Fr. Dcn. James

In the paper this week, there was an article about a man who is trying to start a national prayer movement.  In this case, the prayer that is being organized centers on prayer vigils which are being held at gas stations, where people will pray for lower gasoline prices.  This kind of thing is only one symptom of what we all recognize as growing unease, as a sense that our lives may be undergoing significant changes.  The economy is slowing, fuel and food prices are rising, the drought seems never ending.  California is burning, the ice caps are melting, and the Braves are in fifth place.  Whether these changes are but a passing moment, or become permanent fixtures in our society, remains to be seen.

But it is highly appropriate that our readings today, both our Gospel and the Epistle, speak to difficult times, and to the anxiety that they produce.  Not only do we seem to have an abundance of new worries these days, the truth is that even in the best of times we live under a cloud of constant anxiety.  We worry about our families, our health, our economic security – an entire spectrum of misfortunes confronts us every day of our life.  And indeed, for us living in modern America, worry is endemic.  We take more pills, see more psychotherapists, and spend more time struggling with angst than any other people in the world.  I confess to being the worst example of that, to being the poster child of worry.  I worry about my family, about the church, about my business.  I even set aside the entire month of April to worry about taxes.  For all of us, including myself, we have a deep need to learn a truth that is greater than our worry.  At its most fundamental level, our anxiety is really the manifestation of a deeper issue:  how do we order our lives, how do we allocate our spirit and our soul?  In our readings today, we are told not merely how to treat our worries.  We are told how to live.    

Before I talk about what our readings say, it is important to speak to what they do not say.  It is sad to have to talk about that, but in our day and age there are all sorts of beliefs and teachings floating around, and we are often exposed to things that are simply false.  One of those uses today’s Gospel reading to try to support its argument that God intends for all of us to be wealthy, with all of the material goods we might want.  Nowadays, the most prominent of those is what is called the Word of Faith movement, and some of the largest churches in Atlanta subscribe to this, including well known pastors such as Creflo Dollar.

Experience and history tell us that this is an untrue notion.  The martyrs tell us, the Christians of Constantinople and of 1917 Russia tell us that, and we know it of our own experience.  We live in a fallen world, and while we often find great joy in our lives, we also know that inevitably we will find sorrow and experience tribulation in our lives.  The question is not so much whether or not we will encounter sorrow, but what we will do with it and how we will respond to what we find ourselves facing.

The answer, Jesus tells us, has an awful lot to do with how we set our priorities.  What is our focus, and where do our devotions lie?  In our day to day lives, what truly drives us?  For many of us, we are torn between what are really two completely separate spheres.  We have our daily lives, in which we try to fulfill our worldly duties.  We make a living, we try to run a household, we work hard to do the things that our society expects us to do.  None of us here have been called to be monastics – at least not yet – and so we have no choice in doing these things.  There is no sin in this.  But to the extent that we divorce that aspect of our life from the spiritual realm, we find ourselves conflicted, and end up living in such a way that we find our daily lives and our spiritual life to be two separate things, rarely overlapping, much less being a unified whole.

This is what Jesus is referring to when he speaks of serving two masters.  The particular illustration that he uses is to contrast mammon – the desire to amass riches – with the love of God.  Mind you, there is nothing in Scripture that says that wealth is a sin, in and of itself.  Riches, however, can become a sin when it becomes a desire that controls our life, if it becomes a primary goal that we pursue with single minded determination.  And in truth, there are any number of things which we can substitute for mammon.  Any worldly desire, nurtured and pursued in a single minded fashion can be substituted for mammon. The Orthodox Study Bible says that what Scripture refers to as riches can be expressed as anything which can be thought of as “objects of the senses”.  Not just money, but fame, popularity, reputation or even more humdrum, private matters such as gluttony or sensuality – all of these things can become false gods, things which become our master.  Yet how common is it for people to want it both ways?  How often do we say to ourselves that we can be a true Christian and still have an overwhelming desire, even fixation, on some object of the senses?

Yet Jesus is clear that we may not be fractured in this way.  If we focus our energies on worldly goals, we necessarily subordinate our heavenly goal.  As a practical matter, it arises from the way that we view eternity.  In Psalm 48, the Psalmist tells us that the reason men seek riches is rooted in the fear of death.  By seeking these things, we are trying to avoid the ultimate question:  what happens once our life is said and done.  The Psalmist, speaking of the rich man, says that “when he dies, he shall carry nothing away; neither will his glory descend with him.”  Ps. 48(49):18.  In the verses immediately preceding today’s Gospel reading, Jesus is characteristically clear and to the point:  “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  Mt. 6:19-21

Yet, the truth of the matter is that when times are bad, or appear to be heading in that direction, we worry about our material provision.  One of the letters of Sts. Barsanuphius and John addresses the very concern that so many face these days.  They received this letter:

My thought suggests to me that my material resources are tight and that I cannot feed myself or my household, and this causes me sorrow. What does this mean?

St. John answered:

This sorrow is human; for, if we hope in God, he would provide for us as he wants.  “Therefore, cast your concern upon the Lord”, and he is able to take care of you and your own without sorrow and affliction.  Say to him: “Your will be done”, and he will not allow you to be grieve or be afflicted.

