The Prosperity Gospel: Gaud vs. God

In His teachings given to His disciples, Jesus Christ places a great emphasis on self denial, generosity, giving, charity, and mercy.   He is a preacher of love for others, for one’s neighbors, even for one’s enemies.  The opposite of the love which God offers the world is self-love.  The difference being that true love is focused on the other, while self-love is not love in this same sense for its object is one’s self not someone else.  Love is always other oriented (see 1 Corinthians 13). 

I was asked what I think about Joel Osteen’s message and version of Christianity.  I have to admit being a person who rarely watches TV and so who isn’t awed by the most current “celebrity saint”, I had no idea who Osteen was.  Coincidentally two people sent me different electronic references about him including an article in The Atlantic about the so-called “prosperity Gospel” which is certainly appealing to every self-loving American.  “Name it and claim it” theology is so popular because it is so self-serving.

It is not that a positivist message is wrong in and of itself, but I think it is not true to God or the Gospel.  To put it in another way it is more about gaud than God or more about gaudiness than godliness.  Christ Himself warned His followers that they could expect persecution for rejecting the values of the world, Osteen though changes the message and has Christ teaching prosperity rather than persecution. 

Someone might say I as a pastor of a congregation under 200 members am jealous of Osteen’s worldwide outreach.  But I don’t have the personality to do what he is doing – I have no interest in making myself the message.  Besides it is the Church as whole – the Body of Christ’s task to reach the world.  I personally don’t have to do it by myself.  My role is a small part within the Body of Christ. Osteen is promiting himself and his ideas.   Osteen certainly strikes me as being part of America’s love for celebrity.  It is his message which he is selling, literally in the form of books.

4o Martyrs of Sebaste

I also think the prosperity Gospel is false, because history shows countless Christians who remained totally faithful to God despite persecution, enslavement, impoverishment, exile, imprisonment, torture, minority status and martyrdom.  Faithfulness to God is no guarantee of success in this world, nor is it meant to be.  The entire Old Testament is witness to the fact that despite defeat, enslavement, exile and all manners of suffering, the Jews remained faithful to God and did not embrace the religions and gods who triumphed over them.    One real contribution of Judaism to all of Western civilization is their belief that there is meaning to be found even in suffering and defeat.  Even when there is only suffering God still speaks to His people.  The search for meaning is the Jewish legacy to the world.  The glory of the people of God was their determined faithfulness to the Lord even when they languished in captivity or exile.

Though the positivist message is admittedly totally appealing to a self-loving population, it has little to offer to people in time of crisis, suffering, tragedy or cataclysm. 

The message of the Gospel is one of love – of giving of one’s self, of being merciful to others, of being charitable and generous.  The prosperity Gospel puts everyone’s faith at risk when there is no prosperity.   It makes prosperity, riches and wealth to be the greatest good which will only lead to greed – the willingness to be prosperous at the expense of any others, and the willingness to kill any who threaten one’s wealth.  Hardly the Gospel message of Jesus, the Son of God.

I see the same problem with the prosperity Gospel as I do with those believers who fear science and religion.   It sets up a false God which requires one to sacrifice truth in order to defend the idol.   Faith in God is to help us survive prosperity as well as poverty (“Fret not yourself over one who prospers in his way” – Psalm 37:7; “For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked” – Psalm 73:3).   Faith in God is not threatened by the mounting evidence of evolution at work in the world.   Faith does not oppose truth, but helps us transcend an indifferent or hostile empirical universe.   God as Creator and Savior of the universe is just as true in times of plenty and at times of want.  God as Creator of the universe is just as true even if the on-going mechanism at work in creation is an evolutionary descent with modification.  Neither poverty nor science can change the truth about the Creator.  Faith sustains us through times of suffering and impoverishment and gives us peace and wisdom as science offers a materialistic view of the universe.

Faith is not magic that can manipulate the powers of the universe to carry out “my” will.  Faith is accepting that I am the servant of the Lord – He is not my servant who must accomplish my will because He cannot resist my faith anymore than a Storm Trooper can resist the Force in the hands of a Jedi.   The prosperity Gospel ignores the plight of countless people who suffer disease and trauma in this world despite their faithfulness to God.  It turns God into the Cosmic Santa Claus who must reward your every whim whether you’ve been bad or good because you have the power to force Him to do your will. 

 The prosperity Gospel focuses not on God but on what works for me – any god will do as long as that force/god can be bent to do my will.   This has nothing to do with truth, mercy, love, kindness, peace, generosity or charity.  It says the universe is here to serve me – it is not even a geocentric vision which was ousted by truth centuries ago, but is an egocentric vision of reality in which the universe is nothing more than the narcissistic supply which feeds my self centeredness.  God is only necessary to the extent that He serves me for in this universe “I” am the only one who really exists or matters.  The world outside of myself is mine to manipulate, mine or pillage as I see fit for “’I’ am the Lord my god” in this pseudo-theological thinking.

