The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (8:5-15)

In today’s gospel we hear the familiar story or parable of the sower. Our Lord teaches us that the seed is the word of God. The parable is about what happens when in our hearts we either accept or reject the word of God. There is however one potential, what happens when two different groups of Christians each claim to be following the word of God and yet they come up with dramatically different interpretations and ideas based on the same texts? This issue has troubled many Christians throughout the centuries of Christian history. If I use the Bible, and you use the Bible and we both come to extremely different understandings of the Scriptures, how do we know whose interpretations is correct? How do we discern the truth from falsehood?

We can liken this to our own country and our own rule of law. The laws of this land are supposed to be based upon the Constitution. But problems often arise with the laws themselves or their applications and so it has to be brought to someone who judges what is sound law and what is unsound. What is a proper application and what is a proper interpretation of the text of the Constitution? Ultimately these questions can come before a group of nine judges or justices who are known as the Supreme Court. They have the power to interpret the laws in the light of the Constitution and they can effectively interpret the Constitution itself.

The Church has a similar structure that works to interpret the Scriptures and the New Testament properly. This structure is known as an ecumenical council. These are gatherings of great numbers of bishops from all over the world who would come to one place to pray together, to reason, to debate and ultimately to bring to light the genuine Christian teaching on whatever controversy or issue needed their attention. But unlike the Supreme Court, this was not simply based upon their human opinions but we believe it is guided by some other factors.

One factor is that there is a universal tradition or teaching that was passed on from place to place and person to person. There is a teaching that comes directly from the Apostles and has been preserved among those who rightly believe. The main guarantors of this teaching of the Apostles were the bishops who had been appointed in every place or region. This is one of the reasons why a bishop is never consecrated by simply one bishop, but by two or three. This demonstrates that there is unity among them and that multiple leaders of the Church have vouched for this man’s Orthodoxy and faith. When a gathering of bishops, who have the same faith and doctrine and have been themselves consecrated as bishops by others who held the same faith and doctrine and can trace this faith and doctrine throughout the history of the Church all the way to the Apostles, you know that this is a special and powerful gathering and it is one that can only happen in the Orthodox Church because it is only in the Orthodox Church that we have an unchanged and unbroken connection all the way back to the Apostles of Jesus Christ. That is a bold statement yet it is totally true and easily verifiable through a historical analysis with discernment.

The second factor in the guidance of the Holy Church is the presence of the Holy Spirit in the midst of the assembly. When our Lord the Holy Spirit is present in our midst, error vanishes and the truth is proclaimed. The Church has had many such gatherings over the past two thousand years. We commonly say that there were seven ecumenical councils but that is not necessarily the case. It is really an oversimplification but it is true that there were 7 major gatherings to discuss and discern major issues within the life of the Church. Our Church is always remembering important events and people within it’s life. It is our common remembrance that helps us pass on the truth and the life of our faith from generation to generation. We begin by remembering the Lord’s betrayal, death and resurrection every time we come here for the Divine Liturgy.

Today we remember the Seventh Ecumenical Council which took place in the city of Nicaea in 787 a.d. This gathering came together to discuss the removal and the forbidding of icons in all of the holy churches under the Emperor Leo III in 726. Please take note that the state or government has been trying to find ways to subvert and change the Christian faith in every single generation, not just ours. Sometimes, standing for what is right means going precisely against what we are taught by the government and those that speak and teach on behalf of the government. This issue of the icons really caused a deep divide within the life of the Church because Leo and those who followed him, used Scripture and equated the creation of icons and their use with the idolatry that was forbidden since the time of the prophet Moses. They were further convinced because they saw the rapid rise of Islam and Muslims also taught that images were forbidden.

The bishops of the One Holy Church gathered together not to decide anything of themselves or their own opinions, but to discern the original teaching, the truth of the faith as it had been handed to them. They quoted extensively from St. John of Damascus who had died some years before the council, and was the most well known defender of holy iconography. He taught that the veneration of holy images was always part of the unwritten tradition of the Church but he showed how it was demonstrated even during the time of Moses, for instance with the creation of the cherubim who were fashioned by men and overshadowed the ark of the covenant. This was in direct conflict with a straight reading of God’s commandment to make no graven images. However St. John rightly points out that they were not created to be worshipped as idols.  God instructed them to be made so that we would have a more rich experience of worship that points past the symbol to a greater reality.

Icons are symbols that direct our minds to the living God who actually sanctified all of matter when He took flesh and became man. Icons are not something that we worship. We venerate them, knowing that our veneration is not really for the wood or the paint, but for the Word of God who made all of this possible when He appeared on the earth and was seen by men. Not only do we support the use of icons, we go further than that.  The Orthodox Church says that you must have icons in your place of worship because icons, especially of Jesus Christ, remind us that Christ was not a mere spirit but was fully God and fully man. That He was seen and heard and known. That He truly existed, and truly redeemed all matter and all creation by His coming. May God help us to truly believe this and to live accordingly. Glory be to God forever AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (7:11-16)

We often hear news spread quickly in our age of instant news and the advent of the internet. Sadly this news is usually not good news but various forms of bad news or tragedies that are happening somewhere in the world. The gospel reading today speaks to an amazing event. This event only happened three times in the history of the people of Israel until the coming of the Lord, our savior Jesus Christ. What was this amazing event? The raising of the dead back to life.

