Coming out of Nazareth

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Christmas, Patriarch, St. Andrew

Over the weekend there was yet another example of someone seeing Jesus in something utterly mundane, in this case a discoloration on an iron. Incredulous, a friend of mine wanted to know what I, as a priest, thought of such sightings. He was concerned that it was demeaning for Christ our Lord, God and Savior to reveal Himself through the stain on a household appliance. My response is very nicely summed up by Nathaniel in today’s Gospel, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:46). The answer, of course, is an emphatic ‘YES!’

Lest we forget, our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ chose to reveal Himself to us in extreme humility. In less than a month we will celebrate His Nativity, when He was born in a cave and laid in a feeding trough lined with hay. Nor should forget that crucifixion was a punishment too scandalous for a Roman citizen to be subjected to. In addition, God has consistently chosen to work through people from inglorious and dubious origins. Today we celebrate the Apostle St. Andrew the First Called. He and his brother Peter were fishermen from a backwater called Galilee. Despite these humble origins, bishops around the world under the Patriarchate of Constantinople, all trace their ordinational lineage back to Andrew, a fisherman.

Given all of this, should it be any surprise that Christ should choose to reveal Himself in a stain on an iron?

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Offering Our Lives to God

I have said this several times before, and those who come regularly to Bible Study know, that I believe it is very important to pay attention to those verses in Scripture that grab your attention while we are reading. They may be confusing, or troubling, or just really cool. Regardless, when a verse jumps out at us, we need to pay attention and dig deeper because the Holy Spirit is moving through us, calling us to work with the verse that has caught our attention.

I mention this, because it happened to me while preparing for today’s sermon. I was drawn toward the line “There is . . . one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all” (Eph 4:6). We hear something similar in the Divine Liturgy when we say, “We offer to You these gifts from Your own gifts in all and for all.” Despite the similarity, however, these are two different statements and two different actions. God is above, through and in; and we offer.

Yet, when seen in their own contexts — the Anaphora and today’s Epistle reading — these two statements seem to parallel each other. In the Anaphora, just before we offer the gifts, we remember:

all that came to pass for our sake, the cross, the tomb, the resurrection on the third day, the ascension into heaven, the enthronement at the right hand of the Father, and the second, glorious coming.

We remember God’s actions. In the Epistle today, St. Paul begs us “to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called” (Eph 4:1). In other words he calls us to action.

Thus, in the Anaphora because God acts, we offer and in today’s Epistle we are called because God acts. When placed side by side, these two texts suggest a flow chart or a diagram. Let me try to illustrate.

Imagine God and humanity separated by a great space as two points on a piece of paper. God is up at the top and humanity is down at the bottom. God acts — He sends us His Son, who becomes a man. We are given the cross, the tomb, the resurrection on the third day, the ascension, the enthronement at the right hand of the Father and the second and glorious coming. Christ then sends us the Paraklete, the Holy Spirit — please note that St. Paul implores us to maintain the unity of the Spirit (Eph 4:3). In response, we — humanity — act. We offer. The Holy Spirit descends upon us and the gifts set forth. The gifts become the Body and Blood of Christ. When we consume these gifts we are in communion with God the Father.

Thus, we have drawn a circle, if you will, with these points: on one side, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, humanity; on the other, humanity, Holy Spirit, Son, Father. This circle is a cycle of action. God acts, we act. We act, God acts. This is salvation and salvation history in a nutshell.

So, when St. Paul begs us, “lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called” (Eph 4:1), he is telling us to plug into this cycle. God has acted. He sent us His Son. His son died on the Cross so that we can be the Temple of the Holy Spirit. Now its our turn to act. We have all been called to this cup, where we offer God’s gifts — the wheat, yeast, water, salt, sugar and grapes that we worked with to create bread and wine — back to Him.

God has given us more gifts than just wheat and grapes. We are called not only to rework the ingredients of the bread and wine — we are called to rework all the ingredients that make up our very lives. As we say several times during the liturgy, “Remembering our most holy, pure, blessed, and glorious Lady, the Theotokos and ever virgin Mary, with all the saints” who made their lives an offering to God, “let us commit ourselves and one another and our whole life to Christ our God.”

