The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Mark. (9:16-30)

Today’s gospel reading is given to to as we celebrate the fourth Sunday of Great and Holy Lent. On this Sunday we commemorate St. John Climacus, who is also known as St. John of the ladder since he wrote one of the most famous spiritual works called The Ladder of Divine Ascent. There are some important similarities between the life-giving words of our Lord Jesus Christ that we hear today and the message of St. John Climacus.

In the gospel reading we hear the story of a young boy who suffers with a terrible illness that is not unlike epilepsy. He suffered violent seizures. Only we learn that the illness is not simply one of the physical brain but that in fact the boy has been seized by demonic spirits. When the father of this boy asks the disciples for help, he finds that even the disciples who have been given power to heal do not have any power in this situation. So the father turns to the only one who can possibly help with this great difficulty. After the Lord Jesus heals the boy, we later find the disciples coming to Our Lord in private and asking him why they could not heal the boy. The Lord’s answer is direct and to the point. “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting.” Just as not all illnesses are equal, each requires it’s own particular medicines, so in this case we see the Lord telling His disciples that some demons are stronger than others. We should likewise understand that not all sins or sinful habits and behaviors are equal. Some can come out with a bit of resolve and short prayers. But others require stronger medicines.

The Church as a wise mother, reminds us during these holy forty days, that what we are doing these days through fasting and extended prayers is not easy but it is the best medicine. It is the medicine that clears our path to God. How blessed we are to have received the wisdom of the Church to guide us and to help us become saints! We don’t have to guess and to take a stab in the dark or reinvent the wheel. We know what it takes to be transformed and we have a rich multitude of saints that prove that our way is tried and true because ultimately it allows us to unite with the One who is Himself truth.

St. John Climacus writes “Do not be surprised that you fall every day; do not give up, but stand your ground courageously. And assuredly the angel who guards you will honor your patience.” We so often lose heart when we fail and stumble and fall, and make no mistake, we all stumble and fall at times. St. John encourages us to see our task as a process that requires time and patience. No great work is achieved overnight. God’s great work of molding and shaping and transforming us into holy men and women is not magic. It is not an instantaneous event. It is not simply a matter of superficial intellectual faith. It is a process that only happens through great and painful struggles that are felt deep within the heart. These struggles are energized by the grace of God.

St. John also reminds us that it is best to tackle these issues and sins as soon as possible because the longer they are left unattended, the more stubborn the wounds become. He writes “While a wound is still fresh and warm it is easy to heal, but old, neglected and festering ones are hard to cure, and require for their care much treatment, cutting, plastering and cauterization. Many from long neglect become incurable. But with God all things are possible [Matthew 19:26]” (Step 5.30, Ladder of Divine Ascent). When someone has terminal illness, everyone including the doctors gives up. But St. John tells us that even those who have “terminal” spiritual illnesses can have hope because with God all things are indeed possible.

The Church reminds us during this fourth Sunday of Lent that none of our efforts will go to waste. We aren’t fasting in order to lose weight or to keep a tradition or to look religious or to feel better about ourselves. We are fasting and praying because when these exercises are undertaken with a spirit of humility and when they are coupled together with the sacraments of the Holy Church, they will restore us, renew us and heal us completely.

No matter what you have been struggling with, no matter the number of times that you have fallen, what is required is perseverance in the ascetic disciplines that have been given to us and to add to them the heartfelt pleading of the father in today’s passage. “Lord I believe, help my unbelief!” When a man or a woman learns to fall on their knees with streams of tears running down their face and a heart that is broken, they draw the grace of God to them in a special way. God is our Father and He cannot deny the pleading and requests of His children that are offered up in faith. These heartfelt pleadings are powerful for us personally, and as we’ve seen in today’s gospel they are powerful on behalf of others.

Today we acknowledge that Lent is difficult. This is not fun and games. This is a spiritual battle and the Church has armed us with powerful weapons in this war. So let us not run from fasting and prayer at this crucial moment. But let us use these tools to put our enemies to flight and let us continually remember that none of these things will benefit us unless they are all blessed by the Almighty King Christ our true God, to Him be the glory, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Mark 8:34-9:1

Today’s reading is given to us on this the Third Sunday of Lent. We are now halfway through the Holy 40 days and on this day the Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates the veneration of the cross. In her wisdom the Church brings out the cross on this day as a way to strengthen and empower all her faithful children who are now weary and tired through fasting and prayer.

In today’s reading we hear some of the greatest words of Our Lord Jesus. He says “If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for My sake and the Gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul?”

We are constantly reminded by the Lord that the cross is not just for a few chosen individuals. Each and everyone who calls themselves Christian must take up a cross. Since we follow a master who chose the cross, we must also be ready to choose the cross. You know in our society pain is always seen as bad. It is something to be avoided at all costs. But think about what that would mean for us if the Lord Jesus had a similar mentality. It means that He would never have been crucified or suffered for us.

