Uncategorized 2 - St. Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church

That Man Might Become God

January 22, 2015 By St. Paul Emmaus

This sermon may be heard as a recording via Ancient Faith Radio here.

Twelfth Sunday of Luke / Feast of Ss. Athanasius and Cyril, January 18, 2015
Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick

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

Today is the feast of two great saints of the Orthodox Church—Athanasius and Cyril, patriarchs of Alexandria in Egypt. Perhaps interesting to note is that both also held the title of pope, which is a traditional title of the patriarch of Alexandria in the Orthodox Church and incidentally predates its use by the bishop of Rome. Even today, the Orthodox bishop of Alexandria is called “Pope of Alexandria,” though of course he is not given the universal authority in Orthodoxy that the Roman Pope is given for Catholics.

Yet both Athanasius and Cyril are prominent not only because they were the bishop of one of the most prominent churches in the early centuries of Christianity, but also because of their profound and extensive theological contributions to Christianity. One could dedicate one’s whole life to learning the teachings of either one of these great saints, and it would be time well spent, especially if it were spent in learning them by imitating them.

We do not have time this morning to make such an offering, but I would like to sketch briefly something about the life and teachings of the one who is perhaps the more familiar to Orthodox Christians—Athanasius.

He is called “Athanasius the Great.” Amongst Egyptian Christians, he is called “Athanasius the Apostolic.” And because he stood up for the truth against so many, he is sometimes called Athanasius contra mundum, a Latin phrase meaning “Athanasius against the world.”

He was the hero of the First Ecumenical Council in 325, having been the one whose theological expressions won the day, sifting out falsehood from the truth and resulting in the first version of the Creed we recite in every Divine Liturgy. Yet for all that, he was actually only a deacon at that first great council, not even allowed a vote in the proceedings. He was there only as an assistant to his bishop, St. Alexander of Alexandria. He eventually succeeded St. Alexander on his throne, and as the Pope of Alexandria, in 367 he wrote one of the letters that came to be famous in Church history as the first known listing of the canonical New Testament books.

But Athanasius showed remarkable wisdom even when he was young. His most well-known work, On the Incarnation, may have been written when he was as young as 23. And it is on this work that I would like us to rest for a few moments today, particularly on its most famous sentence.
In the fifty-fourth chapter of On the Incarnation, St. Athanasius wrote a sentence that has echoed down through the centuries even into our own time as a brilliant summary of the Gospel. He wrote this: “God became man so that man might become god” (54:3).

This doctrine is called theosis. And although there are many kinds of language taken from Scripture in which the Orthodox Church has expressed salvation—such as being ransomed from captivity, having a great debt paid off, being pardoned for a crime, being spared from punishment, being healed of a wound, and so on—it is theosis which is probably the most dominant and explicit of all our language regarding what it means for us to be saved.

So what is theosis?

Theosis is a word from Greek which can be translated as either “deification” or sometimes “divinization.” There really isn’t a single word in English that communicates the whole meaning. It comes from the Greek word theos, which means “god,” either in the sense of the one God Whom we worship or in the sense of the little “gods” of polytheistic paganism. This is important to understand if we’re going to learn what Athanasius meant when he said that the reason why God became man was so that man might become god.

First, we should note that it is ambiguous whether Athanasius meant the “big-G God” or the “little-G god” when he wrote “so that man might become god.” In other words, he might mean that we can become “gods” or that we become the Almighty God. So let’s talk about how both are actually true.

If we can become gods, or become divine, deified, etc., then we are of course not changing into the Holy Trinity. There is only one God. The doctrine of theosis is no threat to monotheism. Even though we “become gods,” we do not supplant God from His eternal throne, nor do we get our own universes to create and rule. No, we are only “gods” in a somewhat lesser sense. This sense aligns with a quotation that Jesus Himself made in John 10:34, when He quoted from Psalm 82:6: “I have said: ye are gods; ye are all sons of the Most High.” So we become adopted into God’s family, as His sons and daughters. And that makes us brothers and sisters of the Son of God Jesus Christ. And it means that we become like God. When you’re in someone’s family, you’re like that person in a deeply intimate way. It’s how you know you’re family.