The first was when the great prophet Elijah raised a widow’s son from the dead. The second was when His disciple the prophet Elisha (Elysias) raised a young boy from the dead. And finally, and perhaps most interestingly we have the story from 2 Kings 13 where a man is about to be buried and his friends spot a band of raiders headed their way. They are afraid for their lives and have no time to make a proper burial for the man so they quickly place the man in the same tomb where the prophet Elisha was buried. What happens next is amazing and is only really possible with an Orthodox Christian understanding of the saints and the glorification of the body. At the moment that the body of this dead man touched the body of the prophet Elisha, he came back to life! So much for those who deny the power of the saints and the power of holy relics. It is the power of God to transform humanity that is ultimately being denied!

So the point remains that this was a rare and isolated event in the life of the Jewish people. What happened that day in the city of Nain was a rather great event. This event alone would have caused the name of Jesus Christ to spread far and wide and many of the people would’ve been completely convinced that He was at the very least, a great and powerful prophet if not the Messiah they had been expecting.

In and of itself, the raising of one who was dead, is a great and wondrous miracle. Death is not easily cast aside. Death made mankind tremble with fear. Death had married itself to the human race because of our rebellion and rejection of God, which began in the garden with Adam and Eve. God desired that we should have great potential and in order to give us such potential, He allowed us free will out of His great love for us. This free will, we chose to use in a way that cut us off from God and from His teachings. In short we were cut off from life itself.

Our Lord Jesus did not simply have compassion on a widow who had lost her son. He had compassion on each and every son of man. He had compassion on our whole situation and context. He alone understood it fully. Yes, He does a great work for this woman and for her son. It is merely a shadow of the work He is going to do in the human race. He will not only conquer death in the body, He will allow us to have resurrection and restoration of the soul! That is why it is so important that we honor the saints, those who are pleasing to God. Because they prove that the Lord Jesus Christ has power over our fallenness and the death that was part of our human experience. The saints prove that we can be transformed and brought back from spiritual death to full health and strength and life through the giver of life.

The Lord did not have to do much to raise the man from the dead. He touched the bier and spoke His word “Young man, I say to you, arise.” There is a sense in which the word of God can also heal and raise us from deadness to newness of life. An encounter with Jesus Christ, through reading the 4 gospels, can impart the same miracle which this man received, to our spiritual lives. We can experience spiritual resurrection! Some of you might think that I was born wearing a stole and with a beard and ready to pray the liturgy. You would be mistaken. It is the encounter with Our Lord Christ through the gospels that brought me from spiritual death towards His light, by His grace. I am not sure how we as Orthodox Christians can be instructed in life without reading the 4 gospels. Let’s make it a priority to read one chapter of the gospels each and every day. God wants to impart life to our dead and decaying souls. He has many ways of doing this but one of the most basic and fundamental is through His teaching and preaching as found in the 4 holy gospels.

I’m sorry to say that some of us and some of our families and friends are on spiritual life support. We are one temptation, one storm, one trial away from losing everything, from losing our salvation, from spiritual death. Happy is the man who built his house upon the rock of faith in Jesus Christ. His house can withstand any storm because Christ our God is not moved by death, let alone our storms. Wise is the man who built his whole life upon the God-man Jesus Christ, not following the example of Adam and Eve but turning towards the example of those who please God. Blessed is the man who sees the Holy Church as the body of Jesus Christ, the pillar and foundation of truth. If we come with reverence into the Church as if we are coming towards Christ Himself, we become the most joyous of all people. We don’t want to become like the widow who was left with nothing because she had lost her only son. What use was his body when it was lifeless and cold? What use can we be if our souls are also lifeless and cold?

Come, my friends and my brothers and sisters to the One who raised and continues to raise the dead back to life. Come to the one who alone grants us spiritual resurrection and the promise of unending life in fellowship with Him. To Him who alone is our Resurrection and our Life, to Jesus Christ be glory, with His Father and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages AMEN.

Source: Sermons

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

Both of our readings today give us a clear indication of what is required of us to be considered sons and daughters, the children of God. These indicators are not given to us as rules or laws or even as a warning. They are given to us with a voice of encouragement because God our Father, wants us to know that He is present and that we belong to Him.

In Second Corinthians chapter 6 we hear St. Paul quoting from Scriptures saying “I will live in them and move among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore, come out from them, and be separate from them”….. “and touch nothing unclean; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be My sons and daughters.” St. Paul then concludes with these words “Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, and make holiness perfect in the fear of God.”

Being an Orthodox Christian is about having the potential to have a close-knit, familial relationship with God! I fear that for most of us, this possibility is viewed as a pipe dream, as something impossible. Sometimes it is because we are really comfortable in our simple religious practices. Our Lord Jesus Christ has many things to say to us if we are simply comfortable in our practice of religion. He says “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter into heaven.” So what does that really mean? It means that God is not interested in the adherence to rules and guidelines and religious practices for the sake of the practices. That is what the Jews believed would save them, and Christ our Lord corrected them.

