The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (14:16-24)

The great philosopher Socrates once said “The unexamined life is not worth living.” What a statement! “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I suspect that if we all take a step back or rather, if we take a step and look inward, we find that many of us or most of us have not been very good about examining our lives. In this regard we have lost our way and have not understood our purpose or the meaning of our lives.

Recently I was speaking with someone and we talked about this notion of “days of obligation” that exist within the Roman Catholic understanding. It is an interesting and strange idea that one should feel obligated to go to church. I am not forced to go anywhere or do anything as a human being with a free will. Whatever I decide is ultimately a choice. If I force you to come and have dinner with me, that does not show any respect for who you are because you have no say in the matter. If you are obligated, you are in some ways not truly free but rather a slave.

In today’s gospel passage our Lord Jesus Christ reminds us that obligation has nothing to do with our relationship with God and His Church. The Lord said “A man once gave a great banquet, and invited many.” It speaks to our misguided attitudes that we feel honored and run from place to place whenever we are invited anywhere by anyone. Not only do we make sure that we show up but we try to clean ourselves and put on nice clothes, and make our appearance neat. We also go out of our way to show our gratitude to those who have invited us by bringing a nice gift and not showing up empty handed. We don’t do any of this because we are forced to or feel that we must. Hopefully we don’t do these things out of a sense of obligation, but out of a sense of cheerful joy.

When, however we think about coming to the Church we often approach it as if it were some sort of funeral. We drag our feet and think to ourselves, “why am I burdened by having to go to church?” Sometimes in our day to day life we think “Why must I be burdened with praying or reading the Bible? Why must I fast and repent and struggle?” We question and we often make excuses just like the men in this gospel passage. This is the appropriate mentality for servants and slaves who have no free will, but my brothers and sisters, we are the honored guests of the Lord Himself. We’ve been given this tremendous honor and blessing but what do we do with this invitation? We’ve mentioned the way that we respond when invited by friends to a gathering. We get cleaned up and we bring a gift and we come with a cheerful attitude. What we do for our friends, we should do for the sake of the One who truly loves us.

We should accept the invitation to the Lord’s banquet with tremendous joy and cheerfulness. We should put on our best garments….not the outer garments, not ties or fancy dresses or nice jewelry, but the garments of righteousness and holiness. We should wash our souls through repentance and purify our hearts and minds through the reading of Scripture which is “the washing of the word.” And we should come with a great sense of gratitude, bringing gifts to God, not out of a sense of compulsion or guilt, but freely, because we are overwhelmed by God’s generosity and mercy towards us.

God cannot save us by force. A man cannot gain the attention and love of his bride through force…but just the opposite, through freedom which is a sign of love. God loves us with this type of love. It is a gentle, quiet love that invites and welcomes and waits and hopes that one day we will wake up and respond not with boredom or dread but true thanksgiving and awareness of the Lord’s compassion and the wealth that He hopes to share with us. Practically speaking we need to reorient ourselves and our way of thinking. We do this through repentance. We do this by being brutally honest about who we are and how we have fallen short of the glory of God. We also reorient ourselves through remembrance of where we have been and how God has redeemed and healed and restored our lives. All of these actions lead us back to joyful thanksgiving which is precisely why we should come here and celebrate the Eucharist (which means “thanksgiving”).

Today we are present for a great banquet and we celebrate a meal of thanksgiving and all of this is made possible because we have accepted the invitation to be in the presence of God and to feast with Him. We are invited to life, to joy, to peace and to salvation through Christ who is our life and our joy, our peace and our salvation….to Him be the glory unto the ages of ages AMEN!

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke 13:10-17

One of the risks and temptations whenever one decides to practice their faith or religion is the temptation to adhere strictly to the rules and regulations without giving attention to the inner disposition. One of the things we learn from Our Lord, God and savior Jesus Christ is that outward observances don’t matter, in fact they are downright evil, when they do not transform those who practice them. We encounter just such a situation here.

We are told that there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity for 18 years. Think about that, 18 years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten up, or stand upright…for 18 years! When we have a minor cold for just a day or two we are ready to throw in the towel and give up on life, yet this faithful woman persisted in such a miserable state for nearly two decades. Perhaps we have been struggling with physical illness or even with our own sins and addictive behaviors. You may have been struggling for a long time, but don’t lose heart. God is present and He can make the crooked ways straight if we will only allow Him a chance to lay His hands upon us through the heartfelt practices of repentance and prayer. Nothing is impossible for God.

The Lord found this faithful woman in the synagogue on the Sabbath day. How do we know that she was faithful? Despite everything that had happened to her and the difficult hand that she had been dealt, she continued to come and to worship God. She didn’t blame God or grow impatient with Him. She didn’t give up on religion or choose to try her own form of spirituality. Even though it was not easy for her, she was devout and steadfast in her faith. It is within this context that the Lord Jesus Christ sees her at the synagogue. He was there teaching the people when He saw her and had great compassion on her.

