Sermon - Second Sunday of Great Lent - 4 March 2018

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Glory to Jesus Christ!

Each Sunday of Great Lent has two themes, one historical, and one spiritual.  Last week, the spiritual theme was about faith, both having faith, and keeping the true faith, both of which are supported by the historical theme, the celebration of the end of the iconoclast heresy, more commonly referred to as the Triumph of Orthodoxy.

On this second Sunday of Great Lent, the spiritual theme calls us to go beyond what we believe, and to put our faith into action.  We see this in the Gospel reading this morning, with the paralytic (and the friends who carried him), who were so firm in their belief that Jesus could heal the man, they broke through the roof of the room where Jesus was, carried the man on his palate up to the roof, and lowered him down.  This goes beyond just thinking that Jesus could heal him; this is faith in action, doing whatever it takes to get to Christ so that the healing can occur.  Notice, by the way, that the paralytic doesn’t ask for healing.  Instead, the Scripture reads,

When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven you.”

So how do we show our faith so that Christ can see it?  How to we make our faith obvious, not just to Christ, but to the world, or at least to the people who are in the same room with us? Or, put another way, how do we live our faith?  The best description I’ve heard of what it takes to live our faith is this: to live as a Christian, we need to do two things: see Christ in everyone we meet, and become so filled with Christ that people see Him when they look at us (Father Andrew Stephen Damick gets the credit for this).  No, these aren’t easy things to do, but they are possible.  The idea of being filled with God is mentioned in the writings of St. Maximus the Confessor and St. Gregory of Nyssa, among others, but it is St. Gregory Palamas, whom we commemorate today, who solidified the idea that we can be so filled with Christ that His presence within us can be seen to those around us as what is normally referred to as the Divine Light.  There are many stories of monks experiencing this Divine Light, which St. Gregory equated with the Divine Light that showed forth from Christ during the Transfiguration.  The idea that we can “see God within us” set off a great debate. Surely we cannot see God.  It’s right there in the Book of Exodus (33:30):

“...you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.”  

St. Gregory’s explanation was that while we cannot know Who God is or What God is, we can most certainly experience His actions in our lives, even to the point of having Him act within us.  The distinction is normally called the essence and energies of God.  We cannot know God’s essence, be we can certainly experience His energies. And it is His energies that are experienced when the Divine Light is seen in a person.  The acceptance of this teaching in the fourteenth century, of the distinction between the essence and the energies of God, is often referred to as the Second Triumph of Orthodoxy, and is the historical theme of this Sunday.

So what does it take to experience the energies of God for ourselves?  The Scripture, in St. Matthew’s Gospel (5:8), is also clear on this, and it sounds like simple advice:

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

So there it is. All we need to do is become “pure in heart”.  All we need to do is to become free of all sinful motives, to be devoid of all inappropriate interests, and to have no self-seeking ambitions.  In other words, we need to become selfless.  Being a Christian is hard.  Why should we expect otherwise, when the supreme example of this kind of selflessness is Christ on the Cross, dying for us, unworthy as we are, that we may truly live. We need to consistently see the worth of others even when it appears otherwise and especially when that unworthiness manifests itself in the pain they cause us.  Christ does this with us, and we are called to so the same.  When it comes to being pure in heart, their worthiness of our love and respect is irrelevant, because their worth as a person, as a child of God, is irrefutable.  They are made in the image and likeness of God, and to be pure in heart, we need to see that, regardless.  The first step on the path to purity in heart, on the path to seeing God within ourselves, is to see Him in others.

This is clearly not something that we can immediately do in its fullness, but we can begin to do this, even in small ways. Practice true forgiveness of others. Seek forgiveness from others. Be humble.  We need not do something so outwardly drastic as cut a whole through a roof and enter on a palate.  We need to do something even more drastic: we need to love our enemies.  

This will take a lifetime - a Christian lifetime - to even begin to accomplish, and even then we will fall short.  It is only with Christ that we can become pure in heart, and in doing so, see Him. It is only by realizing He is already within us that we can begin to experience Him in our lives.  As we continue through Great Lent, may we have the will to begin to purify our hearts by putting our faith into action, doing whatever it takes to get to Christ so that our healing can occur.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Glory to Jesus Christ!

Sermon - Forgiveness Sunday - 18 February 2018

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Glory to Jesus Christ!

