St. Nicholas in the Mountains

On March 3, Fr. James was invited to deliver a homily at a Community Lenten Service at St. William’s Catholic Church. The text he was asked to speak from was Matthew 20:17-28. What follows is that homily. Many thanks to St. William’s and its pastor, Fr. George Kloster, for their gracious invitation and hospitality.

When we read the Gospels, we are sometimes struck by passages that stop us in our tracks, that make us sit back and think. Some of these passages are hard, and express truth that is uncomfortable and even frightening. Other passages strike us as riddles, puzzles with solutions that are not readily apparent, such as Jesus’ words in the Gospel of Matthew that “the Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence”. And yet others are statements that are plain and simple, but are undeniably at odds with how each one of us lives our day to day life.

Our Gospel today is one of those plainspoken passages. From its very opening, it presents a stark and uncomfortable contradiction. “The Son of Man is going to Jerusalem,” says Jesus, “to die.” This is not the first time that Jesus has told his disciples what the near future holds, nor is it the first time that the disciples seem not to have heard him. Sometimes we wonder how the disciples seem to be able to completely miss what our Lord is telling them. If we think about it, though, we see that their apparently deliberate disregard of the statement is a reaction that we ourselves sometimes show, a natural human desire to see the bright side of things.

So it was with the Apostles. They could not imagine Jesus dead, much less crucified. He was the Messiah. Surely, they thought, an army of angels would come and rescue him, and drive the Romans from Jerusalem. All would be well, so well that it was time to talk about truly important matters, like, say, who would get the seat of honor in the Kingdom. Who would sit on His right and on His left?

Now we read this, and we tend to be kind of hard on John and James, whose mother asked the question, but the truth is this: that precise question was in the mind of each and every one of the apostles. They were mad at John and James not for thinking about it, but because they asked before the others worked up the courage to raise the subject.

And why not? If we are honest with ourselves, that question, in one form or another, occupies the mind of each of us. Indeed, our entire society is built on the premise that success is paramount. Being first is critical. Being the winner is the mark of a well lived life. We work hard, we compete hard, and if we are truly successful we leave others in our dust. We annihilate our enemies, we wipe out our opposition, we destroy our adversaries. Indeed, if we imagine our world as a pyramid, the most successful, most powerful people will be those at the very top of the pyramid. The closer to the top you are, the more honored and respected you are. Those below you are not as good, not as smart, not as worthy.

Yet here the Gospel does what it so often does – it turns our reality on its head. “To be honored in the Kingdom of God,” says Jesus, “you must be a servant to all.” To be great, you must be a slave. To be the first, you must be the last.

A 20th century Russian saint, Elder Sophrony, pondering this passage, said that the Kingdom of God can indeed be pictured as a pyramid, with Christ Himself at the tip. But, said the Elder, the pyramid is inverted. It is upside down, pointed downward, and from His place on the tip Christ supports the entire world. The task of a Christian, said Sophrony, is to dive downwards: down into humility, down into obedience, down into prayer for the world and everyone in it. By submerging ourselves into the virtues of the Kingdom of God, we strive to come ever closer to Christ, ever farther down into the pyramid, where we join ourselves and our prayers to Christ.

The Kingdom is like that. Those who are honored in the Kingdom of God are those who forgive, so that they themselves will be forgiven. They are those who give away treasures of the world so that they will amass spiritual treasure. They are those who offer the other cheek, who love and pray for their enemies, who humble themselves before all. I will be the first to agree that these are challenging standards. The Gospel writer does not mince words. The path to salvation is a narrow one. But I tell you this — we can walk the narrow path, if we walk it in love.

By love, I am not speaking of passionate love, as we see it in movies and on television. We know that love, true love, as it is expressed every day in our life, is not simply a warm and fuzzy emotion. We know that love that is true, love that lasts, is founded on sacrifice. If you are married, you accept boundaries on your behavior that a single person may not have to accept. If you are a parent, you sacrifice for your children without a second thought. If you are a child, you sacrifice for your parents, and accept their discipline. If you are a Christian, you will sacrifice for the love of God.

