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Worship in Spirit and Truth

June 2, 2013 By St. Paul Emmaus

Sunday of the Samaritan Woman, June 2, 2013
Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick

A recording of this sermon is available via Ancient Faith Radio.

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

There are those outside the Orthodox Church who say that Orthodox worship is empty and meaningless ritual, that it is “dead religion” at its worst. To them, what we do in worship is just “going through the motions,” a sort of dedication to pointless tradition for its own sake. When they look at our vast liturgical tradition, all they see is Pharisaical rules and regulations designed not just to confuse people but to control them, to numb their spirits, to destroy any spark of faith within them.

And there are even some people, perhaps many people, inside the Orthodox Church who have a similar view. It is probably not articulated out loud, but it is spoken by their actions. They do not care too much what the liturgical season is. They do not bother to come to church services aside from liturgy on Sunday morning. They regard discussion of the details of our worship to be annoying and tedious at best, something reserved for ecclesiastical nerds with nothing better to do with their time. It’s nice in some sense that all that complexity is there, but they can’t be bothered with learning it or trying to understand it in any way but the most superficial.

What ties both of these attitudes together is a movement from the churches of the Reformation that began in the 17th century, a movement called Pietism. Without getting too deep into the history of the movement, let us define it simply as the feeling—not so much the teaching, mind you, but the feeling—that the details of doctrine and worship do not really matter. What matters is mostly that you have strong conviction and/or that you are a good moral person. And it is precisely through the lens of Pietism that many people interpret the Gospel reading from this morning, especially the passage on worship. Let’s hear that selection one more time, just to bring it again to our memory:

The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that Thou art a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain; and Thou sayest that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship Him. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Listen especially to the words that Christ uses: “the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship Him. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Someone outside the Orthodox Church who looks at what we do as pointless, “dead” religion, then true worship that is “in spirit and truth” will have nothing to do with liturgics. Instead, “true worship” “in spirit and truth” will probably be something made up sometime recently, using exciting, emotional music and a big spectacular show that will leave the congregation feeling charged up at the end. Using ancient rituals is fake, and they leave people feeling dead and perhaps even trapped in a mind-numbing sameness that doesn’t do anything for anyone.

And yet, speaking as someone who used to work in “show business” and used to participate in precisely that religious world, I can tell you that that entertainment-focused approach to worship can be quite as dead, fake and entrapping as they think liturgical ritual must be. There can be enormous pressure to “perform,” to make everything perfect and polished, to stay constantly up to date with whatever cultural trends are on the radio or in the pages of Christianity Today, to be more “relevant” every day. The canon for propriety in that kind of worship is not measured by anything except the demands of a public hungry for innovation and smooth-talking preachers projecting a successful image.

What is important is that people feel good, that they have an emotional experience, but because what is popular in entertainment can go out of style so quickly, and because churches will never be able to keep up with the frenetic pace of the Top 40, the glitter gets dull and the music gets campy and the architecture goes out of style. And what do you have? Dead religion. It used to feel good, but it’s just not that cool any more. And so such churches, despite all their apparent outward success, have an enormous turnover rate for their members, who eventually leave, looking for something else that will feed their desire for what’s missing.

But someone inside the Orthodox Church, while not actually rejecting liturgical worship, may nevertheless not really care much about it, either. If he comes only to Sunday liturgy while neglecting Vespers and Matins, he may notice that not much changes from week to week. He may notice that the choir eventually cycles through only a certain repertoire of pieces. He may notice that the priest is preaching on the same passage from Scripture he did last year at this time. He may notice all the services listed in the schedule but think to himself, “That’s just for religious fanatics” or “I don’t have time for that.” But what he really means is “That’s boring, and I don’t care.”

And he certainly looks around and notices that hardly anyone else around him seems to care much about such things, either. That one time he came to Saturday Vespers or Sunday Matins, he made up half the congregation. So it must be okay. And surely God does not care about such details. Those are all man-made, anyway, stuff for clergy and crazy converts to bother over. And there it is in the Bible today: worship God in spirit and in truth. Doesn’t that mean that, as long as you’re a good person, as long as you really believe, that the rest just doesn’t matter? What matters is the “spirit,” right? Isn’t that the “truth”?

One of the problems of Pietism is that it forgets anything about history and why it matters. It is understandable that someone might read this encounter of the Lord Jesus with the Samaritan Woman, see Him speaking about worship in spirit and truth, and thereby conclude either that one should reject liturgy entirely or that even if one doesn’t reject it, that its details don’t really matter. But such an interpretation just doesn’t hold up in the light of history, and it certainly doesn’t hold up in the light of what has been experienced in liturgical worship by the people we know really made it to Heaven—the saints.