Notice that he said God will provide for us “as he wants”.  This is where Creflo Dollar and other preachers of prosperity run into a brick wall.  The hard truth is that God is more focused on our souls than on our wallets, and sometimes less is more.  There are times when, in fact, the best thing for us spiritually might be times that are not so easy.  St. Paul spoke to that in our epistle, when he said

‘…we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance character; and character, hope.  Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”

What a strange conundrum!  We glory in Christ when times are good, and His blessings are manifest to all.  But we also glory in Christ when times are bad, and material blessings are few and far between.  This is a conundrum that the world cannot understand, but it is the same faith that sustained the Church in the middle east under Turkish occupation, that fueled the catacomb church in Russia after the Revolution, that inspired the founders of this diocese to sacrifice and struggle for the church even as they worked in the jobs that only immigrants will do, in poor conditions and for little money.

This is not to say that we necessarily need to pray for hard times, or that the current alarms and forebodings that we read of in the paper will amount to anything at all.  Whatever happens will be for our good, for as St. Paul said:

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

Should we fear?  Should we be anxious?  The answer is no, whatever may come.  Let us continue, individually and together, to seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness.  As others fret and others despair, let us always look beyond that, knowing that God will make provision for us.  Let us look beyond fear, beyond worry, beyond anxiety.  Let us lift up our eyes to God, from whom our salvation comes.

Fr. Dcn. James

Why do we suffer?  This is not a question that lends itself to easy answers.  The reason is that suffering is often intensely personal.  At other times, we watch innocent people suffer, and we cannot help but feel their grief and desperation.  No one claim to have any easy answers to the question of why we suffer.  Our world is fallen, and sorrow and pain are our everyday lot.  But our reading today gives us a glimpse into another question, which is equally important:  How do we respond to suffering?  Do we shrug it off as a punishment for our sins?  Or do we see in suffering an opportunity to sharpen our faith, and learn to give glory to God in all circumstances?

You will remember the story in our Gospel reading today.  Jesus is in Jerusalem, and he has just finished a very heated confrontation with the Jews in the Temple.  In fact, at the end of chapter eight, St. John tells us that the Jews were so enraged by the exchange that they were picking up stones in order to stone Christ.   Nonetheless, Jesus left the Temple unharmed.  As he left, however, he came across a blind man, one who had been blind from the moment of birth.  The man had never known anything other than darkness.  As an infant, a child, a young man – he had never seen the light of day, never beheld the face of a loved one, never gazed on the beauty of the world around him.  In fact, some Syriac traditions, best represented by the writings of St. Ephraim the Syrian, hold that the man simply did not have any eyes at all – simply empty sockets where his eyes should have been.

It appears that Jesus’ attention may have been called to the man not by the blind man himself, but by his disciples, who asked a question: “Rabbi, who sinned, this one or his parents, that he was born blind?”  This question may strike us as a little odd, but it was an entirely logical one for them to ask.  For the people of Israel, all suffering was seen to be the result of sin, not only their own, but it was also commonly believed that people often suffered for the sins of their parents.  This belief was not something that God had taught them.  In Deuteronomy 24:18, Moses taught them that “…the sons shall not be put to death for the fathers; everyone shall be put to death for their own sin”.  The prophet Ezekiel had likewise tried to teach them, when he said “Let this parable no longer be spoken: The fathers have eaten unripe grapes, and the children’s teeth shall be set on edge.” (Ezk 18:2). Still, it was a pervasive belief throughout Israel and, if the truth is told, we sometimes find ourselves thinking the same kind of thoughts from time to time.

Jesus, however, answered the disciples plainly.  The man’s blindness was not the result of either the sin of his parents, or his own sins.  Instead, Jesus said, the man’s suffering was so that “the works of God might be manifested in him”.  He took clay, made mud of it, and anointed the eyes of the man.  He then told him to go wash in the pool of Siloam, and to return.  The blind man did as our Lord instructed him, and when he returned he could, for the first time in his life, see.

There is, of course, a great deal more to this story, but for our purposes, we will stop there.  There are two great lessons to be learned, and each of them will speak clearly to each of us here today. 

First, Jesus did not come to teach us to lay blame, or to convict.  He came to move us beyond the law, from the black and white of statutes and rules to the fulfillment of the essence of the law.  He did not come fence us into rigid codes of behavior, and to impose the inexorable cause and effect of sin and punishment, but to transform us.  This was an entirely foreign concept to the Jews.  Father Lawrence Farley wrote that “…it is characteristic of Judaism to investigate and assign blame; it is characteristic of Christianity to reach out to transform.”  For the Jews -- and, it must be said, for some churches that call themselves Christian -- sin is a crime, and the Law utterly condemns you.  As Orthodox Christians, however, we recognize that sin is the product of our passions, of our unwillingness to surrender all of ourselves to God.  The Church does not condemn us, but seeks to heal our spiritual illness, to purify our soul and spirit, to help us, as St. Paul puts it, to go from glory to glory.  This is not an instantaneous transformation, but over time, as we struggle and cooperate with the Holy Spirit, our rough edges are made smooth, our hearts are softened, our souls become ever more open.  All of us in this room are in that process.  The Church is commonly referred to as the spiritual hospital, and each of us are patients under the care of the Great Physician.  If there is one great difference to remember between the Jewish faith and the Apostolic faith, this is it. 

