Saint God, Saint Mighty, Saint Immortal

What makes a person “a saint”?  The word “saint” in English is one way we translate the Greek word “agios” which literally means “the holy one.”  The word “saint” thus is the same word “holy” as in “Holy Spirit” or “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal…”   When we use the word “saint” to talk about God’s holy people, we English speakers lose the sense of connection between the holiness of God and the holy saint.   In the Orthodox Church the Feast of Pentecost - God’s pouring forth His Holy Spirit upon the disciples first and then all the Church is followed a week later by All Saints Day or the Day of ALL the Holy Ones of God.    The giving of the Holy Spirit by God results in abundance of Holy Ones in the Church.   To be consistent if we are going to refer to Saints instead of Holy Ones, we should then also say Saint Spirit and Saint God.  It sounds wrong to our ears but it would help us remember the connection between the Holy God and His Holy Ones.

A saint is a person who is holy in the eyes of God.  We strive as Christians to be holy, not just moral.  Archbishop Lazar Puhalo wrote in FREEDOM TO BELIEVE: 

“Morality becomes a substitute for our life in Christ when we reduce religion to a moral code, when we reduce the faith to a system of correct behavior instead of an existential struggle to purify the conscience and acquire the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. We cannot acquire the Holy Spirit by means of correct behavior, which is just a matter of human works and legalistic words at that. Such an approach fills us with so much judgment and condemnation and arrogance and self-righteousness that the Holy Spirit remains alien to us. We begin to think ourselves to be moral and everyone who is not like us somehow immoral. We set ourselves as the criterion of morality, but there can be no true morality without the inner transformation of our person. Perfect holiness consists only in perfect love, not in correct behavior. Righteousness does not consist in correct behavior, but in genuine co-suffering love and pure faith. No deed has any moral value unless it proceeds from the heart motivated by love”.

St. Paul the Apostle expresed it this way:  

“I may speak in tongues of men or of angels, but if I have no love, I am a sounding gong or a clanging cymbal.   I may have the gift of prophecy and the knowledge of every hidden truth; I may have faith enough to move mountains; but if I have no love, I am nothing.  I may give all I posses to the needy, I may give my body to be burnt, but if I have no love, I gain nothing by it.”  (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)

Christianity and Islam: The Apostle Paul

This is the 8th and final blogin my series which began with  One Christian Looks at Islam Looking at Christianity; next was the two part  Christianity and Islam: Of Prophecy and the Prophet; then the two part  Christianity and Islam:  Conflict over True Christianity; followed by the two part Christianity and Islam: Jesus – Prophet, Messiah and Lord.   This blog follows Christianity and Islam:  Jesus – Prophet, Messiah and Lord (2).

Christians and Muslims agree that Jesus is a messenger of God and that He is properly called the Messiah.  They agree that Jesus’ birth was miraculous, and that Jesus was a miracle worker.   The Qur’an like the Gospel of John even refers to Jesus as the Word of God.   Where Christianity and Islam part company in their understanding of Jesus is that for Christians all the evidence of the birth and life of Jesus (which the Qur’an also accepts) proves Him to be Son of God.  The Christians say the evidence of the miracles of Christ mean Jesus is Lord, God incarnate, and one of the Holy Trinity.   Islam denies these points not believing that the evidence of Christ’s miraculous life justifies such an interpretation of Jesus.   Additionally, for Christians there is the fact of the death and resurrection of Christ which is the ultimate proof of the Christian understanding of who Jesus is and what he has accomplished.  The Qur’an does not accept the story of Christ’s crucifixion and thus denies to the death and resurrection of Christ any sacrificial importance let alone saving or redeeming power.   For Christians Christ ultimately triumphs even over death, the final enemy of God, which is the lesson Christians derive from the story of the resurrection.   In Islam Christ is merely a prophet who brings the same message as all prophets – submit to God.  Islam sees Christ as ultimately having no victory in his life except perhaps a moral victory.  They see true victory coming only with Muhammad who leads an army to victory and thus see God’s victory as a victory in this world.  In the world to come there will be no help from God as all that awaits each human is judgment.   On the other hand for Christians the victory of Christ extends beyond the grave into eternal life as Christ is victorious over sin and death.