What does this all mean? It means that God is after our hearts. He desires a heart that is clean, pure. He desires that our hearts be full of love, not for worldly things but for Him and for others. If we have faith that He will come to us and dwell within us, we are required to do everything in our power to rid ourselves of all the potential obstacles that keep that from happening. Those obstacles begin in the heart.

In the epistle St. Paul says “come our from them, and be separate from them.” This tells us that oftentimes our greatest obstacle to pure and good faith will be the company we keep and the society and culture around us. Christians have done a great job of blending into the society and not sticking out. If we’re honest, we’ve not really done a great job of separating ourselves from the activities and entertainment and the goals of the world around us.

As an Orthodox Christian there is no way that I can be guided by the same principles and goals of the society around me, because the society around us, doesn’t believe in Jesus Christ, doesn’t believe in the afterlife and doesn’t believe that anything is more important than immediate pleasure. For us, the issue may not be who we associate with and interact with on a daily basis. It may simply be what we are subjecting our senses to on a daily basis. God is interested in your heart. The obstacles to knowing God are in the heart but they are strongly influenced by the five senses. We are spending lots of time reading the news, looking at politics, watching Netflix and staring at our computers, phones and tablets. Are we sure that the material we are consuming is actually good, wholesome, encouraging and God-pleasing? Or is it possible that the material is full of violence, obscenities, sex and materialism? Are the characters modeling a strong Christian identity? Are the storylines perverted or demented? Are these stories deeply troubling and gut-wrenching, do they stir up the passions? Are these things that you would watch or freely discuss with your priest?

Nothing in this world matters if we don’t desire to know God intimately. If we desire to know God intimately, we understand that anything that presents an obstacle to that goal, should be corrected or removed from our life. In this way the Christian life is like constant warfare with oneself and ones surroundings. Indeed the Lord Jesus Christ says “The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.” We know that the Lord was not advocating physical violence, but decisive actions.

If one sees a problem that is a life or death issue, he attacks the problem right away. He has no time to waste! The Lord is looking for those who are ready to struggle courageously to live a life of extreme purity and holiness. Why? Because He created us to be more than mindless consumers. He created us to be saints who speak with Him as with our own flesh and blood father. And we know this to be the case because we have seen the witness of the saints who chose to live radical lives of holiness. This living witness of the saints confirms that the words of St. Paul are good and true “Touch nothing unclean, then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be My sons and daughters.” The sacrifices and struggles towards holiness and purity are real, but the promises of God are true. May He give us the strength and courage for this battle, which is in truth, the battle for our hearts. Glory be to God forever, AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (5:1-11)

Have you ever been at your wit’s end? Have you ever felt like you were in the depths of despair? Have you ever felt that no matter what you did, things would never get better? I assume that each of us has had these feelings and thoughts during difficult times in our life. We know that life can be hard, even brutal at times. One of the things that we consistently find when we encounter God in the Scriptures and the New Testament is that God does not prevent all of the pain and suffering for His people. Rather we find that God uses pain and suffering to do two very important things for His people.

First, God uses tribulation and struggle to mold and shape our character. It is difficult to gain character and have your soul molded in a positive way if your whole life is easy and glamorous and comfortable. We can liken this to physical activity. If a perfectly healthy man or woman begins to use a wheelchair to move instead of their legs, what will happen to their legs over time? They will become weaker. And what will happen if they stay off their legs for a very long time? They may even lose some of the ability to walk and hold their own weight. The muscles were not challenged even in the slightest way. Alternatively if we want to get bigger and stronger, we willingly choose to push against or pull weights. We offer resistance, because that alone will allow for real growth and strength.

God does the same with us. He allows the trials and difficulties in the world around us to be a form of weight and resistance in order to cultivate within each of us a saintly, humble, holy, loving disposition. I’ve often had people who come and talk about their problems and issues with spouses and neighbors, with extended family and with co-workers. Those troubles are real, and God knows that they are real. They are also a chance to be reshaped and reformed. Mothers and (sometimes) fathers, struggle to get up in the middle of the night with crying children. They wish and dream about unbroken sleep. That is a very natural response to the difficulty. Yet, God uses this trial to mold them. What is nearly impossible for the first baby becomes like second nature with later children. We have become accustomed to it, we’ve also become stronger.

He does this for each of us in our difficulties. Sometimes He uses our struggles to make us humble and aware of our many shortcomings. That is a wonderful disposition to have, but it is one that is far from us when we are in relative comfort. Just look at the Israelites and the many ways that they fell into sin. But we should be clear that this doesn’t happen according to our knowledge or comfort level or in a specific period of time. It happens according to God’s will. Peter and those with him, had toiled for a number of hours and yet that was not the end of the trial. They continued to struggle and sweat and worry all night long and yet they did not gain any fish or any pleasure. We should also be clear and say that there is very little benefit to such difficulties if we curse or grumble or complain throughout the ordeal. So God indeed uses tribulation and struggle to mold and shape our character, to make us holy.