But what if we read Athanasius to be saying that we can “become God” in the “big-G” sense? That’s a bit scarier. That almost sounds like a threat to monotheism. That almost sounds like he’s saying that we can become the Holy Trinity. To get inside this difficult teaching, we have to understand what it means to “become.”

In this case, to “become God” doesn’t mean to turn from one thing into another. Why? It is because God is infinite, and we are finite. We cannot become infinite, because it is not in our nature. But we can be in the process of becoming more like God. And because God is infinite, the road to doing that is also infinite—it is an eternal process. And because it’s an eternal process, that means that the life of the age to come is not going to be some static, boring existence of sitting around on clouds and playing harps. It will be dynamic and always richer and richer.

We remain human beings. We remain ourselves. But we also have a union with God without fusion. He is present in us, but we remain ourselves, and He remains Himself. But His presence in us changes us. We become not just better versions of ourselves, but like Him.

In theosis, we take on God’s attributes in a lesser way, though we do not become identical to Him. If you think about why the saints are the way they are, you can see that it’s because they are becoming like God—that is why they can work miracles and why they are so holy.

We become more like God by becoming “partakers of the divine nature,” as St. Peter puts it in 2 Peter 1:4. That means that our ability to take on God’s attributes depends on our actual interaction with Him. We have to commune with Him in order to become like Him, and this became possible because He became a man—through His humanity, we gained access to His divinity. We have to spend time with Him in prayer and worship, partake of the sacraments and love Him by keeping His commandments, in order to become like Him. His presence in us is a free gift, but if we do not cooperate with it, then we will not be changed to be like Him. All of this is what it actually means to be “saved” when considering salvation through the model of theosis.

It is not be too hard to imagine someone saying, “I want to be saved, but I don’t want to become like God.” But that’s what being saved actually is. So if we’re not in the process of becoming like God, then we are not being saved. Anything else is just empty religiosity. We have to be becoming like God, and we do that by participating in His presence, becoming partakers of the divine nature. We’re here as Orthodox Christians because we’re trying to become gods, because we’re trying to get ever further along that infinite path of intimacy and likeness with our Creator.

So, according to St. Athanasius, that’s why God became man. And the Church has accepted his statement of what salvation means as normative for all Orthodox Christians, because it’s just an explication of what Athanasius saw in Scripture and what he himself experienced as a saint. And while his statement is not a slogan, it does work very well as a neat summary of what the message of the Gospel is: God became man so that man might become god.

To the God Who is man, with His Father and the Holy Spirit, be all glory, honor, and worship, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Redeeming the Time by Nurturing Community

November 12, 2014 By St. Paul Emmaus

St. Nektarios the Wonder-worker / Seventh Sunday of Luke, November 9, 2014
Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick

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

An experienced senior priest once said to me, “Make the place you are into Paradise.”

This saying occurred to me again this week when I read the phrase from today’s epistle reading from Ephesians 5, “redeeming the time.” In this passage, which is appointed because today we celebrate St. Nektarios of Pentapolis, the Wonder-worker, St. Paul relates to the Christians of Ephesus how they are to be different from the world around them, how they are to “walk as children of light.” In addition to using the contrasts of darkness and light, Paul also uses the image of life and death, saying, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine upon thee.”

Whatever image he uses for what he’s discussing, it’s clear that Paul intends us to see that we as Christians are called to be different from the world around us. We are to walk in light while the world is in darkness. We are to rise from the sleep of death in which the world slumbers, coming to life and receiving the light of Christ shining upon us.

And it’s in this context that he says, “See then that you walk circumspectly, not as unwise, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”

The days are evil. This world is corrupt. There is no denying that. Just turn on the news. Just walk outside and have a look at the billboards. Just go driving. There is so much in this world that is dedicated to false visions, to darkness, to sin, to keeping us in the sleep of death and obliviousness.

So Paul tells us to be wise, to “walk circumspectly.” He tells us to “redeem the time.” We redeem the time when we take our time back from the world and live in another way.