For Muslims it is essential that Jesus himself points the way to Muhammad as it is Muhammad not Jesus who is the final prophet.   The Quran  “quotes” Jesus predicting the coming of  a messenger whose name is “Ahmad.”    The quote is not found anywhere in the canonical Gospels.   Islam uses Jesus predictions of the coming of the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth in  John 14-16 as Jesus predicting the coming of Muhammad rather than the coming of God’s Holy Spirit on Pentecost.    I am not aware if there is any non-canonical Gospel text which has Christ predicting a future prophet to follow Him, but indeed some of the stories of Jesus in the Qur’an which are not found in the canonical Gospels can be found in 3rd-4th Century apocryphal texts – texts the early Christians regarded as spurious or heretical.  (It would be interesting to know if Islam considers these texts as legitimate scriptures since they have in them stories that the later dated Qur’an contains).    For example the Qur’an has Jesus miraculously turning clay birds which he had formed into live ones, a story reported also in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas or the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy of the Savior.   

For Muslims, the Christian reverence for Jesus as Lord and one of the Holy Trinity is both wrong and forbidden by the Qur’an.   Islam blames to a large extent the Apostle Paul for distorting the true story of Jesus and the Gospel.  The Muslim missionary materials claim St. Paul was only interested in his own vision of the mystic Christ, but not interested in the historic person of Christ.    Yet, St. Paul places a clear emphasis on the Cross and on the last supper, events he reports and claims to have the received  and is passing along as tradition.    The Islamic criticism of Paul lacking an interest in history is because Islam itself does not accept the historicity of the events of Holy Week – the last supper, the crucifixion and the resurrection.   Christianity is based in historical events which St. Paul makes the heart of his Gospel.   St. Paul does not preach a different history, but proclaims the very history found in the Gospels.  He also comments on the implication of the historical events of the death and resurrection of Christ for all those who believe in God and who believe that keeping Torah is the only way to earn God’s favor.

 Islam claims its own view of Christ is historical, formed while he still lived on earth (not after his departure from the world), is the view Jesus had of Himself, teaches monotheism, is in line  with what Muhammad taught.  Muslims claim the Christian view on the other hand progressively evolved after Jesus departure from the world, is mythical and an interpretation, contradicts Jesus’ own teachings, is influenced by Greco-Roman polytheistic mythology and philosophy, was not taught by ANY of God’s prophets, was developed by St. Paul a self-appointed disciple.   Islam claims all prophets were Muslims, and so was Jesus.   It claims Christianity is an aberration created by Paul which rejects monotheism.   One booklet asked, “Is it not strange that Paul portrays the law of the mystic Christ as differing from God’s law?!”

The answer, I think is no.     Christians understand the Law of God as serving a purpose in preparing God’s people until the Messiah came.   The Law in Christian thinking is not the teleological goal of God’s plan.   Rather the Law was to help God’s people until the Christ came.   The Messiah is the goal of history and in Him the very purpose of the Law is fulfilled.     For Islam the goal in life is to obey and submit to God’s Law.   In this sense Islam is another form of literalistic and legalistic thinking that sees God mostly as a law giver whose task in life is to police His creatures, punishing or rewarding them for their behavior at the end of their lives.  Christianity however understands God’s deep abiding love for His creation and His desire to share His divine life with His creatures.   Thus the goal is not mere obedience but to freely choose love – for God and for one another.

The Muslim materials accuse Paul  of deception and of saying the law was binding on Jesus but not on Paul.   They claim such passages as Matthew 5:18-19 refute Paul.   But Jesus Himself is accused of violating the law by the Jews who rejected Him.   Jesus declared himself the Lord of the Sabbath and more important than the temple or the Torah because He fulfilled the purpose of both.    

St. Paul considers what Jesus said and did and then looks at what the purpose of the law was – it belongs to this world, not to the kingdom of God. The law was given because of sin but was not given originally by God in paradise.    The Muslim missionary material accuses St. Paul of pushing Jesus aside, yet Paul declared Jesus as Lord and Christ, which Islam will not do.    Islam really accuses Paul of both pushing Jesus aside and of untruthfully exalting Him.

St. Paul is not the founder of Christianity but is an Apostle of Christ.   His teachings are particularly troublesome to Islam because Muhammad did not understand or accept his teachings.   Paul is one of the Apostles and prophets upon whom God built His Church, Jesus Christ being the cornerstone.  Christianity does not have to deny or change any of the Scriptures of the Jews to come to their faith in Jesus as Messiah.   Christians accept St. Paul as being fully in line with the witness of the entire scriptures of Christians and Jews, of accepting and teaching all of the revelation of God which is found in the Bible of Jews and Christians.