If all the positive thinking gurus have got you down, you would be in good company with Barbara Ehrenreich whose new book BRIGHT-SIDED is subtitled, “How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America.”

Keeping Faith with God

This is the 4th and final blog in a series  which began with  “Through the Law, I died to the Law: St. Paul and Torah.”  The immediate preceeding blog was Keeping Torah: Examples of Faith.    In these blogs I have been reflecting on St. Paul’s comment, “For I through the law died to the law that I might live to God”  (Galatians 2:19).    For St. Paul the failure of the Torah was that the Jews made keeping the Torah the center of their spiritual life, rather than keeping faith in God.   They should have done both, but became focused on the minutiae of rules. 

Once St. Paul recognized that Jesus was in fact God’s promised Messiah, he realized the Law had served its purpose – it had kept him faithful to God so that he could recognize what God was now doing for the salvation of the world.  He realized the Law was God’s gift to help him and all Israel be faithful to God, but with the coming of the Christ, the purpose of the Law was fulfilled.  The Law was meant to keep Israel faithful to God’s promises.   The Messiah was the fulfillment of God’s promises, thus the very thing the Law was preparing them to recognize.   For Paul adherence to the law came to an end because now faith was demanding that Israel recognize its Messiah.   The object of his faith was not the Law, but the Messiah – what God was doing for the world.  The Law it turns out was a temporary custodian to help keep Israel focused on and faithful to God.  The Law like the Scriptures were not the end in themselves but point to the Christ (John 5:39-40).   Now being faithful to God meant following Christ; the Law with its demands was shown to be a temporary tool for keeping faith in God.   

In Galatians 2:20 and Philippians 3:9, St. Paul uses a phrase in talking about Christ referring to the faith of Christ.  He says he lives by the faith of the Son of God.  Modern Protestant translators often changed the phrase to read that Paul lives by faith in the son of God.  But a number of current scholars (Morna Hooker or James Dunn for examples) have come to think that Paul intended to say Christ’s faith as the passages literally state.  St. Paul does think we all must live by faith, and Jesus is the greatest example of this.  Jesus is the incarnate Word of God but as a human he must live by faith to be the Savior of the human race.  As Christian we actually do live by His faith, not just our faith in Him!   Christ models faithfulness to us as we can see in Luke 22:41-44 where Jesus is praying on the Mount of Olives just before His crucifixion.  Ritualized religion cannot help Jesus at this point – he now places His full trust in God His Father for He has submitted Himself to the Father’s will in becoming incarnate and setting aside His divine prerogatives.  Keeping Torah cannot save Him from what He must endure to save humankind.  St. Paul’s criticism of the ritualism of the Jews is that they have replaced faith with religion.  Jesus keeps faith despite what religious conviction and authority imposes on Him on the cross.  Jesus does in fact model the faith which St. Paul so brilliantly explicates.   It is the faith of the man Jesus which keeps Him humanly oriented to the Divine Will.

Even in the Gospel Lesson of the woman with the flow of blood (Luke 8:41-56), we see this same message being offered.  The woman’s being faithfully observant to Torah cannot heal her.  Only when she reaches out beyond keeping Torah to touch Christ is she healed.  The Law declared her unclean for her hemorrhage and says she is unfit to be in public or to touch anyone – to touch Christ is to reach beyond what the Torah allowed.   Christ Himself emphasizes the theme of the limit and failure of the Law.  The woman had been healed surreptitiously and nobody knows she is unclean, but Christ calls attention to this fact, and the woman publicly confesses her uncleanness and having touched  Christ against the Torah prohibition.  It is at that  very moment that Christ proclaims it is her faith which has healed her.  Keeping the Law would not have healed her and in fact keeping Torah would have prevented her from touching Christ and being healed.   It is faith to which the Law was meant to bring us, not to keep us away from God!   The woman showed her faith by keeping Torah but her faith led her to Christ.  The sign of her keeping Torah is her desire to secretly touch Christ without letting anyone know she is actually unclean and thus violating Torah.  She kept Torah in order to be faithful to God and then was able to recognize God at work in Jesus Christ.  Through the Law she died to the law so that she might live to God.

As a further means to understand St. Paul’s point about faith and law, I will offer this non-biblical example:   Say you become ill and the doctor prescribes a regiment of taking medicine to help you recover.   You begin taking the medicines, but aren’t getting better, so you decide you need to more strictly follow the doctor’s rules.  You become obsessed with keeping the details of the doctor’s rules, yet your condition worsens.   The direction say take a full glass of water with your medicine, and so you decide a cup 7/8 full is not full enough.   If your focus on rigidly obeying the doctor’s order causes you to fail to notice that your health continues to decline, you have made the mistake that St. Paul ascribes to the Jews – you made following strictly the details of the doctor’s regiment more important than your improving health.   Something got lost in the process.  The doctor was not ultimately as interested in you rigidly following the regiment as he or she was in your getting healthy.  Slavishly following the directions regarding the medication has caused you to lose sight of the fact that the doctor was not concerned about you taking the medicine but rather about you getting better.

