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.”

A Strange Uniate argument

We had an interesting guest at the parish today--a Byzantine Catholic whose brother is Orthodox. Both were raised Protestant. When I expressed surprise to the one brother that he would have chosen to become Byzantine Catholic, he used what I consider to be an odd explanation.

Referring to JH Newman's The Development of Doctrine, and connecting it to John 6, he claimed first, that doctrine has continued to develop (in the Newman sort of way). He then claimed that the end of John 6 is normative for the whole history of the church, and that unless a body continues to develop its teachings and bring each new generation to a crisis-point--a point at which some or many of Christ's disciples leave or are tempted to leave--unless that happens, such a body cannot be the Church Christ founded.

To him, it is proof of Orthodoxy's error that it has held no council since 787. (Of course I pointed out the council of 879, which rejected the filioque; I could also have cited the Palamite councils of the 1340's, but no matter.) In any case, I found it odd for a Uniate to argue that the Orthodox Church presents no ongoing crisis-point at which some leave, given that the Uniate movement arose precisely as a departure from the Orthodox faith in favor of Rome.

But I've seen a similar defense for western discussions of, say, original sin and justification. "We in the West have had to deal with more problems than you in the East," this argument goes, "and so our theological language is more precise than yours." It seems to me to be a little like a Saab owner arguing that his car is superior to a Honda, because it has required more time in the shop.

The Church has had councils since 787, of course, as mentioned above. But ongoing theological crises scarcely seem to be a hallmark of truth. It is good when dysfunctional homes work through troubles to achieve some modicum of stability; but it is better when no such internal troubles arise.

Homily for Pentecost 2012

            Today is the feast of Pentecost. Today God’s promises are fulfilled, our hope is accomplished, and the Church is born. Today the curse of Babel is reversed. Long ago men sought to make a name for themselves by building a tower to reach heaven, and by divine judgment their tongues were scattered. But today the Holy Spirit is poured out in tongues of flame, and God unites men and women and children of every race and tribe and tongue, by giving them the name of the consubstantial Trinity, one in essence and undivided.

            Those of us who came from western Christian traditions knew the Sunday after Pentecost as the Sunday of the Holy Trinity. But in the Orthodox Church, we mark the day of Pentecost itself as the day of the Holy Trinity—and there is wisdom in this choice. For on this day, at last the Spirit is most clearly revealed as he comes to the Church in fiery tongues. Here is how St. Gregory the Theologian puts it:

“The Old Testament proclaimed the Father openly, and the Son more obscurely.  The New manifested the Son, and suggested the Deity of the Spirit.  Now the Spirit Himself dwells among us, and supplies us with a clearer demonstration of Himself.“

But why this ordering of revelation? St. Gregory continues, “For it was not safe, when the Godhead of the Father was not yet acknowledged, plainly to proclaim the Son; nor when that of the Son was not yet received to burden us further (if I may use so bold an expression) with the Holy Ghost; lest perhaps people might, like men loaded with food beyond their strength, and presenting eyes as yet too weak to bear it to the sun’s light, risk the loss even of that which was within the reach of their powers; but that by gradual additions, and, as David says, Goings up, and advances and progress from glory to glory, the Light of the Trinity might shine upon the more illuminated.”  Thus far Gregory.

So the order in which God shows himself is Father, Son and Spirit. But the order by which we come to know him, reverses the order. We come in the Spirit, through the Son, to the Father. The Spirit makes us to know the Son, for “no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit,” as St. Paul says, and Christ himself says, “when the Comforter comes, he will bear witness about me.”

By the grace of the Holy Spirit, we come to know the Son. In the 19^th century, some liberal theologians wrote lives of Jesus. Finally, Albert Schweitzer wrote a history of those books. He remarks that the Jesus each of them portrayed looked a lot more like an idealized portrait of the theologian. And it happens again today, as people take Christ out of context to make him support their own agendas. At the end, we begin to wonder who Jesus is.

The Holy Spirit makes it clear. He brings us to know Jesus as the Son of the Father, Light from Light, true God from true God, one in essence but distinct in Person. He also makes us to know his own relation to the Son, for at the Baptism of Jesus he comes from the Father and rests on the Son. And so we believe, and so we confess, that the Spirit proceeds, not from the Father and the Son, but from the Father alone, and rests on the Son.