Sometimes I hear that Buddhism is similar to Christianity. But those who have studied them know that there is a great difference. In Buddhism the goal is to avoid suffering. Buddha left his wife and young child because he could not handle what life had dealt him. In Christianity the Lord Jesus did just the opposite. He walked straight into all manner of pain and suffering, proving that He is the real deal and unlike any other so-called religious leaders. He teaches us that we can’t be saved if we run away from the difficult things in life.

In our society we are taught that when marriage is tough, we should run away. When work is tough, we should run away. When my parents are tough on me, I should run away. When my schoolwork is tough, I will run away, I will drop out of school. When my very life is tough, I might even look for a way to run from it.

Let’s stand with Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane and just imagine what would’ve happened if Our Lord said “Crucifixion is tough, I will run away.” It would be a normal, reasonable reaction. We are hardwired to avoid pain and suffering. We are hardwired to do everything possible to protect ourselves. But we stand in admiration and thank God that Our Lord did not do that but He proved just the opposite. If you want to defeat some problems, you don’t run away from them, you confront them as you are. In all your weakness and humility, you faithfully confront the difficult things that come up in life. That even means faithfully confronting ourselves in all our sins, our failures, our imperfections. That is the difference between being cowards and being courageous. It’s the difference between living in the realm of fantasy like an actor or being a real human.

In this, the halfway point of Lent, as we are hungry and tired and ready for a break, it should seem a bit strange that we celebrate with the cross. The cross is a sign of suffering, shame, ugliness, injustice, weakness and death. In short the cross is a sign of everything that is wrong in the world…but that is not what it means to us. Because the Lord Jesus Christ faithfully confronted the cross, it has been transformed for us. The cross is a now a symbol of beauty, love, faithfulness, hope, joy and even life! “Through the cross is joy come into all the world!”

The cross becomes our strength because through it Jesus made us strong. The cross becomes our life because through it, the Lord defeated death. The cross becomes our one enduring reminder that when the world is a lonely, dark and difficult place, there is still One who loves us and His love never ends. The cross reminds us that when a man is truly weak, God has the power to use his weakness, to make it strength. The Apostle Paul writes that “the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” 1 Cor 1:18. The power of God is at work in the lives of those who live by the message of the cross! The cross is at work in us even now as we are struggling through the fast. I hope that this is an inspiration for you.

May God bless each of you as you begin the second half of this holy challenge.  Glory be to God forever AMEN.

(Originally preached on March 18, 2012)

Source: Sermons

The Second Sunday of Great and Holy Lent, St. Gregory Palamas Sunday

He was once called “the cause of all disorders and disturbances in the Church.” Now imagine that he was called “the cause of all disorders and disturbances in the Church” by the Patriarch of Constantinople himself. The year is 1344. This comment was made during a Church council and it caused this man to be thrown into prison for the next 4 years. The man who was “the cause of all disorders and disturbances in the Church” was St. Gregory Palamas. He has a long and complicated story but each one of us needs to know about this man St. Gregory Palamas, archbishop of Thessalonica. That is why the Church in her wisdom has set aside this the second Sunday of Great Lent as Palamas Sunday. Why was this man called “the cause of all disorders and disturbances in the Church?” What had he done that was so terrible?

He was raised in Constantinople in a wealthy family. His family was even friends with the Emperor but from a rather young age Gregory was inclined to the life of the Church. It was no surprise because his parents loved the Church and frequently invited clergy and monks to come and spend time with them. As a young man Gregory left the comfortable life and traveled to Mt. Athos in Greece to be trained in the ways of prayer as a monk. He dedicated his whole life to God because he loved God and wanted to spend all his time in the service of God. He grew wise and strong through prayer under the guidance of some experienced holy men.

Unfortunately due to time constraints I can’t tell you all of his story but I will tell you that he advanced and gained the rank of Abbot, a leader of a monastic community as well as a very respected elder on the Holy Mountain (Mt. Athos). The real trouble began when a very gifted speaker and teacher, a monk from Italy, visited Mt. Athos. This monk was Barlaam. He taught the monks that,

“He believed the monks on Mount Athos were wasting their time in contemplative prayer when they should be studying. He ridiculed the ascetic labor and life of the monks, their methods of prayer, and their teachings about the uncreated light experienced by the hesychasts. Countering the traditional stance of the Church that “the theologian is the one who prays,” Barlaam asked: “How can an intimate communion of man with the Divine be achievable through prayer, since the Divine is transcendent and ‘dwelling in unapproachable light’ (1 Timothy 5:16)? No one can apprehend the essential being of God!” Barlaam was convinced that God can be reached only through philosophical, mental knowledge—in other words, through rationalism.” AGAIN Vol. 27 No. 1.

