The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (8:41-56)

In today’s gospel reading we are met face to face with two terribly difficult situations. In one, we have a woman who has been really very sick for about 12 years. She has a serious problem with bleeding which makes her weak and sick and on top of all of that, it also means that she is always considered unclean according to the Jewish law. This means that she could not approach or touch any holy thing. In a way this added much more to her suffering and affliction.

The next situation that we find in the gospel reading is even more difficult than the first. We also encounter Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue and we hear that his only daughter, at the tender age of 12 has fallen seriously ill. It is not long before everyone is alerted to the unbearably difficult news that comes to them as they are traveling towards the home of Jairus, as a servant from his house comes to him and says “Your daughter is dead; do not trouble the Teacher any more.”

Every one of us has suffered the loss of loved ones. Every one of us has been sick or known others who were chronically sick. Many of us have known the extreme pain that comes with the loss of young children. It is an unbearable loss. We have a hard time trying to understand the grief that a parent must endure in such a situation. To all of this we are sometimes inclined to think to ourselves “This is not fair.” Sometimes we are even bolder than that and we say “Why did God let this happen?” or we say “Why does a good God allow such evil and suffering?”

One of the conversations that sometimes happens in our home sound a bit like this, “Daddy, that is not fair!” To which I often reply “life is not fair.” One of the facts of our Christian worldview is the idea that the sin of Adam and Eve caused corruption and death to spread over the whole world and especially over the human race. We can say that life in the beginning was fair, but that the actions of our rebellion against God, changed our situation completely. When humans chose to go their own way and rebel against God, they essentially drifted away from health, sanity and life and towards sickness, insanity and death. This sickness, insanity and death did not stay isolated but spread like wildfire uncontrollably, burning everything that came into contact with it.

God allowed this to happen because He does not impose Himself upon Adam and Eve, or upon us. He allows each man to be a kind of Adam or Eve. He allows each one to follow or reject Him. His respect for our freedom is a sign of deep love for us. But with that freedom, came consequences based on our actions. But God in His wisdom knew from the beginning that our freedom to sin would actually cause great pain and would even lead to the most unjust and unfair event in the history of the world; to the betrayal and murder of His Only Begotten Son. So when we say that life is not fair, we can look to the cross and understand that God knows this much more than we know it.

But through this greatest injustice and cruelty, through the crucifixion, Christ our God could penetrate our human frailty and our sickness and He could heal them from within. As St. Gregory the Theologian writes “What is not assumed is not healed. But that which is united to His godhead is also saved” Christ our God assumed our humanity and by doing so, He shared His divinity with us and conquered the things that we could not conquer on our own, sin and death. He conquered them so that He could once again restore each of us to life and health and holiness.

The healing of the woman with an issue of blood seemed impossible to her. She had spent all of her money looking for cures. She had lost all hope. It’s possible that some of us feel like this woman. We feel that we have lost hope. Perhaps it is because of our own physical illness, but perhaps it is due to a mental illness or a breakdown in an important relationship. There are any number of difficult situations that can tempt us to think “life is not fair.” There are any number of situations that can make us think that we might never get through our trying times. It is at that very moment in life that everyone must make a choice just as this poor, sick woman had to make a choice. You can allow the circumstances of life to defeat you or you can reach out to God with every bit of strength that still remains within you. That is what it is to have faith, to believe in what we cannot see clearly with our eyes. Hoping against hope, with no idea of what would happen, this woman reached out her hand in faith and immediately she received health and peace from the source of healing.

The family of Jairus was shaken to the core. The cloud of death had overtaken their home and had laid hold of their beloved daughter. But God was watching, and God knew of their profound loss. We might find it hard to cope with such loss, yet our God also knows our losses. But unlike the woman who reached out to Christ for healing, death had made it impossible for the little girl to reach out to her Master and Lord. But just as the woman had earlier stretched out her hand to receive healing, Our Lord Jesus stretched out His hand to give healing to the girl who could not longer reach out to Him. What death made impossible, the Lord made possible. He does this for each and every one of us. He is prepared to reach out His hand to pull us up out of the depths, as we see pictured in the icon of the harrowing of Hades, with Adam and Eve.

The message is clear. Even in extreme difficulties and the various sufferings of life, we should not lose hope. Even in death, we are not beyond His reach. God has conquered suffering and He has conquered death because He passed through them both. Let us trust that the God who passed through them can also provide us a way through them, granting both physical and spiritual resurrection, both now and in the coming age. Glory be to God forever AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (8:26-39)

We are close now…only 10 days away from the eve of the Feast of All Saints on the western calendar. This evening celebration is called Halloween from the phrase “all hollows eve”.

On this day we often see children as well as grown adults, dress up as all sorts of awful looking things like ghouls and goblins and witches and monsters. That is certainly not something that we want to imitate. Monsters, vampires and things of that nature are not things that we should try to pretend to be, because when we do that we are in fact making light of things that are evil and demonic.

What a Christian tries to do is to baptize or chrismate everything around him. He tries to sanctify it and transform it so that it gives glory to God and affirms the good, the true and the beautiful.  Perhaps one can find a way to redeem such secular holidays, with the guidance of their priests.

And while we know that much of Halloween focuses on ghosts and monsters and things that are evil, we are not at all afraid of these things because we know that Christ has defeated evil and has given us the grace to defeat evil in the place that it matters most, that is, in our hearts. God is with us! Some say that only two things are certain in this life, death and taxes. But that is not true for us. We add a third, God is with us. His presence is a sign of His love.