Secondly, God uses tribulation and struggle to try and turn our eyes and our hearts back to Him in repentance and heartfelt prayer. God never ceases to do miracles for each of us, yet we are relatively blind to His work in our lives. We forget His benefits and love for us, because we don’t usually pay attention. We forget the many gifts that He has given us because of the abundance of these good things in our lives. It takes difficulties and trials and deprivation in order to wake us up to our need for God’s presence and help in our lives. The fishermen depended on the fish to survive. To be in their shoes, to toil all night long, to come back to shore empty handed…that is enough to break some people. In the case of the disciples, it was just enough to break open a crack in their hearts. It was just enough to allow them to receive the miracle that Our Lord was about to perform and more importantly, it was enough to allow them to receive the One who performed it! God allowed the difficulty in order to wake them up to a greater reality. He had the power all along to put fish in their nets, but His primary objective was not to catch fish in their nets. It was to catch the disciples in His net!

I wonder if we would turn away and reject all of our difficulties and struggles and suffering if we had faith enough to see that these things were really making us holy and leading us back into a relationship with our Master and Creator?  What is better, comfort from things or comfort that cannot be taken away?  What is better, stability in things or stability in Christ?

Among those whom we commemorate today is St. Silouan of Mt. Athos.  He reposed on this day in 1938.  He was a man who struggled valiantly to overcome his sinful passions and to know Christ.  Once, after he had struggled for many years, the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to him with these words “Keep thy mind in hell, and despair not.”  This was a great source of comfort for St. Silouan because he was reminded that God was present and would not leave His children in their struggles.  For the fishermen, a night without fish was a form of hell.  For us, hell might look different, but each of us will have such a time in our life and perhaps more than once.  

Let us also remember not to despair but to patiently endure our struggles with faith that God is able to use these things for our benefit both to grow in our character and to grow in our love of His Son, Jesus Christ to whom be the glory with His Father and the Holy Spirit, AMEN.

Source: Sermons

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

Yesterday we buried a good friend of this mission. Ed Strange was really a joy to know and a man who served tirelessly to help the Church. He spearheaded the replacement of all of the sanctuary lighting as well as all of the new wiring during our remodel just a few months ago. He helped us with his prayers as well. 

The words of the Lord in today’s gospel fit very well with Ed “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?”

Some of you did not know Ed at all. Many of you did not know that Ed was a pastor for many years before becoming an Orthodox Christian. One of the things that I appreciated about Ed was that he was very direct and to the point when he was communicating with others and especially with those that he loved. I was very blessed to have had the chance to sit with him on Tuesday afternoon. We shared some really good words together. Ed was full of wisdom and holiness.

The Lord gave up His life freely so that He might impart life to those whom He loved, those who were under the curse of sin, which is death. And Death takes on a new meaning and reality when it is undertaken by those who love God. It is transformed and bears unexpected fruit. Yesterday, as we finished the funeral services for Ed, I decided that there were things about his last week with us that he would want me to share with you because he was a pastor all of those years and remained a pastor at heart and he would want you to hear these things.

First, when you are in the hospital, especially when you are really sick, either you or your family should inform a priest as soon as possible. I was notified about Ed’s change in condition on Monday night. He was unconscious and passed away on Wednesday. So don’t take that time for granted. Ed took nothing for granted. 

This brings me to my second point: Confess your sins before you depart from this life.

I once visited a parishioner who had been sick and was clearly near the end of her life. I asked her if she wanted to confess anything. She looked at me and replied “No”. I had known the woman for years and had never heard her confession so this was not the answer I expected. Nevertheless, I let her be.

On Tuesday morning, Ed was visited by Fr. Nicholas and he gave his final confession. He cleared the air between him and His Lord. He didn’t approach life with arrogance and say “What do I need to confess for? I was a pastor and served God all of these years and He knows my heart.” He made sure that his garments were white as snow and ready for the banquet. 

If it is at all possible, you should be clear headed and have time to give a confession sometime during your last days of earthly life. While that is not always possible, we can at least make sure that we’ve confessed regularly throughout the year. The medical staff wants to do a great job with their work and part of that is pain management and keeping the patient comfortable. But the family of the Orthodox Christian should make every effort to find a way to allow their loved one to have time to say their final confession and receive communion and pray before they depart this life, even if that means a small amount of discomfort. Ed was not comfortable on Tuesday, but he was at peace.

Third, spend your days practicing the art of denying yourself and you will be ready to receive all that God has to offer you after this life. 

Sometimes we visit people on their deathbeds who want to talk about anything but their passing. They want to talk about the weather and their favorite pasta recipes and the Chicago cubs etc. Others beg for more time to live. They are so attached to this life that they cannot imagine that it will end. They beg for healing and for more days. Yet others spend their time blaming God for all of their sickness and misfortunes. 

Ed was different. He had spent many years serving God and practicing the art of denying himself, and he was seriously ready to leave this world. His understanding was illumined. He knew that life wasn’t ending, it was just about to get started. 

He had spent all of those year praying and worshiping during the liturgy. He had spent all of those years receiving the body and blood of Christ and now he was not going to let fear or attachment to worldly things steal away the joy that he had worked so hard to obtain. Now he was going to enter into life with Christ more fully. He didn’t wait weeks or days. He was ready and the Lord accepted him in a flash.

