Confession: It’s for the body not just the head

People frequently ask about what they should confess. I have listed in the bulletin during the past pre-Lenten and Lenten Sundays several passages from scripture which spoke about things we should confess. Here is another passage from this past week’s Lenten readings from the Book of Proverbs.

Proverbs 6:16-17:

There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him:
haughty eyes,
a lying tongue,
and hands that shed innocent blood,
a heart that devises wicked plans,
feet that hurry to run to evil,
a lying witness who testifies falsely,
and one who sows discord in a family.

Notice how the entire body is brought into this – eyes, tongue, hands, heart, feet. Think about how you use your body and to what ends and purposes.

Do you bring yourself closer to God, and reconcile yourself to family and friends? Do you bring peace to your family and friends or sow discord, anger, enmity, strife? Do you gossip, or plot with some people against others? Do you care about the salvation of those around you, or do you simply use them for your own selfish purposes? Do you make yourself apologize for wrongs you do, and offer forgiveness to others when they hurt, fail or offend you? Do you in your heart and mind carefully plan how to do some evil so that you don’t get caught or so that others might get blamed for what you have done or so that you look good at the expense of others? Do you lie in order to avoid blame or to get others into as much trouble as you are in? Do you have some need to look better than others? Are you always envious of others? Are you greedy – always desiring what others have or even wishing ill on others who have things you don’t? Do you pronounce judgment on others because you feel morally superior? Do you want others to notice all the good you do so they will think highly of you? Are you jealous and vengeful when others get noticed or credited and you aren’t noticed or credited for what you’ve done?

Some might say the above mentioned behaviors are really about what is normative in the work world – cut throat competition for recognition, reward, advancement. But even if that is true and you feel compelled toward certain behaviors in the work place, can you see that bringing those same behaviors into your homes, families, neighborhoods and church, can be extremely destructive? Can you learn to control yourself so that lying, jealousy, envy, greed, anger, judgmentalism, divisiveness, gossip, blaming, whining, selfishness and self-centeredness are recognized for the destructive sins which they are
rather than accepted because “everyone does them”?

Take a look at yourself, think about your body:

Where are your eyes wandering off to? What do you look for and at? Are your eyes motivated by greed and lust to look for what you desire and want to possess?

Your hands, what are they reaching for, grasping, taking, doing? What are you using your hands for – to reach out and help others? To operate your computer, seek out pornography, operate your TV remote, grabbing more things for yourself?

Where are your feet taking you – to pray, meditation, to be reconciled with friends, to love others? Or to places that serve only yourself? To the Lord? To God or gaud? To hear the word of God or to hear the latest gossip or to tell a corrupting joke?

What is your tongue doing – praising and thanking God, witnessing to God’s presence in your life, offering a kind and calming word, encouraging someone? or to gossip, tasting more food, speaking poisonously about others, corrupting others with filthy stories and foul language?

And where is your heart? In the Kingdom of God, or loyal only to yourself?

When others suffer: Repent, don’t blame

These are my notes from yesterday’s sermon on Matthew 18:23-35, the parable of the forgiving King and the unjust servant.Jesus said: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to…. A man who owes a huge debt to a king!”

Now if we are like typical Americans, we all have some sense of what it is to be in debt, and some of us know what it is to be in serious debt, so serious that you may also be wondering about your ability to ever repay that debt.

But I ask you to note, Jesus does not compare the Kingdom of God to a bank in which people have stored up years of savings and wealth. The kingdom of God apparently is not like coming into a bank and having the king tell you how much you earned, saved or amassed during your life time.

Why am I telling you this?

This past week I sent out an email to those members who are on my email list about how Orthodox prayers dealing with disasters, do not question God or blame God for what has happened. Neither do these prayers blame sinners, unbelievers, or the godless. There is little recrimination in the prayers. Rather, the prayers are a call for us who are Christian to recognize our own sins and to repent of them, and in doing so, giving us the hope that perhaps God will see our sincere repentance and will once again show His grace and favor and mercy on us in our time of need.

But some might ask, what good does our being moved to repentance have on the world?

Christianity does not call us to or encourage us to run or hide from the sorrow, pain, and suffering of this world. Such suffering and pain is understood to be real.

Our Lord Jesus Christ came into the world to take on himself the human condition. He came into the world and confronted sickness and demon possession and hypocrisy and sin and self-righteousness. Christ came into the eye of the storm of human suffering.

