But the lawyer, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29)
Jesus asked: Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed mercy on him.” And Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.” (Luke 10:36-37)
“Neighbors, as Jesus knew. Can be a not insignificant challenge to anyone’s Christianity.” (Niall Williams. THIS IS HAPPINESS. P 92)
The Gospel means good news and so too every event of Christ’s life is good news for us. As the priest says at the end of the Nativity services: “He who was born in a cavern and lay in a manger for us and for our salvation, Christ our true God...” Christmas, the birth of God in the flesh, is and is supposed to be good news. It is the world – the fallen world – which is the contrast against which we see the Good News in the Nativity of Christ. To hear the good news, we do have to recognize the noise of the fallen world which darkens our minds and breaks our hearts, and then listen for the mellifluous sound of the Spirit. It is when we have experienced the sting of death, then we can best rejoice in the Gospel. In the bitterness of life and death, we taste the sweetness and goodness of the Lord. If we aren’t hearing good news at Christmas, we aren’t looking for God and/or we have become so accustomed to the world that we no longer recognize it falls short of the glory of God. The Nativity of Jesus is pointing to the Kingdom which is to come, not to amassing more things in this lifetime.
Orthodox theologian Vigen Guroian writes:
“It is our human vocation to translate or transcribe God’s intelligible, eternal, transcendent liturgy into sensible speech and action. Doing God’s will is not merely morality. More important, it is joining in song to sing God’s hymn of Creation so that all things may be made perfect. Short of this participation in God’s Trinitarian love song, we cannot hope to comprehend the deep, deep meaning of Creation and our common destiny with it. In a fallen world, however, sin and death preface liturgy: what should be an unhindered path to holy knowledge, harmony, and joy is marred by ignorance, discord, and suffering. The constant cacophony of a fallen Creation interrupts the melody of faith and drowns it out almost everywhere.
Worship is sacrificial until Christ, the New or Second Adam, renders up his sinless and holy life on the Cross as the final bloody sacrifice. “Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation” (Heb 9:11). In Christ, in his perfected humanity, the church, the temple of Creation, is rebuilt and the song is renewed.” (The Melody of Faith: Theology in an Orthodox Key, Kindle Loc 191-98)
When I think about images of the Church, I often think about the scenes in the Gospel where there is a crowd around Jesus. These are the people following Him. But that crowd is a very mixed group for in it are not only disciples but women, political zealots, nationalists, the sick, sinners, the insane, the possessed, the curious, the deformed, the blind, the hopeless and the hopeful, doubters, rebels, the irreligious, the establishment as well as the enemies of Christ. Just think about two passages in the early part of Mark’s Gospel – Mark 1:23-34 and Mark 2:1-17.
It is the Sabbath Day in the first passage. Jesus and his disciples have entered a synagogue. And there in the synagogue is a demon possessed man. Apparently, synagogues allowed even demoniacs to enter the community, to hear the scripture lessons, to pray and to seek rest from their affliction {that is something parish communities should think about, especially when we feel justified in judging the synagogues in Jesus day!}. Jesus came to seek and save the lost, the possessed, the sinner. He wants to be in their presence and wants them to come into His presence. The man screams: Have you come to destroy us? But Jesus is there on a peace mission. He is not there to destroy sinners or the demon possessed. Rather, He is there to save them. Jesus commands the demon to be silent. ‘You don’t know what you are talking about. I am God but I am not here to destroy life or cast anyone into hell.’ The thief may come to kill and destroy, but Jesus claims, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). Jesus does not seek a crowd of perfectly well behaved and obedient followers. He would not be able to accomplish His mission or God’s will if that is all who came to Him. Really, the righteous, well behaved and those who are healthy don’t even really need Him at all.
Jesus then heals Peter’s mother-in-law at the home of Peter and Andrew. “That evening,” according to Mark’s Gospel, “at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered together about the door.” Again, we see a crowd coming to Jesus, not fleeing from him, of people who are variously sick, wretched, needy, insane, maimed, demon possessed. Jesus ministers to them. This is His crowd, the Church. It is not just respectable people or believers, the moral and the pious, priests and monks.