We pray for a Christian ending to our life, painless, blameless and peaceful. Let us spend our days denying ourselves and taking up the cross. Directing every thought to Christ the Lord who alone is the master of our whole life, and He will truly become our resurrection and our life. 

To Him alone be the Glory, together with His Father and the life giving Spirit AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. John. (3:13-17)

Today is the first Sunday of the football season. It was often the case that during football games you could see a few fans in the crowd who would hold up signs which read John 3:16. In fact our gospel reading today is quite short and includes that verse. What is so important about that verse that people would choose to display it during football games and in other various places? It is the 16^th verse of the third chapter of St. John and in this verse, the Lord Jesus says “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” That is John 3:16. The reading continues with the next verse where the Lord says “For God sent His Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”

These verses are so important because they simply, neatly and directly share the whole message of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is this message of God’s love that overturned empires and subdued the hearts of the godless and pagan peoples over the last 2000 years. God created each of us out of His intense desire to share the gift of life with us. He created us with a desire that we should know Him and have actual communion with Him. He created us to not only live, but to desire to live more abundantly and to even share this overflowing life with others.

I often meet people who find our Christian faith to be threatening. You might meet people who are threatened by the Christian message as well. But I have good news for you, the message that most of these people have rejected is not our Christian faith, not the ancient faith of the early Church and the faith of our fathers in Christ. Often they have rejected a message of fear and intimidation. People were threatened into belief in Christ. Believers would go from place to place and hand out tracts and tell people that if they don’t believe in Christ, bad things would happen to them. That my dear friends, is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. With Christ, everything is love. The modern miracle worker and saint, Porphyrios once said,

“This is the way we should see Christ. He is our friend, our brother; He is whatever is good and beautiful. He is everything. Yet, He is still a friend and He shouts it out, “You’re my friends, don’t you understand that? We’re brothers. I’m not…I don’t hold hell in my hands. I am not threatening you. I love you. I want you to enjoy life together with me.”

So this is the message that the world needs to hear about the Lord that we serve and treasure. We have to actually believe this for ourselves even before we go and try to share this invitation with others. It must be our joy before we try to bring joy to others. It must be our faith before we try to share the faith with others. It is really joyous news that has the ability to change the world. It did so in the past and it can do so again. When we learn that God loves us, we are free to live life as God meant it to be for us and not the shell or shadow of life that is offered by the world around us. The world offers freedom and life apart from God and by this we can be sure that what is actually offered is slavery and death because apart from God there is no life. A life apart from God is a life married to sin and this life becomes a life of servitude and slavery to our passions and emotions and our lower instincts and desires. We are free to live this way, but we were meant for more. This is true because only the one who creates something ever really understands it’s potential.

I want all of you to know that God knows each of you by name. He loves each of you deeply and this love is not dependent on what you have done in the past. His love for each of you is limitless. No matter what sins are in your life, no matter what you did wrong in the past, bring all of this to the feet of Jesus Christ, with complete trust and faith that God knows you and sees your potential and can fully forgive, heal, restore and transform you through His love. I am confident in this because God’s work of transformation and healing was made clear to us when the Lord Jesus Christ hung upon the sacred wood of the cross for us. God didn’t hunt us down, He allowed His own Son to be hunted down and displayed for the whole world to see. He invites the world to look upon His Son, nailed to the cross and says “open your eyes and see how much I truly love you.” This is the ultimate sign of love given to us by the One who is love. Let us joyfully accept Christ’s love in our own lives and begin to invite others to see this reality. We each encounter people every single day, who are in desperate need of this truth “God loves you, you are precious to Him.”

St. Isaac of Syria writing in the 8^th century says this “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son for it. Not that he was unable to save us in another way, but in this way it was possible to show us his abundant love abundantly, namely, by bringing us near to him by the death of his Son. If he had anything more dear to him, he would have given it to us, in order that by it our race might be his. And out of his great love he did not even choose to urge our freedom by compulsion, though he was able to do so. But his aim was that we should come near to him by the love of our mind.” So when we actually look to and contemplate the cross, we have no doubt of the depth of God’s love and we find the strength to live the life of the cross and we receive resurrection. Glory be to God forever AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians. (16:13-24)

We have one king and master, that is the Lord Jesus Christ. At the beginning of today’s Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians we hear these words, “Brethren, be watchful, stand firm in your faith, be courageous, and be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.” These four instructions are given as direct orders from the general, the apostle Paul, who answered directly to the king. Jesus Christ is our King and we are each His servants. Yet we are more than mere servants, we are soldiers for Jesus Christ.

Does this mean that we should take up arms or fight with others, not at all! We are soldiers who are meant to do battle and to struggle and fight in the way that Our Lord Jesus Christ struggled and fought. Of this struggle the Apostle Paul writes “For we struggle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Eph 6:12). Our struggle is like the struggle of Christ, not against flesh and blood, not against other men and women. Not even against governments and empires and ungodly corporations. Our struggle is against evil and evil is both the absence of God, as well as the presence of the devil and his demons. This spiritual struggle is the whole reason why God became man and dwelt among us and gave up His life for us. We could not stand up courageously and contend against evil. Only Christ succeeded where all others failed.