Ours is not an escapist religion. Christ took on himself the human condition, which means God entered the world in order to suffer! And in so doing he redeemed and transformed and transfigured it.

Death and suffering and meaninglessness are no longer the final word about humans. Christ has shown death is not forever. Death is limited and not ultimate. Death is in check and will be overcome.

God saw the suffering of humanity and entered into the human condition and took that suffering upon himself.

When we see the suffering of the world, we aren’t to flinch from it, nor are we to give thanks because it occurred to someone else. Rather, by drawing our minds to our own sins, we enter into the depths of the human condition and human suffering. The bible is clear that suffering and sighing and sorrow belong to the world since the time of the fall. We who live in the fallen world, need to feel the pain of the sinful world, to realize the truth about our own condition. And to be moved to compassion for the suffering of the world.

God saw the suffering of His people and His creation and moved to pity and compassion by His longsuffering love and mercy, entered into our human state.

When we are moved by pity and compassion for the suffering of others, we are seeing the world as God sees it. When we enter into that human suffering, we are doing what God did.

This week, we will celebrate the Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary. Certainly she is loved and highly regarded in Orthodoxy because she is seen as an image of compassion. She is one who intercedes before God for us. She is for us what we should be for the world. She has those virtues before God that we all should have. She is often portrayed as the hope of the hopeless, the help for the helpless, the protection for the bestormed, and a
refuge in a time of need..

When we see the suffering of the hurricane victims, or any suffering in the world, and our hearts are softened by the sorrow of the victims, we become compassionate and learn to love even those who are most unlovable, most undeserving, most unlovely. We see the world as God sees us!

And so we are moved to that self sacrificial love, as God was. And we will love those in need, not just by sending them our castoffs or hand me downs, but by giving them the most and the best we have to offer, just as Jesus did for us.

The Feast of the Ascension of our Lord

May God bless you with His peace and joy on this Feast Day of the Ascension.

I mentioned in the sermon at the Liturgy last evening, that Christ’s Ascension bodily into heaven is both a sign of and fulfillment of God’s reconciliation with humanity. After the disobedient sin of Eve and Adam in Paradise, humanity fell from God’s grace, and lost the unity with God which He bestowed upon humankind from the beginning. We fell from God’s presence and no longer walked with Him, nor He with us in the world which was Paradise and our intended home. The bodily ascension of Christ signals the undoing of all the consequences of the Fall, for once again humanity in its wholeness (body, soul, spirit) is in God’s presence.

You might remember the lesson in the Gospels (Matthew 9, Mark 2, Luke 5) in which Jesus rhetorically asks, “Which is easier to say to a paralytic, ‘your sins are forgiven’ or ‘rise, take up your bed and walk’?” The obvious answer is to tell someone their sins are forgiven is far easier as how could you prove it one way or another? The Lord then gave those folk something to think about when he commanded the paralytic to walk and the paralytic did as he was told! Jesus shows his commands have power and His forgiving us our sins are not empty words.

We can gratefully listen to the Gospels and hope they are correct when they talk about God forgiving human sin and restoring humanity to God’s favor. But when Christ ascends bodily to heaven, we are given something to think about – the reconciliation with God and our bodily union with God is demonstrated before our eyes in and through Jesus Christ our Lord. Christ is not merely the harbinger of the coming Kingdom of God, He bodily enters into God’s presence and restores what Adam and Eve had and lost. But further, His entry into the Kingdom of God is not for Himself alone, but is for all of us, just as His bodily resurrection is but the first fruit of what all of God’s people are to experience.

The Feast of the Ascension is a joyous affirmation that God does intend to bring us back into His eternal presence, despite our sins. What Eve and Adam had in the beginning – living in God’s presence and abiding in God’s Paradise – is being given to us again. The physics and metaphysics of how this works is never explained in the Bible, rather it is simply offered as what was and what will be.

The hymns of the Feast also mention the Apostle’s as well as all of our ambivalence toward the event. For though Christ’s mystical and bodily reunion with God the Father is good news (Gospel!) for all of humanity, it also leaves us believers still here on earth, still having to take up the cross daily, and still awaiting the much anticipated second and glorious coming of Christ and final establishment of God’s Kingdom: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever.” (Rev 11:15)

The hymns of the Feast also mention that the Apostles were disappointed both by Christ’s departure and by the fact that His ascension did not mean the immediate end of this world and instantaneous appearance of the eschatological Kingdom of Heaven. They were however given joy by the promise of the Holy Spirit, which they and we would receive on Pentecost, 10 days after the ascension.