Jesus then travels to Capernaum, to His home. Again, a crowd assembles where he is. Four men are desperate to get help for their friend. Jesus forgives the paralytic’s sins. But then, look, who is sitting with Jesus? The scribes! “Now some of the scribes were sitting there…” Jesus’ rivals and enemies are sitting next to Jesus and criticize Him in His own home for healing someone. It is the scribes who seem to have the seats of honor in Jesus own home. They don’t even have to crowd into the room – they get to sit next to Jesus. Imagine a parish letting the enemies of Christ and the critics of Christianity sit in the front pews, closest to the altar. That’s what Jesus did!
Jesus then goes to the house of Levi, a hated tax collector. Mark says: “And as he sat at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were sitting with Jesus and his disciples; for there were many who followed him.” Table fellowship with sinners! Jesus doesn’t condemn them and kick them out, rather He sits down with them at table and eats with them. This of course gets disapproving comments from the scribes, those opponents of Jesus. If Jesus invited sinners to His table today or sat with sinners at their table, who would be raising their voice in disapproval today? Probably the same kinds of people as the scribes. Why in the world would Jesus eat with sinners when there are decent people, upright, godly who would rather sit with Him? Yet that is what Jesus did.
And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, “‘Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?’ And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.’”
The crowd, the church – if it is following Christ – has sinners in it. In fact, the church should be inviting them in and having table fellowship with them, as Christ did, for these are the very people He seeks and calls. These are the very people who need to be forgiven and given the spiritual nourishment to be able to follow Christ.
If the Church saw itself as the crowd which followed Christ, it would be a crowded Church. It’s not the righteous who need Christ, nor did He come to seek and save them. If churches are losing membership, perhaps they are hanging out with the wrong crowd.
David Bentley Hart’s That All Shall Be Saved inspired me to reflect a bit on salvation and how Christ’s coming into the world is good news indeed for all humankind. His book brought to the forefront of my thinking the many reasons I joyfully embrace Christianity as my faith and experience of God. This is the 5th and final post in this blog series which is looking at ideas from his book which have been an anchor to my faith. The previous post is: Is Free Will the Curse?
The Gospel is and is meant to be good news for all of us who inhabit planet earth and struggle in life, who have to cope with evil and the effect of sin on our existence here. And while the good news promises us salvation, it does not promise us life on earth will be easy, without suffering or temptation or death. We are to be of good cheer because Christ has overcome all of these aspects of the world, and so they are proven to be limited, circumscribed, in their power.
In its dawn, the gospel was a proclamation principally of a divine victory that had been won over death and sin, and over the spiritual powers of rebellion against God that dwell on high, and here below, and under the earth. It announced itself truly as the “good tidings” of a campaign of divine rescue on the part of a loving God, who by the sending of his Son into the world, and even into the kingdom of death, had liberated his creatures from slavery to a false and merciless master, and had opened a way into the Kingdom of Heaven, in which all of creation would be glorified by the direct presence of God.
It was an announcement that came wrapped in all the religious and prophetic and eschatological imagery of its time and place, and armored in the whole metaphorical panoply of late antique religion, but with far less of the background and far fewer of the details filled in than later Christians would have found tolerable. It was, above all, a joyous proclamation, and a call to a lost people to find their true home at last, in their Father’s house. It did not initially make its appeal to human hearts by forcing them to revert to some childish or bestial cruelty latent in their natures; rather, it sought to awaken them to a new form of life, one whose premise was charity. Nor was it a religion offering only a psychological salve for individual anxieties regarding personal salvation. It was a summons to a new and corporate way of life, salvation by entry into a community of love. Hope in heaven and fear of hell were ever present, but also sublimely inchoate, and susceptible of elaboration in any number of conceptual shapes. Nothing as yet was fixed except the certainty that Jesus was now Lord over all things, and would ultimately yield all things up to the Father so that God might be all in all. (Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, Kindle Location 2790-2803)
When the Lord Jesus came eating and drinking with sinners was He not enacting the very thing He proclaimed in His parables – that those invited to the wedding banquet did not wish to attend and so the banquet had been opened to all – undesirable people were invited, even compelled to come in and join the banquet even though they were undesireable? Did not the Jesus’ own lifestyle and actions, especially His table fellowship, announce that the Kingdom of Heaven had come, that God had reconciled the world to Himself? Yet, we see already in the New Testament a rejection of this reconciliation between God and God’s creation. Pharisees, among others, rejected Christ’s message and condemn Him for His table fellowship with sinners. A concern for judgment of sinners and unbelievers comes to the forefront of thinking as Christians see people not only rejecting the Gospel but also persecuting believers. Being forgiven by God, reconciled to God, united to divinity was not enough good news for believers – they thirsted for triumph over enemies and retribution for sinners. Rather than sorrowing that everyone did not embrace salvation, believers began persecuting those who didn’t believe. The values of the Kingdom of Heaven were replaced by the values of worldly kingdoms.