Christianity and Islam: Conflict over True Christianity (2)

This is the fifth blog in my series which began with  One Christian Looks at Islam Looking at Christianity and is the conclusion to my blog Christianity and Islam:  Conflict over True Christianity (1).  

The Islamic missionary materials portray the Qur’an as being a divine document and therefore “a-historical.”  They claim the very fact that the Bible contains historical stories shows it is a human not divine document, and thus subject to human error.   For my part, I have been convinced by the early Christian claim that “all truth is Christian truth.”  And since Christianity is concerned with the Truth and its proclamation, the claims of Christianity must have some relationship to all known truth, including historical and scientific truth, appeals to me.    I think any religions that claims to be true should be openly willing to have its claims matched against the truths which history, archeology, or the various sciences offer to the world.  Some aspects of religion really are issues of faith, some however can be verified by other kinds of study. 

Clearly major areas of debate between Muslims and Christians are the nature of revelation, scripture and inspiration. While Christians and Muslims will disagree as which Scriptures offers the final revelation to humankind, an even more significant issue is what exactly God has revealed. ” To Muhammad, a book was revealed to lead mankind out of darkness” (Qur’an 14:1). Christianity does not claim that God revealed a book to mankind. Instead Christianity claims that Jesus is the Word of God incarnate – Jesus thus reveals what Scriptures are, what it means to be human, as well as an amazing revelation about God’s nature. Christianity has the testimony of Jesus in the Gospel, acknowledge by the Qur’an: “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life” (John 5:39-40). For Christians the ultimate revelation of God is not contained in a book – either the Torah or the Qur’an – but in the God become man Jesus who is the Christ. The written text is but a witness to the living Word of God. At issue is whether in fact God’s Word really is something that can be contained in a written text, or whether God’s Word has life in Itself, Himself, and the written Word is not what is found in heaven but is testifying to the truth about God’s Eternal Word. This is the major point of contention between Christian apologists and theologians and Muslim ones.

There are some other points which the Islamic missionary literature points out as being significant for Christians to consider:

1) Islam is superior to Christianity because God in Qur’an 3:19 and 3:85 gives Islam its name. Christians get named by those who opposed their religion in Acts 11:25-26. Islam indeed is one of the few religions in the world in which in their scriptures God gives their religion a name. The literature also says since “Islam” has at its root the meaning of both “peace” and “submission” the name Islam means something, while “Christianity” as a word tells nothing about the religion.

2) The literature points out that “Islam” means peace, and that Jesus taught us to be peacemakers, which it claims shows that Jesus is a Muslim at heart. Since the Old Testament says God gives peace to those who obey His commandments, the literature claims this too is an Islamic idea: submission leads to peace. In this literature one can see that though Christians see Jesus as both fulfilling and giving full meaning to the Old Testament, Islam moves back and forth between using the Old Testament to interpret the New and vice versa as best fits its own understanding of God. In this Islam holds to an idea that Jesus is simply one more prophet in the line of God’s prophets but does not hold to an idea that Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophecies of the Old Testament.

3) The Muslim missionary literature interprets references to the coming of the Holy Spirit (Parakletos) in John’s Gospel as referring to another human comforter, Muhammad, rather than to the coming of the Holy Spirit. This argument was part of what apparently is important to Islamic missionary need – to prove that in fact the New Testament predicted the coming of Muhammad. It also denies Acts 2 event of Pentecost or the role for the Holy Spirit in the life of God’s people. Christians probably would be disappointed to know that the promises of Christ about the coming of the Comforter and Spirit of Truth, refer to Muhammad rather than to God’s Spirit. The literature claimed that no one in all of history could be the promised Comforter of John 14:16 except for Muhammad. Even if one leaves aside the claim that the Comforter refers to another man, how could we know that no one in all of history could be that man except Muhammad, since we haven’t lived all of history yet?

4) What is perhaps a fair critique of many Christians and some of Christianity, the Muslim literature says that since the Bible enjoins fasting, prayer, modest dress (it notes that Nuns dress themselves in a Muslim way), sobriety, sexual control, and circumcision, and prohibits eating pork, Muslims keep the faith better than most Christians. There is a question raised as to what extent Christians believe they are compelled to follow the Torah in keeping ritual. In Acts 15 the apostles themselves come to the conclusion that the Torah served a purpose to prepare God’s chosen people for the coming of the Christ, but that with Christ fulfilling the Torah, converts to the faith no longer have to become practicing Jews in order to be disciples of Christ. And while this does answer the Muslim charge against Christians on a number of issues, their criticism of Christians not being willing to follow any discipline makes it certain that neither can they be disciples of Christ the Master, is a valid one which Christians need to consider. Prayer and fasting are a normative part of the Orthodox Christian way of life.

