2nd Sunday after Pentecost – All Saints of North America, Gospel: Matt 4: 18-23 ; Epistle: Rom: 2: 10-16
Glory to Jesus Christ! Today is the second Sunday after Pentecost, and also the Sunday of all the Saints of North America. Today all of the more than 250 million world wide members of the Holy Orthodox Church that we are part of are celebrating the saints on their home soil. Russia, Greece, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Georgia and other countries are each celebrating thousands of local saints today. Saints that have lived over the last 2000 years as compared to our 200-year saint history. I think we in North America at last count had 18 officially glorified, and only 2 were actually born on this continent. Yes, we are very much a toddler Orthodox mission church here in North America.
Our mission is to reach out to the thirsting people all around us and show them the love of Christ and the fullness of the Orthodox Church. The community around us knows almost nothing about the Orthodox Church, and most of what people do think they know about the Christian Church, is based on their encounters with the Roman Catholic or Protestant church or even the horrible TV aberrations such as the prosperity gospel and other complete heresies. This often has little resemblance to what the Orthodox Church teaches. Our view of original sin, of the wrathful God and hell, of missionary outreach, prayer and union with God, and much else is radically different. Yes, we are a mission of a mission Church here in Cranbrook and the East Kootenay Valley.
The Orthodox Church has existed and has been creating saints continuously from its beginning, from when Christ first called Peter and his brother Andrew and James and John the sons of Zebedee. They immediately left their nets and followed Him as we hear in today’s gospel. I am always humbled by this response. I tend to respond more in a “just need to finish off this one last thing” way. Funny how often there ends up being a continuous collection of “one last things” that always seem to need to be taken care of.
He calls Peter and Andrew his brother saying, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” They immediately leave their entire previous life, James and John even leaving their Father behind in the boat. This was a heart response by these first four disciples. They had no idea what the plan was, and though they spent the next three years witnessing incredible miracles, they remained almost completely clueless as to where this was all leading. It was enough just to trust and follow. To simply walk with faith in Him. Wherever He led them. They had this faith to simply follow right from the beginning, and when the Holy Spirit came upon them in fullness, and our Church was born in power and strength at Pentecost, this seed of faith burst into towering and ever-expanding life!
When Christ talked about what seemed crazy ideas, which were incomprehensible, they remained secure in their faith in Christ. In John we hear (John 6: 53,54) “…Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” Many who were following Christ reacted poorly, (John 6:60) “Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this said, ‘this is a hard saying; who can understand it?” (John 6: 66) “From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.” When asked if they too wanted to leave, Peter replied (John 6:68,69) “Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Also we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Our calling into Christ and His Church into being re-born into the kingdom of heaven in our baptism and our cooperation with this re-birth, all rests on following Christ no matter what logic and our current circumstances seem to indicate. When we are being persecuted, when others treat us disrespectfully and even tell lies and seem to look for ways to hurt us, we are told to deny ourselves, to pick up our cross and to follow Christ. In today’s gospel for the saints of North America we hear (Matt.4:11,12) “Blessed are you when men revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven.”
When things are not going particularly well in our lives, God doesn’t promise to make it all better. He promises to give us His peace and even a particular joy as we turn to Him in the middle of the problems of our lives. All of the Apostles except John were martyred and joined the heavenly host with great joy as they died. This is always the goal, to teach us to turn and follow Him in all our struggles. As St. Paul says (1 Cor. 10: 13) “No temptation has overtaken you except as is common to man; but God is faithful and will not allow you to be temped beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.” What is this way of escape? To turn and follow Him. To give thanks for all things – even the present miserable circumstance and the hurtful people you have to put up with; at work and school and even here at church! For He is there with us all the way through. Of course, we may need to vent a little, to tell Him what a particularity rotten plan this seems to be before we can then sigh and tell Him “not my will and desires be done but Yours” and begin to force ourselves to thank Him for all things – even this mess. Just try it sometime, say out loud “Thank you Lord, Thank you Lord, Thank you Lord…” and you will find your grumbling and reluctant heart will finally start to join in and the light will softly return.