Our whole life needs to be an offering to God. This is why we pray everyday. This is way we fast. This is why we give alms. These are exercises that prepare our mindset, to open our eyes to all the possible and creative ways that we might offer our whole life to Christ our God. Our eyes will be opened because we are the temple of the Holy Spirit. This morning in Orthros we sing, “In the Holy Spirit every divine man sees and speaks as a prophet.” When we pray, fast and give alms — we act — we participate in the Holy Spirit — we insert ourselves into the cycle of action. He will descend, He will inspire us, He will fuel our creativity to find ways that our lives — our jobs, our free time, our hobbies, etc. — can be offered to Christ our God. And when we offer through the Holy Spirit in Christ our God, we will find ourselves doing the will of God the Father. We will become participants in the salvation story where Christ is offered in all and for all. Amen.

Matter Matters

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Environmentalism, St. Leo

In his Sermon XXII on the Nativity, St. Leo the Great states:

Sun, moon, and stars may be most useful to us, most fair to look upon; but only if we render thanks to their Maker for them and worship God who made them, not the creation which does Him service.

This was written in a context where there were a good number of people who worshipped the sun. Given this context, one might be tempted to dismiss it as something that is no longer relevant in our own context. Despite its intention, however, there is a very interesting argument hidden within this quote — matter is only useful to us when we render thanks to God for it. This is a difficult concept that can be hard to get one’s head around. It helps to read it along with this quote by Alexander Schmemann from his book on baptism, Of Water & the Spirit:

In the Christian worldview, matter is never neutral. If it is not “referred to God,” i.e. viewed and used as a means of communion with Him, of life in Him, it becomes the very bearer and locus of the demonic (p.48).

Thus, unless we give thanks for the matter that God has given us, it is no longer useful as a means to get closer to God; rather it is a means to separate us from God.

Let me give a concrete and contemporary example: the recent scandal surrounding hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU).

Now, I am not going to sit here and argue the merits of either side of the global warming debate; rather, I am interested in looking at how the CRU is going about making its argument and the consequences of that particular course of action.

Today’s environmental movement is largely divorced from God. The argument usually has humanity as the primary contributor to global warming, thus it must be humanity that saves the world. From a Christian point of view this is a faulty argument — only God can save. We can participate in the history of salvation, but it is only God that can save.

The green movement has produced a lot of very interesting and useful technologies. These devices can be used in ways that allow humanity to live with less waste and potentially reduce the amount of negative impact on the world around us. However, according to St. Leo and Schmemann, none of these technological wonders will do us a bit of good if we remove God from the equation.

The scandal at the CRU illustrates this point. The kinds of things the scientists of the CRU are accused of doing — illegally destroying data so that freedom of information laws couldn’t let the data see the light of day, using mathematical tricks to skew results, and suppressing the work of scientists who questioned the global warming hypothesis — are all things that lead us away from God. Sans God, the very science that inspired all of this green technology has lead us toward sin and a separation from God.

In other words, matter matters — every aspect of our lives can be used to bring us closer or farther away from God. It all depends on us and how we use what God has given us.

Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is truly the first and essential act of man, the act by which he fulfills himself as man. The one who gives thanks is no longer a slave; there is no fear, no anxiety, no envy in adoration. Rendering thanks to God, one becomes free again, free in relation to God, free in relation to the world — Alexander Schmemann

St. Katherine on Equality

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equality, feminism, St. Katherine

On Monday, November 23, the legendary feminist Gloria Steinem appeared on CNN’s Anderson Cooper and said this about the recent governement recommendation to discourage breast cancer screenings prior to age 50:

But what worries me is that I fear that, in some ways, the coverage of this, which is good, has so outweighed another huge health issue. I mean, one in eight women gets breast cancer. One in three women needs an abortion at some time in her life.