And now, in the season of Lent, we think about sacrificing, about giving something up. But just as love is sacrifice, sacrifice that is made without love is no sacrifice at all. In the 4th century, St. John Chrysostom told the faithful in Constantinople that they could fast from food during Lent, as was expected of them, but that it meant nothing if they did not also fast from sin: from anger, from judgment, from hatred. Lent is not found in the simple act of going without. Properly done, going without, or giving up something, is the outward sign of an inward spiritual sacrifice.

I say that because, properly viewed, Lent forces us to look within ourselves, and honestly assess the sins and passions that govern each one of us. It invites us to engage our Lord with our whole selves: body, mind and soul. Lent forces us to look closely at Christ, to remember His suffering, and to remember His eternal love. It forces us to confront just how cold our own love may have become. And recollecting that, Lent offers us an opportunity to do as Elder Sophrony speaks of, to dive downward into obedience, into humility, into love, and thus to become closer to our God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

There is another image that comes to mind. In the 7th century after Christ there lived a man we know as St. Isaac of Ninevah. Isaac grew up on the coast of the Red Sea, and as a child he saw men diving for pearls in the ocean. The pearl divers, without air tanks or any kind of life support, would sail small boats out onto the sea, where they would dive for pearls. They were buffeted by waves, they were menaced by sharks, they often dove so deep that the air, indeed, their very life, was almost crushed out of them, all so that they could collect that one, perfect pearl from which they derived their livelihood, their very substance. Years later, reflecting on the Gospel lesson of the pearl of great price, he brought those same images to mind in the context of Great Lent.

If pearls could be collected by simply walking along the beach, Isaac said, then they would have no value. Any person, without effort or thought, could simply pick up a pearl. But pearls, he said, are collected only with great labor. A Christian, said Isaac, must be like the pearl diver, and must sacrifice for the sake of the wondrous pearl. The Christian will be buffeted by the cares and worries of life. The Christian will be menaced by sin and passion, by evil both within and without. The Christian life, said Isaac, is arduous and requires dedication and sacrifice and single minded determination.

Lent is like that. Lent invites us to leave our comfortable day to day life, marked by unquestioning acceptance of the values of the world, and instead to undertake a journey fueled by love. With love we dive down: down past self interest, down past distraction, down past abiding sin, down past failure of prayer, down past worldly values, down past selfishness. We pray, we worship, we sacrifice; and from these struggles, small as they may be, grace comes upon us.

Out of our small love, we find the greatest love.

Out of our small struggles we find enormous rewards.

Out of our descent into our soul we find the King of Glory.

In our tradition, during Great Lent we add a particular prayer to our morning and evening prayers during the week. It is a prayer written by St. Ephraim of Syria in the 4th century, and it perfectly expresses the lesson we have learned:

O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, faint-heartedness, lust of power and idle talk. But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love to thy servant. Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own errors and not to judge my brother, for Thou art blessed from all ages to all ages.

Together, let us resolve to continue our Lenten journey, to embark anew into prayer, into worship, into watchfulness, into service, into love. If we do that, our celebration of Pascha, of Easter, of the Great Feast of the Resurrection of our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ will be unimaginably sweet, joy beyond describing.

We are at the midpoint, more or less, of a deeply festive season. We have welcomed the Infant Jesus into the world, in the cold silence of a Bethlehem night. We have joined the shepherds and the angels, the Magi and the beasts of the field, in adoration of God made flesh. In the joy of His coming, we forgo our usual fasting. Our celebration is deep, and heartfelt.

Yet no sooner have we celebrated the Nativity then we see disquieting signs, reminders that the Incarnation is but the first step in an arduous journey of salvation. We are reminded of this on December 27, when we remember the Protomartyr, the Deacon Stephen. On December 29, we read of the heartbreaking slaughter of the 14,000 innocents by Herod. And on January 6, we will celebrate a feast of a different character, that of the Theophany of Christ.