However, the Church never lost sight of its message. The Gospel shone through the centuries to those who would hear it. St. Leo the Great (d. 461AD) writing in the 5th Century about the Nativity of Christ still captures the joyous message of salvation for everyone:
“Our Saviour, dearly beloved, is born today; rejoice! For it is not fitting that we give any place to sadness when Life is born, the Life which, consuming the fear of death, has filled us with joy because of the eternity He promises. No one is excluded from this gladness. One reason for joy is common to all, since Our Lord, the destroyer of sin and death, as he found no one free from sin, came to deliver us all. The saint is to exult, for he is nearing his palm. The sinner is to rejoice, for he is invited to forgiveness. The pagan is to take courage, for he is called to life…
And so, dearly beloved, we are to give thanks to God the Father, through His Son, in the Holy Spirit, to Him who, in the abundant mercy with which He has loved us, has had pity on us, and ‘when we were dead in our sins, has brought us to life together with Christ’, so that we may be in Him a new creature, a new work. Let us, then, take off the old man with his works, and become partakers in the generation of Christ, renouncing the works of the flesh. O Christian, realize your dignity: you are associated with the divine nature, do not turn back to your past base condition by a degenerate way of life. Remember that you have been rescued from the power of darkness, you have been transported into the light and the kingdom of God. By the sacrament of Baptism, you have been made the temple of the Holy Spirit. Do not make such a guest take flight by perverse actions nor submit yourself again to the devil’s slavery, for you have been redeemed by the blood of Christ, for He will judge you in truth, He who has redeemed you in mercy, He who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen.” (THE SPIRITUALITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT & THE FATHERS by Louis Bouyer, p 530)
St. Symeon the New Theologian (d. 1022AD) writing five centuries after St Leo says:
“… He Himself, Who is able to do all things and is beneficent, undertook to accomplish this work through Himself. For the man whom He had made by His own invisible hands according to His image and likeness He willed to raise up again, not be means of another but by Himself, so that indeed he might the more greatly honor and glorify our race by His being likened to us in every respect and become our equal by taking on our human condition. O what unspeakable love for mankind! The goodness of it! That not only did He not punish us transgressors and sinners, but that He Himself accepted becoming such as we had become by reason of the Fall: corruptible man born of corruptible man, mortal born of a mortal, sin of him who had sinned, He Who is incorruptible and immortal and sinless. He appeared in the world only in His deified flesh, and not in His naked divinity. Why? Because He did not, as He says Himself in His Gospels, wish to judge the world but to save it.” ( ON THE MYSTICAL LIFE Vol 1, pp 144-145)
Christ did not become incarnate in order to condemn humans, but, rather, to save them. God became human so that we humans might become god. If He wanted to condemn sinners, He didn’t need to die on the cross. That death is God’s love and will for humanity – God uniting Himself to humanity, not spurning humanity because it is fallen and sinful. Why senselessly be tortured for humanity if your goal is punishment for sinners in the first place? The life, death and resurrection of Christ are God’s continued effort to bring about God’s own plan: to unite heaven and earth, to reconcile humanity to God so that we humans might share in the divine love and life.