So what does history actually show us about this, and why should we care? First, we should remember that the New Testament as we now know it does not appear in a list we would recognize as our twenty-seven books until the year 367. That’s more than 300 years after Jesus rose from the dead before we might be able to point to something fully recognizable to today’s Christians as “the Bible.”

So what does the historical context of the formation of the Bible actually show us about how Christians worshiped? That is, when the Christians of the first three centuries of Christianity knowingly included the language of worshiping “in spirit and truth” in their Bible, what did they understand it to mean?

After centuries of Jewish liturgical worship that had been directly instituted by God Himself, the first Christians did not immediately drop everything, pull out their guitars and drum sets, and start worshiping God by putting on a big theatrical spectacle while imitating first century pop songs.

But neither did the Apostles go around preaching to the first Christians that all that Scripture and liturgical tradition they had been raised with and were in the process of transforming along Christian lines was now going to be handled by liturgigeek experts and that no one else need bother with knowledge or participation in worship that was anything more than minimal.

Neither is true. What happened is that much of Jewish liturgical tradition was retained and then initially augmented with specifically Christian elements, such as the Eucharist. It all became more specifically Christian especially after the Christians were expelled from the Jewish synagogues. Over time, the liturgical tradition gradually unfolded to what we have today. Even in the 21st century, it still retains the essential shape that it had in the first century, with no radical revisions. And it was always assumed that the vast content of the liturgical life was there both to teach and to shape the Christian as he participated both rationally and bodily. That is what the actual data on worship from the first few centuries of Church life shows.

Doctrine matters. Liturgy matters. And both make a big impact on the authenticity and even the very existence of the Christian spiritual life. If you don’t pay attention to those things as much as you are actually able, you’re not only not doing it right, you might not be doing it at all. So how does this work? And why?

Liturgical worship was instituted by God first for the Jews and then continued and expanded for Christians because it corresponds directly to how human beings are made. If we really want to get close to God and become like Him, then this is how you do it. You may not need to understand every single detail of how it works, but if you only barely understand it or barely participate in it and don’t even care about the details, it will not have much impact on you, and you will remain essentially dead in your sins.

In that respect, it’s very much like being healed by a doctor. You need to listen closely to what he tells you about how the cure is going to work and what you need to do. If you don’t, then you’re probably not going to be healed. And you certainly had better not go about making up your own cures. You’re not the doctor.

The Orthodox Church’s liturgical life is worship in spirit and truth. It is in this worship that we truly receive the Holy Spirit. It is in this worship that we not only learn the truth but actually participate in the truth. In this worship, the wisdom of the ages is packed in tightly. In this worship, the whole of the Church’s theology is not only taught but actually experienced. In this worship, God reaches out to touch us and we receive that touch and are healed.

Anyone who thinks that all that is just going through the motions has never really dived in deep to know it for himself. And anyone who thinks that some minimal knowledge and participation is enough is skipping the great banquet just to munch on a few appetizers available near the door. He will go away hungry.

Worship is what we were made for, brothers and sisters. When Christ tells the Samaritan Woman that the time is coming when all true worshipers would worship His Father in spirit and truth, He is referring not only to the geographic explosion of worship that is about to happen in His time—that the mystical sacrifice will not only be on the Samaritans’ mountain or in the Temple in Jerusalem, but in every place—but He is also telling us that a powerful, overwhelming, holistic, and world-transfiguring form of worship is about to be inaugurated, a form of worship that enfolds every part of what it means to be human—the mind, the body, the soul—everything!

How could anyone want to stand on the outside looking in? How could anyone be content with merely an occasional “observance” that doesn’t take up too much time so as to be inconvenient? How could anyone who truly experiences this think of it as “dead religion”? This is not meaningless ritual—this is the most meaningful action that can happen in human life. This is our encounter with the God before the ages. This is the awesome moment when we not only see God but touch Him and taste Him. This is worship in spirit and truth.

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

The Springtime of Repentance

April 21, 2013 By St. Paul Emmaus

Sunday of St. Mary of Egypt, April 21, 2013
Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick

A recording of this sermon is available via Ancient Faith Radio.

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

Today we remember a woman who walked out into the desert and repented there for more than forty years. On this fifth Sunday of the Great Fast, the Church celebrates St. Mary of Egypt.

