The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (6:14-21)

“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” These are the words of our Lord God and savior Jesus Christ given to us today as we are now at the edge and preparing to leap into Great and Holy Lent. Our Lord has this amazing way of reorienting our thinking and even removing our blindness in order to help us to see. He prepares us for this great and holy season with an important reminder. Forgiveness and fasting are not simply “religious observances” or “traditions.” They are tools that help us gain and regain heavenly treasures. Lent isn’t actually about suffering or denial. It is about moving our hearts to treasure and appreciate things that matter and those things have an eternal significance and weight.

Our lenten disciplines are meant to give us laser-like focus on God and His kingdom, which shall not pass away. We are among the most productive people in the history of the world. Yet our Lord continually speaks to us and cries out saying “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth. Where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal.” Reorient yourselves. Change your minds. Repent. Take the tools give by to us by the Son of God and work hard, work tirelessly. Become the most productive person in the world…but produce something worthy of the name “Christian”. Toil, labor and struggle…but only for that which is eternal, glorious, and heavenly. Our bank accounts and savings which are here, cannot possibly help us in our next and permanent home. So the Lord tells us to struggle to save in our heavenly savings account.

What are the ways that are mentioned here by the Lord?

He begins by reminding us that forgiveness is a key foundation for beginning your savings account. Why is this the case? Because when you hold something against someone else, you are holding a debt against them. This debt is worse than all others including monetary interest (which God hates). This debt is worse than all the others because it is a debt that the other individual can never repay. Why can they never repay the debt? Because you won’t give them a way to repay it. This is outrageous and unacceptable in God’s eyes. God does not like it when we are unfair and unjust to others and we are the definition of unfair and unjust, when we do not forgive others quickly.

What happens to us when we do not forgive others?

God is disgusted when He sees this type of behavior. It forces God to remember all of our sins, all of our wrongdoings, and all of our evil because He does not, He cannot recognize us as His own children. We are like the one who was caught trying to sneak into the wedding without the appropriate wedding garments. If we have not been merciful and loving to others, we have not understood God’s mercy and love. This is ultimately a sign that we have rejected God’s love and mercy! Forgiveness is not something we’d like to do. It is one of the things that we have to do. It is a necessity for our salvation because salvation itself presupposes the forgiveness from God and the Lord Himself says “If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

My brothers and sisters, these are not games that we should play. There is a better way. Today is the start of our recommitment to God. Today is the day to refocus and set our priorities. We are God’s children, and we are each meant to be sources of hope for others. We offer others the hope of God’s love, His mercy and His forgiveness by reflecting and incarnating these characteristics. We don’t talk about them in theory. We live them and in living them faithfully we find that what was once forced now becomes inseperable from who we are. The Lord who loves us, desires that we should be eager to receive God’s treasures. He says to us “come and take from my treasures which are piled high up to the heavens. Come and take as much as you can carry. Everything that I have is yours!” We are encouraged to take and to fill our spiritual inheritance to the brim. Let us start with Forgiving others so that God will not hold any debts against us. Let us continue by building up our heavenly accounts through heartfelt prayer that is powerfully united with fasting. Let us work for these eternal treasures and by the grace of God we will rightly treasure Him who alone is eternal. To the eternal God be the glory, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (25:31-46)

The teachings of Our Lord, God and savior Jesus Christ are often quite difficult for us. In fact, it cannot be any other way since God is speaking to man. God is attempting to raise man from his earthly nature which makes him similar to the beasts, and He is trying to raise him to the level and stature which alone is God’s. We do not take lightly the idea that God desires to call us “sons and daughters.”

As the Church prepares us for the coming of the great and holy challenge, we are indeed challenged by the words of Christ. Sometimes this makes us uncomfortable. Why is God always challenging us? Why does God expect so much from us? Really, if we think about it, we should really be troubled if God didn’t challenge us and didn’t expect so much from us! In man made religion everything is geared towards the pleasure of those who are at the top. But in our Christian faith, everything presupposes that the one who is at the top is ready to become the least of all, even to die for all. As our Lord says “He who desires to become the greatest, must be the servant of all” and He also says “True love is to give ones life for his friends.”

In today’s gospel reading our lord challenges us, challenges every fiber of our being in fact. The challenge is how do we respond to those who are marginalized and struggling in our society? How do we respond to those who have dire needs? There are people in the world (and in our own communities) who are hungry, who are thirsty, who are strangers, who are naked, who are sick and who are in prison. No matter which of these situations we see others facing, we know that the person who is going through these afflictions is in need of help from somewhere. We are expecting help to come from God but my dear friends, God is expecting help to come from us!