Writing 900 years after St Symeon, Archimandrite Sophrony building upon the words of St Silouan the Athonite discusses the struggle with evil humanity has faced through the centuries:
“The history of the Orthodox Church, past and present, right up to our own day reveals frequent instances of a leaning towards the idea of physical combat against evil, though fortunately confined to individual prelates or ecclesiastical groups. The Orthodox Church herself has not only declined to bless or to impose these measures but has always followed in the steps of the crucified Christ, Who took upon Himself the burden of the sins of the world. The Staretz was profoundly and very precisely aware that only good can defeat evil – that using force simply means substituting one sort of violence for another. We discussed this many a time. He would remark, ‘The Gospel makes it plain that when the Samaritans did not wish to receive Christ, the disciples James and John wanted to bring down fire from heaven, to consume them, but the Lord rebuked them and said, “Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of . . . I am come not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them”.’ And we, too, must have this one thought – that all should be saved.” (ST. SILOUAN THE ATHONITE, p 226)
David Bentley Hart is in good company as he argues the purpose of God’s incarnation in Christ, His death and resurrection all were done for the salvation of the world not for condemning sinners to hell. As previously noted, a message of universal salvation does not change the struggle which believers face in the world, does not deny that evil is real, does not take away the suffering undergone in this world by innocent people. It does bring the Gospel to the forefront of the Christian message and says “God is love” is not an idea that can be negotiated or altered. Rather it becomes the key to interpreting all of Scripture. God’s purpose in creating the cosmos is to bring all things into communion with God. This is God’s plan, unaltered by human sinfulness, which is being realized from creation to salvation in Christ to the kingdom of God. God is both Creator and Savior because God’s will is that we should be united to God. As Hart says:
… between God’s antecedent and consequent decrees: between, that is, his original will for a creation unmarred by sin (“Plan A,” so to speak) and his will for creation in light of the fall of humanity (“Plan B”). And it has usually been assumed that, whereas the former would have encompassed all of creation in a single good end, the latter merely provides for the rescue of only a tragically or arbitrarily select portion of the race. But why? Perhaps the only difference, really, between these antecedent and consequent divine decrees (assuming that such a distinction is worth making at all) is the manner by which God accomplishes the one thing he intends for creation from everlasting. Theologians and catechists may have concluded that God would ideally have willed only one purpose but must in practical terms now will two; but logic gives us no reason to think so. Neither does scripture (at least, not when correctly read). After all, “our savior God,” as 1 Timothy 2:4 says, “intends all human beings to be saved and to come to a full knowledge of truth.” (Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, Kindle Location
On September 5 we Orthodox commemorate the Holy Prophet Zechariah and Elizabeth, the parents of St John the Forerunner. Their narrative is found in Luke 1:5-80.
Everything we know about the blessed Saints Zechariah and Elizabeth is contained in one chapter of the Bible – Luke 1. There is something very humbling in this fact. How little we know about this holy married couple. Their memory has been praised throughout the 2000 year history of Christianity, yet all that we know about them is contained in about 60 bible verses of one chapter. From the perspective of the history of the world, there role is very small though unique. God called them to achieve one particular thing – to give birth to the last Old Testament prophet, the prophet who would herald the coming of the Messiah. They accomplished their God-given task and are honored both by God and the Church ever since.
Interestingly, St Luke begins his entire Gospel account with the story of Zechariah. Zechariah is chosen to offer incense before the Lord in the Jerusalem Temple. This tiny event marks for St Luke the beginning of the New Covenant between God and His people. The beginning of the salvation of the world is ignited when one Jewish priest burns some incense in the Temple.
Zechariah marks the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the entire new covenant. Yet after his experience in the Temple of God he will not appear again in the entire bible. St Luke thought him significant enough to begin the Gospel with his story, but no other New Testament author even mentions Zechariah.