In fact, in the early Church there was only one winter feast, that of the Theophany. For us today, the Nativity and the Theophany are like bookends, bracketing a season of joy and celebration, before we begin a period of ordinary time that leads us inevitably into the somber reflection of Great Lent. We might ask: what links these events? On the surface, there does not seem to be a connection. What does a new born infant have to do with the baptism of the fully grown God-man, Christ? And what does any of it have to do with us?

The answer is not found in the way we see Christmas celebrated around us, in a society which does not celebrate the baptism of Christ at all. It is only in Orthodoxy, in the Church itself, that a true and complete understanding of these events is found. And what the Church tells us is that the joy of this season does not derive from gifts we receive, but rather in what we sacrificially give. Christ, as always, is our unparalleled example. By being born of the Virgin, Christ underwent what the Fathers called kenosis, the complete emptying of Himself. The Son of God consented to a birth in rude surroundings. He entered the world not as a King, but as an infant, dependent upon his mother for care, and upon his guardian, Joseph, for protection. Where the angels sang before his throne in the heavenly courts, he is now surrounded by farm animals. The Incarnation was a voluntary denial of self that led directly to the cross. Even in the Nativity icon we see that link:

Christ, the second person of the Trinity, is born in a cave. After His crucifixion, he will be laid again into another cave, a tomb.

When He is born, he is wrapped in swaddling clothes which binds the limbs of the child. After his crucifixion, he is wrapped again in cloth.

When he is born, he is laid in a manger, a receptacle for holding food. He will indeed become food for us, and his Body and his Blood sustains us in every Liturgy.

But understanding that the child has embarked on a road to the cross does not lessen our joy. As St. Athanasius the Great exclaimed, God became man so that man might become God. The Incarnation is the opening of the door of salvation. It is the only door to salvation, and for that we are filled with gratitude. Yet it is a door which we must choose to enter. The mere existence of an open door means nothing unless we avail ourselves of the road which is offered. And it is in the Theophany that we begin to see that clearly.

It is the universal teaching of the Fathers that Christ submitted to baptism in obedience, in order to fulfill all things. He had no sin for which he needed to repent. Unlike the throngs of others who came for the baptism of John, He had nothing to confess. He needed no forgiveness. Yet in his obedience, the Trinity was revealed, as His Father declared that Jesus was His son, in which he was well pleased, and The Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove. The Godhead became apparent. From that, we understand that our own obedience is demanded.

There is an Old Testament story that helps remind us of the link between God’s work, and our own obedience. In the book of 4 Kingdoms (2 Kings in the western Bible), we find the story of Namaan. Namaan was the powerful commander of the army of the King of Syria. At the height of his career, however, he developed the dread disease of leprosy. His wife had a slave girl, an Israelite, who told her mistress about the wonderworking prophet of God, Elisha. He, the slave girl declared, could cure Namaan of leprosy. Word got to the Syrian king, and he sent his commander to the King of Israel, carrying enormous treasure, asking that Namaan be cured.

The King of Israel misunderstood the request, thinking that he was supposed to somehow cure Namaan. Scripture tells us that the King fell into despair, tearing his clothes. The King, you see, failed to see the request through spiritual eyes, but instead interpreted the event through the eyes of the world. He thought that the King of Syria was hoping to start a quarrel, and begin a war which Israel would lose. He did not stop to think that the request was a genuine plea for assistance, nor did he think to send the man to the Prophet Elisha, who lived within his borders.

Elisha, however, heard of the demand. He sent a message to his king, and told him to send Namaan to him. The general came to his house, with his soldiers and his chariots and all of the signs of his power. Namaan was a proud man, and a powerful one. It was not in his nature to approach Elisha in humility. In his mind, he just had this one little problem – leprosy – and if he could just be cured of it, he would go back to being the powerful man he had always been.