Born in the mid-4th century, Mary was a woman dedicated to pleasure. She is sometimes called a prostitute, but that term is not really accurate, because she would not take money in exchange for her wantonness. She was offered it many times, but she would usually refuse it, and sustained herself primarily by begging. And so she lived this way, constantly seeking out new men to engage in fornication. Being beautiful, she was desired by many, and so she lived an “active” lifestyle. She began this way of life when she was twelve years old, having run away from home to the city of Alexandria.

After seventeen years of what became a more and more tortured way of life, she decided to make a pilgrimage to the city of Jerusalem for the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross in September. But she did not go to celebrate the feast. She was instead hoping to find crowds of pilgrims with whom she could satiate her lust, her constant, overwhelming desire. She paid for her travel by prostitution, and when she arrived in Jerusalem, she continued in her manner of life, having found new people to lead into her desperation for physical satisfaction.

She eventually was led to enter the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which includes Golgotha, the place of the crucifixion, within its walls, the holiest place to celebrate the feast of Christ’s Cross. But as she began to enter the doors of that blessed church, she was suddenly stopped by an unseen force. The crowds around her entered, but it was almost as if a great hand was holding her back.

At that moment, something began which the world tells us is really not possible. At that moment, something began which for the world is not in any way desirable. Mary began to repent. And she walked beyond the Jordan River and kept repenting for more than forty years.

When we hear this word repentance, it is likely that we do not hear it as anything positive. It may stir up feelings about guilt. It may sound like judgmentalism or condemnation. It may conjure images in our brains of overbearing, bombastic preachers hurling down sermons on hellfire and brimstone like lightning bolts from angry gods. So why do we talk about repentance so often in the Orthodox Church?

Well, it should probably first be said that there are many so-called churches that have stopped talking about repentance or have tried to massage it out of their message because it is unappealing to their customers—or, I mean, their congregants. And certainly one does not hear about repentance in the public square much any more. It is long since any president declared a day of national fasting and prayer as Abraham Lincoln did in 1863. I daresay there are some things done by those in the public square that need some repentance.

I think there are probably two reasons why repentance is unfashionable. The first is that, as we said earlier, most people have a harsh and painful image of what it means to repent. It is demeaning. It is hard. It is annoying. The second reason is just that we like sin—another word that doesn’t get used too much in public any more.

But since we are Orthodox Christians, we recognize that we need to repent. And since the public proclamation of the Gospel has always begun with the exhortation “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand,” first in the mouth of John the Baptist and then from his cousin the Lord Jesus Christ, we should ask what repentance really is. And then we should ask why we should not flee from repentance but should actually want it. And this will tell us how someone like St. Mary of Egypt could keep repenting for so very long.

The word for “repentance” in Greek is metanoia, and it consists of two different Greek words—meta and nous, with the latter word being changed by the compound. Meta can mean many things, but here it means “change” or “turning.” And the nous is the innermost sense of human beings, the faculty with which we apprehend divine, mystical reality. It is the “heart” or the “eye of the soul.” So metanoia—repentance—is the turning of the eye of the soul, the changing of the heart. It is to direct our innermost gaze away from what is sinful, what separates us from God’s life, and toward what is good, what connects us with the life of our Maker.

That is the etymological and theological description of what repentance means. But for us to understand repentance, I think we may need some illustrative imagery. The place where Mary of Egypt went to engage in her repentance was the desert beyond the Jordan River. There it is said that she watered the place with her tears, the tears she shed over her many years of evil and self-destruction.

And that is what sin does. It is not just a transgression against some cosmic law. It is self-destruction and nothing less. Sometimes the destruction is sudden and devastating, but other times it is the slow dehydration that turns what is fertile into the barrenness of the desert. That is what happened to much of the Middle East, by the way—so much of it was fertile, but through gradual overuse and misuse of the land, it became desert. So it is with human persons. What is beautiful and fertile and full of possibility becomes, over time, bit by bit, dry and thirsty.

Yet repentance is possible. When a soul repents, the rain begins to fall. Sometimes the rain may bounce off the hard ground because it is so unused to receiving it, and so it may seem to do nothing or even to hurt. But over time, the rain begins to soak the land. And where there may at first be mud and erosion, there eventually comes to be fertility and growth.

Repentance is the springtime of the soul, and is it any wonder that we are now in this Lenten season of repentance, right now, at springtime? Even the very word Lent itself actually means “springtime.” We pour repentance into our souls by shedding those things that weigh us down, those useless burdens of sin that look and feel so good but actually are deeply dangerous to us. And when that repentance comes pouring in, all the many virtues of our souls, like flowers in a garden, begin to awaken, to bud and to bloom. They have been sleeping during the long winter of sin, but now they can grow.