Leo Tolstoy wrote the story “The Death of Ivan Ilych,” in which Ivan has a terminal illness.  Ivan fanatically tries to keep the doctor’s rules to the minutest detail, yet no amount of following the rules can change the fact that his condition is terminal.  He loses sight of the big picture until the disease progresses to such a point that he has to come to grip with death itself.   Then he realizes that the rigid following of such rules is a distraction to the ultimate and important issues of life.

When St. Paul accepted that Jesus was the Messiah, he realized the Law had served its good purpose and so through the Law he died to the Law for the Law could not do for him what faith alone could – keep Him oriented to God’s current plan of salvation.   Keeping the Law was never the goal, rather it was always meant to help us keep faith with God.  Rigid keeping of the law could be done without the heart being brought closer to God, while faith opens the heart to being a through for God Himself.

Lest we falsely imagine St. Paul’s criticism of Torah-keeping replacing true faith is only directed at Jews, we must remember as Orthodox it is easy for us to replace faith in God with the religion of Tradition.    Orthodox Tradition serves the same role for us as the Torah did for the Jews.   We can follow all the details of liturgical ritualism or ascetic rigorism and still be lacking that faith in God which St. Paul taught.    Consider St. Paul’s words:

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:1-3 RSV).

Through the Law St. Paul died to the Law because his faith causes him to be crucified with Christ.  He embraces the faith of Christ and understands that it is His faith which saves us.   We must never imagine that obedience to a tradition is equivalent to faith in the Son of God.  We could be like Zechariah so faithful to tradition that even God sees our righteousness and yet incapable of believing what God is doing in our lives.  We can also be like the crucified Christ –  stripped of the religious tradition and yet faithful to God even to the point of death on the cross.

Keeping Torah: Examples of Faith

This is the 3^rd blog in a series in which I am reflecting on St. Paul’s comment, “For I through the law died to the law that I might live to God”  (Galatians 2:19).   The first blog is entitled, “Through the Law, I died to the Law: St. Paul and Torah.”  and the 2nd blog is  Keeping Torah: The Means to the End.  For St. Paul the failure of the Torah was that the Jews made keeping the Torah the center of their spiritual life, rather than keeping faith in God.   They should have done both, but became focused on the minutiae of rules. 

Keeping Torah (Law) according to St. Paul was not the end result of Jewish faithfulness but rather the sign of that faithfulness.   Keeping Torah thus served to  to help Israel faithfully watch what God was doing in the world.   The tragedy as St. Paul presents it is that while the Jews kept the Law, even fanatically, they couldn’t recognize God’s plan and activity when He sent His Messiah to them.  The Law became for them the way to show how perfect they were in terms of obedience, whereas it was intended to keep them faithfully focused on God in order to recognize what God was doing and how they were to follow Him.    

Paul’s argument is that Moses and Abraham were all about keeping faith in God not simply obeying God’s rules.  They paid attention to what God was doing and they followed God; they did not simply follow old rules.  The Law wasn’t wrong, but when God acted in a new way the faithful were expected to keep faith in Him and follow what He was doing.   They were to respond in faith to the new activity by God.   Unfortunately, the Law became more important than what God was presently doing.  The Law became incarnate for the Jews but in hardened rock, whereas faith was meant to be kept in the human heart.  The Law became external to their very being, whereas faith was meant to work internally in the people to keep alive their relationship with God.  Keeping Torah was supposed to keep their hearts attuned to God.

As an example of what St. Paul is talking about consider Luke 1:5-23, the story of the priest Zechariah who was to become the father of John the Baptist.  First Zechariah is a priest – a man whose very position in Jewish society was to intercede before God on behalf of Israel.  He is to be a man of prayer involved in asking God’s forgiveness and blessing for His people.  Thus he is a man focused on God, a man of faith.  Zechariah in the Gospel lesson is described in verse 6