Next: Christianity and Islam: Jesus – Prophet, Messiah, and Lord

Monday of the Holy Spirit

The Monday after PENTECOST in the Orthodox Church is the Day of the Holy Spirit.   Pentecost is known as Trinity Sunday, while the next day is dedicated to the 3rd Person of the Holy Trinity: the Holy Spirit.   This also follows a pattern of many feast days  in which the day after a major feast is often dedicated to a key person from the feast (examples:  the day after Christmas is dedicated to the Virgin Mary, the day after Theophany is dedicated to St. John the Baptist).

Commenting on the Acts 2account of the events of Pentecost, Orthodox biblical scholar Yaroslav Pelikan writes in his book on Acts:

But among the creedal marks of the church as “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic,” the emphasis in the         Pentecost miracle is on the unity of the church even more than on its catholicity, because Pentecost represents the undoing of the tower of Babel, where the human race, which until then “was one lip, and there was one language to all,” had been punished for its pride by God, who “confused the language of all the earth…that they may not understand each the voice of his neighbor” (Gen. 11:1-9).

The Feast of Pentecost celebrates God’s pouring forth on the world His Holy Spirit as recorded by St. Luke in the Book of Acts.   

 According to the Saint, the Lord schools us through His Word and His Holy Spirit. He makes us kin with Him. The Holy Spirit dwells in us and transforms us into the likeness of Christ. By the Holy Spirit Christ unites us with God and makes us one family with the Father. Without the Holy Spirit the soul has no life. The person who has the Holy Spirit feels that he has paradise within himself. The Holy Spirit is love and sweetness to the whole person. He pervades a person’s entire soul, mind and body. A person who comes to know the  Lord by the Holy Spirit stands in awe and wonder before the Lord. The Holy Spirit is like a dear mother. He lovingly cares for us, forgives and heals us, illumines and rejoices us. However, the staretz counsels, we must guard the grace of the Holy Spirit with prayerful vigilance. A single evil thought and He forsakes the soul. Unless we repent, the love of God remains no longer with us.   (Theodore G. Stylianopoulos, The Way of Christ)

Attaining the Holy Spirit is the true goal of the Christian life.  We are not simply trying to become good people, we are aiming to become holy people and Spirit led and Spirit filled people. 

 Prayer, fasting, watching, and all other Christian acts, however good they may be, do not alone constitute the aim of our  Christian life, although they serve as the indispensable means of reaching this aim. The true aim of our Christian life, is to acquire the Holy Spirit of God.        (St. Seraphim of Sarov)

O gracious Comforter, save us who sing unto you: Alleluia.

Pentecost (1995)

Sermon notes  PENTECOST   June 1995       Acts 2:1-11

1] On Pentecost we remember and celebrate the orginal giving of the Holy Spirit to the Church – a gift not just to the Church but to the entire world.  God poured forth His Holy Spirit to the world in and through the Church.

This event gave the first disciples the courage and power to speak to the world about God’s love for the world through Jesus Christ.   For though the cross was a sign of God’s love, the initial reaction of the disciples was fear – they went into hiding.   It was the gift of the Holy Spirit which inspired them to share the message of God’s self-emptying love with the world.

2] Note in the Epistle Lesson, the apostles were speaking to JEWS from many different nations, not yet to the Gentiles. And these Jews are further identified, they were not secular Jews, nor lapsed Jews, nor Jews in name only, but they were devout men. They were men who were conscientiously concerned about God’s laws and promises. It is the beginning of the proclamation of the Gospel to all the world, yet it begins with a particularly fine and believing group of men. Maybe that is where evangelism must always begin with the best spiritual element of society.

3] Had 20th Century American Jews been there, they too would have heard the original sermon of St. Peter in a language they understood.

Brothers and Sisters, pray to God that He continually gives us His Holy Spirit today as well, so that the people of our time might hear our message – the apostles message, the apostolic message – in their native languages; in languages that they easily understand. For our mission to the world, to be witnesses to God’s love for us, has not changed from the first day of Pentecost.

