Homily for Sunday of All Saints, 15 June 2014--A Great Cloud of Witnesses

Homily for 15 June 2014:  Sunday of All Saints

(Hebrews 11:33-12:2)                    (Matthew 10:32-38, 19:27-30)

 

Today is the Sunday of All Saints.

Of course we remember and honor certain saints by name every day of the year—some are famous, some are not.  We remember and honor certain saints by name in the prayers and services of the Church.  And we have our personal devotions to certain saints—maybe those for whom we are named, maybe according to family or village traditions, maybe because of personal experience or inspiration.

But today the Church reminds us that all Christians—all of us, and all of those who have gone before us, and all those who will come after us—are called to be saints:  the “Holy Ones” of God.

St Paul reminds us of this when he calls the saints a “great cloud of witnesses.”  He also reminds us of what we have to do in order to join that great cloud of witnesses.  And in today’s Gospel reading, our Lord Jesus Christ gives us some very clear—and also pretty difficult—advice on how to live holy lives.

When St Paul calls the saints “a great cloud of witnesses,” he’s telling us two very important things.

First, like a cloud, the saints are sort of above us and around us.  Sometimes they are closer and heavier; sometimes more distant and fluffy (if we can imagine fluffy saints!).  Sometimes they storm; sometimes they provide shade.  Like the droplets of moisture that form a cloud, the individual saints form this great cloud of witnesses.

Second, the saints are a cloud of witnesses:  they have a function, to be examples to the world and to us—examples of Christian faith and life.  Like the people of the Old Testament that St Paul describes, different saints have different talents, different experiences, different ways of witnessing.  But all their words and actions and trials and sufferings and deaths are meaningless unless they are connected to faith.

This is true for us, too.  Jesus says, “Whoever acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father,” but “whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”

We can’t call ourselves Christians unless we live as Christians.  We have to live in a way that joins us to that “great cloud of witnesses”—God’s holy ones.  This takes determination and effort.  It’s not going to happen unless we work at it all the time, every day.

First, according to St Paul, we “must rid ourselves of every burden and sin” that holds on to us and holds us back from living holy lives.  This means we have to look honestly at ourselves, discover and admit our shortcomings and failures, and repent—turn ourselves around in the right direction.

Second, that right direction is following the lead of Jesus Christ.  We have to “persevere in running the race, keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith.”  He has done it; He is showing us how; He wants us to succeed.

Third, we have to follow Jesus openly, not secretly.  We should never be afraid to thank and praise Him for creating us, loving us, guiding us, saving us—in whatever situation or company.

Fourth, we have to put Jesus first in our lives.  It’s kind of hard to hear Jesus say, “Whoever loves father or mother, or son or daughter, more than me is not worthy of me.”  But our family is not God; we must not worship them.  They are gifts from God, so we must treasure them.  The best way to do this is by living holy lives and setting a good example.  Parents have to be witnesses to their children, showing them how to put Christ first, ahead of selfish desires.  Let your children see you pray, teach them to enjoy coming to church, share with them the goodness of helping others.

Finally, we can’t expect rewards in this life.  Being Christian is not easy or comfortable or profitable in worldly terms.  The only reward that counts is the joy of eternal life in God’s love.  That is the reward that awaits us when, by God’s grace, we join all the saints in that “great cloud of witnesses,” giving thanks and praise and glory to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and ever and unto ages of ages.  Amen.

Homily for Pentecost Sunday, 8 June 2014--The Holy Spirit Makes us Witnesses for Christ

Homily for 8 June 2014:  Holy and Glorious Pentecost Sunday

(Acts 2:1-11)                    (John 7:37-8:12)

 

Today is the great feast of Pentecost—the 50^th day after the Resurrection of Christ and the 10^th day after His Ascension to the Father.

Imagine how the disciples must have been feeling.  When the Lord was crucified, died, and was buried, they were devastated.  When He rose from the dead on the third day, they couldn’t believe it at first, then they were overjoyed to have Him with them again.  But when He ascended, once again they were left alone, although He told them to wait for the Holy Spirit, whom He would ask the Father to send.

So, ten days after that, they were probably confused and scared, maybe even angry.  They must have been full of questions:  What’s going to happen to us?  What is this “Holy Spirit” that’s supposed to be coming?  What will we have to do when it comes?  How can we do anything without Jesus, our Master and Teacher?  Why did He have to leave us?

