In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Our Orthodox Christian inheritance is a very profound inheritance, indeed. However, what do we make of this inheritance, and what do we understand about this inheritance ? As we see in the Gospel reading this morning, do we treat the inheritance as the Pharisees treated their inheritance ? If we understand our Orthodox Christianity to be just a bunch of rules and merely a bunch of customs or even simply a language, then we are just like those Jews. We are no better than they. We are no better than the Pharisees were then, and we are no better than the Jews are now. To reduce Orthodox Christianity to something so shallow is to throw it away and spit on it. That is essentially what the Jews were doing, and are actually still doing. They are spitting on their own inheritance.
The Jews in those days and especially certain Middle-eastern parties of Judaism today who are in power and who are running the country, are in fact spitting on their inheritance. They have made Judaism into race-protection as they did 2,000 years ago. They have simply not stopped. Judaism was not a national characteristic. It was not ever intended to be limited to one race. It was intended to be a chosen people who knew that God loved them and wanted a relationship of Father and children with all His creatures. From the very beginning, through Abraham, the Lord proclaimed to those chosen people that that is what they should be proclaiming to the whole world. However, they have not so far done it.
When the Father gave His Only-begotten Son Jesus Christ to us, who took our humanity upon Himself, our Lord declared finally, and as completely as is possible, that it is this loving relationship that He desires from us and with us. If we behave as some Orthodox Christians behave in this world today, and say that I am Greek, or Arabic, or Russian, or Ukrainian, or Serbian or Byelorussian first before I am Orthodox, then I am not an Orthodox Christian and I am spitting in the face of what God wants to do with me and with us all. I am spitting on my Orthodox inheritance and I reject it.
Orthodox Christianity is a continuing relationship with Jesus Christ who is the Son of God. He was born, lived, died, rose again, ascended into Heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father for our salvation. He has done this because he loves us and because He wants to unite all His children to Himself in that love. It is that which we have inherited : this loving relationship with our God. This is the meaning and work of Orthodox Christianity. This is what made Greeks, Arabs, Russians, Ukrainians, Serbs, Byelorussians, Poles and even Norwegians into Orthodox Christians. The Pharisees seemed to be incapable of understanding how Jesus Christ could give sight to a man born blind. They did not see it because they had no understanding of this loving relationship with their loving Father.
The Lord is building His Church in this country. He is building it out of Greeks, Arabs, Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, and even Norwegians. Unless we are living in that loving relationship with Him, we are going to behave in the same way as those Pharisees. We are not going to be able to accept what the Lord wants to build in and amongst us. We will be as guilty as the Pharisees 2,000 years ago and as the Zionists are today.
The Lord is building His Kingdom amongst us. He is reconciling us to Himself. He is uniting us to Himself. In the midst of a world full of blind people, people born blind (and I do not mean physical blindness), the Lord is calling us to bring sight to them. He is calling us to bring His light to them. He is not calling Orthodox Christians to be on television every Sunday in order to preach and make a big production. He is not calling us to say things that are easy to hear, things that will make money and make us all rich. It would be nice, but that is not what the Lord is calling us to be. The Lord has called us to a loving relationship with Him and with each other. In this loving relationship we proclaim that He is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death and giving life to those in the tomb. He is calling us to show, as our Fathers and Mothers have done for the past 2,000 years, that Christians are characterised by their love for God and by their love for each other. They are characterised by their compassion, and by their readiness to be reconciled with each other in ways that are not logical for the world and that are completely different from the way of the world. We are not being called to behave as the world does, which eats itself up with hatred, envy, jealousy and submits to all sorts of strife and brokenness. He is calling us to unity, to healing, to reconciling, and to forgiveness. It is not easy. It is not easy, certainly, if we attempt to do any of this with our own strength, with our own power. It is only possible if we do it in Christ, when we take up the weapons of the Gospel, and when we put on Christ.
Sometimes I am tempted to think that we should stop singing “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal” every Sunday in the Divine Liturgy, and that for several years we ought to be reminding ourselves to sing : “As many as have been baptised into Christ have put on Christ” (see Galatians 3:27). We need desperately to be reminded that it is we who have been baptised into Christ, who have put on Christ. By putting on Christ, we put on His armour ; we put on His love ; we put on His strength and we put on His energy. It is no good to be intellectualising about His divine energies, and to be thinking about His divine energies, unless we are participating in His divine energies. To be an Orthodox Christian is not to be a philosopher. It is not to be a great thinker, nor to be a guru or to be a wise man. To be an Orthodox Christian is to be a lover and a knower of God. It is to be a participator in His life, a child of His Kingdom, and one who lives in that Kingdom. That is what we are called to do here today, and that is why we are here. We are here for no other reason than to remember that we have put on Christ. We are here for no other reason than to be nourished by Him, to come to His Table and to be fed by Him, to be united to Him, filled with Him, strengthened with Him and to be living with Him. We stand here today as His children, brothers and sisters of each other in His Kingdom, princes and princesses, children of the Kingdom. Let us behave as such and let our lives proclaim every day : Christ is risen. Let us glorify the all-holy Trinity : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.