My theological autobiography

Here's a great excerpt from Alasdair MacIntyre's "Whose Justice? Which Rationality?":

"...the adherents of a tradition which is now in this state of fundamental and radical crisis (elsewhere identified as an epistemological crisis--my note) may at this point encounter in a new way the claims of some particular rival tradition, perhaps one with which they have for some time coexisted, perhaps one which they are now encountering for the first time. They now come or had already come to understand the beliefs and way of life of this other alien tradition, the language of the alien tradition as a new and second first language."

This, roughly, describes my life c. 1987-2000. MacIntyre continues:

"When they have understood the beliefs of the alien tradition, they may find themselves compelled to recognize that within this other tradition it is possible to construct from the concepts and theories peculiar to it what they were unable to provide from their own conceptual and theoretical resources, a cogent and illuminating explanation--cogent and illuminating, that is, by their own standards--of why their own intellectual tradition had been unable to solve its problems or restore its coherence. The standards by which they judge this explanation to be cogent and illuminating will be the very same standards by which they have found their tradition wanting in the face of epistemological crisis. But while this new explanation satisfies two of the requirements for an adequate response to an epistemological crisis within a tradition--insofar as it both explains why, given the structures of enquiry within that tradition, the crisis had to happen as it did and does not itself suffer from the same defects of incoherence or resourcelessness, the recognition of which had been the initial stage of their crisis--it fails to satisfy the third (elsewhere, described as showing a fundamental continuity of a new conceptual structure with the shared beliefs of the tradition in crisis). Derived as it is from a genuinely alien tradition, the new explanation does not stand in any sort of substantive continuity with the preceding history of the tradition in crisis.
In this kind of situation the rationality of tradition requires an acknowledgement by those who have hitherto inhabited and given their allegiance to the tradition in crisis that the alien tradition is superior in rationality and in respect of its claims to truth to their own. What the explanation afforded from within the alien tradition will have disclosed is a lack of correspondence between the dominant beliefs of their own tradition and the reality disclosed by the most successful explanation, and it may well be the only successful explanation which they have been able to discover. Hence the claim to truth for what have hitherto been their own beliefs has been defeated."

These paragraphs describe my life c. 2000-2005, and my conversion to the Orthodox Church.

Homily for the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee, 2013

            Everything comes together at the moment of prayer. All our theology, all our piety, all our practice meet in that time we stand before God. Prayer reveals our hearts.

            It surely revealed the hearts of the Pharisee and the Publican. Both of them came to the Temple to pray. The Pharisee said, "God, I thank you that I am not like other men. I fast twice a week, and pay tithes of all I get."

            Pay attention to the Pharisee's prayer. In his heart, there were three things: God, himself, and other men. He paid his tithes--and there's nothing wrong with that, it's a good thing. He fasted twice a week, just as he was supposed to do.

            But all of that he did, so he could compare himself with others as he stood before God. "God, thank you that I am better than they are." He makes no request from God, he has no need of God; for him, God was there to see how good he was.

            Not so the prayer of the publican. While the Pharisee stood in a prominent place, the publican hid in a corner. While the Pharisee prayed sure of his goodness, the Publican prayed sure only of his misery.

            In his heart, there were only two things: God and himself. He mentions nothing that he has done. He comes to God in real need, deepest need. He doesn't manufacture his misery; he admits it.

            The holy fathers teach that there are only two with whom I deal in life: myself and God. Every other human, high and low, good and bad, rich and poor--but especially the poor--are but masks God puts on, covers under which he hides himself. When I exalt myself over them, as did the Pharisee, God will humble me. When I humble myself before God--both directly and when he hides beneath my neighbor--then he exalts me.

            The text tells us that the Publican went home justified, but not the Pharisee. There are some who say that being justified is a matter of being certain, of being sure in our salvation. The funny thing is, only the Pharisee was confident. The publican lived with the ongoing sense of his own need, his own unworthiness. "Be merciful to me the sinner" is his only word.

            If I am to receive God's mercy, I have to be content to think of myself as in misery. If I am to receive God's forgiveness, I have to accept the fact that I am a sinner. If I want his strength, I must admit that I am weak. If I want to be raised with Christ, I must accept that I am dead without him.

            That's not to say that I should wallow in my sin, rejoice in my misery, or turn my weakness or death into a substitute for the Pharisee's works, of course. The publican bemoans his condition; he doesn't brag about it. But neither does he cover it up with the fig leaves of his own actions. He admits it. He prays to be released from it. And he trusts that God will do it.