So we are not afraid of ghosts and goblins and nonsense, it is all under the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ, who conquered not only these but death itself! But according to today’s gospel there are a couple of things that should truly terrify us. The first is that demons are real and can truly possess those who do not care for their souls. It is no surprise that the first thing that we do when we baptize anyone into the Church is that we read prayers of exorcism. The Church takes seriously the idea that demons exist, why? Is it because of superstition? Is it because the early Christians didn’t understand science or psychology? No. It is because Our Lord Jesus treats demons and demon possession as real. St. Luke the evangelist tells us that the man in the story had superhuman strength. He lived among the tombs and had the strength to break free from his chains. He would have been a truly terrifying sight. A wild, crazed man, running around naked and out of his mind. He was a plaything of the devil. He was a puppet and Satan was his master.

In actuality our Christian life is about being in the hands of a master. Either we are in the hands of Satan as his puppet, who does his will. Or we are in the hands of our Creator, the Master of our life. The One who molds us and forms us into the new man. Every choice, every decision, every moment of life, is a chance to further solidify our standing. When we choose evil, when we choose to rebel against God and fall into sin, we are choosing to have the demons add new strings to us. We are giving them control over us. Slowly, with each terrible decision we find ourselves less and less in control. Further and further away from Christ. On the other hand, when we choose Christ and follow His teachings, then Satan’s strings are cut, and we find ourselves shaped and transformed into the likeness of God.

This man was a slave and puppet to the demons. He had lost control of his mind, his heart, his body. But Christ our God, who is full of mercy, had compassion upon this man. He travelled to this gentile region, away from His people and through this He demonstrated that all people would become His people, both Jews and gentiles. And this brings us to the second truly terrifying thing in the story. It is something which could keep us awake at night if we bothered to really think about it and reflect on it. After seeing the most amazing miracle that these people had ever seen, the healing of the demon possessed man, and after seeing him seated, clothed and in his right mind. The people reacted by rejecting the Lord Jesus Christ immediately and begging Him to depart from their region and their presence. Nothing could possibly be more frightening than asking the God-man Jesus Christ to withdraw from your presence. This is the epitome of ignorance and the fulfillment of evil. And we have to ask why they acted or reacted this way?

The answer comes down to the swine. The swine were of far more value to the villagers than the presence of the Lord of glory. Oh how terrible would our life be if we one day realized that we had pushed away God because we loved something else. In this case, the thing that the people loved and desired was their financial stability and livelihood. Perhaps in some ways these people are not much different than the average person. But Christ the Lord calls us to wake up and leave behind the average misguided mindset and trust Him and love Him. If He was able to heal this man who was by all accounts quite far gone, imagine what He could do for those villagers. Imagine how much He could have changed their lives in one night, or one conversation. That is exactly what happened to the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob and we still remember her to this day!

How precious is Jesus Christ in our lives and in our heart? Or let us ask it another way…what is most precious in my life? Is it my talent or my looks or my wealth or my title and position? None of it will matter. Like the herd of swine, everything outward will perish but everything that Christ Himself builds up within us, will remain. It is our Lord’s good pleasure to transform your life and to make you a part of Him. It is His good pleasure that you be seated next to Him, clothed in righteousness and in your right mind.

St. Paul writing to the Ephesians says,

“Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self,which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

May our Lord grant this to us,and Glory be to God forever, AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (8:5-15)

Why does one person become a saint and another choose a different way? Why does one person seek goodness, beauty, truth and life while another runs towards evil things and death? Why do some people live their lives toward God and others spend their lives running from Him?

According to today’s gospel reading, the Lord Jesus Christ tells us that the difference between these types of people has absolutely nothing to do with God. What do I mean by this? I mean to say that God loves us all dearly. He has generously thrown His seeds everywhere. If we don’t respond to the excellent seeds that are generously given, then it is not the seeds or the sower of the seeds who is to blame. It is the soil that must be blamed.

The difference between the group that seeks the Lord and the group who rejects the Lord and His teachings is demonstrated to us as a difference between types of soil. And this soil is itself a symbol of the heart of man. The seed that is given to us from God is always the best of the best. The word of God can never be second rate. But what happens to the word of God once it has entered into our heart? Does it find a safe, fertile environment for growth? Or does the seed of the word encounter soil that has not been softened and cleared of weeds and thorns?

We can say that all of the Christian journey of life can be boiled down to this parable. What do we do with the word of God? Indeed, Our Lord tells us that everyone must unequivocally fall into one of these categories. We might gain a lot by asking ourselves, “which type of soil is like my heart?” And we should be willing to answer this question in an honest way. If we don’t answer it honestly or we’re worried about the answer, we won’t be able to properly address the problems or shortcomings we find. It would be like meeting a doctor when you happen to feel sick and then when the doctor asks you how you are feeling, you reply “I feel just fine, Doc”, because you are worried about the treatment. Well, if we are worried by the treatment, how can we ever be made well? If we are going to worry, we ought to worry not about the treatment but about what will happen to our illness if it goes untreated.

Each of the soils in the Lord’s parable offer us a type of person or a type of faith. Perhaps we have a very superficial faith. We might say that we believe in Jesus but we don’t actually follow His teachings, or worse yet, we might not even know His teachings because we never read the gospels and studied them. Perhaps we go through the motions of coming to the services and even saying our daily prayers. Or perhaps we are joyful Christians but our faith is not strong enough to carry us through the various trials and temptations that may come our way. If your faith is only as good as your situation, that faith is destined to fail you because it is not based on Christ who is our only rock and shelter in this life. It is instead based on the situations and circumstances of life. Or perhaps yours is like the soil that shares its space with the thorns. We might have faith and that faith might be genuinely good but that faith is always struggling to go deeper, always struggling to really grow and bear fruit, always on the verge of death. Why? Because the soil is shared with the thorns, which are the cares and riches and pleasures of this life. If my heart is burdened with cares, and riches and possessions, it can become nearly impossible to focus my heart on God and the things of His kingdom. As the Lord says “No man can serve two masters.” For all intents and purposes, it is as if we already have our own kingdom here and now. We love our life and all the stuff we have in this life. So we neglect the true, eternal joy that only Christ can give us. We forget that everything else is going to pass away. We can’t take any of our possessions with us when we depart this life. Only the things of God will matter, only the fruit that we have collected and possessed in our spiritual life will remain.

