Sunday of Orthodoxy

Sermon Sunday of Orthodoxy

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit:

CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST !!!

We have made it through the first week of Great Lent. This has been a hard week. But we made it. And the Church has given us these weekends as a time to fast, but not quite as rigourously. We have a couple of days each weekend, and then . . . the rigours of the week day return. Tonight we have Washingto Orthodox Clergy Association vespers of Sunday evening to help us transition back into the rigours of the weekday. Two years ago we were at the beginning of the Pandemic; this was the last WOCA vespers that we did. This year we start again. The weekend is an important time to catch our breath and then once again face the journey to Pascha, preparing to face another week.

I would be remiss as your priest if I did not acknowledge the conflict in the world; a conflict that has brought Orthodox brother against Orthodox brethren. The history of the Church has always been messy. We can see this in St. Paul’s Epistles to the Corinthians. St. Kyril of Alexandria had some problems with St. John Chrysostom. Indeed, the very thing we celebrate today started in AD 726 with an emperor who attempted to abolish icons. This action of the political leader had some support in earlier times by some of the Monophysite and Nestorian bishops. It was also fueled by fear of Islam and their proscription of images. For 117 years icons were removed from parishes and cathedrals. Illuminated manuscripts were destroyed. Some people (created in God’s Image, were killed, and monks were forcibly married to women; churches and monasteries were burned. Some bishops even got together to fashion a robber council to prohibit icons. This went back and forth for many years. At one point the emperor deposed the patriarch and forbade priests from preaching. Eventually the Orthodox way prevailed; and we call the victory of Orthodoxy over the iconoclasts: The Triumph of Orthodoxy.

Today we celebrate a great feast of the Incarnation of Christ. The Prophets proclaimed and prophesied the coming of our Lord in the flesh. And because of that it is both proper and necessary to depict that flesh in images. Hitherto no one had seen God in any form and it was not proper to depict Him.

Today we celebrate the return of icons to the worship of Christ our God on earth. Today we commemorate the restoration in AD 843 of Icons. They went in procession to the Church of Theotokos ton Blakhernós, and restored the icons.

The scriptures we read were catechistic. They are pointing those who will be baptised at the end of Great Lent to what the beginning of the journey was for the disciples, and reminding them of the prophets of old that looked forward to the Kingdom and the coming of the Messiah but never saw it themselves. We celebrate the Incarnation of the Word of God Who took flesh for our sake. The indescribable deigned to become describable. As we will hear in the Gospel on Bright Monday: “No man has ever seen God; the only begotten Son Who Is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.”

He Who is the very radiance of the glory of God, the very Icon of His Person has shown Himself. As we sing in Matins: “God is the Lord and has revealed Himself unto us!” For He Who is the very Icon of God has taken that flesh that He Himself created in His Image, and joined the two together without confusion.

We venerate icons by kissing them as we would kiss a revered friend. We venerate them by bowing, again as to a revered friend. We also venerate them by censing them with incense. When we cense icons we are recognizing that the person depicted was created in God’s Image and reflected His likeness.

But we also cense us — we humans. We are created in God’s Image; by censing ourselves we honour that Image of God in ourselves.

So as we honour the Image of God in ourselves by censing we must ask ourselves: “Do we honour God’s Image in us?” Is how we live a reflection of that Image of God in us? Do we seek God’s will in our lives? Do we honour His image in ourselves? our family members? Our co-workers? The people we meet everyday? Do we see God’s image in the Barista who makes our coffee drink? Do we see the Image of God in the homeless person whose path we cross? Do we see the Image of God in the person whose politics we despise? In the eyes of the refugee who asks for a safe place? Do we see God’s Image in the face of those people we don’t like?

For all of us, that likeness with God is broken and distorted. Are we working with God to restore that likeness? How are we treating His Image in others . . . remembering that He said that how we treat the least of these is how we treat Him? By how we treat ourselves and others we often are guilty of being iconoclasts.

These are questions that this Sunday requires us to look at. While we are celebrating the Triumph this evening we must pause and take stock at where we are. Celebrating the restoration of Icons means we must work on restoring God’s Likeness in us.