This story points not only to the faithfulness of this woman but to the unfailing mercy of God. The Lord was busy teaching. He, the greatest teacher of the world, the greatest expounder of the Scriptures, stopped what He was doing (which was really important and excellent work) because He saw this woman’s pain and suffering and He wanted to heal her. We cannot help but thank God for the lesson for our lives. Even when we are doing good work, it is important to pause and help others when it is within our power to do so.

And now this woman who had struggled for all these years, was immediately healed by the hands of the one who fashioned the whole universe. This should be the end of the story. Everyone should see the miracle and rejoice and give glory to God for what has happened to this woman…but sadly this is not the case.

The ruler of the synagogue came up to the Lord Jesus and began to chastise Him and the woman who was healed. The ruler said “there are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day.” You know we ought to be careful how we speak to God, here we see a man who wants to correct the holy one of Israel. And yet we find that those who try to correct God are themselves swiftly corrected and judged. The Lord calls the man a hypocrite. Why was he a hypocrite? The Sabbath was meant to be a holy day that was free from work. Yet even on the day when the people were to refrain from work, they usually did things that were reasonable and necessary. For instance, if they had livestock or animals they untied them and lead them to water. That is work, but it would hardly be considered sinful to take care of the animals and make sure that they didn’t get sick or die. Yet the Lord brings to light this man’s hypocrisy because he wasn’t willing to extend this same mercy and compassion to another human being, even a fellow Jew.

The Lord continuously amazes us by His ability to pierce straight through the noise to the heart of the matter. He shows us that the one who is truly sick and truly infirm is not the one with a physical sickness but the one who lacked charity and mercy. The one who was truly sick was the one who couldn’t accept an act of God even when it happened right in front of his face. That is real sickness.

God wants us to follow His law, but not use it as a way to ignore the needs of others, or even worse, to judge the good and loving work that needs to be done. What good is our religious activity, what good is our strict adherence to rules and regulations (such as fasting), if these things do not make us merciful, gentle and loving with others? If all of our religious practices are merely outward they become worthless. Our works are supposed to be a powerful witness to God’s love in the world, and not a witness of cruelty or judgment towards others. God has saved us from dead works. We are free to serve the living God in truth and not just with outward motions, because we know Him and we are known by Him. May God continue the work of saving us from our inner death and our dead works and free us with the true liberty that comes from experiencing His mercy and truth. May He look on us and see our weaknesses and infirmities and lay His hands upon us and heal us all. Glory be to God forever AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke 10:25-37

At that time, a lawyer stood up to put Jesus to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read?” And the lawyer answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And Jesus said to him, “You have answered right; do this, and you will live.”

For some it has been a difficult week. For others a week full of hope and joy. In both cases we find that our responses are somewhat immature. Who are we as Christians, even, as Orthodox Christians…to be dismayed or exuberant over the winner of a political contest? Sadly if this election has shown nothing else, it has clearly demonstrated that we as Christians are often far more interested and passionate about human candidates than we are about the living God!

Psalm 146 reads “Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish. Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God” (Ps 146:3-5)

If we are honest with ourselves perhaps we can see that we’ve been doing what the word of God warns us against. Perhaps we have put our trust in princes and princesses instead of looking to God as our help and our hope. My brothers and sisters, in this we are found to have failed in doing what is commanded by Our Lord Himself. He tells the lawyer that if you love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and strength and mind. And if you love your neighbor as yourself, you will live. When we allow the politics of power and the earthly kingdom to invade our hearts and steal our peace, we are in fact showing ourselves to be sons of the corrupt and fallen men of this world and not sons and daughters of the kingdom.

St. Paul writes “Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people. For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. The saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for people. But avoid foolish controversies” (Titus 3:1-9).

Let me be clear so that no one misunderstands the point here. We as a Church pray for our elected officials. We even pray for our leaders regardless of how they came to power. Let me also be clear that we as a community and God’s family will not spend time reflecting the idolatry and misguided zeal of the world around us. We will not engage in endless foolish controversies because if we do then we are saying that our fleshly opinions and thoughts are of more value than the peace and love that we enjoy through Christ who came to die for each and every one of us. If you want to have long political discussions please go and do so over coffee with one another in private, but leave these careless and foolish discussions for another place because our unity is far more important than our feelings at this time. The release of our feelings is often an exercise in pride and the emboldening of the passions, while our silence and prayer is a mark of humility and gracious charity towards all. Do not risk destroying the peace of this holy place and the hours of prayer that you’ve cultivated today, by speaking hastily about things that are passing away.