Righteous Zechariah

as being “righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord.”   Zechariah keeps all the commandments religiously, and should thus be an example of the man of faith.  In this pericope Zechariah is chosen this day to go before the Lord to burn incense in the Temple while the people are praying.  The Temple itself is the sign of God’s presence in Israel, the very place where the Jews believed God dwelt with His people.  It should have been the very place where the faithful would expect God to speak to His people.   The scene is one of the man of faith standing before God in prayer awaiting God’s action and/or direction.  But then a very troubling thing happens to Zechariah.  God sends an angel to speak to him and Zechariah is totally unprepared for this!   Zechariah is disturbed and fearful – this is not what is supposed to be happening!   The Angel of the Lord tells Zechariah that in fact God has heard his prayer and will grant his petition.   Zechariah is literally struck dumb with disbelief.  We can only wonder, what in the world did he think he was going into the temple for?  Was it not to invoke God to continue to speak with Israel?   Who did he think he was offering incense to and to whom was he praying?   In fact, even for the righteous man Zechariah, walking in the commandments of the Lord had become routine and keeping ritualized.  The Scriptures proclaimed him as righteous for his perfect keeping of the Law.  Yes, he was being obedient and observant.  Yes, he faithfully kept the ordinances.  But, no, this did not translate into faith in God – looking to what God is currently doing, trusting God to act and fulfill His promises, and expecting to see their fulfillment.  Zechariah went literally to burn incense – to follow the ritual – but he was not prepared for nor expecting God to speak to him.  He was not at all prepared for God to answer his prayers.  He prayed in obedience to the law but this was not the same as having faith.  Zechariah is a prime example of what Paul describes as keeping the form of religion but denying its power.  Zechariah was keeping Torah, but his faith was not alive, he was keeping the ritual without any thought about keeping a relationship with God.   So standing in the temple, God’s dwelling place on earth, praying to God with the people, has become a ritual to perform, but is no longer a faith experience -  Zechariah is totally unprepared to hear from God. Keeping Torah had replaced having faith as he thought absolute obedience to  the Law was all God wanted from Israel. 

When Zechariah’s son is born, Zechariah is given his voice back and he sings a hymn of praise to God who fulfills His promises (Luke 1:67-80).  He doesn’t mention the Law in his hymn for He has learned that it is faith in God which God wants from His people not just obedience.  Obedience to the Law is not wrong and will earn one the title of being righteous, but it is no substitute for faith in God and a living relationship with Him.

Next blog:  Keeping Faith with God

Keeping Torah: The Means to the End

This is the 2^nd blog in a series in which I am reflecting on St. Paul’s comment, “For I through the law died to the law that I might live to God”  (Galatians 2:19).   The first blog was entitled, “Through the Law, I died to the Law: St. Paul and Torah.”  For St. Paul the failure of the Torah was that the Jews made keeping the Torah the center of their spiritual life, rather than keeping faith in God.   They should have done both, but became focused on the minutiae of rules.  

The proof of the problem for St. Paul is that when God acted and sent the Messiah, Jesus, into the world, the Jews were so intent on keeping Torah, and defining their relationship to God wholly in terms of keeping Torah, that they did not recognize what God was doing.  They didn’t see the Christ for whom the Torah was meant to prepare them and help them recognize because they made keeping the Law the goal of their spiritual life.  They had substituted an active faithful relationship with God by embracing the form of religion while denying its power.  They replaced faith in God with keeping the Law.  For St. Paul the Law ended up blinding them to God, and what God was doing for them.

As St. Paul sees it, the Jews had substituted strict adherence to the law for the faith it was supposed to show they had.  They became obsessed with watching who was or wasn’t keeping every jot and tittle of the Law, and became obsessed with the fact that since they alone were keeping Torah, they alone were favored by God.   They were supposed to keep faith with God in order to be a Light to the world’s other nations, but instead saw themselves as the only people God cared about.   They could not see that God was actually continuing to act in the world – sending the Messiah into the world for the life of the world, and for its salvation, to be the Light to the nations, to bring all people to Himself.

St. Paul in his conversion experience recognized that what he was aiming to perfect as a Pharisee – strict adherence to Torah — in fact had become a failure in faith; for the Jews had missed God’s chosen One when He appeared on earth.  Keeping Torah was meant to keep all of Israel faithful, but it wasn’t working as the Jews had rejected God’s chosen Messiah.    In Paul’s conversion he realized that God in fact had fulfilled His promises to His people in Jesus.  Keeping the Law did not prevent Paul from seeing the truth, rather what Jesus revealed to him was that the coming of Christ was the very thing for which keeping Torah was preparing him and all Jews.   The Law had done its job in Paul:  in seeing Christ, he was temporarily blinded which led to his proclaiming that Jesus was the fulfillment of God’s plan and promises.  The Law had thus kept Paul faithful to God, to His promises, to His plan.  But now that the Christ had come, Paul realized keeping Torah was not what God had wanted for His people, but rather keeping Torah was the means to the end; the end being remaining faithful to God.    Astoundingly, the strict adherence to keeping Torah had caused many Jews to reject Jesus as the Messiah and to demand his crucifixion for not keeping Torah!  It turns out that keeping Torah didn’t mean just strict adherence to the Law, but rather being faithful to God and His plan of salvation which He revealed in Jesus Christ.   Having faith in God was always both the goal and the desired behavior. 

Next:  Keeping Torah: Examples of Faith

Through the Law, I Died to the Law: St. Paul and Torah

In this series of blogs I intend to explore St. Paul the Apostle’s comment in Galatians 2:19 (RSV), “For I through the law died to the law, that I might live to God.”