Standing in front of the rude house with his servants and his soldiers, what Namaan expected was that Elisha would come out to where he was impatiently waiting, wave his arms around, call on an obedient God and – viola! – he would be cured. He wanted it done quickly, and in accordance with his schedule, at his convenience. Namaan was used to getting things done as he wished.

But God had other plans. “Go,” Elisha told Namaan, “and wash yourself in the Jordan River seven times, and you will be healed.”

In all honesty, the Jordan is not the world’s most attractive river. It is not huge and grand like other great rivers, nor is it as pristine and delightful as a mountain stream. Frankly, Elisha’s order offended Namaan. There were prettier rivers in Syria, rivers that he would enjoy getting into and bathing. Why did he have to go into the Jordan, and why did he have to bathe seven times? Furious, Namaan turned to leave. He was going to return home. From his point of view it was humiliating to be told to go to some muddy river and wash himself seven times. He was dissuaded, however, by his servants, who said “My father, if the prophet had commanded you to do some great thing, would you not have done it?” So why not go in obedience, and wash yourself in the Jordan? Namaan obeyed, and against his every expectation, he was healed of his leprosy.

Now, there is more to this story, and in the end, Namaan’s leprosy was transferred to a servant of Elisha’s, who acted out of pride and greed. But for our purposes, let’s stop and think about Namaan.

Namaan was a proud man, used to having things his way, and doing as he wished. It was not in his nature to humble himself. Oh, he was open to anything that appealed to his heroic nature, or to any task that he could take pride in performing. But to be asked to dunk himself seven times in a muddy little river was almost more than he could stand. There was no heroism, there was no glory, there was no self, if you will, in Elisha’s command. There was only self-emptying, there was only humility, there was only obedience.

All of us can see ourselves in the person of Namaan. We are proud, and want to do things our way. We have firm ideas about the best way to live our life. We have definite preferences for what is clean and shiny and attractive, as opposed to what looks not shiny and not attractive. We all are drawn to praise for things we have done, and we bask in the admiration of other people. And we all have this little problem – call it spiritual leprosy – that we need taken care of.

In response, we must emulate Namaan. We must set aside our worldly trappings and achievements, and empty ourselves, in imitation of our Lord. We must repeatedly submerge ourselves into the Jordan of repentance, in obedience and in hope, that Christ our Lord, He who has opened the door of salvation, will heal our souls and save us. It is worth noting that the number seven in this story was not just happenstance. In scriptural terms, seven is the number of completion. It tells us that in our Christian life, we must return repeatedly to the Jordan, not for baptism by water, but for what the Fathers call the baptism of repentance. We must constantly humble ourselves before God, acknowledging our shortcomings and our sins. We must constantly submerge ourselves in the waters of the Jordan.

Do you see the lesson for us? At Christmas, Christ is born in a cave, having emptied Himself for the sake of mankind. At the Theophany, Christ is baptized in the Jordan, submerged into a muddy river in obedience and in fulfillment of the divine will, and in His obedience he sanctified the waters of the earth.

That is the thread that connects Christmas and the Theophany. The extreme humility of Christ, and the humble response from us. Think of the infant Jesus in the cave, and know that He was born for you and I. Think of Jesus, who submitted to baptism in that muddy little river, and know that He did that for you and I. Let us respond. Let us humble ourselves before our God, and like Namaan, set aside our pride and our achievements. Let us seek the baptism of repentance, dipping ourselves into the Jordan, for as long as we live.

The last Divine Liturgy celebrated by Fr. Alexander Schmemann was on the morning of Thanksgiving in 1983. He fell asleep in the Lord not long after, on December 13. That his final liturgy should occur on Thanksgiving Day was particularly appropriate since Father Alexander had devoted his whole life to teaching, writing and preaching about the Eucharist; for the word Eucharist in Greek means thanksgiving. Here are his final words from the Ambo of the church, a homily written in the form of a prayer.

Thank You, O Lord!

Lord, it is good to be here! Amen.

(The Orthodox Church, Vol. 20, No. 2, February 1984, p. 1:1)

(Many thanks to Deacon Gregory Uhrin for sending this out.)

