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.

St. Mary of Egypt (1991)

5th Sunday of Great Lent     Mary of Egypt      Sermon notes  1991

1) Desire:    Though sometimes we get the impression that having desires is bad, in Mary we see that desire could lead to sin and evil, but also gave her that perseverance to pursue wanting to get into the church and then doing what was necessary to get into the church.
Desire in and of itself is not evil, it simply motivates us toward some goal
2) Repentance:    Mary’s story teaches us that no matter how much you have sinned or resisted repenting or abstained from confession, God will still accept your repentance when you offer it. That is a good message for us as we enter into the last week of Great Lent. You may have procrastinated on confession or resisted it or decided it is of no value, but it is never too late to repent, as long as there is a today.
3) The Desert :      The place each of us needs to find and get to in our lives so that we don’t return to our former sins. The desert is that new place which helps insure that we are changed and have no intention of going back to what evil we were doing.
4) Great Lent       Some people who take Lent seriously see Lent as a brief period in their lives when many things change – they fast from certain foods, do prostrations, perhaps deny themselves going to the movies or take on certain ascetic feats – but what they look forward to is Lent being over so they can get back to their normal lives. Some treat Lent like the alcoholic who tries to prove he is not an alcoholic by abstaining from alcohol for a few days. He or she determines when the proof has been shown and then resumes his or her addiction to the alcohol. In this kind of thinking Lent is a bridge which we enter on Forgiveness Sunday and disembark from on Pascha. But in this thinking Lent is a strange bridge indeed for it carries us over the concerns of life and the flesh only to deposit us right back where we started the sojourn. Lent is supposed to help transport us to someplace else, to a new me, or at least a renewed me. It’s goal isn’t to return us to our former self so we can go on as we always have – inconveniently to disrupt our meals for a few weeks before we get back to our normal lives and menus.Think of Mary of Egypt and what the Desert was for her. She didn’t want to end up where she began, but wanted to end up in a different place, and she did whatever it took to achieve that goal. This is true repentance, moving in a new direction in order to find our way to the Kingdom of God. And what we find when we get to Pascha is a new creation and a new beginning. The old has been taken away and the new begins, and with joy we begin again our walk with Christ in the new light of the Resrrection.

The Greatest Serves

5th Sunday of Great Lent 2005
Gospel: Mark 10:32-45

Fr. Elchininov once asked rhetorically, “If it were to happen that Satan could somehow be victorious over Christ, would I abandon Christ and serve Satan?”
He answers “no” because He says serving Christ is an act of love: “I don’t follow Christ for what I am going to get from him, I follow Him because I love him and in love choose to serve Him, personal or gain or self-interest has nothing to do with it.”

Today’s Gospel lesson touches upon the issue of self-interest.

The Disciples James and John are intent on asking Jesus a question of self-interest. They all are walking on the road to Jerusalem, and all seem to be aware that something perhaps not good is about to unfold. His disciples are amazed that Jesus is headed to Jerusalem, and some are afraid. And they have reason to be afraid, Jesus’ relationship with the other Jewish rabbis has not been good, but has rather been confrontational. And certainly the disciples recognized a growing hostility among some of the leaders toward Jesus. And Jesus himself is talking more and more about his own death and predicting it will be a horrendous execution.

In the midst of this James and John want Jesus to grant them their request that they be allowed to sit next to Him when He is in His glory. The scene is a bit surreal, Jesus is saying, “In Jerusalem they are going to kill me” and the disciples are waving their hand and saying, “OK, OK, enough about you what about us!”

These disciples are ignoring the lesson that to be with Jesus in His glory is to be with Him on the cross, at His crucifixion. The Greek word for “sin” – hamartia – means “to miss the mark.” The disciples miss it by a long shot this time. It is the perfect example of how reductionist it is to consider sin as simply “breaking the law.” Sin in its depth is failing to be human, failing love God, failing to do God’s will.

And then we get to the heart of this week’s Gospel lesson, a theme I spoke to you about at the beginning of Great Lent and now it appears before us on the last Sunday of Great Lent: we are called to serve others, just as Jesus served us by dying on the cross to save us form our sins and from death. Christian life, Christian spirituality, Christian prayer and Christian fasting are all about loving service of others. They are all about serving others not about serving ourselves. Self service has become a popular way for us to get what we want out of a store without having to wait for others to help us. Christianity is not a self service store. It is about serving others.

