Meatfare Sunday 2021

Note: Meatfare Sunday begins the Orthodox Lenten fast. After this Sunday, we eat no meat until Pascha. (Next Sunday, "Cheesefare" Sunday, we bid farewell to eggs, dairy, and fish until Pascha.) It's traditional to hear the Gospel on the Last Judgment from Matthew 25 on this Sunday; here is my homily from yesterday:

            The philosopher Seneca once told his friend Lucilius, “We are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed. Whatever years lie behind us are in death's hands.” Something similar could be said of the Judgment. We are mistaken when we look forward to it as something a long time from now. For the basis of the Judgment is happening right here and now, day by day.

            Christ in glory says, to those on his right, “I was hungry and you fed me; I was a stranger and you welcomed me; I was thirsty and you gave me a drink; I was naked and you clothed me, sick and in prison and you visited me.” Those things don’t happen after death, or on Judgment Day. They happen today: here, and now.

            Sometimes when I’m getting off a freeway, I’ll encounter a beggar on the ramp. You know what the signs say: “Homeless.” “Please help.” “Unemployed.” There’ve been some creative ones, too, like “Have a Nice Day” or “Smile.” If the person is in my lane and there’s a red light, I may give him a dollar. But I rarely think of him as he actually is: the one who will judge me on the last day, for now wearing a disguise. If I did, I wouldn’t be so self-congratulatory. I might rather tremble in fear.

 

            A while back, I got to visit Constantinople. I saw St. Savior in Chora with its famous funeral chapel. Part of the iconography showed the wise thief, carrying his cross, and ushering people into heaven. Part of it showed the rich man in hell, all by himself. I found myself thinking a distressing thought: the rich man looked a lot like me.

            Jean-Paul Sartre once said that “hell is other people.” But the truth is exactly the opposite. Heaven is other people; hell is being by myself. Now, as an older man, I think back to the disciplines my parents used when I was a child. I got my share of spankings. I got grounded. But the worst punishment ever was the time they they told me to stand, facing the wall, and look at it, for thirty minutes. I could hear life going on behind me. But I was cut off, alone. I begged them after a few minutes: “Please just spank me and let me go.” Hell is like that. “Stare at the wall for eternity.” Heaven is the other people around us. 

The people I deal with every day have a hidden majesty—especially the poor and weak and foolish. Enfleshed God hides himself beneath them. “Inasmuch as you did it to the least of these, you did it to me.” And this isn’t just Matthew’s idea. When Christ encountered Paul on the road to Damascus, he said, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?

 

            The people on Christ’s left hand, who went into eternal torment, just didn’t get it. “When did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or naked, or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?” And the King will say, “Inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did not do it to me.”  

            Christ can hide himself under these outcasts, because when he saw us in despair he didn’t leave us to ourself. Freely and willingly he took flesh of a pure Virgin, and was made man. Sometimes people will say, “Don’t put God in a box.” By that they mean, “Don’t limit God.” But God has put himself into something much more limiting than a box. He put himself into our humanity. He did that, sheerly out of love for us. He lived our life, and died our death—talk about limiting yourself—what limits more than a grave? But the grave could not hold him. He rose again to save us.

            We need to stop thinking of the incarnation as the great Exception, and begin to see it as God’s way of working. Doesn’t the Old Testament teach us this? God walks in the garden in the cool of the day. He argues with Abraham, and wrestles with Jacob; he appears to Joshua, and Isaiah…and all these before he takes on flesh.

            So if you want to see the Judgment, don’t look forward. Look around at the people you meet—especially the insignificant ones. Find him there, and love him there, and serve him there, and you will find life in his kingdom, to which may we all attain,  through his grace and love for mankind, always, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen. 

1 Thessalonians 4:13f--First Soul Saturday 2021

             The saddest two words in the English language are these: “No hope.” A mother can bear the pains of childbirth because she hopes for the delivery of a child. A soldier can endure hunger and pain and even death if he has hope that his cause will ultimately prevail. Once, when I was pursuing Cindy, she wrote me a letter that quoted Paul’s words, “Let us not grow weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not”—and it encouraged me to keep on trying—and I’m glad that I did.

            Life without hope is no life at all; it’s mere existence, “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Is it any wonder that violence, and addiction, and political extremism are on the rise? When despair pierces the heart like a hook pierces a worm, there’s nothing left but to writhe and wriggle until death swallows us whole.

 

            In today’s epistle, St. Paul encourages us “not to grieve as those who have no hope.” What does he mean? Does he mean that Christians don’t grieve at all the loss of loved ones? By no means!--for when he who is the Resurrection and the Life encountered the tomb of his friend Lazarus, he groaned in spirit. “Jesus wept,” we’re told.

             We grieve. In part, it’s because we think of things we should have said or done differently than we did. In part, it’s because we think of things that might have been, that now can never be. Jesus’ grief at Lazarus was neither of those. But it was this: that he loved Lazarus, and for our sake he was grieved that death’s shadow should obscure the brightness of his love.

            Love led him to stop death in its tracks. He called his friend back from death, and Lazarus’ rising was a foretaste of his own greater resurrection just eight days later. By his death, Christ has destroyed death. He has emptied Hades. He has brought life and immortality to light by his resurrection. Christ’s rising is no exception: it’s a foretaste of what is coming for all those who have died. He is the first-fruits of the resurrection.

 

            And so we grieve in hope. We live in hope. We love in hope. The Creed’s last words are these: “I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the age to come.” I look for it. I await it. It is coming, as surely as day follows night. 

So it is right for us to remember our loved ones whom we have lost, and to pray for their rest and repose. We do it for them, today. Others will do it for us, before we know it. For as Solomon wisely said, “Love is as strong as death.” 