St. Paul is the prime elucidator of the Christian idea of the justification by faith rather than attaining God’s justification through keeping Torah.  He was clear that it is faith in Christ which brings one to salvation, not keeping the Law.  However, St. Paul was not an anarchist nor even anomian, rather he had very clear ideas of morality based in the Jewish Tradition and Law.  Biblical Scholar James Dunn, in The Partings of the Ways, notes that keeping the Law for Jews was not the means to become part of the chosen people, rather keeping the Law was intended for those already within the community of God’s people and the means for distinguishing themselves from the other nations.

“For the devout Jew, obedience to the law was not a way of entering the covenant, not a way of winning a place in God’s favour. Obedience to the Torah was what God demanded of those already within the covenant, already part of his chosen people. The law told the covenant member how to live as a covenant member. ‘Covenant nominism’ is what the devout Jew did to express his Jewishness, that which distinguished him from the other nations.” 

What Paul objected to was exactly the Jewish notion that since only Jews had the Law, only Jews could keep the Law and therefore only Jews were capable of being saved by God.  St. Paul’s argument is that all along it was faithfulness to God which was essential - keeping the Law was only meant as a sign of faithfulness - it was never intended to replace faith in God as the basis for our relationship to God.   Paul’s argument is the Jews were meant to be a light to the nations, not the people who closed the door on them.  Any who see keeping tradition as the sign of their exclusively being saved by God have missed the point of godly Tradition.  Keeping Tradition like keeping Torah is only meant as a sign of our faithfulness but it is not intended to replace faith as our way of relating to the Lord God.

The point St. Paul is trying to make is that what God always wanted from His people was that they remain faithful to Him.  God’s intention was never to create a people who robotically obeyed the detail of Law, rather Law was given to help the people keep faith with God.   God did not create automatons but rather made us humans meaning we have to freely choose to believe in God and follow Him.

God always wanted us to live by faith, meaning that we actually trust God, believe His promises and live as if we actually believe them. We are to pay attention to what God is doing, not just what God did in the past.  The Law was given as a means for believers to demonstrate that they do have faith in God.  How would someone who believes in God live?   St. James has it right when he says, “I by my works will show you my faith” (James 2:18).  If we really believe God, we will do what God commands.  The Law was given to help us maintain a faithful relationship with God.

Here though is the issue as St. Paul defines it.  The Torah was given by God as the means for believers to demonstrate their faith (What difference does it make practically whether or not you believe in God?  You live a particular life style, one that God has revealed and commanded).  The Torah was also given to help believers remain faithful, to be constantly reminded that they are to live and act with faith in God as their prime motivator.  By being constantly faithful to God in every little deed we maintain a right and living relationship with God.  We pay attention to God and continually watch for what He is currently doing, where He is leading, what He expects from us.   This is a living relationship – not just keeping old rules, but an engagement with God today in whatever circumstances we are now in.

What happened however for the Jews, according to St. Paul, is that they lost sight of the fact that keeping Torah was always about faith and being faithful.  Keeping Torah was a means to an end.  Unfortunately, keeping Torah became the end in itself; the Jews came to value absolute adherence to the Law as the goal of the spiritual life, but lost sight of the fact that keeping Torah was meant to keep us faithful – to keep our eyes on God and what God is presently doing and what God wants us to do.

Next:   Keeping Torah – The Means to the End

Lazarus and the Rich Man (2009)

St. John Chrysostom

Commenting on Luke 16:19-31, the Gospel Lesson about Lazarus and the rich man, St. John Chrysostom wrote in praise of Lazarus, a man for whom Scriptures lists no virtues, and whose only known characteristics are poverty and disease.   Lazarus’ poverty and sufferings are contrasted with the unnamed rich man who lived a life of luxury.  The Gospel lesson is a challenge to any who see their own prosperity as being a guarantee of God favoring them.  The blessed man in the parable – the rich man -  stunningly is not in the end the one favored by God.   Wealth is no indication of virtue or of God’s favor.   Chrysostom sees in Lazarus though the more hidden virtues of  long-suffering patience coupled with his having a thankful spirit despite his poverty.  In other words Lazarus is not a complainer, nor bitter about his situation in life, but rather keeps faith in God like Job despite the cruelty of his life experience.

For this was the achievement of Lazarus, too: he did not give anyone money, either—how could he, being short of necessary nourishment? He did not visit prisons—how could he, being incapable of standing up? He did not visit the sick—how could he, exposed as he was to the tongues of the dogs? Yet  independently of these things he carried off the prize for virtue for bearing everything nobly, for uttering no harsh word despite seeing a cruel and inhumane man feted and feasted while he himself was subjected to such awful troubles. Hence the one whose condition was no better than a corpse, lying neglected in the gateway of the man who was then rich, was welcomed into the bosom of Abraham. Along with the patriarch who had achieved so much he was awarded the crown, was publically acclaimed and given a place in his company despite having given no alms, stretched out no hand to the wronged, welcomed no strangers, was capable of demonstrating nothing else of this kind, but only giving thanks for everything and carrying off the bright crown for endurance. Thanksgiving and sound values are a great achievement, as is patient endurance practiced amidst such awful difficulties; it is a greater work than anything. On those grounds Job also was crowned… After all, it is no slight merit to hold back a soul in distress from committing any sin; it is comparable with martyrdom, it is the acme of good things.  