Maybe—probably—we often feel the same way and have the same kinds of questions?  What do we really know about the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives?  What are we supposed to do with the gift of the Holy Spirit that we received in Baptism and that was sealed in Chrismation?

We get a clue from what Jesus told His disciples at the time of His Ascension:  “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

So the power of the Holy Spirit enables us to become witnesses for Jesus Christ “to the ends of the earth”—that is, in the whole world.  But how can we do that?

In his First Letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 12:3-13), St Paul writes that there are many different varieties of gifts of the Spirit, and that different ones are given to different people to be used for the good of all.  These are the gifts of the Holy Spirit:  wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles or mighty deeds, prophecy (calling people to follow God’s will), discernment of spirits, speaking in tongues, and interpretation of tongues.

And on Pentecost, as we read today, the disciples received these gifts and used them to preach the Gospel in many languages.  All those hard names in today’s reading from the Book of Acts—Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Phrygia, Pamphylia—represent “the whole world” known in the Roman Empire at the time.  All those people from all those places, gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate the Jewish feast of Shavuot (the giving of the Law on Mt Sinai), understood the disciples’ message as if it was spoken in their own languages, which is a sign of unity in God, just as the disciples were unified.  That’s why Acts says, “they were all together in one place.”

What happened at Pentecost shows the Holy Trinity at work:  the Father, at the Son’s request, sends the Holy Spirit.  And it shows that the way to accomplish God’s will is to seek the unity of Christians—all languages, nations, cultures, people.  The Father creates us all, the Son saves us all, and the Holy Spirit gives life to all and guides all.

So we can be Christ’s witnesses to the ends of the earth by using whatever gifts we have for the good of all.  Some use wisdom to raise their families, teach their children, show good example.  Others show their faith, and share their faith, in everyday life.  Some use God’s healing power as doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals; others use it in words and actions that heal anxiety, confusion, and depression.  Still others are called to preaching and public actions.

We just have to certain, when we use our gifts, that we’re doing it for God, not for personal glory or profit.  And we have to remember that it’s not our power, but the working of the Holy Spirit.  Then we can truly be witnesses for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and ever and unto ages of ages.  Amen.

Homily for 1 June 2014--The Spirit Guides the Leaders of the Church

Homily for 1 June 2014:  7^th Sunday of Pascha (Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council)

(Acts 20:16-18, 27-36)                    (John 17:1-13)

 

Every year, on this sixth Sunday after Pascha—the Sunday between the feast of the Ascension of the Lord and the feast of Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples—the Church honors the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council.  That Council, called by the Emperor Constantine in the year 325, brought together all the bishops of the Christian Church in the world.  That’s why it was called “ecumenical”—it involved the whole oecumene—the whole world.

Those bishops had the job of agreeing on a statement of Christian belief in order to settle the fights among Christians that were disturbing the peace of the Roman Empire—which stretched from Britain to Germany to Northern Africa and almost to India.  To do this, the bishops prayed for the guidance of the Holy Spirit, studied the Holy Bible, and considered the teachings of philosophers and earlier Christian theologians.

With much discussion and argument, they composed the Creed, which we still recite as he statement of essential Christian belief.  They made sure not to put any words in the Creed that were not in the Bible. So if anyone tells you the Creed is just a man-made statement, you can point out that it is completely based on the Bible.

All of this information is interesting, but that First Ecumenical Council happened 1689 years ago.  Why should we still have a Sunday remembering it?  Isn’t this one way in which the Church is kind of stuck in the past and not really connected with the modern world?

As the readings for this Sunday show, remembering the Holy Fathers of that ancient council teaches us lessons that remain extremely important and valuable today.  Today’s readings from the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel of John lay out some basic duties of bishops as the leaders of the Church, and, by extension, duties of priests as leaders of the local churches, and also essential truths for the People of God, who are the Church.

In John’s Gospel, we read the words that Jesus addresses to His Heavenly Father while He is still at supper with His disciples before His betrayal and Passion.  Because the disciples are listening, in a way these words are also addressed to them.  They will be the teachers and builders and leaders of the Christian community.