The general is giving each of us instructions on how to live lives that would please our king and master. One thing that is true of all Kings and all of their generals, They are not pleased when the soldiers are timid or cowardly.

St. Paul tells us to be watchful. What does that mean? It means that we do not approach life like zombies or those who are half asleep. In the Roman empire, the idea of a soldier falling asleep at his post was considered a grave offense. It was often corrected by lighting the sleeping soldier on fire. We must be awake and have our eyes open to reality because we’ve been illumined and awakened by the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That means that we need to have the ability to see what is happening in the world around us, or even under our very noses, and assess these things critically in the light of the gospel of Christ. If our eyes haven’t been opened to reality by the gospel, it is time to sit down and be introduced to the Son of God and His teaching and worldview.

We are also watchful when we take care that we don’t neglect our own spiritual lives and lose our focus. The Lord Jesus says that if we are not ready for His coming, it will be “like a thief in the night.” We can meet our king at any moment. The apostle asks us to be watchful so that the moment does not catch us off guard.

Next, the apostle Paul tells us to “Stand firm in your faith.” Today this is very difficult for us as Christians. Everywhere we turn we find new obstacles to being a Christian. Obstacles that we’ve allowed into our homes, like the rubbish that we view on Netflix and Hbo and the internet. As well as the obstacles that are external. We find many false teachers and false doctrines. One of the doctrines of our world is the idea that there is no right or wrong, that the only thing that matters is the way that someone feels. Another idea is that there is no real truth, you are allowed to have your truth and I have mine and there is no way that we can make a distinction between them and say that one truth is better than another.

My brothers and sisters, Jesus Christ is our only truth. The Lord says “I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father except through me.” We are asked to stand firm in our faith in the Son of God and that is not merely a proclamation with the lips but with the groaning of our hearts and the movement of our bodies. Standing firm in the faith means to never ever deny Christ or stand by quietly while others deny Christ. The apostle tells us to “be courageous and be strong.” St. Paul tells his people this, in an atmosphere that was much less friendly to Christians than our own. Being courageous and strong meant possibly sacrificing your life for your faith in Jesus Christ. So we need to have a similar spirit of bravery. Don’t be timid in the face of others, be bold and yet humble.

Finally, St. Paul says “Let all that you do be done in love.” Watchfulness without love is a form of blindness. Firmness without love is legalism similar to that of the pharisees and the Lord reminds us that unless our righteousness exceeds that of the pharisees, we will by no means be saved. Courage without love is foolishness. And strength without love is the ultimate weakness. What really separates the people of God from the rest of the world, what allows us to stand out and to shine is our love. Love of God, and love of neighbor, and first and foremost this applies to our neighbors here in the Church. The Lord Jesus says “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Our love is not simply a sign that we follow Christ, it is the very sign of Christ’s dwelling within us! Glory be to God forever AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (19:16-26)

Every time that we come here to the Church we have an opportunity to encounter God.  We encounter God in multiple ways, but the most important of those ways is through the words of the holy gospel that are read every Sunday and also through the Word who is mystically made flesh for us in the bread and the wine.  We are the most blessed of all the people in the world.  We are among the most blessed who have ever lived upon the earth.  When you come here to the Church of the living God, put aside all of the earthly cares and focus and internalize the tremendous blessing that God has bestowed on you by allowing you to know Him and to hear Him and to partake of Him.

If you come into the Liturgy and spend your time thinking about what is for lunch or what is on your agenda today or what you need to buy from the store, you are not thinking on the things of the kingdom.  Most of us will spend many weeks, months and years here praying together.  Let’s not waste that time to satisfy some requirement and check off some weekly list of things we need to get done.  Attending the Divine Liturgy is not something that you check off your list.  It is something that when done correctly, ensures that you are not checked off God’s list.  It’s a serious business.  We come here to encounter God who is a consuming fire.  I say this to you as a cautionary word, because it is easy to get comfortable in the day to day.  Complacency has no place in the Christian’s vocabulary.

Comfort and complacency play a large role in what we see happening in today’s gospel.  A man came up to the Lord Jesus and said to Him “Good teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?”  Let’s pause here and look at the reply of the Lord which is very interesting He says “Why do you call me good?  No one is good but God alone.”  That verse, when taken on face value, is often misunderstood and used by opponents of the Christian faith to try to prove that the Lord Jesus is not in fact the Son of God, who is equal to the Father and the Spirit.  They see it as a correction of the man’s statement that Jesus is good.  But that is not the case. What the Lord is correcting here is not the man’s statement.  As St. John Chrysostom says “The Lord never says “Why do you call me good, I’m not good.”  He instead says God alone is good.  It is meant to direct the man to a more profound understanding of the real identity of Jesus.  The Lord wants to make sure that the man understands that He is no mere teacher or rabbi.  He leads him in the right direction without fully revealing Himself before the time.

Now one of the things that we should never do as Christians is get complacent.  Another thing that we should never do is to test God.  The rich man tests God by asking a serious, weighty question without a full realization of the gravity of the question and who it is that will answer.  The man wants to justify himself as a perfect man who keeps the commandments and will go to heaven. When we test God, we find that we are the ones who are thoroughly tested.  Our Lord Jesus Christ turns this man’s world upside down by giving him one more command “If you would be perfect, go and sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come follow me.”

