Sunday after the Feast of Nativity

Archbishop Seraphim : Homily
First Priorities
Sunday after the Feast of Nativity
27 December, 2009
Galatians 1:11-19 ; Matthew 2:13-23
Acts 6:8-7:5, 47-60 ; Matthew 22:1-14


In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Christ is born.

We Canadians have some difficulties, I think, with keeping things in perspective because the way of Canada is all about “me, myself and I”. Our refrains are constant : “Satisfy my every desire”. “Make me comfortable in the context of everything soft”. “I deserve everything I want”. A long time ago my mother would refer to certain persons with a significant ego, saying : “Okh”, he is a lettered man : he wears a big “I” on his sweater”. Sadly, this is the mentality in our whole country. It is not that this is something new for human beings. Human beings have always been like this since the Fall. However, in these days we are becoming specialists in this.

That is our problem. We are becoming specialists in this egocentricity. For an Orthodox Christian, this is a particularly difficult situation to be in because this disposition is the opposite of the Christian way. We Christians do not pretend that we do not exist. We do not pretend that we are bad. However, for the Christian, there are priorities greater than self-satisfaction. These priorities have to do with putting first things first. Who is first except the Lord ? The Lord is first for us. The Lord is first for us as He is for the holy Archdeacon and First-martyr Stephen whose death we witness today in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles. The Lord is first not because He is some sort of philosophical principle or because He is a cultural tradition. The Lord is first because He loves us, and He created us because of love. We, likewise, love Him. The Orthodox way is to recognise this loving relationship : He, first of all, loves us, and we love Him in return (see 1 John 4:19). Everything about our lives is lived out in that context : the Lord first, and everything else afterwards in order.

At the time of the Incarnation, this is where the Jewish people got into trouble regarding their response to the Incarnation. They had other priorities at the time. Just as Saul of Tarsus thought he was doing God a service by persecuting Christians when he was a young man and had not yet encountered Christ fully, the chosen people thought that they were doing God a service. The parable that our Saviour tells us today is precisely about the consequences of this denial.

A certain king invites people to the marriage feast of his son. These people do not take the invitation seriously. They have other priorities than the banquet : someone just got married ; someone just bought a cow ; someone just bought some land. All these things are other priorities. The prevailing attitude of these people was that there was always some dinner taking place somewhere anyway, so why bother. We, ourselves, have to be careful about this because we are invited to the heavenly banquet. How are we regarding the Master ? Are we regarding Him with love, and as a first priority in love ? Does love for Him count for everything in our lives ? Or do we have the attitude that says : “The Church is always there. The Divine Liturgy is always there. I have other things I have to do right now”. Do I excuse myself like this ? Are there other things that are somehow more important in my life than the Lord ? It is a dangerous environment that we live in because it is so easy to forget who is who, and what is what.

The holy Archdeacon and First-martyr Stephen does not come to his death today because of loyalty to some principles. He comes to his death, and his entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven today precisely and only because of his love for Jesus Christ. That is why it was possible for the Archdeacon to be able to say : “‘Look! I see the Heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!’” These words immediately brought about his death. However, he did not have the Heavens opened because he was following some sort of discipline or exercise in order to bring himself to some sort of philosophical enlightenment. He received this gift from God, this vision of the Kingdom of Heaven, in order to encourage and strengthen him. It was because he was a lover of God, and because his heart was attuned to the Lord that he was able to see this vision that the Lord gave him in order to strengthen him. It was because of his love for the Lord. The holy Archdeacon Stephen is not by any means the only Christian who has seen such things. In fact, there is a young man standing outside Jerusalem today, at whose feet were laid the clothes of those who are stoning the holy Archdeacon Stephen to death. That young man (who became the Apostle Paul) was also given such blessings from the Lord in order to encourage him to persevere.

It is important to remember in our perseverance that everything is in the context of the Incarnation of the Son of God whose Nativity we are celebrating right now. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory” (John 1:14). The Word of God, who speaks everything into existence, took flesh. The Word of God is the visible, touchable expression of God’s love for us. Everything takes place in that context. We, all of us, are called together here to worship the Lord, all of us with our own brokennesses. Our Church, somehow, is not the society of the enlightened and the perfect in some philosophical sense. If that were the case, we would not be feeling the strong need to have to go to confession week after week, as we do. We are, all of us together, broken persons with our own pain in life, all suffering from one thing or another. Yet at the same time, in our sorrows, in our weaknesses, and in our fallenness, we all are united together by our response of love to Jesus Christ who is stretching out His hands to us and inviting us to this banquet today.

The Church is often called a “hospital for sinners”. We are the Church. Thus, here we are in the hospital. The great Physician Himself, our Saviour, is stretching out His hands to us, inviting us to His bosom of love. He, Himself, is going to feed us with His own hand. The Lord uses the bishop and the priests (who are His extensions), but it is He, Himself, who is feeding us all. The prayers recognise that. He, Himself, is feeding us all with His Body and Blood in which are life, consolation and healing. From the parable that our Lord told us in today’s Gospel reading, we can understand that we are like those who were pulled into the banquet from various highways in order to take the place of the invitees who, for various reasons, refused to come. Of course, we do not have appropriate wedding apparel. However, it is the Lord, the Master of the banquet, who gives the correct garment to wear. The man who still was not wearing a proper wedding garment and who was cast out, is a person who accepted the last-minute invitation but who would not for some reason accept to put on the proper apparel from the hand of the Master. What, then, is that apparel ? It is the garment of baptism. The Lord gives us the renewal of our life in baptism. He brings us to life eternal in baptism. He, Himself, dresses us in the banquet apparel for the occasion. He gives us everything.

The Apostle Paul learned in his life how this love works itself out in the environment of people who are broken as we are. There are all sorts of people who did not understand what he was trying to say about the love of Jesus Christ. Many people rejected what he had to say. They called him names, and sometimes they beat him up. The Apostle Paul was not deterred by these broken responses from broken people because these were not responses sent by the Lord. They were responses from below, from darkness, and from people who were suffering because the light of the love of Jesus Christ was shining on them and into their hearts. They were uncomfortable about what that light was exposing in their hearts. Rather than allow the Lord to clean the darkness and to clear the junk, they closed the door and hid from the light.

Brothers and sisters, it is crucial that we do not let ourselves fall into that temptation. When we suffer from certain persons who are in that dark condition and who treat us similarly, it is important that we not fall into a sulk, and say in so many words : “I am not going to play in your yard anymore. I am going home to my own toy”. We cannot be like that. The Apostle Paul did not descend into that despite all the difficulties he faced. He continued to do what had to be done : to reveal in his life, in his words and in his writings, the love of Jesus Christ. He laboured, preaching and writing so that people around him would be able to have hope, and so that those who could respond to the invitation to the banquet by the Master would be able to respond. They would be able to see in the example of the Apostle that the Master is a loving Master, and that He will receive them with love.

As we are celebrating this great Feast of the Nativity of Christ, in this cycle of feasts that we also call the “Winter Pascha”, let us allow the Lord to renew our hearts. Brothers and sisters, let us allow the Lord to open our hearts, to strengthen our hearts and to multiply the light that He has already planted in our hearts. Together with the Apostle Paul and the holy First-martyr and Archdeacon Stephen, may we come at the end of our days to the Kingdom, and enter into the permanent banquet of the Master, ever glorifying the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.