The joy of the Holy Spirit is real. But the Holy Spirit comes upon us to give us all we need to live the Gospel life IN THIS WORLD. The Holy Spirit does not come to take us out of this world and all of this world’s sin, sighing, suffering and sorrow. The Holy Spirit rather is given to each believer to enable us to live in this world and to empower us to support, love, forgive, encourage, help, and teach one another. The Spirit is given to the community of believers to build up the community, and to unite each of us to Christ and one another. The Spirit comes upon us when we gather in the Liturgy and makes it possible for both the bread of the offering and our community to become the Body of Christ. But all of this happens in this world and as long as this world continues to exist. We each are given grace by God, the Holy Spirit as gift (in Chrismation), and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, so that we can help each other continue to live in this world and to bear the cross and to witness to the eternal joys of the kingdom to a world which is so often seduced by and enticing us with the fleeting pleasures of this world.

I pray that God will bless you by and through the Feast of the Ascension. May He prepare you for and enliven you with the coming of the Holy Spirit.

Theophany: The Blessedness of Water

Sunday is the Feast of Theophany. The event we remember is the baptism of Jesus Christ our Lord, but its theological significance is what it revealed about God. For at the Baptism of Christ, we have the first full revelation of God as Holy Trinity: the voice of the Father, Jesus Christ the Son of God, and the Holy Spirit in the form of the dove all appearing together for the first time. The manifestation of the Trinity at the waters of the Jordan give us the truth about God, and also show that water itself was always meant to be a medium of revelation.

Yesterday, Friday, during the reading of the Royal Hours, I was particularly struck by the hymnody of our church which talks about John the Baptist trembling at the thought of putting his hand on the head of Christ, realizing that it was he (John) who needed to be baptized by Christ (Matthew 3:14). John’s baptism was one of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (Matthew 3:11). John also recognized Jesus as the one who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). What the hymns implicitly capture from the Scriptures is that John recognizes that Jesus is the One to take away the sin of the world, and yet this chosen Messiah humbly appeared before John submitting Himself to baptism. The very thing John felt he could accomplish through baptism – the forgiveness of sins- is now paled when in the presence of the very One who takes away the sin of the world. John, like any Jew, knew only God forgives sins. When God revealed to John that Jesus was the One to take away the sin of the world, John realized that somehow, Jesus, the man standing before him to be baptized was God! No wonder his hand trembled and no wonder he expressed doubts to Jesus about baptizing Him. John the Baptist was the first person struck by the implication of the revelation of the Trinity at the baptism of Jesus. The cleansing of sin is not accomplished only by washing, it is accomplished also by God becoming man in Jesus Christ.

My final thought about the Feast is about the nature of water itself. Water in the beginning was involved when God created the heavens and the earth. The creation story is also a story of the revelation of God. We bless water because we believe the physical creation of God is holy and capable of bearing to us God’s revelation. The prayers of the blessing of water do not really say the water we pray over is holy and all other water is not. Rather the prayers ask that God make water and really all created matter the bearer of His revelation to us. We pray that water might become all that it was originally designed to be – especially life giving and cleansing. Water is capable of blessing other things, washing away the guilt of our sins, being a medium of God’s revelation about Himself, being source of life and renewal. Almost all health advocates say to drink plenty of clean water. We know in our world that too little water is deadly (drought, famine, deserts, sandstorms). We also know too much water is also deadly (Tsunamis, floods, drowning, mudslides, carrier of disease). But water is also capable of being part of life giving creation, salvation and revelation. There are countless stories in the Bible in which water plays a significant part in salvation and revelation – Noah and the ark, crossing the Red Sea in Exodus, crossing the Jordan into the promised land, washing Naaman’s leprosy, Peter walking on water, the Baptism of Christ and our own baptisms!

So this weekend, when we bless water, truly ask God to reveal Himself to you in the blessed waters of the Jordan, of the baptismal font, of the Feast of Theophany. Drink deeply of these waters – not just to resolve your physical thirst, but to enter into what God is manifesting to His creation. Take these waters home and bless your homes and gardens and cars and family members. You will realize that the spiritual life does not consist in overcoming our physical lives, but rather in turning the physical world into the means of revelation and salvation – all that God originally intended it to be. It is only because there is a physical world that God has a means to reveal Himself and someone to whom to reveal Himself! That is part of the very purpose of His creating us.