Redeeming the time can mean a lot of things, but one I’d like to focus on today is how the Church stands apart from the world as a place of community. The word community gets used a lot these days, but it mostly means something other than actual community. We hear about “the academic community” or “the gay community” or “the medical community” or “the scientific community,” but none of those are actually communities. None of those are groups of people living together and sharing a common life.

This is something that the Church can tell the world about now, because the world has largely forgotten what community is. Most people do not know their neighbors. Our society relies increasingly on systems and policies to keep things going rather than the face-to-face relationships that traditionally connect people together. We deflect people in need and in crisis to programs and institutions rather than helping them within our neighborhoods, within our own lives.

Yes, some of those policies and institutions are very much needed, but the main reason they’re needed is because there is no help anywhere else. It’s the “anywhere else” that should concern us.

But our society’s problem with community-forming isn’t just about helping those in financial need or in some kind of health or personal crisis. Those are just the symptoms of a profoundly dysfunctional system. Our problem with community-forming affects all of us. And Christians are not immune. We are affected by this.

Within many churches, a majority of fellow worshipers are unknown to the average churchgoer. Some people sit here, while other sit there. Some people talk to certain people at coffee hour but never others. And outside of the church building in daily life, people connect mainly in small clumps just like they do inside the building, clumps mainly defined by blood relations. They’re not necessarily being mean or unfriendly or ignoring everyone else. They’re just not connecting, not being family to each other. They’re not being community.

Yet the Church knows how to do this. The Church understands the way community is formed. The Church knows human nature and knows how to connect human persons to each other. When it comes to showing the world a genuinely humane way of being, the Church knows how to redeem the time. The Church knows how to make the place we are into Paradise.

So what do we do? In our own parish here in Emmaus, we are already doing many things well, and we also have a number of things that we need to do better or to start doing. I think this is an especially appropriate thought today, since we are having our annual parish meeting after the Divine Liturgy.

How do we connect to each other? How do we develop community? How do we treat each other as brothers and sisters and not just as “fellow church-goers”? How do we move beyond “friendly” to “family”? How do we step outside of our customary clumps and clans and serve the cause of communion?

I recently visited a parish that stunned me with the kind of community life and love they had for one another. I was asked to speak at a retreat for the weekend, but I have to admit that I felt that I was the one being ministered to rather than the other way around.

Just to give you some sense of what happened there, let me describe a couple scenes for you: First, the parish itself has a population of about one hundred in total. And this was their annual retreat weekend. They didn’t hold it at the church, however, but at a retreat center about thirty miles away. And how many people went to the retreat? It was around three fourths of their population. They shut down the church in town and went on retreat together. Getting three fourths of any church population to show up just on Sunday morning is itself a difficult task for many churches, but getting that same number to go on retreat together is really astounding.

One moment that really struck me was on that Saturday evening. We prayed Vespers together, then had dinner. Then the gathered parishioners came together on some couches and chairs near a fireplace. Together, they sang songs, and they told stories. The kids dressed up in costumes while those gathered tried to guess which saint they were protraying by asking yes or no questions. And even after this time of sharing was over, people lingered for a long while afterward.

Doesn’t that sound like family? And yet most of these people were not related. A number of them even lived more than an hour from the church. But they loved each other. That’s the sign that Christ said would make His disciples known to the world, that they have love for one another.

When I visited the parish’s church building itself, the priest described to me how it was they had developed community. He said that their parish life was founded on two tables—the altar table and the meal table. And in their building it is literally a straight line from one to the other. You could stand in the middle and see both by looking left and right. Their church temple, though small, is beautiful and a feast for the eyes and all the senses as traditional Orthodox churches are.

And their parish hall, where they ate their meals, is built around several large common tables. And along the sides were couches and armchairs and coffee tables. I don’t recall clearly, but I think there were even rocking chairs. The whole building is fashioned as a place where people don’t just do their business of church services or eating or education and then leave. It’s a place where it’s comfortable, where you want to linger, where you want that extra cup of coffee while you have a good, long conversation with someone else who loves Christ as much as you do.

To be honest, when I went there, I was overwhelmed.