Last night during Vespers, the Church says this about St. Katherine the Great Martyr of Alexandria:

Let us now honor the feast-day of Katherine’s memory; for she cast down with firmness all the enemy’s powers, and the rhetoricians’ resistance, she quelled, by her words and her mighty deeds. O God, deliver us all through her holy prayers from all heresies and false beliefs.

Reflecting upon this today, I would argue that St. Katherine the Great makes a far better feminist icon than does Gloria Steinem. St. Katherine is a great woman. Some 1700 years before women were fighting for the right to vote in this country, she was challenging what modern feminists might call patriarchal authority. When Emperor Maximian came to Alexandria to organize a huge pagan festival, she challenged pagan philosophers to a debate. Not only did she convince these philosophers to become Christian, but even Maximian’s own wife was converted. When Maximian could not convince Katherine to sacrifice to idols for money, he imprisoned and tortured her. She, along with all those she convinced to be Christians, were martyred.

Despite all these great accomplishments, what makes St. Katherine a better feminist icon than Steinem is her faith. St. Paul tells us in today’s Epistle:

Now that faith has come, we are no longer under a custodian; for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. — Galatians 3:25-28

In faith, St. Katherine put on Christ. She battled the great minds of Alexandria and won. She resisted the power of Rome. She endured torture. All of this was possible in Christ. As a “mere” woman, she proved the radical equality possible in Christ.

This equality — where all are called to the cup, where all are called to be saints — is only possible because Christ took on all our humanity. Without God, and without Christ, no philosophy, no political agenda, and certainly no form of government can create or protect true equality. There are too many objectively provable inequalities in this fallen world. Someone with cerebral palsy is not the physical equal of a professional athlete. Some one with Down syndrome is not the mental equal of a PhD in Physics. Inevitably we are all categorized and classified into different populations and judged by those very categories and classifications. There is no standard by which we can justify equality besides Christ.

That great champion of equal rights, Gloria Steinem, proves my point. She finds it necessary to murder and destroy one classification of human beings in order to advance another one. I quote again, “One in three women needs an abortion at some time in her life” (emphasis mine).

St. Katherine, on the other hand, was willing to sacrifice herself in order to advance others, in order to call us to that radical equality where there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female — that place where we are all one in Jesus Christ. Amen.

A Letter to Marcellinus Revisited

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Christmas, Holy Spirit, Psalms, St. Athanasius, St. Leo

Today, I’d like to approach yesterday’s post from a slightly different angle with the help of St. Athanasius the Great. In a letter to his friend Marcellinus, St. Athanasius writes about the Psalms. He points out that, “the Psalter includes the special subjects of all the other books.” Therein we will find history, God’s commands, prophecy — everything we find in the rest of Scripture. However, as St. Athanasius points out:

among all the books, the Psalter has certainly a very special grace, a choiceness of quality well worthy to be pondered; for, besides the characteristics which it shares with others, it has this peculiar marvel of its own, that within it are represented and portrayed in all their great variety the movements of the human soul. It is like a picture, in which you see yourself portrayed, and seeing, may understand and consequently form yourself upon the pattern given.

This makes the Psalms especially accessible — it allows us to make the words of the Psalms our words. St. Athanasius states that:

In fact, under all the circumstances of life, we shall find that these divine songs suit ourselves and meet our own souls’ need at every turn.

This is possible because “the grace of the one Spirit is common to every writer and all the books of Scripture…they have but one voice in the Holy Spirit.” When we make these words our words — when we participate in that one voice — we participate in the Holy Spirit. Through Him, the multitude and diversity of the writers of Scripture become one voice in us.

I would argue that in the same way that the Psalms are the poetic expression of Scripture, the hymnody of the Church is the poetic expression of Dogma and of the Fathers. The Orthodox Church sees the work of the Holy Spirit in the Councils of the Church, “For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15:28). Thus, in the same way that we participate in the Holy Spirit through the Psalms, we participate in Him through the hymnody of the Church. In the same way that the Holy Spirit makes the multiple voices of Scripture in to one voice, so, too, does He take the diversity of the Fathers and makes them one voice in Him through the hymnody. By chanting the services of the Church, by making these words our words, this vast array of writers and Fathers become one in us through the Holy Spirit.