Second, our reading today offers us a perspective on suffering.  How often do we ask ourselves that question:  why do I suffer?  Why am I in such pain?  At times, without doubt, our suffering is the result of our sin.  If I choose to drink more than I should and then have an accident driving home, there is a clear cause and effect between my sin and my suffering.  But more often we find ourselves suffering through no particular fault of our own.  We may fall ill, we may have financial problems, we may endure an entire host of difficulties and setbacks.  Why do these things happen?

This question – this overwhelming need to understand suffering – is perhaps the most pervasive cause of doubt among us.  A person may suffer, and sometimes he or she may begin to lose their faith.  It is critical that we maintain a proper spiritual perspective on our suffering, and that of others.  The truth is this: sometimes we bring our suffering on ourself.  Sometimes, our suffering is the result of evil committed by others.  At times, we suffer simply because we live in a fallen world.  Regardless of why we suffer, what Christ teaches us today is that we may use our suffering so that the works of God may be manifested in each one of us.

This has always been the experience of the martyrs, and it should be the experience of each one of us.  If approached rightly, our suffering can cleanse us.  If we see our suffering as an opportunity to glorify God, then we will reach the other end of that suffering – even if that is the time of our death – a far different person than when we began.  There is a story told by Father Zacharias, a spiritual son of the modern saint, Elder Sophrony.  A woman came to see Father Zacharias, and told him with great fear that she had been diagnosed with cancer.  The doctors had told her that in six months she would die.  He made no attempt to tell her that the doctors were wrong, that nothing was the matter.  He told her “Whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.  Prepare for this meeting.  You have six months.  That is wonderful!  Prepare for the greatest moment of your life.”

The woman took him at his word, and she began to pray, quietly repeating to herself “Glory be to Thee, O Lord.”  Every time the monk saw her, she would be saying that simple prayer, and bearing her cross.  Finally, the day of her departure came.  Father Zacharias came to see her just at the end, and he found her weeping quietly.  She whispered “Am I worthy to be given such grace to bear this monstrous thing?  My relatives come here thinking to console me, and they disturb my prayer, and do not understand it.  And the Lord is there – she pointed to the corner of the room – waiting for me.”  And having said that, she died.

In that woman, just as in the blind man in today’s reading, the works of the Lord were made manifest.  In each of us, whatever our problems may be, we have the same capacity, and the same potential, for manifesting the glory of the Lord.  It is easy to express the joy of the Lord when times are good.  It is more difficult, but far more meaningful, to do so when times are not so good.  We must never forget that, because the choice is ours to make.

Fr. Dcn. James

Earlier this week, on Wednesday, we celebrated the feast of mid-Pentecost.  On that day, we were, if you will, tipped on the balance, halfway between the resurrection joy of Pascha, and the majesty of Pentecost.  We look back and we look forward, and we see much joy and hope in both directions.  Yet ironically, at this midpoint we can sometimes sense within ourselves a certain sluggishness, a notion that we have lost or misplaced the keen edge of Pascha. 

It is no surprise that this subject came up this past week in a conversation with a friend about what we might call the Post-Pascha letdown.  That sounds like a fairly odd phrase, but I think we all know about it.  We struggle through Lent, and we walk to Golgotha with Christ during Holy Week, and suddenly it is Pascha, and our joy is limitless.  But then we have a long period of time, a number of weeks, where there is very little fasting, and very few services aside from Sunday liturgy, and one morning we wake up and become conscious that we are a little flabby, spiritually speaking.  We wonder where our focus and our dedication went.  Here we are in the third or fourth of fifth week after Pascha, and we wonder why our joy seems to have diminished.   Pentecost is coming, but where, we wonder, is the flame?  Where is the fire? 

So it is only fitting that our Gospel reading this week introduces the first glimmerings during this Paschal season of the work of the Holy Spirit.  Oh, the Spirit has always been a part of the Godhead, but prior to the revelation of Christ, the work of the Spirit was largely misunderstood by the Jews.  Yet today, early in His ministry, we find that the subject of the Spirit is a deeply important part of our story.  At the same time, our passage today is the story of a conversation, one between a single individual and the Saviour of all mankind.  In these two things we find a great truth, a key to our salvation, and the answer to the Post-Pascha letdown.

It is only right that all of this takes place in the context of one person, a woman who we might instantly recognize in someone we know, in a family member or even, dare I say it, in ourselves.  It is the Samaritan woman who assumes a role that almost anybody could play.

We know her name, of course.  Scripture omits it, but we know her name is Photini, and today she is a highly respected saint of the Church, that we know more fully as St. Photini, Equal to the Apostles and Martyr.  In our reading today, though, she is simply Photini, and she was not a happy woman.  Indeed, we could say that as she went to well that day, she already had three strikes against her.  First, she was a woman, in a time when many people were unsure about whether or not being a woman was really an honorable characteristic to have.  Indeed, it would be highly suspect for a man to speak to a woman who was alone.  That helps us understand Photini’s startled reaction to being addressed by Jesus.  Strike one.