The older themes of this Sunday can help us. Before the restoration of Icons, this Sunday was dedicated to the prophets. If you read or sing the hymns of this Sunday you will notice that it bounces between Icons and the Prophets. If we were to do Complines tonight we would hear the older canon of the Prophets. The prophets called Israel and Judah to repentance. They called the people to treat the poor, the orphan, the widow, the foreigner with respect. They called the people to treat their children as precious gifts from God, and not as a thing that can be disposed of to appease a Ba-al, or to appease our gods of material gain and convenience. They called the people back from, and criticized the false images of their material greed, their love of power over love of people. And the people did not repent and had to pay the cost in exile. We are encouraged during Lent to read the prophet Isaiah. No matter what age we live in, the book of Isaiah has some sobering criticism of our society.

He sandwiches his prophecies of destruction with consolation, with the message: “It doesn’t have to be that way; you can repent.”; in someway he is saying to us today: “It doesn’t have to be this way; we can repent.” By Chapter 40 it becomes clear that the people won’t repent, and he prepares them for exile and return. Great Lent is a period of exile and return from exile.

This is what the Church asks us to chew on as we journey towards Pascha. God calls us in this period to work with Him to restore His likeness in us. The prayers are all a part of that. The Presanctified Liturgy and other services are all a part of that. Fasting is all a part of that. Alms are all a part of that. The Triodion is part of that. The prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian is part of that. These are the tools we have been given. These tools must be applied with love, or they will be useless to us. These tools help us see clearly. Very often we have a distorted view of ourselves, either overlooking or excusing *our own sin with pride, or aggrandizing our sin (making it bigger and unsurmountable in our eyes) . . . and falling into despair. But we can repent. . . it doesn’t have to be this way.

All of this takes place, today on a canvass of war — of war in which one Orthodox country has invaded another Orthodox country. A grave sin is being set forth. War is always a grave sin. And we hear this war both decried and justified. And some of the noise of war is being spoken by Orthodox bishops and clerics — a noise that we sometimes hear from our own mouths.

Brothers and sisters, the war is out there. It is real; it is serious. It, like the iconoclast controversy of 1400 years ago threatens the unity of the Church. In addition to actual icons and churches being bombed, people created in God’s Image are dying. This is a wound that, if we take the Incarnation seriously, runs very deep. And, at the same time that we must grieve that wound, please, do not let the war come into our heads. Let us not fight with our brothers and sisters and so perpetuate the grievous sin that comes with war. But most importantly, do not let the war into our own heads; do not fight it out in ourselves. As I said last week, this will be one of the hardest of Great Lents for us. The needs of our brothers and sisters in the war-torn country of Ukraine are real; and, if you wish to help, there are ways to make sure assistance gets to Ukraine through Metropolitan Onuphry. Be careful; choose the news outlets that you use carefully; some of them gain following and revenue by stoking the flames of fear and anger; . . . and they are working over-time. Or better yet fast from too much news — for this distracts us from our work of coming to God in repentance. We are being given the temptation of replacing God with our own fear and need to feel in control. We are being invited to a new iconoclasm within ourselves. For when we are in control, we push God out of our lives.

God calls us today to restore His Likeness in us, just as the icons were restored to the Churches. … to Him be glory and honour, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Last Judgement

Mar9

Last Judgement

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit:

CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST!!

Amen, I say to you, in as much as ye did not to the least of these, neither did ye to Me.

Today we hear about fasting in the epistle. If we read the hymns from Vespers and Matins for this coming cheese week we will also hear words of instruction about fasting.

If thou dost fast from food, O my soul, yet dost not cleanse thyself from passions, thou dost rejoice in vain over thy abstinence. For if thy purpose is not turned towards amendment of life, as a liar thou art hateful in God’s sight, and thou doest resemble the evil demons who never eat at all. Do not by sinning make the fast worthless, but firmly resist all wicked impulses. Picture to thyself that thou art standing beside the crucified Saviour, or rather, that thou art thyself crucified with Him Who was crucified for thee; and cry out to Him: “Remember me, O Lord, when Thou comest into Thy Kingdom. (Wednesday Matins)

The hymns of the Katavasia of the Canon for last night’s Vigil are already the hymns of the irmosoi of the Great Canon of St. Andrew.