With this concept in mind, let us revisit St. Leo and the Kathisma from Christmas Orthros that I quoted yesterday:

For God the Son of God, the only-begotten of the eternal and unbegotten Father, remaining eternal “in the form of God,” and unchangeably and without time possessing the property of being no way different to the Father He received “the form of a slave” without loss of His own majesty, that He might advance us to His state and not lower Himself to ours. — St. Leo the Great, Sermon XXVIII on the Nativity

He Whom nothing can contain, how is He held within a womb? And while in His Father’s arms, how in His Mother’s pure embrace? Such is His will and good pleasure, and as He knows. For being without flesh, He took flesh willingly; for us HE WHO IS became what He was not. Without forsaking His own nature, He has partaken of what we are. For Christ is born now, twofold in nature, to fill Heaven with mankind. — Kathisma from the Orthros of the Nativity of Christ

The Kathisma is a poem written about the very thing St. Leo is expressing in his sermon. On Christmas morning, when we gather to sing this hymn in Orthros, the Church will be one voice with St. Leo the Great through the Holy Spirit. I hope to see you there. Amen.

The Form of a Slave

Tags

Christmas, St. Leo

For God the Son of God, the only-begotten of the eternal and unbegotten Father, remaining eternal “in the form of God,” and unchangeably and without time possessing the property of being no way different to the Father He received “the form of a slave” without loss of His own majesty, that He might advance us to His state and not lower Himself to ours. — St. Leo the Great, Sermon XXVIII on the Nativity

In this quote, St. Leo is reflecting upon Philippians 2:5-7:

Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men.

Christ did not need to grasp at being God (as did Adam of old) because He is already in the form of God — in no way different than the Father, as St. Leo says. Yet, he took the form of a slave. Normally we translate the word doulos as “servant” or “bondservant.” I suppose we shy away from its real meaning of “slave” because of the discomfort we have with that word, especially in context of U.S. history. St. John, however, confirms the reality of Christ coming as slave:

Jesus…rose from supper and laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded Himself — John 13:5

The washing of the feet was the task of a slave and Christ dressed the part. This is why Peter is so shocked in vv. 6, 8.

Despite this, He loses none of His majesty. Rather, He advances us to His state. Christ turns to world on its head — He turns the world right side up. By becoming a slave, He elevates all of us. He pays no heed to what the world says and what the world expects. How many times in our lives have we or someone we know been brought down to someone else’s level — or done this to someone else? How many bullies have we seen punish those who excel? How many times have we blamed the rich or the famous or the powerful and wanted to take them down a few notches or delighted in the scandals that did bring them down? How many times have we ignored those “below” us?

Christ became a slave to elevate all of us. The list of saints are full of those who the world would never have given a second thought to:

• St. David — an adulterer and murderer
• St. Mary of Egypt — a prostitute
• St. Paul — a persecutor of the Church
• St. Peter — a fisherman
• St. Matthew — a tax collector
• St. Photini — a Samaritan and adulteress
• Ruth — an alien
• Joseph — a slave
• Jacob — an usurper and liar
• I could go on…

The world wants to deny that every one of us has been endowed with the image and likeness of God. In turn, God refuses to deny that image and likeness in anyone. It is why He sent us His son:

He Whom nothing can contain, how is He held within a womb? And while in His Father’s arms, how in His Mother’s pure embrace? Such is His will and good pleasure, and as He knows. For being without flesh, He took flesh willingly; for us HE WHO IS became what He was not. Without forsaking His own nature, He has partaken of what we are. For Christ is born now, twofold in nature, to fill Heaven with mankind. — Kathisma from the Orthros of the Nativity of Christ

Let me emphasize that last line: He came to fill Heaven with mankind. Amen.