Here in the church there is the one thing needful: Here is a refuge from the vanity and the storms of life. Here is the calm harbor for souls seeking after salvation. Here is incorruptible food and drink for the soul. Here is the light that enlightens all men existing upon earth. Here is the clean air of the spirit. Here is the fountain of living water which flows to life eternal (John 4:14). Here are distributed the gifts of the Holy Spirit, here is the cleansing of souls. The reading and chanting is done in church in a holy language. All Orthodox Christians should learn it, that they might understand the sweet pronouncements of their mother, who educates her children to prepare them for heaven, for life eternal…. Here in the temple, man comprehends the truly noble origin of his soul, the worth of life and its goal and purpose. Here he is torn away from his fascination with earthly vanities and passions. Here he comprehends his temporal and eternal fate. Here the Savior lives – in His Life-giving Mysteries, in His salvation. Here he recognizes his true relationship to God and to his neighbor, to his family and to the society in which he lives. The temple is heaven on earth, a place where intimate union with the Divine takes place. It is a heavenly school, where Christians are taught to become citizens of heaven, where they are taught heavenly norms, the way of life in heaven. It is the threshold of heaven, a place of communal prayer, thanksgiving, praise of the Triune God, creator and protector of all. It is a place of unification with the angels. What is more honorable and more esteemed than the temple? Nothing. In its Divine Services, as in a blueprint, are severally depicted the fates of all humanity, from beginning to end. The Divine Services are the alpha and omega of the world and of mankind. ~ St. John of Kronstadt

To believe that God exists is one thing, to know God another. — St. Silouan the Athonite

The same field shown in our header photograph

A slightly different perspective

The pasture where we walk the dogs

The Lord dwelleth in the flood, yea, the Lord shall sit as king forever. — Psalm 28 (LXX)

Well, it wasn’t on a par with the great Atlanta flood of several weeks ago, but I left the house this morning to discover that places that I haven’t seen flooded in years and years were, in fact, under water. This included a number of places near the house, including much of the field shown in our header picture, and the pasture where we take the dogs to run. Across the road from the church was more flooding, with annoyed cattle either perched on islands of dry land or, more often, slogging through the water to their barn on higher ground. Fortunately, the corn fields were already harvested. I think Pani took some pictures of all of this, and I’ll try to post them later this evening.

Meanwhile, a little over the Tennessee line in Polk County, where we have at least one member, things were even more spectacular down in the Ocoee Gorge. Just as workers were close to cleaning up one rockslide, a second one engulfed the road. This video is pretty impressive.

Yesterday was the Feast Day for St. Nectarios, a wonderful saint of the 20th century. He was one of that astonishing group of modern day saints with which Greece was blessed over the last century. I can think of a half dozen or so, and my memory is famously deficient. I love all of them, at least in part because it is proof that even in our times God sends grace upon the world, and reminds us just how much he loves us, and loves the Orthodox faith.

In any event, we served a moleban to St. Nectarios, both to commemorate the day and because…well, because a moleban to St. Nectarios is never a bad idea. Afterwards, I talked a little bit about the saint, and about the beautiful monastery on Aegina island that he called home.

Today I was fortunate enough to find a few photos:

St. Nectarios

The saint’s cell

The tomb of St. Nectarios

The new church being built in honor of the saint on Aegina.

Archangels, and a suffering woman, Part 2

The icon of the Archangel Michael stands at the front of the church.  He is strong, very clearly a force to be reckoned with.  Angels are the messengers of God, but that does not make them cute and cuddly.  One has to wonder if they ever get tired of having to open every conversation with the same phrase:  “fear not!”  But that is part of who they are.  They are terrible in the old sense, just as they are awesome in the literal sense.