She was a Samaritan, which meant that she was as good as pagan.  While the Samaritans considered themselves to be pure Jews, their beliefs were most definitely out of the Jewish mainstream.  The truth is that any good Jew considered the Samaritans to be vile and unclean.  Remember the story of the Good Samaritan?  For first century Jews, the shocking part of that story was that the hero, the man who Jesus told them to emulate, was a Samaritan.  But Photini is a Samaritan.  Strike two.

Finally, Photini has had a rather checkered past.  She has been around the block a few times, having had five husbands, and as our passage opens, she is living in a 6^th relationship without, as we might say, the benefit of matrimony.  That helps explain why Photini is at the well at noon, in the heat of the day.  Ordinarily, women went to the well in the morning and in the evening, when it was cool and pleasant.  They would meet there and socialize.  There would be laughter and companionship.  But Photini lives in shame.  If she goes to the well with the other women, they whisper about her.  They shun her.  She is a sinner, and so she goes to fetch water from the well alone.  She goes at noon, when it is hot, it is lonely, there is no shade to shelter her.  Photini is not respectable.  She is not by any stretch of the imagination a righteous person.  Strike three.

The ironic thing about all of that is that Photini is very clearly a person with a spiritual heart.  When Jesus engages her in conversation she is open and receptive, in a way that only a yearning heart will produce.  She has a very lengthy conversation with Jesus, maybe the longest conversation we find in the Gospels between our Lord and any one person.  It is important to note that it was not a comfortable talk.  Jesus quietly challenges her assumptions, and reveals to her the truth of her past.  It was one which she could easily have broken off at any point, and walked away from the man who was sitting at the well.  Many people would have done so, and would have politely said good bye, gotten up and left.  But Photini did not do that, for a reason that we can all identify with.  Photini knew this: even living as she was living, she knew that there was something better.  She knows that what she does is wrong, even as she cannot find a way out of the dead end of her life.  She knows, instinctively, that there is purity and truth and beauty and unadulterated joy to be had, even if she has no idea where to find it.  She is, in short, every man and every woman who has felt isolated, who has felt afraid, who has looked at the circumstances in his or her life and said to herself “there must be something better”.  If you have ever sighed and felt hopeless, then you are Photini.

So perhaps it is no wonder that a tired and weary stranger came up to her that day at the well, and began to speak to her.  Who better could Jesus find?  All of the respectable people were sheltering in their homes from the burning heat.  All of those without need of comfort from the Messiah were perfectly comfortable at home.  All of those who knew what their life was all about were busy leading that life.

Those people weren’t ready to listen to Jesus.  Only the sorrowful, only the contrite, only the broken hearted are fully prepared to hear the word of Christ.  Only Photini, and her spiritual heirs, people who know sorrow and know shame and know hopelessness, were ready for this conversation.  That is why Jesus started to teach about the Spirit.

Jesus told Photini this:  “The hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him.  God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Do you see?  True Christianity has two aspects.  One is truth, which means right faith and true doctrine.  It means the Orthodox faith.  That is truth, and it is absolutely essential to our salvation.  But it is not enough.  The Apostle James – you know, the good James – writes “You believe that God is one; you do well.  Even the demons believe and shudder.”  In other words, just knowing the truth of the faith will not save us.  Simple knowledge never saved anyone.  If we study the structure of Orthodoxy, the dogma and the canons and all of the things which define our faith, we have to understand that we are seeing only half of the faith.

The canons give us structure and discipline, but not hope.

Dogma gives us truth and gives us identity, but not hope.

That is why Jesus says that we must also worship in the spirit.  The Church excels in this, even if we do not know it by this phrase.  Why do we focus on our soul, why do we fast and deprive our bodies, why do we pray and confess and stretch ourselves as far as we can?  We do these things precisely to free the spirit, the liberate it to soar among the angels, so that our spirit may commune with the Spirit, the Holy Spirit.  The greatest saints have done this in ways that are unimaginable to us.  Perhaps the day will come when we will do that as well.  But for you and for me, to worship in the spirit is nothing more and nothing less than a conversation with God.  Speaking.  And listening.

That, I think, accounts for the Post-Pascha letdown.  We celebrate, we savor the joy of the season, but we can get so caught up in Pascha and its following weeks that we forget our conversation.  We lose that sense of being in an intimate meeting with our Lord.  He is still here.  He is still waiting to hear what we have to say, and what we are worried about.  And He is still patiently waiting to tell us the answer to our problems and the solutions to our fears.  We need only listen.

There is a great deal that we must address in prayer.  Our concerns for ourselves and our family, for each other and for our parish, for our Church.  For all of the suffering that we see, in our own homes and neighborhoods, and in far corners of the world.  We seek the intercession of God, and help for ourselves and our loved ones.  But having done that, we must quietly open our heart and our soul to the Holy Spirit.  Listen to what God has to say to you.  Let us offer our spirit to the Holy Spirit, and truly worship as Jesus told Photini – in spirit and in truth.  With our actions and our belief, with our works and our sacrifices, with our love and our willing spirit, with our petitions and our prayerful silence.  This is worship in spirit and in truth.

That I think, might be why the Church in her wisdom has placed this reading from John on the calendar for today.  It is as if the Church is saying:  Listen!  Listen to Christ tell this outcast, this woman who no one likes and no one respects, how she may be saved.  How she may worship, in a new way, a way that opens her heart and her soul to the voice of the Spirit.  That Spirit is coming!  Let us listen for that same spirit.  Let us quiet our restless and suffering souls.  Let us remember to speak to God, and then to listen for the still, small voice of our Saviour.

