Obedience as a Form of Godliness

The author of the Letter to the Hebrews wrote to the 1st Century Christians, “Obey those who rule over you…”   (Hebrews 13:17).    These words were written by a believer at a time when he apparently could not imagine Christian leadership misleading or abusing  fellow Christians.   Almost 2000 years later Christians have learned through painful experience that leadership sometimes fails, sometimes sins, sometimes abuses its power.  In an age when leadership of every kind is looked at with far less trust, the unflinching and unapologetic attitude of the Letter to the Hebrews stands as a challenge to those who are jaded by skepticism toward leadership.  (In the 2008 Gallup Honesty and Integrity Poll only 56% of Americans ranked church leaders as being of high integrity).

Obedience in America is often coupled with the adjective “blind” and is most often considered the lot of enslaved people.  Think about the Star Wars movies – the federation has a presidency with some implication of free elections while the evil empire is ruled by a despotic emperor who crushes dissent with storm troopers.

On the other side of this, we Christians can see that one of the traits of the Messiah is that though He was God, He learned obedience to His Father.  

“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God … emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.  Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name…”    (Philippians 2:5-9 RSV)

 In this, He showed us that obedience can be part of love and of salvation.  We don’t have to be blindly obedient to authority, but in love we can freely submit ourselves to authority in order to accomplish salvation for the world and to build up the household of God.  The  practices of asceticism – fasting and self-denial – is connected to our freely choosing to deny ourselves in order to take up our crosses and follow Christ.

Admittedly, St. Paul wrote those words in a culture which valued obedience a lot more than American culture does.  Nevertheless, if we are to be Christian, Christ-like, disciples of Christ, there is a need for us to learn some form of obedience.  Fasting is one way that we can learn this.  Submitting ourselves to a discipline is a way to become a disciple. 

“Obey!” for many Americans is a command for a dog, perhaps a child, but not for an adult.  Theologian Olivier Clement defined Christian obedience in this way:  “Obedience sets freedom free by crucifying the love of self”.     Obedience has to do with discerning God’s will, something we cannot do if we are pre-occupied with asserting our own. 

Jack Sparks in his adaptation of the spiritual classic, VICTORY IN THE UNSEEN WARFARE, writes this about the will of God: 

 “For whatever affliction comes upon them, they refuse to bend their necks to the yoke of God’s will and to trust in His secret and righteous judgments. They do not want to follow the example of our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, who humbled Himself and   suffered for our sakes…We must renounce all will of our own and learn perfect obedience to the will of God…You must sacrifice everything to God and do only His will. You will meet within yourself a multitude of desires, all clamoring for satisfaction, whether or not it agrees with the will of God…Therefore, to reach our chosen aim, we must first curb our own desires, submitting them to the will of God.”

Fasting, self-denial, abstinence all have to do with learning how to freely submit our desires to the will of God.

In Hebrews we are told to “obey those who rule over you,” referring to allegiance to legitimate Church authority.  In Romans 6:16, we are reminded of another side of obedience:

Do you not know that if you yield yourselves to any one as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?

Here St. Paul asks us to think about whom we obey for whomever that is, we become enslaved to them.   We can become enslaved to sin or to righteousness, to God or to the ego, to evil or to the self, to peer pressure or to our passions, to wealth and pleasure or to goodness and love.   Obedience in and of itself is not always a virtue: we must discern to whom we choose to become servants and whom we are to obey.

The Nativity Fast (2009)

NATIVITY FAST  

In any Fasting period we follow an ascetic discipline established by the Church to help us to become and to be disciples of Christ.  The fasting discipline, denying one’s self in order to follow Christ, is done to help us establish virtue in our lives.   In his book THE ARENA,  Bishop Ignatius (Brianchaninov) reminds us of what fasting is and what it is not:  

“Let us give all due value to bodily ascetic practices as instruments or means indispensable for acquiring the virtues, but let us beware of regarding these instruments as virtues, so as not to fall into self-deception and deprive ourselves of spiritual progress through a wrong understanding of Christian activity.” (p 139).  

Fasting, self denial, abstinence, self control are instruments through which we practice our discipleship, but they are not the virtues of Christianity, they are not the goal of the Christian life.  They remain an instrument, a tool, to help us be disciples.  We are not striving to attain self denial, rather we use self denial as the way to become Christ like. 