So this led to a great dispute among the monks and especially between Gregory and Barlaam. Why such a dispute? Because Barlaam was teaching that we learn and experience God through knowledge. That we know God in the head first. This was a type of rationalism. It is the belief that the only proper way to know things is through reason. This led to many of the problems in Western Christianity and led ultimately to the Protestant Reformation. The problem is that essentially it means that we know God only through logic as if God is a mathematical equation. It ignores the fact that for centuries illiterate but holy men and women, have had true experiences of God through the life of the Church. In addition it means that Barlaam thought that what was experienced by the monks through prayer was not actually a real, genuine experience of God but a lesser experience of something created by God, which he called “grace”.

We are told that Barlaam traveled to Constantinople and stopped at the monasteries. He refused to attend vigils, prayer or fasting and did not trust in spiritual experiences. In short, he behaved much like modern Christians, even so-called Orthodox Christians. He caused a division throughout the Church with his improper teachings and then blamed it all on Gregory. This sort of thing has happened before and will probably happen again.

Knowing God is not theoretical, it is an actual experience. Gregory Palamas taught that we could certainly know God. He made an important distinction. He said that there were two sides to knowing God. One was to know God’s essence. This is impossible for any human being. No human has ever seen God. No one can grasp His greatness or His glory. On the flip side, Gregory taught that we could know God through His energies: the way that He clearly acts through our world and visits us. He compared knowing God to the Sun. God is like the Sun. This Sun can never be grasped or even looked at closely. It is impossible and yet we can receive the energy from the Sun. We feel the warmth of the rays, we experience the light and heat.

St. Gregory suffered and was imprisoned more than once for defending his understanding of the faith in the living God. We may one day have to be courageous enough to suffer for our Christian faith. You can’t prepare by stocking guns and ammo. You can prepare by loving your neighbors and by stocking God’s words in your heart and by becoming men and women of prayer and teaching this life of prayer to your children. St. Gregory teaches us that it is possible to soak up God’s rays of love and blessings through genuine communion that is possible through the struggle to reach fervent prayer. It doesn’t happen automatically, but comes by the grace of God. God wants to affect us through prayer, prayer is not meditation or an intellectual exercise. It is communication with the Divine.

Today we are reminded that we can experience God, He is not a theory hidden in a book. Education and degrees only go so far, the experience of pure prayer is a true teacher. Right now as we’ve been struggling for a few weeks we are inclined to think…it is not worth it. Why fast, why pray more, why attend extra services, why do any of this? St. Gregory answers to us: these things open us up to receive the love and the grace of God which will dwell in us through our union and communion with the Holy Spirit.

So keep struggling, it is indeed worth it. Glory be to God Forever AMEN.   (Originally delivered March 31, 2013)

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (6:14-21)

“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” These are the words of our Lord God and savior Jesus Christ given to us today as we are now at the edge and preparing to leap into Great and Holy Lent. Our Lord has this amazing way of reorienting our thinking and even removing our blindness in order to help us to see. He prepares us for this great and holy season with an important reminder. Forgiveness and fasting are not simply “religious observances” or “traditions.” They are tools that help us gain and regain heavenly treasures. Lent isn’t actually about suffering or denial. It is about moving our hearts to treasure and appreciate things that matter and those things have an eternal significance and weight.

Our lenten disciplines are meant to give us laser-like focus on God and His kingdom, which shall not pass away. We are among the most productive people in the history of the world. Yet our Lord continually speaks to us and cries out saying “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth. Where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal.” Reorient yourselves. Change your minds. Repent. Take the tools give by to us by the Son of God and work hard, work tirelessly. Become the most productive person in the world…but produce something worthy of the name “Christian”. Toil, labor and struggle…but only for that which is eternal, glorious, and heavenly. Our bank accounts and savings which are here, cannot possibly help us in our next and permanent home. So the Lord tells us to struggle to save in our heavenly savings account.

What are the ways that are mentioned here by the Lord?

He begins by reminding us that forgiveness is a key foundation for beginning your savings account. Why is this the case? Because when you hold something against someone else, you are holding a debt against them. This debt is worse than all others including monetary interest (which God hates). This debt is worse than all the others because it is a debt that the other individual can never repay. Why can they never repay the debt? Because you won’t give them a way to repay it. This is outrageous and unacceptable in God’s eyes. God does not like it when we are unfair and unjust to others and we are the definition of unfair and unjust, when we do not forgive others quickly.

What happens to us when we do not forgive others?