            Beloved, we are once again approaching Lent. We will renew our calls to get serious about prayer, and fasting, and tithing. These things are all good, but none of them give us good standing with God. God doesn't need our prayer, our food, our money.  It is for us that we fast, for us that we pray, for us that we give.

            This coming week is one of those few in the calendar that we fast from fasting. The Church wants us to flee the mind of the Pharisee, and take up the prayer of the Publican. Let us learn from him, how to be right with God! Let us learn from him to humble ourselves beneath God's mighty hand, that he may exalt us in due time.

           

Homily for Sunday after Christmas (Matt. 2:13f)

“Peace on earth among those with whom he is well pleased.” So the angels sang on that first Christmas evening.

Where then was the peace, when Herod cast out his murderous net

            and killed thousands of young children?

Where was the peace when Zechariah, the father of the Forerunner,

            was cut down by Herod’s soldiers in the very Temple itself?

Where is the peace in our day, when children at school are killed,

 and innocent people die in conflicts around the world?

           

We are surprised and shocked when violence strikes.

But maybe, in the light of today’s gospel lesson,

we need to re-adjust our notion of peace.

           

Peace is not the absence of suffering, of conflict, of war.

The Church teaches us powerfully in the days just after Christmas. We remember the Protomartyr Stephen,  the 20,000 martyrs of Nicomedia, the 14,000 children killed by Herod.

Is it any wonder, when people hear of Christmas peace,

then see the bloodshed...the violence...the anger

all around and within us, that they question the message of this season?

Yet what they question…what they reject…is not the true and living God,

but an  idol of their own imagination,

an idol that takes a truth and bends and twists it out of shape.

For Christ himself told his apostles,

“Do you think I have come to bring peace on earth?

Not peace, I tell you, but a sword!”

And later he told them,

            “In the world you will have tribulation”

Eleven of the first twelve met violent deaths, because they followed him.

So in the light of what happened to the holy innocents, and to Zechariah, and to countless witnesses who followed Christ and suffered—why this violence? And what is this peace the angels spoke of?

The violence comes, because Christ’s nativity is a kind of D-Day,

an invasion of a place that once was free,

but had fallen under the tyranny of a usurper.

The enemies in this war are the Devil, the World, and our own sinful flesh:

            the devil—the tyrant and usurper, whose weapons are deceit and death;

            the world—the system he set up, run by fear;

            and our own flesh—the enemy within ourselves,

 who fears and serves the devil, and loves the broken world.

Between God and the devil,

the world as created and the world as fallen,

the new man we received in baptism and our sinful flesh,

there can be no peace.

No man can serve two masters. To love one, is to hate the other.

The Christian life is constant conflict with these three foes. We fight, we fall, we get up again. And again…as long as we live and breathe.

What, then, is this peace? Maybe it’s better to ask, “Who is this peace?”

St. Paul tells us elsewhere, “Christ himself is our peace, who broke down the wall dividing us from each other, and reconciled us both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity.”

Look at his holy life. He ate with sinners and tax collectors. He spoke with a Samaritan woman, outcast both from the Jews and from her own people. His love moved a rich man, Zacchaeus, to share his wealth willingly with the poor.

See his innocent death. Suspended between heaven and earth, arms outstretched in welcome, he spoke words of forgiveness for those who hung him there. He bought us for God by his holy precious blood.

Behold his glorious resurrection. He came to where the disciples were, cowering in fear. He showed them his hands and his side. Then he said, “Peace be to you.” He is our peace!

When he died, and rose, he defeated the devil in principle.

But what began in the Head, must be completed in the Body.

The servants are not above their Master;

it is enough for us to be like him.

So in this world we have tribulation.

We are conformed to the likeness of his death…

and yet we live,  

for we are joined to him who overcame death.

We face constant conflict, fear within and fighting without

yet we have peace,

for we are joined to Christ, who is our peace.

Is life, then, wearing you down?

Come to the Child of Bethlehem, whose coming brings us peace.

            Lay your troubles at his feet.

            Take his yoke upon you, and learn from him;

                        For he is meek and lowly in heart,

                        And in him you will find rest for your souls.

Sermon on the genealogy of Christ

            Have you ever thought about the fact that the people of the Middle Ages didn’t think of themselves as living in the Middle Ages? No; as far as they were concerned, they were modern. All the world’s prior history was leading to their time.