4] Remember also the reaction of the crowd to the fact that each could understand the Gospel message in their own languages. First it was amazement, but then it turned to ridicule: “They are drunk” was the accusation.  

To believe in God means to believe not only when one is filled with the Holy Spirit, but also when one is being ridiculed. To believe in God is easy when everyone in society also believes in God, but what if everyone of your friends denied a belief in God, how would you hold on to your faith?

Our own receiving the Holy Spirit does not necessarily change the reaction of an unbelieving world to us or to God.  It might not soften their attitude toward us but can even make them despise us as some did the apostles on the first day of Pentecost.  And remember that it was devout men who gathered and heard the apostles speak.  Many believed, but many mocked the apostles.   It is not the reaction of the world which determines the validity of the experience of inspiration.

Brothers and Sisters, we are to strive to find the Holy Spirit in life. For the Spirit who gives life to all believers, can teach us how to pray, can empower us to be faithful in the world, and can give us the words and deeds which allow us to speak to all the world so that everyone might be inspired by God’s Spirit.   It is the Spirit of God which inspires us to go into all the world to live and to preach the Gospel.

The Ascension: Believers, Get Your Heads out of the Clouds

 In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen.  After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God.  On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about.  For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”   So when they met together, they asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”  He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority.  But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.  They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them.  “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”   (Acts 1:1-12)

One popular idea that many people profess is that we all are going to “die and go to heaven.”  This is an idea of which New Testament Scholar N.T. Wright tries to disabuse believers  (See almost any of his books or my blog The Resurrection: Life Beyond Life After Death).   I would offer that the Feast of the Ascension also does not support a “die and go to heaven” version of Christianity either. 

If Jesus was mostly interested in heaven, it is strange that He taught His followers how to live on earth, and then left His disciples on earth with work to do.  Why did Jesus spend time discipling His followers and then later convince them He had risen from the dead if all that was was important was to get them to heaven?  Why didn’t He simply take His few disciples with Him and abandon the fallen earth to its own devices?

It seems to me that Christ had an interest in a new heaven and a new earth, not in abandoning the original earth but saving and recreating the existing one.    Even if we think back to the story of the great flood in Genesis 6-8, God did not utterly annihilate creation into non-existence and create from nothing again.  Rather the story is that He tried to uproot all wickedness from the existing creation and fully intended to repopulate the earth and use the existing cleansed creation to accomplish His will.  Heaven was not the goal of God, but an earth on which His will was done as it is done in Heaven. 

The Lord Jesus had an interest in convincing His disciples that He had risen from the dead because He fully intended them to continue living on earth.  And on earth, they and we are to be His witnesses.  And to what are we witnessing?  The resurrection from the dead – in other words restoration to the world from which death has taken us.   Christ did not simply die and go to heaven, He destroyed death and was bodily resurrected from the dead.  Apparently Christ thought the body and this world was part of God’s plan of salvation.  Jesus did not abandon the world or His body, but He redeemed them, recreated them.  He invites us in baptism and the Eucharist to participate in and become part of that renewed creation.  

Baptism with the Holy Spirit is not so much for life in the world to come, but for continued life in this world as His witnesses!  We need the Holy Spirit to help us live in this new creation, and to empower us to be His witnesses to the rest of the world.  None of this has to do with exiting this world, but rather has to do with how to live in this world.

Note that the apostles were interested in the restoration of the kingdom of Israel – that was their idea of “other worldliness.”    They assumed this world was passing away and the Kingdom of God would be the same as Israel restored as a Kingdom.   But Christ’s answer to them is “get your heads out of the clouds!”   “Don’t worry about restoration and future times and heavenly places.  You have work to do on earth and the Holy Spirit is going to empower you to do it!”  Christ tells the apostles the time of the restoration is not their concern – their real concern is how to witness to Christ’s resurrection.  The place of the apostles is on earth as Christ’s witnesses and their work is with the people of earth to bring them to a knowledge of God’s truth.

Jesus tells them (and us) that we are to be witnesses to the very ends of the earth.  Notice He doesn’t mention anything about getting to heaven.  Our work is on earth, throughout the earth, to the ends of the earth.   Christ’s Great Commission in Matthew 28, also tells us to make disciples of all nations.  Our work is on earth and this is what we must focus on.  It doesn’t matter when Christ may come again, that doesn’t change what we must be doing every day while we still have time on earth.