How can we honestly assess where we are and move in the right direction, towards Christ? We have to ask ourselves honestly “What or who do I love?” And how will we know the honest answer to that question? One way is to examine our schedules as well as our budgets. Perhaps there is no greater indicator of what we love than the way we spend our time and the way we spend our financial resources. So take some time and reflect on these matters and if possible, adjust them so that you spend more time and energy focused on God and the things of God. You will never waste any of your effort or energy if your life is focused in this way. Because you will be investing in the garden of your heart and this will bring forth divine, precious fruit from God. Unlike the stock market and the investments of the world, this investment carries little risk but many rewards.

If you love God, you spend time with Him, both at home and in the Church. The same way as a man should act toward a wife that he claims to love or that a woman should act toward the children that she claims to love. Love is not merely a word but an activity of one’s presence. We enter into His presence through prayer, both private and corporate.

In addition, if we love God and the things of God we should look at our budget and examine it. We should find ways to trim our budget of things that are unnecessary or unprofitable to our spiritual life, to our relationship with the Lord of our lives. We should then redirect those funds towards tithing and almsgiving, not out of a sense of guilt, but out of a deep sense of gratitude for all that God has given us and as a testament to the fact that we understand that God is the source of all of our blessings and even of life itself. When we examine our lives in this way, we will no doubt find things that we can change and those things will help transform our hearts from being poor soil to being exceedingly fertile.

God out of His love has given us His word as seed, as potential. It is our repentance that softens the ground and allows the seeds to take root. It is our ascetic discipline that removes the thorns and it is our acts of love and charity that help fertilize the seed of God’s word. And then something beautiful begins to happen. The seed of the word moves by grace, from potential to actual fruit. The seed finds its purpose fulfilled when it finds a good place to dwell within us. This will not happen overnight though. Much like any successful harvest, it will take diligence and patience. But God’s promises are true.

May the Lord help us to struggle like the saints, so that we might become a dwelling place that is worthy of the Lord! Glory be to God Forever AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (7:11-16)

We sometimes have the feeling that the gospel texts don’t relate to us, but nothing could be further from the truth. The gospel story revolves around life and death. The gospels speak of life and death but they take life and death to a whole new level. The Lord shows us that it is not the physical death which is the most important consideration of our life. Rather, it is the spiritual death that is our chief concern. Yet, the Lord remains intimately aware of our personal individual situations and our physical needs as well. He aims to heal us spiritually but also physically and emotionally.

We hear in today’s gospel that the Lord went to a city called Nain. The hebrew dictionary tells us that this means beauty. Of course there is no way to imagine what beauty would be seen at the gate of that city on that particular day as the Lord passed through it. It happened that as the Lord was traveling with His disciples and a great crowd, they came across a funeral procession. We are told that this was a large crowd who accompanied a widow, who had lost her only son.

It is hard for us to imagine her situation or her mindset at this darkest hour of her life. She had lost her husband, the love of her life, although we are not sure exactly how long she had been a widow. But in her husbands death there was still the consolation of a grown son. Within her son she could see her husband. She was reminded of him. Even more, he took over the duties of providing for his mother. That is what a good son does for his mother. He looks after and takes care of the one who lived to look after him and raise him. Now we find this woman in the depths of despair as she has lost her beloved son. At this point we might question God in the way that modern people often do and say “why would a good and loving God allow such an awful thing to happen?” The answer is not easy to find. Death and corruption, suffering and evil are part of our world. They are part of our reality. The woman was facing these harsh realities but little did she know that she would come face to face with a new reality.

Our Lord Jesus Christ offers us a new reality. In this new reality, the old and the dying is swallowed up by newness and life. St. Luke tells us that He had great compassion on her. He knew her situation intimately. We often say “why does God allow awful things to happen in my life? Why doesn’t God care about me?” Today’s gospel reading is a reminder that the God sees everything and does care. It is also a reminder that His work happens on His time and no other. The widow was in the depth of her anguish and sadness. She had no idea what was in store for her. She had no idea who was coming towards her. She had no idea that God was already on His way to help her.

How was corruption and death swept away that day? How did darkness give way to light? How did despair become joy? The Lord used two ways; His touch and His word.

Let’s begin with His word: We are told that God created the heavens and the earth and all of creation by the power of His Word. We remember that the Lord calls forth Lazarus from the grave by His word. In His word there is tremendous power and life. My brothers and sisters, these words are also available to us. We can inhale the word of God through the study of the Bible and most importantly the study of the gospels. If a Christian does not study the scriptures, he is dying internally. If he is studying them seriously, he is being renewed in the spirit of his mind, as St. Paul says. If his mind is only filled with news and politics and trash tv and Facebook feeds, he is withering away and dying. But have faith in God and in His word. This word gave life to Lazarus and to the widow’s son. Let there be no doubt that Christ our God desires to give you this life through His word. Cling to it as you would to a life-raft in the middle of the sea.

But since the Lord desires to richly pour out His life upon us, He has done much more than give us His word. There is much more to knowing God than reading the gospels and studying the scriptures. These are often hallmarks of knowing God in according to the Protestant tradition. What is missing however is our knowing God through His touch. St. Luke tells us that the Lord touched the bier, the casket that held the widow’s son. He was not off in some distant place. He was there with the funeral procession. He was there with the grieving widow. He became a real, tangible human being. He took flesh and became man and dwelt with us.

According to our Orthodox teaching, God remains with us in a tangible manner through the sacraments of the Church. The sacraments connect us to the living power of Christ through matter which has been blessed by God. When we receive the sacraments, we receive the touch of Christ! When we offer the sacrament of Unction we are offering oil that has been touched by the Spirit of God and which is placed on the individual by the touch of the priest who represents Christ. When we come for confession we receive the hands of the priest upon our head as he touches us with the sign of the cross and asks the Lord to forgive and absolve us.