I wish you a blessed Feast of Theophany. May God manifest Himself to you and all of us.

Christ is born! How do we glorify Him?

When Caesar Augustus put forth the order to do a census of the world for tax purposes (as mentioned by St. Luke, chapter 2 in the Gospel lesson we read at our Christmas services), he put into motion a series of events which ultimately caused Joseph the inconvenience of having to take his pregnant wife, Mary, to Bethlehem. This of course was of no interest or concern to His Imperial Majesty who as a god of Rome was cognizant only of those things pertaining to himself – a very limited and narrow view for any claiming the title of god. The Roman Emperors in those days often were thought of as being a god, and certainly his imperial commands could move an entire empire and all those living in its realm – the entire “civilized” world as the Romans saw things. King Herod of the Jews although being more pretentious than real as a king, since his “kingdom” was a tiny “backwater” and an insignificant part of the Roman Empire, also moved the denizens of his “kingdom” at his whim, and could order their deaths with fear of repercussion as we hear in the Nativity story with the deaths of the holy innocent baby boys. Though Emperor and king each saw themselves as the shakers and movers of their respective domains, St. Luke views both Herod and Caesar as petty players in a much bigger drama that was unfolding in the universe. Because Mary, Joseph and the infant Jesus were invisible to king and emperor as the holy but impoverished family was insignificant to their imperial interests, so too the two imperial claimants were totally unaware of the one truly significant event that was happening in their own lifetimes and within their kingly precincts. In a sense neither Herod nor Caesar were concerned with the minor events occurring within their realms (another birth to one of the endless impoverished Palestinian girls, impregnated by an unknown father), nor with the major events that were happening in the cosmos (the Word of God becoming incarnate for the salvation of the world). Both the small events and the great events were beyond their imperial interests, as they only things of significance to the kings were things involved themselves! King and emperor though “governing” large realms of territory had narrowed their field of interest to their respective selves.

Shepherds on the other hand, knowing themselves not to be of any great significance to the world, pay attention to what happens in the world beyond their limited self, and certainly are open to witnessing anything of interest that might be happening in the cosmos. So they see the angels announcing the birth of the messiah as they do believe the universe is greater than their insignificant selves and they expect great things to happen outside of themselves and to involve people other than themselves. So they gladly go to Bethlehem to see the birth of this Messiah heralded to them by God’s own messengers. They could be awed in a way that the great men of the world cannot at the birth into poverty of a baby with uncertain paternity lying in a manger. How this child could possibly be or even grow up to be anyone of consequence was, I am sure, dubious to even the shepherds, for this wasn’t the United States of America after all with its promise that any citizen could potentially become president.

Also entering into the narrative are the strangers from Persia following a star which tells them something new has occurred in the universe. The magi using the wisdom of the universe at their disposal through the reading of the stars had become aware of the birth of a king – neither a Caesar nor a Herodian one. The magi were no doubt under whelmed by Herod’s lack of awareness or wisdom when it came to the universe or even to his own kingdom or the prophecies of his own religion. And it is no doubt Herod’s unobservant dullness of mind which made the magi realize they too could easily escape the attention of this unperceptive “king” when they wanted to return unnoticed to their own country. Herod, self absorbed, could only understand the promise of a Messiah in terms of how it might affect (or threaten) him personally. That some greater cosmic event not dependent on him was unfolding before his eyes never crossed his king sized self absorbed ego. So he will never see the child that both shepherds and magi are able to find and see with their own eyes. Even if the Christ child had been placed right in front of him, Herod the Great would have been duly unimpressed and not been able to see the child for who he is.

Today, thanks to the Gospel we know what the magi knew even though we don’t know their astrological art, and we also know what Herod did not about the location and the personage of the Messiah. As Luke tells the story, Caesar the man become God in Rome was going to be displaced in the empire by the God become man – this very baby Jesus whom Herod wanted to kill. We are given the perspective that neither Herod nor Caesar knew – what God was doing in their respective kingdoms within their lifetimes. And what God was doing then and there turns out to be significant to you and I, not to mention to every human being anywhere in the world at any point in history.