So in the Second Comforter, we come to know the First Comforter, the Word of God made flesh for us men and for our salvation. And through the First Comforter, we come to know the Father. On the night of Christ’s betrayal, Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and we will be satisfied.” Jesus responded, “Have I been so long with you, and still you do not know me? Whoever has seen me, has seen the Father…I am in the Father, and the Father is in me.”

Note carefully: Christ distinguishes his Person from the Person of the Father. He does not say, “I am the Father,” but “I am in the Father, and the Father is in me.” But he shows their unity of essence by speaking of “Father” and “Son,” for all fathers are the same essence as the sons they beget. Horse fathers beget horse sons, human fathers beget human sons. Since, in this case, the Father is God, the Son must also be God.

Through the Son we know the Father. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son.” The cross of Christ is not that of an innocent child crushed by an angry, abusive father.  At Christ’s cross, rather, we see the complete, self-giving love of the Father. Such love!—that he gives us the one in whom dwells all the fullness of deity bodily—utterly and completely gives him, life into death, that through his death we might share the life of the Holy Trinity.

And now, let us never go further. Let us never seek to innovate, or be creative. Let us remain in the teaching we have received, the faith given once for all to the saints. Each week we say, just before the Creed, “Let us love one another, that with one accord we may confess Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Trinity one in essence and undivided.”

To remain in the Orthodox faith is to remain in love—love for God who has revealed himself, and love for all those who faithfully handed down this truth to us. And the reverse is true. To depart from love—to act out the pride of Babel—is to depart from the Orthodox faith.

So on this day of Pentecost, let us, like them, remain together and in one accord. Let us love each other fervently, not only in word but in deed and truth. By this all men will know that we are Christ’s disciples; and by this we will come, in the Spirit and through the Son, to know the Father.

Why would anyone in their right mind go to get water at high noon? Getting water, back then, was hard work. It wasn’t a job you’d want to do by yourself. And it certainly wasn’t something to do in the heat of the day. Yet there she was, day after day, in the heat of the day, coming to the well. But this day something was different. A man sat there—a Jew. He sat by the well, tired. Whether we recognize it or not, we put up little walls around ourselves. There’s the wall between the sexes, the wall between social classes, the wall between old and young. It requires extra effort for us to approach someone who’s different than we are. We have to climb these walls first. At the well that day, that tired Jewish traveler broke down all the walls—it was as if they didn’t even exist for him. First he talked to her. “Woman, give me a drink.” She was shocked, and pointed out the walls. “How can you, a Jewish man, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” Now that he had her attention, he shocked her. “If you had known God’s gift, and who asks you, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” She was confused. Living water? Who did he think he was? So she tried to put him into context. “Our father Jacob gave us this well to drink from; are you greater than him?” See how gently, yet powerfully he replies. He doesn’t compare himself directly to Jacob. He points out that Jacob’s water doesn’t really satisfy our thirst…but that his water, the living water, will become a spring inside us. (Talk about indoor plumbing!) So she commits herself to him. “Sir, give me this water, so that I might not thirst, or have to come here to draw.” Her heart is opening…the walls are down…all, that is, but one. “Go call your husband,” he tells her, “and come here.” “But I have no husband,” she answers. “You speak truly,” he says, “for you have had five husbands, and the man you have now is not your husband.” Now the last wall comes down. Now we understand why she came every day at noon, by herself. She was a woman scorned by all the others, an outcast, a misfit. He knew it all…but still he loved her. But she was also a woman with insight. She confessed him to be a prophet, and asked him the most burning Jewish/ Samaritan question: where is the right place to worship, in Samaria or Jerusalem? She wasn’t ready for his answer. “Soon,” he said, “neither here nor Jerusalem. For God is looking for those who worship him in spirit and in truth.” Who was this weary traveler? Clearly he was greater than Jacob. He even seemed greater than a prophet. So she brought up the Messiah. “When Messiah comes, he will explain everything to us,” she said. “I who speak to you am he,” Jesus replied. Now her life was truly turned upside down. She forgot all about getting water. She even left her water pot there at the well. She ran into the town and broke down their walls by saying, “Come see a man who told me everything I ever did! Could he be the Messiah?” We often hear this text preached as an evangelism text…and so it is. But this morning, I invite you to put yourself in the place of this woman, Photeini...to see how Christ deals with us. Her daily trip to the well represents the things we thirst for every day…our desires. In Jeremiah, the Lord says, “My people have committed two great evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and have hewed out for themselves broken cisterns, which hold no water.” The walls we build around ourselves, to protect ourselves, simply don’t exist for him. He knows us as we are. Yet still he loves us. He offers us the living water—his Holy Spirit—so that we may be refreshed and energized day after day to live for him. The mediaeval write Thomas de Celano meditated on todays text and wrote, in Latin, Quarens me sedisti lassus; Redemisti, crucem passus; Tantus labor non sit casus! Translated, it says, “Seeking me, you sat weary (by the well); you redeemed me, suffering on the cross; (O Lord,) don’t let such labor go for nothing! It won’t go for nothing, beloved, as we open ourselves to Christ like St. Photeini…when we receive from him this great gift he gives…the gift of living water. Thirsty? Come and drink!