When we are baptized, we are immersed into the water that has been touched by the Holy Spirit and also by the breath and the hand of the priest. When we receive the Holy Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, we touch and are touched by Christ Himself. He unites with us both physically and spiritually. He gives us life by giving us Himself.

Christ is present with us even in the midst of our sufferings and trials just as He was present for the widow. He is present because the Church is the physical presence of Christ. St. Paul calls the Church, the body of Christ. The sacraments are a sign of His life-giving activity among His people.

When we receive Christ’s touch and His word, we become full of life, full of Christ who is life. He touched the casket and the resting place of the dead man was transformed into a place of resurrection. He commanded the young man to rise and death was swept away. It became a distant memory. What happened to the widow’s son was a shadow of the new reality offered to us by Jesus. What the Lord has done for this young man, He offers to each of us; He takes our lives and our situations which often seem bleak and He transforms them just as he transformed the casket from a place of death into a place of new life. He offers us a new reality through the Church. Physical and spiritual resurrection that begins now and is fulfilled in the Kingdom which is to come.

We, the people of God are here together and together we wait for God. Have faith that God is drawing near to you even in your darkest moments. Have faith that God knows the details of your life and has compassion on you. Even if you feel dead in your faith, have faith. Have faith and draw near to God through His word and through His healing and saving touch which is found in the Church. Then we will know the Lord’s presence and have our sorrow turned to joy and proclaim with the people in the funeral procession “God has visited His people!” And Glory be to God forever AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke 6:31-36

There is a powerful teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ that is well known as the “golden rule.” Our reading today begins with this golden rule. Our Lord Jesus says “As you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.” This teaching has the power to change your life, but like all of the teaching of the Lord Jesus, it only happens if one puts it into practice.

Every one of us has certain pet peeves. Each one of us is annoyed by the certain actions of others. Every one of us expects a certain standard of treatment. The genius of this teaching is that it takes that standard of treatment that we would like or appreciate and the Lord forces us to apply that standard to others. Wow.

If you don’t like it when others get angry with you, don’t get angry with others. If you don’t like it when others yell at you, don’t yell at others. If you don’t like it when others lie to you, why do you lie to others? If you would like others to share with you, then share with them. If you would like others not to speak evil of you or gossip about you, then you should also refrain from speaking evil or gossiping about others. If you would like others to treat you with kindness and respect, then treat others with kindness and respect. If you would like others to show you love, then show love to others.

Each of these principles points us to a very important fact. You are not special. That’s right. You are not special. Every man, woman and child who has ever lived throughout all of the history of humanity is just as important as you are. How is that possible? Because each and every person was created in the image of God. Each of them was given life by Him. So in fact when we treat the others in the way that we would like to be treated, we are actually showing extreme reverence and gratitude to God for His own handiwork.

It goes further than that. The Lord concludes His teaching today by saying the words that no one else dared to utter “love your enemies.” This is one of the primary ways that we as Christians can stand out from the world, by our practice of radical love. We need it now more than ever perhaps. The rise of social media and the internet has helped to foment and stir up political discourse to a new and terrible level. Truth has gone out the window and all that is left is the search for power, or so it seems. In all of that frenzy over right and left, Democrat vs Republican, liberal vs conservative, we had better take seriously these words of the Lord Jesus, not to see people by their political orientation or their ideology or their worldview, but rather to see them through the lens of the cross of Jesus Christ. The cross allows us to make sense of everything because it highlights for us the immutable law of the love of God for each of us.

Where did you read or hear that Jesus died for only one group of people? Where was it said that Christ’s death redeemed only one privileged class? His love is universal love for all of humanity, all of His creation. And He proves that what He teaches, He has fulfilled in practice. He tells us to do something that seems impossible, to love our enemies. And He shows us how to do it by patiently accepting to suffer and be killed at the hands of His enemies. Through His suffering and death, He did more than demonstrate His love. He poured it out upon creation. He took what was evil and He redeemed it and made it good, through His love. This is our only way forward as Christians.

St. Ambrose adds to this by saying “What Christ said in word, he proved also by example. Indeed, when he was on the cross, he said in reference to his persecutors who were slandering him, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing,” so that he might pray for his slanderers, although he could have forgiven them himself.” Hereafather of the Church shows us that one of the ways that we show love to our enemies is to pray for them. Prayer is one of the ways that we direct our love towards God and towards others. When was the last time that you were angry with someone or some group? When was the last time that you prayed for them with fervent love for them and for their salvation? That was the example of the Lord while in the midst of excruciating suffering upon the cross, how can it not be our example?

I have mentioned this before but I must mention it again. St. Siouan, not so long ago wrote “He who does not love their enemies, does not know God.” That is something we must take seriously. We can’t put it off because we don’t know when we will go to meet the Lord.  This isn’t easy…but it is possible with God’s help, so always ask God to help you love your enemies. Whatever we lack, we can request from God, who gives us generously.

Life is very short. Too short for hatred and grudges.  Too short for false divisions.  The devil divides, but only the Lord unites. Only the Lord grants us liberty and this liberty is the freedom from anger, sin and corruption. The Lord bought us such freedom through His love for us. Each of us must live by that rule of love that was demonstrated by the Lord, in order to fully know that love in the person of Jesus Christ. This is our purpose in life.  Glory be to God forever AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. John. (3:13-17)

One of the ideas that has guided modern anti-religious thinking is the idea that God has multiple personalities. That God is sometimes love and sometimes wrath. This has caused an unhealthy fear of God and has often caused people to dismiss the “Christian” God as being petty or childish or unstable. For instance some teach that if someone accepts Jesus Christ, then God loves him. But if he rejects Christ, then God hates him and moves to punish and destroy him. This has led to unbalanced views of heaven and hell and the afterlife, but most importantly it has caused people to be unsure of their relationship with God or to reflect hostility towards God since they believe that God is already hostile towards them. If we believe in this type of God, we are left confused or angered by the unpredictable personality of God. It then becomes no wonder that people have fled from the Christian faith and that the typical modern western man or woman no longer considers Christian faith as an integral part of our society and culture. These are the ways in which our theology or dogma have a deep effect on our worldview and thinking from the top down. What you believe about God affects your whole world.