So as Christmas Day 2007 comes to an end, we realize we know more than the great Caesar Augustus who commanded an empire. We have a better understanding of events than King Herod the Great. Even though we live 2000 years after the actual events, we have the vantage point of understanding what God was doing in our world at the time Christ was born. We can see what both Caesar and Herod could not – God working for the salvation of the world. We can learn from the mistakes of emperors and kings and allow their errors to serve our needs. We can understand the truth about and the significance of the birth of Jesus. And we have the ability to decide how we should live knowing the truth of Christ – an advantage neither king nor emperor had! Unlike Herod or Caesar, we do not have to be limited by self interest. We can be focused both on the small story of one birth in a manger, and we can recognize the cosmic dimension of that story. Christmas is not just about human poverty, but it is also about the voluntary poverty of God who entered the world in Jesus Christ in order to enrich us by saving us. Being Emperor of the world is of no advantage to a person if that emperor/empress still can’t see what God is doing in the world.

Christ is born! Now is the time to figure out what to do to Glorify Him!

Christmas: The Sanctity of Life

As I was driving to church this morning, I was thinking about the Gospel lesson for today, the Sunday before Christmas (Matthew 1:1-25). This is the Gospel lesson which contains the long genealogy of Christ. We might be tempted as Christians to say that in that whole list of births, there is only one birth that really matters – the Nativity of Jesus Christ. But that would exactly miss Matthew’s point. The very point of the text is that all the births mattered, even those of the nefarious characters in the genealogy, because they each were an essential birth in the history of humanity necessary for the advent of the Savior to enter into the world. Every one of the births are of the utmost importance as the birth of Christ would not have occurred without this exact history unfolding as it did (though the bible doesn’t ever mention genetics, the fact is Mary and Joseph genetically are who they are because of their ancestries). Of course in Orthodoxy, though Matthew’s genealogy traces Joseph’s ancestors, it really is the genealogy of Mary the Theotokos which is of genetic and human significance for the incarnate Word of God. Joseph’s role is not genetic, but certainly is one of husbandly and fatherly nurture. All the births in the Scriptural genealogies are thus essential and matter for the salvation of the world because they lead to Jesus Christ. Christ’s birth is certainly unique in His being also the Son of God, but His is not the only birth which matters. We read the genealogy of Christ precisely because every one of the births and the personages recorded in the genealogy is significant fo r the salvation of the world, even if most indirectly. That is why we have the Sunday before Christmas dedicated to the memory of the ancestors of Christ. Furthermore in Christian thinking, the birth of every human since the time of Christ also is significant for the life of the world. No human ever conceived is inconsequential to the world, every single human conceived and ever human who is born matters to God and to the people of God.This is why we as a Church embrace the sanctity of human life. It is also why we pray for the salvation of the world – of every human who exists. And it is why you yourself are so important to God, to our parish, and to me personally. I give thanks to God for you!

Christmas: The Sanctity of Life

As I was driving to church this morning, I was thinking about the Gospel lesson for today, the Sunday before Christmas (Matthew 1:1-25). This is the Gospel lesson which contains the long genealogy of Christ. We might be tempted as Christians to say that in that whole list of births, there is only one birth that really matters – the Nativity of Jesus Christ. But that would exactly miss Matthew’s point. The very point of the text is that all the births mattered, even those of the nefarious characters in the genealogy, because they each were an essential birth in the history of humanity necessary for the advent of the Savior to enter into the world. Every one of the births are of the utmost importance as the birth of Christ would not have occurred without this exact history unfolding as it did (though the bible doesn’t ever mention genetics, the fact is Mary and Joseph genetically are who they are because of their ancestries). Of course in Orthodoxy, though Matthew’s genealogy traces Joseph’s ancestors, it really is the genealogy of Mary the Theotokos which is of genetic and human significance for the incarnate Word of God. Joseph’s role is not genetic, but certainly is one of husbandly and fatherly nurture. All the births in the Scriptural genealogies are thus essential and matter for the salvation of the world because they lead to Jesus Christ. Christ’s birth is certainly unique in His being also the Son of God, but His is not the only birth which matters. We read the genealogy of Christ precisely because every one of the births and the personages recorded in the genealogy is significant fo r the salvation of the world, even if most indirectly. That is why we have the Sunday before Christmas dedicated to the memory of the ancestors of Christ. Furthermore in Christian thinking, the birth of every human since the time of Christ also is significant for the life of the world. No human ever conceived is inconsequential to the world, every single human conceived and ever human who is born matters to God and to the people of God.This is why we as a Church embrace the sanctity of human life. It is also why we pray for the salvation of the world – of every human who exists. And it is why you yourself are so important to God, to our parish, and to me personally. I give thanks to God for you!