Complete Confidence in the Lord

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
Complete Confidence in the Lord
25 September, 2005
Luke 5:1-11


In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

As we are struggling to live our Orthodox Christian lives day by day in this difficult environment, it is extremely important to keep our hearts and minds in the Gospel. If we are Orthodox Christians, everything in our lives has to be related to and referred to Christ. If we are going to try to do this, we have to keep remembering Who He is. I remember not long ago being reminded about a particular river of Greek mythology, a principal river of Hades called Lethe. If a person should drink of the water of this river, then everything would be forgotten. There is much about the world in which we are living right now which is like drinking from this river of forgetfulness. There are very many distractions in everyday life. There are many pressing needs of one sort or another (or shall we say “apparent” pressing needs). Therefore, it is very easy for us to pay so much attention to these so-called needs that our conscious awareness of the Lord can drift into the background or even the sub-basement of our lives. It is a very dangerous thing for us to allow this to happen. When our consciousness of the Lord drifts into the background of our lives, then we become prey to the temptations of “Big Red” more than ever. Then we are in greater risk of being pulled away from the Body of Christ. We are in greater risk of being separated from the flock, and being eaten up by the wolf. These are real metaphors that the Lord gave us : flocks of sheep, shepherds.

For our sake, it is important every day to ask the Lord to help us have the strength to remember to read a little bit from the Scriptures. The readings for every day, which we find in all sorts of Church calendars, are not all that long. If we read those readings for every day, in the course of a whole year we will have read almost the whole New Testament. It is not that hard. A year to read these little portions is not all that hard. However, You-know-who-down-below makes us think that it is a very difficult thing to open the Bible, and read six or even ten verses. If it is a whole chapter, it seems that it is going to take so much time, and this becomes an obstacle. Actually, it takes three or four minutes. However, he helps us to think that it is so much to read that it feels like wading through porridge to open the Bible. That is how it feels. That is the way the Deceiver deceives us. That is how he plays with us.

However, when we manage actually to open the Scriptures, we encounter Christ in those Scriptures. He makes us realise that even though it felt like wading through porridge to get to opening the Scriptures, once we start to read, it is refreshing. It is refreshing because we remember Who Christ is to us, and Who He is to the world and to the Church. We are renewed in our hope of being able to survive. That is why it is important to try to read the Scriptures at the beginning of the day, not at the end of the day (because at the end of the day we are tending to fall asleep even after a couple of verses, especially if we have a big dinner).

Once having opened the Scriptures, once having encountered Christ, we are refreshed. We are renewed. We are given the ability to survive the rest of the day by beginning the day reading the Scriptures. We have food to remember and a correct perspective of life for the rest of the day. It only takes a few minutes to read those Scriptures. If we want to get into reading a Kathisma of Psalms, that is a more serious chunk of time – a whole ten minutes. However, even just a few minutes like that with the Lord and a couple of prayers will give us focus, and will help us to keep going for the rest of the day.

Who is Jesus Christ to us ? Jesus Christ to us is just as He is to the Apostles Peter, Andrew, James and John and all the rest (especially the ones today who are encountering Him by the Sea of Galilee). Our Lord borrows the Apostle Peter’s boat so that He can sit in it and teach people from it. That sounds rather strange from an average Canadian perspective, because it is not so obvious to us how it is easier from a boat to teach a crowd of people on the shore. I will tell you how it is easier.

In the first place, there were a lot of people. There always were a lot of people around Jesus Christ when He was teaching. How was He to be heard ? When one is sitting on a boat on the water, already the voice carries better. Simply the acoustics of being on the water makes the voice carry better. Besides that, the Sea of Galilee is surrounded by fairly steep hills. It is not some place where the land merely slopes gently into the water. By the Sea of Galilee there is a fairly steep rise, and it almost gives the effect of an amphitheatre. There is the water and the rise, and the people being able to see the speaker (in this case, Christ) in the boat. There is a possibility of being able to concentrate on who it is that is speaking, and being able to hear the one who is speaking. This is sort of an ideal place and way to teach. In the Gospels on more than one occasion we see the Saviour standing or sitting in a boat doing exactly the same thing. He knows His creation. He knows His creatures.

The Lord shows how He knows His creation, and knows His creatures by telling the Apostle Peter : “‘Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch’”. The apostle says : “‘Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing; nevertheless at Your word I will let down the net’”. They go out ; they fish ; and as we heard, they get so many fish that they have to fill several boats with these fish. Now they know Who He is. Now they know what would be necessary for them to do when they would come to shore, and He says : “‘Follow Me’” (Matthew 4:19). They leave everything and they follow Him because they have complete confidence in Him.