            Soon, soon, our Lord will return. He has promised. He is faithful. And his promise feeds our hope. It helps us endure the pain, and hardship, and even the death we experience in this life. 

Hope won’t last forever, of course; like faith, it will have an end. One day faith will become sight, and hope will be fulfilled, in the presence of our God, who is love. Till then, we grieve, in hope.

Sunday of the Prodigal Son 2021

             This past year we lost a great songwriter and singer—John Prine. One of the last songs he wrote is called “Summer’s End”…a song he dedicated to those who have died of drug overdoses. The refrain of that song captures the heart of today’s text; you could hear the waiting Father say this to his wayward son: “Come on home; come on home; you don’t have to live alone; just come on home.”

            Those are the words our heavenly Father addresses to us at the beginning of Great Lent. They imply that we’ve wandered away, and all of us have. “All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way.”

            Which son are you? Are you the younger son, who took his inheritance and went to a far country and wasted it on worthless things? Have you been starving to death, trying to satisfy that inner hunger with anything—even pods fit for pigs?

            Or are you the older son—close in body, but far in soul from the waiting Father?—the son who worked hard every day, and justified himself to himself—who, like Little Jack Horner in the nursery rhyme, said to himself “What a good boy am I!”

            Maybe, like me, you’re a mixture of the two. The worst part of Covid hasn’t been the number of deaths, though they’ve been great. It isn’t the lost jobs, or the crashing economy, though they’ve been hard. No; it’s the way that our hearts have been laid bare like the framework of an old house after a hurricane blows through. 

            If you think about it, both boys in the parable were dead to their dad. When the younger one wished for his inheritance, he was as good as wishing that his dad would die. And when the older boy sulked and complained, he showed his own rebellion—less obvious, but no less deadly.

            And yet the Father is not dead toward them. Every day he waits for the younger son’s return. When the older son sulks and separates himself from brother and father, the father talks to him. To both of them, and to us this day, he has the same theme: “Come on home; come on home; you don’t have to live alone—just come on home.” Or, as Isaiah of old said it: “Seek the Lord while He may be found, Call upon Him while He is near.  Let the wicked forsake his way, And the unrighteous man his thoughts; Let him return to the Lord, And He will have mercy on him; And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon.”

            And Isaiah says, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; but the Lord has laid on him—Christ—the iniquity of us all.” In other words, the fare for our return trip has been paid. The father in our text killed the fatted calf; but our heavenly Father gave his own Son to bear our curse and taste death for us. The father in our text gives his son a fine robe; but our heavenly Father wraps us in the robe of Christ’s righteousness. The father in our text places a signet ring on his son’s finger; but our heavenly Father seals us with the gift of the Holy Spirit.

            When you get down to it, repentance isn’t about feeling miserable—wallowing in our passions or pridefully claiming that we’re smarter than our heavenly and earthly fathers. Repentance is about turning away from ourselves, and turning toward God and each other. “Come on home; come on home; you don’t have to be alone; just come on home.”

 

            

Maxims

 In this space, I will from time to time post maxims--short sayings that bear reflecting on. I make no claim that these originate with me; indeed, I am skeptical of anything I think of that has not been thought of, and tested, before.

These maxims occur in no particular order.

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1. Any weapon you fashion and/or use against another, will be used against you.

    "Those who take up the sword, will perish by the sword." 

2. In this life, things are hidden under their opposite.

3. What people notice in a situation reveals at least as much about them, as it does about the situation.

4. Greater harm comes from the overcorrection of an error, than from the error itself.

5. We do not know as much as we think we know.

6. Suffering provides the opportunity for wisdom and salvation; ease provides the opportunity for folly and damnation.

7. The world is far more chaotic than our maps of it suggest. All our maps lie.

8. Stupidity is an equal opportunity employer.

9. What you fear will happen, will happen. Choose your fears wisely.

10. Most revolutionaries are broken-hearted lovers.

11. When narrative drives fact, problems quickly spiral out of control. (Chernobyl)

12. When power is concentrated, more progress is made. The question is, progress in which direction, and to what end?

13. One is never so close to sight as when one says, "I don't see." One is never in such deep darkness as when one says, "I see." (John 9; Socrates)

14. Truth stumbles, error marches. Truth whispers; error shouts. 

15. He who discovers how death is overcome, never fears.

The Shepherd and the Thief

     The holy fathers teach that we know a thing's essence by its energies. We know that Christ is truly man because he wept, he ate and drank, he slept, and he suffered. We know that Christ is truly God because he forgave sins, raised the dead, healed the sick and so on. (Others have also done those things, but in his name.) When St. John the Forerunner called people to repent, he told them to "bear fruit worthy of repentance," because repentance is manifest in actions. To use an everyday example, if I am in a room and hear laughter coming from the hallway, I can be sure that somebody is out in that hallway. The energy (laughter) is an infallible sign of the essence (a human being).

    In John's Gospel, Christ told the people, "I am the good shepherd. The thief comes only to steal, and kill, and destroy; I have come that they might have life, and have it abundantly." We can tell the difference between the Shepherd and the thief by the fruit they produce. You can be sure of this: where theft, and murder, and destruction is present, it has come from the Evil One. 

    So let me give to others freely, but not take from them by force; let me lay down my life for love of neighbour, but never wish his hurt or death, much less cause it; let me build up the lives of those around me, and not tear them down by words or works. "But they have wrong ideas!" Their wrong ideas will cause you no harm (unless you let them). "But they act wrongly!" They, like you, act for what they think is best. Pray for them, act kindly toward them, try as hard as you can to understand them. Choose wisely whose will you enact: the will of the Shepherd, or the will of the thief.