God has assigned for each of us a special task to accomplish in the world. However great or simple, however significant or small, our salvation is linked to this task God has given us each to do. God chooses you specifically to accomplish the task only you can do. Each of us is irreplaceable in God’s plan for our salvation. The best way to know what our task is, is to be a person of prayer. By constantly being in God’s presence and by keeping our heart looking toward God, we will be given the guidance we need to accomplish our unique task. Being God centered, living a godly life, meditating on God’s Word, worshiping God, all help us to realize what it is God has created us to do.
St Luke says Zechariah and Elizabeth were both righteous in God’s eyes, without any fault in keeping God’s commandments. They each had a prayer life and studied God’s teachings, living according to those teachings. Thus they prepared themselves to do God’s will.
But note, according to St Luke they were judged harshly by many as being cursed since they had no children. However, their righteousness was seen by God and they were favored by God even though in the world they had no physical or spiritual reward from God which they could show to others.
It is a lesson for us – remain faithful to God even if you don’t feel you are blessed by God. Even if you see sinners prospering, don’t be deceived into thinking God doesn’t see or that God doesn’t care or that God doesn’t exist. God’s favor does not always come to us in ways that the world can measure it.
Zechariah is an example of a truly prayerful person. Pure prayer emerges from a righteous person. Prayer shapes our hearts and mins to conform to the will of the loving and merciful God.
Zechariah, the man concerned with pleasing God hears the words of the angel: “Your prayers have been heard.” What does Zechariah do when he learns God has actually accepted his prayers?
He trembles with fear!
What would you do if God told you He was going to grant you everything you asked for in prayer? You might think you had just found the greatest Genie in the world. But are you willing to be responsible for what happens to the world if God grants all of your silly or self-centered wishes? For if God gives you all you wish for, so too will God hold you to account for all that happens as your will ripples out into the world.
Think about the poor Zechariah after the angel spoke to him. Not only was he an old man and childless, but now dumb and deaf too! He hardly seems to be the image of a man blessed by God. But if we were to judge him for all that is apparently wrong in his life, we would be so wrong, for this is a man whom God considers righteous and blameless even though for all appearances he seems cursed in life.
Finally a few thoughts about Elizabeth. She too is considered righteous and humble. No angel speaks to her to tell her what is happening. She has lived a long life, quietly faithful to God yet harshly judged and gossiped about by family and neighbors because she has no children. No doubt they made fun or her and condemned her for sins real or imagined. Now her husband comes home deaf as a door nail and unable to tell her about God’s favor.
These two saints lived long lives in faithfulness to God, but had little to show for it – at least until the end of their lives when God blessed them with one child. That child is the forerunner of the salvation of the world.
The Gospel lesson of Matthew 14:14-22 :
And when Jesus went out He saw a great multitude; and He was moved with compassion for them, and healed their sick.
Who is in this crowd upon whom Jesus has compassion/mercy? Some who are sick, lost souls, some seeking God, the walking wounded, those who have lost their faith, the downcast and the outcasts. But also, there were curiosity seekers, non-believers, some who are hostile to Christ – His enemies. Throughout the Gospel His enemies follow Him everywhere, listening to His words, gathering evidence against Him – but they are in the mix and often very near Christ for they engage Him in conversation.
Christ ministers to all of them. His grace, love, mercy, compassion is not limited to His disciples, but extends to all whom He sees. Jesus teaches us by His own example to love and commands us to love one another in the same that that He loves us. He is moved by compassion when He looks on us. We have to be aware of how Christ loves us and to see the world through the eyes of Christ.
How are we to judge others? With compassion. Any who come to Christ, who seek Christ for any reason are to be welcomed by us and blessed by us. This is how the Lord Jesus loves us. He expects us to love as He loves us. Is it hard? Yes. Is it impossible? Hardly.
When it was evening, His disciples came to Him, saying, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is already late. Send the multitudes away, that they may go into the villages and buy themselves food.” But Jesus said to them, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.” And they said to Him, “We have here only five loaves and two fish.” He said, “Bring them here to Me.” Then He commanded the multitudes to sit down on the grass.
And He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, He blessed and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples; and the disciples gave to the multitudes. So they all ate and were filled, and they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments that remained. Now those who had eaten were about five thousand men, besides women and children. Immediately Jesus made His disciples get into the boat and go before Him to the other side, while He sent the multitudes away.