Saint Euphrosyne of Suzdal and Saint Sergius of Radonezh, whose memory we keep today, also have complete confidence in the Lord. They were both contemporaries, more or less, at the time of the Mongol invasion in the fourteenth century. They withdrew for different reasons : he, because God called him into the wilderness ; she, because she was widowed on her wedding day. Saint Euphrosyne withdrew to pray. Saint Sergius withdrew into the forest to pray. Both of them depended on the Lord to look after them, and He did. As we heard last night, the monastic brethren were grumbling sometimes. I am sure that that happened in Saint Euphrosyne’s community as well. Sometimes food gets scarce (or very repetitive) with preserved apples, buckwheat and sauerkraut – that is the likely diet. There is an old Russian proverb that says : “Cabbage soup and buckwheat – that’s our food”. The brethren easily become rather irritable when there is no variety in the diet for a long period of time. Sometimes monastic communities have had to live like that, but the Lord does always provide. Many times in these monastic communities, they have seen as concrete evidence of the Lord’s providing that when there is nothing left (and they think that they are going to begin starving), someone sends money so that they can buy food or someone brings food to them, and the day is saved just in the nick of time. Why is this ? It is because the brethren of those monastic communities, who have withdrawn to serve the Lord and the Lord only and above all in their lives, have to be reminded that it is the Lord who is feeding them. He is feeding them in the same way as He feeds the birds of the air. This is precisely what it says in the words of Christ (see Luke 12:22-31).

There have been very many people whom I have known who have been in exactly this boat : lay people, Christian families, who have often been in a very precarious position. Out of nowhere the Lord provides from some unexpected place. Some person sends money saying : “I was thinking of you”. The Lord helped the other person to remember this person three weeks before so that that person would write a cheque, mail it, and the mail would get there on the right day. The Lord knows what He is doing. The Lord is in charge of His creation. The Lord is in charge of us in this community as well. He is leading this community. He is leading all of us personally and all together. He is leading us in the direction of life, and health and salvation.

To underline this again, Saint Euphrosyne in Suzdal was told ahead of time that her father would be a martyr, and he was. This is because the Mongols came and levelled Suzdal, except for her monastery. Her monastery was the only thing left in Suzdal after the devastation of the Mongols at that time. That was because she and her sisters were praying and trusting completely in Christ, and the Lord wanted them to be a witness. The martyrs were witnesses in their own way, but the Lord wanted that community of Saint Euphrosyne in Suzdal to be a witness of how the Lord is with us. Other people have had similar confidence in Him in various other places. For example, there is the wonder-working icon of the Theotokos of Tikhvin (which we took back to Russia last year). In the old days, when the icon was first in its monastery in Tikhvin not very far from where St Petersburg now is, the Swedes were attacking (as the Swedes did like to attack Russia in those days). They were going to destroy Tikhvin, except that the brethren of that monastery obeyed the Mother of God and they made a procession with the icon around the monastery, and without a fight the Swedes just went home.

These sorts of things have happened time and again in Christian history. Who is in charge of the universe ? It is the Lord. He created us all. Who is in charge of my life ? It is the Lord. He created me. He gives me life. Who is in charge of the details of our life together ? It is the Lord. Our Lord Jesus Christ is our Saviour. He is our loving Pastor. He is our loving Shepherd. He will not betray us. Every human being, willingly or unwillingly, sometimes betrays other human beings even if we do not want to, just because we are fallen. We make mistakes and we have to repent of our mistakes. Jesus Christ is the only One who is ever faithful, ever trustworthy. We can see Him in failing human beings, but we do not compare Him with failing human beings. He alone is faithful, and He alone will sustain us in every difficulty, every trial, every disappointment, every pain, every obstacle. He will sustain us and He will teach us how to survive, how to live positively, healthily, and with strength.

Saint Sergius of Radonezh and Saint Euphrosyne are very good, positive and strong examples of what are the fruits of trusting Jesus Christ. Let us, ourselves, do our best to trust that Jesus Christ knows well what He is doing with us, and to allow Him to lead us. Let us not put blocks in His way, but let us ask Him : “What do You want us to do ? We will do it. Just show us the way. I am saying this especially for two reasons : this community is being tested a little bit just at this time. It is not too bad, and it will work out all right. However, another challenge will come in the near future probably, and that is : where will be the final permanent place for this parish. Is it going to be a variation on this theme, or is it going to be in a different place ? This will be what has to be discerned in Christ. As I said before, I hope it is a place down the block, but we cannot count that chicken before it hatches. If we count that chicken before it hatches, I can tell you that it will not hatch. We can hope, and the Lord knows that we hope, but we cannot say it must be. Maybe, for some reason, the Lord wants us to re-arrange this Temple, and He will give us the ability to do it. He will show us, and it will be understood by people, together.

Keep your hearts open to the Lord and attuned to the Lord so that you will know what He is saying to you. Keep your eyes on Jesus Christ every day. He will not disappoint you or desert you. He will always feed you, guide you, support you and sustain you, and enable you to glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.