To repent is not to feel guilty. Guilt may encourage us to repent, but it doesn’t always. Guilt is just the pain at recognizing the desert that our souls have become. But pain isn’t repentance. To repent is to turn, to change, to come back to life. We have to see that we have a desert in our souls, and sometimes it takes the upheaval of disaster, depression, divorce, drugs or death to see it. But it doesn’t have to take that. Seeing the desert within may also be inspired by contact with true beauty. Seeing the beauty of Eden, the beauty of Paradise, in the love of our Lord, we realize that we live in the desert. And we want Eden.

And so we repent. We turn back to Eden. We turn to the divine life of Christ, the life of the Holy Trinity granted in communion with the Son of God. This is what it means to repent! It means that we who are dead can be made alive, that we who are dry and thirsty may become fertile and full, that we who are addicted might be set free.

And that is how Mary of Egypt could live in that desert for decades. She was not out there moping around feeling guilty. She was watering her garden. She was tending to the flowers of virtue in her soul. She was walking with God in Eden, just as Adam and Eve had once done. She who had been a desert in the midst of fertility became a walking Paradise in the midst of the desert.

Has this Great Lent been the springtime of your soul? Even if it has not yet been, it still may be. There always is hope. There always is mercy. There always is possibility. Let us repent with joy, brothers and sisters, and so pour the grace of God like long-awaited rain into the desert of our souls.

To our life-giving God, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, be all glory, honor and worship, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Asceticism: How to Take Up the Cross

April 7, 2013 By St. Paul Emmaus

pectoral-cross
Sunday of the Adoration of the Holy Cross, April 7, 2013
Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick

A recording of this sermon is available via Ancient Faith Radio.

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

On this third Sunday of the Great Fast, we contemplate the mystery of the Cross of Jesus Christ. In this great mystery, we see sacrifice, atonement, the destruction of death itself. This Cross is at the center of who we are as Christians, so much so that the Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1:23 that the content of the preaching of the Gospel is “Christ crucified.” As Christians, we cannot get away from the cross any more than we could get away from Christ.

Yet the cross still scandalizes us. We may be willing to feel a certain sentimental pathos when we see Christ crucified. We are moved by what He did. We are sorrowful for what happened. We are grateful for His sacrifice. And we should be all of those things. But those feelings are only the beginning of what it means to make the Cross our own, what it means that we preach Christ crucified.

We have heard from the saints that we, too, must be crucified if we are to be true followers of the Crucified One. We must crucify our sinful passions. We must crucify our egos. We must crucify our addictions. We must crucify all our desires, our minds and, indeed, our whole selves. But why? And what does all this mean? Is this just flowery religious language whose only real referent in our daily lives is something that happens in the mind or in the emotions? Or is there something else here?

What I would like us to contemplate today is something found in the Gospel reading appointed for this mystery of the Cross. The Lord said: “If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for My sake and the Gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:34-35).

We see from this call from our Lord Jesus that following Him means self-denial and taking up our crosses. Only in doing so can we follow Him. So a follower of Jesus is one who denies himself and takes up his cross. The language of self-denial is a bit more concrete than just religious emotion. If following Jesus means denying yourself, that that means that people who spend their time pursuing their own desires rather than God’s are not actually Jesus’ followers. This is a frequent refrain in Orthodox teaching: that we cannot be true Christians if our top priorities in life are not worship, education in the faith and sharing it with others through witness and service.

But what does it mean to “take up” the Cross? For some Christians, it means suffering the things that come your way, enduring the pain and suffering that comes from disease, disaster, etc., or even to endure persecution that comes from trying to be a Christian. And there is some truth to that.

For others, taking up the Cross doesn’t mean much at all. I think a lot of folks don’t hardly even think about it. It may be that they just don’t care about being true Christians, but it may also be that they just don’t know how. How do I take up my cross? Do I just wait until something bad happens to me and then try to bear it with a smile? What kind of spiritual life is that?

The Orthodox Church alone has preserved the full Christian teaching of what it means to take up the Cross, both in terms of the public preaching of the Church and in terms of the actual spiritual practice of the faithful Christian. In a word, taking up the Cross primarily means one thing: asceticism. Among Christians of our time, this emphasis on asceticism is unique to Orthodoxy. It is almost never mentioned and virtually unpracticed in the Protestant world, and while it exists in the Roman Catholic tradition, it is so de-emphasized that it is rarely practiced.

The English word asceticism comes from the Greek word askesis, whose essential meaning is “athletic training.” To engage in askesis is to train, to practice, to be strengthened, for the purpose of engaging in the contest. In a Christian context, asceticism is the actual steps taken in life to practice the self-denial that Jesus says is a prerequisite for following Him.