God is disgusted when He sees this type of behavior. It forces God to remember all of our sins, all of our wrongdoings, and all of our evil because He does not, He cannot recognize us as His own children. We are like the one who was caught trying to sneak into the wedding without the appropriate wedding garments. If we have not been merciful and loving to others, we have not understood God’s mercy and love. This is ultimately a sign that we have rejected God’s love and mercy! Forgiveness is not something we’d like to do. It is one of the things that we have to do. It is a necessity for our salvation because salvation itself presupposes the forgiveness from God and the Lord Himself says “If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

My brothers and sisters, these are not games that we should play. There is a better way. Today is the start of our recommitment to God. Today is the day to refocus and set our priorities. We are God’s children, and we are each meant to be sources of hope for others. We offer others the hope of God’s love, His mercy and His forgiveness by reflecting and incarnating these characteristics. We don’t talk about them in theory. We live them and in living them faithfully we find that what was once forced now becomes inseperable from who we are. The Lord who loves us, desires that we should be eager to receive God’s treasures. He says to us “come and take from my treasures which are piled high up to the heavens. Come and take as much as you can carry. Everything that I have is yours!” We are encouraged to take and to fill our spiritual inheritance to the brim. Let us start with Forgiving others so that God will not hold any debts against us. Let us continue by building up our heavenly accounts through heartfelt prayer that is powerfully united with fasting. Let us work for these eternal treasures and by the grace of God we will rightly treasure Him who alone is eternal. To the eternal God be the glory, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (25:31-46)

The teachings of Our Lord, God and savior Jesus Christ are often quite difficult for us. In fact, it cannot be any other way since God is speaking to man. God is attempting to raise man from his earthly nature which makes him similar to the beasts, and He is trying to raise him to the level and stature which alone is God’s. We do not take lightly the idea that God desires to call us “sons and daughters.”

As the Church prepares us for the coming of the great and holy challenge, we are indeed challenged by the words of Christ. Sometimes this makes us uncomfortable. Why is God always challenging us? Why does God expect so much from us? Really, if we think about it, we should really be troubled if God didn’t challenge us and didn’t expect so much from us! In man made religion everything is geared towards the pleasure of those who are at the top. But in our Christian faith, everything presupposes that the one who is at the top is ready to become the least of all, even to die for all. As our Lord says “He who desires to become the greatest, must be the servant of all” and He also says “True love is to give ones life for his friends.”

In today’s gospel reading our lord challenges us, challenges every fiber of our being in fact. The challenge is how do we respond to those who are marginalized and struggling in our society? How do we respond to those who have dire needs? There are people in the world (and in our own communities) who are hungry, who are thirsty, who are strangers, who are naked, who are sick and who are in prison. No matter which of these situations we see others facing, we know that the person who is going through these afflictions is in need of help from somewhere. We are expecting help to come from God but my dear friends, God is expecting help to come from us!

It is not that helping others is just a nice thing to do, it is the rule by which each of us will be measured. It is true that the Lord is challenging us, but in His divine mercy He is also preparing us and warning us about the coming judgment and He is giving us a roadmap to His kingdom. The privilege of being a child of God is to do what the Lord Jesus Christ has done for all of humanity. He made the fallen state of humanity His burden. And by making us His burden, He entered into our struggles. In fact our Lord became all of these that are here mentioned. Our Lord was hungry and thirsty when He fasted. He was a stranger when He travelled from place to place. He was in prison on the night in which He was betrayed, or rather gave Himself up for the life of the world. He was naked and sick when He hung upon the tree of the cross and according to Isaiah the prophet “we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted” (Is 53:4). So God understands what it is to suffer and to be associated with the downcast and downtrodden in society, and He wants us to also understand and to spring into action.

But He goes even further, He multiplies the blessing of serving the poor and the struggling. He tells us that when we do this we are not simply serving those who are struggling, we are in fact serving the Lord Jesus Christ Himself! What a Lord and Master we serve! He bows low to identify with the least of our brethren and then raises our service so that it will be counted as service to Him, the King of glory! So what more can the Son of God do to convince us to serve others? Let us go out of our way to help others during the coming season of Great Lent. You may be surprised to find that when you disconnect from the computers and televisions, there are many people who can use your help, right in your community.

Let us try hard to bring the love and mercy of God to them and there can be no doubt that God will see our love and mercy and will multiply this much, much more in our lives, both here and at the great and awesome judgement. Glory be to God forever AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke 15:11-32

By now you know that we are firmly in the Pre-Lenten period. We are only two short weeks away from the start of the awesome and wondrous struggle that we call Great and Holy Lent. Here during this time before the great fast, the Church gives us of her milk in order to prepare us with a foundation upon which to build. She starts us off with nourishing milk in order that she might later give us meat. Last week we heard the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee. The lesson was a simple one: humility is the start of the positive spiritual path. Today we hear another of the Lord’s famous parables: The parable of the prodigal son.

