today, as you stand and pray, utter a prayer for the thousands of Serbian men, and some women, who came to this country, who took the jobs laboring in the mines; those who were shot down in cold blood by the state militia during the coal field wars, and those who died of black lung disease, those who were never able to return to their home land as they’d promise, but were never able to marry and leave children – remember that those people were the people who built this church here. But they have left very few children behind because their lives were difficult, because their struggle was hard. Very hard. Many many of them died very young. Pray for them. We always bless their graves at the cemetery, buried among the railroad tracks there. There all also some in Eerie, some in Lafayette, and up in Leadville, and down in Trinidad. So, pray for those people and remember that every year, no matter how cold it was, how snowy it was, no matter how dangerous the roads, these men and their wives if they had them, and their children would load into wagons with animals or Model T Fords and they would go down those mountain roads – sometimes at night a little boy would have to sit on the hood of the car with his flashlight to show where the road ahead was, snow blowing in his face – to come to Globeville, to gather here in this place, this place where the great Tesla, the great scientist, prayed together with them at one time. They came here to celebrate a saint who had touched their lives, and melted their hearts, and made them feel the love of God.
So today we honor St. Sava and we ask that by his prayers, we also, of many nations, of people who were gentile dogs, of people walking in darkness but have been brought to see the light and have been made children of Israel by water and the spirit, have been made more than that, have been made divine, have been made to have union with God himself, how we are made into one family; and lets ask our dear patron, Sava, to make us all feel a new burst of love and to be able to embrace each other in Christian fellowship as a family, to lay aside all of the foolish and trifling arguments and disagreements which throughout decades my have arisen among some of us, and to again stand before God and have the group photo taken in heaven of this household, this family, this Eucharistic assembly today, in peace and harmony and joy, with our father Sava standing behind us, embracing us like a great grandfather, holding us all warmly in his arms.
In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Glory to Jesus Christ.
Glory forever
So he comes, and this woman comes up to him, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” And he doesn’t answer her. He wants to hear from her more, what does she have to say? She says, “Lord help me.” The conversation that he has with her has been interpreted by some rabbis as a terribly insulting conversation. He said, “It is not proper to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” But is that what he really said? You know, in Greek there’s no question mark. As you read the conversation, it sounds not like a conversation between Jesus and the crowd, but an intimate conversation between Jesus and the woman. He is saying to her, “Is it proper to take the bread that belongs to the children – the house of Israel – and to give it to the dogs?” He’s not calling her a dog. In Jewish idiom, all gentiles were dogs. “Gentile dog” was a compound sort of like “Damned Yankee.” And so, when he says to her, “Is it proper – is it possible – to take the bread of the children of Israel, these people who don’t even understand what I’m doing and to give it to the gentile dogs?” She comes back with a very astute comment, “If the children are throwing their bread on the floor, then can’t the dogs take it?” That’s what she’s saying. “If the children of Israel aren’t accepting you, and I am, then shouldn’t I be able to benefit from what they’re not choosing?” The Lord says, “Great is your faith,” and He heals her daughter immediately, and He shows that His grace flows over, that even though he was sent first to the lost sheep of Israel, that His power, and His mercy, and His healing will extend to all the nations.
And so today, we are here, a gathering, a multitude of gentile dogs, of people who are not the descendents of Abraham after the flesh, but who have attained more than that, who have been grafted into the tree of Abraham, who have been made the true Israelites. But we come from a motley crowd. We are not a people who are monolithic in our culture, in our nationality, in our origin. God has taken us from many nations, from many cultures, from all of the colors of human flesh which was formed from the dust of the earth, and he has gathered us together in one assembly, in one ecclesia, one gather called out from among the nations to be a chosen generation, a royal priesthood.
So, today we celebrate St. Gregory the Theologian, who was an Archbishop of Constantinople, but at the same time we celebrate St. Sava of Serbia, the first archbishop, a holy man, a man who could have been the king of his own country, who was cultivated by his father to succeed to the throne but who exchanged that earthly glory of the robes of a monastic, and then brought back to the Serbian people and through them to the Russian and Ukranian people, the treasures of the Law of God translated into the Slavonic language, and also brought back to us our beautiful Typicon of St. Sava’s of Palestine – which is why our service is a little different from the Greeks, because ours comes from Jerusalem, not second hand from some Greek town. So, we celebrate all the saints, the new martyrs who have died in Russia, at the very same time. And Romanian and Serbian ladies work together to make a wonderful feast in honor of St. Sava. And we remember when St. Sava died – when he caught pneumonia blessing the waters of the lake – and then died a week later on the leave-taking, it was to resolve a conflict in Bulgaria – to bring peace to the Bulgarian people. And we understand that what we really in is not a diminution of our culture by bringing together and mixing all of these wonderful gifts that God has given, distributed to the many nations, gathered together here in one community; but we have is that Greeks can have St. Sava for their own now, and Serbs can have St. Gregory, and the Romanians can have both of them, and we can all have St. Philothea, and St. Dmitru Bazarabov because they have all become our relatives, our kin, our family. They have all become our protectors, our intercessors.