In today’s gospel reading which is given to us on this, the Sunday before the Feast of the elevation of the Cross, we are reminded of the reality of this God whom we serve. John writes “For God sent His Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” So John tells us that the Lord Jesus Christ did not become a man who dwelt among us and lived our life and experienced our pain and suffering because He hated us or wanted bad things for the human race. In fact it is the opposite, He came to us and was present with us because of His deep love for us. We see this again in the life of the Lord Jesus as He does not impose His beliefs on others or cause them physical pain or use force in order to coerce them into faith and belief, no! Instead we see that He teaches out and works openly and invites people to come to Him.

It is not that God forces us at all. Out of His love for us, He opens to us the opportunity to choose Him and to choose His way over the ways of the world (which are the ways of death and corruption). Yet, even in the life of the Lord Jesus we see that people would not always accept Him or His teaching. Sometimes they would reject him and then we saw the one thing that was unimaginable. People turned on God and attacked His Son. Humanity repaid God’s love by betraying Him. Far be it from God to condemn the world, in fact it was the world who condemned His Son. How much love does God have for us, that He would allow such a terrible and hateful thing to occur? We have no way to quantify such a deep love.

St. John writing in his first epistle says this about the subject “God is love.” He is telling us something about God’s character, God’s personality and even God’s essence. In a manner of speaking, love is in the very fibers of God’s being. There is no place for anything other than love within Him! When we say that God is love, we are saying that His love is perfect, eternal and unconditional. God will always love you. There is nothing that you can do that will change this pillar of our universe. God IS love.

We see this love come to complete fruition when we see the Son of God hanging upon the cross. In effect, this is the way in which God says to the world “Now you see just how much I have loved the world.” St. Paul writing in today’s epistle had this to say “But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This is our glory because it fundamentally changes the way that we understand the world, theCreator of the world and our place in the world.

Everything is seen differently when we begin to understand God’s love. We even understand our lives differently through the lens of the cross of Jesus Christ. We understand through seeing the cross, but even more, through living the cross. It is one thing to see Christ from the outside, it is another thing to put on Christ and carry the cross.We begin to see that life is not about comfort but about struggle. We begin to see that doing the right things does not always mean that you are rewarded with comfort and happiness. Often it means thatyou will have to really suffer. That is part of what it is to be a Christian who lives according to the law of love. To loveis often to be used, humiliated, disgraced, hurt or even killed. Many of you have experienced such pains and trials.Why do you think that we remember the Martyrs so often? Because they have demonstrated to us what it means to put on the Lord Jesus and take up His cross with love. But my brothers and sisters, if we recognize that men and women like us have been able to embody and demonstrate such love, we can never forget that God’s love far exceeds any concept of love that we might understand. His love for us is perfect.

This love brings us to life and gives our life new meaning. Even difficult things and painful circumstances become beautiful when they flow from our love for God and when we attempt to live His love for others. So this is exactly what we try to do on a daily basis. We don’t simply go around in a careful way, trying to avoid all kinds of pain and struggle. That is no kind of life. We embrace holy struggles. We struggle to be loving to others even when they treat us poorly. We struggle not to condemn others, even when we see them sinning. We struggle to be faithful and dilligent to our work and our families and our husbands and wives. We struggle not to get swept away with the currents of the world. We struggle to be honest even when we see our classmates and co-workers being dishonest. We struggle to live holy lives.

We carry our crosses with the understanding that each one of us can multiply the love of Christ in the world. We carry them bravely, knowing that God is able to raise us up because He alone has conquered death! We carry the crosses that He allows in our lives, no matter how difficult they might beand He promises that we will share in Hisresurrection. All of this is given to us by grace because He first loved us and gave up His life for us, to Christ our God is due all glory, together with His Father and the Holy Spirit. AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (22:2-14)

Again and again I am moved by the way that Our Lord Jesus Christ has refused to leave us ignorant about the things of God and the things of His kingdom. Because He loves us, He opens the blinds and gives us a glimpse into the most critical issues for the people of God.

Last week we heard the parable of the vineyard and this week we hear that “the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a marriage feast for his son.” There can be no doubt that the king in the parable is God the Father. The son is Our Lord Jesus Christ. The feast to which God is calling us is the celebration of the marriage union of the Lord Jesus to His bride. St. Paul tells us that the bride of Christ is the Church. The Lord consummated this marriage by uniting Himself to His bride upon the holy wood of the cross. He became one with His bride and took her infirmities upon Himself. In return for the death that He took for our sakes, He gave His bride, His own life and resurrection!

Each and every Sunday we come together as the bride of God, the Church, in order to celebrate this union of God with man. This transformation of death into life. We celebrate the swallowing of despair and the rebirth of hope. Each Sunday is Pascha. Each Sunday is entrance into the kingdom of God. There is in a very tangible sense, a way in which we live from Sunday to Sunday. That is actually the structure of the services and the weeks of the Church calendar.