 

Thoughts on the Dormition Fast 2009

The  DORMITION fast   is the second of two Lenten seasons which occur in the summer.  It is part of the preparation for the Feast of the Falling Asleep of the Virgin, which also happens to be the second Major Feast of the Church in August.   The fasting “rules” are the same as for any fasting period in Orthodoxy.  It is a time for us to practice our discipleship by following a Christian discipline.   St. John Chrysostom said about fasting:

We have, you see, a gentle and loving Lord who demands nothing of us beyond our capabilities. In other words, it is not arbitrarily that he looks for fasting and abstinence from food to be performed by us, nor simply for the sake of our remaining without food, but rather that we may be detached from things of this life and devote all our spare time to spiritual matters. If we conduct our lives with sober mind, use all our spare time in spiritual matters, eat only for nourishment and spend our whole life in good practices, we would have no need of the help that comes from fasting. But since human nature is lazy and is given rather to indulgence and luxury, the loving Lord accordingly like a kindly father devised for us the healing that comes from fasting so that the effects of luxury might be cut out of us and we might replace worldly concerns with performance of spiritual exercises.                               

There is an “inner” connection between fasting and the Christian life, for Christ taught that “THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS WITH US”  (Luke 17:21).    Fasting is connecting us to our own inner lives, helping us to find our way to that Kingdom which is found within us – not out in the distant cosmic heavens but within our own hearts.   St. Anthony the Great said:

 Fear not goodness as something impossible nor the pursuit of it as something alien, set way off; it hangs only on our own choice. For the sake of Greek learning, men go overseas, but the City of God has its foundations in every place of human habitation. The kingdom of God is within. Goodness is within us and it needs only the human heart.  

Great Lent is about Christ

Great Lent as is well known served at one time in the church as the special season for preparing catechumens for entrance into the church through baptism.  There are a few remnants of this early catechectical effort still visible in our liturgical readings during the time of the Great Fast.  The week day readings of Genesis and Proverbs were used to instruct the initiates in the basics of the faith and in how to live a godly life.  On weekends the lessons from the Gospel of Mark and the Letter to the Hebrews are also from this catechetical period.   There are secondary epistle and Gospel lessons listed for Great Lent  which reflect the post-15^th Century monastic influence on the Church’s liturgical life (as can be seen in the Lenten themes of Sts. Gregory Palamas, John Climacus and Mary of Egypt). 

I want to draw attention to the themes of the more ancient catechetical Epistle readings from Hebrews for the Sundays of Great Lent and briefly point out a theme in each one:

Hebrews 11:24-12:2  –  ”looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising  the shame, and  is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”

Hebrews 1:10-2:3  -   Speaking of His Son, God says, “You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands … and your years will have no end.”

Hebrews 4:14-5:6   -    “Since then we have  a great high priest  who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.”

Hebrews 6:13-20   -    “Jesus has gone  as a forerunner on our behalf,  having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek”

Hebrews 9:11-14  -  “Christ appeared as a high priest”

What I want to note is that each of these Great Lent Sunday Epistle readings have as their focus Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Great Lent is about Christ.  It is not about me, about my fasting, my sacrifice, my prayer life, my confession.  The goal of Lent is not to focus on the self, but to unite one’s self to Christ. 

As one of the great examples of ascetic self denial, St. John the Forerunner and Baptist, said in reference to Christ, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).  Our goal in Lent is not to inflate the self and spend more time thinking about the self.  Great Lent is the time of self denial, not self love.  Our focus is to God and neighbor, not our self.  We are to deny self love and self centeredness in order to love God and neighbor.   Fasting from food is a form of self denial, not a way to focus on what my SELF is being denied. 

The only self centeredness of Great Lent is in repentance:  Grant me to see my own sins and not to judge my brother (or another).   Looking at one’s own sins is the only aspect of self consideration that is appropriate to Lent.  Otherwise we are to look to the good of others and to their needs (see 1 Corinthians 8:8-13, the Epistle for Forgiveness Sunday). 

Focusing too narrowly on “my” Lenten discipline, “my” fasting, or even “my” salvation can end up with way too much focus on “me.”  In this Christian spiritual life it is not all about “me.”  Christ showed us to be servants of one another, to love one another, to work for the good of others.  Great Lent is to help us to make Jesus Christ be the focus of our lives, so that we can indeed love one another as He loved us (John 15:12).

As Fr. Schmemann wrote in GREAT LENT:

“In other words, what is virtually absent from the lenten experience is that physical and spiritual effort aimed at our participation in the today of Christ’s resurrection, not abstract morality, not moral improvement, not greater control of passions, not even personal self-perfecting, but partaking of the ultimate and all-embracing today of Christ.  Christian spirituality not aimed at this is in danger of becoming pseudo-Christian, for in the last analysis it is motivated by the ’self’ and not by Christ.”