Fr. Dcn. James

+Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit

How many times did He tell them?  How many times did Jesus tell the disciples that he would die, but he would then arise on the third day?  If you think back to the Sunday Gospel readings of Lent, it seems as though every one included an admonition to his followers:  I will die, but on the third day I will rise again.

No one listened.  No one believed Him.  He may as well have been speaking to the wind.

I am reminded of this now, in the joyous Paschal season, by the readings both for today and for last Sunday, Thomas Sunday.  It is as though the Church, in her wisdom, wants to speak to us about the varieties of doubt, the species of despair, the cloud of disillusionment which even now, even in this time of celebration, can take us unawares.  It seems a paradox, to speak of doubt during the bright season of Pascha, but we, of all people, know from our own experience that despair and disillusion can strike us at any time.  In the midst of our own discouragement, these Gospels offer reminders that we badly need to hear.

In today’s gospel, we go back in time, as it were, to the three days during which Christ lay dead.  We know that this was a time of enormous turmoil for the disciples, a time where we see both amazing courage and terrible fear, even cowardice.  Many had fled during the trial and crucifixion of Christ.  Peter, to his shame and sorrow, had denied even knowing Jesus.  Only the women, particularly the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene, together with the Apostle and Theologian John, persevered while Christ was on the cross. 

Our passage from St. Mark begins after Jesus is dead, something which happened so swiftly, relatively speaking, that Pilate himself expressed surprise at the fact.  Joseph of Arimethea, who tradition tells us was a member of the Sanhedrin, went to Pilate and asked for the body of Christ.    We have to understand that he did not have to do this.  In the ordinary course of things, Jesus’ body would have been given to his family, to his mother and brothers.  To go to Pilate was a risky and dangerous thing for Joseph to do.  After all, it was Joseph’s colleagues on the Sanhedrin which had been instrumental in bringing about the crucifixion of Christ.  For Joseph to now openly reveal his allegiance to Jesus was a courageous act, one which we can understand only in the light of the great love which Joseph had for the Saviour.  His act was, if you will, a bookend, a counterweight, to the betrayal of Peter.  Peter, the well known disciple of Christ, disavows Him.  Joseph, however, the secret disciple, now openly pledges his fidelity to the Messiah.  Peter flees from the condemned Christ; Joseph lovingly removes His broken and mangled body from the cross.  Peter denies knowing his Saviour; Joseph wraps him in clean linen, and places Him in a newly hewn tomb.

 Similarly, St. Mark goes on to tell us of the visit to the tomb by the myrrh-bearing women.  In this instance, there are three:  Mary Magdelene, Salome and the Theotokos, who was the step-mother of James, the brother of the Lord.  They went to the tomb just at dawn on Sunday morning in order to complete the burial ritual upon Jesus.  There had not been time on Friday for him to be properly buried.  He had been wrapped in burial cloths, but had not been anointed with the herbs and spices used by the Jews.  Yet a simple errand, a ritual task, does not fully explain the meaning of this story.  We must look beyond the surface, and find there another, heart breaking, level of meaning.

To reach that, we must remember that a large stone had been rolled across the opening of the grave.  As the women walked to the tomb, they asked themselves the question:  “who will roll away the stone for us from the face of the tomb?”  The women knew that they very well that the stone was too large, too heavy, for them be able to move.  Without help, they would not be able to get into the tomb.  Purely logical people would have waited until more people were up and about; when they would have been able to recruit some men to move the stone.  But pure logic rarely produces great acts; acts of which we sing.  No – the reason we celebrate the myrrh bearing women is because of their great and abiding love, a love which was not fenced in by logic, but was made immeasurable by devotion.

So in our Gospel, we have great and indisputable acts of courage and love.  We see people doing things that we wonder at; things that we privately admit to ourselves might have been beyond our own capacity had we been present during that terrible time.  So it is a sobering and ironic thought to understand this:  that these acts, however noble, were done without true understanding.  These acts, so praiseworthy, were done blindly.  These acts, that we admire and sing of, were done without true remembrance or understanding of the words of Jesus Himself.  Do you remember?  He said:

The Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of men, and they will kill Him.  And after He is killed, He will rise the third day.

That is the key to our Gospel today.  Joseph of Arimethea exhibited enormous courage, but he did so blindly.  The women evidenced heart-rending love, but they did so without understanding.  Do you see?  It is in that failure to remember, that failure to truly believe, that we are able to look, as if in a mirror, and see ourselves.

How often do we find ourselves in such times?  It is not at all uncommon for us to be confused by what we are facing, and even pessimistic about what the future holds.  As individuals, we struggle with fear and uncertainty.  Even now, as a parish, we are passing through deep water and difficult times, wondering what the future holds for us.  That is not to say that we are without courage or without love.  Everyone in this room is devoted to Christ.  Everyone in this room is here out of love.  Not out of duty or obligation, but out of a deep and abiding love of Christ, of the Church, of this parish.  And, not least of these, a deep and abiding love for each other.