Jesus is the Lord of Glory, the Son of God, and he comes to the world not to demonstrate how a Lord can rule over others, not to show us how to be masters and despots and demand others to serve us. Rather Jesus reveals godly lordship as being a life of service to others. Jesus doesn’t treat servants as lower than himself, but rather uplifts the image of servitude. Jesus says, “you are right in calling me Lord and Master” but instead of taking your ideas about Lord and Master from dictators and despots and slave owners, learn the value of being a servant from me. The lifestyle Jesus models for us is that we become servants, and it is Jesus Christ who gives total value to service to others. We become Lords when we become servants, service to others is being a Lord as Jesus is Lord.

James and John came to Jesus with their own self-interest in mind, and Jesus tells them self-interest is how tyrants behave. If you want to be with me, then learn to be servants, because I am a servant, not a tyrant.

And servants need most of all to be attuned to the needs of others. What do the people around me need in order to be saved? What must I do to help those around me attain the Kingdom of God? What must I do to reveal the love of God to my neighbor? How can I help make Christ present to those whom I am with?

Jesus said, “Whoever among us wants to become great, must be a servant.”

So it is service that each of us must seek, not greatness.   To seek greatness is to miss the mark of being followers of Jesus.

Thanksgiving to Increase Giving

At the beginning of Great Lent, I asked my parishioners to fulfill the teaching of Christ which we encounter 2 Sundays before Lent begins:

‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father,  inherit  the kingdom  prepared for you  from the foundation of the world. ForI was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink,  I was a stranger and you welcomed me,   I was naked and you clothed me,  I was sick and you  visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?  When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And  the King will answer them,  ’Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these  my brothers, you did it to me.’   (Matthew 25:34-40)

We attain Pascha, we attain the Kingdom of God, when we do these things in our daily lives.

I saw the following prayer on a flyer from the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese’s Food for Hungry People Campaign.  Considering the economic downturn, it is a good prayer for each Orthodox to say as we prepare for Pascha by doing the works of the Lord.

Oh, God, when I have food,

Help me to remember the hungry;

When I have work, help me

To remember the jobless;

When I have a warm home,

Help me to remember the homeless.

When I am without pain,

Help me remember those who suffer;

And remembering,

Help me to destroy my complacency

And awaken my compassion.

Make me concerned enough

To help, by word and deed,

Those who cry out

For what I take for granted.

4th Sunday of Lent – St. John Climacus

On the 4^th Sunday of Great Lent the Orthodox Church commemorates St. John Climacus – St. John of the Ladder.  This 7^th Century monastic receives his name from a work he authored called THE LADDER OF DIVINE ASCENT.   This work was written for monastics as a guide to the ascetic life.  Somewhere about the 11^th Century Great Lent began to lose its catechetical dimension in the life of the Church and become more a time of repentance.   After the 15^th Century when monasticism took control of the liturgical practice of the Orthodox Church, the Sundays of Great Lent became more associated with monastic ascetical practice, and in this time St. John Climacus’ name became associated with the 4^th Sunday of Lent as a reminder that the ascetic practice of Lent was part of the monastic effort to ascend the ladder toward God which was put before each monk.   A quote from St. John’s book:

Repentance is the renewal of baptism and is a contract with God for a fresh start in life. Repentance goes shopping for humility and is ever distrustful of bodily comfort. Repentance is critical awareness and a sure watch over oneself. Repentance is the daughter of hope and the refusal to despair…Repentance is reconciliation with the Lord by the perfor­mance of good deeds which are the opposites of the sins. It is the purification of conscience and the voluntary endurance of affliction. The penitent deals out his own punishment, for repentance is the fierce persecution of the stomach and the flogging of the soul into in­tense awareness.

The theme of the ladder of divine ascent became very popular in Orthodox spirituality.  Thus Bishop Kallistos Ware in his recent book, The Inner Kingdom writes:

Enter eagerly into the treasure house that is within you, and so you will see the things that are in heaven – for there is but one single entry to them both. The ladder that leads to the Kingdom is hidden within your soul. Flee from sin, dive into yourself, and in your soul you will discover the stairs by which to ascend.   

Though monastic spirituality came to dominate Orthodox practice and thinking, at the heart of Orthodox spirituality is still the basic issue of discovering what it truly means to be human – created in God’s image and likeness, endowed with a soul where God’s Spirit combines with the dust of the earth.  As Russian Orthodox priest Fr. Alexandr Elchaninov wrote:

The man who denies his relationship to God, who refuses to be His son, is not a real man but a man diminished, the unfinished plan of a man. For to be sons of God is not only granted us as a gift but is also entrusted to us as a task, and the accomplishment of this task alone, through the conscious putting on of Christ and God, can lead to a full  disclosure, a full blossoming of human personality.

