In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
As we prepare for Great Lent, today is the last day for eating meat, so I hope you enjoy yourselves today with whatever roast beef, pork, or kolbassa that you particularly enjoy. However, do not let it touch your lips again until Pascha. One of the real, sad dangers of living in this county, Canada, is living in the midst of this attitude which has grown up and which says : “It doesn’t matter what you do as long as you don’t hurt anyone”. “You can do anything you like, as long as you don’t hurt anyone”. You have all heard that. Even the former Prime Minister Trudeau said it in an oblique sort of way when he started to adjust the laws of morality in the country : “It doesn’t matter what you do as long as you don’t hurt anyone”. For such an attitude to grow up in a nation which is reputed to be Christian is really pitiful because it shows a complete misunderstanding of the Gospel. It shows a complete misunderstanding of what it means to be a Christian.
In the Epistle reading today, for instance, the Apostle Paul is speaking about meat that was sacrificed to idols and about whether it was all right to eat it. He understood that a Christian has this liberty to eat anything because as long as we bless what we eat, it is God who gives us the food, and it is God who blesses what we eat. It does not matter if it is poisoned, because we can still eat it if God gives the blessing. Some people tried to kill the Apostle himself with poison, and they were surprised when nothing happened at all, and they converted to Christ. Remember the time when an adder bit him ? It was expected that he would swell up, fall down and die in no time at all (see Acts 28:3-6). Nothing at all happened to the Apostle, because he was about the Lord’s business.
Christians have a certain sort of freedom, a powerful sort of freedom, but it is a freedom which has to be exercised in accordance with God’s will, and in accordance with God’s will only. If we start to get cocky with this freedom, it turns into licence just like that, and then it is sin, and it is against God’s will. If we try to drink poison or get bitten by snakes, we are liable to die very quickly. We can die very quickly if we are not depending totally on the Lord’s will and witnessing for Him totally. The Apostle said that even having this liberty, this power and this freedom in Christ, he would set it all aside if one of his brothers was weak in faith and if he was going to scandalise one of his brothers or sisters by the way he exercised his freedom.
Let us take today’s Gospel reading, for example. We all know this Gospel, but are we really paying attention to it ? It is clear from this passage that the Lord wants us to understand that if we want to serve Him, if we want to do good for Him because we love Him, then we cannot be satisfied with saying : “I love the Lord. I come to church every Sunday. I do good, and I don’t hurt anyone. I don’t rob ; I don’t steal and I am no worse than anyone else”. That is just nothing. That is zero for being a Christian because our Lord says in effect : “I want you to do good for Me by doing good for My children (in other words for each other)”. He says very clearly that as much as we visit the sick, clothe the naked, feed the hungry, visit people who are in jail, take care of people’s physical and spiritual needs, we are serving Him”.
We learn two fundamental and extremely important facts about Christian living today. If we want to serve Christ, we cannot be abstract about it. It is very popular in Canada (in particular for people who are not Orthodox Christians) to look at Orthodox Christians and say : “Oh, how we admire you and your worship. It is so lovely. It is so mystical. You Orthodox Christians are so spiritual”. Well certainly, I suppose we are spiritual, but not in the way they understand. Spirituality does not have to do with levitating off the ground or walking on air. Orthodox Christian spirituality does not have to do necessarily with being some sort of ascetic guru who eats nothing but potato leaves and says very wise, wonderful and profound things. For the Orthodox Christian, that is not spirituality at all. The Orthodox Christian is a Christian who is very much aware of the concrete reality, the materiality of our environment and what God expects of us. In all Orthodox Christian history and in the greatness of all our saints is found care and love for human beings and for all God’s creation.