Still, we are human.  We worry.  Times are difficult.  The road ahead seems to be uncertain.  What will become of us?  What does the future hold?  Yet, isn’t that what Joseph of Arimethea thought as he made his way to Pilate’s palace as the sun set on Friday?  Isn’t that what the women thought as they walked through the pre-dawn darkness on Sunday morning?  Isn’t that what we ourselves think as we wait, for what seems to be an unbearably long period of time, facing an uncertain future as a parish family?  And sometimes, don’t we find ourselves becoming so accustomed to difficult circumstances and painful uncertainty that we unconsciously confine Christ to the tomb.  We become pessimistic.  We come to think of pain as normal, of anxiety as natural, of fear as an ordinary thing.

But none of that is true.  Are we ever abandoned?  St. Paul put it well, when he said this:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness or peril, or sword?...Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.  For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

It is helpful to stop and remind ourselves:  Christ is no longer in the tomb.  The noble Joseph, even though he placed Him in the tomb himself, discovered that.  The women, full of love and grief, discovered that.  Even Peter, despairing and suffering in his failure, discovered that.  And on this day, let us re-discover that.  Christ will not abandon this parish, a part of His Body.  Our fears are simply wisps of smoke.  Our doubts are but human frailty.  Didn’t St. John Chrysostom say it?

Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen.

Christ is risen and the angels rejoice.

Christ is risen, and life reigns.

Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave.

On this day, let us remind ourselves of that.  Let our fear turn to hope.  Let our courage lead us to boundless joy.  The darkest of times are inevitably followed by the brightest of days.  We need only to keep our eyes focused on the Cross, and always searching for our Risen Lord.

Christ is Risen!  Indeed He is risen!   

Fr. Dcn. James

Today we gather for the fourth Sunday of Great Lent.  It has been, dare we say, a strange season.  Even under the best of circumstances, our arrival at the Sunday of St. John Climacus can find us worn down and distracted from the disciplines of this period of prayer and repentance.  We live amidst the cares of the world, and it can be difficult to maintain the diamond sharp focus on repentance that Lent demands.  When that happens, it is good to stop momentarily and take stock of our position.  Both the remembrance of St. John of the Ladder and our gospel reading help us to do that.   

Sometimes we forget exactly why the Sundays of Lent are assigned to particular saints or commemorations.  Certainly the Veneration of the Cross, which we did Last Sunday, is clear enough, as the remembrance of the salvation brought on by an instrument of torture and death is brought to mind.  Similarly, next Sunday’s commemoration of St. Mary of Egypt resonates with all of us.  I do not think that there is a single more memorable statement in the life of any saint than what St. Mary tells Zosimas about her excruciating period of repentance in the deserts of Palestine:  “the first seventeen years were the hardest”.  That is a statement that brings hope to all of us who struggle with besetting sin.  If that great saint of repentance, Mary, had to fight so hard against the passions that assailed her, then we too can take courage when we find ourselves falling into sinful habits and patterns of behavior.  It is a measure of Mary’s greatness that it took her only seventeen years.  I have been at it much longer, and my progress, if it exists at all, is measured in terms of millimeters.  Her confession of struggle encourages me that all, perhaps, is not lost.

But we may not be as clear as to the hows or whys of other saints we remember during the Fast, such as the one we remember today, St. John Climacus, or as he is often called, St. John of the Ladder.  St. John, a 6^th century monk in Egypt, is best known for his book, The Ladder of Divine Ascent.  While the book is primarily written for monastics, it is deeply profitable for us who live in the world.  It is written in thirty chapters, each corresponding to a particular sin or virtue.  St. John does not suggest to us that the ladder is easily climbed.  Indeed, if there is a single unifying theme to the book, it is that of patience.  When asked what advice he would give to people in the world, for example, St. John replied:

Do whatever good you may.  Speak evil of no one.  Rob no one.  Tell no lie.  Despise no one and carry no hate.  Do not separate yourself from the church assemblies.  Show compassion to the needy.  Do not be a cause of scandal to anyone.  Stay away from the bed of another, and be satisfied with your own wife.  If you do all this, you will not be far from the kingdom of heaven.

In a word, patience.  We live our lives, we struggle to attain the virtues, we suffer from the consequences of our sins and our passions.  This is the summation of our daily existence.  That this is the root of all virtue is can be seen in today’s epistle, where St. Paul notes that Abraham, after he had patiently endured, obtained the promise of blessings given him by God.

Patience.  Struggle.  Suffering.  If you observed that the advice of the saints sounds like what we are focused on during Lent, you would be right.  This is the lesson of the Scriptures and of the Fathers.  It is the lesson we must take home with us today.

Which brings me to the lesson in today’s Gospel reading, which is uniquely suited to this Sunday deep in the Great Fast.  On the surface, we may think otherwise.  Often we read this and simply see the demon-possessed child as an object of our pity.  Other times, we read it and identify with the cry of the boy’s father, who begs for help in his unbelief, or in the disciples themselves, who wearily confess their impotence before the demon and ask Jesus why they were powerless in its face.

The Church fathers, however, did not take such a piece meal approach in their understanding of this lesson.  For them, the passage describes the condition of us all.  The boy, beset by demons, is none other than you and I, struggling in a fallen world.  The demons which beset him abuse him cruelly.  They cast the boy into both fire and water.  Both of these elements are meaningful for us.  The fire is perceived by the Fathers as the sins which so often beset us, such as anger, jealousy, hatred, lust.  These are sins that fan the flames of our passions; sins that we often seem to be drawn to, as a moth to a flame.