Knowing Christ = Eternal Life

4th Sunday after Pentecost   2009            Matthew 8:5-13

At that time Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him,  beseeching him and saying, “Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, in terrible distress.” And he said to him, “I will come and heal him.” But the centurion answered him, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” When Jesus heard him, he marveled, and said to those who followed him, “Truly, I say to you, not even in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.”  And to the centurion Jesus said, “Go; be it done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed at that very moment.

The Centurion demonstrates a great amount of faith in Christ.   He does not come to Jesus asking that Jesus pray for his beloved sick servant.  He lays at Jesus’ feet the crisis:  the servant is perilously ill and in great pain.   Jesus says He will come and heal the servant. 

In this story we see the Centurion has sized up Jesus and understands that Jesus is a man of power.  Jesus, howcver, is not commanding a cohort of soldiers; rather Jesus is able to command the wind, evil powers, illness and death.  The Centurion’s faith is not merely in healing; his faith is in the man who can heal.  Whether he can articulate the idea or not, the Centurion is expressing a belief in the divinity of Christ.   The powers that Jesus possesses come from God, and rightfully belong to God alone.  The Centurion is expressing a belief  – the answer to the question, “Who is Jesus?”   The Centurion believes Jesus has the power over sickness and death because he believes that Jesus in fact is the Messiah and the Son of God.   “Who is Jesus?” is the central question which this Gospel lesson answers.

The Centurion also expresses his faith in Jesus and who Jesus is through his tremendous humility in expressing to Christ that he is not worthy to have Christ come to his home.  The Centurion is a military leader in the army which has conquered the Jews.  He could be emboldened to seek mercy from Jesus for his servant because of his own status as conquering military officer.  

Neither the Centurion’s faith nor his social status as a conquering army officer takes away his meekness and humility before the Lord Jesus in whom the Centurion sees the power of God. 

We are indeed to approach Christ boldly in prayer with our requests.  But then we learn from the Centurion it is Christ’s mercy and goodness not our righteousness which causes Christ to heal and answer prayer.   Abba Zosimas says:

What can be simpler than to love everyone and be loved by everyone? What great comfort do we not receive from the commandments of Christ? Nonetheless, our free will is not passionate enough. If it were truly passionate, then by the grace of God everything would appear simple for our free will. As I have frequently told you, a small inclination of our desire is able to attract God for our assistance. Moreover, as the sacred Antony says: “Virtue only requires our desire.” Or again: “We do not need to make a great journey in order to reach the heavenly kingdom, nor do we need to cross the seas in order to acquire  virtue.” What rest is lacking from the meek and humble person? Truly: “The meek shall inherit the land, and delight themselves in abundant prosperity” (Psalm 37:11).     (John Chryssavgis, In the Heart of the Desert)

The Centurion is a man of faith.  His faith however is not in a vague benevolent power in the universe.  Rather the Centurion recognizes God in Jesus Christ.   The Centurion understands that Jesus doesn’t have to pray to the Father to ask God the Father to do the healing, for in fact Christ Himself possesses the power to heal, to command sickness, demons and nature.  The essential question to be answered is “Who is Jesus?”    When we understand how the Gospels answer that question, then we understand what we need to do.

Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God,

and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

(John 17:3)

Thomas Sunday (1994)

Sermon notes   St. Thomas Sunday, John 20:19-29                                      May 8, 1994

At the very beginning of Great Lent I told you that Lent was designed to be a liturgical tool to teach us about life as disciples of Christ. I used the word microcosm, meaning the few weeks of Lent were really our whole life lived out in a few short weeks. Each Sunday of Great Lent was given a special Gospel Lesson to help us understand what it means to be a disciple of Christ.

Each week was like moving down a narrowing tunnel.

Each week our way of life, our beliefs and perspectives were challenged by our Lord Jesus Christ, so that we could properly understand and follow him. Each week we were drawn deeper into that ever narrowing tunnel, and as Mark’s Gospel has it, it is a tunnel that gets darker as we go in. It gets darker because the world increasingly rejects Christ and pushes him toward the crucifixion. It gets darker because slowly his family and followers and then even the disciples of Jesus abandon him, betray him, deny him and flee from him.

But also always, there is a speck of light at the end of the tunnel which we are drawn towards, which we continue to move towards, but to get there we must pass through this most narrow and painful passage, we are forced to crawl on our hands and knees on painful, cold and hard stone.