Jesus makes four main points:

1.  That His followers must know the One True God and Jesus the Christ whom God sent into the world.
2. That we belong to the Father and to Jesus.
3. That we must be one unified people, as Jesus and the Father are one.
4. That we must be joyful in Jesus our Lord.
   In the Acts of the Apostles, we read that St Paul is meeting with the leaders of the Church in Ephesus, on the coast south of Byzantium in what is now Turkey.  He gives them advice on how to continue the work of the Lord.
   St Paul makes five main points:

1.  They must keep watch over themselves and all the flock, because the Holy Spirit has appointed them as overseers.
2. They must be alert and guard against people inside the church who will distort the truth to get people to follow them.
3. They must preach and teach the message of God’s grace that builds up the community and leads to salvation.
4. They must not seek to get rich off the community.
5. They must work to support the weak.
   We can see that these words of Jesus and St Paul provide sure guidance for the whole Church—bishops, priests, and people.  Jesus sets forth the spiritual truths; Paul gives practical methods for achieving them.  The leaders of the Church in 2014, like the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council in 325, have to live by these words, teach them to the people, and so build up the Body of Christ.
   The decision of Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew, at their recent meeting in Jerusalem, to meet in 2025 on the 1700^th anniversary of that first Council, shows that the Holy Spirit is still at work, guiding our leaders towards Christian unity.  We don’t know what form that meeting will take, or who will be involved, or even if the Pope and the Patriarch will be alive then, but we rejoice at this sign that Christians are once again trying to overcome their differences, and we give thanks and praise and glory to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and ever and unto ages of ages.  Amen.

Homily for Sunday 25 May 2014--Our Imperfections Reveal the Works of God

Homily for 25 May 2014:  6^th Sunday of Pascha (the Man Born Blind)

(Acts 16:16-34)

(John 9:1-38)

 

Today’s reading from the Gospel according to St John gives us the chance to consider how God works in ways that are hard for us to understand.  In fact, in order to begin to understand how God works, we have to put aside and get beyond a lot of ideas that we think are just plain facts, just normal situations, just natural conclusions.

This is what happens to the disciples when they ask Jesus about the man born blind.  To them, it’s just obvious and natural to believe that he is blind because either he or his parents sinned.  But Jesus overturns their conclusions when He says, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”  He goes on to teach the lesson that we must “do the works” of God while we have the time, while it is still daylight.

The fact is, no one is perfect.  In a way, all of us are born blind.  We are all born with some imperfection, because all of us, since the first sin of Adam and Eve, the original sin, have fallen away from the perfection God originally intended for the human race.  So doing the works of God, and having them revealed in us, consists of trying to live in a way that eventually will restore—or allow God to restore—that original perfection in us.

Our Byzantine Christian Tradition calls this “theosis”—becoming like God or returning to God.  It’s part of the process of salvation.  All of us are born the way we are so that the works of God can be revealed in us.

Our challenge—our call from God—is to be who God made us, no matter how other people may judge us to be sinful or defective or abnormal or unnatural or any of those other nasty labels, and to live in a way that shows the glory of God to other people.  We have to remember—about other people and about ourselves—that God doesn’t make junk (as Bishop John Elya so often said); God makes us in God’s own image and likeness.  So anything that is natural or born in us is given by God—from hair color or eye color or skin color to being left-handed or right-handed, or male or female, or musical or athletic or mentally gifted.  What we have to do is discover, with God’s help, how to live with what God has given us so that the works of God are revealed in us.

Our church community is the place where we can make this discovery and share the revelation of God’s works in each other.  This is because the church is a special place where God calls God’s people together.  It’s not a business.  It’s not a social club.  It’s not an obligation.  It’s not about numbers.  It’s not about money.  Church is a mysterious, wonderful, beautiful, mutual revelation of God at work, accomplishing God’s will, through the people He loves—in all our sinfulness, all our blindness, all our imperfection, all our diversity.

Through faith and love, through prayer and fasting and works of charity, the church is the place where we recognize the face of Jesus Christ in our own faces and in the faces of all the people around us.  Although we are born imperfect, we are born again through water and the Spirit in Baptism, and we set out on our life-journey to reveal God at work in us and in the world, and at the end of that journey we are made perfect in the eyes of God.

So we don’t complain about, or curse, our blindness and our other imperfections.  We thank God for the chance to show forth God’s love and mercy and justice and righteousness, and we give thanks and praise and glory to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and ever and unto ages of ages.  Amen.

Homily for Sunday 18 May 2014--Jesus' Word is Easy and Hard

Homily for 18 May 2014:  5^th Sunday of Pascha (the Samaritan Woman)

(Acts 11:19-30)

(John 4:5-42)

 

Today’s Gospel reading gives us two excellent examples of how people misunderstand what Jesus says.

The Samaritan Woman whom Jesus encounters at Jacob’s Well thinks that the “living water” that Jesus talks about comes from the well.