Sunday, the day of the resurrection, is the day where we fully commemorate and enter into the marriage feast with our bridegroom, the One whom we love and long for. Christ our bridegroom loves us, His bride, to such a degree that He does not want us to be apart from Him. Like any sane and healthy husband longs to be with his wife and to grow ever closer to her. The Lord Jesus fulfills this deep desire for His bride and her deep desire for Him by offering us food to fulfill our deepest hunger, and drink to quench our deepest thirst. He doesn’t offer us food and drink that will only fill us up for a short time but will then leave us hungry and thirsty again. He offers us to take and eat of His body and His blood. He gives us of Himself because it is only by consuming the One who is eternal and limitless that one can be satisfied. But there is something more to this. He gives us of His body and blood in order to fully unite us to one another. The Lord teaching in the gospel of St. John says “He who eats my flesh and drinks by blood abides in Me and I in him.” The best and finest way that we unite to Jesus Christ is through partaking of holy communion. We receive the body and blood of Christ and become united to the One who united Himself to us by dying our death. In receiving Him, we are consumed by the One whom we have consumed.

It is a great gift that each Sunday we hear the word of the gospel. When the priest or the deacon comes out to read the gospel all of the people stand attentively and no one even moves while the gospel is being read. We do this out of reverence for the Lord and His word. It is an even greater gift that each Sunday, the Lord is given to us as bread and wine, the mystical body and blood. We should be even more attentive and stand reverently (if we have the strength) during the distribution of communion. We are present at the feast and the Son of the King is in our midst. We have to be reverent, much more reverent than we are during the reading of the gospel or the blessing of the priest. This is our reality. Often I don’t notice things during communion because I’m trying to be very careful while distributing the gifts but this is something that we should do as best we can. It is a sign of our deep gratitude for what is happening and a sign of our love for God who is giving Himself to His people. And love is the crucial factor in the parable.

We notice that there is a man who has been invited to the marriage feast and yet when the king arrives he sees that the man is not clothed properly. He has no marriage garment. The king has him thrown out of the banquet. Why? St. Gregory the great tells us that the garment which the man was lacking was love. In a very real sense, everyone is invited to the kingdom but not everyone will be dressed properly to stay and celebrate. St. Augustine writes “All the faithful know the story of the marriage of the king’s son, and his feast. They know that the Lord’s table is open to all who are willing correctly to receive it. But it is important that each one examines how he approaches, even when he is not forbidden to approach.” He is saying that just because you can approach to receive communion doesn’t mean that you always should approach. We have to prepare for it with confession (at least a few times a year), we have to prepare with heartfelt repentance. We have to prepare by showing acts of mercy and charity. We have to prepare through cultivating a life of prayer and not merely outward motions or intellectual belief.

What makes our appearance acceptable to God is not our outward dress or our hairdo or makeup. God is not concerned with the outward appearance, but with the things of the heart. Where is your heart? What fills your heart? Are we already fantasizing about coffee and donuts or what we will do after the liturgy? Or are we focused and present and full of love right now during this marriage feast which gives us a taste of the eternal marriage feast to which we are called? Marriage means that you devote all of yourself to the one that you love.  We are here at the feast, we have accepted the invitation, don’t stop now! Go forward in you relationship, don’t let it get stagnant. Pour out your heart to God so that He can clothe you with the garment of His love. It is when you receive this love, that you truly are brought back to life. Then we won’t come to the feast as mere guests or observersbut Christ our God will welcome us to enter as His beloved family. He says to us “everything that you see here in My kingdom is for you because I love you and desire to share it all with you.” May the Lord help us to walk in a manner worthy of His holy invitation. Glory be to God Forever AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (21:33-42)

Today we hear the parable of the vineyard. We are told that there was a man who planted the vineyard and along with this vineyard he built and provided everything that was necessary for the vineyard to thrive and do well.

He decided to allow tenant farmers to lease the vineyard and to work this land and take care of the vineyard. This was done with the understanding that one day they would bear fruit and share the fruit of the land with the owner. We are told that the season for fruit drew near and the owner of the vineyard sent servants to get the fruit. How did the tenant farmers treat the servants that came from the one who owned the vineyard and allowed them to work there? They took the servants and beat one of them, killed one of them and stoned another. Killing and stoning are both mentioned because stoning was a particularly shameful way to die and was usually reserved for those who had done wrong or committed transgressions according to some aspect of the Mosaic law.

How did the master of the vineyard respond to this? He sent even more servants in the hopes that he might get a different result. But it was no use. The result was the same. And finally the master decided to send his own son while he said to himself “They will respect my son.”

The Lord told this parable to teach the people and His own disciples about what was really happening around them. The Lord saw the religious authorities of the day, the Pharisees and Sadducees as the tenant farmers who worked the land that they did not themselves own. It was the land that they received in pristine condition, already built up with all that was necessary for the bearing of fruit. They received the law of Moses and the priesthood. They received the temple and all that was contained therein. They received the teaching of God. But none of that changed their disposition. In fact their disposition became worse. God had allowed them to work and serve in order that they might bear fruit. What was that fruit?

It was the fruit of repentance, which is love. The fruit would be seen in the changed lives of the people. The fruit would be seen in people who were brought from their old ways and directed towards love for God and their neighbors as well as the poor and suffering. But the tenants had nothing to give to the people because they didn’t first cultivate love for God and for their neighbors within themselves. In fact they so lacked love that they became hostile towards the Master who had allowed them to serve on His land and those whom He had sent to them, namely the holy prophets.

God began by sending His prophets to teach and warn and correct the people. Most of the prophets were not received with open arms but were driven away or killed. What was the message of the prophets? To cease from worshipping false idols and the things of the world and focus our lives on repenting, loving God and showing mercy to our neighbors and those in need.

Finally the Lord Jesus Christ begins to predict or foreshadow His own sufferings and death when He says in the parable that the master of the vineyard said “They will respect my son.” And of course they would have respected the son of the master had they been decent, good and upright people but they were not. They were corrupt to the core. Instead of looking at the son as a representative of the father, and treating him with utmost respect and gratitude for all that his father had done for them, they looked on the son with scorn and hatred. They said to themselves “This is the heir, come let us kill him and have his inheritance.” And so they took him and cast him out of the vineyard which was his birthright and they killed him.