It is not that helping others is just a nice thing to do, it is the rule by which each of us will be measured. It is true that the Lord is challenging us, but in His divine mercy He is also preparing us and warning us about the coming judgment and He is giving us a roadmap to His kingdom. The privilege of being a child of God is to do what the Lord Jesus Christ has done for all of humanity. He made the fallen state of humanity His burden. And by making us His burden, He entered into our struggles. In fact our Lord became all of these that are here mentioned. Our Lord was hungry and thirsty when He fasted. He was a stranger when He travelled from place to place. He was in prison on the night in which He was betrayed, or rather gave Himself up for the life of the world. He was naked and sick when He hung upon the tree of the cross and according to Isaiah the prophet “we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted” (Is 53:4). So God understands what it is to suffer and to be associated with the downcast and downtrodden in society, and He wants us to also understand and to spring into action.

But He goes even further, He multiplies the blessing of serving the poor and the struggling. He tells us that when we do this we are not simply serving those who are struggling, we are in fact serving the Lord Jesus Christ Himself! What a Lord and Master we serve! He bows low to identify with the least of our brethren and then raises our service so that it will be counted as service to Him, the King of glory! So what more can the Son of God do to convince us to serve others? Let us go out of our way to help others during the coming season of Great Lent. You may be surprised to find that when you disconnect from the computers and televisions, there are many people who can use your help, right in your community.

Let us try hard to bring the love and mercy of God to them and there can be no doubt that God will see our love and mercy and will multiply this much, much more in our lives, both here and at the great and awesome judgement. Glory be to God forever AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke 15:11-32

By now you know that we are firmly in the Pre-Lenten period. We are only two short weeks away from the start of the awesome and wondrous struggle that we call Great and Holy Lent. Here during this time before the great fast, the Church gives us of her milk in order to prepare us with a foundation upon which to build. She starts us off with nourishing milk in order that she might later give us meat. Last week we heard the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee. The lesson was a simple one: humility is the start of the positive spiritual path. Today we hear another of the Lord’s famous parables: The parable of the prodigal son.

This parable should be familiar to each of us. Not only because we have heard it from year to year over the course of our lives, but because the parable is about each of us. Our daily lives reflect this struggle that is symbolized by the prodigal son. We have been given everything we could ever need in life. The proof that this is indeed the case is that you are here, alive. Life itself is a gift from God. More than simply giving us life, the Lord has continually poured out His many gifts and blessings on each of us. The problem is that humanity is notoriously good at making idols of created things and ignoring the One who is the source of all things. Humanity is also notorious for using people for their benefits without attaching proper reverence and love to those who have benefitted us. The “casual” dating scene in today’s culture is a sign of this fallen concept of using others for the benefits they provide instead of engaging in a relationship which requires an investment of time, reverence and love.

The prodigal son used his birthright (which came from his father) and used his inheritance (which his father had earned) in order to rebel against this same father who was the source of these good things in his life. The prodigal was like a man who is given part ownership of a boat with others. Yet in his greed and desire to go in another direction, he decides to divide himself from the others by taking a saw to the boat and cutting off his portion. Little does he realize that he will only end up at the bottom of the sea because of his selfishness and short-sightedness.

This parable is about each of us. We have each been rebellious in our lives. We have each fought God in order to have freedom on our own terms. This is not unlike the teenager that argues with his or her parents imagining that the parents are the enemy when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. The parents love the child and attempt to do only what is good for the child. Our rebellion from God is the very definition of sin. What you might find interesting is that God does not want unhappy slaves, actually He wants us to be free. He has created us with a free will. He does not force us to act in a certain way. He does not force us into anything. He doesn’t force us because He doesn’t want us to be slaves but sons and daughters and friends. What is most interesting is that when we choose to rebel against God and His teachings and commandments in order to gain our freedom, the opposite happens. We gain our freedom from God but we end up as slaves to our own desires, slaves to sin and ultimately, we end up slaves to death which is the fruit of sin.