I mention all this not to say that what all Orthodox Christians need to do is to copy some particular model of community building, but nevertheless, if we are to redeem the time, shouldn’t our church be a place where we want to spend our time, to linger, to love, to connect? Why does it seem that for so many, what we feel in our hearts is that we are here only until we are done with something, that we are waiting until we can move on to some other place?

And isn’t what the priest said beautiful, that their community is between two tables? I would like to adopt that phrase for us. Orthodox altar tables are the focal point of our worship space, and it is only natural that a kind of sumptuous glory extends outward from them. Within this room, there is so much to see and to experience. And even if our seating is not the most comfortable, we still like to be here, because there is so much that draws us here. And it is what happens on the altar table and what we receive from there that binds us most closely together. It is called communion for a very good reason.

And when we think about our meal tables, think about the difference between a restaurant and your home. The great tables of grandma’s houses are different from the tables of cafeterias and even of fine dining. Even the best restaurant table is not designed for truly feeling comfortable and at home. And most are of course far less than the best.

But Grandma’s table is surrounded by comfort, by welcome, by all the things that make you want to linger. You have arrived. You are home. You are family. It is not just her table, but her home—there is welcome everywhere. It is a place to be. You are not there to “do” something, but to “be” someone. You have come together as family, and your grandfathers and grandmothers and sisters and brothers and fathers and mothers are there, just to be with one another, to love and to connect. It is the image of Paradise.

I offer these images to you for your consideration. Many churches function as institutions, sometimes even as very active and well-run institutions. But they can nevertheless be cold. They may have programs, but not much in the way of communion. And such programs are sustained mainly by having a large population, so that transience and inconsistency don’t harm their stability.

But a far more sustainable way of being for a parish is to function as a family, as a community. And even if a population is small, they are bonded together by something far more precious and permanent than good programs. And even when it’s time for the family to do programs, they find that everything works better and functions more smoothly and more edifyingly because they already have love for each other, because they already know each other, because they have already lingered in each other’s presence.

Here at St. Paul’s, I think we have something of both. There are ways that our family is strong, and there are ways that our family needs to get to know the family better. So as we chart our course for the coming year and in the years to come, my prayer for all of us together, including myself, is that we will grow, that we will learn, that we will love, that together we will redeem the time and nurture this community, that this will not be a stop to some other place. This will be the place we will be.

To God therefore be all glory, honor and worship, to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.

The Outsider God: The Cross and the Divinity of Jesus

September 16, 2014 By St. Paul Emmaus

Elevation of the Cross, September 14, 2014
Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick

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

“The word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.”

I sometimes wonder whether Christians have “domesticated” the cross. We of course put it on everything, including ourselves. It is probably the single most recognizable symbol in the world. And today, on this great feast of the Elevation of the Cross, we lift the cross high and show it not just to one another but to the world.

So I think it might be good if we took a moment and talked about this symbol of the Christian faith, this sigil that marks us as Christians.

In the Roman Empire that crucified Christ at the behest of the religious leaders of the Jews, crucifixion was not the standard method of execution. Many people were hung or beaten to death. And Roman citizens were given the “merciful” death of being beheaded, which was probably the quickest and most painless method of execution at the time.

Crucifixion, however, was generally reserved for slaves, pirates and enemies of the state. Roman citizens would never be crucified, unless they had done something particularly threatening to the Empire, such as high treason. For this reason, crucifixion was also one of the most public of forms of execution. It is true, of course, that some people were killed publicly in arenas with gladiators and wild beasts and so forth, but crucifixion was typically out in the streets, where everyone could see. This was appropriate for those who were considered enemies of the Empire, true outsiders.

And crucifixion was also one of the slowest and most painful ways of executing someone. It is painful to be nailed to a cross, of course, but the death is not usually caused by the wounds from the nails but rather by slow suffocation, as the legs gradually grow more and more tired and can no longer hold the chest up to take full breaths. Thus, as the person crucified gradually grew more exhausted from hanging in the sun, he could no longer push himself up to breathe, and he eventually gasped to death in exhaustion and suffocation.