This day, the day before the beginning of Great Lent, goes by many different names.  It is Cheesefare Sunday, a name that emphasizes the seven-week fast that begins at sundown this evening.  It is also the commemoration of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise, a name that emphasizes our sinfulness and our need for redemption.  It is known as Forgiveness Sunday, a name that emphasizes the Rite of Forgiveness that happens during Vespers.  And this year, today, the 18th of February, is also the feast of Pope St. Leo the Great of Rome.  It is with St. Leo that I would like to begin.

In one of his lenten sermons, St. Leo writes:

“At every moment the earth is full of the mercy of God, and nature itself is a lesson for all the faithful in the worship of God. The heavens, the sea and all that is in them bear witness to the goodness and omnipotence of their Creator, and the marvellous beauty of the elements as they obey Him demands from the intelligent creation a fitting expression of its gratitude. But with the return of that season marked out in a special way by the mystery of our redemption, and of the days that lead up to the Paschal feast, we are summoned more urgently to prepare ourselves by a purification of spirit.  The special note of the Paschal feast is this: the whole Church rejoices in the forgiveness of sins.”

Nowhere in here does St. Leo emphasize fasting.  Rather, the emphasis is placed on forgiveness. This is in line with the Tradition we hold of beginning our preparation with Forgiveness Vespers.  It is also in line with the Gospel reading this morning, which opens with:

“...if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

The implication here is that the beginning of our forgiveness from God lies in our forgiveness of others.  We ask precisely this of God every time we say the Lord’s Prayer, which, not coincidentally, was part of the Gospel reading yesterday:

“And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”

So we ask God to forgive us in the same way we forgive others.  Of course, being human, we often place requirements on our forgiveness.  We expect more than just an,  “I’m sorry.”  We expect a real change to occur in the other person.  I’ll forgive you, but you have to promise to never do this again.

That’s not all that unreasonable, considering God expects the same from us.  The first words of Christ’s public ministry are not, “Be sorry, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand,” but rather, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”  The Greek word for “repentance” is “metanoia”, a word that under a strict interpretation means, “change of thought”.  Repentance goes beyond being sorry for what we’ve done, asking us to actually change not just our actions, but the very thoughts that lead to those actions, a request that is repeated over and again by Christ: “Go and sin no more.”   

But the logic there is in the wrong direction.  The commandment is not, “Well, since God requires this of me, I’m allowed to require this of others.”  Rather, the commandment is, “What you require of others, God will require of you.”  So, if we expect others to repent, we better begin by repenting.  Actually, we should probably just repent, and leave any requirements of others to God.

So how do we keep that focus on our sins and on our repentance?  This is where fasting comes in.  Fasting is not the end in and of itself.  Fasting is a means to the end.  Fasting asks us to gain some self-control in an area of our life where it should be relatively easy for us to do so.  If we’re honest about it, we have no chance of controlling our emotions and actions when someone else wrongs us, if we can’t even control whether or not we use half-and-half in our coffee in the morning.  Fasting is nothing new, and it is nothing new that we humans have a hard time with it.  After all, God’s first commandment was to fast from the fruit of one tree, but even that proved to be too difficult for Adam and Eve. So it should come as no surprise that we, their descendants, struggle with self-control in the same way.

Which brings us back to the commandment, “Go and sin no more.” I’ve been reminded of this a lot recently.  My ordination to the diaconate was two months ago yesterday, and throughout the last two months I have made mistake after mistake in serving the Liturgy and Vespers.  It hasn’t been anything earth-shattering, and I’m told that the mistakes aren’t noticeable, but of course that isn’t the point.  So I commit myself to not making the same mistake during the next service.  The trouble, of course, is that, while I succeed at not making the same mistakes at the next service, I instead make new mistakes that need to be corrected.  

And so it is with us in our lives.  We repent of one sin, only to go and commit a different one.  Hopefully, fasting not only reminds us of our need to dedicate ourselves to not repeating a particular sin, but nudges us toward the self-control required to “Go and sin no more.”

In the same sermon, St. Leo mentions this, when he says:

“Initially, men are made new by the rebirth of baptism. Yet there still is required a daily renewal to repair the shortcomings of our mortal nature, and whatever degree of progress has been made there is no one who should not be more advanced. All must therefore strive to ensure that on the day of redemption no one may be found in the sins of his former life.”

As we enter into Great Lent, may we strive to make a little progress each day, at the end of each day, may we long to be a little more advanced, and upon the arrival of Pascha, may we at the very least no longer be found in the sins of our current life.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Glory to Jesus Christ!