Homily on the Paralytic, 2012

Where were you thirty eight years ago? I was fresh out of high school, working at a drug store for a dollar an hour, thinking about heading off to college in the fall. Richard Nixon was the president. Gold was about $165 an ounce. The #1 song was “Locomotion,” done by Grand Funk Railroad. Thirty eight years ago, most of you weren’t born yet. For all intents and purposes, 38 years is a lifetime ago.
 I raise the question to highlight how long this man had waited, helpless, at the pool of Bethesda. St. John mentions that the pool had five porticoes. From time to time an angel would come down and stir up the water; the one to enter the water first would be healed.
Perhaps we can see here a veiled reference to the Law of Moses. It was made up of five books; it was ministered by angels…but it lacked the power to bring about change. The problem wasn’t the Law; the problem was, as St. Paul says elsewhere, that through fear of death we were subject to lifelong bondage. So close, and yet so far away.
The paralytic wanted to be healed. Why else would he stay there for thirty eight years? But, as he told the Lord, “I have no man to help me.” Wanting to be healed wasn’t enough. “I have no man to help me.” He spoke those words to the one and only man who could help him—the God-man, Jesus Christ. With one word from Christ, thirty-eight years of waiting come to a sudden end. “Get up,” the Lord says, “take up your bed and walk.” And at once the man got up.
Beloved, this paralyzed man has much to teach us—first, that self-help strategies count for nothing, unless we are connected to Christ. If we could change those things that trouble us by ourselves, wouldn’t we have done it by now? And yet we think, “Why trouble God with this problem? I should try to fix it myself. If I could just find the right self-help book…” Listen to the paralytic—he gets it right. I have no man to help me. There can be no healing, no forgiveness, no change in my life apart from Jesus Christ.
Second, he reminds us about patience. How many of us give up on prayer for some great need because our prayers are not answered at once? How many of us consign ourselves to hopelessness because our weak wills aren’t able to bring about change in our lives? God is faithful to his promises. Ask, and you will receive. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you.
And let us reflect on the pool of Bethesda—literally, “the house of mercy.” Like so much in the Old Testament times, it was a foreshadowing of something greater to come. This healing water, touched by angels, points forward to the greater and better water of Holy Baptism. Bethesda healed bodies; baptism cleanses souls. Bethesda healed one only, and from time to time; baptism washes each and every one who comes, no matter when they come.
When, then, we struggle with our own paralysis, let us return to our baptism. For there we were joined to the God-man, Jesus Christ. We were buried together with him by baptism into death, so that as he rose from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. Let us not grow faint because the struggle is long; but let us read and ponder God’s promises and cling to Christ in prayer.
And finally, as Christ gives us healing let us guard ourselves from falling back to where we came from. When Christ meets the man in the Temple he tells him, “Look, you are made well. Sin no more, lest something worse befall you.” Don’t read this as a threat—it isn’t. Christ doesn’t say, “Sin no more, lest I get angry with you.” He says, “lest something worse befall you.” Christ does not heal us so that we may seek our own will; he heals us so that we might seek his will.
 So if the struggle is long—keep at it! Wait on the Lord in prayer. Seek his face. He isn’t ashamed to help paralytics, and tax collectors, and prostitutes. The only folks he has no time for, are those who have no use for him. Return to your baptism, and trust that he who joined you, there, to Christ, will continue to work in your life until he brings you at last to his Kingdom, of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Epictetus on not fearing want

Does God so neglect his own creatures, his servants, his witnesses, whom alone he uses as examples to the uninstructed, to prove that he both is, and governs the universe well, and does not neglect the affairs of men, and that no evil befalls a good man either in life or in death?