So, today we glory in God’s mercy but I wanted you to think for a moment today, as you stand and pray, utter a prayer for the thousands of Serbian men, and some women, who came to this country, who took the jobs laboring in the mines; those who were shot down in cold blood by the state militia during the coal field wars, and those who died of black lung disease, those who were never able to return to their home land as they’d promise, but were never able to marry and leave children – remember that those people were the people who built this church here. But they have left very few children behind because their lives were difficult, because their struggle was hard. Very hard. Many many of them died very young. Pray for them. We always bless their graves at the cemetery, buried among the railroad tracks there. There all also some in Eerie, some in Lafayette, and up in Leadville, and down in Trinidad. So, pray for those people and remember that every year, no matter how cold it was, how snowy it was, no matter how dangerous the roads, these men and their wives if they had them, and their children would load into wagons with animals or Model T Fords and they would go down those mountain roads – sometimes at night a little boy would have to sit on the hood of the car with his flashlight to show where the road ahead was, snow blowing in his face – to come to Globeville, to gather here in this place, this place where the great Tesla, the great scientist, prayed together with them at one time. They came here to celebrate a saint who had touched their lives, and melted their hearts, and made them feel the love of God.
So today we honor St. Sava and we ask that by his prayers, we also, of many nations, of people who were gentile dogs, of people walking in darkness but have been brought to see the light and have been made children of Israel by water and the spirit, have been made more than that, have been made divine, have been made to have union with God himself, how we are made into one family; and lets ask our dear patron, Sava, to make us all feel a new burst of love and to be able to embrace each other in Christian fellowship as a family, to lay aside all of the foolish and trifling arguments and disagreements which throughout decades my have arisen among some of us, and to again stand before God and have the group photo taken in heaven of this household, this family, this Eucharistic assembly today, in peace and harmony and joy, with our father Sava standing behind us, embracing us like a great grandfather, holding us all warmly in his arms.
In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Glory to Jesus Christ.
Glory forever
January 18, 2009
You know, even in the church calendar there are mistakes after all these centuries. One of the problems is when we scrunch the readings of Luke into the pre-Lenten, there’s a question of what you read. Our calendar was right, what was sent to me over the internet was wrong. It had the gospel reading of the Syro-Phonecian woman. You will hear that next week. But oddly enough you’ll hear the same reading from the apostle Paul next week that you heard this week, but we’ll talk about that then.
What I’m going to talk about today is the Gospel and the real significance of this particular gospel at this time. We’re now back to the beginning of the cycle of Pascha. The three Sundays before we begin are the Lenten Triodion, the Pre-Lenten Sundays start, are dedicated to the blind man, the Syro-Phonecian woman, and then to Zaccheus – the little man who climbed up into the sycamore tree to see Jesus. The thing that unites the blind man and the Syro-Phonecian woman is the knowledge they had through faith that the people surrounding them did not have because they were living in their minds, in their brains, not in their hearts. One was a Jew, one was a Gentile, but both of them recognized Jesus as divine, and as the Savior. Both of them came to Him and both of them were rebuked. When the blind man heard that Jesus was coming, he cried out, “Son of David, have mercy on me” – that is, “Messiah, have mercy on me” – and the crowd told him, “Shut up. Be quiet. This is an important Rabbi, but don’t make a fool of yourself.” And when the Syro-Phonecian woman came up and threw herself at Jesus feet and said, “Lord, have mercy on me,” the disciples wanted to push her away. She was a gentile dog. But both of them insisted, both of them persisted, and both of them received what they wanted. When we gave up Pascha, when we had the last Sunday of Pascha, we celebrated it with the Feast of the Man Born Blind. You remember that every year. The man whose eyes Jesus created out of clay and told him to go wash in the pool of Salom. And then we begin the cycle that brings us to the Triodion, the Pre-Lenten times, we begin with the blind man again. This blind man, this man who cried out, “Son of David, have mercy on me,” was actually the only one there who had sight.
You see that now many of our teachers are reminding us, as Father Alithios Webber pointed out, we’re deceived into believing that we are our brains, that our brains are us. But our brains are simply a database, and that database is corrupt. It’s full of all kinds of garbage, it’s been attacked by all kinds of viruses, all kinds of program deviations. And so it makes us think things, and about things, that we have no business thinking about. I was thinking today, “Is anybody going to notice that the hem on this vestment is too long? I wonder how coffee hour will go. Are the kids going to do a good job for St. Sava’s day?” All these little thoughts intruded on my prayer life, and probably two dozen more, some of which, if I told you, you would be ashamed of me, so I won’t. but these are called by the Fathers “logosmoi.” They are little words uttered in our ear by the demon, by the deceiver, to make us think we are thinking. They are little words that distract us and occupy our minds. Words about self-importance, or about self-deprecation; words that exalt us in our own hearts, or depress us and drive us down, so that we feel we are “lower than a toad’s belly.” These logosmoi are just the distractions that flow into our ears. They make us think things are important that are not. They make us fear. They make us occupy ourselves with thoughts of acquiring entertainment or stimulations that when we acquire them we wonder why we did and we don’t really want them anyway. They make us want things we don’t want. And they’re assisted now, because we are bombarded by the availability of all sorts of information. Why do you suppose God confounded the tongues at the Tower of Babel? It is because, he said, “if people could all communicate about every idea that they have, they’ll be able to devise all manner of evil. It will be harmful for themselves. I have to divide them up, spread them out.” But now with the computer, all kinds of knowledge and ignorance, all kinds of wisdom and foolishness, all kinds of beauty and ugliness come into our house from every corner in the world. Sometimes we seek it out, sometimes it just throws itself in your face, but we have available to us logosmoi in the billions. Little evil thoughts, little self deceptions.
But the blind man was not looking at Jesus with the eyes of body, because they were blinded. He’s different from the man born blind because he had seen once. He had been born with vision and had lost, and so he knew what it was to see. But he cried out, seeing in his heart that this man coming to him was the messiah, he proclaimed him as the children did on palm Sunday when nobody else was willing to conjure up the gumption to identify our Lord as what he really was – the savior. “Son of God, have pity on me,” he cries out, and Jesus comes to him and He heals him.