The disciples think that someone else has brought food to Jesus when He tells them that He has food that they do not know about.

In both cases, Jesus has to explain the real meaning of His words.

We might be tempted to ask, “Are these people just stupid?”  Or is there another reason why they misunderstand?

But we need to be very careful about calling them stupid—because we also find it

• Easy to misunderstand Jesus’s message, and
• Hard to comprehend what He really means.
  Let’s look at a couple of examples:
  When Jesus says, “You must deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me,” we think he’s imposing a burden on us.  We forget that the Holy Cross is the key to the gate of Heaven, and unless we are willing to carry our cross, as Jesus carried His, we will have a hard time entering His Kingdom.
  When Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” we think to ourselves that it’s not natural to love everybody.  But in fact we usually don’t really love ourselves, so we can’t love our neighbors.
  When Jesus says, “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven,” we despair, because we all want to be rich—maybe even more than we want to be saved.  But it is attachment to wealth (a form of idolatry, loving money as a god), not wealth itself, that blocks our entry into Heaven.
  Jesus’s teachings are often easy to misunderstand and hard to understand because God’s ways are not our ways—even though they should be, because we are created in the image and likeness of God.  Sin prevents us from being in sync with God’s ways.
  This sometimes even extends to our idea of what the Church is.  Don’t we sometimes think of St Joseph’s as “the Arabic church” and of Latin Catholic parishes as “the American church?”  But isn’t the Church for everyone?  It’s God’s church for God’s people, not “our church for our people.”
  The Samaritan Woman talks to Jesus about her people’s beliefs in contrast with Jewish beliefs, but He tells her that soon “true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth . . . neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.”
  And today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles says that the early Christians left Jerusalem because they were being persecuted and they preached about Jesus as the Messiah as far away as Phoenicia (that is, Syria and Lebanon), Cyprus, and Antioch (now in Turkey)—but only to Jews.
  Then, some also preached to Greeks and Greek-speaking Jews in Antioch, and many of them believed in the Lord.  The Church leaders in Jerusalem heard of this and sent Barnabas especially to work in Antioch.  They adapted to changing circumstances and broke out of their usual way of thinking about the Church.  Barnabas, as it turned out, had great success, and in Antioch the disciples were first called “Christians.”
  The lesson for us is clear—especially since we are the Church of Antioch, and we wouldn’t be Christians now if the original Jewish Christians hadn’t decided to include Greeks in the Church.
  Jesus Christ came for all people and His Church is for all people.  We never forget where we came from, but we have to live where we are now, and reach out to strangers, as Jesus did to the Samaritan Woman and as Barnabas did to the Greeks in Antioch.
  This is easy to understand—it’s not hard to get—the Church is not limited to a mountain or a city or a language or a country.  True believers worship in spirit and in truth, inviting everyone to hear God’s word and to share God’s love.
  The truth never changes, but the Spirit leads us where we need to go—which is not always where we expect to go or want to go.  We have to open up our minds and our hearts and our church so that we can let everyone learn about Jesus and discover, like the Samaritan Woman, that He is “truly the Savior of the world,” and give thanks and praise and glory to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and ever and unto ages of ages.  Amen.

Homily for Sunday 11 May 2014--Healing for Body and Soul

Homily for 11 May 2014:  4^th Sunday of Pascha (the Paralytic)

(Acts 9:32-42)

(John 5:1-15)

 

Sometimes when we read this story of Jesus healing the paralyzed man at the Pool of Bethesda, we pay so much attention to the events leading up to the healing that we don’t pay any attention to what happened afterwards.

But there are two main things worth thinking about in the second part of the story.

Number One is the reaction of the religious authorities.  (The Gospel just refers to “the Jews,” but clearly they are the authorities who are experts in the Old Testament Law.)  They don’t seem to notice or to care that the man has been healed and can walk again after being paralyzed for 38 years.  All they care about is that he is breaking the religious Law by carrying his sleeping mat on the Sabbath.  That counts as work, and work is forbidden on the Sabbath, the day of rest.

Number Two is the reaction of Jesus.  Jesus doesn’t want to be noticed after He heals the paralyzed man, so He blends into the crowd.  But He isn’t finished with the man.  When we encounter God, we have to learn something.  So Jesus goes hunting for the man, and finds him in the Temple area.  Then He warns him, “You have been made well.  Take care not to sin anymore, so that nothing worse may happen to you.”