The child is also cast into water, and in that too the fathers saw our kinship with the unfortunate boy.  Water is seen as the worldly cares with which we are preoccupied.  The blessed Theophylact describes the burdens of daily life as "the crushing waves and billows of worldly care."   That is not a sin in and of itself.  But from common experience we know that our worries and concerns, our distractions, will keep us from God.  They will burden our hearts, and keep us from prayer.   

If we stop to think about it, we immediately recognize both of those things in our lives.  Fire and water.  Sin and cares.  They feed on each other, and if we are not careful we will find ourselves caught up in an endless circle, where we find ourselves in constant activity, always moving, but going nowhere, simply around and around and around.

In all honesty, this is where I found myself as I thought about this homily.  I have become distracted during this Holy season of Great Lent.  I find myself subject to the same irritating sins I always fall prey to, while at the same time I worry incessantly about any number of problems.  When I look at myself clearly and without deceit, I realize that I am thrashing about, working hard but getting nowhere; striving energetically, but making no progress.  Here, on this 4^th Sunday of Lent, I am steadfastly going nowhere.  I am crashing through the underbrush of my life, making a great deal of noise, but achieving exactly… nothing.

Fortunately, today’s Gospel also has the answer.  This kind, says Jesus, come out by nothing other than prayer and fasting.  In other words, we must stop our frenzied activity, and turn our minds and bodies toward God.  When we become so busy, and so distracted, we end up being subject everything but our Savior.

I am glad to be reminded of this.  It is a truth which I know, but too often forget.  I am reminded of an experience I often have, which teaches me what Lent is like:

 Late in the evening, I step out of house for a breath of air, and to look at the stars.  If you have ever done that, you know that your ability to really see stars will not be good, so long as there is other light present.  Outside my front door, the lights from inside the house could be seen, shining through the windows.  If I wanted to really see the stars in the sky, I have to leave the porch, leave the light and busyness of the house, and walk into the darkness.  If you have ever been to our house, you know that it is on the side of a hill, and there are no neighbors nearby.  So when I say that I walked into the darkness, you can imagine that it was really dark.  I could not see where I was going, I could not clearly see what was in front of me.  I picked my way down through the trees, past our shed, and onto the open space that we call the lawn.  Only then did I look up at the sky.  When I was at the house, I saw only a very few stars.  But here, having passed through the darkness, I see what appear to be thousands and thousands of stars, blazing in the night sky.

Lent is like that.  To know God, we have to walk into the darkness.  We have to leave behind the artificial distractions of our lives and enter the Gates of Repentance, into the very depths of our heart.  It is only there, freed from the sins that cripple us and the cares and distractions that turn our eyes from the Cross, that we can really see our Saviour.  It is only there that we can begin to cultivate patience, to endure our suffering, to understand our struggles.  It is only there that we find salvation.

We have two weeks left to us, plus the austere majesty of Holy Week.  Let us resolve to set aside distractions, and worldly care.  Let us turn inward, unafraid to face the darkness in our soul, and thus reach the Light of the World.  Did not our Lord tell us to seek the Kingdom of God first?  We should turn out hearts toward the celestial light.  Light of light, true God of True God.  Let us continue our Lenten journey, in hope and in love and in joy.

(Fr. Dcn. James)

Yesterday we celebrated one of the twelve feasts of the Lord, a major feast of the Church.  It was the Meeting of the Lord at the Temple, and as we stood at the property on East Cherokee Drive, consecrating the land to the service of God, I could not help but be struck by the rightness, by the appropriateness of the day.

You will remember the story of the Feast.  In accordance with Jewish law, the Virgin Mary and Joseph went to the Temple in Jerusalem forty days after Jesus’ birth.  There, they presented the child, as a first born son, to the service of God.  This was a requirement of the law.  In the Book of Exodus, we find God’s commandment that the people “sanctify to me all the first-born, whatever opens the womb”.  As we see repeatedly, Christ in every way fulfilled the ancient law, being obedient to His Father in all things.

But the law was also directed at purification.  As Metropolitan Hierotheos points out, it was considered that under the law both the mother and the child required purification.  This is not to say that children are not a blessing, nor that childbirth is itself something which is unclean, yet under the law it was a matter which required ritual purification. 

As we know, of course, neither Christ nor the Theotokos required purification or cleansing.  The birth was virgin, and the Father of Christ was no man.  Yet it was fitting and entirely expected that Christ, the Son of God, would fulfill the law in each and every respect.

But there were others in the Temple that day, and it is on them that my thoughts have turned over the last week, and particularly yesterday.  The first is the Righteous Simeon.  The tradition of the Church tells us a great deal about him.  We are told that he was one of the 70 translators of the Old Testament into Greek, the Septuagint.  Locked into separate rooms, so that each of their translations would be their independent work, uninfluenced by others, each of the 70 produced identical translations.  Simeon, however, expressed skepticism at the translation of the passage in Isaiah which foretold that a virgin would give birth, saying that it was impossible and could never happen.  He received a revelation from the Holy Spirit, was scolded for his disbelief, and was told that he would live to see the Son of God in the flesh.  For many long years, Simeon lived in expectation of the day that he would be blessed to see the Messiah, truly born of a virgin.  On the day on which the Infant Jesus was taken to the Temple, he was told by the Holy Spirit to go to the Temple, and that the time he had awaited for so long was at hand.