Yet this parable should comfort each of us even more than it convicts us. Even though we have each been rebellious against God, just as the prodigal son was, we can also take comfort in the fact that we can come to our senses, just as the prodigal son did. What was it that led to his coming to his senses? It was his involuntary fasting and asceticism! Yes, even here the Church prepares us for the upcoming fast by showing us that the one who is rebellious can reclaim his heavenly inheritance by voluntarily choosing what the prodigal son received involuntarily through his hunger and difficulties. Through our voluntary hunger and thirst for God, we are sure to reclaim our senses and come to our right minds and turn from our wrong thoughts and wrong ways and remember and turn to the One who is the source of true freedom and true life.

No matter what you have done wrong in life. No matter your background or your history. There is nothing that you could do that would keep God away from you. His love is far greater than all of our sins. His forgiveness is generous and richly overflowing. Like the prodigal son, if we will simply come to our senses and turn towards our Father, we will find that before we have taken many steps, the Father will already be rushing towards us to embrace us and to clothe us with the white and brilliant garments of salvation. He will return us to His house (which is the Church) and prepare a great feast of joy, a feast of thanksgiving for our return, because we are His beloved children and nothing less.

Glory be to God forever AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Second Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians. (6:16-7:1)

People are hungry for God. The world is groaning and aching to know God. We are among the most blessed people in the history of the world because we have knowledge of this living God and His Son, our lord and savior Jesus Christ.

Because we acknowledge His Son and because we have received the gift of Chrism within the Holy Church, we are also given the gift of the Holy Spirit and this gift makes us “the temple of the living God” as the Apostle Paul states here in the second epistle to the Corinthians. It is not enough for God to simply wash away our past sins, or to pay the price of our redemption. The God who is love is not pleased until He can fully share every good and perfect gift with His people. He goes so far as to refer to them as His children, His “sons and daughters.”

The Temple was a physical place made of stones and bricks and it was in this particular place that the Lord our God would come to dwell and meet His people and because of the work of our Lord Jesus Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Temple is no longer located in one particular place. The Temple was destroyed in 70 a.d. as the Lord prophesied and it has not yet been rebuilt. At any rate it is of little consequence to us because we are not required to go on far away pilgrimages in distant lands to seek the living God. We are required to go on the most difficult journey for any man, which is the journey inward. Our Lord reminds us that “the kingdom of God is within you.”

Everything that belongs to God is now ours because He is generous and charitable and He wants to give us of Himself and even of His divine nature. St. Paul reminds us however that there is something required of the sons and daughters of God most high. He quotes from the prophet Isaiah saying they must “touch nothing unclean.” He continues by telling us that we should “cleanse (ourselves) of every defilement of body and spirit.”

But what does “every defilement of body and soul” mean? According to St. John Chrysostom “Unclean things refer to adultery and fornication in the flesh and to evil thoughts in the soul. We must be delivered from both.” In our reading St. Paul quotes again from Isaiah saying “come out from them, and be seperate from them.” One of the most important aspects of staying pure is to be careful of the company you keep. Of course you immediately think of the people you are with but the fact is that our phones now keep us company, our movies and shows do as well. Our social media keeps us company and in addition to all of these we have the company of real flesh and blood co-workers and students and friends. Often the things that are offered to us by friends or by shows or by movies or by websites….these things are often unclean and immoral. We should be willing to guard our senses in the same way that we would guard our children from nearby danger. The dangers are real even if we don’t perceive them.

God sends us His divine grace and is present in our lives. He works in our hearts and minds and regenerates us with new life. It is because God is holy and desires to dwell in us, that we must also be holy. Because what is holy can never be mingled with the unholy. There can be no fellowship between light and darkness. What the Lord requires of us is simply a clean temple in which to dwell. A place where God is welcome.

We may attempt to live holy lives most of the time yet we feel that we lack the presence of God. We don’t believe that God is hearing our prayers or helping us. Our faith is still a bit shaky. Perhaps that little bit of influence from the outside, from facebook or netflix or the radio or the nightly news is not allowing us to really be separate and clean. Perhaps that bit of time with the person who curses or speaks coursely is not allowing us to live in purity. To be holy means to be separate and set apart for God. You can’t be a little bit holy. You either are or you aren’t living a life that is separated from the world and the things of the world.