This parable should be familiar to each of us. Not only because we have heard it from year to year over the course of our lives, but because the parable is about each of us. Our daily lives reflect this struggle that is symbolized by the prodigal son. We have been given everything we could ever need in life. The proof that this is indeed the case is that you are here, alive. Life itself is a gift from God. More than simply giving us life, the Lord has continually poured out His many gifts and blessings on each of us. The problem is that humanity is notoriously good at making idols of created things and ignoring the One who is the source of all things. Humanity is also notorious for using people for their benefits without attaching proper reverence and love to those who have benefitted us. The “casual” dating scene in today’s culture is a sign of this fallen concept of using others for the benefits they provide instead of engaging in a relationship which requires an investment of time, reverence and love.

The prodigal son used his birthright (which came from his father) and used his inheritance (which his father had earned) in order to rebel against this same father who was the source of these good things in his life. The prodigal was like a man who is given part ownership of a boat with others. Yet in his greed and desire to go in another direction, he decides to divide himself from the others by taking a saw to the boat and cutting off his portion. Little does he realize that he will only end up at the bottom of the sea because of his selfishness and short-sightedness.

This parable is about each of us. We have each been rebellious in our lives. We have each fought God in order to have freedom on our own terms. This is not unlike the teenager that argues with his or her parents imagining that the parents are the enemy when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. The parents love the child and attempt to do only what is good for the child. Our rebellion from God is the very definition of sin. What you might find interesting is that God does not want unhappy slaves, actually He wants us to be free. He has created us with a free will. He does not force us to act in a certain way. He does not force us into anything. He doesn’t force us because He doesn’t want us to be slaves but sons and daughters and friends. What is most interesting is that when we choose to rebel against God and His teachings and commandments in order to gain our freedom, the opposite happens. We gain our freedom from God but we end up as slaves to our own desires, slaves to sin and ultimately, we end up slaves to death which is the fruit of sin.

Yet this parable should comfort each of us even more than it convicts us. Even though we have each been rebellious against God, just as the prodigal son was, we can also take comfort in the fact that we can come to our senses, just as the prodigal son did. What was it that led to his coming to his senses? It was his involuntary fasting and asceticism! Yes, even here the Church prepares us for the upcoming fast by showing us that the one who is rebellious can reclaim his heavenly inheritance by voluntarily choosing what the prodigal son received involuntarily through his hunger and difficulties. Through our voluntary hunger and thirst for God, we are sure to reclaim our senses and come to our right minds and turn from our wrong thoughts and wrong ways and remember and turn to the One who is the source of true freedom and true life.

No matter what you have done wrong in life. No matter your background or your history. There is nothing that you could do that would keep God away from you. His love is far greater than all of our sins. His forgiveness is generous and richly overflowing. Like the prodigal son, if we will simply come to our senses and turn towards our Father, we will find that before we have taken many steps, the Father will already be rushing towards us to embrace us and to clothe us with the white and brilliant garments of salvation. He will return us to His house (which is the Church) and prepare a great feast of joy, a feast of thanksgiving for our return, because we are His beloved children and nothing less.

Glory be to God forever AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Second Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians. (6:16-7:1)

People are hungry for God. The world is groaning and aching to know God. We are among the most blessed people in the history of the world because we have knowledge of this living God and His Son, our lord and savior Jesus Christ.

Because we acknowledge His Son and because we have received the gift of Chrism within the Holy Church, we are also given the gift of the Holy Spirit and this gift makes us “the temple of the living God” as the Apostle Paul states here in the second epistle to the Corinthians. It is not enough for God to simply wash away our past sins, or to pay the price of our redemption. The God who is love is not pleased until He can fully share every good and perfect gift with His people. He goes so far as to refer to them as His children, His “sons and daughters.”

The Temple was a physical place made of stones and bricks and it was in this particular place that the Lord our God would come to dwell and meet His people and because of the work of our Lord Jesus Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Temple is no longer located in one particular place. The Temple was destroyed in 70 a.d. as the Lord prophesied and it has not yet been rebuilt. At any rate it is of little consequence to us because we are not required to go on far away pilgrimages in distant lands to seek the living God. We are required to go on the most difficult journey for any man, which is the journey inward. Our Lord reminds us that “the kingdom of God is within you.”

Everything that belongs to God is now ours because He is generous and charitable and He wants to give us of Himself and even of His divine nature. St. Paul reminds us however that there is something required of the sons and daughters of God most high. He quotes from the prophet Isaiah saying they must “touch nothing unclean.” He continues by telling us that we should “cleanse (ourselves) of every defilement of body and spirit.”