You know today we celebrate two saints: Athanasius, who was a deacon at the council of Nicaea but became patriarch of Alexandria, and Cyril who later followed him as patriarch of Alexandria. And we have in these two men, these men who looked at the world through the eye of their soul, two heroes who stood up against everything that just made sense because it wasn’t true. Athanasius was dealing with Arius. Arius was a brilliant orator. He was also a pretty good song writer – would have probably had three songs in the top ten today – that’s why the church stopped letting people make up hymns like the Protestants have in their hymnals because heresy has a funny way of sneaking its way in between the truth. Arius said, “Look. Everybody knows that there had to have originally been a monad – that is, on little ball of stuff, God stuff. And that then that monad emanated the Son and the Holy Spirit, that’s why we call it Father. And so, there has to have been a time when Jesus didn’t even exist. He came into existence at the first instance of time, He wasn’t eternal. There is no trinity, because,” he said, “all these Greeks, all these people who were trained in Platonism, the whole world knows that everything started out with a little ball of oneness and the emanations came from it. Let’s not be foolish. Even if we want to believe that Jesus is eternal,” he said, “doesn’t it make more sense to get people into the Church by catering to their delusions.” So his only doctrine was an antidoctrine – there was a time, he said, when God the Son did no exist. And Arius spread this heresy, and all the Platonists who couldn’t accept the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as the undivided, consubstantial, eternal trinity, said, “Oh! We’ll go to church now. We’ll be baptized. This is a lot like what we believe. Thank you for changing your teaching so that we could accept it.” And Athanasius said, “No! This is heresy. It’s not true. God the Holy Trinity created the world, but there was not a time when the Trinity did not exist. The world is not the product of some mad monad who needed people to obey and worship him. The world is the product of a loving community of persons whose love overflowed so much that they made others to share that love with.”
And then, having defeated Arius, the Arians came back with what was called semi-Arianism: “Well, lets say just that it’s possible there was a time when God the Son did not exist.”
And lots of people in the Church said, “Athanasius, you’re causing lots of trouble. Our pews are full. Our offering plates are running over. Why don’t you just shut up? If people want to believe that there was a time when the Son of God did not exist, let them believe that. We can believe what we want to. NO! It’s not true. We’re not going to say that the Son is homoousios – that is of one substance with the Father, we’re going to say that He is homoiousios – the same or similar substance with the Father, and that’ll make these people happy.”
And Athanasius said, “I refuse. I refuse to compromise with heresy. I refuse to look through the eye of my logosmoi. I want to look through the eyes of my heart at my God, who is the eternal Trinity.” So he was thrown out of communion. The church did that to him! The bishops were more interested in the money; they were more interested in the people in the pews or standing up in church in those days. They were so interested in power and importance that they buried the truth. So, he spent most of life in exile until finally, in his old age, he was called back, vindicated by the monks who lived in the dessert – not very well educated, but not distracted – the monks who knew that there was never a time when God the Son did not exist, that God the Son was of one essence with the Father. And so he was restored, and vindicated.
And then along came a patriarch of Constantinople. This guy was a, well, we’ll say he was a woman hater. And the empress, who was the ruler of the empire at that time, came to him and said, “Patriarch Nestorius, on the day of my coronation, I intend to enter the Holy Altar and receive communion at the Holy Table.” Do you know women can do that? When we had deaconesses – who were not woman deacons, they were women who ministered to women – the deaconesses received communion at the Holy Table. They didn’t serve in church, but they came into the altar for communion. When an empress is crowned, she receives communion at the altar. Why? Because she’s sharing in the ruling on the earth of the priesthood of Christ.
And he said to her, “You can’t do that.”
“Well, why not?”
“Well you’re a filthy woman.”
And she said, “What?!? I am a virgin.”
And he said, “You’re still a filthy woman.”
She said, “Was the Theotokos a filthy woman?”
And he said, “She’s not Theotokos; she’s not ‘God-bearer.’ She’s just Christotokos- Christ-bearer.”
See, he looked through the eyes of his prejudices and he distorted and twisted the faith to fit his bad attitude. So, he tried to teach that Our Lady only carried the human nature of Christ. Now, what does that mean? It means that Jesus couldn’t be truly and completely God and truly and completely man, right? If she only carried his human nature, where was his divine nature? Hovering above her? Hiding out in her skirts? I don’t know. But it was a stupid, and asinine idea. But because he saw with the eyes of his body, because of that, he created a whole heresy. And it was Cyril, the successor of Athanasius, who stood up and said, “Enough with the blasphemy.” They summoned a council, the Council of Ephesus. And they declared that our Holy Lady, the Mother of God, is Theotokos God-bearer. That she not only gave birth to Him that was God, but she carried in her womb ___ who is God, that she became the temple, the arc of the covenant, the habitation of the divine on earth. And so, what we need to do, brothers and sisters, as we face the questions that come to us – spiritual questions: How often should I pray? How much money should I give? Should I be kind to this beggar? Should read my morning and evening prayers – and practical questions like: How should I act toward others? What should I think of myself? How am I going to deal with my sickness? How am I going to deal with my children? We need to look at these things from the eyes of the heart, and not listen to the logosmoi, the little words the devil whispers to us: “you don’t need church. You can pray anywhere. That’s not really the body of Christ, we just say it is. Those icons are just holy pictures, they’re not windows into heaven.” The happens to us then when we do what’s wrong to the eyes of our heart is that the logosmoi, when they die, when these dead ideas fall out of our head when we’ve entertained them for a while, the form like bat manure in a cave, a collection of garbage inside of us, and they cover up the eye of our soul. So then let us come to Jesus and fall down before Him say, “The eye of our heart is blind Lord, at least it’s distorted, warped by the bat guano surrounding it. Son of David, Messiah, have mercy on us,” and hear Him say, “Thy faith hath made thee whole. Go in peace.”