What we are trying to do is to obey the first and greatest commandment, to offer God all of our heart, soul, mind, strength and ultimately our very lives. We don’t attempt to live holy lives because God requires this or needs this.  He needs nothing from us. But He desires each of us deeply.  He wants to commune and unite with us.  We attempt to live holy lives because we want and need God’s presence and fellowship in our lives. God is faithful to keep each of these promises He’s given us. A promise to live and to move among us. A promise to be our God and to make us His people. A promise to adopt us. And a promise to call us His own sons and daughters. Only let us do the hard work of constantly searching out our sins and separating ourselves from all of the influences that harm us and leave us unclean. Let us continue repenting and cleansing ourselves until He makes what holiness we have, a perfect holiness.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (19:1-10)

Many people say that they want to know God. Sometimes people are more specific and they say that they want to know Jesus Christ. This is really the correct way to think about it. We know the Father only through the Son. The Lord Himself says “He who has seen me, has seen the Father who sent me.” He has also taught us that “No man comes to the Father except through me.”

It is a good thing to desire to know God, but what is the process by which we obtain this knowledge? How do we acquire knowledge of God? Can we do a google search and know God? No. We can do a search or a study to learn about God. But to actually know God, more is required of us. Today’s gospel reading is an outline of the process that is required.

One of the first steps necessary to gain knowledge of God is to focus on our desire. We all have passing desires. Many of the holy fathers of the Church tell us not to focus or hold on to our desires because if we do we will become entangled by them. However, our desire to know God should follow the model of Zacchaeus. He had a desire and he didn’t ignore it or get distracted away from it. His desire to see the Lord Jesus was not just a brief moment of wishful thinking or daydreaming. He allowed it to overtake him. It was the driving force behind his real struggle and efforts.

Zacchaeus has so much to teach us. Even though he was a tax-collector, among the most hated people in all of the Jewish world, he impressed the Lord so much by his zeal for knowledge of God. Zacchaeus demonstrated his heart for God by not allowing anything to become an obstacle for him. He was born short, it was easy for him to shrug his shoulders and say “too bad God didn’t make me taller so that I could see Jesus.” He didn’t complain about the crowd that surrounded Christ. He could’ve said “I would’ve loved to see Jesus but there’s simply too many people.” He doesn’t use these difficulties or obstacles as excuses, he uses them as proof. What did he prove? Zacchaeus proved that his desire to see Jesus was genuine, heartfelt and powerful.

Every single man, woman and child will have some obstacles or difficulties that keep them at a distance from God. Do these allow us to create excuses or do they challenge us to struggle and to fight to know Him? Zacchaeus demonstrates his willingness to struggle to know God. He may look foolish as a grown man who is climbing into a tree. He probably got sweaty and dirty. It took effort. But it was all worth it wasn’t it?

We each say that we want to know God more. We want to have a deeper relationship with the Lord Jesus. What are we doing to make that happen? We often say that we are too busy or too distracted to fast, or to pray or to study the word of God or the writings of the fathers or the lives of the saints. How would Zacchaeus respond in the same situation? We already know the answer. This is the difference between the one who claims to desire God and the one who pursues his desire. One of the great figures of the Old Testament, and a patriarch of the Jewish people was Jacob. Jacob deeply desired to have Rachel as his wife. So he struggled and worked and toiled for 7 years. At the end of the 7^th year he was rewarded for all his hard work. Rachel’s father gave him his daughter to be his wife, but there was a small problem. It was not the daughter that he had desired. What was Jacob to do? What a terrible thing to have happened to him. He was fooled. It was a great obstacle. He had toiled for 7 years and guess what? He learned at that moment that if Rachel was truly worth it, he would need to struggle even longer. He toiled for 7 more years to receive the hand of the daughter that he truly wanted. That is real desire! He worked for 14 years to finally marry the woman that he loved.

We as the Church are the bride of Christ. How much do we desire to enter into a deep relationship with our beloved? Work to develop a relationship with God as if your life depends on it. Don’t be afraid of how you will look, or what others will say (yes they will undoubtedly say things). Don’t be afraid of the pain and the struggle (yes, pain and struggle will be present). Don’t be afraid that you will fall short of your goal (you will fall short almost daily). If we are faithful, He is yet more faithful. We want to know Christ but in truth Christ wants to be known by us….He wants to dwell among us and to say to us “today salvation has come to this house.” So pour yourself into the task of climbing the tree. By a tree, Adam and Eve were banished out of paradise. By climbing a tree, Zachaeus found paradise in the form of a man and was granted not only to see Christ but to sit and to dine with Him. May we struggle to climb the trees that lead our minds upwards toward the heavens. May we not rest until we hear the blessed words “Make haste and come down, for I must stay at your house today”. Glory be to God forever AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (17:12-19)

Today we hear the passage about the ten lepers from St. Luke the evangelist. When a man or woman was found out to be leprous, this was considered something of a death sentence. This sickness would separate people from their loved ones. It would force families and communities to distance themselves and push those who had the disease outside the city walls. Lepers were known to dwell together and travel together since they could not be around those who were healthy due to being contagious and unclean.