There is no other way for us to go if we are to follow Christ, for we all must pass through that narrow and dark passage of the tomb of Christ. And all of Lent and all of Holy Week lead to the darkness of the night, Christ in the tomb, and we hoping that God will arise and judge the earth. And then in the middle of the night, in the midst of this darkness, the light appears, the unfading and everlasting and gladsome light of Christ, Risen from the dead. We have passed through the cross, through the tomb, through death, through hades, into the never ending light of God’s Kingdom. And that tomb of Christ which stinks of death suddenly becomes the fount of life, the source of the resurrection, the font of baptism, the means of new birth, of regeneration, of access to God, to the kingdom, to eternal life.

The tomb of Christ, his death, his burial, become for all of us the passage into new life, we enter through this narrow passage way in our own baptism, where we die with Christ and are buried with him, and then are raised with him to a new and unending life. And each Pascha, we are reminded of this journey, of our journey through the darkness of this world, through the cross and tomb into the joyful light of God’s Kingdom. And our little walk into the darkness of the midnight, is a reminder that we are but sojourners on earth, passing through on our way to the Kingdom of God, and the night does pass away, and the darkness does fade into the light of Pascha, and the New Day, just as this world and our life on this earth also will pass away, and only that which God establishes will continue on forever. And that is a reminder not to live for this world which too is passing away like the night, but to live for the Kingdom of God which stands forever, and is never over come by the darkness.

And today we stand on the other side of that tomb, of the darkness of death, the cross and the grave. Today we know of the resurrection and we have experienced the light and life of Christ our God in baptism, in the Gospel, in the Liturgy, in the Eucharist. And we pass through the tomb of Christ which also becomes the font of life for us all, and we are here again in the world, facing the new reality of God’s resurrection.

But for all its newness, for all the light of Christ, and the power of the resurrection, and the joy, and the hope, we also notice that some things in the world have not changed. In fact many things seem to go on as if there is no God and there is no resurrection. The world is still awash in sin – in violence, disease, warfare, abortions, lust, greed, murder, death, disbelief. And we are confronted with this contradiction, if Jesus indeed is raised from the dead, why is the world so much like it was before? Are we really to believe that Jesus is risen from the dead? Are we to understand that this resurrection has changed the world forever? The apostles tell us that they saw Jesus alive, risen from the dead, but what are we to believe?

And this is where the Gospel lesson today brings us. Because, like Thomas, we were not there when Jesus appeared, and even though people we trust, the apostles, their followers, our bishops, priests, grandparents and parents, all say Jesus is risen from the dead, are we to believe?

And Jesus says to us, “You are indeed blessed, for you have not seen me and yet you believe.”

It is the doubt of Thomas, which is our doubt, and his confession of faith is for us.

Remember before you judge Thomas, that the other disciples also did not believe before they encountered the risen lord. None of them really believed in the resurrection until they had seen Christ themselves. The empty tomb, the message of the angels, the testimony of the myrrhbearing women, none of these things convinced the other disciples either. But Christ appears to the disciples and brings them to faith. He does not reject those slow-to-believe followers, he does not reject Thomas, but encourages him to faith. Neither will he reject you or I if or when we doubt the Lordship of Christ Jesus. Instead, He invites us, he welcomes us, He is ever patient with us because He loves us. If we have our doubts, note well that so did the disciples. Yet they came to believe that the resurrection was true, and then they took that news to the world.

Listen to these words from the hymns of Vespers for this Day.

Thomas, called the twin, was absent
When you came to your disciples through closed doors, O Christ.
He refused to believe what they told him,
But you did not reject him for his faithlessness.
When he saw your side, and the wounds in your hands and feet,
His doubts vanished and his faith was confirmed.
After both seeing and feeling you,
He confessed you to be neither and abstract God nor merely a man.
He cried: Glory to you, my Lord and my God!”

The disciples were assembled on the eighth day,
When the Savior came and gave them his peace,
He said to Thomas,
“Come, Apostle! Feel my hands, which were pierced by the nails.”
O Blessed doubt of Thomas,
which brought the hearts of believers to knowledge.
In fear we cry to You:
“Glory to You, my Lord and my God!”

If there are any doubts in your heart about Jesus or the resurrection, know that many people before you have also doubted, and there doubts were laid aside by personal experience, and it is they who witness to you today, who invite you to believe that Jesus of Nazereth is in fact God’s chosen Messiah, whose life, death and resurrection has changed the course of the world forever.

The Blessed Doubt of Thomas

THOMAS SUNDAY                  John 20:19-31

One element to the resurrection stories found in all 4 of the Gospels which I think lends credence to the story of the resurrection is the recorded reaction of the women disciples of the Lord when they arrived at Christ’s tomb and discovered it was empty.  There was no immediate proclamation of the resurrection or belief in the resurrection by the women.  They are totally baffled and dismayed by the discovery of the empty tomb and don’t know what to make of it.   Seeing the empty tomb does not bring them to immediate faith, they need someone to interpret the empty tomb to them, and that is when they learn about the resurrection.  It is only in the interpretation offered to them by the angel being(s) that they begin to understand the empty tomb.