God’s Peace

Tags

Christmas, peace, stewardship

Today, I’d like to revisit that Christmas declaration by the multitude of the heavenly host:

Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, goodwill toward men! — Luke 2:14

The reason being, St. Paul speaks of God’s peace in today’s Epistle:

Christ is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end. — Ephesians 2:14-16

St. Paul goes on to declare that we are neither strangers nor sojourners in the household of God — we are citizens with the Saints. Thus, when the angels cry out peace on earth, when Christ says to the Apostles after the resurrection “Peace be with you!’ and when the priest repeatedly declares during the liturgy, “Peace be with all!” this is God’s peace — the ceasing of hostility between fallen humanity and God. Christ, by becoming a man, has reached out in peace to take us up with him into the kingdom to sit at the right hand of the Father.

This doesn’t mean, however, that we cannot reject Christ’s hand, turn our back on God and reject His peace. In today’s Gospel, Christ tells the parable of the rich fool. In three short sentences he uses the words ‘I’ and ‘my’ ten times (Luke 12:16-21). This is the blueprint for rejecting God’s peace. He repeats the mistake of Adam and Eve — he tries to take control of his life away from God and without God. As with Adam and Eve, death is all that awaits him.

When Adam and Eve rejected God — they tried to be like God without God — and ate of the fruit they knew evil. They knew a world without God. They pulled all of creation with them away from God. They created a huge gulf between humanity and God. This gulf we cannot cross on our own. This is why God gave us His Son — to cross that gulf, or, in the words of St. Paul, Christ has broken down the dividing wall of hostility.

Know this, then, a life without God leads to death, to nothing. Today the rich fool says “What shall I do? I have not.” Does not the poor man also say “What shall I do? I have not”? The pursuit of riches for the sake of being rich is an unending and unachievable cycle of “What shall I do? I have not.” Just think about computers, cars, and fashion — how we are constantly told about the latest greatest thing. It never stops. It will never end — until we accept that our goal is not riches, that our goal is not the latest thing. Our goal is God.

We must be vigilant against the foolish rich man’s temptation to do without God, for claiming credit for what God has given us. Everything that we have in life —all of our successes in school, in business, at home and all of our possessions — are gifts from God. Our response to this reality is modeled in the prosphoro.

God gives us the gifts of wheat, water, yeast, salt and sugar. We take those gifts and we work with them. We create with them. We then give back what we have created to God. With all of the gifts that God gives us, our job is to use them to bring glory to Him. We do that by loving and giving — nothing is truly ours because everything we have comes from God. A simple and easy way to do this is to try and see what your gifts can do for the Church. Were you given the gift of a good voice and some musical talent? Chant and/or sing in the choir. Are you good with your hands? Help out by maintaining the Church. Do you have a lot of extra time on your hands? Volunteer. Have we, in these tough economic times, been fortunate? Use that fortune to give to those in need. Sponsor a ministry of the Church. Be creative. Look for a need. Is there something the Church isn’t doing that you could help with? Do it. Make it happen.

When we do this, we reach out and take Christ’s hand as He reaches across that gulf between us and God, across that dividing wall of hostility. We work with God. We become rich in God. We participate in God’s peace.

Peace be with all. Amen.

Singing with Hannah

Tags

Christmas, Entrance into the Temple, Hannah, Katavasiæ, Theotokos

I have to admit, I am struggling with today’s blog. Not because I have nothing to say, but rather because I have too much to say. The Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple, which we celebrate today, is one of my favorite feasts because of the richness and depth of its imagery. There are so many interconnections between hymns, scripture and liturgical traditions that I can’t possibly say everything that I want about this magnificent feast. Let me try to keep things as simple as I can.