The ten lepers stood at a distance and we are told that they lifted up their voices and said “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” It reminds me of the time I visited a chaplain in a local liberal arts college. I walked into his office and found that there were many peculiar decorations including a large poster with a picture of Our Lord that read “Jesus is my homeboy.” Brothers and sisters, Jesus cannot be your homeboy. We learn to address the Son of God in a worthy manner and not with such casual titles. And this is not a trivial point because how we address others is a sign of how we actually love and respect and show reverence to them or quite possibly it is a sign of our lack of love and respect and reverence. Whatever we believe is apparent in the ways that we speak of God, or in the ways that we speak to God.

Here we are confronted with the ten lepers and we see their reverence. Why did they have such reverence? Perhaps because they had no hope left and the Lord Jesus became their only real source of hope for them in their despair. When the Lord heard them say “Jesus, Master, haver mercy on us”, He said to them “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” We are consistently awed by the power of God and by the power of His word. By His word He made the heavens and the earth and created light. By His word He now grants new life to the ten who were like the walking dead. We are told that as they went to see the priests they were cleansed. It is truly remarkable! A disease is healed by the word of the Word. Yet something even more remarkable is about to happen. Ten lepers were cleansed but only one turned back and offered praise to God and came to fall at the feet of Jesus to offer thanks.

The Lord Himself took the opportunity of the lepers return to point out a few things to us. He asked “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine?” There is an expectation that the right number of lepers that should’ve returned to give thanks to God was 10 out of 10. There should have been gratitude from 100% of the lepers. Their life was given back to them and they went off on their merry way without so much as a thought of gratitude for the One who had made all things possible for them. This isn’t because God wants us to feel guilty, it is because God wants to help us understand reality and act in a truly human manner. One who is truly human cannot deny his need for God’s help for even a minute of his life. Gratitude is a sign that one is truly aware of what his life was, what his life is and what God has done and continues to do for him.

Our Lord continues by asking “Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” One of the inescapable facts of the gospel according to St. Luke is the way that those who are outsiders, non-Jews are constantly shown to be more faithful than the Jews who supposedly know God. The one who reads the gospels is faced with this reality and it is important that we all understand that this reality is sometimes true for us as Orthodox Christians. We have been handed the full deposit of the faith through faithful men and women. We have the full knowledge of the truth about God and His Son. It may also be true that there are some, perhaps they are Protestants or Roman catholics who lack a portion of the knowledge and yet have a better actual understanding of God which is demonstrated by their faithfulness, even in the little things, even in the seemingly unimportant act of gratitude. The only one who came back to show his gratitude for the miracle that Christ had performed was the Samaritan. The Jews looked on Samaritans as if they were no better than dirt. Yet the one who is considered less than human, was the only true human among the bunch because he recognized the source of his blessings. The gospels continually point to the fact that those who have the privilege of knowing God are expected to live up to this privilege through their piety and devotion. But I want to repeat that this is not about making God happy, it is about fulfilling our purpose and finding our peace in the Lord.

St. Mark the ascetic wrote “You should continually and unceasingly call to mind all the blessings which God in His love has bestowed on you in the past, and still bestows for the salvation of your soul. You must not let forgetfulness of evil or laziness make you grow unmindful of these many and great blessings, and so pass the rest of your life uselessly and ungratefully. For this kind of continual recollection, pricking the heart like a spur, moves it constantly to confession and humility, to thanksgiving with a contrite soul, and to all forms of sincere effort, repaying God through its virtue and holiness. In this way the heart meditates constantly and conscientiously on the words from the Psalms: ‘What shall I give to the Lord in return for all His benefits towards me?’ (Psalm 116:12).” Letter to Nicolas the Solitary, The Philokalia Vol. 1

True gratitude leads to the complete sacrifice of oneself through total obedience to the teachings of Christ….and it leads us to true worship of the living God.  We thank God for the faith of this Samaritan and outsider who not only found physical healing but through his mindfulness and the offering of thanks to God, also found wellness for his soul. And glory be to God forever AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (1:1-25)

In today’s gospel reading we are given a foretaste of the great feast of Nativity and the Christmas celebration. The evangelist St. Matthew has left a wonderful present under the tree and he teases us to contemplate it and think about it and perhaps even to peek into it and discover something of the mystery of this joyous feast.