Death by crucifixion was painful. It was humiliating. It underlined that the person being killed was publicly being proclaimed as outside of the society, so far that he had to be killed like this.

And this is the death by which the earthly life of the Son of God is ended. It is a dark irony that the most exalted One, the holiest of Holies, the King of Kings should be killed in this way. Even if anyone at the time, whether Jew or Gentile, could have stomached that God would become a man, or even believed that Jesus was, if not God, then somehow divine, they certainly would not have considered it appropriate that He could be killed like this. Crucifixion was a death for those so low in society as to be outside it entirely. Crucifixion was a way for the entire Empire to spit upon someone and blot him out of their consciousness.

This is why Paul in his first epistle to the Corinthians in the passage appointed for this feast calls “the word of the cross” “foolishness to those who are perishing.” Those who do not believe in Who Jesus is and do not participate in His life find crucifixion to be “foolishness.” There is absolutely no way that anyone would want to be crucified, and there is absolutely no way that anyone could successfully do that to God or even to some kind of divine being. It’s just crazy. It’s foolishness.

But “to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.” The cross is the “power of God” because it shows clearly Who God truly is: He’s not the “biggest person in the room.” He’s not a very big, very powerful being Who’s basically like we are, only bigger. He’s not an old man living up in the sky. God is uncreated. He is like nothing that exists in creation. He is not only from outside the Roman Empire or even from outside the Earth. He is from outside existence itself! He is the ultimate outsider, and, if you think of it, the only true outsider.

This is the God Who became flesh and dwelt among us. It’s not that a big being came down and pretended for a while to be a small being. It is that the One Who is beyond being itself took on our reality, our finiteness, our solidity and createdness while also retaining everything He had before the Incarnation.

And so, although those who perpetrated it did not intend it to be so, His death on the cross is a declaration to the world of His divinity, for the One Who was innocent and had never done anything against not just the Empire but against any man, the One Who was not only not a slave but the King of Kings, the One Whose citizenship was beyond the Roman Empire and beyond all Empires—this was the One Who was being crucified, the One Who was being rejected not just by Rome and the Jewish leaders who collaborated with Rome, but He was rejected by all mankind.

The cross is the hour of His glory, for it proclaims Him as God. Yes, He is a threat to the Roman Empire, to the Jewish leaders, to all mankind’s empires and powers and kingdoms, for He is beyond them all. He comes from outside them all. And the great foolishness is that He came at all.

But the cross is the hour of His glory most especially because of how that story unfolds over the days that follow. For as He died on the cross, we might be tempted to think that the great experiment of the entrance into this world of the One Who is from beyond it had ended in failure. Perhaps this spirit from beyond got trapped in that body and died. Perhaps this One from outside our world went back to where He was before when His body died, and the union was ended.

But we know what happens. On the third day, life erupted from the place of death. The One Who had been killed as an outsider revealed Himself to be permanently man, to be permanently one of us, to be permanently part of our world. They could kill Him, but they couldn’t put an end to Him! Death had no hold over Him! The greatest foolishness of all was the resurrection, when the One Who had voluntarily given up His life, Who had stopped breathing and lain in a grave, began to breathe once more. His human lungs filled with air. His human heart began to beat. He opened His human eyes, and nothing would ever again be the same.

For life had trampled down death.

And in the face of this ultimate, total collapse of death in the face of life, Paul says this: “Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God turned the wisdom of the world into foolishness?”

What can anyone say in the face of that? He Who was not from us became one of us, and He Who was rejected by His own as an outsider proved Himself permanently one of our kind. And it was death who was laid in a grave that day. And the world in all its wisdom could not figure it out.

Paul again says: “For, since the world in the wisdom of God did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe. For Jews ask for signs, and Greeks seek wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Greeks; but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the Power of God and the Wisdom of God.”

He is the resurrection and the life. He is the outsider. He is the Crucified One. That is what we preach. That cross we elevate today is indeed “foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.”

To the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit therefore be all glory, honor and power, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.

