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

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