It all sounds very exciting and yet we are confronted with a passage that many believe is one of the most boring passages in all of the gospels. How can this be? It is because what might look boring in this passage is actually the sign of the Lord’s entrance, or rather, our entrance into the Lord’s salvation. This is something that is far from boring! It is quite literally the history of the Jewish people and of the whole of Scripture and St. Matthew is tracing and weaving a story that ultimately finds it’s meaning and purpose in the child who is born to the Virgin Mary who is betrothed to Joseph, who is himself from the line of David the King.

This passage tells us so much but most important of all are three points:

First, we find that Jesus is actually of Jewish heritage since he is from the lineage of Abraham. This is important because the long-awaited messiah, the anointed one of Israel was expected to be Jewish.

Second, we find that Jesus is indeed part of the lineage of David the king. Why is this important? Because it was long understood that the messiah would not only be a Jew, but he would be a king. In order for this to be true he would have to be related to the kings who had come before him.

Third, and this is really by far the most important, this passage tells us without a doubt that the Lord Jesus Christ, the son of God and savior of the world, has a human nature that he takes from the Virgin Mary. The genealogy found in this passage is not simply a matter of tying together the loose ends of the history of Israel (though it does this quite nicely). It is ultimately there to show us that the Lord Jesus Christ entered into history as a man. He who formed man in His image and likeness now demonstrates that His love will bring Him to take upon Himself our image in order that we might grow in His likeness. If God did not become a man in the flesh, then our human flesh cannot be touched and healed by His divine power. It is a powerful rebuke to the gnostics who denied that Christ existed in the flesh and also believed that the body was inherently unclean and evil. St. Irenaeus wrote “How could we be joined to incorruptibility and immortality unless incorruptibility and immortality had first become what we are, so that the corruptible might be swallowed up by incorruptibility, and the mortal by immortality, so that we might receive adoption as children?” (Against Heresies 3:19,1)

The one who is God before the ages, will come into space and time and take a mortal body that He might share immortality with us. He who could not die, took on the flesh of man in order to ultimately take on death and give us His life. The evangelist reminds us that all of this did not happen suddenly in a vacuum. It was all foretold in the prophets of old “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and His Name shall be called Emmanuel.” The feast of Nativity is the celebration of God’s special entrance and presence into the world and among the human race. This feast is one of the everlasting signs of God’s love and our undying hope; God with us.

We turn on the news and we hear about tragedies. We speak to friends and hear about their difficulties. We see brokenness and suffering and we think to ourselves “What kind of a God would allow such things to happen in the world?” But before we can go further we are faced with the answer in the form of a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, “What kind of a God would allow such things to happen in the world?” The God who loves us so much that He would come down and experience this world as one of us.

What kind of a God is this? The kind of God who so deeply desires a relationship with us that He didn’t wait for us to find a way to Him, but instead made His way directly to us. But He was not content be near us, rather He would not cease until He had united Himself with everything that it is to be human. He demonstrates this true humanity with complete obedience to His Father even unto death. And in uniting Himself with everything that it is to be human, He has actually given us the potential of becoming truly human.

To Him be the glory, now and ever and unto the ages of ages AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (14:16-24)

The great philosopher Socrates once said “The unexamined life is not worth living.” What a statement! “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I suspect that if we all take a step back or rather, if we take a step and look inward, we find that many of us or most of us have not been very good about examining our lives. In this regard we have lost our way and have not understood our purpose or the meaning of our lives.

Recently I was speaking with someone and we talked about this notion of “days of obligation” that exist within the Roman Catholic understanding. It is an interesting and strange idea that one should feel obligated to go to church. I am not forced to go anywhere or do anything as a human being with a free will. Whatever I decide is ultimately a choice. If I force you to come and have dinner with me, that does not show any respect for who you are because you have no say in the matter. If you are obligated, you are in some ways not truly free but rather a slave.

In today’s gospel passage our Lord Jesus Christ reminds us that obligation has nothing to do with our relationship with God and His Church. The Lord said “A man once gave a great banquet, and invited many.” It speaks to our misguided attitudes that we feel honored and run from place to place whenever we are invited anywhere by anyone. Not only do we make sure that we show up but we try to clean ourselves and put on nice clothes, and make our appearance neat. We also go out of our way to show our gratitude to those who have invited us by bringing a nice gift and not showing up empty handed. We don’t do any of this because we are forced to or feel that we must. Hopefully we don’t do these things out of a sense of obligation, but out of a sense of cheerful joy.