Jesus does not simply make their hunger go away by divine magic. Rather, Christ feeds them. He blesses the only food they had, and feeds 5000 men besides women and children from this food. The food doesn’t miraculously appear on each plate, but rather the disciples distribute it. The disciples have to work to make sure the people are fed. Christ receives from His disciples the food which some people had worked to make possible – bread and fish. He takes this human made food and blesses it. There is synergy between the disciples and Christ, working together for the good of all the people. This is the Church.
Christ entrusts some problems to us His disciples and asks us to deal with the problems. He doesn’t miraculously make the problems go away. He says to us: I am not taking hunger away, but I empower you to do the work necessary for these people to feel cared for and to be fed. The disciples themselves had to provide the food and distribute it.
We obey Christ not by having problems go away but by dealing with them. The Gospel lesson began with Jesus seeing the crowd and feeling compassion for them. The Gospel lesson ends with Jesus feeding them. It is the work of the Church.
I remember a cartoon I saw once in which a mother tells her son, “I want you to mow the lawn and clean the garage today.” The son moans mightily and responds with great complaint saying, “Man, I can’t wait until I’m an adult, then I won’t have to do anything I don’t want to do!”
Most adults recognize the weakness of that logic. We Americans just celebrated this past week our Independence day, and as much as we value those hallmarks – independence and freedom – we know that freedom brings with it responsibility – responsibility for self-restraint, self-control, self-denial, self-respect and respect for others. As Christians we know our responsibility includes love for one another, which means we intentionally try to do what is good for others, not just what is good for our self. For us love for one another and freedom are not opposed to each other but work in harmony to help us see ourselves as part of a greater whole – whether part of family, or neighborhood, or city or state or nation. Our life in Christ always means working out our salvation in relationship to the church, to our neighbors, to our family, to strangers, and even to enemies and to the world itself.
The goal of this love is to help build up in us a concern for others. In Matthew 6:22-33, our Lord Jesus Christ tells us numerous times not to be anxious. He concludes his anti-anxiety lesson with these words:
Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well. “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.
do not be anxious about your life – Jesus taught us liberation from anxiety, concern and worry – that was His idea of freedom and independence. Freedom from concern not because God grants us our every wish, but rather He taught us that by being united to God in prayer, we learn how to be content in every situation. We learn to be thankful always and in all circumstances. Worry doesn’t take away tomorrow’s problems, it only takes the joy out of today. Faith in God on the other hand helps us to look to God and for God in every circumstance.
For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)
If we are united to God, we will not be shaken by the events happening in our lives. As St Paul says in Philippians 4:6-7,
Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
We are told not to be anxious, but rather to pray. Yet, we are also warned that problems will arise, but that in Christ, if we stand firmly with Christ, we will have reason to hope even in the face of problems because in Christ we are already united to God. In Christ we are united to God even through times of sorrow or suffering, as we heard St Paul say in today’s Epistle:
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-10)
In the midst of all that troubles us, bothers us, weighs us down, confuses us, or causes us to suffer, there is hope – that is what our faith in Jesus Christ is and produces. The world doesn’t have the last/final say, there is yet a judgment of this world, and this world as we know it as well as our own lives will become visible to us from a new perspective in which this world and our lives will seem small and unimportant in the grand scale of things. Our hope is Jesus Christ, our belief is that Christ is the real context of our life. We may suffer in this life, yet in faith we are never separated from Christ even in times of distress or sorrow or sickness. We endeavor to keep ourselves in Christ so that we can always be united to God, to that bigger picture of which this world is only a tiny part. It is this bigger perspective – the eternity of the Kingdom – that gives us hope in our current moment
Many of the original twelve disciples of Christ made a living by catching fish – they sought out fish in the sea, trying to discover where the fish were so they could catch them. Jesus promised to make them into fishers of men rather than fishers of fish. In other words, He promised to redirect their life and work to seek out people and to work for God not just for themselves. Jesus wants us also to produce a harvest for Him – to seek out people and bring them into the church. The words of Jesus, “follow me”, are spoken to you. Jesus invites you to follow Him and you do that by seeking out other people to join you in your Christian life.