This Wednesday at Vespers, and Friday at the Moleben, we will already say the Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian.

This week we already begin fasting from meat. If you have access to the daily sections of the Triodion, they start this week. I commend them to you.

In today’s Gospel Jesus gives us a different sort of teaching. Instead of speaking of Himself and the Kingdom obliquely or through Parables, He confronts us with a vision of the Last Judgement. This Glorious vision is of Him, the Son of Man, as King of all nations, for ALL nations will be judged, those we like, and those we do not like. All nations before the Throne of Glory are judged based on how they recognized the Image of God in the least of them.

The Lord sent the Law, and the Prophets, and we have disregarded them. And finally He spoke to us through His Son, and we disregarded Him too. Our Physician has taken careful measures for our healing, even conquering death by His death, and dulling its sting. And as in the days of Noah, Christ has flooded the world with His Righteousness, Grace, and Mercy.

The King comes with both Justice and Mercy. And we recall all of Jesus’ teachings and parables reminding us that, to the merciful, God will show mercy; — to the merciless, God will show no mercy, but only judgement. Some will see the King as joy and bliss; others will see the King as judgement and condemnation. And the dividing line is: . . . “How did we treat others.” When we get to Holy Week we will see this theme repeated: for the Foolish Virgins did not have enough oil. . . . Oil is a pun for mercy.

And He divides the sheep from the goats, the righteous from the wicked. The Sheep are sheep because their likeness is as to the Lamb of God. One thing to note is that neither the righteous nor the wicked are aware of who is which. The righteous question being considered righteous; the wicked question being considered wicked. The righteous are unaware that by ministering to the least of these, they ministered to the King.

He was: hungry, and they fed; thirsty and they gave drink; a foreigner, and they welcomed Him; naked, and they clothed Him; sick and imprisoned and they visited Him. The righteous ministered to Him by ministering to the least of these. They didn’t know that by ministering to the Image of God in the least of these, that they ministered to God, the King. For God does not need food, drink, asylum, clothing, a physician, or liberty — but the least of those created in His Image do. When you sum it all up, what they did for their fellows who are created in God’s Image and likeness — they loved. . . . Come ye blessed, inherit the Kingdom that was prepared for you from the foundation. The Kingdom of God is what we were all created for. . . And the righteous do not react as if they have been vindicated; instead they react with humility.

To the goats, the wicked He says: Depart you cursed ones. He does not curse them. They have cursed themselves. Depart to a place that was NOT prepared for you, but for the devil and his demons. The fire of punishment was not designed for you, but you have brought it upon yourself; you have chosen it. They choose it by refusing to do all the things the righteous did. And the impious react with self justification: “Lord when did we see Thee…” In this is a warning to us, not to seek to justify ourselves. DEPART! . . . for you preferred wealth and power and things over your brothers. . . and that is hatred for your brothers.

St. Gregory Palamas says, “Observe this last evil: pride is yoked with callous behavior, as humility is with compassion. When the righteous are praised for doing good, they humble themselves the more, without justifying themselves. When these others are accused of being devoid of compassion by Him Who cannot lie, they do not humbly throw themselves to the ground, but answer back and justify themselves.”

The first commandment is that we love God with all our mind, all our soul, and all our strength, and the second is that we love our neighbor as ourselves. The only way we can prove we love God is by loving our neighbor.