Two Thoughts for Great Lent

Fasting:  We don’t fast because food is bad or bad for us.  We fast in order to learn what it means that we don’t live by bread alone, but rather that we live by every word that proceeds from God (Matthew 4:4).

“With regard to self-control in eating, we must never feel loathing for any kind of food, for to do so is abominable and utterly demonic. It is emphatically not because any kind of food is bad in itself that we refrain from it. But by not eating too much or too richly we can to some extent keep in check the excitable parts of our body. In addition we can give to the poor what remains over, for this is the mark of sincere love. It is in no way contrary to the principles of true knowledge to eat and drink from all that is set before you, giving thanks to God; for ‘everything is very good’ (cf. Gen.1:31). But gladly to abstain from eating too   pleasurably or too much shows greater discrimination and understanding. However, we shall not gladly detach ourselves from the pleasures of this life unless we have fully and consciously tasted the sweetness of God.”    (St. Diodochos of Photiki, 5^th Century)

Regarding the Sacrament of Confession – some wonder how God could possibly forgive them when they come to confession year after year and confess the same sins and don’t seem to make any real spiritual progress.  If Christ could heal the sick and raise the dead, surely He can forgive the sinner and help him or her overcome any passion or temptation.

  “But if it truly seems difficult and impossible to us that we can ever be converted from such a great multitude of sins because we are caught in their grasp, a temptation as we described above, of evil and a sure obstacle to our salvation, let us recall and seriously consider how our Lord, while on this earth, restored sight to the blind, cured the paralytics, healed every sickness. He raised the dead, already decaying and disintegrating. He made the deaf to hear and drove out a legion of devils from one man and restored him to full   mental health after such madness. How much more, therefore, will he not convert a soul that turns back to him, seeking from him mercy and in need of his help? Will he not bring such a soul into a freedom from passions and a permanence in all virtues with a renewed mind? Will he not lead it to health and inner insight, to thoughts of peace, freed from the blindness, deafness, and death of unbelief, ignorance, and rashness, bringing such a soul to a virtuous moderation and to purity of heart? For he, who created the body, made also the soul and when he walked this earth, he gave help and health to those who approached and begged him for such favors. He granted with generosity and kindness such healings for he was the good and only true  physician. So it is with spiritual matters. (Pseudo-Macarius: The Fifty Spiritual Homilies and the Great Letter)

Hymns For the 2nd Week of Lent

Two hymns from the TRIODION, Thursday of the 2nd Week of Lent

IF WE SET OUR HANDS TO DOING GOOD,
THE EFFORT OF LENT WILL BE A TIME OF REPENTANCE FOR US,
A MEANS TO ETERNAL LIFE,
FOR NOTHING QUITE SAVES THE SOUL AS MUCH AS GIVING TO THOSE IN  NEED.
ALMS, INSPIRED BY FASTING, DELIVER MAN FROM DEATH.
LET US EMBRACE THIS, FOR IT HAS NO EQUAL;
IT IS SUFFICIENT TO SAVE OUR SOULS!

OF OLD, OUR PARENTS DID NOT FAST ACCORDING TO THE CREATOR’S COMMAND
AND RECEIVED DEATH AS A FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE. THEY WERE BANISHED FROM THE TREE OF LIFE, AND FROM THE SWEETNESS OF PARADISE! THEREFORE, FAITHFUL, LET US FAST
FROM CORRUPTING SNARES, FROM HARMFUL PASSIONS, SO THAT WE MAY ACQUIRE LIFE FROM THE DIVINE CROSS, AND RETURN WITH THE GOOD THIEF TO OUR INITIAL HOME, RECEIVING GREAT MERCY FROM CHRIST OUR GOD!

The Power of Humility

    Roberta Bondi writes in her book  To Love as God Loves

“When Abba Macarius was returning from the marsh to his cell one day carrying some palm-leaves, he met the devil on the road with a scythe. The [devil] struck him as much as he pleased, but in vain, and he said to him,  “What is your power, Macarius, that makes me powerless against you? All that you do, I do, too; you fast, so do I; you keep vigil, and I do not sleep at all; in one thing only do you beat me.”  Abba Macarius asked what that was.  He said, “Your humility. Because of that I can do nothing against you.” (Apoth., Macarius 11, p.130)…

If this was true for Macarius, it was also true for any other person who wished to be a Christian. Anyone can fast or renounce what they love in order to gain what they want more.  The devil himself is good at renunciation; there is no merit in that.  For these early folk, the mark of the Christian was not renunciation or, for that matter, heroic feats of virtue, but humility.