Repenting from the Heart

Great Lent is said to be a “school of repentance,” meaning that in the season of Lent, by honestly facing up to our sins and rejecting them for the evil they are, we learn how to repent and the importance of repentance in our daily lives as Christians (We pray that we might “spend the remaining time of our lives in peace and repentance” – repentance is not a 10 minute spiritual talk in confession, it is a way of life involving self understanding as well as a way of understanding the world; it involves a life time of orienting one’s self to God’s will.)

To understand repentance, we have to understand the nature of sin.  There are some false notions of sin, of which we should be aware.

One idea of sin which is not Christian is based in a notion that the human body is evil and the body is the cause of sin.  

  “Christian tradition vigorously denies that our bodies are the real cause of our sin. This is the Manichean heresy that Christians repudiate. Yet while the chief sins are spiritual rather than carnal, we are still called to order the life of our fleshly sins.”  (Ralph C. Wood, The Gospel According to Tolkien) 

Any religion which teaches the physical body is in itself evil is based in some form of dualism, but is not biblical.   God is the creator and fashioner of the human body in biblical thinking and the body is also part of what God sees as good in the universe He made.  Jesus is God incarnate – God in the flesh – where the flesh is savable, good, and capable of bearing God.  Mary, the Theotokos, gives flesh to the God incarnate.  The physical body, including human sexual organs, was fashioned by God to be good, as part of God’s plan for humanity and for salvation.

Ideas that the body somehow belongs to the evil part of creation are ancient – predating Christianity, but they are not biblical.  Sometimes it is possible to read in Orthodox hymns about the flesh dualistic ideas and to imagine that one’s body is evil and the cause of all sin.  But we are not trying to escape the body; the body is saved in the resurrection of Christ and in the resurrection of all the dead in the world to come.   The body is thus not the source of sin, though we do sin with our bodies.   The real culprit is the will – we desire things and so sin with our bodies, but we choose this sin.  Our lives are not totally predetermined nor predestined by having bodies, though some forms of atheistic materialism would claim that we are nothing but genetically determined through our bodies.  This again is not biblical.

A second error in thinking about sin would say that Satan or the devil is the cause of all of our sin.  This idea too is not biblical.  Satan is not God’s opposite and equal.  The very point of Genesis 1-3 is that God alone created the heavens and the earth.  Satan had no part in the creation of the world, and is a creature himself.  Satan is not eternal as God is eternal.  Satan’s powers are extremely limited, and in Christian thinking Christ has defeated Satan.  In the baptismal service we say that Satan doesn’t even have power over swine.   Satan cannot make us do anything, but we can choose evil and can cooperate with evil.   In Genesis 6:5 and 8:21 it is clear that God sees the human heart as being the locus of evil in humans.  God does not blame Satan or anything external to humans.   Jesus Christ repeats a very similar idea in Mark 7:20-23 -

“And he said, ‘What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.’”

This is why repentance involves looking into one’s self, to see the sins within one’s own heart, to expose them to the light of Christ, to confess them in order to over come them.

Thus sin is not caused by Satan, nor is it external to us.  Sin is found in our hearts and this is where the spiritual war against “the flesh” and against evil and against Satan must take place.   This is why repentance involves looking into our hearts and openly confessing to Christ what we see there – so that Christ can take away this sin and bring healing to our hearts.

Repentance and fasting do not have as their goal the destruction of the flesh, but rather the destruction of the passions which come from the heart which stimulate our flesh to turn away from God and to seek pleasure and delight only in things which take us further from God.    Sex for example can be part of the sacramental life of marriage, and as such be a way of experiencing love and union with God.  On the other hand, sex can be turned into self love, and godless self-centered passion which does not lead us to God but away from Him so that we can pursue our own pleasures and desires.

To say that I sin only because Satan tempts me or only because my evil body drags me into it, is to deny personal responsibility for sin, it ultimately even blames God for giving me a body or for allowing free will.   Repentance means acknowledging that one has free will and makes real choices in life.  It means acknowledging that there are real temptations and that good and evil are both equally appealing to us.  It means acknowledging that we must CHOOSE good over evil. 

This is why the sacraments are so important to our lives – for in them we are united to Christ, and thus have Christ, the Son of God, as an ally against evil and choosing evil.  The sacramental life does not take away our free will and responsibility, but rather is an aid in helping us see goodness and to choose it, and to recognize evil and to deny ourselves choosing it.   The sacramental life helps to transfigure and transform “mundane” bodily experiences into means of communion with God.