We however often persist in following our own dreams and our own way forgetting the concerns of Christ and the Gospel. We build our dreams, but then sometimes a tornado comes along and teaches us how fragile and temporary life is. Some of the tornadoes are meteorological events, other tornadoes are simply people in our lives. Sometimes in these events we are forced to look at the fact that we have been devoting our lives to build things that are temporary rather than eternal or permanent.
Jesus says, “Come, follow me” and I will give you something permanent – eternal life. Not a house that can be broken into or blown away by a tornado, but a room in the heavenly mansion. Not a catch of fish, but an entire kingdom.
And Peter said, “Lo, we have left our homes and followed you.” And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there is no man who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive manifold more in this time, and in the age to come eternal life.” (Luke 18:28-30)
“For Christ, the apostles, and the Church, the kerygma, the announcement of salvation. ‘Repent, for the kingdom of God’ – that is the theme of Christianity! We believe in God not because he satisfies our happiness in this world and also promises us, as a kind of bonus, a pleasant survival. Rather, we believe in a God who revealed to us that he created this world, so that ultimately, at the end (in Greek, eschaton), God will be all things, ‘all in all.’ We believe that in Christ each of us will find the image of his ineffable glory. We will all be, as the Pentecost prayer says, “anointed with the Holy Spirit” and become prophets, kings, priests. Ultimately, the glory of God – the Shekinah, communion, presence, knowledge, wisdom – will triumph, and the world will become truly the temple of God and of eternal life. That was the faith, why the martyrs died happy.”
(Alexander Schmemman, The Liturgy of Death, pp. 173-174)
So he came to a city of Samaria, called Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and so Jesus, wearied as he was with his journey, sat down beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, and his sons, and his cattle?” Jesus said to her, “Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.” Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and he whom you now have is not your husband; this you said truly.” The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain; and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will 
worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ); when he comes, he will show us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.” Just then his disciples came. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but none said, “What do you wish?” or, “Why are you talking with her?” So the woman left her water jar, and went away into the city, and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” They went out of the city and were coming to him. Meanwhile the disciples besought him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.” So the disciples said to one another, “Has any one brought him food?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work. Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see how the fields are already white for harvest. He who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor; others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of your words that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.” (John 4:5-42)
Fr. Alexander Men referring to the end of the Gospel lesson when the Samaritans come out to see Jesus writes that today we are all like these Samaritans in how we come to faith in Christ:
Samaritans surrounded the Jewish traveller, not caring that He was from a hostile nation, and led Him to their village; we do not know what happened then, but the most important thing in this story is the result. After listening to Him, they said to the woman: “Now we see the truth; no longer because of what you said, but because we have seen for ourselves.”
So now all of us are in the same position: at first we believe in the words written in the Scriptures and in other books, then we believe in what other people tell us. But the happiest moment in our spiritual lives is when we come to know the mystery of God, the mystery of the Lord Jesus, as revealed in our hearts, no longer through the words of others but through our own instincts and our own profound experience. We, like the Samaritans, guess at what is true and ponder on it. But He is near us, He reveals His word to us. Only we must also be ready to hear Him – like that simple woman of Samaria, like everyone who has ears to hear and hears. Amen. (Awake to Life!, p. 78)
Fr Alexander Schmemann comments on the Gospel lesson and how it shows that Christ was declaring an end to religion not creating a new one for Christ is calling us to life itself:
Christianity, however, is in a profound sense the end of all religion. In the Gospel story of the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus made this clear. “‘Sir,’ the woman said to him, ‘I perceive that thou art a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.’ Jesus saith unto her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father…but the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him’” (Jn. 4:19-21, 23). She asked him a question about cult, and in reply Jesus changed the whole perspective of the matter. Nowhere in the New Testament, in fact, is Christianity present as a cult or as a religion. Religion is needed where there is a wall of separation between God and man. But Christ who is both God and man has broken down the wall between man and God. He has inaugurated a new life, not a new religion. (For the Life of the World, pp. 19-20)
After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had.
Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” The sick man answered Him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your bed and walk.” And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked. And that day was the Sabbath. The Jews therefore said to him who was cured, “It is the Sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your bed.” He answered them, “He who made me well said to me, ‘Take up your bed and walk.’” Then they asked him, “Who is the Man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?” But the one who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, a multitude being in that place. Afterward Jesus found him in the temple, and said to him, “See, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.” The man departed and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. (John 5:1-15)
Jesus Christ on several occasions heals the sick on the Sabbath Day, which causes the religious leaders of His day to doubt that His power to heal comes from God since He breaks the Sabbath law. In John 5:1-15, not only does Jesus heal a paralytic, but He commands the healed man to carry his bed and it is the Sabbath Day. In these actions, Jesus is challenging the religious authority’s understanding of the Torah and accusing them of being hard-hearted while suggesting that keeping the Torah should lead to loving both God and neighbor. From the 4th Century we have comments of a Syrian monk who explains in a sermon the true nature of Torah:
In the shadow of the Law given to Moses, God decreed that everyone should rest on the sabbath and do nothing. This was a figure and a shadow of the true Sabbath given to the soul by the Lord. For the soul that has been deemed worthy to have been set free from shameful and sordid thoughts both observes the true Sabbath and enjoys true rest, being at leisure and freed from the works of darkness. There, in the typical Sabbath, even though they rested physically, their souls were enslaved to evils and wickednesses. However, this, the true Sabbath, is genuine rest, since the soul is at leisure and is purified from the temptations of Satan and rests in the eternal rest and joy of the Lord.
Just as then God decreed that also the irrational animals should rest on the Sabbath – that the ox should not be forced under the yoke of necessity, that they should not burden the ass (for even the animals themselves were to rest from their heavy works) – so, when the Lord came and gave the true and eternal Sabbath, he gave rest to the soul of heavily burdened and loaded down with burdens of iniquity, of unclean thoughts, and laboring under restraint in doing works of injustice as though it were under slaver to bitter masters. And he lightened the soul from its burdens, so difficult to bear, of vain and obscene thoughts. And he took away the yoke, so bitter, of the works of injustice, and gave rest to the soul that had been worn out by the temptations of impurity.
For the Lord calls man to his rest, saying, “Come, all you who labor and are heavily burdened and I will refresh you” (Mt. 11:28). And as many persons as obey and draw near, he refreshes them from all these heavy and burdensome and unclean thoughts. And they are at leisure from every iniquity, observing the true, pleasing, holy Sabbath. And they celebrate a feast of the Spirit, of joy and ineffable exultation. They celebrate a pure service, pleasing to God from a pure heart. This is the true and holy Sabbath. Let us, therefore, entreat God that we may enter into this rest (Heb 4:11) and that we may be freed from shameful and evil and vain thoughts sot that thus we may be able to serve God out of a pure heart and celebrate the feast of the Holy Spirit. Blessed is he who enters into that rest. Glory to the Father, who is so well pleased, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, forever. Amen. (Pseudo-Macarius, The Fifty Spiritual Homilies, pp. 204-205)
The true burden the paralytic of John 5 carried for 38 years was his illness and the fact that he had no one to help him. His paralysis laid upon his heart a burden of bitterness which allowed Satan to torment him, bringing him to doubt and despair. Christ gave him rest from his burden. Commanding him to carry his bed was proof that his burden had been lifted. Now on that Sabbath, carrying his bed was not carrying a burden but was proof that he had entered into the Lord’s rest. Now the man no longer was burdened by Satan with bitterness, doubt and despair.
Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest remains, let us fear lest any of you be judged to have failed to reach it. For good news came to us just as to them; but the message which they heard did not benefit them, because it did not meet with faith in the hearers. For we who have believed enter that rest . . . For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way, “And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.” . . . So then, there remains a sabbath rest for the people of God; for whoever enters God’s rest also ceases from his labors as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, that no one fall by the same sort of disobedience. (Hebrews 4:1-11)
Fraternized 