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Glory to Jesus Christ.
Glory forever
What I’m going to talk about today is the Gospel and the real significance of this particular gospel at this time. We’re now back to the beginning of the cycle of Pascha. The three Sundays before we begin are the Lenten Triodion, the Pre-Lenten Sundays start, are dedicated to the blind man, the Syro-Phonecian woman, and then to Zaccheus – the little man who climbed up into the sycamore tree to see Jesus. The thing that unites the blind man and the Syro-Phonecian woman is the knowledge they had through faith that the people surrounding them did not have because they were living in their minds, in their brains, not in their hearts. One was a Jew, one was a Gentile, but both of them recognized Jesus as divine, and as the Savior. Both of them came to Him and both of them were rebuked. When the blind man heard that Jesus was coming, he cried out, “Son of David, have mercy on me” – that is, “Messiah, have mercy on me” – and the crowd told him, “Shut up. Be quiet. This is an important Rabbi, but don’t make a fool of yourself.” And when the Syro-Phonecian woman came up and threw herself at Jesus feet and said, “Lord, have mercy on me,” the disciples wanted to push her away. She was a gentile dog. But both of them insisted, both of them persisted, and both of them received what they wanted. When we gave up Pascha, when we had the last Sunday of Pascha, we celebrated it with the Feast of the Man Born Blind. You remember that every year. The man whose eyes Jesus created out of clay and told him to go wash in the pool of Salom. And then we begin the cycle that brings us to the Triodion, the Pre-Lenten times, we begin with the blind man again. This blind man, this man who cried out, “Son of David, have mercy on me,” was actually the only one there who had sight.
You see that now many of our teachers are reminding us, as Father Alithios Webber pointed out, we’re deceived into believing that we are our brains, that our brains are us. But our brains are simply a database, and that database is corrupt. It’s full of all kinds of garbage, it’s been attacked by all kinds of viruses, all kinds of program deviations. And so it makes us think things, and about things, that we have no business thinking about. I was thinking today, “Is anybody going to notice that the hem on this vestment is too long? I wonder how coffee hour will go. Are the kids going to do a good job for St. Sava’s day?” All these little thoughts intruded on my prayer life, and probably two dozen more, some of which, if I told you, you would be ashamed of me, so I won’t. but these are called by the Fathers “logosmoi.” They are little words uttered in our ear by the demon, by the deceiver, to make us think we are thinking. They are little words that distract us and occupy our minds. Words about self-importance, or about self-deprecation; words that exalt us in our own hearts, or depress us and drive us down, so that we feel we are “lower than a toad’s belly.” These logosmoi are just the distractions that flow into our ears. They make us think things are important that are not. They make us fear. They make us occupy ourselves with thoughts of acquiring entertainment or stimulations that when we acquire them we wonder why we did and we don’t really want them anyway. They make us want things we don’t want. And they’re assisted now, because we are bombarded by the availability of all sorts of information. Why do you suppose God confounded the tongues at the Tower of Babel? It is because, he said, “if people could all communicate about every idea that they have, they’ll be able to devise all manner of evil. It will be harmful for themselves. I have to divide them up, spread them out.” But now with the computer, all kinds of knowledge and ignorance, all kinds of wisdom and foolishness, all kinds of beauty and ugliness come into our house from every corner in the world. Sometimes we seek it out, sometimes it just throws itself in your face, but we have available to us logosmoi in the billions. Little evil thoughts, little self deceptions.
But the blind man was not looking at Jesus with the eyes of body, because they were blinded. He’s different from the man born blind because he had seen once. He had been born with vision and had lost, and so he knew what it was to see. But he cried out, seeing in his heart that this man coming to him was the messiah, he proclaimed him as the children did on palm Sunday when nobody else was willing to conjure up the gumption to identify our Lord as what he really was – the savior. “Son of God, have pity on me,” he cries out, and Jesus comes to him and He heals him.
You know today we celebrate two saints: Athanasius, who was a deacon at the council of Nicaea but became patriarch of Alexandria, and Cyril who later followed him as patriarch of Alexandria. And we have in these two men, these men who looked at the world through the eye of their soul, two heroes who stood up against everything that just made sense because it wasn’t true. Athanasius was dealing with Arius. Arius was a brilliant orator. He was also a pretty good song writer – would have probably had three songs in the top ten today – that’s why the church stopped letting people make up hymns like the Protestants have in their hymnals because heresy has a funny way of sneaking its way in between the truth. Arius said, “Look. Everybody knows that there had to have originally been a monad – that is, on little ball of stuff, God stuff. And that then that monad emanated the Son and the Holy Spirit, that’s why we call it Father. And so, there has to have been a time when Jesus didn’t even exist. He came into existence at the first instance of time, He wasn’t eternal. There is no trinity, because,” he said, “all these Greeks, all these people who were trained in Platonism, the whole world knows that everything started out with a little ball of oneness and the emanations came from it. Let’s not be foolish. Even if we want to believe that Jesus is eternal,” he said, “doesn’t it make more sense to get people into the Church by catering to their delusions.” So his only doctrine was an antidoctrine – there was a time, he said, when God the Son did no exist. And Arius spread this heresy, and all the Platonists who couldn’t accept the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as the undivided, consubstantial, eternal trinity, said, “Oh! We’ll go to church now. We’ll be baptized. This is a lot like what we believe. Thank you for changing your teaching so that we could accept it.” And Athanasius said, “No! This is heresy. It’s not true. God the Holy Trinity created the world, but there was not a time when the Trinity did not exist. The world is not the product of some mad monad who needed people to obey and worship him. The world is the product of a loving community of persons whose love overflowed so much that they made others to share that love with.”