On the very day Christ ascended into heaven, even the angels tell the apostles (and us) to quit gawking into heaven as their and our work is on earth.   What we need is not Heaven but the Holy Spirit because Jesus is coming back!    Our role is to do on earth God’s will as it is done in heaven, which is not the same as saying we need to do God’s will in heaven.  We cannot skip the earth or our life here, but rather are to do His work and will on this planet: to be His witnesses, to talk not only about Christ’s death but also about His resurrection.  We have to get our heads out of the clouds of heaven and castles in the sky in order to carry out Christ’s mission on earth.   The Feast of the Ascension is very much a call to all of us to be ministers of the Gospel, to be the Church, to make disciples of all nations by being witnesses to what God has done in and through His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Unity of the Church

The recent discussions regarding the Church in America and Canon 28 of the 451AD Council of Chalcedon are no doubt essential to the eventual normalization in organizing the Orthodox jurisdictions in America.  I have not yet had the chance to completely read the comments of historian and canonical interpreter Fr. John Erickson, Chalcedon Canon 28: Yesterday and Today, former dean of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary.   I did read Nick Katich’s insightful “Chalcedon Canon 28: Historic Truth or Greek Mythology?”   which also made me realize how far we need yet to travel to bring about “normalcy” to Orthodoxy in America in terms of ecclesiological structure.

This morning as I was doing my daily devotions and scripture reading I read Joshua 22 which contains the story of Joshua finally giving the tribes of Reuben, Gad and Manasseh permission to occupy the territories east of the Jordan River which they had requested at the beginning of the Jewish invasion of Palestine, but which they had to delay until all the tribes had secured for themselves a homeland in the territories west of the River Jordan.  Joshua recognizes that the River Jordan which forms a natural boundary also represents a potential permanent division between the tribes.  He instructs those minority 2 and 1/2 tribes living east of the Jordan to maintain unity with the rest of the Israelites by carefully following the rule of faith: “to love the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, to keep His commandments, to adhere to Him, and to serve Him with all your mind and with all your soul” (22:5, OSB). 

Tribalism like jurisdictionalism or ethnicism always poses a threat to the unity of God’s people.   Human conventions are strong enough to break apart the unity which God wishes His people would choose, maintain and build up.

What transpires in Joshua 22 is that the 2 and 1/2 Eastern tribes proceed to build an altar to God on their side of the River Jordan.  Immediately an alarm is set off among the other 10 tribes that the Eastern tribes have broken unity with the Western tribes by setting up their own altar.  A call to arms goes out and the 10 tribes prepare for war against their brethren.  The 2 and 1/2 tribes then explain themselves:  they are not setting up an altar in opposition to the altar of the tabernacle, but rather they want to have an altar to remind future generations that they worship the one true God of Israel and as a witness to their unity with the other tribes.   Their fear is that in the future the majority tribes on the Eastern side of the Jordan will eventually declare that they are not really part of Israel.   Each “side” in the conflict had a different need and a different fear – they were separated by tribe, by geography, and now by altar and custom.  Despite all these differences they were still able to see and reaffirm their unity.   They didn’t need monolithic administration and thought about every custom or practice, they didn’t need conformity and uniformity in practice to preserve their basic unity in faith.  What binds them together was “that the Lord is their God” (22:34).

Such too will have to be the nature of unity for the Orthodox in America when it comes.  It will not be external law and canons that will bind us together, for Orthodoxy in America is multicutural and abounds in diverse practice and customs.   The true unifying principle must be the Spirit of God working within us.   As Nicholas Afanasiev wrote in THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, in primitive Christianity the increase in the number of local communities did not disturb the unity of the faith for each community could not separate itself from Christ – the only foundation they had.  The unifying principle – one Lord and one Spirit – were central to each community, were at the heart of each community, were internal to each community long before there were any hierarchs or canons to impose unity on the Church.    It was and is the Holy Spirit and not human law or convention that serves as both the organizing and unifying principle of the Church.

While the canons, and Chalcedon 28, are part of the Tradition of the Church, their purpose is to help maintain the unity of the Spirit which resides in all Christians because of their having received the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit in Chrismation.   The main purpose of the Church is not to promulgate and uphold canons, but rather to use the canons when necessary as a tool to maintain the God-given unity of the Holy Spirit among all Christians.