Brothers and sisters, we live in a culture dominated by protestant calvinism: the idea that wealth is virtue. If you read social theory you will find that they have divided the poor into “deserving poor” and “undeserving poor”. And we do our best as a culture to withhold aid to those we deem “undeserving. But SS John Chrysostom, Basil the Great, Ambrose of Milan will have nothing of this:

For most people, when they see someone in hunger, chronic illness, and the extremes of misfortune, do not even allow him a good reputation but judge his life by his troubles, and think that he is surely in such misery because of wickedness. — St. John Chrysostom

Lift up and stretch out your hands, not to heaven but to the poor; for if you stretch out your hands to the poor, you have reached the summit of heaven. But if you lift up your hands in prayer without sharing with the poor, it is worth nothing . — St John Chrysostom

Feeding the hungry is a greater work than raising the dead. — St John Chrysostom

If you see any one in affliction, ask no more questions. His being in affliction involves a just claim on your aid. For if when you see a beast of burden choking you raise him up, and do not curiously inquire whose he is, much more about a human being one ought not to be over-curious in enquiring whose he is. He is God’s, be he heathen or be he Jew; since even if he is an unbeliever, still he needs help… . . . If you see him in affliction, do not say that he is wicked. For when a person is in calamity, and needs help, it is not right to say that he is wicked. For this is cruelty, inhumanity, and arrogance. — St. John Chrysostom

The rich are in possession of the goods of the poor, even if they have acquired them honestly or inherited them legally. — St. John Chrysostom

The rich seize common goods before others have the opportunity, then claim them as their own by right of preemption. For if we all took only what was necessary to satisfy our own needs, giving the rest to those who lack, no one would be rich, no one would be poor, and no one would be in need. — St. Basil the Great

He who strips the clothed is to be called a thief. How should we name him who is able to dress the naked and doesn’t do it. — St. Basil the Great

You are not making a gift of what is yours to the poor man, but you are giving him back what is his. You have been appropriating things that are meant to be for the common use of everyone. The earth belongs to everyone, not just to the rich. — St Ambrose

Feed him who is dying of hunger; if you have not fed him you have killed him. — St. Ambrose of Milan

I was hungry and you took my food away, and arrested those who were trying to feed me; I was thirsty and you dumped my water in the desert, or you gave my water to someone who paid you; I was a foreigner and you sent me back to the perils of the country I escaped, I was naked and you condemned my morality; I was sick and you made it impossible for me to see the physician; I was in prison and you forgot me.

Rather than take Jesus’ words to heart, we try to find a way to justify our greed, our hard heartedness, our neglect, our theft of the resources that belong to all mankind.

During the Lenten season that will soon be upon us, we are instructed to increase prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. When we give alms we should thank the one we give to, because through them we have the blessing to give to God.

We are beginning a time when we are asked by the Church to simplify our lives, to soften our hearts, to be generous with alms, to turn down the volume of our noisy world.

Brothers and sisters, listen. Our souls are on the line. Jesus taught us to pray that our debts be forgiven as we forgive our debtors — our debts, those things we should have done but didn’t. Jesus did not accuse the goat people of adultery or murder; He accused them of lack of mercy.

I would be guilty of not clothing you if I soft-pedalled this. This is what our Lord expects of us. This is the criteria by which we are judged.

The Kingdom which was prepared for you from the beginning, the joy of all joys — or, … the punishment that was not prepared for you but rather for the devil and his angels. Which will we decide? We must decide whether to let the medicine of these commandments be a healing for us. Or by not applying the medicine, a fate which was never ours to begin with awaits.

But by our actions or inactions, we decide.

May we attain unto the lot of the sheep through the mercies of our Lord Jesus Christ, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, to Whom be all glory, honour, and worship; always now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen

Sunday of Orthodoxy

Mar7

Sunday of Orthodoxy

CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST !!!

Today is the Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy. We celebrate the return of icons to the worship of Christ our God on earth. Today we commemorate the restoration in AD 843 of Icons. They went in procession to the Church of Theotokos ton Blakhernós, and restored the icons.

The scriptures we read were catechistic (Heb 11 and John 1:43-51). They are pointing those who will be baptised at the end of Great Lent to what the beginning of the journey was for the disciples, and reminding them of the prophets of old that looked forward to the Kingdom and the coming of the Messiah but never saw it themselves.

We celebrate the Incarnation of the Word of God Who took flesh for our sake. The indescribable deigned to become describable. As we will hear on Bright Monday: “No man has ever seen God; the only begotten Son Who Is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.”