We hear this statement and we might feel bad for the man.  How could the Lord ask so much of this man who just wants to go to heaven?  It seems like Jesus is picking on him.  But that is not the case at all. Jesus is the world’s greatest heart surgeon.  He asked much of Him because He loved Him much, and much was required to save him.  He went straight to the tumor and pointed it out and told the man what was necessary to be saved.  It is painful to have our faults pointed out but part of being a Christian is having your faults pointed out by God.  What is not recognized as sickness, cannot be healed properly.  Our Lord pointed out that what was keeping this man from knowing God had nothing to do with physically keeping the commandments.  Yes it was good that he “kept” them, but he missed the essence of the matter.  The commandments cannot save you, it is God alone who can save you.  What’s worse, was that the man showed that he loved the riches more than he loved God.  He was more serious about the riches than about heaven.  He was more in love with his comfortable life than he was with following Life Himself, and all of this means that the man was breaking the first and greatest commandment.  He did not in fact love God with his whole heart, mind, soul and strength. So we should indeed feel bad for the man but we should feel bad because he is attached to his material possessions and because he is delusional regarding his standing with God.  He missed out on the opportunity and invitation to be a follower and disciple of Christ.  He missed out on a relationship with the Son of God that would have led him to his stated goal…eternal life.

There is good news in this story. God loves us much.  If we approach God and want to grow closer to Him, we know that He is going to help us and attempt to perfect us just as He tried with this rich man.  When you approach God in prayer and you ask God to make you a better person, or make you more patient or more loving or more holy, you have to understand with faith that God wants these things for you more than you want them for yourselves!  He alone knows our potential.  So when you ask God to help you, expect that God will answer by giving you what is necessary for your growth as a person and not what is comfortable or convenient; When you ask God to help you, He will honor your request and allow you to experience challenges, tribulations, and great difficulties and on top of it all, He will ask you to make tremendous personal sacrifices.  This is the way that God gives us the blessing of following His Son and putting on Christ daily, and Christ alone is our eternal life. Glory be to God forever AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (18:23-35)

Today’s gospel lesson is fairly simple and straightforward and yet these days such simple and straightforward teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ are completely neglected.   All statistics point to a significant change happening in the fabric of our society.  Today there are more atheists in the United States than at any time in history, that is a statistical fact.  Why does this matter?  Because as people lose their Christian faith, they are losing the ability to process and deal with life in the correct ways.  We have so many struggles and temptations and battles in life.  The Christian faith has for two thousand years been a place of refuge for those who struggle.  If someone lost everything, they could still be full of joy because they held Christ near and dear to their hearts and kept His teachings as the compass of their lives.  Christ should be our only treasure and our only hope.

As people lose their faith they also become very easy to manipulate.  In the absence of God, or in the absence of a thriving Christian faith, people will find other flags around which to rally.  Some will rally around isms, sexism, nationalism, feminism, marxism, socialism, racism etc.  They will assume that tackling the injustice of the day will solve all of their problems, and they will be bitterly disappointed when that is not the case.  Why?  Because we have lost the ability to process and deal with life in the correct ways.

According to the Christian teaching, the issues that really trouble us have little to do with injustice and much to do with what is going on in our hearts.  Sin proceeds from the heart.  Sin is a rebellion against God which leads to a man being divorced from God and divorced from his neighbor.  The divorce from God and from his fellow man is never amicable or friendly.  It is full of anger, hatred and malice.  Sin separates us from others and encourages us to see everyone as different from us.  It encourages us to put people into classes and categories.  It encourages hatred and violence against anyone or anything that stands against our cause or gets in our way.  Anger and the remembrance of wrongs is like a mountain of debt that can never be repaid  but simply multiplies out of control.  

Is there any hope for us?  There is always hope. The teachings of Christ are truly revolutionary and counter-cultural today.   We may not be able to bring people directly to Jesus Christ, but perhaps we can introduce them to Christ through the teachings of the gospel.  One of the fundamental activities of a Christian is that he or she forgives others.  What should we forgive?  Anything and everything, whether actual or perceived, whether real or imaginary.  We put every pain, every injustice at the feet of Our Lord with assurance that He sees and knows our struggles.  We also trust Him because He has not only taught us to forgive with words, He is the very image of forgiveness!  

When the Lord hung on the cross on Holy Friday, the evangelists tell us that the Lord looked up to the heavens and cried “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  This has been the model and prototype for generations of Christians who have fought to be Christ-like.  Thousands upon thousands of martyrs have used these exact words and asked God to forgive their persecutors.  Forgiveness is the path to healing.  Whether we are talking about national healing or a marriage that is on the rocks, there is no path to unity without a generous dose of forgiveness.  Forgiveness doesn’t only bring healing and unity, it brings salvation and communion with God!  The Lord tells us that if we do not forgive others genuinely, from the heart, we will not be forgiven by our Heavenly Father.  We all recite this fact in the Lord’s prayer each and every day “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespassed against us.”  We are called to take this seriously.  If you are going to say it and pray it, you’d better mean it.