When, however we think about coming to the Church we often approach it as if it were some sort of funeral. We drag our feet and think to ourselves, “why am I burdened by having to go to church?” Sometimes in our day to day life we think “Why must I be burdened with praying or reading the Bible? Why must I fast and repent and struggle?” We question and we often make excuses just like the men in this gospel passage. This is the appropriate mentality for servants and slaves who have no free will, but my brothers and sisters, we are the honored guests of the Lord Himself. We’ve been given this tremendous honor and blessing but what do we do with this invitation? We’ve mentioned the way that we respond when invited by friends to a gathering. We get cleaned up and we bring a gift and we come with a cheerful attitude. What we do for our friends, we should do for the sake of the One who truly loves us.

We should accept the invitation to the Lord’s banquet with tremendous joy and cheerfulness. We should put on our best garments….not the outer garments, not ties or fancy dresses or nice jewelry, but the garments of righteousness and holiness. We should wash our souls through repentance and purify our hearts and minds through the reading of Scripture which is “the washing of the word.” And we should come with a great sense of gratitude, bringing gifts to God, not out of a sense of compulsion or guilt, but freely, because we are overwhelmed by God’s generosity and mercy towards us.

God cannot save us by force. A man cannot gain the attention and love of his bride through force…but just the opposite, through freedom which is a sign of love. God loves us with this type of love. It is a gentle, quiet love that invites and welcomes and waits and hopes that one day we will wake up and respond not with boredom or dread but true thanksgiving and awareness of the Lord’s compassion and the wealth that He hopes to share with us. Practically speaking we need to reorient ourselves and our way of thinking. We do this through repentance. We do this by being brutally honest about who we are and how we have fallen short of the glory of God. We also reorient ourselves through remembrance of where we have been and how God has redeemed and healed and restored our lives. All of these actions lead us back to joyful thanksgiving which is precisely why we should come here and celebrate the Eucharist (which means “thanksgiving”).

Today we are present for a great banquet and we celebrate a meal of thanksgiving and all of this is made possible because we have accepted the invitation to be in the presence of God and to feast with Him. We are invited to life, to joy, to peace and to salvation through Christ who is our life and our joy, our peace and our salvation….to Him be the glory unto the ages of ages AMEN!

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke 13:10-17

One of the risks and temptations whenever one decides to practice their faith or religion is the temptation to adhere strictly to the rules and regulations without giving attention to the inner disposition. One of the things we learn from Our Lord, God and savior Jesus Christ is that outward observances don’t matter, in fact they are downright evil, when they do not transform those who practice them. We encounter just such a situation here.

We are told that there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity for 18 years. Think about that, 18 years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten up, or stand upright…for 18 years! When we have a minor cold for just a day or two we are ready to throw in the towel and give up on life, yet this faithful woman persisted in such a miserable state for nearly two decades. Perhaps we have been struggling with physical illness or even with our own sins and addictive behaviors. You may have been struggling for a long time, but don’t lose heart. God is present and He can make the crooked ways straight if we will only allow Him a chance to lay His hands upon us through the heartfelt practices of repentance and prayer. Nothing is impossible for God.

The Lord found this faithful woman in the synagogue on the Sabbath day. How do we know that she was faithful? Despite everything that had happened to her and the difficult hand that she had been dealt, she continued to come and to worship God. She didn’t blame God or grow impatient with Him. She didn’t give up on religion or choose to try her own form of spirituality. Even though it was not easy for her, she was devout and steadfast in her faith. It is within this context that the Lord Jesus Christ sees her at the synagogue. He was there teaching the people when He saw her and had great compassion on her.

This story points not only to the faithfulness of this woman but to the unfailing mercy of God. The Lord was busy teaching. He, the greatest teacher of the world, the greatest expounder of the Scriptures, stopped what He was doing (which was really important and excellent work) because He saw this woman’s pain and suffering and He wanted to heal her. We cannot help but thank God for the lesson for our lives. Even when we are doing good work, it is important to pause and help others when it is within our power to do so.

And now this woman who had struggled for all these years, was immediately healed by the hands of the one who fashioned the whole universe. This should be the end of the story. Everyone should see the miracle and rejoice and give glory to God for what has happened to this woman…but sadly this is not the case.