The Harvest is Plentiful: Send Me Lord to do the Labor

A couple of months ago in my blog Ecclesiology and the Resurgence of the OCA I mentioned a business organizational book  The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations.   Authors Brafman and Beckstrom offer thoughts and some history lessons about how having power diversely spread through an organization allows institutions to survive and even thrive through times in which leadership breaks down or is forcefully eliminated.   This is like a starfish which when its arms are cut off from its head regenerate and form new starfish.  Though they don’t use it as one of their examples, certainly the early Christian Church fits their starfish model.  Despite persecutions, despite the imprisonment and executions of the bishops, the Church continued to grow and thrive because its power – the faith of each Christian – was distributed throughout the organization.  Cutting off the head – martyring the bishop – did not change the faith of the membership.  New bishops kept arising because the people believed in their God and in their Gospel.

In fact a new form of charismatic leadership emerged in the Church – monasticism.   The monastics took up the mantle of the martyrs and attempted to keep the Church fervent in its faith by living the Gospel to the full, even if the Christians were no longer threatened by the state.  But the monastics were a spiritual leadership – not in the line of the official apostolic succession, which after all could be disrupted by martyrdom or by apostasy to the lures of the world by bishops who were more concerned with power or wealth than with the evangelical life of martyrdom (witnessing to the Gospel through their own lives).   One needs only look at some of the canons, for example those of the Council of Antioch in 341AD, to see how real the problem of bishops misappropriating church funds and abusing their power really was. 

Fr. Paul Tarazi in his book THE NEW TESTAMENT INTRODUCTION: JOHANNINE WRITINGS makes the argument that St. John in his Gospel and in the Book of Revelation is making this very point in his emphasis on the role of the Holy Spirit in the early Church.   Faced with the loss of leadership due to persecutions, the Christians needed both guidance and a sense that they were being faithful to the apostolic message.  

“…it is as though John is insisting that any reliance on particularly authoritative human leaders is superfluous, even undesirable.  God wants to make clear that he and only he will lead his people, and he will do so directly through his Spirit.   Given this viewpoint, the loss of an authoritative person to death may not be a loss but a gain because it reminds people of where true authority lies. ‘It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you’  (Jn 16:7).”

The Holy Spirit was what held the Church together in any one time, but also throughout the world and throughout time as well.   Church membership might lose sight of this from time to time and become overly reliant and dependent on bishops, hierarchy and ecclesial structures to lead the Church  or to forcefully maintain the unity of the Church.   But according to Tarazi St. Paul and St. John both place the emphasis of church unity squarely on the Holy Spirit of God.   Human leaders might be martyred or even commit apostasy or sin against the Church, but the Holy Spirit would not leave the Christians orphaned or leaderless.  The Holy Spirit would inspire Christians to rise up even if the “official” leadership was eliminated or failed.   Certainly this is the witness of the saints and of monastics when they are true to their own calling.

The import for us today should be obvious.  We too can be tempted with being overly reliant on bishops (or even monks!) to lead the Church.  But the Holy Spirit is given to the entire Church at Pentecost and to each Christian at baptism.   “Leadership” in the Church is thus bestowed on all Christians as the power of God is spread throughout the Church membership as God distributes His gifts to all as He sees fit for the good of and building up (edification) of the Body of Christ.

Today, for the bishops to be able to be true Christian leaders, the entire membership has to embrace the mission Christ gave to us and use the spiritual gifts given to each of us.   To wait for the bishops to lead without the entire membership being actively engaged in living and proclaiming the Gospel is to guarantee failure in the leadership of the bishops.   They will end up feeling the need to defend their role and authority to the membership and over the membership rather than seeing themselves as empowered in and by the Body and the Spirit to accomplish the Great Commission.   The harvest is plentiful,  therefore  let us pray that the Lord of the harvest will raise us up as the laborers to do the needed work in His vineyard.

For another blog on Fr. Tarazi’s book see my Christ the Interpreter of the Law

Filled with the Holy Spirit

Yesterday, the Epistle Lesson for PENTECOST  Sunday (Acts 2:1-11 ), included these words:

Now when the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

What caught my attention were the words “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.”    The text also says the whole house was filled with the sound of the rushing mighty wind.  

FILLED.

It is an interesting word.

We don’t normally conceive of humans being empty like a bottle that you can fill.    So what exactly does it mean for a person to be filled by the Holy Spirit?   Of course, to be scientifically accurate, a bottle is not empty (as in vacuum), it is filled with air, and we displace the air with the liquid with which we (RE-)fill the bottle. 