All of this the Lord tells us in order to show us the reality of the situation. God sent His only begotten Son to us and He was treated shamefully and unjustly because of what He represented to the Pharisees and Sadducees as well as those in authority; a threat to their power and ability to rule over the people that God had given to them to care for. The problem is that these were not their people. They were God’s people. God taught and nurtured and loved His people throughout the ages in order to prepare them and bring them to Himself. Finally, when there was no other perfect way, in the fullness of time, Our heavenly Father sent His only begotten Son Jesus Christ to us. He did this knowing beforehand, that His Son would suffer just like the prophets did, but even worse.  He would be hung shamefully, from a tree, the sign of one who is accursed according to the law. He was betrayed by the very people who should have embraced Him and venerated the very ground upon which He walked.

Our Lord tells us that the master of the vineyard will put those miserable men to death and will let out the vineyard to others who will give the fruit in due season. The apostles were given the priesthood of Jesus Christ, and have passed this down through the laying on of hands which has fallen to us. In this way, we who are responsible for the people of God are the tenant farmers and the vineyard is the Church. God the Father is the master who holds us accountable. It is not a lighthearted matter but a matter of spiritual life and death. My brother clergy and I will be held accountable for what we have taught and what we have failed to teach you. But most importantly we will be held accountable for whether or not we have taught you to truly love God and love your neighbor as if he is Christ in your midst.

Our Lord comes to each one of us every day.  Sometimes He comes as a thought to pray.  Sometimes He comes in the person who is needy or sick.  Sometimes He comes to us in the word of the Scriptures and especially in the gospel.  Sometimes He comes to us as bread and wine.  But how do we receive Him? Do we cast him aside and live our own lives as we see fit? Do we crucify Him again by falling back into sin and rebellion?  Or do we receive Him with open arms?  Do we show Him honor and gratitude by bearing the holy fruit of love?

Nothing is more important in our lives than overwhelming love for God and for His Son. This love can be cultivated through intense prayer, and through the humble preparation for and participation in the holy mysteries as we do at every liturgy.

Our love is also cultivated through our love for others (but not just our friends and family). St. Maximos the confessor says “He he who does not love his neighbor fails to keep the commandment, and so cannot love the Lord.”

This is the foundation of all that we aim to do and this foundation of love is built upon the love of Jesus Christ for the whole world. Through this love, He who was the stone rejected by the builders became the headstone upon which our whole faith and Church have been built. To Him alone be the glory, dominion and worship with His Father and the Holy Spirit. AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (19:16-26)

In each gospel reading we come face to face with the mind and the heart of God. That is not a light thing. When we pay attention to the gospel text we should rightly be shaken to the core. By shaking us to the core, God can ensure that our foundations are strong and ready to be built upon in the right way.

The rich young man that came to the Lord Jesus, came with the right question in his mind. But he had no place for the right answer in his heart. Everyone in this room should have this man’s question as one of the guiding questions of their life “What must I do to have eternal life?” Every day is a new chance to ask this question and to work towards that goal. Why is this such an important goal? What is the big deal?

The big deal is that our earthly life is short and everything in our life, everything that we have worked so hard for or invested so much in, will fall right through our grasp. It will be counted as nothing unless it is an investment towards the kingdom and towards our life in that kingdom and with the King of life! St. Augustine writes,

“For this life is loved, whatever its quality; and however troubled it is, however wretched, people are afraid to end it. Hence we should see, we should consider, how much eternal life is to be loved, when this miserable life that must at some time be ended is so loved. Consider, brothers, how much that life is to be loved when it is a life you never end. You love this life, where you work so much, run, are busy, pant. In this busy life the obligations can scarcely be counted: sowing, plowing, working new land, sailing, grinding, cooking, weaving. And after all this hard work your life comes to an end. Look at what you suffer in this wretched life that you so love. And do you think that you will always live and never die? Temples, rocks, marbles, all reinforced by iron and lead, still fall. And a person thinks that he will never die? Learn therefore, brothers, to seek eternal life, when you will not endure these things but will reign with God forever.”

The question posed to the Lord was a good one. The response to the Lord’s answer was not what the man expected. But why should it be what we expect in the first place? When you come to God and ask for answers, you should be prepared for God’s answer to shake you to the core because God is in the business of turning people’s lives upside down in order to turn their hearts and minds right side up.

How does the Lord do this for the young man? He asks him if he has kept the ten commandments. The man replies that he has. Next the Lord tells the man the one thing that the man did not expect, the one thing that would certainly shake him to the core. The Lord Jesus says “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come follow me.”

At this point many of you are probably saying to yourselves “thank God I’m not rich, I guess my path into eternal life will be easy.” But I want you to know that while the focus has been material wealth, the words of the Lord Jesus most certainly apply more broadly than that. We can be rich in many ways and many of those forms of wealth can keep us from loving God fully. They can be things that consume our hearts and minds and time and energy. Some people are wealthy with money, others are wealthy in their gifts or talents, some are wealthy in their physical beauty or their intellectual abilities. All of these forms of wealth can keep us from inheriting eternal life because we use them to build up our pride and arrogance and not to build our love and service towards God.

Preaching about this passage, St. John Chrysostom says, “Christ demonstrates that there is a significant reward for the wealthy who can practice self-denial.” Our holy Orthodox faith teaches us to practice self-denial. This is why we learn to fast not only for great fasts but every Wednesday and Friday. We learn to give alms to the poor and to delay our desires for instant gratification. We learn to pray and keep vigil instead of merely spending our time trying to be entertained. All of these are forms of self-denial that can be directed to focusing on and following Jesus Christ.

Can we imagine that this rich man went away sad? People around us are spending their lives and their strength trying to accumulate wealth and this man who was already wealthy, went away sad. But there is something else, he did not simply go away sad, he also went away poor. Why was he poor? Because he had been offered the chance to follow Jesus and His disciples and he walked away from that chance. He walked away from the living treasure out of his love for things that can be stolen and lost and ultimately are left behind one day.