 Abba Anthony said, “I saw all the snares that the enemy spreads out over the world, and I said, groaning, ‘What can get me through such snares?’  Then I heard a voice saying to me, ‘Humility.’”  (Apoth., Anthony 7, p.2)

It was the humility that made these ancient Christians able with the help of God’s grace to take on the enormous and dangerous task of the transformation of the old creation into new.” 

Food, the Fall and the Fast

“We find the meaning of food in the very first chapter of the Bible, in the account of the creation of man. Having created the world, God gives it as food for man, and this means first of all that man’s life depends on food, that is, on the world. Man lives by food, transforms food into his own life. This dependency of man on the external, on matter, on the world is so self-evident, that Feuerbach, one of the founders of materialist philosophy, consigned man into the famous formula: ‘man is what he eats.’ But the teaching and revelation of the Bible does not rest on this dependency.  Man receives food, that is, life itself, from God. It is God’s gift to man and he lives not in order to eat and thereby maintain his physiological survival, but in order to develop in himself the image and likeness of God. Thus, food itself became the gift of life as the knowledge of the freedom and the beauty of the spirit. Food is transformed into life, but food is revealed from the outset as the victory over this dependency on food alone, for in creating man God commands him to have dominion over the earth. Therefore, in receiving food from God as the gift of God, man is filled with divine life itself. This is why the biblical account of the fall of man is linked with food.  This is the famous story of the forbidden fruit, which man ate secretly apart from God, in order to become like God. The meaning of this account is simple: man believed that from food alone, that by pure reliance on its consumption, he could receive that which is actually possible to receive only from God. By way of food he sought liberation from God, which only led him to slavery and dependence on food; man became a slave of the world. But this also means a slave of death, for food cannot give him that freedom from the world and death, which can only come from God. Food, the symbol and source of life, became the symbol of death. For if man does not eat he dies. But if he eats he still dies, for food itself is a communion with that which had died and therefore with death. And so, finally, salvation, and recreation and forgiveness, and resurrection itself are linked also in the Gospel with food.”   (Alexander Schmemann, Our Father)

Great Lent: Practicing the Faith

Great Lent is said to be a school of repentance.  It is is a time when we can “practice” our faith.  It is a time to practice repentance, forgiveness, charity, love, the virtues, taking up the cross, humility, fasting, patience, chastity, prayer, and being a disciple of Christ.   All of these are ways in which we show that we actually do believe in God, we deny the self and take up our cross in order to rid ourselves of self-love in order to practice the love of Christ for others.

Fr. Dmitri Dudko, an Orthodox priest in Russia during the days of communism, was once asked if he could give a brief summary of the Gospel for his fellow countrymen who were given little chance to learn about Orthodoxy in atheist Russia.  He replied,

“The whole Gospel consists in very little: ‘Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand…’  ‘Seek first the Kingdom of Heaven and its righteousness and everything else will be added to you…’  ‘The kingdom of God is taken by work…’   To love God and neighbor.  If we remember this, then everything else in the Gospel will become clear to us.  If we look at the matter carefully, we all know this.  We just lack the seriousness to apply it to our lives as we should.  We play games with ourselves, pretending that we don’t know anything.” 

Especially when it is inconvenient to be a Christian, we pretend not to know for sure what to do.  Great Lent creates an entire season of inconvenience, so that we have opportunity to practice our faith – to be a disciple in little things, like fasting, prayer, charity, reading scripture, attending services.  Such little inconveniences, but they help reveal to ourselves where our treasure is and where our heart is.

 “We ought to learn the virtues through practicing them, not merely talking about them, so that by acquiring the habit of them we do not forget what is of benefit to us. ‘The kingdom of God’, as St. Paul said, ‘resides not in words but in power’ (1 Cor 4:20).”  (St. Peter of Damaskos, 12^th Century AD) 

Observing the Facts, Observing the Fast

“…in the Middle Ages it was thought that barnacles formed from fruits and dropped into the water from trees along the riverbanks.  Once submerged, they were believed to develop into the geese that arrived on the continent each spring.  No one had ever actually seen these geese lay eggs and rear young, but only adults migrating across Europe on their way to breeding grounds in the Arctic.  People did, however, notice a resemblance between the shapes of barnacles and goose necks – and therefore concluded that gooselike barnacles developed into barnacle like geese.

Christian scholars debated whether these geese should be classified as fish or fowl and, if the latter, whether they could be eaten on Friday or during Lent, when meat was forbidden but fish allowed.  Jewish philosophers debated whether this goose was a shellfish, hence food forbidden to Jews, and if it was not, whether it had to be butchered according to ritual practice.  Some saw a convenient compromise:  Since both barnacle and goose fell from a tree, they were neither fish nor fowl, but fruit.”  (Theories for Everything, pp 245-247)