            And so it is with us, too. We children of the 60s and 70s had a saying, “Never trust anyone over 30.” We were the center of history; our parents and grandparents were old folks. Then time played its cruelest joke on us. We got older than 30. We had kids, and now we have grandkids. We have become our grandparents. And we have discovered, just as every previous generation, that the world doesn’t revolve around us. Like the old hymn says, “Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away/ They fly, forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day.”

            Each generation thinks that it is the point of history. Time proves us wrong, so some move to the other extreme—the view that history has no point, no center. History is just “one thing after another”—in the words of Macbeth, it’s a “tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

            Today’s gospel sets things straight. History does have a center, a focus, a point. But it’s not us, here…it’s two thousand years ago and an ocean away. St. Matthew goes through the genealogy of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ. And what a tale it tells!

            We hear of Abraham, the friend of God and father of the faithful; Isaac, the child of promise, the one who showed Abraham’s obedience; Jacob, the sneak, who got the blessing by deceit. It’s a story of sinners. Unlike most genealogies, it lists some women, too. But all of them have a question mark by their name: Rahab the harlot…Ruth the foreigner…Bathsheba the adulteress.

            We hear, too, of the high and low points of Jewish history. From God’s promise to Abraham till David the king, 14 generations go by. From that pinnacle to the exile into Babylon, another 14 generations. And from the Babylonian captivity till God’s promise to Abraham was fulfilled, took another 14 generations. Promise… Kingship…Exile—all lead to the center, the point of it all—the birth of enfleshed God. For history is, you see, his story.

            And because it is his story, it is our story too. When God the Son became man in the womb of the Virgin, he took on our humanity, in all its fullness, apart from sin.  Isn’t that what today’s gospel is all about?

            God the Son’s becoming man is, for us, a comfort. We do not have a God untouched by our weakness. He knows what we’re going through. He knows hunger and thirst, he knows poverty and temptation. He even knows sin—not because he sinned, but because he took our sin on himself and conquered it for us.

            God the Son’s becoming man is also a challenge. There are many human beings, but only one humanity. When I say, “I am human,” “You are human,” “Christ is human,” the word “human” refers to one and the same thing. 

We have a habit of excluding some from the human community. When the head of the NRA spoke about the school shooting in Connecticut, he referred to “monsters among us.” Some of our leaders refer to the Iranians seeking nuclear power as “insane.” When we were broken into, some of us thought, “What kind of person would do that?”

But the reality is, there are not two or more humanities. All these people: the school shooter, our enemies on the world stage, and those who hurt us personally—all alike share the same humanity with us, and with incarnate God. So do the poor, the prideful, the weak and the wealthy.

The challenge for us, then, is to love them all alike—not making distinctions, not allowing for classes, not treating anyone different from another. For God the Son became man, and in his incarnation he embraces each and every one of us. Let us, therefore, embrace each other in love! History is his story, and his story is the story of abiding love, of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

           

Homily for Second Sunday of St. Luke

Today's texts teach one theme: the theme of theosis. In our Epistle we hear, “I will be a Father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.” And the Lord Jesus says, “Love your enemies...and you will become sons of the Most High.” 
 

What is theosis? Quite simply, that we become sons and daughters of God: that what he is by nature, we become by grace. Or, as St. Athanasius says, “God became man, so that we might become god.”

 
God, in Christ, became man.

He who was eternally begotten of a Father without mother,

      was begotten in time of a mother without father.

He whom the heavens cannot contain,

      was held within the womb of a woman.

He who nourishes all creation,

      was fed on milk.

He did not come because we were worthy,

      but because we were dead, in trespasses and sin,

      held by Satan in bondage to sin.

He did not come because we sought him, or wanted him;

      he came because he is good and loves mankind,

      because he saw his work falling into decay,

      and willed to raise us to life,

           to forgive our sins,

           and restore his image and likeness in us.

He won us for himself, by active, patient love,

      by taking our guilt and sin on himself,

      and by pouring out his holy, divine life into death.

He rose from the dead, trampling down death by death,

      and to those in the tombs bestowing life.

He ascended into heaven, that he might fill all things;

      he poured out the promise of the Spirit from the Father

           upon his waiting Church.

Now the Holy Spirit works in the Church, bringing us through the Son to the Father.

The Holy Spirit indwells us, and so we are God's holy Temple.

He births us in holy Baptism, he anoints us with holy Chrism, he makes the bread and wine to be Christ's own flesh and blood so that we might receive Christ,

     and with Christ, forgiveness; and with Christ, eternal life.

Let us not forget how great a price was paid for us, beloved;

     let us not forget to what end it was paid.

Christ did not suffer to make us happy, to give us our “best life now.”