The Dormition Fast: Waiting with Hope

August 10, 2014 By St. Paul Emmaus

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, August 10, 2014
Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick

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

We are now most of the way through the Dormition Fast, those first fourteen days in August when we gather with the Apostles at the bedside of the holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, the Mother of our Lord, as she prepares to pass from this earthly life into the age that is to come. We are in this time of waiting and keeping vigil for the moment when God chooses for her to bring her soul to Himself.

This image is quite an immediately potent one for me right now, because, as you know, my own mother Sandy is at this moment making the same preparation to pass through death into life. You know that I do not usually speak about my own life in sermons, because a good sermon is not about the preacher. But perhaps there are some things that I can share with you from this experience that may be of some benefit as we prepare for the Feast of the Dormition and most especially as we prepare ourselves for our own passage through death into life everlasting.

When we heard that my mother’s diagnosis of aggressive brain cancer had been confirmed, as you know, we rushed to be with her, because we had no idea how much longer she would be awake. She wanted to see all her children and grandchildren, so Kh. Nicole and I stuffed our three rambunctious younguns in the back seat of our little Prius and set out for the more than 1,800 mile journey to Colorado. It took us three very long days to get there, with overnight stops in Indiana and Kansas, and you can only imagine what kinds of sounds proceeded from the back seat.

When we finally arrived, I dropped Nicole and our two boys off at the place where we were staying, and I took our daughter to the hospital to see my mother, where she was in hospice. My father and my mother’s two sisters were there. I had asked my father if it would be okay for me to pray for my mom in the way that we are used to praying for the sick in the Orthodox Church, and so when I got there, I greeted her and asked her if she would like me to pray for her. I prayed a few brief prayers for her and anointed her with oil from St. Thekla Monastery here in Pennsylvania that Mother Justina gave me to bring to Colorado, since I could not give her holy unction.

And I have to imagine that, even though anointing with oil for the sick is something not much practiced in the variety of Christianity practiced by most of my family, they at least have read James 5:14: “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.”

The next morning, my mother asked for our immediate family to be with her, and my father, brother and sister were all there. We spoke with her for a while, and then each of us spoke with her alone. I told her what she meant to me and asked her to forgive me for all the trouble I had given her in life, especially as a young man.

The next evening, my mother called us all together and spoke with each of us quite directly, ending by praying for each of us. It was rather intense and dramatic and clearly took a great effort, and I think most of my family expected that she would pass away almost immediately, though eventually she just fell asleep again.

Over the week that followed, Kh. Nicole, the kids and I visited my mom every day. Most of the time I would just sit with her and read to her from the Scriptures, but we also talked about various little things. I wished I could stay with her until the time finally came, but the doctors are saying that it could still be a couple months, and there are things we need to do during that time here in Pennsylvania. So we’re back for now, at least until the time comes for me to return for the funeral. And now we wait and watch.

A couple months ago, my mother wrote in a passage my dad shared with me this week that she felt that she was always waiting on God for something. And in a life that for her was defined by a lot of moving from one place to another, from one project to another, the shape of life can become defined by waiting. The next thing is always on the horizon. The next moment will be coming.

All this was perhaps prefigured for her when she was born, because the doctors told my grandmother that my newborn mother was going to die, so they might as well take her home and just wait for that to happen. But of course that’s not what happened. My grandmother accidentally overcooked some baby formula, which then happened to be just the right thing for my mother to swallow and keep down and begin to be nourished.

And my family now finds itself waiting for the earthly end of that life God chose to save so many years ago. We are waiting for my mother to die. We don’t want it to happen, but it’s happening. We don’t know when it will be happening. But we still have to wait. And we also watch. And those who are there with her in Colorado are waiting and watching most closely. And the rest of us keep our vigil from afar.

Sometimes in life, waiting can be overwhelming. We don’t know what will happen next. And waiting is often accompanied by worrying. My grandmother must have been worried for my baby mother. My family is worried now for her: Will she feel too much pain? Will she remain herself up until the end? Will there be someone in the room with her when she passes into the next life?