The Prophetess Anna was the other person that St. Luke talks about on that day.  An elderly woman, long a widow, she had devoted her life after her husband died to prayer and to fasting.  Her devotion to God was so great that she was divinely given insight into the truth concerning the child, and what his coming meant to all people.  

Two people.  A man and a woman.  For years they had dreamed of and longed for this day, when they would finally saw God face to face.  And while God in the flesh could have been revealed to them anyplace, that ultimate revelation happened in the Temple, in the house of God.

It is in the Temple that Simeon saw the fulfillment of his greatest desire, of the salvation that he has sought for so long.

It is in the Temple that the Righteous Anna, having devoted her life to prayer and supplication to God, is finally allowed to see God face to face, and is granted her ultimate understanding of the meaning of the Lord’s birth.

It is in the Temple that the old met the new, and the New was revealed.  It is in the Temple that the Lord was presented as a pure sacrifice.  It is to the Temple that the Virgin Mary, the very Theotokos, and St. Joseph humbly came, without complaint and with joy, to fulfill their duty in all piety and peacefulness.

The Temple in Jerusalem has been destroyed, but we now stand on the threshold of building and offering our own Temple to the service of the Lord.  It is no coincidence that Orthodox churches have traditionally been referred to as Temples.  The Lord himself said that “where two or three are gathered, there I am also”.  While God reveals Himself in all places and at all times, it is in the Temple that we come together to worship, to join our voices with those throughout eternity, saints and believers, angels and archangels, before the very throne of God.  We meet to serve a molieben, to supplicate God for aid and assistance.  We meet and serve vespers, and ask that “our prayers may arise in Thy sight as incense”, offering our evening worship to God.  And on Sundays and feast days, Soul Saturdays and Presanctified Liturgies, we meet and eat and drink of the most pure body of Christ. 

All of this happens in the Church, in the Orthodox temple.  Just as the Christ child was presented at the Temple so many years ago, he comes and he meets us.  To be sure, He has always done so, in all the years that this mission has been in existence.  He has met us in chapels of other faiths, in restaurants, in conference rooms and in basements.  But never before have we been in a position to build a true temple, a sacred space in which God abides, and where every time we open the door, the Lord meets us.  A space where icons grace the walls and we can gaze into the eyes of the great saints of the church.  A space where our incense freely rises to mingle with our prayers.  A space where angels guard our altar, where we tread sanctified and holy ground every time we open the doors.

We have never had this.  But we are on the threshold, the very doorway, of this great blessing and stunning miracle of God.

We have never had a home.  But now we can see it, taking shape before our very eyes.  I assure you; the angels see it and sing.  The saints see it and thank God for the fulfillment of their prayers.  We should look at it, and fall to our knees in thanksgiving.

The importance of this act, of this struggle, cannot be overstated.  It is an act of faith, not in ourselves, not in the building committee, not in Father Paul or in this Deacon, but faith in God Himself.  We build so that we may see our salvation.  We build so that we may see God face to face.  We build so that people we do not know, men and women who have not yet been born, will come to God, and will come and worship at the Divine Liturgy and at Vespers, long after each and every one of us is gone, our souls remembered only by our merciful God.  Like us, the people in years to come will gather in times of great joy, in times of great sorrow and fear, but always in gratitude and with love. 

If we stop to think about it, this is something that we can scarcely comprehend.  Imagine!  In a pasture, located in a place where Orthodoxy is largely unknown, a temple arises, bringing the faith to great numbers of people who have never heard of the Apostolic Church.  You cannot tell me that St. Herman of Alaska, St. Innocent, Sts Cyril and Methodius, have not stood before the throne in supplication for us.

We have an opportunity to bring the witness of true Orthodoxy to those in desperate need of hearing of the genuine spirit of faithfulness, of sacrifice and of love.  We have the opportunity to bring pure doctrine and true faith to a place that is awash in shallow spirituality.  You cannot tell me that the great saints of love, St. John the Theologian, St. John Chrysostom, St. Seraphim of Sarov, have not interceded for us.

We have survived for over a decade, through difficulties and discouragement.  You cannot tell me that our patroness, St. Elizabeth, has not beseeched the Lord for us.

And you can never, ever tell me that our beloved Theotokos has not constantly interceded for this mission, and for each and every one of us.

In the consecration of our land yesterday, we took an enormous step.  This is an act of consummate faith, and of consummate obedience.   The saints intercede for us.  How can we despair?  The Theotokos comes to our aid.  How can we be faint hearted?  God himself is with us.  Who can stand against Him?

This Sunday – this weekend – let us be glad.  If you have been distressed, take courage.  If you have been doubtful, thrust your cares on God.  This year, at the Feast of the Meeting of the Lord, we have met Him in a new and astonishing way.  We see before us the vision of a new Temple, in the Orthodox church of St. Elizabeth.    In this Temple, we and our children and our children’s children, along with great numbers of people we cannot know and cannot imagine, will meet the Lord.

Father Dcn. James