Bible Study Notes: Sunday of St. Mary of Egypt

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Cross, Sacrifice, St. Mary of Egypt

This coming Sunday, as the fifth Sunday in Lent, commemorates St. Mary of Egypt. Her story is read, along with the Great Canon of St. Andrew on the fifth Thursday of Lent. Personally, I love the fact that her name is Mary, which invites us to compare her with the Theotokos. One is a virgin, the other a prostitute; yet, both say Yes to God and as a result each is now a beloved saint within the Orthodox Church. It is St. Mary of Egypt’s life that we kept in mind as we discussed the Epistle Reading (Hebrews 9:11-14) and Gospel Reading (Mark 10:32-45) for this coming Sunday.

We spent most of our time on the Epistle. As we discussed this pericope from Hebrews, it quickly became clear that we needed to understand the Temple sacrificial cult of ancient Judaism:

• The architecture of the Tabernacle (the mobile tent structure where the Ark of the Covenant was kept prior to the Temple) and the Temple (the permanent place of the Ark built by Solomon) is very similar to Orthodox Churches. The Narthex is the place where people would come with their sacrifices. The Law proscribes various sacrifices (liquid, grain and animal) for various needs and offenses (see the Book of Leviticus). The priests would then take these sacrifices into the Nave (where only priests where allowed to go). In the middle of the Nave was a sacrificial fire (at the time of Jesus, this was huge — the Temple complex occupied about 35 acres). Behind the Iconostasis, where the altar is would have been the Holy of Holies (where the Ark of the Covenant was). No one was allowed to go into this space except for one person (the high priest) and only one day a year.
• This day was Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) when two goats would be offered to God for all the sins of the people of the previous year and a bull for the priest (see Leviticus 16). One of the goats (the scapegoat) would have all the sins placed on its head and then led out into the wilderness (presumably for the demon “Azazel” to consume them). The other goat and the bull would be slaughtered and their blood would be sprinkled on various parts of the Tabernacle/Temple.
• St. Paul is therefore comparing the efficacy of these sacrifices with the sacrifice of Christ. If the Temple blood sacrifices effectively wiped away the sins of the people for one year, how much more effective is Christ’s sacrifice — the blood of God incarnate? Since God is infinite, so must His sacrifice be. Thus, His sacrifice is once and for all.

There are a couple of interesting implications from all of this:

• The space where Christians worship is the same space that was reserved only for priests. This is because we are now the royal priesthood (1Pet 2:9).
• The sacrifice that we make during worship for ourselves and for the people is ourselves. Note the prayer at the end of both the Small and Great Litanies: “let us commit ourselves and one another and our whole life to Christ our God”.

Some of us were offended by the whole concept of sacrificing animals to God — was such a thing necessary? Remember that St. Paul tells us that the worship of the Temple was a shadow of the heavenly worship (Heb 8:5). These things were done to prepare us for the coming of Christ. Without the sacrificial cult of the Temple, we can’t truly understand Christ’s sacrifice.

We continued to speak about sacrifice as we moved on to the Gospel Reading:

• Christ explicitly tells again that He will be killed when the chief priests hand Him over to the Gentiles. This will be the last Sunday of Lent, therefore we are preparing for the realities of Holy Week where we will see Christ crucified.
• Thus, the cup that Christ will drink and the baptism that He will receive are His suffering and death.
• This sacrificial love is the model of Christian leadership. A true leader is willing to be a servant (διάκονος) and a slave (δοῦλος).
• We briefly touched upon the reality that those who demand that women should be ordained as clergy grossly misunderstand the role of the priest and the bishop. This demand understands the clergy as those who rule over the Gentiles and lord it over people — they see the priesthood in terms of power. As we see in this pericope, the Christian leadership model is not based on power, it is based on service. In addition, Orthodox Christianity already ordains women — baptism and chrismation is an ordination to the laity, a.k.a. the royal priesthood. Remember, the proper title for those men who we call priests is really presbyter (which literally means elder, not priest).

Finally, we tried to tie all this to St. Mary of Egypt. She offered herself as a sacrifice to God by wandering the desert for 47 years and in the end had one of the most holy men of her age (St. Zosimas) bow in respect to her — she received the honor due to a priest.

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Bible Study Notes: Sunday of St. John Climacus

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fasting, Ladder of Divine Ascent, prayer, St. John Climacus

Apologies for not posting anything last week. Medical emergencies on top of preparation for the Feast Day of our parish prevented us from having Bible Study and me from having any time to post my own thoughts.

The fourth Sunday of Lent is dedicated to St. John Climacus, author of the Divine Ladder of Ascent, an ascetical treatise that uses the image of a ladder to describe ways of avoiding vice and embracing virtue in order to obtain salvation. The icon of the Ladder of Divine Ascent depicts Christians climbing a ladder towards Christ while demons use various tools to try to pull them off.

It is in this context that we examined both the Epistle Reading (Hebrews 6:13-20) and Gospel Reading (Mark 9:17-31) for this coming Sunday. We began by struggling through the Hebrews pericope, trying to understand how it was related to St. John Climacus. The image around which we were able to do this was Christ as “a sure and steadfast anchor” (Hebrews 6:19):

• Anchors in the ancient world were made of stone.
• This brought forth the image of both the rock in the desert that gushed forth water (Exo 17:6) and that Jesus equates Himself with (John 7:37) as well as the rock of faith that Jesus built His Church upon (Matt. 16:18).
• One of the uses of anchors in times prior to engines was the help steer. By setting an anchor out away from the boat, one could pull themselves toward the position of the anchor.
• God does not change. When He makes a promise, that promise will be fulfilled because God does not change, therefore neither will that promise.
• Thus, we can safely place our hope and faith in Christ as an anchor because He will not change where He is — we always know that He is in the same place (seated at the right Hand of the Father with our humanity intact). Thus, we can pull ourselves toward where He is knowing with certainty where it is that we are going.
• This is similar to the image of the Ladder.
• Note that it was not we who placed the ladder nor the anchor — it was God.

Our discussion of the Gospel was a little less focused:

• We discussed possession by demons — whose fault is it? God said to Cain as he was contemplating the murder of Abel, “Sin is crouching at the door hungry to get you. You can still master him” (Gen. 4:7). We are not inherently evil, rather we choose evil.
• However, it was noted that the focus of Christ’s admonition “O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you?” (Mark 9:19) is not aimed at the possessed boy, but rather at the Disciples and the father of the boy.
• The Disciples were unable to cure the boy because they and the father had no faith. This is shown by the father’s request, “if you can do anything, have pity on us and help us” (Mark 9:22). Note where Christ takes the father: “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24).
• Thus, the father has taken his first step upon the Ladder.
• It was noted that one can doubt and still have faith.
• This pericope shows us that our actions, whether we are sinning or working towards our salvation, affects those around us. The possessed boy was negatively impacted by his father’s disbelief and cured through his belief.
• If we accept that we are created in the image and likeness of God and that God is one in essence and three in persons, than humanity is also one in essence and many in persons. What one person does, then, can affect all of humanity.
• Thus, we come to the necessity of prayer and fasting — these are tools that we can use to help us climb the Ladder and bring us closer to Christ — and through us others.