He did not die to give us an excuse to wallow in sin and self.

He did not rise to give us this life, extended out forever.

He suffered to give meaning and purpose to our suffering;

He died so that we might die to sin;

He rose to give us his own divine, indestructible life.

It's through much suffering that we enter the Kingdom of God;

it's through dying to sin that we are free to serve others;

it's through sharing his own indestructible life that we truly know God.

This is an election season, beloved; in a little over a month we will choose who will govern our nation and state. But every day, and every moment, we hold a little election. Shall we let the idols around us, come to live in God's temple? May it never be!

Rather, if we are the Temple of God, and we are, then let us give ourselves over to worship. (That's what temples are for, after all.) Let us be constant in prayer, in Scripture, in giving thanks to God.

If we are the sons of God, and we are, then let us live as sons of God. Let us seek Christ in the least of his brothers and sisters: the poor, the sick, and the ones whom nobody loves. Let us love our enemies and do good; let us lend, expecting nothing in return. Let us learn to become merciful, even as our God is merciful: for that, beloved, is the way of theosis...that is the way to the Kingdom, of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Sermon on Sunday before Holy Cross (Jn 3.14f; Gal. 6)

            A priest once heard a woman sobbing in the stillness of a church. He wondered, “What could be the problem?” Did someone die? Were they ill? Had they lost their job? He went up to console her and asked, “What’s the trouble?”

Her answer stunned him. “Father, I call myself a Christian. But my life is going well. I have no suffering, no sorrows, and no problems worth talking about. I am worried that perhaps I have fallen from Christ.”

            How strange her remark sounds…but how right-on it is! The Christian life is marked by suffering. The Christian life is marked by the cross, and where there is no cross, there there is no Christ. St. Paul told the Hebrews, “If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.”

            Now sometimes the cross comes to us unsought. The person whose marriage falls apart despite their best efforts…the one who hears that horrid word ‘cancer’ from the doctor…the one who becomes isolated at school because he bears the name of Christ…nobody wants these things, no one desires them, but they come nonetheless.

            Joachim and Anna bore the cross of childlessness. When we read their story, and hear how uprightly they lived, and how cruelly they were taunted, it makes us weep. But it was through their suffering, and through their prayers, that God made them ready to become parents of the Theotokos. How else can we explain how willing they were to give her up to life in the Temple at just three years of age? Their suffering bore rich fruit.

            But what about us? What if we have no suffering in our life, to speak of? Well, in such times we can take up the cross of self-discipline. Prayer, fasting and alms are all means by which we say “no” to ourselves and “yes” to God and to others.

            There are those who like to say they follow “the theology of the cross,” and surely the cross is a wonderful theology to follow. But for St. Paul and for all the saints from then till now, the cross is not merely a clever phrase, or way of speaking. For all the saints, the cross is a daily experience of being united to Christ in his sufferings. St. Paul says, “God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of Christ, whereby I was crucified to the world, and the world was crucified to me.” And again, he tells us, “I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.” Where there is no cross, there there is no Christ.

            But why? Why is the cross so necessary for the Christian life? If we are the children of God, then why must we suffer…why must we discipline ourselves?

            In the first place, the suffering of Christ was the means by which he gave his life for us; and if we are to receive that life, suffering is the means by which it enters us. In today’s gospel Jesus tells Nicodemus, “As Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so must the Son of man be lifted up, so that all who believe in him should have eternal life.”

            Think of a blood transfusion. The one who donates the blood, gives it through a wound opened in his body with a needle. But the one who receives it, must receive it through a wound opened in his body likewise with a needle. When we embrace suffering, not with complaining but with repentance and faith, we are joined to the one who joined himself to us completely on the cross.

            And suffering accomplishes its work in another way. Soren Kierkegaard tells the story of a swan who flew high above a barnyard. He worked hard to get his food; but the ducks in the barnyard were fed by the farmer. One day his curiosity got the best of him. He landed in the barnyard. To his surprise, the farmer didn’t try to catch him. Instead, he fed the swan.

            Day after day, the swan began to land in the barnyard for his food. He grew fatter and slower. Finally one day the farmer went to grab him…and he had become so fat he was unable to escape.

            Kierkegaard asks us, “What if someone had scared off the swan…had made his time in the barnyard unpleasant.? The swan would never have been caught by the farmer. That’s what the cross does in our life. It reminds us that this life, where so many glory in the wrong things, is fundamentally upside down. All the glory, all the pleasure, all the power of this world ends at the grave.