We cannot say that we love God or are in love with Christ unless we are life-givers ; unless we are love-givers ; unless we are doers of good for human beings ; unless we are protectors and healers of the environment ; unless we are integrated human beings who care well about our bodies (not for selfishness) but for how well we can serve the Lord. We care for the welfare of each other, our brothers and sisters. We care for all the people whom we encounter every day on the street who are wandering along with blank looks on their faces. It is easier to care about people and be concerned about the welfare of people who are actually physically hungry by giving them some soup, than it is to be truly concerned about these people that we live with every day, whom we mix with every day who have these blank, empty and sometimes very angry faces. These are people who are lost, people who are wrapped up in themselves, interested only in making money, money and more money. They are interested in building walls around themselves and protecting themselves from everyone else for fear of what people might say or do to them. They are paralysed and enslaved by fear. Those are the people who are the neediest of the needy in our society. Their numbers are not just increasing slightly. They are multiplying exponentially these days.
What can you and I do about them ? When the Lord presents such a person to you or to me, do we diligently pray for that person ? Do we try to show that person that emptiness is not the only story in life, that it is not the end of everything ? When we are busy doing good for people and meeting their needs, that is when we Orthodox Christians are living our spirituality because our prayer-book conversation with the Lord then has flesh on it just as His love for you and for me has flesh on it. He took flesh, human flesh. Without falling into sin, Our Lord took all our humanity, everything about us, all our darkness and He allowed us to kill Him. He did this in order to save us and in order to rise victorious over that rebellion with which we are enslaved. His love has substance, and His love active in you and me must also have substance. It must be concrete and tangible.
As much as we demonstrate our love for God by the good that we do, and as much as we demonstrate our love for God by strengthening, renewing, encouraging, praying for, healing and meeting the needs of other human beings, it works also the other way. Contrary to that popular Canadian saying : “It doesn’t matter what I do as long as I don’t hurt anyone”, the fact is that the Orthodox Christian knows very well that when you or I commit even small sins, we are hurting our brothers and sisters. It is high time that we began to be open about this. In every small or large sin, we are sapping courage and strength to follow Christ from our brothers and sisters. Not only that, we are increasing the poison which we have already inflicted on this environment, the earth on which we live, which the Lord gave to us to be the custodians and caretakers of it. In either direction, whether we do good or whether we do evil, everything that we do affects all our brothers and sisters, all humanity (not just here in n) all around the world. It affects everyone and everything. That is what Saint Seraphim meant when he said that if you save your soul, thousands will be saved with you. Conversely, if you lose your soul, thousands will be lost with you. If you are struggling to follow Christ, your struggle to follow Christ and the good that you do, makes a wake just as a boat does, which makes it easier for other people near you to do the same thing. It encourages them, strengthens them, and makes a sort of current in that direction. You yourself are not breaking new ground, because you also are following in the wake of others who have shown you the way to Christ, the way to be a Christian and the way to live the Gospel. You yourself are following a way that has been made easier by the suffering and struggles of others.
Today, the Lord is asking you and me : “Which way are you going ? Which way is your life going ? Whom are you following – yourself, or are you following Me, the Giver of Life ? Are you going to do as I have shown you or are you going to do as the thief of souls teaches you to do ? Which way are you going ? How do you live your life ?” Sooner or later you and I will all come to face the Lord. Precisely how you and I live our lives now is going to determine what will happen at the Last Day when we come to face Him in His love. Will you and I by our loving lives now be able to accept Him then or will you and I, because of our stubbornness, be afraid of our Lord and run away from Him ? Which way shall we go ? How is our life today ?
If I have been going the wrong way, the Lord has this to say to me (and to anyone who has been going the wrong way : “‘Come to Me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest … My yoke is easy and My burden is light’” (Matthew 11:28, 30). He says : “‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life’” (Matthew 14:6). He says : “Come to Me, all of you, and I will give you life”. He wants us all, everyone, to enter into His Kingdom and live and reign with Him forever. Today, let us renew our determination to repent : to turn away from selfishness, to turn to selflessness : to turn away from darkness and turn to the light. Let us turn to the Lord and serve Him in each other as Saint Herman has taught us and exhorted us : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all and do His holy will”. Thus will we glorify the all-holy Trinity : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.