Sometimes, waiting even for what is likely the inevitable can be too much. I’ve seen more than one person post on my dad’s Facebook profile that they’re praying for miraculous healing for my mom. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. We pray for healing all the time, and we should pray for healing. But when I saw those comments, I thought about what it would have been like if one of the Apostles had approached the deathbed of the Mother of the Lord and said to her, “We’re praying for a miracle for you!” It just doesn’t make sense.

While I know my mother would not compare herself to any of the great saints of the Bible except to hope she could be like them, her own passage through death into life is very similar right now to that of the Virgin. She is at peace with it. She even said when they brought her home, “I know why I’m here.” Almost every word she speaks to people is to tell them about God’s blessings in her life, about His love which has been more than she could ever imagine. She kept saying to me, “The love of God is beyond measure.”

No, I don’t want my mom to die. She’s only 61. It should have been years from now. My dad should have his beloved wife into his old age. My mom should live to see her great-grandchildren. But that’s not what’s happening. And when the Virgin Mary passed through death, I am sure that there was great sorrow at her passing, too. No one wanted her to die. No one wanted this woman who had held the very God of the universe within her womb to leave us all alone. Think of what was being lost! Think of that unique human experience of God passing from this world!

And think of what it must be like to be waiting for that, waiting in uncertainty for the inevitable.

In remembering the passing from this life of her grandmother, my mother wrote this: “Waiting can be hard, but I learned that it is in the waiting that we get to spend time with God in His presence. Grandma’s presence was a wonderful place to be. I never really knew why when I was young. I know now. She loved me so much! God’s presence is so wonderful because He loves me so much!”

And so we wait. But we are Christians, and so we wait while redeeming the time. Whether we are waiting for something good to happen, for something bad to happen, or even just waiting for the completion of our own days here on this earth and our passage through death to life, we do not wait without hope. We do not wait without action. We wait with expectation. We wait with love to be in the presence of the God Who loves us, the God Whose presence is indeed full of wonder. Our waiting is a waiting that is happy to be here for as long as we can. We are here to be with God. And that is enough.

To God therefore be all glory, honor and worship, to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Spiritual Paralysis and the Resurrection

May 12, 2014 By St. Paul Emmaus

Sunday of the Paralytic, May 11, 2014
Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. Christ is risen!

On this fourth Sunday of the bright festal season of Pascha, we remember today how Christ raised a paralytic from his bed beside the pool of Bethesda, who had lain unable to move for some thirty-eight years.

In considering this man whom the Lord healed, I especially am drawn today to consider all of the ways in this life in which we experience paralysis, but most especially in our thoughts. In our minds, we tend to think of situations and people in conventional ways. We form thoughts and narrative structures that play out whenever we are in a certain situation or with a certain person—they are almost like scripts for a play or a movie.

When I am in a situation in which I feel uncomfortable, I access the script for being withdrawn and cautious, passive and inwardly focused. At times I can be an extrovert, but at other times I become quite introverted, because that is the script that I have in my mind. My thoughts are paralyzed into one image, one story that tells me what will happen and what I will do.

When I am in a place where I feel at ease, I access the script for being affable and outgoing, even charming, even if that is sometimes inappropriate, because that is the image I have in my mind of what I should be doing there, what will be happening, what I think is appropriate and fits with the story I have in my head.

It is the paralysis of social interaction.

When I am with someone I like, someone I admire and respect, my script is the one for brightness, intelligence, even love. Failings on his part are easy to forgive, and I may even overlook something that should be dealt with.

But when I do not like someone, my script may be to cut him off, to avoid him, to be critical and judgmental toward him, to scrutinize and criticize everything about him. Every failing is a black mark on his person, even if he may otherwise be virtuous and hardworking. I have heard it all before, and I will react the same way again.

It is the paralysis of relationship.

We can also have paralysis in our jobs, in our classrooms, in our homes, and even in our church. In all of these places, we typically act according to set scripts we have in our minds—probably not conscious scripts, probably submerged somewhere into a place we don’t think of too often.

This is why things do not change for us even when we want change. Even if we want change—for instance, in a relationship—we often feel as though it will never change, even if the other person really does change, because we still are acting according to the script we have written for him.