But what does “every defilement of body and soul” mean? According to St. John Chrysostom “Unclean things refer to adultery and fornication in the flesh and to evil thoughts in the soul. We must be delivered from both.” In our reading St. Paul quotes again from Isaiah saying “come out from them, and be seperate from them.” One of the most important aspects of staying pure is to be careful of the company you keep. Of course you immediately think of the people you are with but the fact is that our phones now keep us company, our movies and shows do as well. Our social media keeps us company and in addition to all of these we have the company of real flesh and blood co-workers and students and friends. Often the things that are offered to us by friends or by shows or by movies or by websites….these things are often unclean and immoral. We should be willing to guard our senses in the same way that we would guard our children from nearby danger. The dangers are real even if we don’t perceive them.

God sends us His divine grace and is present in our lives. He works in our hearts and minds and regenerates us with new life. It is because God is holy and desires to dwell in us, that we must also be holy. Because what is holy can never be mingled with the unholy. There can be no fellowship between light and darkness. What the Lord requires of us is simply a clean temple in which to dwell. A place where God is welcome.

We may attempt to live holy lives most of the time yet we feel that we lack the presence of God. We don’t believe that God is hearing our prayers or helping us. Our faith is still a bit shaky. Perhaps that little bit of influence from the outside, from facebook or netflix or the radio or the nightly news is not allowing us to really be separate and clean. Perhaps that bit of time with the person who curses or speaks coursely is not allowing us to live in purity. To be holy means to be separate and set apart for God. You can’t be a little bit holy. You either are or you aren’t living a life that is separated from the world and the things of the world.

What we are trying to do is to obey the first and greatest commandment, to offer God all of our heart, soul, mind, strength and ultimately our very lives. We don’t attempt to live holy lives because God requires this or needs this.  He needs nothing from us. But He desires each of us deeply.  He wants to commune and unite with us.  We attempt to live holy lives because we want and need God’s presence and fellowship in our lives. God is faithful to keep each of these promises He’s given us. A promise to live and to move among us. A promise to be our God and to make us His people. A promise to adopt us. And a promise to call us His own sons and daughters. Only let us do the hard work of constantly searching out our sins and separating ourselves from all of the influences that harm us and leave us unclean. Let us continue repenting and cleansing ourselves until He makes what holiness we have, a perfect holiness.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (19:1-10)

Many people say that they want to know God. Sometimes people are more specific and they say that they want to know Jesus Christ. This is really the correct way to think about it. We know the Father only through the Son. The Lord Himself says “He who has seen me, has seen the Father who sent me.” He has also taught us that “No man comes to the Father except through me.”

It is a good thing to desire to know God, but what is the process by which we obtain this knowledge? How do we acquire knowledge of God? Can we do a google search and know God? No. We can do a search or a study to learn about God. But to actually know God, more is required of us. Today’s gospel reading is an outline of the process that is required.

One of the first steps necessary to gain knowledge of God is to focus on our desire. We all have passing desires. Many of the holy fathers of the Church tell us not to focus or hold on to our desires because if we do we will become entangled by them. However, our desire to know God should follow the model of Zacchaeus. He had a desire and he didn’t ignore it or get distracted away from it. His desire to see the Lord Jesus was not just a brief moment of wishful thinking or daydreaming. He allowed it to overtake him. It was the driving force behind his real struggle and efforts.

Zacchaeus has so much to teach us. Even though he was a tax-collector, among the most hated people in all of the Jewish world, he impressed the Lord so much by his zeal for knowledge of God. Zacchaeus demonstrated his heart for God by not allowing anything to become an obstacle for him. He was born short, it was easy for him to shrug his shoulders and say “too bad God didn’t make me taller so that I could see Jesus.” He didn’t complain about the crowd that surrounded Christ. He could’ve said “I would’ve loved to see Jesus but there’s simply too many people.” He doesn’t use these difficulties or obstacles as excuses, he uses them as proof. What did he prove? Zacchaeus proved that his desire to see Jesus was genuine, heartfelt and powerful.

Every single man, woman and child will have some obstacles or difficulties that keep them at a distance from God. Do these allow us to create excuses or do they challenge us to struggle and to fight to know Him? Zacchaeus demonstrates his willingness to struggle to know God. He may look foolish as a grown man who is climbing into a tree. He probably got sweaty and dirty. It took effort. But it was all worth it wasn’t it?