So what does it look like? How can we be ascetical? There are a number of ascetical practices preserved in the Church—fasting, vigils, lifelong celibacy, sexual continence even within marriage, giving up non-essential possessions, almsgiving, silence, to name a few. And in the monastic life there are some more or variations on these. We may also add some ascetical practices that are in the same spirit but are only expressible within the modern world, such as setting aside entertainment or avoiding Internet social media.

None of these things means punishing yourself. The purpose is not to create suffering. Rather, the theme in all of them is simplification and setting aside desires. In short, it is self-denial, to say “no” to what we want when we could say “yes.”

Now some might argue that such things are not to be found in the New Testament, that Jesus never meant for Christians to be ascetics. But asceticism is actually found everywhere in the New Testament, from the fasting of Jesus to the celibacy of Paul to the rough clothing and meager diet of John the Baptist to the personal poverty commanded by Jesus to the Apostles, not to mention the fasting commanded by Him. And Paul makes mention of “mortifying” his flesh so that he can live in Christ. In short, asceticism is everywhere in the New Testament, and we certainly know that it’s everywhere in subsequent Christian history.

But what does it do? Why is asceticism the way in which we properly take up the Cross and follow Christ? One of the central affirmations of Orthodoxy for how salvation works is that it is synergistic, that salvation requires a synergy of God and man working together. The will and action of God and the will and action of man make salvation possible. It is God’s grace that does all the work, but man must be receptive to that grace, or else nothing happens. Why? Because God created us with free will and loves us so much that He will never override it. In short, we only are saved as much as we want to be, as much as we cooperate to be.

So what asceticism does is train us for saying “yes” to God’s grace. Every time you look at a Philly cheesesteak in Great Lent and say “no,” your will gets a little stronger. Every time you don’t buy that shiny piece of jewelry or gadgetry just so you can have the latest thing, your will gets a little stronger. Every time you practice the vigilance of the eyes by looking away from that Victoria’s Secret advertisement on a billboard on the highway or on television, your will gets a little stronger. When you say to your husband or wife, “Do we really need a car that big?”, your will gets a little stronger.

And having strengthened your will, you are now more able to say “yes” to what you were made for—holiness, communion with God, wisdom, faith, hope, love. This is what Paul means when he says that we must “work out [our] salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12). This is how we repent, how we learn to turn from obsession with created things to a focus on the Creator. It is not an instant experience that comes just because we make a decision for Christ or get baptized. It has to be worked out over time. Salvation is an eternal process, not a momentary status.

And that is also why Christian asceticism is traditionally adapted and customized according to the ability of each Christian—salvation is a process, not an achievement. Each of us has to walk the path as he can, and not everyone is at the same place on the path. That is also why asceticism is doable for everyone in some way.

Now, please do not think that asceticism earns you salvation. It doesn’t. There is nothing about any of these practices that makes you holy. Many religions practice asceticism, but that does not mean that their adherents are thereby becoming more like Christ. God doesn’t owe anyone salvation just because they don’t eat meat for a few weeks. Rather, what asceticism does, if practiced within the context of the Church and especially with prayer, is make us receptive to divine grace, which is the presence of God Himself.

If we would be crucified with Christ (Gal. 2:20), so that we may be His true followers, we have to take up the Cross, which means self-denial and asceticism. And in practicing it, we become stronger. We become freer. We become able to receive more of what God is giving us.

To the crucified and risen Jesus Christ, with His eternal Father and His all-holy and good and life-giving Spirit, be all glory, honor and worship, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.

The Sunday of Orthodoxy: Seeing God

March 24, 2013 By St. Paul Emmaus

sunday-of-orthodoxy
Sunday of Orthodoxy, March 24, 2013
Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick

A recording of this sermon is available via Ancient Faith Radio.

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

Moses, found in the river by the daughter of Pharaoh, the King of Egypt, was raised in the Egyptian court and given all the luxuries of an Egyptian prince: wealth, power, influence, popularity. And yet upon reaching adulthood, he chose to leave behind a life which would have been the envy of everyone in Egypt and indeed throughout the world. He left behind his identity as an Egyptian prince and identified rather with the enslaved Hebrews, his true people. He chose to forsake his status as a master and voluntarily became a slave.

In today’s epistle reading, we hear not only of the powerful choice of Moses, but also of the decisions of numerous prophets and saints of the Old Testament. We hear how they subdued kingdoms, stopped the mouths of lions, worked righteousness, endured ridicule, abuse, poverty, torture and even death. Some were sawn in half, tempted or killed with the sword. They wore the worst kind of clothing and wandered in deserts, living homeless, rejected lives.

