Homily for 17 May 2015--Sunday of the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council

Our Fathers in Faith Established the Basic Beliefs of Christian Faith

Homily for the Sixth Sunday after Pascha (17 May 2015, 1 June 2003)

Acts of the Apostles 16:16-34…………….John 9:1-38

 

On the sixth Sunday after Pascha every year, the Church celebrates the memory of the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council, which was held at Nicea in the year 325.  In 2015, 1690 years later, we might wonder what was so important about the Fathers, or Bishops, who attended that council.  Why should we remember them today?  Why should we have a Sunday dedicated to honoring them?

We can’t really answer these questions without knowing something about the time and the circumstances.  In 325 Jesus had been gone from the earth less than 300 years.  For example, that’s about the same length of time that has passed since the American Declaration of Independence.

In 325, Christianity had been legal only 12 years!  The capital of the Roman Empire had moved to Constantinople only one year before.  It was an amazing time for Christians.  We no longer had to hide our faith and celebrate the Eucharist in houses and caves and even tombs.  We no longer had to worry about being forced to worship the pagan gods or the Roman emperors.  We no longer had to be afraid of persecution and torture and gruesome executions.

On the other hand, Christianity became the official religion of the Empire.  The Emperor and his bureaucrats expected the Church to support the government; they expected bishops to keep the people in order and loyal to the Emperor.  Yet there was no huge, well-developed Church bureaucracy to step in and do these things.  There was no standard liturgy—bishops and priests improvised the prayers according to the custom of their town or city or province.  There wasn’t even a basic agreed-upon statement of what Christians believed.

Of course this led to confusion and arguments and divisions.  People accused each other of being heretics simply because they didn’t agree about things we now take for granted as the Truth.

The hot argument of the early 4^th century was whether Jesus Christ was actually God, equal to the Father, or whether He was a created being given special power and status by God.  Arius, a priest from Alexandria, claimed that Jesus was inferior to God the Father—that He was the greatest of creatures, sort of adopted by God to do God’s work on earth.  Not knowing any better, and not being able to find out by studying the Gospels for themselves, a lot of people accepted Arius’s ideas and followed him.  In some places, they threw out or even killed bishops and priests who believed otherwise.

Obviously, this threatened the peace and unity of the Empire.

So the Emperor Constantine called all 318 bishops in the world to a meeting and told them that if this was going to be a Christian Empire they had to decide what Christians believed.

Today’s readings from the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel of St John help us understand the bishops’ actions and decisions.

In the Acts, St Paul warns the priests and bishops of Ephesus that they must take care of the church and guard it against “fierce wolves” who would try to attack the people and against false teacher speaking twisted words who would try to lure the people away from the true faith.  Obviously, for the Fathers at Nicea Arius and other heretics were such fierce wolves and false teachers.

In the reading from John’s Gospel, Jesus makes it clear again and again that He and the Father share divine identity.  He says that the Father gave Him God’s name.  He says that He and the Father are one.  He says He lost none of those entrusted to Him except the son of perdition.  Of course, Jesus was talking about Judas, who betrayed Him and then, realizing his sin, killed himself.  But the Holy Fathers at Nicea saw that this description also applied to Arius, who was also betraying Jesus by denying His divinity.  From this passage, we can see that the unity of the Church mirrors the unity of God.

So the Fathers of Nicea condemned Arius and his heresy.  They wrote the Creed, which says clearly that Jesus is “true God from true God, begotten not made, one in essence with the Father.”  They established the basic beliefs of the Christian faith.  They are truly our Fathers in the faith.  And that is why we remember and honor them, because they taught us how praise and glorify the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, One God, unto the ages of ages.  Amen.