And then, having defeated Arius, the Arians came back with what was called semi-Arianism: “Well, lets say just that it’s possible there was a time when God the Son did not exist.”
And lots of people in the Church said, “Athanasius, you’re causing lots of trouble. Our pews are full. Our offering plates are running over. Why don’t you just shut up? If people want to believe that there was a time when the Son of God did not exist, let them believe that. We can believe what we want to. NO! It’s not true. We’re not going to say that the Son is homoousios – that is of one substance with the Father, we’re going to say that He is homoiousios – the same or similar substance with the Father, and that’ll make these people happy.”
And Athanasius said, “I refuse. I refuse to compromise with heresy. I refuse to look through the eye of my logosmoi. I want to look through the eyes of my heart at my God, who is the eternal Trinity.” So he was thrown out of communion. The church did that to him! The bishops were more interested in the money; they were more interested in the people in the pews or standing up in church in those days. They were so interested in power and importance that they buried the truth. So, he spent most of life in exile until finally, in his old age, he was called back, vindicated by the monks who lived in the dessert – not very well educated, but not distracted – the monks who knew that there was never a time when God the Son did not exist, that God the Son was of one essence with the Father. And so he was restored, and vindicated.
And then along came a patriarch of Constantinople. This guy was a, well, we’ll say he was a woman hater. And the empress, who was the ruler of the empire at that time, came to him and said, “Patriarch Nestorius, on the day of my coronation, I intend to enter the Holy Altar and receive communion at the Holy Table.” Do you know women can do that? When we had deaconesses – who were not woman deacons, they were women who ministered to women – the deaconesses received communion at the Holy Table. They didn’t serve in church, but they came into the altar for communion. When an empress is crowned, she receives communion at the altar. Why? Because she’s sharing in the ruling on the earth of the priesthood of Christ.
And he said to her, “You can’t do that.”
“Well, why not?”
“Well you’re a filthy woman.”
And she said, “What?!? I am a virgin.”
And he said, “You’re still a filthy woman.”
She said, “Was the Theotokos a filthy woman?”
And he said, “She’s not Theotokos; she’s not ‘God-bearer.’ She’s just Christotokos- Christ-bearer.”
See, he looked through the eyes of his prejudices and he distorted and twisted the faith to fit his bad attitude. So, he tried to teach that Our Lady only carried the human nature of Christ. Now, what does that mean? It means that Jesus couldn’t be truly and completely God and truly and completely man, right? If she only carried his human nature, where was his divine nature? Hovering above her? Hiding out in her skirts? I don’t know. But it was a stupid, and asinine idea. But because he saw with the eyes of his body, because of that, he created a whole heresy. And it was Cyril, the successor of Athanasius, who stood up and said, “Enough with the blasphemy.” They summoned a council, the Council of Ephesus. And they declared that our Holy Lady, the Mother of God, is Theotokos God-bearer. That she not only gave birth to Him that was God, but she carried in her womb ___ who is God, that she became the temple, the arc of the covenant, the habitation of the divine on earth. And so, what we need to do, brothers and sisters, as we face the questions that come to us – spiritual questions: How often should I pray? How much money should I give? Should I be kind to this beggar? Should read my morning and evening prayers – and practical questions like: How should I act toward others? What should I think of myself? How am I going to deal with my sickness? How am I going to deal with my children? We need to look at these things from the eyes of the heart, and not listen to the logosmoi, the little words the devil whispers to us: “you don’t need church. You can pray anywhere. That’s not really the body of Christ, we just say it is. Those icons are just holy pictures, they’re not windows into heaven.” The happens to us then when we do what’s wrong to the eyes of our heart is that the logosmoi, when they die, when these dead ideas fall out of our head when we’ve entertained them for a while, the form like bat manure in a cave, a collection of garbage inside of us, and they cover up the eye of our soul. So then let us come to Jesus and fall down before Him say, “The eye of our heart is blind Lord, at least it’s distorted, warped by the bat guano surrounding it. Son of David, Messiah, have mercy on us,” and hear Him say, “Thy faith hath made thee whole. Go in peace.”
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Glory to Jesus Christ.
Glory forever
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
January 11, 2009
We’re told by holy Apostle Paul, that having descended into the earth – that is into the depths of Hell itself – that our Lord Jesus Christ ascending on high bore in captivity slavery itself captive, and that he gave gifts unto men. The gifts that he gave are the gifts of the holy spirit. They are the presence of God in our lives and they are given to us for two reasons: They’re given to us as signs of God’s presence with us individually, and they’re given to us for the building up of the body of Christ. Now, there are profound misunderstandings about the nature of the Christian vocation, of the Church, and of salvation. People understood from almost the beginning that the church is a community, that salvation comes in communities and that everything that is given to us by God is communal. That doesn’t mean that we are communists. But in the early church, when in Jerusalem there were five thousand Greek speaking Jews converted at Pentecost who then decided to stay, and then sent letters home asking for their house and their property to be sold so that they could maintain themselves, the Christians in Jerusalem sold what they had and then gave it to those people. That’s why we have the deacons now: because the apostles one day realized that the Greek-speaking widows, the Greek-speaking virgins – young women – were not getting their proper share of food and of care from the church. So they appointed these men, these economists of the household, caretakers of the house, or in plain roman parlance, these butlers, these household servants. They were responsible for making sure that everyone was cared for rightly. In our time and in our age, the church is just the same. There are enormous churches – there are churches with five hundred or a thousand people – these are all in the United States. In Europe, there may be a thousand, or two thousand, or five thousand people at a service in church, but the parishes are not that enormous. The church there is a place you go to, and you may go to this church this week, and that church the next week. But here our communities are modular – it has good points. It allows us to be more like the early Christians in that we know the people who are our brothers and sisters in Christ. It allows us to set up an operating mechanism the permits us to run the church in a way that is appropriate to God’s desire for economy. On the other hand, it allows us to know each other to well, to offend each other, to make one another angry, and to become political. None of these are good.