He Who is the very radiance of the glory of God, the very Icon of His Person has shown Himself. As we sing in Matins: “God is the Lord and has revealed Himself unto us!”

Because He took flesh and dwelt among us, it is proper to depict Him in icons. For He Who is the very Icon of God has taken flesh that He Himself created in His Image, and joined the two together without confusion.

But we also cense us — we humans. We are created in God’s Image; by censing ourselves we honour that Image of God in ourselves.

For most of us, that likeness with God is broken and distorted. Are we working with God to restore that likeness? Are we treating His Image in others remembering that He said, that how we treat the least of these is how we treat Him?

These are questions that this Sunday requires us to look at. While we are celebrating the Triumph this evening we must pause and take stock at where we are.

The older themes of this Sunday can help us. Before the restoration of Icons, this Sunday was dedicated to the prophets. If you read or sing the hymns of this Sunday you will notice that it bounces between Icons and the Prophets. If we were to do Complines tonight we would hear the older canon of the Prophets. The prophets called Israel and Judah to repentance. They called the people to treat the poor, the orphan, the widow, the foreigner with respect. They called the people to treat their children as precious gifts from God. They called the people back from and criticized the false images of their material greed, their love of power over love of people. Often the people did not repent and had to pay the cost in exile. We are encouraged during Lent to read the prophet Isaiah. No matter what age we live in, the book of Isaiah has some sobering criticism of our society.
He sandwiches his prophecies of destruction with consolation, with the message: “It doesn’t have to be that way; you can repent.” By Chapter 40 it becomes clear that the people won’t repent, and he prepares them for exile and return. I commend to you all the reading of Isaiah.

This is what the Church asks us to chew on as we journey towards Pascha. God calls us in this period to work with Him to restore His likeness in us. The prayers are all a part of that. The services are all a part of that. Fasting is all a part of that. Alms are all a part of that. The Triodion is part of that. The prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian is part of that. These are the tools we have been given. These tools must be applied with love or they will be useless to us.

God calls us today to restore His Likeness in us, just as the icons were restored to the Churches.

Sunday of Orthodoxy: Icons and Iconoclasm

Mar8

Sunday of Orthodoxy: Icons and iconoclasm

The Sunday of Orthodoxy gives me pause to consider.

The Sunday of Orthodox celebrates the restoration of Holy Ikons to the Church.

While I decry, with the Church, the lack of understanding of the Incarnation of God in the flesh that underlies iconoclasm, it is upon me to look inward. Have I not done violence to the Image and likeness of God in myself? Am I not thus, in some form, an iconoclast?

Honouring the Image of God in me requires that I allow Him to transform my Mind (NOUS) to be renewed, restored, transformed. This is hard. It is a life-long struggle. For as the Light of God illumines me little by little, I get to see the dust and dirt that needs to be cleaned, and the trash that needs to be taken out.

In this Sunday we are reminded that God took flesh. And since He did this it is not only permissible but NECESSARY to have ikons. When I apply that to myself, I find that God is insisting that I become His likeness. In this way His Incarnation continues in the Church through Communion, and through our treatment of the least of these. In this God is calling me to be a saint. Part of me wants to be a saint; part of me rebels.

Since the day also honors the prophets, the second question must be: Have I done violence to the Image of God in others? This is what Jesus says the Last Judgement will be based on. Have I increased the burden of the afflicted? the hungry? the homeless? the ill clad? Have I failed to minister to the Image of God in the least of these? Have I failed to pay the worker a living wage? Have I made the disabled’s life more difficult or been impatient with them? Have I murdered with my attitudes of hate or indifference? These are the questions I must look at this second week of Lent.

O Lord and Master of my Life, give me not the spirit of laziness, despair, lust of power and idle talk; † But give, rather, the spirit of Sobriety, humility, patience, and Love to Thy servant; † Yea, O Lord & King, grant me to see my own transgressions, and not to judge my brother: for blessed art Thou unto ages of ages. Amen. †