“The Church, through the temple and Divine service, acts upon the entire man, educates him wholly; acts upon his sight, hearing, smelling, feeling, taste, imagination, mind, and will, by the splendour of the icons and of the whole temple, by the ringing of bells, by the singing of the choir, by the fragrance of the incense, the kissing of the Gospel, of the cross and the holy icons, by the prosphoras, the singing, and sweet sound of the readings of the Scriptures.”
Category: Faith
God is Merciful…
and we all should be grateful for that because if God were of mind to practice strict justice with humanity, with us, “Who” as the Psalmist would say “could stand?”
But why is God merciful? One reason, among the others, has been on my mind.
God extends mercy to us so that we have the potential to return to him. Our brokenness is so deep that God, in love realizing that the strictest form of holy response to our numerous sins, struggles, and failings would be our eternal undoing, gives us time, time to come to ourselves, time to come to him, time to turn from the various sins which challenge us, and time to have some beginning, at least, to heal.
When Jesus encountered the woman who committed adultery he refused to join in with those who were seeking immediate justice and retribution for what she had done, even though he, being without sin, could really have been the first to throw the executioner’s stones at her. Instead he told her two things. First, he was not going to be like those who were ready to condemn her to death and, second, he was giving her the gift of mercy, the gift of time to “Go and sin no more…”
I suppose it is possible, when we really think about it, that God has given each of in our lives more mercy than we could ever imagine or measure, more times when He chose to stay the immediate implementation of righteous judgment in favor of granting each us broken and fallible people the chance, the time, and the potential, to realize our lost state and find our way home.
Without this great gift where would I be? Where would any of us be?
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I’m Not Pure…
When it comes to sin if I haven’t done it I’ve probably at least had a passing thought about it and I suppose that if God would give me an unvarnished and undeceived view of myself I would discover things I would definitely rather not know or share.
Yet that doesn’t mean I’m hopeless.
I’m on a journey, you see, a journey of transformation where, by God’s grace, I hope to be changed, even if it’s at a very slow place, into something that looks more and more like Jesus who is purity, truth, love, freedom, and joy itself. And as I travel I’ve seen glimpses, short ones for sure, but real nonetheless, of what that destination is like. They are beautiful, peaceful, integrated, whole, and full of indescribable light. In a weary world their brevity still brings great peace to me, fresh water from a pure stream, a cloudless summer day, and the sense that time itself is temporary.
So I’m not pure. Yet I’ve seen what that purity looks like. It looks like Jesus, and I’ve decided that even though I know I’ll fall sometimes, and even though my life and my most profound ideals won’t always match, it would still be better trying to gain those lofty heights than to settle into the comfortable numbness of an ordinary life, a life spent achieving everything less than what the God who loves me would like to share.
It’s just that I’ve seen life as it could be, and even if I trip and fall I’m not able to go back.
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Discover Jesus…
by actually reading the stories of his life, the Gospels, and the writings of his immediate followers, the Epistles. That sounds like it would be obvious but I’m amazed, often, at how many people who claim to know something about Jesus have, at best, a foggy idea of who he is because they’ve not actually read much, if any, of the source material.
There are others, of course, who have read the source material and because it doesn’t suit their personal desires choose to distort it but that’s for another post. My invitation is simple, just read the stuff. Open that Bible you may have somewhere in your house, start with the Gospel of Matthew, and read it, simply, like you would read any other book.
You might be surprised at how different the Jesus presented in that book is from the popular cultural impressions. You will find that far from being some kind of perpetually nice guy who just wants you to have everything you want, a popular American image of Christ, the Jesus of the Gospels has opinions, judgments even, is robust, challenging, virile, and sometimes mind-blowing. Agree or disagree with Jesus teachings, you’ll still at least understand that if they were to be followed life, yours or the world’s, would not, could not, ever be the same again.
In our days there are a lot of people who want some of Jesus’ personal impact to bolster themselves. They understand, in some sort of way, that Jesus is important and so if they can get Jesus to agree with them than their own arguments, lifestyles, and ambitions will have a sort of “Jesus Stamp of Approval”. Largely these people have their own image of what Jesus is, an image that’s often formed by ignoring the actual stories, words, and actions of Jesus, or borrowing just the snippets of information that confirm their biases.
So my challenge remains. Read the book, the stories of Jesus. Read the whole thing and listen, perhaps for the very first time, to what is really being said. In the end if you think it’s all rubbish at least you can say you tried to understand. If, as you read, you begin to sense some wisdom, something deeper and higher in everything then pursue it because it will take a lifetime and more to come to terms with it.
But don’t claim to know anything about Jesus, even if you’ve spent a lifetime in church, until you’ve read the book.