There is a difference here, of course, between the paralysis we are speaking of and the simple act of being consistent and reliable. Both are products of the same power within us, though. Our culture tends to worship innovation and progress, but our hearts still love consistency. It is the desire for eternity that is planted within us. We want a God Who will never change, Who will always be there, Who will always love us and provide life to us. And since we are made according to His image, we also tend to act in predictable, unchanging ways, especially as we get older and even “set in our ways.”

So the problem is not that we have repeatable patterns of thought and behavior. The problem is when those patterns are paralyzed in dark ways. When I cannot enter into an uncomfortable situation and rise above myself, above my insecurities and above my desire not to bother with anything or anyone new, then I am paralyzed. When I cannot see someone as a child of God, as someone who is fundamentally created to be good and whose own bad behavior is the result of the soul’s suffering, then I am paralyzed. When I cannot enter into the church looking for ways to challenge and stretch myself, to sacrifice more of myself, to become more than I have been, then I am paralyzed.

Paralysis in the human body comes when the connection between nerves has been detached, when the signals being sent from the brain do not successfully reach the muscles, and so there is no movement. Paralysis in the human soul comes when the inner core of our hearts that desires God is cut off from the rest of our thoughts and behaviors. The signals being sent from God through that innermost spiritual nerve center do not successfully reach our thoughts and our actions, and so there is no spiritual movement.

So we are like this man, who lies next to the pool of Bethesda for thirty-eight years. There is no reason to believe he will ever change. And even if someone comes to us with the hope of that change, we may make excuses, playing out the script in our minds, for why we will not change. Paralysis is easy. We may not actually prefer it, but we choose it, because it is easy. Even if we don’t actually like it, it is always easier to stay the same.

But in the light of Christ’s resurrection, we are given the possibility for change. That ancient script written by the devil and first acted out by Adam and Eve; that script that says we are inevitably bound up in our sins, enslaved to our passions, controlled by our egos; that script that tells us that nothing will ever truly get better; that script that says that I am who I am and that’s just the way it is; that script that says that the end of all our stories will be death—that very script was torn up by the death of the Deathless One.

Jesus has written a new story, a story received from His Father and confirmed in the Holy Spirit. And that story is not a story of paralysis. It is a story of healing, a story of movement, a story of transformation from glory to glory. We can access that story by choosing to set aside our mental scripts and to act according to a new Author and Director.

When Jesus comes to encounter the paralyzed man lying by the pool of Bethesda, He asks him whether he wants to be healed. Instead of simply saying “yes,” the man complains and explains why he cannot be healed. I often do the same thing. When given the opportunity to be healed, I instead explain why I cannot be. But here is the One Who is writing a new story, a new way of being, a new way of thinking and acting. And He is saying to me and to you, “Rise, take up your pallet, and walk!”

We do not have to live in paralysis. We can be saved. We can be resurrected, not just on the Last Day, when all mankind will be resurrected either to life or to judgment, but even now. This life of mine that seems dead and hopeless, this relationship of mine that seems like it will never change, this situation where I have given up hope, this spiritual life where I have become stale and unready to move—all of these things can be changed by the resurrection.

How do we do this? The problem is complex—complicated. But the solution is simple, though not easy. When I want to withdraw and pull away from others, I swallow my pride and say hello. When I have no hope for a relationship, even if I have no reason to believe the other person will ever change, I forgive and start over. When I am stuck in a single way of serving in church, I look for something I have not done before. When I want to make excuses for why I cannot be healed, I instead say “yes” and get up when Christ calls me.

The people next to us and around us, and the situations in which we find ourselves may not change. But we can change. And in our changing, we will begin to see everything differently. There will be hope where there was none. There will be faith. There will be love. This is the power of resurrection.

To the risen Lord Jesus Christ, with His Father and the Holy Spirit, be all glory, honor and worship, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen. Christ is risen!

That Man Might Become God

Redeeming the Time by Nurturing Community

The Outsider God: The Cross and the Divinity of Jesus

The Dormition Fast: Waiting with Hope

Spiritual Paralysis and the Resurrection

St. Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church

Address

Phone Number

Email

Meta