I want you to live. I want you to have life. This is God’s desire for you because God is life. So let us help one another. Let us pray for one another and for the peace of the nation. Let us encourage one another. Because our real problems have nothing to do with our leaders and everything to do with our willful disobedience to our rightful Master. Let us refocus our minds and hearts and souls and strength on the living God and His only begotten son Jesus Christ, who alone deserves our passion, who alone deserves our allegiance, who alone deserves our admiration and who alone is worthy of our worship and our love…to Him be the glory, now and ever and unto ages of ages. AMEN!When

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Second Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians 11:31-12:9

We live in a society and in a world that is addicted to power. Even governments enjoy access to power and the ability to force their citizens to do whatever it is that they deem appropriate. When someone cannot get their way in a certain matter, they often resort to force and the exercise of power to change the outcome in their favor.

St. Paul wrote his second letter to the Corinthian Christians during a difficult time in his life. He had problems with some of the people in his communities. Often these problems would arise when he left a particular city and community that he had just founded. Influential men within these communities would see his absence as a sign that they might be able to grow in power and they would take the opportunity to also teach that which is false concerning the gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ, all the while demeaning and speaking ill of the great apostle to the gentiles.

With this as a background we see that in today’s epistle the apostle Paul writes some very profound words. These are words that each and every one of us must live by. He writes,

“And to keep me from being too elated by the abundance of revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I besought the Lord about this, that it should leave me; but He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”

Sometimes it happens in our lives that God blesses us with gifts. In the case of St. Paul he was given many gifts including the gift of healing and teaching and also the gift of receiving divine revelations and communing with God directly through the gift of the Holy Spirit. Because of all of these gifts, the Lord allowed St. Paul certain difficulties in life in order that he might not grow prideful and fall.

We do not know the exact meaning of the “thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan” to which he refers but some of the holy fathers suggest that it was the difficult people who stood opposed to his teaching of the gospel and tried to undermine his authority as an apostle. Again we see this as a power play. Sadly this still goes on and is happening even in some of the churches where parish councils are pitted against priests and vice-versa. This should not happen in because the Church does not belong to either the priest or the council but it is the house of the living God. Everyone enters in order to serve and if possible to put themselves lower than the others. No one comes to the church to look for their own benefit but in order to worship and serve God and to love one another with a holy and divine love.

St. Paul shares with us the word which he received directly from God and which is given to us as a corrective medicine. We must take this medicine daily if we want to grow in Christ. The Lord spoke to St. Paul with these words “My grace is sufficient for thee, for my power (strength) is made perfect in weakness.” What beauty and elegance and majesty we are privileged to receive along with the apostle!

St. Paul had real troubles, real suffering and he prayed to God with real tears for real deliverance from his troubles. That ought to sound familiar to us. Each of us has prayed in this way and at times we find that God offers deliverance and other times the Lord allows a particular difficulty to remain in our lives. Perhaps He is allowing it for the same reason that it remained in the life of St. Paul “to harrass us, to keep us from getting too puffed up.” God in His mercy allows His children some mild difficulties in order to keep them from getting prideful, boastful and arrogant. He allows them some measure of suffering in order to protect their relationship with Him. God knows that this relationship is fragile and could be lost if we lost our way through our own successes and victories. If we always won, we would feel strong, and God would become weak in our eyes and in our hearts. But God loves us too much to allow us to fall so easily. He allows us to feel weakness and to be vulnerable in order that we might reach out to Him and find real power.

We each lack certain things in life, we each want God to help with certain issues and difficulties but how often do we hear the words of the Lord “My grace is sufficient for thee?” How often do we really fall down on our face in prayer and understand and feel our weakness, our complete spiritual poverty. That is the kind of repentance that shakes not only the individual, it shakes the universe itself.

St. Isaac the Syrian once said,

“He who senses his sins, is greater than he who raises the dead with his prayer. He who groans one hour for his soul, is greater than he who benefits the whole world. He who is made worthy to see himself, is greater than he who is made worthy to see angels. To him who knows himself, is given the knowledge of all things. For the knowledge of ourselves is the fullness of knowledge of all things.”

It is just as the apostle learned from the Lord Himself…the Lord’s strength is made perfect through our weakness! Nowhere is this fact more clearly seen than in the picture of our Lord Jesus Christ upon the cross. We sing “He who suspended the earth upon the waters, is suspended upon a tree.” This picture is for us, the law of the Christian life. No matter how great or talented we may become, we must empty ourselves of all things and we must appear empty before God so that God will fill our emptiness and take our weakness and replace it with the true and eternal power of the Holy Spirit which can never be taken away from us. To God be the glory forever and ever AMEN.

Source: Sermons