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Being Orthodox…
When times are challenging I’m reminded of how good it is to be an Orthodox Christian. Now that’s not a put down of anyone else so much as a simple remembrance of the great gifts that Orthodoxy shares with unworthies like myself.
Connected directly to Christ through the Apostles? Check. Over 2000 years of lived experience and wisdom in the Faith? Check. Saints and friends to guide, and pray for, me as I live this life? Check. Rock solid commitment to everything that truly matters in the Faith? Check. True love and mercy from the Source of such things? Check.
Certainly I know that I’m a sinner and need to always keep close to God. I know, as well, that I’m in a community of people like me so everything isn’t hunky dory all the time. Still, however the world goes I’ve been given much, all of it underserved but still gratefully received. If the world does temporarily go to hell in a handbasket (and my Faith teaches me that all such times are only temporary) I’m glad I have something deep, rooted, and strong, even in weakness, to help see me through.
Sometimes that can make all the difference.
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Christianity is Difficult…
because it really does require a life long commitment of every aspect of life in the quest to become like Christ. To truly understand Christian Faith you have to understand that the word “Christian” has no hyphen before or asterisk after to modify it. The old American Protestant hymn is quite correct “I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back…”
Christianity is also beautiful beyond words because as its transformative powers are allowed to work, even if that transformation is difficult in any given moment, the person on the path begins to become what they were meant to be and discovers a kind of existence that, while fully engaged in the world, also transcends it, a world to come that lives in the present.
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Dear Orthodox Christians…
Please come to the services on time.
I know, I know, you have kids, stuff, a late Saturday night, a world of reasons why. Still you can arrange, change, and set the alarm clock early if you really want to. You do this for work. You do this when you have tickets to a concert or pro sports event. You do this for a date. Why not for God?
Let me explain.
Would it make sense to you to come to a movie towards the end just so you can slip in and see the finish? Would you try to slide into a chair at the conference table at work just so the boss would notice you’ve at least arrived?
So why come late to church?
Perhaps you think you already know what’s going on, what’s going to be said, what’s the next item on the agenda. Truthfully, if you pay attention to the services of the Church you’ll realize it’s not all the same all the time. Yes the basic structure, tested by centuries of experience in worship, may be the same but the hymns, the readings, all of that is different depending on what day it is and what we’re calling to mind. Try listening. Try participating. You’ll be surprised at what you discover.
Maybe its just a cultural thing. After all, people wandered in late back in the old country so it must be the way things are, right? Wrong. A bad habit doesn’t get a special blessing just because it comes from the old country.
Then, again, it could be about everything just being plain boring. Yet the bottom line is that the services of the Church, or any church, are as boring as the people who are in attendance. If your heart is cold towards God and holy things no amount of fireworks, smoke, or loud music will warm it up. If you struggle with being in the presence of God for an hour or so once a week consider pondering what that says about how you and God are really relating. God hasn’t changed, so what’s different?
The truth is simple.
If you understand your Orthodox Faith correctly you realize that worship is the most important thing we do. Everything in our life flows from our awe and reverence of God and any time we can stand in His presence is holy time, unique, special, and of eternal importance. There is a blessing in worship, just being in the presence of the Holy can eternally change us. Worship calls us from a crazy world to the one place where there is sanity, the presence of God. Worship, when we are truly engaged in it, helps us to understand who we are and what we’re supposed to be. Worship is deliberately attempting to be with the One for whom, and by whom, we were made and as we make the attempt that God encounters us as well. Right worship is built right into our name “Ortho-dox” and without it we are meaningless.
So here’s the challenge.
Make the effort to get to all the services of the Church on time, early is even better. No more excuses, no more shading the edges, no more waiting until just before the Gospel is read so you can slip in and get the “prize” of the Eucharist like God’s love was some sort of Cracker Jack box.
Change yourself. Change your heart. Struggle if you have to, but just do it. And as you do don’t be surprised when you start seeing things in an entirely new way, God’s way, and you begin to realize that this Christian “stuff” is for real.
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There is a great peace…
just in spending time in a church. I feel it when I step in, a sense of sanctuary from the craziness of the world, a physical reminder there are higher and more enduring realities in the world.
At times it makes no difference what is actually going on, what Liturgy is being served, or how I am part of things. Just to be there, to have my eyes completely captured only by holy things, a whole world around me where nothing profane can find root. This is a deep kind of joy.
Now there is precious little refuge to be found. The whole world is about signs and commerce and work and the endless pursuit of the next “thing”. Some who are called flee to the deserts and forests to find a place of rest but I am called to be in this world and so I need a place in the world, a place that calls me to what is higher, better, and more enduring.