It says that God gave this diversity of gifts to us; it means that you, and I, have received from the Holy Spirit at least one charismatic gift, at least one special blessing from God given to build up the body of Christ, to make the church stronger, healthier, more effective in the teaching and preaching and the charitable work of Christ. And since St. Paul says to pray for the higher gifts, it means that we who have received some gifts are capable of receiving more. And although the gifts are diverse, yet they are not qualitatively different. Therefore the priest in his location in the altar is not a better person than lady wipes down the tables and scrapes the floor in the hall, or even the one who cleans out the toilets, or those who cook in the kitchen, or those who vacuum. The diversity of gifts are given for the health of the whole, entire body, and as St. Paul says those members of the body which are not the most attractive, those not given the most attention, we clothe our ugly parts.
And so it is that ascending into heaven, Christ has poured out on us the Holy Spirit, which in Jordan the father poured down on Him. We have become recipients of that grace, but we can’t talk about it as my gift of the Holy Spirit, or my salvation, or my personal savior because Jesus establishes his relationship with the church, his body. It’s not that you and I each have our own little salvation that we can go out to Aurora and take with us. It is that salvation is through Christ in His body, the Church.
Today we’re going to install Parish Council members and officers, and there are different attitudes toward this. At one time, with the assistance of Bolshevik mentality, parish councils got the idea that somehow or the other they were supposed to be the opponent of the priest; that the priests were going to get uppity; that the priests were called servants of the cult – they were paid a salary, they were supposed to do a job. But the parish council ran the church and they were sure as heck going to tell you who was boss. In other places priests resented the councils and they argued with the people and they said, “I’m the priest here. I have all the power. Who do you think you are anyway?” And both of these are directly from the devil, both of these are directly from Satan. We’ve had splits in the Syrian, and the Russian and, the Ukranian church that, thank God are in the process or have already been healed, that primarily sprung from the question of “Who’s boss?” But I’ll tell you what. Jesus Christ is boss and none of us are put here to boss each other around; we’re put here to work together for the building up of the Body.
Whenever I let somebody goad me into pushing somebody around I always end up sorry, and somebody ends up angry. I remember, about 10 years ago, one of our parishoners said to me, “Father you’re a bad priest because you let people cross their legs in church and my grandmother always said that was a great blasphemy.” So I was out here talking one day and I saw one of the older young people with his legs crossed, and I said, “Uncross your legs.” I shouldn’t have said that. It wasn’t my job to do that then. I did it because that other person had gotten me riled up. And you know, it took people a long time to forget that – that I had singled out that person and criticized them. Parents should never correct their children in public. I tell people that if your kids are being bad, take them out, put them in a corner, have them face the wall and say, “Are you bored yet?”
When the people take their vow today they’re going to pray and they’re going to promise to promote the peace, unity, and tranquility of the church. And when you say that it sounds like you’re saying the same thing over and over again. Let me remind people who are going to take the oath today that this is a promise and that when they don’t keep that promise that they’re lying to God. Now, not if they’re not able to keep it. It’s kind of like if I decide I’m going to give 10% of what I have and it’s going to be this much, and then I lose my job. I can’t do that. It’s the intention that matters to God. But if I go in there lightly and I make big promises to God and I don’t intend to make the effort to fulfill them I am lying to him. I am foreswearing myself. The peace of the Church is not, as I have told you many times, simply that people aren’t fighting. The word peace in our vocabulary means the full integrity of everything. It means that the Kingdom of God which is here, which Jesus preached in the Gospel this morning, is at hand, and which is coming in its fullness should be present in the church. It means that everything is here needed to make this church work. It means that everything is here necessary to do the job that we have to do as this part of the body of Christ. And that we have to make sure that all that is here, that peace, that completeness, that fullness is used, is called upon, that all the gifts of all the people… Now sometimes people come to me and say, “There are so many people that don’t do anything.” Well, to me that’s like having people criticize my kids. My kids didn’t always do everything they were supposed to do either. It’s kind of like, “What am I supposed to do about it?” What they’re really saying is, “I want you to notice me, I’m doing a whole lot. You know, there’s other people not doing as much as I am.” That’s too bad. Find a way to get them to do it. It’s good for you – you’re getting to do great things for God, you’re getting to do extra things for God. That’s a special blessing, that’s a joy. If you resent doing anything you do for God or his body, don’t do it, because you’re not getting any blessing out of it and no good will ever come out of it, okay? Anything you do with resentment, with anger, withholding in your heart your full willingness to do it, anything you’re doing like that no good will come from it, it will be a waste of time, and it will be a burden on your soul. When people first join the church, they say, “What do you want me to do?” I say, “Stand and pray, then something will come along. Either God will tell you to do something or somebody will ask you and you’ll know it’s the right thing, and you’ll do it.” One thing I especially appreciate about Xenia: I give her a lot of odious tasks - I ask her to clean this, or to vacuum that, or to remove was from that – and you know she says, when she’s done, “Thank you, Father, for letting me help you with that.” As long as she keeps that attitude, as along as it’s sincere, she’ll receive two blessings for everything she does. So the peace is the completeness of the church.