We each say that we want to know God more. We want to have a deeper relationship with the Lord Jesus. What are we doing to make that happen? We often say that we are too busy or too distracted to fast, or to pray or to study the word of God or the writings of the fathers or the lives of the saints. How would Zacchaeus respond in the same situation? We already know the answer. This is the difference between the one who claims to desire God and the one who pursues his desire. One of the great figures of the Old Testament, and a patriarch of the Jewish people was Jacob. Jacob deeply desired to have Rachel as his wife. So he struggled and worked and toiled for 7 years. At the end of the 7^th year he was rewarded for all his hard work. Rachel’s father gave him his daughter to be his wife, but there was a small problem. It was not the daughter that he had desired. What was Jacob to do? What a terrible thing to have happened to him. He was fooled. It was a great obstacle. He had toiled for 7 years and guess what? He learned at that moment that if Rachel was truly worth it, he would need to struggle even longer. He toiled for 7 more years to receive the hand of the daughter that he truly wanted. That is real desire! He worked for 14 years to finally marry the woman that he loved.

We as the Church are the bride of Christ. How much do we desire to enter into a deep relationship with our beloved? Work to develop a relationship with God as if your life depends on it. Don’t be afraid of how you will look, or what others will say (yes they will undoubtedly say things). Don’t be afraid of the pain and the struggle (yes, pain and struggle will be present). Don’t be afraid that you will fall short of your goal (you will fall short almost daily). If we are faithful, He is yet more faithful. We want to know Christ but in truth Christ wants to be known by us….He wants to dwell among us and to say to us “today salvation has come to this house.” So pour yourself into the task of climbing the tree. By a tree, Adam and Eve were banished out of paradise. By climbing a tree, Zachaeus found paradise in the form of a man and was granted not only to see Christ but to sit and to dine with Him. May we struggle to climb the trees that lead our minds upwards toward the heavens. May we not rest until we hear the blessed words “Make haste and come down, for I must stay at your house today”. Glory be to God forever AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (17:12-19)

Today we hear the passage about the ten lepers from St. Luke the evangelist. When a man or woman was found out to be leprous, this was considered something of a death sentence. This sickness would separate people from their loved ones. It would force families and communities to distance themselves and push those who had the disease outside the city walls. Lepers were known to dwell together and travel together since they could not be around those who were healthy due to being contagious and unclean.

The ten lepers stood at a distance and we are told that they lifted up their voices and said “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” It reminds me of the time I visited a chaplain in a local liberal arts college. I walked into his office and found that there were many peculiar decorations including a large poster with a picture of Our Lord that read “Jesus is my homeboy.” Brothers and sisters, Jesus cannot be your homeboy. We learn to address the Son of God in a worthy manner and not with such casual titles. And this is not a trivial point because how we address others is a sign of how we actually love and respect and show reverence to them or quite possibly it is a sign of our lack of love and respect and reverence. Whatever we believe is apparent in the ways that we speak of God, or in the ways that we speak to God.

Here we are confronted with the ten lepers and we see their reverence. Why did they have such reverence? Perhaps because they had no hope left and the Lord Jesus became their only real source of hope for them in their despair. When the Lord heard them say “Jesus, Master, haver mercy on us”, He said to them “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” We are consistently awed by the power of God and by the power of His word. By His word He made the heavens and the earth and created light. By His word He now grants new life to the ten who were like the walking dead. We are told that as they went to see the priests they were cleansed. It is truly remarkable! A disease is healed by the word of the Word. Yet something even more remarkable is about to happen. Ten lepers were cleansed but only one turned back and offered praise to God and came to fall at the feet of Jesus to offer thanks.

The Lord Himself took the opportunity of the lepers return to point out a few things to us. He asked “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine?” There is an expectation that the right number of lepers that should’ve returned to give thanks to God was 10 out of 10. There should have been gratitude from 100% of the lepers. Their life was given back to them and they went off on their merry way without so much as a thought of gratitude for the One who had made all things possible for them. This isn’t because God wants us to feel guilty, it is because God wants to help us understand reality and act in a truly human manner. One who is truly human cannot deny his need for God’s help for even a minute of his life. Gratitude is a sign that one is truly aware of what his life was, what his life is and what God has done and continues to do for him.

Our Lord continues by asking “Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” One of the inescapable facts of the gospel according to St. Luke is the way that those who are outsiders, non-Jews are constantly shown to be more faithful than the Jews who supposedly know God. The one who reads the gospels is faced with this reality and it is important that we all understand that this reality is sometimes true for us as Orthodox Christians. We have been handed the full deposit of the faith through faithful men and women. We have the full knowledge of the truth about God and His Son. It may also be true that there are some, perhaps they are Protestants or Roman catholics who lack a portion of the knowledge and yet have a better actual understanding of God which is demonstrated by their faithfulness, even in the little things, even in the seemingly unimportant act of gratitude. The only one who came back to show his gratitude for the miracle that Christ had performed was the Samaritan. The Jews looked on Samaritans as if they were no better than dirt. Yet the one who is considered less than human, was the only true human among the bunch because he recognized the source of his blessings. The gospels continually point to the fact that those who have the privilege of knowing God are expected to live up to this privilege through their piety and devotion. But I want to repeat that this is not about making God happy, it is about fulfilling our purpose and finding our peace in the Lord.