We each have been hurt by others.  We each carry wounds and memories of wrongdoings.  We each have people that we currently do not love because they have sinned against us.  How long should we hold those things in our hearts?  How long should we bring them up and remember them and stir up our passions over them?  As the people of God, let us be the example for our society by quickly forgiving everyone for everything.  Let us show people what it is to have an open heart that is capable of love for others.  Will it be easy, maybe not.  Will it be painful, probably.  But if we have love we can endure any and everything, and we can do it with joy for the sake of our Master Jesus Christ who offers Himself eternally as our only justice, our only peace, and our only hope… to Him alone belongs glory, now and ever and unto the ages of ages AMEN.  

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (17:14-23)

Today we hear the story of the man who brings his son (an epileptic) to the Lord Jesus Christ for healing. The man, a devout and caring father, comes and falls on his knees before the Lord and he cries out with a familiar cry “Lord, have mercy!” This is the proper way to worry about our children and loved ones, not with fruitless anxieties, but with heartfelt prayer to God with the cry “Lord have mercy!” Often people who come to the Orthodox Church for the first time are quite amazed at the number of times they will hear us pray “Lord have mercy” at every service and especially at the Divine Liturgy. This is no accident but a purposeful habit that the Church, our mother, is trying to form within us.

This prayer is not simply to be said with our mouths, but with our hearts. It is not to be said only on Sundays during the Divine Liturgy, but every day and if possible, every waking moment of the day. This prayer found in passages such as this one, is foundational for our understanding of the Jesus prayer. This prayer is often spoken of by the early fathers of the Church as simply “the prayer.” The full Jesus prayer is said as follows “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner.” Often this will be shortened to “Lord Jesus, have mercy on me.” An even shorter form is simply what we are already saying here every day “Lord have mercy.”

This prayer needs to be foundational in our lives. We build a life of prayer upon these words which are short, sweet and go directly to the point. The repetition of the Jesus prayer allows us to fulfill the teaching of St. Paul who tells us to “pray without ceasing.” So it is possible to pray in such a way, and this practice gives us a prayerful disposition, and connects us to Christ. This prayerful disposition makes it easier for us to pray at other times and to keep a warm connection with God as we go through our day.

Many of the fathers of the Church tell us that the ultimate power of the prayer comes from the repetition of the name of Jesus Christ. It is for us the holiest of all words. It is the very name of the word of God made flesh. It is the name above all names, and it is extremely powerful. This is why it is a very great and grievous sin to use the name of Jesus Christ in vain.

Speaking about the Jesus prayer, the holy elder Father Sophrony said that the monks he met while living on Mt. Athos, pray while “Their attention is concentrated on harmonizing their life with the commandments of Christ.” He continues saying, “According to ancient tradition, mind unites with heart through Divine action when the monk continues in the ascetic feat of obedience and abstinence (please note that the abstinence spoken of here is specifically for monks and those who are not united in holy matrimony. At times abstinence is also permitted within a marriage, as is spoken of by St. Paul in 1 Cor 7:5 when he writes “Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.) But continuing on, Father Sophrony writes “According to ancient tradition, mind unites with heart through Divine action (the grace of the Holy Spirit) when the monk continues in the ascetic feat of obedience and abstinence; when the mind, the heart and the very body of the ‘old man’ to a sufficient degree are freed from the dominion over them of sin; when the body becomes worthy to be ‘the temple of the Holy Spirit’.” Of course we know that one never actually becomes worthy of this, but the Holy Spirit comes as a gift.

Through the prayer we acknowledge that Jesus Christ is our master and the lord of our life. We acknowledge His true identity as the divine Son of God. Finally, we also recognize our fallenness, our sinfulness. It is both a prayer of acknowledging the Lord for who He really is, and for acknowledging who we really are.

We notice that the Lord is quick to respond to the cry of this desperate father. The Lord responds as one who takes a genuine interest in the problem and especially in the people involved. Glory to God for His compassion and love of mankind. He offers this same compassion and this genuine interest in each of us and our situations, no matter how difficult, no matter how complicated, no matter what we are dealing with. His powerful love is not only for those who lived 2000 years ago, who are remembered in the gospel accounts. Christ is an unending fountain of love to those who fall on their knees and cry “Lord have mercy.” One does not even have to fall on his knees, so much as he has to bring his demeanor and his attitude low. This humble cry to the Lord cannot be ignored. No matter how often you’ve tried and failed, no matter how often you’ve sinned and fallen short, God can forgive and wipe away the stain of sin from your life.

The Lover of mankind goes beyond our limitations, and beyond our needs to supply more of His grace than we ever thought possible. But again let me remind you that this requires what we’ve already mentioned above, real humility and obedience to the teachings of Jesus Christ, and this is all necessary to have genuine faith. Without these, there can be very little genuine progress in our prayer life and in our general spiritual life. Without increasing our prayers, our repentance and fasting, we will be like the disciples in today’s passage, whom the Lord said were faithless. Perhaps we can each resolve to make a new start today and daily to call upon the name of Jesus Christ with this prayer and to couple this with repentance and a firm desire to obey all of the teachings of the Lord. These are just a few of the important steps that a Christian must take to be found as people of great and dynamic faith. And Glory be to God forever AMEN.

Source: Sermons