It’s unity has to do with us not breaking up into parties and fighting about issues. Every institution that gets over 100 people – whether it’s a tribe, a clan, a church, or a club – every community that gets over a hundred has the temptation to form parties and fight with each other. And that is a blasphemous sin. It’s like tearing the arm of the body of Christ, or cutting the body down the middle. What we should do for those with whom we disagree is to pray more fervently, to set an example. I had a young priest who was beating the people up, and the bishop said, “If you want a transfer, I can get you one in about a year.” So he got up and he said, “The bishop is POed with you, he’s mad at you, and he’s going to move me somewhere else, and you’re not going to have a priest” – he told them that – “because you don’t come to confession enough, you come to communion when you shouldn’t, you don’t fast right, you don’t attend weekday services, you don’t come to my classes.” You know, I used to plan classes, and I’d plan them out myself and there would be three people, and the next week there would be three people but two of them would be different. So I decided, if you’re going to plan classes, make every lesson independent and don’t worry about who comes – the people who need it will be there. Anyway, he told them this stuff, and the bishop wrote back and said, “Father, your job is not to change your people. Your job is to change yourself so they will want to be like you are.” That’s a lifelong task. I haven’t even begun to start to accomplish it. But the unity of Christ comes from our all following one good shepherd who is Jesus, and the priest is the visible image of the one good shepherd on earth.
Peace, unity, purity: that means that the faith can’t be diluted. We can’t water it down. We can’t say on respect for life Sunday, “We’re not going to talk about abortion because it’s a controversial issue.” It’s not a controversial issue for the Orthodox church: it is destruction of human life.
And tranquility: You know, peace and harmony are one thing; tranquility is another. You can have things not in a riot, people working together, but people agitated, upset, nervous. So the church has to be a place of tranquility, and that means that you guys – guys? – you have to not rile the big people when they’re praying. Be quiet, pray. What you don’t know people is, some of these kids are prayer warriors – they’re in church five or six times a week some weeks, and they can pray five or ten minutes and the rest of the time they’re zoned out because God lets you enter into the kingdom and forget where you are. Some of them pray everyday, they’re at liturgy, they’re at vespers. I won’t tell you which ones, but it’s not just my own grandchildren. But it’s your guys’ job not to upset the big people – don’t run, don’t jump, don’t dance in church, and especially don’t tip candle stands over on your heads because even though it’s red, we’ll have to cut it up and burn it. God has given you, by your chrismation, the gift of the Holy Spirit and he’s continuing to send you new gifts. But what you need to do is keep opening up the gifts that God gives you, ask what can I do that I couldn’t do before, and then open it up, look at it, enjoy the precious stone that he gives you, and then ask, “how can I use this for the building up of the body of Christ, for the edification of the saints, my brothers and sisters?”
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, glory to Jesus Christ!
Glory forever!
It says that God gave this diversity of gifts to us; it means that you, and I, have received from the Holy Spirit at least one charismatic gift, at least one special blessing from God given to build up the body of Christ, to make the church stronger, healthier, more effective in the teaching and preaching and the charitable work of Christ. And since St. Paul says to pray for the higher gifts, it means that we who have received some gifts are capable of receiving more. And although the gifts are diverse, yet they are not qualitatively different. Therefore the priest in his location in the altar is not a better person than lady wipes down the tables and scrapes the floor in the hall, or even the one who cleans out the toilets, or those who cook in the kitchen, or those who vacuum. The diversity of gifts are given for the health of the whole, entire body, and as St. Paul says those members of the body which are not the most attractive, those not given the most attention, we clothe our ugly parts.
And so it is that ascending into heaven, Christ has poured out on us the Holy Spirit, which in Jordan the father poured down on Him. We have become recipients of that grace, but we can’t talk about it as my gift of the Holy Spirit, or my salvation, or my personal savior because Jesus establishes his relationship with the church, his body. It’s not that you and I each have our own little salvation that we can go out to Aurora and take with us. It is that salvation is through Christ in His body, the Church.
Today we’re going to install Parish Council members and officers, and there are different attitudes toward this. At one time, with the assistance of Bolshevik mentality, parish councils got the idea that somehow or the other they were supposed to be the opponent of the priest; that the priests were going to get uppity; that the priests were called servants of the cult – they were paid a salary, they were supposed to do a job. But the parish council ran the church and they were sure as heck going to tell you who was boss. In other places priests resented the councils and they argued with the people and they said, “I’m the priest here. I have all the power. Who do you think you are anyway?” And both of these are directly from the devil, both of these are directly from Satan. We’ve had splits in the Syrian, and the Russian and, the Ukranian church that, thank God are in the process or have already been healed, that primarily sprung from the question of “Who’s boss?” But I’ll tell you what. Jesus Christ is boss and none of us are put here to boss each other around; we’re put here to work together for the building up of the Body.