What could motivate all these Old Testament saints to do what they did? What made Moses leave behind the Egyptian palace? What made Daniel gladly go into the lions’ den? What inspired Esther to risk her life? What fueled the hearts of the Three Holy Children to endure the fiery furnace? What motivated the prophets to suffer rejection and even death? What was it that gave these people their courage?

To learn the answer to this question, we must look back, even before Moses and all the prophets, back to the first human beings, Adam and Eve. When Adam and Eve sinned, they were expelled from Paradise. The expulsion from Paradise was the liturgical theme for this past Sunday, as we stood on the threshold of Great Lent. The dominant image in the hymns of last weekend is Adam, sitting outside of Paradise and wailing as he mourns over what he has lost.

What did Adam lose? Did he lose a nice, green place to live, complete with palm trees and all kinds of fruit, populated with animals that he got to name himself, all accompanied by a woman made especially just for him by God? Yes, he lost all of that. But Paradise was much more than simply physical comfort and pleasant surroundings. What was the treasure that Adam lost, driving him to weeping on the doorstep of Paradise?

Adam lost his ability to see and experience God.

God made Adam and all of us with the purpose of seeing Him and having an intimate communion with Him, a direct experience of the divine life. It was this direct experience of God which made Paradise what it was, and when Adam sinned, he ripped himself away from God, expelling himself from the Paradise of life with the Holy Trinity.

When the Fall of Man occurred, the entire universe was thrown out of balance, because man was made by God to serve as the priest of all Creation, offering up the created world back to God for His blessing and invigoration. When the priest no longer offers up the sacrifice, it is no longer blessed and filled with the life God desires for it. And this is why we have so-called “natural” disasters, because the sin of man disconnects the whole cosmos from God.

And into the midst of this unbalanced Creation, where mankind has lost his ability to see and experience God, to connect to Him and to connect the world to Him, God chose to reconnect Himself to us.

He came to this earth and became a man, the God-man Jesus Christ. We could no longer see and experience God because of our spiritual disconnection, and so God chose to make a touchable, physical connection with us, by becoming one of us, by taking on a human body just likes ours, a human soul just like ours, by assuming our human nature into Himself, the same as us in every way except sin. And thus through the physical connection, we can receive the spiritual connection. Because our spiritual eyes had been blinded, the Lord came and appeared before our physical eyes. And if we look at Him with faith, then we see not only a man, but also the God before the ages.

The Scriptures tell us that Moses made the choice to leave behind Egyptian luxury for Hebrew slavery precisely because he had a vision of Christ, though he could not see Him clearly yet. The prophets and saints suffered and often died because they could see God in Christ. Historically, some lived before His time, certainly, but their desire to reconnect what Adam had disconnected was so powerful that God gave them a foretaste of His appearance in Christ. This is why Jesus said that even Abraham rejoiced to see His coming, centuries before his birth from the Virgin Mary.

Today is called the Sunday of Orthodoxy. Today should therefore tell us something about who we are as Orthodox Christians. And what is it that we remember and celebrate on the Sunday of Orthodoxy? We celebrate the historical event in the year 843 of the return of the icons to our churches, after more than a hundred years of iconoclasm, the heresy that taught that icons do not belong in the Christian life. Many people died for their faith, believing that icons were not only a normal but necessary part of what it means to be Christian. But why? What do icons have to do with Orthodoxy? What do we see in the icons?

The first and most significant of all the icons is the icon of Jesus Christ. When we look at His icon, we can see that God became a man: a real, flesh-and-blood man Whom you could see, touch, talk to, and draw pictures of. The icon of Christ tells us that He is a real man. The icon of Christ is a confirmation for us that God chose to reconnect Himself to us, to provide for us the way to see Him after Adam lost that ability. And the icons of all the saints tell us the same story, that here are real, living people who have seen God in Christ.

Some may look at the prohibition in the Ten Commandments against making what it calls “graven images” of God or the creatures of this Earth and bowing down to them and say that icons must therefore be idolatry and against God’s command. But those who say this probably are not considering the many images that God Himself directly commanded the people of Israel to put onto the Ark of the Covenant, in the Tabernacle, or throughout the Temple of Solomon. Imagery has always been intimately linked with the spiritual life, both for Jews and for Christians.