            But those who have been joined to Christ in his sufferings have something different to look forward to. “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs-- heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”

            So let us learn to embrace the suffering that comes our way in this life. Let us embrace the disciplines of prayer, and alms, and fasting. Wherever we see Christ suffer, there let us join him, whether it is the poor, the hungry, the sick—wherever he hides himself. For our cross, embraced in repentance and faith, joins us to Christ’s cross, the source of our life. And by the cross the Lord will teach us to look past these present passing pleasures, to the eternal joy at his right hand, of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Sermon on the Sunday after Transfiguration, 2012

            Two things surprise me about today’s Gospel lesson. While the Lord Jesus was on the mountain with Peter, James and John, a man had brought his demon-possessed son to the other disciples and asked them to cast out the demon. Try as they might, they couldn’t do it. So when the Lord returned, the man came to him directly and asked him to do it. At once the demon left the boy. The disciples, all embarrassed, took Jesus aside privately and asked, “Why couldn’t we cast it out?”

            And that brings us to the first surprise. Jesus answers, “Because you have no faith.” Ouch! He doesn’t say, “Because you have small faith,” or “because you have weak faith.” No; he tells these men who had been living with him for two years or more, “You have no faith.” Zero. Zip. Nada. Talk about bringing someone down to the ground!

            Think of all the problems we face. Sometimes, as in our Gospel lesson, others bring us those problems. (As Tevye says, in Fiddler on the Roof, “Life obliges us with hardships…”) We wonder, “How can I help this person who’s come to me for aid?”

And sometimes we bring those problems on ourselves. We worry, we think, we try different strategies, all to no avail.

Meanwhile, we assume that we have faith, and that we just need to figure out that missing something—whatever it might be. But all to no avail. Our problems don’t so much get solved, as get exchanged for other ones.

What if all these other problems just distract us from the one problem that all of life’s about? What if we keep on attacking the symptoms, but never address the root cause?

What if, instead, we took the Lord’s diagnosis to heart? “Why, Lord, am I so ineffective? Why can’t I get things done for you?” “Because you have no faith.”

When I first became Orthodox, Deacon David Khorey told me about a priest he knew growing up. The priest used to say to people, on a regular basis, “Pray for my conversion.”

“Pray for my conversion.” Isn’t that what’s it’s all about, after all? The struggle of our lifetime isn’t with this or that problem others bring to us…or the problems we see in ourself. The struggle of our lifetime is simply this: that before we die, we come to faith in our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ.

Didn’t he say, after all, “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” Didn’t his apostle say, “I do not consider that I have made it my own”—and by “it” he means “the righteousness from God that depends on faith”?

Why, after all, do we struggle with prayer, and reading the Scripture, and coming to Matins and Vespers? Why do we seek our own pleasure, and get into power struggles? Why do we grow so often dissatisfied? At root, it’s a faith-problem.

In the book, The Way of a Pilgrim, the pilgrim goes to a renowned monk for confession. The pilgrim lists every sin he can remember from his youth up. When the monk sees his list, he tells the pilgrim, “You have all these things, but you’ve forgotten the main sins.” “What do you mean?” the pilgrim asks, and the monk gives him his own list. Four items are listed, and one of them is “I have no religious belief.”

But just that fact brings us to the second surprise of the text. And to me it’s even more amazing than the first. Jesus doesn’t forsake these men. St. Matthew continues, “As they were traveling together through Galilee…”

He knew that one would betray him. He knew that another would deny him. He knew that all of them alike would forsake him. But he didn’t forsake them. He stayed with them. He gave them all he was, and all he had.  As John says in his gospel, “…Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the uttermost.”

You see, unbelief doesn’t get the last word with Christ. Neither does sin. Neither does death. His love for us is the ground on which we build our faith. His holy death covers our sin—indeed, by death he trampled death, and rose again for us. Take a look at the icon of the Anastasis. The Lord Jesus stands triumphant over death and hades; all the locks of hades’ gates lie scattered and broken beneath him. And then, in his strong hands he pulls Adam and Eve from hades. Look carefully, and you will see that he is holding them by the wrist, not by the hand. There is synergy, of course—they have their hands extended. But the work of pulling them out is his work.

So let us stop swatting at symptoms, and look to the root. Let us accept the Lord’s judgment and see that our problem is with faith. Let us learn to say with Deacon David’s friend, “Pray for my conversion.” For he who died for you and rose for you, promises, “I will never fail you, I will never forsake you. I am with you always, even to the end of the age. In the world you will have trouble, but be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.”