Whenever I let somebody goad me into pushing somebody around I always end up sorry, and somebody ends up angry. I remember, about 10 years ago, one of our parishoners said to me, “Father you’re a bad priest because you let people cross their legs in church and my grandmother always said that was a great blasphemy.” So I was out here talking one day and I saw one of the older young people with his legs crossed, and I said, “Uncross your legs.” I shouldn’t have said that. It wasn’t my job to do that then. I did it because that other person had gotten me riled up. And you know, it took people a long time to forget that – that I had singled out that person and criticized them. Parents should never correct their children in public. I tell people that if your kids are being bad, take them out, put them in a corner, have them face the wall and say, “Are you bored yet?”
When the people take their vow today they’re going to pray and they’re going to promise to promote the peace, unity, and tranquility of the church. And when you say that it sounds like you’re saying the same thing over and over again. Let me remind people who are going to take the oath today that this is a promise and that when they don’t keep that promise that they’re lying to God. Now, not if they’re not able to keep it. It’s kind of like if I decide I’m going to give 10% of what I have and it’s going to be this much, and then I lose my job. I can’t do that. It’s the intention that matters to God. But if I go in there lightly and I make big promises to God and I don’t intend to make the effort to fulfill them I am lying to him. I am foreswearing myself. The peace of the Church is not, as I have told you many times, simply that people aren’t fighting. The word peace in our vocabulary means the full integrity of everything. It means that the Kingdom of God which is here, which Jesus preached in the Gospel this morning, is at hand, and which is coming in its fullness should be present in the church. It means that everything is here needed to make this church work. It means that everything is here necessary to do the job that we have to do as this part of the body of Christ. And that we have to make sure that all that is here, that peace, that completeness, that fullness is used, is called upon, that all the gifts of all the people… Now sometimes people come to me and say, “There are so many people that don’t do anything.” Well, to me that’s like having people criticize my kids. My kids didn’t always do everything they were supposed to do either. It’s kind of like, “What am I supposed to do about it?” What they’re really saying is, “I want you to notice me, I’m doing a whole lot. You know, there’s other people not doing as much as I am.” That’s too bad. Find a way to get them to do it. It’s good for you – you’re getting to do great things for God, you’re getting to do extra things for God. That’s a special blessing, that’s a joy. If you resent doing anything you do for God or his body, don’t do it, because you’re not getting any blessing out of it and no good will ever come out of it, okay? Anything you do with resentment, with anger, withholding in your heart your full willingness to do it, anything you’re doing like that no good will come from it, it will be a waste of time, and it will be a burden on your soul. When people first join the church, they say, “What do you want me to do?” I say, “Stand and pray, then something will come along. Either God will tell you to do something or somebody will ask you and you’ll know it’s the right thing, and you’ll do it.” One thing I especially appreciate about Xenia: I give her a lot of odious tasks - I ask her to clean this, or to vacuum that, or to remove was from that – and you know she says, when she’s done, “Thank you, Father, for letting me help you with that.” As long as she keeps that attitude, as along as it’s sincere, she’ll receive two blessings for everything she does. So the peace is the completeness of the church.
It’s unity has to do with us not breaking up into parties and fighting about issues. Every institution that gets over 100 people – whether it’s a tribe, a clan, a church, or a club – every community that gets over a hundred has the temptation to form parties and fight with each other. And that is a blasphemous sin. It’s like tearing the arm of the body of Christ, or cutting the body down the middle. What we should do for those with whom we disagree is to pray more fervently, to set an example. I had a young priest who was beating the people up, and the bishop said, “If you want a transfer, I can get you one in about a year.” So he got up and he said, “The bishop is POed with you, he’s mad at you, and he’s going to move me somewhere else, and you’re not going to have a priest” – he told them that – “because you don’t come to confession enough, you come to communion when you shouldn’t, you don’t fast right, you don’t attend weekday services, you don’t come to my classes.” You know, I used to plan classes, and I’d plan them out myself and there would be three people, and the next week there would be three people but two of them would be different. So I decided, if you’re going to plan classes, make every lesson independent and don’t worry about who comes – the people who need it will be there. Anyway, he told them this stuff, and the bishop wrote back and said, “Father, your job is not to change your people. Your job is to change yourself so they will want to be like you are.” That’s a lifelong task. I haven’t even begun to start to accomplish it. But the unity of Christ comes from our all following one good shepherd who is Jesus, and the priest is the visible image of the one good shepherd on earth.
Peace, unity, purity: that means that the faith can’t be diluted. We can’t water it down. We can’t say on respect for life Sunday, “We’re not going to talk about abortion because it’s a controversial issue.” It’s not a controversial issue for the Orthodox church: it is destruction of human life.
And tranquility: You know, peace and harmony are one thing; tranquility is another. You can have things not in a riot, people working together, but people agitated, upset, nervous. So the church has to be a place of tranquility, and that means that you guys – guys? – you have to not rile the big people when they’re praying. Be quiet, pray. What you don’t know people is, some of these kids are prayer warriors – they’re in church five or six times a week some weeks, and they can pray five or ten minutes and the rest of the time they’re zoned out because God lets you enter into the kingdom and forget where you are. Some of them pray everyday, they’re at liturgy, they’re at vespers. I won’t tell you which ones, but it’s not just my own grandchildren. But it’s your guys’ job not to upset the big people – don’t run, don’t jump, don’t dance in church, and especially don’t tip candle stands over on your heads because even though it’s red, we’ll have to cut it up and burn it. God has given you, by your chrismation, the gift of the Holy Spirit and he’s continuing to send you new gifts. But what you need to do is keep opening up the gifts that God gives you, ask what can I do that I couldn’t do before, and then open it up, look at it, enjoy the precious stone that he gives you, and then ask, “how can I use this for the building up of the body of Christ, for the edification of the saints, my brothers and sisters?”
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, glory to Jesus Christ!
Glory forever!
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