So did the Holy Spirit fill the otherwise vacuous disciples?  Or did the Spirit displace that with which the disciples were already full of?

The text is of course describing a spiritual experience in metaphorical language, so St. Luke (the author of Acts) is trying to approximate the experience described by the apostles.  He is after all writing about the event years after it happened, and has to rely on their description of what they experienced in that moment of Pentecost – the inrushing of God’s Spirit into their lives.

The Greek word which St. Paul used for “filled” has a variety of uses literally and metaphorically and among its many cognates:  To fill, To make full,  To influence, To imbue, To supply, To accomplish, To furnish, To complete, To satisfy, To fulfill

In our prayer, we claim the Holy Spirit fills all things.   It is a rich image, which to some extent defies (and maybe deifies!)  understanding.  We do not usually think of all things as being empty – but rather things contain mass, and yet the Holy Spirit fills them. 

Is it that apart from God all things are still lacking something?   Only with the Holy Spirit filling something or someone does that thing or person attain its fullness of being – all that God intended for it, him, or her.   Only when we and the Church and world are full of the Holy Spirit do we experience the created world as God intended it to be and as He experiences it Himself.

The Holy Spirit is neither filling a vacuous being, nor displacing what is already in each of us.  The Holy Spirit fills us – brings us to fullness, completes us, recreates us so that we are the humans in whom God breathed His Spirit in the beginning.  “By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth”  (Psalm 33:6).   It is the Holy Spirit of God which continues Christ’s saving activity in the world – transfiguring and transforming all things.  By abiding in us, filling us with God’s Spirit, we are cleansed of every impurity, for there is no room for evil in the one in whom God’s Spirit dwells.

See also my Pentecost post. 

 

Feast of Pentecost

Sermon for Pentecost 2005         Acts 2:1-11

We might remember that in the Epistle reading for last Sunday (Seventh Sunday of Pascha,  Acts 20:16-36), we heard that St. Paul was eager to travel quickly in order to be in Jerusalem for the Day of Pentecost.  It would seem that in the early Church already they were commemorating the giving of the Holy Spirit to the apostles  – an event we Orthodox have celebrated annually in the Feast of the Holy Spirit which we are keeping today in our parish.

It was God’s bestowing the Holy Spirit upon the disciples that gave them the courage and power to be apostles of Christ and to speak to the world about God revealing His love for the world through the risen Lord Jesus Christ.

2]         Note in the lesson, they were speaking to JEWS from many different nations, not yet to the Gentiles.  And these JEWS are further identified, they were not secular Jews, nor lapsed Jews, nor Jews in name only, but they were devout men.  They were people who were conscientiously concerned about God’s laws and promises.  It is the beginning of the proclamation of the Gospel to all the world, yet it begins with a particularly fine and believing group of men.     Maybe that is where evangelism must always begin with the best spiritual element of society.

3]         Brothers and Sisters, pray to God that He continually gives us His Holy Spirit today as well, so that the people of our times might here our message in their native languages, in languages that they easily understand.   For our mission to the world, to be witnesses to God’s love, has not changed from the first day of Pentecost.

4]         Remember also the reaction of the crowd to the fact that each could understand the Gospel message in their own languages.  First it was amazement, but then it turned to ridicule, “They are drunk.”     To believe in God means to believe not only when one is filled with the Holy Spirit, but also when one is being ridiculed.  To believe in God is easy when everyone in society also believes in God, but what if everyone of  your friends denied a belief in God, would you hold on to  your faith?   

I am sure that the apostles filled with the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, expected the attracted crowd to recognize the event as God acting anew in their midst.   Instead, the crowd did not see the hand of God in the disciples’ behavior, but rather mocked them for being drunk!   It is not witnessing a miracle that makes you into a believer – you really have to believe in order to see the miracle.  St. Peter wanted to proclaim to the gathered crowd the miracle of God they had just experienced, but found himself having to defend the inspired apostles from charges of public drunkenness at 9 in the morning!

Brothers and Sisters, we are to strive to find the Holy Spirit in life.  For the Spirit who gives life to all believers, can teach us how to pray and can empower us to be faithful in the world.  We also need to be prepared for how the world may react to our lives and our witness.  We as witnesses to God’s saving activity in the world, also need to the patience, wisdom and humility to deal with our neighbors’ disbelief, cynicism, distrust, incredulity, and disdain.

See also my post on the Holy Spirit