Sermon for 15 Nov 2009

(Text: Parable of the Good Samaritan)

"Who is my neighbor?"
He says this "wishing to justify himself."
To love God was one thing.
There's only one God, and
he gives all that we have.
But to love the neighbor!
There's too many of them, and,
often they're annoying or inconvenient.
If only the field could be narrowed,
the task might be fulfilled.

So the Lord tells a story.
It's the story of a nameless man,
of a priest, a Levite,and a Samaritan;
but it's also our story.

"A man was going down" from Jerusalem to Jericho.
Jerusalem was God's city;
Jericho a city of sin,
the great city whose walls fell down at Joshua's trumpet.
That is the story of our race:
We left God behind in the Garden,
and have journeyed away, going down, since then.

And what of the robbers that beat the man?
They are the demons, who delight in tormenting man,
and leaving him half-dead.
We are to blame for this, of course.
The man would not have been beaten if he stayed in Jerusalem.
The demons would not have tormented us if we hadn't first left God behind.
But we are wounded by the passions,half-dead:
living and breathing in this world,
but in agony when we remember what we've lost.

The priest and the Levite, too, journey down that same road.
Religious men, men of God,
but they pass by. They cannot help. They are afraid.

Then comes the Samaritan.
It doesn't say of him that he was on that same road,
but rather that he was on a journey.

He saw the man, just as the priest and Levite did.
But he felt compassion,
and came to him,
and bandaged his wounds with oil and wine.
He brought the man to an inn,
and gave the innkeeper money,
and told him to care for the man till his return.

The Samaritan is our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ.
Despised, like a Samaritan, by those he came to save.
Being God, he became man,
and journeyed down this road our race had taken.
He saw us in our plight and was moved with compassion.
He wrapped us in bandages when we were baptized,
covering us with his own righteousness.
He poured out the oil of compassion on us in chrismation,
and gives us the wine of his blood.
He brought us to this inn, his church,
where he heals us through his mysteries.

And what is the sign that this healing is ours?
How do we know we've been living in the hospital?

Only this:
That we stop trying to justify ourselves,
and leave that to the Master.
That we cease walking to Jericho
and learn to see our life as a journey--his journey,
That we serve the ones we find along the way,
and serve them in their wretchedness,
and help them to the inn where we too find healing.

"Who is my neighbor?"
God is my neighbor, who proved himself to be my neighbor
by helping and healing me in my distress.
That God calls us to "go and do likewise"--
to copy him as beloved children copy their father.

Lord Jesus, open my eyes to see my neighbor;
do not let fear turn me away,
but let me serve him,
and so come to see, from the inside,
a fragment, a tiny share, of the love you have shown to me.

I don't commemorate the Reformation any more...

...because I have come to see that I, not the Church, am the one in need of reformation.

Huh...

I may have noted elsewhere that our small Orthodox parish has four former Lutheran (LCMS) clergy in it.

I just discovered that the philosophy department in which I teach also has four former Lutherans in it.

Interesting....

Subterranean scribbling: A little child...

...approaches the Eucharist in the arms of his mother. He has been baptized in the name of the Triune God and, theologically, he is said to possess the faith in its fullness. "The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these," and unless we who are older become like him, we cannot see the Kingdom of Heaven. He has even had the "confirmation prayer" prayed over him at the end of the rite.

To each person near him come the words, "Given for you, for the forgiveness of sins."

But when the host and chalice come to him, he is passed over.

The words are Jacob's: "he is a member of the body of Christ."

But the hands are Esau's: he is not communed.

And it is useless to talk about "earlier" communion. Does baptism give what it says, or not? If it does, there is no reason to refuse what is said to be the body of Christ to those who are his members. Such communion is not 'open,' since such recipients are equally members of the parish in question as their older fellows.

This is the kind of problem that's led many away from Lutheranism, for all its good, to the Church. One can destroy forests with the trees sacrificed to books and articles on various points of theology. But such arguments arise from faith; they rarely lead to faith. What leads one to reflect and to reexamine are these crushingly existential problems. "How can I refuse one whom I say that the Lord himself has received?"

The Kingdom of God does not consist in talk, but in power.

There is little profit in engaging Lutheran bloggers in logomachy.

It's not our turf.

Lutheranism was born and bred in words. Ninety five theses, Heidelberg Disputations, Visitation Articles, Confessions, etc. From the womb it was quarreling, and it exists by defining itself over against 'the other'--whether that be Rome, the Reformed, or even other Lutherans.

The Church was born in power: the power of God the Word incarnate--and she lives by the divine energies, received in font and chrism, Body and Blood, and revealed in the blood of the martyrs. Less than a year after Luther died, St. Michael the breadseller was covered in sulpher by the Turks and burned alive, singing hymns till the end. While Walther was disputing about predestination, St. Joseph of Damascus was being ripped limb-from-limb by an angry unbelieving mob. While Pieper was writing his Dogmatics, St. Elizabeth was singing the Cherubimic hymn and tending the wounds of her fellow-martyrs in a mineshaft.