What is forbidden is not imagery, but idolatry, which is the worship of created things rather than the uncreated God. Idolatry’s essence is that it directs the worshiper not toward God, but toward a phantom, and this is the meaning of the Greek word eidolon from which our word idol comes. An idol is something false, something illusory, something transitory. But a true image, an eikon in Greek, points us instead to something which is true and real. And thus, Christ Himself in the New Testament is called the icon of the invisible God. With the coming of Christ, we now can quite literally see God.

Iconoclasm, the heresy which teaches against the use of icons, is thus precisely a denial of the Incarnation, which is why the overwhelming witness of 2000 years of Christian history supports the use and veneration of images as part of Christian worship of the Holy Trinity, but it does not support turning them into idols, as somehow magical objects with a power in themselves. They have no such power. There is only the power of God, which sometimes works through them, just as it has done through many physical objects both in Biblical and subsequent Christian history.

Therefore, when we look at the icons, touch the icons and venerate the icons, we are connecting not with wood and paint, but we are connecting through them to the living God, Jesus Christ. Today is called the Sunday of Orthodoxy precisely because icons are a powerful witness to what it is that we as Orthodox Christians are trying to achieve, through God’s grace. When mankind sinned, we lost our ability to connect to God. But if we have faith, He will grant us a vision and therefore an experience of Himself, according to the measure of our cooperation with Him. And having had that experience, we will find that we, too, have the courage, confidence, love and fire of the prophets and saints.

In the Gospel today, we read the story of Christ calling the Apostles Philip and Nathanael. When Philip sees Jesus, he goes to Nathanael and tells him that they had found the one Moses and the prophets were looking for: the Messiah, the promised Saviour. Receiving a vision and experience of Jesus, Philip recognized in Him the hope that Moses, the prophets, and all of his ancestors and family had shared for centuries.

His immediate response was to go out and share this experience with Nathanael, saying to him, “Come and see.” Having received the vision of Christ and experienced God, Philip immediately goes out to tell someone else, to reconnect someone else to the divine power that is meant for each of us to experience.

When Nathanael then goes to meet Christ for himself, he is amazed when Jesus tells him that He had seen him under the fig tree, even though no one had told Jesus about where Nathanael was sitting. But Jesus tells him that he will be amazed not only with that, but he will be granted a vision of heaven opening, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man, Who is Jesus Himself.

Do we want to reconnect with God? Do we want to see heaven opened, and the truth of the meaning of our lives revealed? Do we want to be filled up with the energy of God Himself? Then let us accept the invitation of Jesus to come see Him. And the good news of the Gospel is that this invitation is not to some ephemeral, emotional or mental experience, but to a direct, physical encounter with the living God. The awesome miracle of the Incarnation is that what was untouchable is now touchable. What was invisible is now visible. What was inaccessible is now served to us in the holy power of His Body and Blood.

We see and experience Him in the icons, in private prayer, in the beauty of Creation, in the divine services, in the Holy Eucharist and all the sacraments, and we open ourselves up to this experience by faith, repentance and participation. This holy season of Great Lent affords more opportunities than any other time of year to have this vision. Having emptied ourselves of our sins by confession and receiving the gift of divine grace, we can receive the vision of Christ in glory. Bit by bit, the more we open ourselves, the more He shows Himself to us. And as we receive Him, our response should be to bring Him to the rest of the world, saying to them, “Come and see.”

To Him 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.

Knowing God at the Last Judgment

March 10, 2013 By St. Paul Emmaus

last-judgment

Sunday of the Last Judgment, March 10, 2013
Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick

A recording of this sermon is available via Ancient Faith Radio.

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

Today we now come to that moment in our liturgical calendar when we consider what it will mean for us to stand before the awesome Judgment Seat of Christ. This Sunday one week before we begin the Great Fast is called “The Sunday of the Last Judgment,” because it is on this day that we read from the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel that remarkable description of what it will be like at the end of time, that moment when the fates of all humanity are finally sealed.

Let’s be honest—this is a scary moment. This is not a moment we like to think about. It should frighten us, because the truth about each one of us is that we are sinners. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23). When the Lord describes in Matthew 25 what happens after the Judgment, having used the metaphor of sheep and goats to represent the righteous and the wicked, respectively, He uses rather concise language: “And they [that is, the wicked] will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

This is not the only time we see the Judgment described in the Scriptures, however. There is a less metaphorical and more awe-inspiring description of that moment in the apocalyptic vision that Christ granted to the Apostle John, which the John describes in a book we don’t read quite as often, the Book of Revelation, also called The Apocalypse:

“Then I saw a great white throne and him who sat upon it; from his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, by what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead in them, and all were judged by what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire; and if any one’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire” (Rev. 20:11-15).