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)

Plenty of Blame to Share: Few Takers

I am going to offer a suggestion which I think might help the U.S. work through the economic crisis which grips our country and the world today.  That I think I have an idea for the economy which I think can be part of the solution to the crisis will no doubt amaze the readers of this blog since I have confessed openly that I know nothing about economics, and I have done nothing but puzzle over what is happening and how it happens (a webpage where you can learn about economic terms and theory:  http://vimeo.com/2606496).

I am going to speak from the point of view of my strength – being an Orthodox Christian priest, so I am not going to entangle myself in economic theory.

Here goes:

We Orthodox are in the middle of Great Lent.  There is a prayer we say throughout Lent which I think could help all of the politicians, economists, bankers, lenders, financers, federal regulators, brokers, and capitalists deal with the crisis.  I’ll paraphrase the one line from the prayer which is essential here (and you don’t have to even believe in any kind of deity to say this part of the prayer):

“Grant me to see my own sins and not to judge the other.”

For though I have heard countless people say regarding the financial meltdown that there is plenty of blame to go around, I have not heard many (any?) of the players in the crisis accept that blame.  There have been incredibly few “mia culpas” for all of the blame that is being thrown around.  Plenty of blame, but no one courageous and honest enough to own it.

So my solution is this:

Republicans look only at the ways that Republicans have contributed to the mess we are in.  Then clean up your house.

Democrats look only at the ways that Democrats have contributed to the mess we are in.  Then clean up your house.

Congress do the same.  Federal agencies too.  Wall Street also. Bankers, lenders and brokers the same.  Economists and borrowers too.

For the remaining time of Lent, let no one point the accusing finger of blame at anyone outside their own house.   Let each group responsible for this mess finally and honestly accept the blame for what they did to contribute to the economic collapse.  Stop covering your own butts, stop trying to make everyone else look bad, stop blaming and accusing and start owning up to your share of the blame.  Then you will be able to correct the faults in your own house and you will contribute positively to the recovery.   Take the painful step of confessing how your political party, your organization, your profession was responsible for the economic collapse.

That’s about the only way we are going to end Washington gridlock and Wall Street greed.

[Editorial Note:  I just heard this on NPR this evening.    President Obama said, "Washington is all in a tizzy and everybody is pointing fingers at each other and saying it's their fault, the Democrats' fault, the Republicans' fault. Listen, I'll take responsibility. I'm the President."    It's a start!  He also said he didn't create the mess, but acknowledged it's now his job to deal with it.    A little lame - it's easy to accept blame when you don't really think you are part of the problem.  He was part of the Senate though.  What blame will he be willing to accept from that role?]

2nd Sunday of Great Lent 2003

Sermon Notes 2nd Sunday of Great Lent 2003                Mark 2:1-12

2:1 it was reported that Jesus was at home
I have been struck by that sentence. The Son of God who can claim Heaven as His dwelling place, came to earth and here he had a place he called home. He was comfortable enough on earth to feel at home. It does give me hope in this world torn by warfare and hatred, in which even “peace” demonstrations turn violent, that the Son of God felt he could be at home and that He wanted to be at home here.  God so loved the world (John 3:16) is a deep truth.

2:11 Jesus: “go to your home” Jesus tells the young paralyzed man whom he heals. Which is more amazing that the paralyzed man is healed or that he has a home to which he go? He is not homeless and unwanted. Despite his paralysis he has a place where he belongs. His friends had to bring him to Christ, but he is able to go home on his own power. The power of the Kingdom of Heaven is not taking him out of this world, but giving the man his proper place in the world.

Did Jesus come to heal all the sick in the world, or did He come to forgive sins? If to heal the sick, he was only of limited success for illnesses continued throughout His stay on earth.. But no where in the bible does it say that Christ’s main goal was to heal the sick. His curing of those who are ill was rather a sign that there is another reality, another kingdom, another power which we are to seek out. Namely the power, the reality, the kingdom of God.

One can be sick in one’s life, and yet be forgiven and blessed by God and attain heaven.
But one cannot attain heaven if one is not forgiven.

It has been said of neurotics that they sometimes do seek help, but they don’t want healing if the healing will be painful. What they really want is to be comfortable in their neuroses. Or they really want a miracle that will heal them painlessly.

In the Narnia tales, Eustace Scrubbs and Aslan the Lion – Eustace had been turned into a dragon. His healing was accomplished by Aslan using his claws to painfully peel away the useless layers of dragon skin which had enveloped him.

Great Lent: a time to seek God’s forgiveness
Great Fast: the food fasting is about forgiveness not about health. A lot of us are concerned about our health and we need to diet for our physical health. Fasting aims to help us attain the forgiveness of our sins

How do we attain this forgiveness which is necessary for salvation? How do we prepare ourselves to receive the gift of forgiveness?

REPENTANCE AND CONFESSION