Obviously, the religious authorities and Jesus have very different ideas of sin.  The authorities are concerned that the man has violated the Law by working on the Sabbath.  They don’t seem to connect physical healing and spiritual healing.

On the other hand, Jesus doesn’t seem concerned with the Law.  But for Him, the physical healing of the paralytic is just the first step.  He has to make sure that the man understands how profoundly his life has been changed—how his physical healing is just the sign of a deeper spiritual healing.

I don’t think that Jesus means that sin leads directly to illness.  Or that illness is direct punishment for sin. But sin can literally make us sick.  It can paralyze our ability to make moral decisions.  It can make us sick with guilt.  It can poison our relationships with other people and with God.  It can lead us to do stupid and dangerous things.

Very often we don’t think much about the connection between sin and health, between our spiritual and physical condition.  It doesn’t seem that the paralytic does this, either.  Before he’s healed, he just complains that no one will help him, and afterwards he just seems to be glad that he can walk.  He’s focused entirely on his physical condition.

The religious authorities also don’t seem to connect the physical and the spiritual, except for them the spiritual dimension is missing entirely.  They consider only the physical aspect of sin:  it’s just a matter of breaking the law, rather than dealing with what’s in the heart.

What Jesus shows the paralytic—and us, too—is that both of these attitudes are wrong.  We can’t take health—or any other part of physical existence—for granted, and leave God out of it.  And we cannot reduce our relationship with God to following the rules.  We also cannot judge other people and their relationships with God on how well we think they follow the rules.

When Christ comes into our lives, He brings healing for body and soul.  He frees us from paralysis, from sin, from obsession with rules.  But He frees us not just from things; He frees us to do things:  to live holy lives of love and mercy and justice, to be humble and respectful and generous, and to give thanks and praise and glory to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and ever and unto ages of ages.  Amen.

Homily for Sunday 6 April 2014--Do We Get It?

Homily for 6 April 2014:  5^th Sunday of Great Lent

(Hebrews 9:11-14)

(Mark 10:32-45)

 

Today’s Gospel story seems to tell of another incident in which the disciples don’t really understand what Jesus is saying to them.  It should make us stop and think:  Do we get it?  Or do we also miss the point of what the Lord is saying?

In this story, it’s James and John who don’t get it.  Usually it’s Peter.  Jesus has amazed and frightened them by telling of His coming betrayal, condemnation, mocking, death, and resurrection.

But the only way they can react is to ask that He will guarantee them the best seats in Heaven.  This is a very childish response.  It’s like when a child says, “Mommy, you have to promise to give me whatever I ask for!”

Mothers are smarter than that.  They will always say, “I can’t promise anything until you tell me what you want.”  And often children ask for things they can’t possibly have, or that they don’t understand, or that Mom has no power to give them.

Similarly, Jesus reminds James and John that they don’t really know what they are asking for.  It’s a lot harder and more complicated than they think.  They will have to suffer as Jesus suffers, and there’s no guarantee that they will receive a special place of glory in Heaven.  Jesus tells them that He doesn’t have the power to promise that.

What about us?  Do we sometimes act childishly when we are talking with God?  When we pray, maybe we say to God, “You have to do this or that for me, because I’m a good person, and I pray, and I go to church.”  In fact, we can’t dictate to God and we can’t give orders to God and we can’t have a guarantee of special honor in Heaven.

We do know that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, offered Himself as a perfect sacrifice to take away our sins.  We do know that God loves us so much that God’s only Son did this—sacrificed His own life—willingly for us.

We do know that we can’t buy or trade or earn our salvation, because as St Paul says, works or actions are dead and God is alive.  This means that we do good and we don’t seek our own glory and we don’t use power over other people—simply because that’s the way God wants it.  That is the way of the Living God, who came not to be served, but to serve—and who gave His life to save our lives.

So let’s grow up in our relationship with God.  With Jesus, we are children of God; but we are also heirs to the Kingdom with Jesus.  We are made in the image and likeness of God.  We lack God’s perfection of love and justice.  We lack God’s Almighty Power.  We cannot save ourselves.  But we are called to live up to our creation in God’s image and likeness; we are called to be like our brother Jesus Christ—humble, giving service, sacrificing ourselves for the good of others.

We have to accept the place that has been prepared for us, and we can’t dictate what it will be.  So when we pray, we should pray that God’s will may be done, and that God’s mercy and love will bring us to accept and follow God’s will, for we know that He is good and the Lover of All People, and we give glory, honor, and worship to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and ever and unto ages of ages.  Amen.