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior — Luke 1:46

Today we read Luke 1:46 twice — once during Orthros in the morning Gospel and once during the Liturgy as the Prokeimena for the Epistle. It is the opening line of the Magnificat — the hymn Mary sings when Elizabeth greets the Theotokos after the Annunciation. It is based upon the Song of Hannah at the beginning of the second chapter of Samuel (1Kings in the LXX). The opening line parallels Luke 1:46:

My heart exults in the Lord; the horn of my strength is exulted in my God — 1Sam 2:1 (1Kings 2:1 LXX)

Hannah sings this as she presents her son Samuel to God. Having been barren, she had promised Samuel to God and gave him into the care of the high priest Eli when Samuel was three years old. According to the Church, Mary was also born from a barren womb:

Today barren Anna bears a handmaid of God, pre-selected out of every generation as a habitation for the King of all, Christ God, the Creator. — Stichera from Vespers of the Nativity of the Theotokos

The Theotokos is also presented to God at the age of three into the care of the priest Zechariah (the father of St. John the Baptist and the Zechariah martyred between the altar and the sanctuary mentioned in Luke 11:51).

Samuel goes on to become a prophet and anoints David as King. Mary, a descendent of David, gives birth to the Anointed One — the Christ. We are called to look forward to the Nativity of Christ, because today we begin to sing the Katavasiæ of Christmas. These, in turn, ask us to sing the Song of Hanna:

To the Son begotten without flux of the Father before the ages, and who was lately made incarnate of the Virgin without seed to Christ God now let us cry aloud, “You have exalted the horn of our strength, only You are holy, O Lord.” — Ode iii, Katavasia for Christmas, First Canon

Amen.

David’s Lord

Tags

Christmas, Cross, David, Psalms, St. Leo

One of my favorite quotes by St. Leo in his sermons on the Nativity comes from Sermon XXVII:

David’s LORD was made David’s Son

One might raise an eyebrow at this, imagine my sheepish grin and then dismiss the quote due to the fact that the one quoting it shares his name with that great Old Testament King. That notwithstanding, I would challenge anyone to find a more poetic, beautiful and succinct description of the Incarnation of our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ.

It calls to mind Luke 20:41-44 when Christ answers the Sadducees’ challenge to the resurrection. He quotes Psalm 109 (110), which I reproduce here in its entirety so that we can all read it in context of St. Leo’s quote about David’s Lord:

The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand,
Until I make Your enemies the footstool of Your feet.”
The Lord shall send forth the rod of Your power from Zion,
And rule in the midst of Your enemies,
With You is the beginning in the day of Your power,
In the brightness of Your saints;
“I have begotten You from the womb before the morning star.”
The Lord swore and will not repent,
“You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”
The Lord at Your right hand crushed kings in the day of His wrath;
He shall judge among the nations; He shall fill them with dead bodies;
He shall crush the heads of many on earth.
He shall drink from the brook on the way;
Therefore He shall raise His head high.

Personally, I am rendered speechless when I contemplate the fact that David’s Lord — the person that Psalm 109 (110) is all about — became David’s Son. There is an intimacy in these words that cannot be truly expressed in the word “incarnation.” The word “Lord” is a title for God. If the Lord is speaking to my Lord, the Father is speaking to the Son and both are God. Christ then becomes one of us, He becomes family. The phrase “God’s children” takes on a whole new meaning.

Psalm 109 (110) also reminds us that the Church equates the footstool with the Cross, as seen in the Entrance Hymn sung for the Elevation of the Venerable and Life-Giving Cross on September 14:

Exalt the Lord our God, and worship the footstool of His feet; for He is holy. Save us, O Son of God, who was crucified in the flesh, we who sing to you: Alleluia!

The enemies are the devil, sin and death, and Christ was willing to go to the Cross and suffer death in order to defeat them. We are reminded that the Nativity means nothing without the Cross. The whole point of the Incarnation, of David’s Lord becoming David’s Son is the crucifixion. Without the Cross there is no resurrection, there is no ascension, there is no enthronement at the right hand of the Father.

I cannot help but ask myself in the words of David, “What is man that You remember him, or the son of man that you visit him?” (Psalm 8:5). That He has done all of this for me…for all of us…Thank you, God for sending us Your Son by allowing David’s Lord to become David’s Son. Amen.