My hope and prayer is that each one of us doesn’t walk away from Christ, sad and poor. The Lord tells us that it is truly difficult for a rich man to be saved. But with God’s helpit is possible to leave behind the perceived riches of our lives and direct ourselves to the Master. “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” St. John Chrysostom says “If you also want to learn the way and how the impossible becomes possible, listen. He did not make this statement that what is impossible for man is possible for God merely so you could relax and do nothing and leave it all to God. No, he said this so you could understand the importance of calling upon God to give you help in this rigorous contest and that you might more readily approach his grace.”

Sowe have to take steps in the right direction and we do this through ourspiritualpractice and ourway of life and even in the way that we approach and prepare to receive the body and blood of Christ here at the Divine Liturgy.

Let us work and humbly ask God to work within each of us so that we might enter into the true life of communion that never ends.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (18:23-35)

We would not know a single thing about God or His kingdom had it not been shared with us in His great love for us. God did not want us to be ignorant people who walk around uninformed and unenlightened. God did not want us to be blind or empty. He wanted us to be full of joy and our joy is to know God, to know His ways and to know His kingdom.

Today’s parable is yet another example of the generosity that the Lord Jesus Christ has for us as He teaches us about the kingdom of heaven. These are not things that the Lord must teach us. No one is forcing Him to do so. He does them because He is merciful to us and He wants us to be with Him in His kingdom. He wants to share the kingdom with each of us. In teaching us about the kingdom we are also being reminded or put on notice “This is not our kingdom.”

What aspect of the kingdom does the Lord share with us in today’s parable? His focus is forgiveness. If we pay attention we find many examples of this teaching about forgiveness throughout the gospels. Perhaps if something is mentioned multiple times, we should open our ears as well as our hearts and minds and hear what it is that the Lord is saying to us. In today’s reading we are told that the kingdom of heaven is to be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. Upon finding that his servant could not repay his debt, he ordered the servant to be sold with his wife and kids in order to repay the debt. But something powerful happened! The servant who was about to be sold with his wife and children dropped to his knees and begged for patience. He asked for the king to be merciful to him and to his family. We can imagine such a scene, a man at the end of his rope, pleading, begging and crying out of despair. And how does the king respond? He responds by forgiving all of the debt and releasing the servant. So far so good. The king in this story is the Lord God. And we are the servants who owe a great debt to God. Such a debt as can never be repaid. Although it is God’s prerogative to sell us or allow us to be sent to another master (that is the evil one), He graciously chooses to forgive us all of our debt. So far so good.

But now comes the trouble. That same servant who was just released from all of his mountain of debt, was walking along the way and he found one of his fellow servants who owed him just one hundred denarii. And the anger inside him welled up and he grabbed that other servant by the throat and said “pay what you owe.” So the man who owed the hundred denarii fell to his knees and asked the man to be patient and merciful to him. How would this servant who had himself owed ten thousand talents to his king and was forgiven respond? He responded by taking the fellow servant and threw him into prison until he could pay the debt. This tells us that there is a problem with us when we ask God to forgive us from the bottom of our hearts but we are unwilling to forgive others who ask for our forgiveness from the bottom of their hearts.

The Lord Jesus tells us that the one who does not forgive another is essentially putting that person into a type of prison. And I have experienced this firsthand. We feel imprisoned because someone is angry with us and they refuse to properly forgive us. Each of us has been in that situation. We feel helpless because we have done our part to try and right the situation and have been apologetic (even when we may not have had much to apologize for in the first place), but those who are angry hold all the power. They can choose to remain angry or they can choose to forgive. In addition to making us feel imprisoned, those who are angry also put themselves into a type of prison of their own making.

This type of behavior is problematic for at least two reasons. The first is that each one of us is human and none of us is perfect yet. Since we are not perfect it is reasonable for us to assume that at some point or another, we will be the ones who are in need of mercy and forgiveness from others. But the second point is much more important than the first. We each owe a great debt to God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We accumulated such a debt of sin that it reaches high into the sky like the tower of Babel. Our mountain of sin is so great that it is like the peak of Mt. Everest. We cannot even see it from the ground. It is so high it reaches above the clouds.

And what could we do with such a mountain of sin? How could we repay the great debt that we owed to God? There was no way possible. Each one of us would have been bound by our sin and sold to the devil. But God in His abundant love for us did not want to see us bound as prisoners. He paid the debt for all of humanity and all of it’s sins with the sacrifice of His own Son. In return this sacrifice offered us true freedom from bondage and in fact the Lord’s sacrifice elevates us from mere servants of the King to members of His royal family.

What does this mean for me practically? It means that God’s forgiveness is not unconditional. God has generously forgiven us with a condition; That we must forgive each and every person that wrongs us in our life. In fact we say this very thing each and every time we say the Lord’s prayer. Study the words! Remember that this is not our kingdom. But what we do or fail to do here will have everlasting consequences. We should not approach this simply from fear of God, but even more so, from gratitude and a place of joy. We should say “If God has forgiven me for so much that I have done wrong, how could I possibly hold a grudge against people who have done so little wrong to me?” That is the message. Our forgiveness of others is a key that unlocks others from their prisons of regret, doubt and shame. It allows them to move on with life in a productive and healthy manner without emotional and spiritual roadblocks and detours. This is the mentality that is necessary to be sane in a world full of insanity, anger and misguided searches for justice. Forgiveness is key to our salvation and the salvation of our families. What a difference it makes when wives forgive their husbands and husbands their wives. What a difference when parents forgive their children and children their parents. What a difference when brothers and sisters forgive each other and never hold any grudges or keep any scores. No matter how difficult it might be, find a way to forgive and the doors of the kingdom of God will be opened wide for you. And most importantly, forgive me, the chief of sinners. AMEN.

Source: Sermons