It does not need to be a fancy, covered with gold and finery. Wherever people of true Faith come in humility to encounter God is already covered in the best of decoration. I have been to beautiful churches and I have been to humble ones and I can say that God is no respecter of persons as much as He is a respecter of hearts. The holiness of hearts is what makes a church a temple and such hearts transform a building into a refuge from a confusing and aggressive world.
If nothing else is to be gained the Faithful should be in their temple as often as possible simply because it is “other” than any place in the world and may be the one place, the only place in the world, where holiness and the deep peace it brings is welcome. To rest in such a place refreshes the soul and brings healing to lives numbed by the restlessness of this world.
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As I Have Grown Older…
I have come to view the weeks of spring with a greater sense of appreciation. As the snow fades and the green emerges from the ground I feel the cool air give way to warmth and listen to the birds announce life’s return to the trees. There is a kind of gentle hope in all of that, a hope that means more to me now that I realize there are more years behind than ahead, more days past than days to come.
Hope and spring allow me to endure the craziness of the world, the sense of the whole thing flying off its axis and spinning madly through space and time. More than anything else these days I’m simply sad at what I see around me, a great delusion with victims who have no idea of how to escape and transcend. I find myself caught up in it as well, drowning in a stormy sea and waiting for the Master to reach down and pull me from the waves. Yet, at least I know there’s a Master there and couldn’t imagine what it would be like if I didn’t. Such is the world these days, the world of headlines, 24 hour access, and a culture designed to make drones of us all.
Then spring comes and resurrection and a still, small, voice speaks with a clarity beyond the storm. Life begins anew. It always does. Crazy, bitter cold winters can wreak havoc with their temperamental winds driving us to huddle inside by any fire we have left to keep us warm. Yet they never last. Life, sanity, joy, better things, they always return. Sometimes, of course, there is much pain in the journey to that return, but the return, like spring, is inevitable.
One day my body, worn down by all the days that have passed will enter its winter slumber. One day the world around me will enter its night as well. Perhaps it already has. Yet I will rise and so will the world, both by the same force, the grace of God, God’s eternal spring which even death, the death of a person or the death of a culture, cannot overcome. What the birds in the trees announce now. the angels will then, and so the hope inside me never dies.
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I Have a Gay Cousin…
and I discovered that he recently married his long time partner, so all the stuff in the news these days has come a little closer to home.
My mother has met my cousin’s partner and apparently he’s a pretty nice guy. He’s an academic, a musician, and they have a nice home where they’ve lived together for years. There’s a beautiful garden in the yard and a certain kind of domestic stability that pervades the place. Had the judge not overturned their state’s laws on marriage and given them the opportunity to wed they would still be together as they have been for years. This is their house, their place, and their life.
It’s been decades since I’ve seen my cousin and years since we’ve talked, briefly, on the phone. The last surviving member of his immediate family, I only have a picture in my head of what he looks like and mostly I remember his paintings on the walls of their cabin on the lake. The son of my dad’s older sister I can’t say we’ve ever been close. In fact I don’t recall being close to any of the family on my dad’s side of the equation. So, in some ways. there is a distance between me and the news that he had married his partner.
I know what I’m not going to do. I’m not going to ostracize. I’m not going to despise. I’m not going to yell, badger, or harass. There will be no phone calls with Bible in hand and, if by chance, we meet some time we’ll talk of old times, look at some of his paintings, and catch up on all the years gone by.
Of course its hard for me in a way, but not the way most people may think. I was part of a team that spearheaded the introduction of HIV care to a health care facility. I’ve been a health care chaplain. I’ve watched good men, witty, bright, artistic, interesting, full of life, who happened to be gay, get sick and die. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t good. It bore very little resemblance to the movie “Philadelphia”. Above all it was just sad.
The truth is that the image of a young man I cared for in tears, full of the realization that the man he looked to for love and happiness gave him an incurable illness, is stuck in my head and probably will be for the rest of my life. I see the statistics. I keep up on the health news. To be a sexual person in these United States is like running a gauntlet and for folks who identify as gay the risks are even higher. That’s not hate, just medical fact and there’s absolutely no joy or sense of “I told you so” in any of it. As a Christian I’ve given my life to helping make other people’s lives better and my heart aches in the face of human suffering. I’m glad my cousin has a steady place to be and people who care for him, as I understand it that’s not always been the case, but I also don’t want him to be another name on some quilt.
So, yes I worry a bit and pray, a lot. I cannot change anyone else. It’s enough that I struggle to change myself. I don’t have to agree with the choices other people make or the life they live as a condition for caring for them or having them as family or friends, so my door will always be open for anyone come what may. If there really is some kind of culture war to be fought I will fight it in my prayer corner and with loving service to others in confidence that God will shine His light where it is most needed.
Yes, my cousin is gay and married. But God isn’t finished with him, or me, yet.
The Beautiful Path 