The ruler of the synagogue came up to the Lord Jesus and began to chastise Him and the woman who was healed. The ruler said “there are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day.” You know we ought to be careful how we speak to God, here we see a man who wants to correct the holy one of Israel. And yet we find that those who try to correct God are themselves swiftly corrected and judged. The Lord calls the man a hypocrite. Why was he a hypocrite? The Sabbath was meant to be a holy day that was free from work. Yet even on the day when the people were to refrain from work, they usually did things that were reasonable and necessary. For instance, if they had livestock or animals they untied them and lead them to water. That is work, but it would hardly be considered sinful to take care of the animals and make sure that they didn’t get sick or die. Yet the Lord brings to light this man’s hypocrisy because he wasn’t willing to extend this same mercy and compassion to another human being, even a fellow Jew.

The Lord continuously amazes us by His ability to pierce straight through the noise to the heart of the matter. He shows us that the one who is truly sick and truly infirm is not the one with a physical sickness but the one who lacked charity and mercy. The one who was truly sick was the one who couldn’t accept an act of God even when it happened right in front of his face. That is real sickness.

God wants us to follow His law, but not use it as a way to ignore the needs of others, or even worse, to judge the good and loving work that needs to be done. What good is our religious activity, what good is our strict adherence to rules and regulations (such as fasting), if these things do not make us merciful, gentle and loving with others? If all of our religious practices are merely outward they become worthless. Our works are supposed to be a powerful witness to God’s love in the world, and not a witness of cruelty or judgment towards others. God has saved us from dead works. We are free to serve the living God in truth and not just with outward motions, because we know Him and we are known by Him. May God continue the work of saving us from our inner death and our dead works and free us with the true liberty that comes from experiencing His mercy and truth. May He look on us and see our weaknesses and infirmities and lay His hands upon us and heal us all. Glory be to God forever AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke 10:25-37

At that time, a lawyer stood up to put Jesus to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read?” And the lawyer answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And Jesus said to him, “You have answered right; do this, and you will live.”

For some it has been a difficult week. For others a week full of hope and joy. In both cases we find that our responses are somewhat immature. Who are we as Christians, even, as Orthodox Christians…to be dismayed or exuberant over the winner of a political contest? Sadly if this election has shown nothing else, it has clearly demonstrated that we as Christians are often far more interested and passionate about human candidates than we are about the living God!

Psalm 146 reads “Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish. Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God” (Ps 146:3-5)

If we are honest with ourselves perhaps we can see that we’ve been doing what the word of God warns us against. Perhaps we have put our trust in princes and princesses instead of looking to God as our help and our hope. My brothers and sisters, in this we are found to have failed in doing what is commanded by Our Lord Himself. He tells the lawyer that if you love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and strength and mind. And if you love your neighbor as yourself, you will live. When we allow the politics of power and the earthly kingdom to invade our hearts and steal our peace, we are in fact showing ourselves to be sons of the corrupt and fallen men of this world and not sons and daughters of the kingdom.

St. Paul writes “Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people. For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. The saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for people. But avoid foolish controversies” (Titus 3:1-9).

Let me be clear so that no one misunderstands the point here. We as a Church pray for our elected officials. We even pray for our leaders regardless of how they came to power. Let me also be clear that we as a community and God’s family will not spend time reflecting the idolatry and misguided zeal of the world around us. We will not engage in endless foolish controversies because if we do then we are saying that our fleshly opinions and thoughts are of more value than the peace and love that we enjoy through Christ who came to die for each and every one of us. If you want to have long political discussions please go and do so over coffee with one another in private, but leave these careless and foolish discussions for another place because our unity is far more important than our feelings at this time. The release of our feelings is often an exercise in pride and the emboldening of the passions, while our silence and prayer is a mark of humility and gracious charity towards all. Do not risk destroying the peace of this holy place and the hours of prayer that you’ve cultivated today, by speaking hastily about things that are passing away.

I want you to live. I want you to have life. This is God’s desire for you because God is life. So let us help one another. Let us pray for one another and for the peace of the nation. Let us encourage one another. Because our real problems have nothing to do with our leaders and everything to do with our willful disobedience to our rightful Master. Let us refocus our minds and hearts and souls and strength on the living God and His only begotten son Jesus Christ, who alone deserves our passion, who alone deserves our allegiance, who alone deserves our admiration and who alone is worthy of our worship and our love…to Him be the glory, now and ever and unto ages of ages. AMEN!When

Source: Sermons