The Liturgy teaches us to how to pray and worship and give proper thanksgiving unto God. We gather to eat and drink of the very body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to be mystically transformed and united into the body of Christ, together to become saints. We pray in the Anaphora prayer “we ask You, and pray You, and supplicate You: Send down Your Holy Spirit upon us and upon these Gifts here offered” Our Liturgy is God-given, to lead us into communion with God. We may not always feel the joy and comprehend the eternal mystery that without exception takes place when we gather to celebrate the Divine Liturgy; but this is due to the dullness of our own God-receptors, not because anything is absent from the throne of God. The more we fully and with godly effort participate in the Liturgy, the work of the people, worshiping with the angels and with the saints gone before us, the more our contaminated God -receptors are cleansed. We begin to become more consciously aware of God being ever present and filling all things as we choose to follow Him. Through every generation for 20 centuries, from the Apostles, through all the saints and right up until today here in St. Aidan’s, God has been faithfully present in every Liturgy, transforming hearts and bringing His people to union with Himself.
We are sometimes tempted to judge whether God is active by our own emotional response. We tell each other “Wow, God was really here today.” Was He on vacation yesterday? This is a grave error that will leave us very susceptible to being manipulated by false Christ’s and teachings. God is always with us, not just when someone or something manages to cause an emotional reaction within us. Every one of the cults and other religions can promise their followers great emotional highs, and often are expert at producing the environment to achieve these feelings. We usually place far too much trust in our ability to discern when we are thinking in error or being lured off the path. Faith is the evidence of things not seen – or felt. Trust the Church and her teaching.
Our liturgical prayers have passed the test of centuries of use and are well proven to help lead us into true union with Christ. One of the great prayers of the church that I have found helpful comes from St. Philaret where He prays “O Lord, I know not what to ask of You. You alone know what are my true needs. You love me more than I myself know how to love. Help me to see my real needs which are concealed from me. I dare not ask for either a cross or consolation…” The struggle of Liturgical prayer is to unite our hearts with the prayers and make these prayers our own. Asking that our hearts can be transformed, becoming infused with the wisdom and purity being expressed by the saint who wrote the prayer in Christ. When we are having difficulty with this, we can ask the saint whose prayer we are using to intercede for us and ask Christ to fill us with the reality of the prayer.
In the Orthodox Church we have 2000 years of the collected and non-conflicting wisdom of the saints. If what we are struggling with or thinking doesn’t square with what is called Church tradition, the same tradition that gave us the New Testament and has been carefully guarded and passed on to us by every generation of those who faithfully served Christ within the Orthodox Church, perhaps it would be wise to consider that we may be in error. It is sometimes put that we are safer letting the Church judge us when we disagree, than for us to be judging the Church. This is a very counter-cultural idea in our society where we are constantly being encouraged to “do it my way” and not let anyone tell me what to do. “Sola scriptura” has come to mean “my own private interpretation of the scriptures is the only right one.” This fits in nicely for the cultural paradigm we live in but is a sure recipe for complete chaos and has given birth to literally thousands of conflicting variations of “Christianity” in the Protest-ant world.
So what has all this to do with the saints of North America whom we are celebrating today? Everything. They were all formed within the bosom of the Church. You will find reading the lives of the saints that they immersed themselves in the cycles of the Church. They availed themselves of every opportunity to be present, to receive communion and pray, eagerly cooperating with the transforming grace of God.
We too are all called to be saints of God, this is our job description, our very purpose in life. Today is also our feast day! We all have but one thing to contribute to God to this end, our free will. In today’s epistle we are given very good instructions about what is required. “Be not hearers of the law but doers.” Coming to Church and learning God’s truth is very good. But then choosing to ignore it will only harden our hearts and make us crazy in the long run. I remember listening to Fr. Thomas Hopko of blessed memory, and someone asked him why some people come to Church and seem to get sweeter and more loving, yet with others it seems the longer they come, the more twisted and bitter they become. He answered that when we are encountering the living God on a regular basis, receiving communion while not allowing Him to forgive and heal us, we are likely to get worse rather than better. This isn’t magic. Coming to Church really doesn’t do us a lot of good if we are not willing to change, to put into practise what we hear. Choosing to stay hurt and not to forgive when we are insulted and wounded, choosing to close our eyes to the pain and poverty around us when our conscience is pleading with us to be generous, choosing to close our hearts to what we are hearing, these choices will not enable us to grow closer to Christ, no matter how much we go to Church.
So, let us do all we can to learn from the saints, asking for their intercessions before the very throne of God, and imitating them as best we are able. Pray for us St. Herman, St. Tikhon, St. Peter, St. John, St. Nicolai, Blessed Olga and all the rest of our beloved North American saints that we too may join you in answering Christ’s call to simply “follow Him.” Glory to Jesus Christ!