So if the sheep and goats stuff didn’t get to you, perhaps that will. This is seriously scary stuff. This is the kind of thing that should keep you up at night. But I think it probably doesn’t keep most of us up at night, even for one night. Why is that?

There are a lot of reasons we can become desensitized to language in Scripture whose purpose is to make us sit up and take notice, even to startle us into a deep, honest look at our eternal destiny. Perhaps it’s because we are so used to seeing hellish imagery in our entertainment that it just seems like more of the same, only less compelling because it’s written and not in 3D on an IMAX movie screen. Perhaps it’s because we find it hard to imagine this could all be real. Perhaps it’s just because we find the Bible boring and don’t really care what’s written in it.

But I think the real problem, deep down, is actually not due to any sort of psychological or cultural explanation like those. Rather, I think our problem actually comes from a misinterpretation of what the Christian life is actually about. I think our problem is that the average Christian is actually a pagan.

Now, by that, I don’t mean that, if asked, he wouldn’t say he believes in Jesus and so forth. But what’s happened is that he lives his Christianity as if he were a pagan. What does that mean? I don’t mean he necessarily lives like an atheist (though, of course, that might be true, too), but rather that he has taken the basic narrative of paganism and interpreted Christianity through its lens. How does that work?

Consider the pagan’s relationship with his gods. The basic dynamic goes something like this: A sacrifice is given, and divine favor is expected in return. Sacrifice to the right god for the thing you want. If I’m an ancient Greek pagan and I want to excel in singing, I will worship Apollo. If I’m looking for a good harvest for my crops, I will sacrifice to Demeter. If I want victory in war, Ares is my god. No matter which god it is, the narrative is about making a deal. I give something to the god, and he owes me something in return. It’s a kind of contract.

This is the essence of nominalized Christianity—people who believe that because they do something (whether it’s getting baptized, attending church, giving donations, helping out around the parish, volunteering their time, doing good deeds, just being a good person, etc.) that they are guaranteed eternal life. So if you are a nominal, paganized Christian, when you look at the Bible’s depictions of the Last Judgment, you may think to yourself, “I’ll be just fine! I paid my dues” (however one may interpret the idea of “dues”). So it doesn’t bother you.

But a close look at what happens here reveals that this approach to Christianity is not only false but actually deeply dangerous. And why is it dangerous? Because it gives a false sense of security to those who really are not engaging in the Christian life at all, but are actually engaging in the pagan life only with a “Christian” label applied to it. And that means that they’re not doing what Christ said. And that means that their name’s entry into the Book of Life is doubtful.

So what do we do? What is the true path to making it through the Last Judgment and coming out the other side among the blessed? What we need to know is right there in the great fountain of truth given to us in the Holy Scriptures.

We know that all of us will be judged by what we have done in this life, and the passage from Matthew 25 gives some examples of the kind of behavior that the righteous will have done: feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, tending to the sick, visiting those in prison, and so forth. But is it possible to have done those things and yet not to be found in the Book of Life? Once we understand what it truly means to be righteous, we will realize that the answer is “yes.” We can indeed have done all of those good works and yet still not be righteous.

So what does it really mean to be righteous? Here’s the key, found in another place where Jesus speaks about the end of time, Matthew chapter seven, where the Lord tells us about people who did all kinds of good things in His name, yet won’t enter the kingdom of Heaven: “Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers’” (Matt. 7:21-23).

“I never knew you.” That is the key. Jesus elsewhere describes eternal life not as living forever in a happy place, but as knowing God (John 17:3). Why do the righteous do all these good things? They know God. What is it about the pagan that keeps him in a “contractual” relationship with his god? He has no desire to know his god. He just wants something from the god.

There is a clear difference here. Christianity is not just monotheistic paganism with some of the names changed. The Way of Life is not about “getting to go to heaven when you die,” nor about receiving other good gifts from God. That’s part of it, but the true character of the Way is to get to know God, to connect with God, to commune with God. How can you tell if you’re on that way as opposed to living the paganized Christian life? Your priorities will be worship, prayer, learning the Scriptures and all of the details of our faith, humble service, serious soul-searching in confession, and genuine repentance. All of the other things we do in church flow from that central core, that place in the heart where we come to know God.

If you wish at the end of time to be among the “sheep” at the right hand of Christ, the righteous whose names are written in the Book of Life, then get to know God. Find Him. Know Him. Commune with Him.

To Him therefore be all glory, honor and worship, with His Father and the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Worship in Spirit and Truth

The Springtime of Repentance

Asceticism: How to Take Up the Cross

The Sunday of Orthodoxy: Seeing God

Knowing God at the Last Judgment

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