We saw some of that in our readings at Vespers on Saturday night.  We heard of the angel appearing to Joshua, and of Joshua falling on his face.  We heard of the angel visiting Gideon, announcing that he will be the one to deliver the people of Israel from the Midianites, at a time when he was hiding in order to thresh his grain.  Gideon was not quite so fast on the uptake as Joshua, but after the angel disappeared he, too, was dismayed and frightened.  And no wonder!  I don’t doubt that any of us would be the same way.

But while Angels are mighty and powerful and fearsome, they are creatures with free will, who also make a choice to worship God.  We know this because not all of them made that choice.  Our third reading at Vespers, from the 14th chapter of the Book of Isaiah:

How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!  He who sends for all the nations is crushed to the earth!  For you have said in your heart, “I will ascend into heaven, I will place my throne above the stars of heaven, I will sit on a lofty mountain, on the lofty mountains toward the north.  I will ascend above the clouds, I will be like the Most High.  But now you descend to Hades, to the foundations of the earth.

Lucifer and those who followed him fell, and were cast out.  We heard Jesus tell his disciples, “I saw Satan fall like lightening from heaven”.   Even among the angels, the proud fall.  Lucifer and those with him, who continually saw the face of God  and participated in the eternal worship, lost everything because of pride.

Those angels who remain with the Lord, however, did not fall to pride.  Indeed, what characterizes the angels we celebrate today is humility.  As much as power, as much as might, as much as any of these, the angels we sing of today are humble before the Lord.

Humility before the Living God is what the angels have in common with the woman with the issue of blood.  This is a lesson for us all!  The world tells us to be proud of whatever we wish.  Looks, intellect, success, wealth, achievement — all of these become the basis for pride.  But on this day, the day when we honor the Archangels and angels, when we see a desperate and suffering woman healed — on this day, we learn that it is humility that is essential for our salvation.

Archangels, and a suffering woman

Today is the day that we commemorated the Archangel Michael and the other bodiless Powers of Heaven, so at Liturgy this morning we had two Gospel readings.  One concerned the Angels (Luke 10:16-21), while the other was the story of Jairus’ daughter and the woman with the issue of blood (Luke 8:41-56).  When I read them, I was struck by a common thread, an unexpected commonality.  One would not necessarily associate the woman with the issue of blood with the mighty Archangels,  yet…

I have always loved the reading about the unnamed woman.  It is easy to imagine the scene in your mind’s eye.  There is Jesus, together with the disciples, in the middle of a jostling, shouting, thoroughly rambunctious crowd.   Some are there because they want Jesus to help them – whether illness or demonic possession or what have you – while still others are there to see the famous teacher.  There are people there, as well, intent on listening to what Jesus might say, with an eye to taking it back to the Sanhedrin, already looking for an excuse – any excuse – to put the Lord to death.  Finally, like any celebrity sighting, there would have been hordes of the simply curious.  Only the lack of appropriate technology kept the crowd free of paparazzi.

In the midst of all of that, Jesus would have been the center of gravity, the one point on which all attention was focused.  No one would have noticed that pale, shy woman creeping toward the Messiah.  Indeed, had they noticed her she would most likely have been shoved away, scorned by the good people in the crowd.  She was poor, she was desperately ill, and she was on the verge of being without hope.  For twelve years she had suffered from an issue of blood, and her quest for a cure had done nothing but impoverish her.  Even worse, her condition was such as to render her unclean, and unable to even enter the synagogue.  She was a person that decent folk had nothing to do with, and as far as the Law was concerned, God had no use for her either.  It could only have been desperation that drove her to approach Jesus, and to reach out and touch the hem of his garment.

Jesus knew.  He knew that someone had touched him in faith, and in humility.  Someone had not had the courage, like Jairus, to openly ask for a miracle, but had trusted that she would be healed by simple faith.  When Jesus asked Peter who had touched him, however, we can almost imagine Peter rolling his eyes.  Look at all these people.  They have all touched you!

What healed that woman?  What attracted the grace of God, and caused her to be free of the curse which she was under.  It was faith, indeed, but it was more than that.  It was simple humility, humbleness of heart and meekness of soul.

But what does that have to do with angels?