Yes; but what if he does not provide food?

Why, what else but that as a good general he has sounded the recall? I obey, I follow, lauding my commander, and singing hymns of praise about his deeds. For I came into the world when it so pleased him, and I leave it again at his pleasure, and while I live this was my function--to sing hymns of praise unto God, to myself and to others, be it to one or to many.

Homily for Sunday of St. Mary of Egypt (Fifth Sunday in Lent)

“Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” That’s the question Christ posed to James and John, all eager to sit next to him in his glory. They answered yes, but they didn’t know what they were saying. James would be martyred just a few years after the resurrection. John would be sent into exile and suffer many things before he reposed.

You see, to be worthy of sharing in Christ’s glory, we must first share in his suffering. There’s really no other way. No suffering, no glory. The New Testament makes it plain, again and again. In our text, Christ speaks of suffering in terms of sharing his baptism and his cup. When we receive the holy mysteries, we are embracing everything about Christ—especially his sufferings. As St. Paul says in Romans, “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.”
Sometimes that suffering comes unsought. James didn’t try to get martyred; John didn’t seek to be exiled. They were faithful to Christ, and that’s enough to get into trouble.

Other times we embrace suffering for Christ’s sake. That’s what we’ve been doing this Lententide—learning to say “no” to ourselves in matters of prayer, alms and fasting. “No” isn’t a bad word, it’s a good word, it’s a life-changing, life-saving word. But “no” is never an easy word.

So how’s it going for you, this Lententide? Are you winning victories against the devil, the world, and your sinful flesh? Or are you feeling beaten down, discouraged and downright cranky? “Are you able to drink Christ’s cup, and receive his baptism?” For me, it’s been a real struggle.

That’s why our holy fathers were so wise to place the story of St. Mary of Egypt right at this point in our Lenten journey. She lived a loose life, selling herself not just for food, but for pleasure. When she tried to enter the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and wasn’t able to, she was convicted of her sin. She came to repentance, and faith, and so was able to enter and receive the Holy Mysteries. Then, fortified by that food, she journeyed into the desert to fight against her passions for forty eight years.

We sometimes act like St. Mary and the other saints were different from us…that they were able to drink Christ’s cup, and receive his baptism. But St. Mary herself confessed to Fr. Zosima that for seventeen years she fought against the old passions and desires. And she wasn’t able, in herself, to win.

She herself told Fr. Zosima, “But when such desires entered me I struck myself on the breast and reminded myself of the vow which I had made, when going into the desert. In my thoughts I returned to the ikon of the Mother of God which had received me and to her I cried in prayer. I implored her to chase away the thoughts to which my miserable soul was succumbing. And after weeping for long and beating my breast I used to see light at last which seemed to shine on me from everywhere. And after the violent storm, lasting calm descended.”

Are you able? Am I? In a word, no! But neither were the saints. They learned from experience to call on God and his Mother in their weakness…and by the intercession of the Theotokos, God answered their prayers. He joined their sufferings with Christ’s sufferings. And through those sufferings—Christ’s sufferings, in which they joined—they entered his glory.

We must stop thinking of ourselves as separate from Christ. When we cut ourselves off from him, we wither and fail. But the whole point of everything in church is that we are joined with him. We were buried with him through baptism into death; he gives us to share his own body and blood, and so becomes one flesh with us. We are joined to Christ. Only in this way, beloved, will we ever be able to drink his cup, or share his baptism.

So don’t be discouraged. Take our mother Mary of Egypt as an image of repentance. Receive Christ as he comes to you in the mysteries. And he will give you grace to drink his cup, and share his baptism, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.