 In Matthew 28 the women do go tell the disciples what they saw and were told but in 28:17, doubt lingers among the disciples.   In Mark 16 the women flee from the tomb in fear and say nothing to anyone about what they saw.  In Luke 24 the women tell the 11 disciples but in 24:11 the disciples clearly do not believe what the women tell them. In John 20 Mary Magdalene sees the empty tomb and reports it to the disciples.  Peter and John then look for themselves but no one knows what to think. 

 In today’s Gospel lesson when we see the disciples hiding behind locked doors in an upper room, it is not that they fear how people are going to respond to the Gospel of the resurrection that has them hiding.  They haven’t yet understood the resurrection – they are simply hiding in fear for their own lives.  The appearance of Christ in their midst comes as an unbelievable shock.

 Thomas is not with the other disciples when Jesus appeared to them.  We are not told why Thomas wasn’t there – was he absent for an honorable reason?  We aren’t told whether his absence was worthy of a blessing. 

 When the other 10 disciples tell Thomas they saw Christ, his reaction is instant and complete disbelief.  “I don’t believe you!”   The disciples witness to one of their own – 10 to 1 – and yet the 10 cannot convince their fellow disciple that Jesus is risen.   The whole resurrection narratives are filled with what seems to me a very credible disbelief.   Resurrection was unheard of, and they did not leap to belief in it. 

 Thomas’ own disbelief is called in one Orthodox hymn “the blessed doubt of Thomas.”  For Thomas represents all of us who have a hard time believing in God;   ”Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe,” Jesus says (20:29). 

 And the message to all of us today is a reminder how difficult it is to witness to Christ and to the resurrection.  Yet the disciples did go into the world and they and their disciples converted an entire empire over the period of about 300 years. 

Acts 5:12-20 gives us some indication that the disciple’s preaching was also accompanied by some miracles.  But the frequency of miracles declined through the history of Christianity.  And however hard it was in the time of the apostles to convince people that Jesus was risen from the dead and that Jesus is Lord, it is even more difficult for us today.  For the most part we are not able to show countless miracles.  So to prove we are disciples of Jesus our witness must rely on  our integrity and our credibility as disciples which is manifested in how we live, what we do, how we treat one another.

 Take note also of the disciples’ reaction to Thomas and his disbelief.   Do they cast him out from their midst?   Do they shun him or excommunicate him?  No, one week later he is still with them, despite his vocal exclamation that he does not believe.  The disciples kept him as part of the community for Thomas had received his call from Christ, not from them.   Thomas was chosen by Christ, not by the disciples.   And though the 10 disciples were powerless to change Thomas’ mind, they kept him in the fellowship and apparently despite his disbelief he was still attracted to Christ and to His followers.

 This too is a lesson for us in how we are to treat those who express doubt and disbelief among us.   If those who struggle with faith are still willing to come to our fellowship and be numbered among us, we are to welcome them.  For though we fail in our witness to them to bring them to faith perhaps Christ Himself will speak to them when He is in our presence.  Our task is to keep such troubled believers in our midst so that Christ can speak to them.

Remember that not everyone sees what you see in Christ or in Christianity or the Church.  Not everyone has experienced what you have – there are other Thomases out there who want to see and believe.  Even if we can’t bring them to faith, we can at least keep them coming until Christ speaks to them.

 Not everyone can believe as you do.  Some doubt more than you do, and some doubt just as much.  Some believe as you do and some believe easier than you do or even more than you do.   If they have been chosen and called by Christ, our task is not to judge, but to treat them as the disciples treated Thomas:  Welcome them into the fellowship until that day and hour when Christ speaks to them and they come to faith.

The Touching Story of the Apostle Thomas

THOMAS SUNDAY                  John 20:19-31

 The sense of touch – what is its importance to our lives?  

 We confirm many truths with it.  We confirm that a loved one is near by.  We sense warmth and life by it.  We can convey love and concern through it.  We connect to others in a deeper way when we touch them.  We confirm we are not dreaming, that we are wide awake, still alive and we can use touch to awaken another.  We can also use touch to diagnose illness and convey health through touch as some are trained to do.  It can also be used to convey tenderness and affection, as well as use it to get someone’s attention.  Touch can be used to verify truth.

Touch is also involved when we make the sign of the cross on ourselves, when we are baptized and chrismated, and when we receive the Holy Eucharist.  Through this sense we can be put in touch with God, as the Apostle Thomas discovered.

Of course touch can be used purely for sensuous, pleasurable and self satisfying purposes as well, as St. Gregory Nazianzus reminds us:

 Let us purify our touch, taste, and throat, not touching softly and enjoying smooth things, but touching the Word made flesh for our sake as is fitting, and imitating Thomas in this. Let us not have sauces and seasonings tickling our palate, since they are akin to more harmful tickling. Rather, let us taste and know that the Lord is good, a better and more lasting taste. Let us not refresh briefly that cruel and ungrateful conduit, which sends through and does not keep what has been given it. Rather, let us delight it with divine words sweeter than honey.