St. Mark the ascetic wrote “You should continually and unceasingly call to mind all the blessings which God in His love has bestowed on you in the past, and still bestows for the salvation of your soul. You must not let forgetfulness of evil or laziness make you grow unmindful of these many and great blessings, and so pass the rest of your life uselessly and ungratefully. For this kind of continual recollection, pricking the heart like a spur, moves it constantly to confession and humility, to thanksgiving with a contrite soul, and to all forms of sincere effort, repaying God through its virtue and holiness. In this way the heart meditates constantly and conscientiously on the words from the Psalms: ‘What shall I give to the Lord in return for all His benefits towards me?’ (Psalm 116:12).” Letter to Nicolas the Solitary, The Philokalia Vol. 1

True gratitude leads to the complete sacrifice of oneself through total obedience to the teachings of Christ….and it leads us to true worship of the living God.  We thank God for the faith of this Samaritan and outsider who not only found physical healing but through his mindfulness and the offering of thanks to God, also found wellness for his soul. And glory be to God forever AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (1:1-25)

In today’s gospel reading we are given a foretaste of the great feast of Nativity and the Christmas celebration. The evangelist St. Matthew has left a wonderful present under the tree and he teases us to contemplate it and think about it and perhaps even to peek into it and discover something of the mystery of this joyous feast.

It all sounds very exciting and yet we are confronted with a passage that many believe is one of the most boring passages in all of the gospels. How can this be? It is because what might look boring in this passage is actually the sign of the Lord’s entrance, or rather, our entrance into the Lord’s salvation. This is something that is far from boring! It is quite literally the history of the Jewish people and of the whole of Scripture and St. Matthew is tracing and weaving a story that ultimately finds it’s meaning and purpose in the child who is born to the Virgin Mary who is betrothed to Joseph, who is himself from the line of David the King.

This passage tells us so much but most important of all are three points:

First, we find that Jesus is actually of Jewish heritage since he is from the lineage of Abraham. This is important because the long-awaited messiah, the anointed one of Israel was expected to be Jewish.

Second, we find that Jesus is indeed part of the lineage of David the king. Why is this important? Because it was long understood that the messiah would not only be a Jew, but he would be a king. In order for this to be true he would have to be related to the kings who had come before him.

Third, and this is really by far the most important, this passage tells us without a doubt that the Lord Jesus Christ, the son of God and savior of the world, has a human nature that he takes from the Virgin Mary. The genealogy found in this passage is not simply a matter of tying together the loose ends of the history of Israel (though it does this quite nicely). It is ultimately there to show us that the Lord Jesus Christ entered into history as a man. He who formed man in His image and likeness now demonstrates that His love will bring Him to take upon Himself our image in order that we might grow in His likeness. If God did not become a man in the flesh, then our human flesh cannot be touched and healed by His divine power. It is a powerful rebuke to the gnostics who denied that Christ existed in the flesh and also believed that the body was inherently unclean and evil. St. Irenaeus wrote “How could we be joined to incorruptibility and immortality unless incorruptibility and immortality had first become what we are, so that the corruptible might be swallowed up by incorruptibility, and the mortal by immortality, so that we might receive adoption as children?” (Against Heresies 3:19,1)

The one who is God before the ages, will come into space and time and take a mortal body that He might share immortality with us. He who could not die, took on the flesh of man in order to ultimately take on death and give us His life. The evangelist reminds us that all of this did not happen suddenly in a vacuum. It was all foretold in the prophets of old “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and His Name shall be called Emmanuel.” The feast of Nativity is the celebration of God’s special entrance and presence into the world and among the human race. This feast is one of the everlasting signs of God’s love and our undying hope; God with us.

We turn on the news and we hear about tragedies. We speak to friends and hear about their difficulties. We see brokenness and suffering and we think to ourselves “What kind of a God would allow such things to happen in the world?” But before we can go further we are faced with the answer in the form of a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, “What kind of a God would allow such things to happen in the world?” The God who loves us so much that He would come down and experience this world as one of us.

What kind of a God is this? The kind of God who so deeply desires a relationship with us that He didn’t wait for us to find a way to Him, but instead made His way directly to us. But He was not content be near us, rather He would not cease until He had united Himself with everything that it is to be human. He demonstrates this true humanity with complete obedience to His Father even unto death. And in uniting Himself with everything that it is to be human, He has actually given us the potential of becoming truly human.

To Him be the glory, now and ever and unto the ages of ages AMEN.

Source: Sermons