It's not the nature of the problem, either:

It's not the problem with Lutheranism. Most or all of us who were Lutherans and became Orthodox didn't do so because a certain formula came to be recognized as heretical. "Find me an error in the Book of Concord" is beside the point. Are there errors there? Of course there are. But one does not see that at once. "The renewing of the mind" takes years. Old patterns of thought cling to most of us, in my case doubtless till I die (though I find hope in St. Elizabeth the New Martyr). We left Lutheranism for the sake of our children.

The problem with Lutheranism is existential. It is not the Church. And that is not a judgment based on Orthodox sources. It is based on the words of the Lutheran Confessions.

The fact that some cars in that train called Lutheranism have not yet gone off the edge of the bridge can, in the end, provide but cold comfort for those further back in the train who realize that they are joined historically and confessionally to those whose cars have gone off the edge. "How can the church of Krauth have come to what it now is?" Indeed! Let every Lutheran ponder that.

It is not the problem with certain Lutheran bloggers, either.

They did not turn away from Orthodoxy because they were troubled by ambiguous truth, or unambiguous error. They turned away for, shall we say, personal reasons. They heard the Truth but walked away sorrowful because of their great possessions--or perhaps, family connections.

What do you suppose the rich young ruler did for the rest of his life?


For all this, I am sad and weep. Kyrie eleison!

The ELCA decision...

...has produced some thoughtful commentary in the Lutheran blogosphere--most notably on Weedon's blog and on Father Hollywood. Pr. Weedon poses the question of what happened to the church of Krauth, Jacobs, Tappert and Reed--a question well worth pondering. Fr. Beane writes a nice piece on tradition, in which he says, in part:

"The Lutheran Reformation got rid of some traditions, such as the prayers to the saints, the withholding of the cup to the laity, indulgences, and the liturgical language of the canon of the Mass that refers to a propitious (sin-forgiving) sacrifice, offered ex opera operato (by the work itself apart from faith) for the living and the dead.

But the Lutherans kept a whole lot more than they got rid of. "We keep traditional liturgical forms, such as the order of the lessons, prayers, vestments, etc." (Ap 24:1)...

Tradition that "nullifies" the Word of God is a bad thing, and must go. Tradition that upholds the Word of God is a good thing that ought to be retained. This was a very important principle guiding the Lutheran reformers, and it continues to guide Traditionalist Lutherans today.

Those who cut themselves off from the apostolic tradition cut themselves off from the Lord Jesus Christ and the Word of God, and are left with nothing more than their own imaginings and the sorts of "traditions" of the Pharisees that our Lord condemns."

(Note the ellipsis after the second paragraph; I've excerpted the text I want to comment on, but you should read the whole entry--it's well worthwhile.)

First, note the list of traditions rejected by the Lutherans:

• prayers to the saints
• the withholding of the cup to the laity
• indulgences
• liturgical language of the canon of the Mass that refers to a propitious (sin-forgiving) sacrifice, offered ex opera operato (by the work itself apart from faith) for the living and the dead

The last three were late mediaeval Roman practices, rejected also by the Orthodox. But the first is different. It was practiced universally by all Christians as far back as archaeological and historical evidence can be found, and there was no controversy over it. Mediaeval Rome linked it to its unique theology of merit, of course, and changed the theological underpinnings; but the practice itself is both ancient and universal. I would argue further that it is one of those traditions that "upholds the Word of God," to use Fr. Beane's terms.

(1) The Word of God teaches that those Christians whose hearts have ceased beating are not dead, but alive. The normal New Testament way of speaking of them is as "asleep in Christ," not "dead." And the Word of God enfleshed tells us that "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him."
(2) The Word of God teaches that Christians ought to pray for each other, and to ask for each other's prayers.
(3) Finally, unlike the late Roman system, our motive for asking is not utility, but love.

It is understandable that the Lutheran reformers would reject asking for the intercessions of the saints (though the reason they offer, "How can we know that they hear us?", is an example of early-modern skepticism); after all, they only knew the practice in its late-mediaeval Roman guise. Nonetheless, they tossed out the baby with the bathwater here.

The intercession of the saints is, I would argue, an apostolic tradition. It upholds the apostolic words; it is both ancient and universal. So Fr. Beane's last words cited above are worth pondering:

"Those who cut themselves off from the apostolic tradition cut themselves off from the Lord Jesus Christ and the Word of God, and are left with nothing more than their own imaginings and the sorts of "traditions" of the Pharisees that our Lord condemns."

Can you identify this photo?